Magick Without Tears

PROGRESS 483 Last Sunday I looked through an interview with the least brain-bound of these ruminators-poor old, dear old G for gaga Bernard Shaw. The artist, said he, was a special case. He should have a nice easy job, three or four hours a day, and be free for the rest of it to devote himself to his Art. I wonder how much of his own work would have seen daylight if he had been tied to some silly robot soul-killing, nerve-crushing, mind-infuriating routine job for even one half-hour a day! When I am on a piece of work, I grudge the time for eating; and when it's done, I need the absolute relaxation of leisured luxury. Then what of the Work itself? If the Idea be truly new and important, God help it! The whole class of men affected jump on it with one accord, if haply they may crush it in the germ. Read a little of the History of Medicine! Any man who shows a sign of independent thought is watched. is thwarted. He persists and is threatened and bullied. He persists; every engine of oppression is set in motion against him. Then, something snaps; either they succeed in killing him (Ross, who defeated malaria, nearly starved to death) or they make him a baronet, or a peer, or make his death a Day of National Mourning, and bury him in the Pantheon-aux grands hommes fa patrie reconnaissante-like Pasteur after one of the most infamous campaigns of persecution in history. Then, of course, entertainment must be standardized. It costs money to produce; and who will produce anything which can only appeal to the very few-to none at all, soon, if these swine have their way. So, if it is new, is original, is worth one's while, it must be ignored . Besides, being new and incomprehensible to the great Us, it may be dangerous, and must be suppressed. In all literature I know no pages so terrifying as those in Louis Marlow's Mr. Amberthwaite, which describe his dream. I wish I could quote it, with Sinai as the orchestra; never mind, read it again. And we are on the way-far on the way-to That! Now, obviously, the robot education, robot textbooks