IMPROVISING A TEMPLE 
175 
Wha t is really more significant is the hidden, the 
unexpressed, soul of the Book; the way in which it leaps into 
wild spate of rhapsody on any excuse or no excuse. 
This is surely more convincing than some dreary thesis, 
plodding along doggedly with the "proof" (!) that "God is 
good," every sentence creaking with your chalk-stones and 
squeaking with the twinges of your toe! 
Yet just because I proclaim a doctrine of joy in the 
language of joy, people - dull camels-say I am not "serious." 
Yet I have found pleasure in harnessing the winged horses 
of the Sun to the ploughshare of Reason, in showing the 
validity of this doctrine in detail. It satisfies my sense of 
rhythm and of symmetry to explain that every experience, 
no matter what, must of necessity be a gain of grandeur, of 
grip, of comprehension and enjoyment ever growing as 
complexity and simplicity succeed each other in sublime 
systole and diastole, in strophe and antistrophe chanting 
against each other to the stars of the Night and of the 
Morning! 
Of course it is easy as pie to knock all this to pieces by 
"lunatic logic," saying: "Then toothache is really as pleasant 
as strawberry shortcake." You are hereby referred to Eight 
Lectures on Yoga. None of the terms I am using have been, 
or can be defined. All my propositions amount to no more 
than tautology: A is A. You may even quote The Book of the 
Law itself: "Now a curse on Because and his kin! ... Enough 
of Because! Be he damned for a dog!" (AL, 11:28-33) These 
things stink of Ignoratio Elenchi, or something painfully like 
it: a sort of slipping up a cog, of "confusing the planes ," of 
wilfully misunderstanding the gist of an argument. (All 
magicians, by the way, ought to be grounded solidly in 
Formal Logic.) 
Never forget, at the least, how simple it is to make a 
maniac's hell-broth of any proposition, however plain to 
common sense. 
All the above, now: - Buddhism refuted. Yet it is a