imagine, is not frequently met with here below. The flesh, alas!
is weak, and--from a certain point of view--so important!

A superficial person might be rendered miserable by the simple
question: What would become of us if the circulating libraries

ceased to exist? It is a horrid and almost indelicate supposition,
but let us be brave and face the truth. On this earth of ours

nothing lasts. TOUT PASSE, TOUT CASSE, TOUT LASSE. Imagine the
utter wreck overtaking the morals of our beautiful country-houses

should the circulating libraries suddenly die! But pray do not
shudder. There is no occasion.

Their spirit shall survive. I declare this from inward conviction,
and also from scientific information received lately. For observe:

the circulating libraries are human institutions. I beg you to
follow me closely. They are human institutions, and being human,

they are not animal, and, therefore, they are spiritual. Thus, any
man with enough money to take a shop, stock his shelves, and pay

for advertisements shall be able to evoke the pure and censorious
spectre of the circulating libraries whenever his own commercial

spirit moves him.
For, and this is the information alluded to above, Science, having

in its infinite wanderings run up against various wonders and
mysteries, is apparentlywilling now to allow a spiritual quality

to man and, I conclude, to all his works as well.
I do not know exactly what this "Science" may be; and I do not

think that anybody else knows; but that is the information stated
shortly. It is contained in a book reposing under my thoughtful

eyes. {5} I know it is not a censored book, because I can see for
myself that it is not a novel. The author, on his side, warns me

that it is not philosophy, that it is not metaphysics, that it is
not natural science. After this comprehensivewarning, the

definition of the book becomes, you will admit, a pretty hard nut
to crack.

But meantime let us return for a moment to my opening remark about
the physical effect of some common, hired books. A few of them

(not necessarily books of verse) are melodious; the music some
others make for you as you read has the disagreeableemphasis of a

barrel-organ; the tinkling-cymbals book (it was not written by a
humorist) I only met once. But there is infinitevariety in the

noises books do make. I have now on my shelves a book apparently
of the most valuable kind which, before I have read half-a-dozen

lines, begins to make a noise like a buzz-saw. I am inconsolable;
I shall never, I fear, discover what it is all about, for the

buzzing covers the words, and at every try I am absolutely forced
to give it up ere the end of the page is reached.

The book, however, which I have found so difficult to define, is by
no means noisy. As a mere piece of writing it may be described as

being breathless" target="_blank" title="a.屏息的">breathless itself and taking the reader's breath away, not by
the magnitude of its message but by a sort of anxious volubility in

the delivery. The constantly elusive argument and the illustrative
quotations go on without a single reflective pause. For this

reason alone the reading of that work is a fatiguing process.
The author himself (I use his own words) "suspects" that what he

has written "may be theology after all." It may be. It is not my
place either to allay or to confirm the author's suspicion of his

own work. But I will state its main thesis: "That science
regarded in the gross dictates the spirituality of man and strongly

implies a spiritualdestiny for individual human beings." This
means: Existence after Death--that is, Immortality.

To find out its value you must go to the book. But I will observe
here that an Immortality liable at any moment to betray itself

fatuously by the forcible incantations of Mr. Stead or Professor
Crookes is scarcely worth having. Can you imagine anything more

squalid than an Immortality at the beck and call of Eusapia
Palladino? That woman lives on the top floor of a Neapolitan

house, and gets our poor, pitiful, august dead, flesh of our flesh,
bone of our bone, spirit of our spirit, who have loved, suffered

and died, as we must love, suffer, and die--she gets them to beat
tambourines in a corner and protrudeshadowy limbs through a

curtain. This is particularly horrible, because, if one had to put
one's faith in these things one could not even die safely from

disgust, as one would long to do.
And to believe that these manifestations, which the author

evidently takes for modern miracles, will stay our tottering faith;
to believe that the new psychology has, only the other day,

discovered man to be a "spiritualmystery," is really carrying
humility towards that universal provider, Science, too far.

