FOLLOW A WORD THROUGH THE COLLECTION
Search the corpus.
Phrase search ignores case and repeated whitespace. All-words search finds whole words anywhere on the same page. OCR errors can affect results.
4,494 matching pages
Page 221 of 2251929 · PDF PAGE 520
… to the point at which the Prussian drill sergeant was invaluable. The aim was to reduce the soldier to a brainless bulk of brawn, to be manipulated as mechanically as a chessman, exercising his inherent energies without the slightest wish or power to think or act for himself. (This stage corresponds to that which we are rapidly approaching in industry.) Now at least we have reached a further stage. The complexity of a battle and its mere extent in space have made it impossible for {820} a single man to handle his troops as was done by Marlboro…
1904 · PDF PAGE 104
… “ The Knowable,” for a fair summary of the facts under- lying this gener alisation; which indeed he comes within an ace of making in so many words. It may be observed that this law is nearly if not quite axiomatic, its contr ary being enor mously difficult if not impossible to formulate mentally. As to an infinite intelligence, all philo- sophers of any standing are agreed that all- love and all-power are incom patible. The existence of the universe is a standing proof of this. The Deist needs the Optimist to keep him company; over their fires…
1929 · PDF PAGE 342
…he phantasm? To me it seems no more than one of the ways of expressing the formula of creation. I regard chemical action as identical. A man and a woman unite; and the result is a child, which is totally different from them though formed of their elements. Just so the combination of hydrogen and chlorine produces hydrochloric acid. They are gases; at ordinary temperature it is a liquid. None of its chemical and physical reactions is identical with those of its elements. The phenomena are analogous in very many ways, but the essence of their sim…
1929 · PDF PAGE 197
… the varied stimuli of the senses. There is a tendency to regard even such comparatively slight variation as the reflective habit of the man of science and the philosopher as being abnormal and in a sense unhealthy. They are the subjects of vulgar ridicule. In sheer spiritual lassitude, I left Egypt homeward bound. During my absence from England I had kept up a sort of irregular correspondence with Gerald Kelly, who had by this time started to try to learn to paint, and who had a studio in the rue Campagne Premičre in the Montparnasse quarter o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 510
…pairing cynicism of the wise realist Snake, on the other, the heartless vanity of the foolish idealistic Cat, had left me hopeless for humanity. In this extremity, I met a very rare animal. A woman! She was a regular street-walker. She had been familiar with hardships, callousness, obsession, shame and poverty from her cradle; but she possessed every noble quality to the full. Hers was the true pride, generosity, purity and passion to which the Cat so basely pretended; and hers also the clear-insighted intelligence, the wide experience and deep…
1929 · PDF PAGE 463
…rofitable. It is of perculiar interest, by the way, to observe that the artists were so impregnated with with the Buddhist ideal of impermanence that in even the costliest buildings they calculated the life of the plumbing as at no more than twenty years; that is, they expected, from one cause or another, that the building would be superseded within that period. The actual situation, by the way, is critical. There are, roughly speaking, two and a half of the seven and a half million people of Great New York put to grave inconvenience by the con…
1929 · PDF PAGE 211
… sketches by Kelly which I defy the world to distinguish from Beardsley, Rossetti, Morris, G.F.Watts, etc. Robbie Ross once told me of a man who collected fans by Charles Conder. He had twenty-three when he {354} died; four of them Conders, five doubtful, but the remaining fourteen genuine Kellys. At this particular moment he was aiming at the "low tone" of Whistler and Velasquez and his method was to keep on darkening his palette. Ultimately he would use paint the colour of Thames mud for the highlight on the cheek of a blonde. He once picked …
1929 · PDF PAGE 296
…od of St. Januarius, but I see no reason for inflicting my incredulity on the people of Naples. The villagers naturally resented the ill manners of this brainless boor and told him to shut up. He immediately began to scream that he was being martyred for Christ's sake. I told him that if I could have brought myself to touch him, I would have thrashed him within an inch of his life. He did not understand my attitude; but I don't suppose there is much in this funny world that he did understand. On the twenty-third we came to Yuncangfu. The road d…
1906 · PDF PAGE 278
…o, if they really do so, which I doubt. Even the lowest dimly, or perhaps automatically, perceive the folly thereof z Scept, As? Myst. A man will say ‘‘ Since the Derby was run” more intelligibly than ‘since May such-and-such a day”; for his memory is of the race, not of a particular item in the ever changing space-relation of the heavens, a relation which he can never know, and of which he can never perceive the significance: nay, which he can never recognise, even by landmarks of catastrophic importance. Scept. One might be humorous on this s…
1929 · PDF PAGE 120
… to perceive the real implications of what I was doing. In particular, I gained an entirely new grip of the Cabbala. One of my results demands detailed record, because it proved later to be one of the foundations of the Great Work of my life. The word Abracadabra is familiar to everyone. Why should it possess such a reputation? Eliphas Lévi's explanations left me cold. I began to suspect that it must be a corruption of some true "word of power". I investigated it by means of the Cabbala. I restored its true spelling. Analysis showed it to be in…
