418 
MAGICK WITHOUT TEARS 
contempt the theory of "original sin" in the sense which you 
probably 
meant me to take: 
the defect deliberately 
implanted in man by "Old Nobodaddy" 
with no better 
object than to prepare the grotesquely tragic farce of the 
"Atonement." 
I will merely remark that no idea at once so 
base and so contemptible, 
so bestial and so idiotic, can 
challenge its ignoble absurdity. 
Rotten with sex-perversion, it is a noisome blend of sadism 
and masochism based on the most abject form of fear. 
The only argument for it is that it ever did exist; but it does 
not exist for wholesome minds.