We moderns have complicated our old perplexities to the point of
absurdity; our perplexities older than religion itself. It is not

for nothing that for so many centuries the priest, mounting the
steps of the altar, murmurs, "Why art thou sad, my soul, and why

dost thou trouble me?" Since the day of Creation two veiled
figures, Doubt and Melancholy, are pacing endlessly in the sunshine

of the world. What humanity needs is not the promise of scientific
immortality, but compassionate pity in this life and infinite mercy

on the Day of Judgment.
And, for the rest, during this transient hour of our pilgrimage, we

may well be content to repeat the Invocation of Sar Peladan. Sar
Peladan was an occultist, a seer, a modern magician. He believed

in astrology, in the spirits of the air, in elves; he was
marvellously and deliciously absurd. Incidentally he wrote some

incomprehensible poems and a few pages of harmonious prose, for,
you must know, "a magician is nothing else but a great harmonist."

Here are some eight lines of the magnificent Invocation. Let me,
however, warn you, strictly between ourselves, that my translation

is execrable. I am sorry to say I am no magician.
"O Nature, indulgent Mother, forgive! Open your arms to the son,

prodigal and weary.
"I have attempted to tear asunder the veil you have hung to conceal

from us the pain of life, and I have been wounded by the mystery. .
. . OEdipus, half way to finding the word of the enigma, young

Faust, regretting already the simple life, the life of the heart, I
come back to you repentant, reconciled, O gentle deceiver!"

THE ASCENDING EFFORT--1910
Much good paper has been lamentably wasted to prove that science

has destroyed, that it is destroying, or, some day, may destroy
poetry. Meantime, unblushing, unseen, and often unheard, the

guileless poets have gone on singing in a sweet strain. How they
dare do the impossible and virtuallyforbidden thing is a cause for

wonder but not for legislation. Not yet. We are at present too
busy reforming the silent burglar and planning concerts to soothe

the savage breast of the yelling hooligan. As somebody--perhaps a
publisher--said lately: "Poetry is of no account now-a-days."

But it is not totally neglected. Those persons with gold-rimmed
spectacles whose usual occupation is to spy upon the obvious have

remarked audibly (on several occasions) that poetry has so far not
given to science any acknowledgmentworthy of its distinguished

position in the popular mind. Except that Tennyson looked down the
throat of a foxglove, that Erasmus Darwin wrote THE LOVES OF THE

PLANTS and a scoffer THE LOVES OF THE TRIANGLES, poets have been
supposed to be indecorously blind to the progress of science. What

tribute, for instance, has poetry paid to electricity? All I can
remember on the spur of the moment is Mr. Arthur Symons' line about

arc lamps: "Hung with the globes of some unnatural fruit."
Commerce and Manufacture praise on every hand in their not mute but

inarticulate way the glories of science. Poetry does not play its
part. Behold John Keats, skilful with the surgeon's knife; but

when he writes poetry his inspiration is not from the operating
table. Here I am reminded, though, of a modern instance to the

contrary in prose. Mr. H. G. Wells, who, as far as I know, has
never written a line of verse, was inspired a few years ago to

write a short story, UNDER THE KNIFE. Out of a clock-dial, a brass
rod, and a whiff of chloroform, he has conjured for us a sensation

of space and eternity, evoked the face of the Unknowable, and an
awesome, august voice, like the voice of the Judgment Day; a great

voice, perhaps the voice of science itself, uttering the words:
"There shall be no more pain!" I advise you to look up that story,

so human and so intimate, because Mr. Wells, the writer of prose
whose amazing inventiveness we all know, remains a poet even in his

most perverse moments of scorn for things as they are. His poetic
imagination is sometimes even greater than his inventiveness, I am

not afraid to say. But, indeed, imaginativefaculty would make any
man a poet--were he born without tongue for speech and without

hands to seize his fancy and fasten her down to a wretched piece of
paper.

The book {6} which in the course of the last few days I have opened
and shut several times is not imaginative. But, on the other hand,