1929 · PDF PAGE 203
…he mystery of his birth, and his father's attempts to establish a marriage with would have entitled him to a place in the peerage; the romance of Vittoria; and the intrigue of Diana of the Crossways. He traced the influence of the master's locomotor ataxia upon his life, his character and his creatures. He explained how the long years of suffering had deformed Meredith's disposition and led him to disgrace himself by refusing to head the petition for Oscar Wilde's release. He told us the true story of Salome. The character of Wilde was simple. …
1904 · PDF PAGE 116
…ay say, it is at least clear that if this s tate is accom - panied with an intense and passionles bliss beyond any thing that the normal man can conceive of, and unaccom panied with the slightest prejudice to the mental and physical health, it is most highly desirable. And to the scientist is presen ts a m agnificent field of research. with which he is fam iliar, and, lord of his own system, cannot trace the course or divine the cause of the accident which has disturbed him. And he will accept this ignorance as a proof of how well his own sy st…
1929 · PDF PAGE 256
…nga from England, thanks to the admirable photographs of every side of the mountain taken by Signor Vittorio Sella, who accompanied some man named Freshfield in a sort of old-world tour around the mountain. I had also a map by Professor Garwood, the only trouble with which was that, not having been up the Yalung glacier himself, he had had to fill in the details from what he himself calls the unintelligible hieroglyphics of a native surveyor, who had not been there either. {424} It did not matter; but I was very much puzzled by the appearance o…
1929 · PDF PAGE 467
…7 genus that has yet appeared on this planet. Before him nobody ever conceived so all-embracing a theme. Yet I am still unsatisfied! I demand that he shall be developed towards the solution of his problem, and perceive that the contradictory thesis is equally true: that the most trivial, vain and fatuous events, if rightly understood, are sublime; that the slough of despond is but an optical illusion created by the shadow of the snow-pure summits of success. I have been accused of exaggerated enthusiasm for Cabell. The more stupid and mean-mind…
1929 · PDF PAGE 121
…al situation and told me that my troubles were due to my inability to control my thoughts. He said: "Give up your Magick, with all its romantic fascinations and deceitful delights, Promise to do this for a {213} 1. WEH Note: In the Hebrew language. time and I will teach you how to master your mind." He spoke with the absolute authority which comes from profound and perfect knowledge. And, as I sat and listened, I found my faith fixed by the force of facts. I wondered and worshipped. I thought of Easter '98, when I wandered in Wastdale in despai…
1929 · PDF PAGE 12
…stinctive love of terrors. The Elders and the harps seemed tame. He preferred the Dragon, the False Prophet, the Beast and the Scarlet Woman, as being more exciting. He revelled in the descriptions of torment. One may suspect, moreover, a strain of congenital masochism. He liked to imagine himself in agony; in particular, he liked to identify himself with the Beast whose number is the number of a man, six hundred and three score six. One can only conjecture that it was the mystery of the number which determined this childish choice. Many of the…
1929 · PDF PAGE 330
…duced bad jokes to show that I did not take myself seriously; whereas the truth was I was simply nervous about my achievement, just as a man afraid to disgrace {536} himself as a boxer might pretend that the bout was not in earnest. My prose is consequently marred by absolutely stupid blasphemies against itself. I now began to see that this was schoolboyish bashfulness, and to feel my responsibility as an exponent of the hidden knowledge, to treat my prose as reverently as my verse, and (consequently) to produce masterpieces of learning and wit…
1929 · PDF PAGE 533
…slates into action his thought or, in other words, is the instrument through which his idea assumes sensible form. This Ape became my permanent companion. At this moment, she is beside me in a bathing house at Marsa Plage near Tunis, writing these words. Tahuti being the Lord of Speech, I published number 1 of volume III of The Equinox on March 21st, 1919. I arranged for it to contain something like a complete programme of my proposed Operation to initiate, emancipate and relieve mankind. The first item is a "Hymn to Pan", which I believe to be…
1911 · PDF PAGE 305
…OF NUMBERS. A Handbook dealing with the Traditional Inter- pretation of Numbers and their Predictive Value. By ‘SEPHARIAL,” Author of “A Manual of Occultism,” “Kabalistic Astrology,” “Prognostic Astronomy,” etc. etc. About 168 pp. crown 8vo, ornamental cloth gilt, 2s. net. A MANUAL OF OCCULTISM. A complete Exposition of the Occult Arts and Sciences by ‘SEPHARIAL,” Author of ‘A Manual of Astrology,” ‘‘ Prognostic Astronomy,” “Kabalistie Astrology,” etc. etc. With numerous diagrams and illustrations. 368 pp., handsomely bound in cloth gilt. “Gilt…
1911 · PDF PAGE 305
…OF NUMBERS. A Handbook dealing with the Traditional Inter- pretation of Numbers and their Predictive Value. By ‘SEPHARIAL,” Author of “A Manual of Occultism,” “Kabalistic Astrology,” “Prognostic Astronomy,” etc. etc. About 168 pp. crown 8vo, ornamental cloth gilt, 2s. net. A MANUAL OF OCCULTISM. A complete Exposition of the Occult Arts and Sciences by ‘SEPHARIAL,” Author of ‘A Manual of Astrology,” ‘‘ Prognostic Astronomy,” “Kabalistie Astrology,” etc. etc. With numerous diagrams and illustrations. 368 pp., handsomely bound in cloth gilt. “Gilt…