Reviews

DARE TO BE WISE. By JOHN McTAGGART ELLIS McTAGGART Doctor in Letters Fellow and Lecturer of Trinity College in Cambridge, Fellow of the British Academy. Watts and Co., 17 Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, E. C. Price 3d.

Only the Price Threepence saved my reason.

“Dare to be Wise” is startling enough; but when one saw Who it was that advised it …

“Our object,” quoth he (“our” being the “Heretics”), “is to promote discussion upon religion, philosophy, and art. …”

These desperate conspirators! What is the Parry-lytic Liar about to allow such things in Trinity?

“In seeking truth of all sorts many virtues are needed.” This daring thinker!

“Happiness and misery have much to do with welfare.” These burning words may rekindle the fires of Smithfield.

“Here we find the need of courage. For, if we are to think on these matters at all, we must accept the belief for which we have evidence, and we must reject the belief for which we have no evidence. … And, sometimes, this is not easy.”

This unworthy right hand!

We should not think of calling this Martyr to His Convictions, this Revolutionary Thinker, an ass in a lion's skin. For asses can kick. Shall we say a sheep in wolf's clothing? For the Heretics are too clearly Sheep — probably descended from Mary's little lamb. If the Dean were to frown, they would all take to their heels, and break the record for attending chapel.

In fact, this is what happened, when he did frown! Just like the Rationalists themselves when they disowned and deserted Harry Boulter.

I am coming round to the belief that the best test of a religion is the manhood of its adherents rather than its truth. Better believe a lie than act like a coward!

And of all the pusillanimous puppies I have ever heard of, there are none to beat the undergraduates who wagged their rudimentary tails round the toothless old hound that yelped “Dare to be wise” on last 8th December.

I hate Christianity as Socialists hate soap; but I would rather be saved {239} with Livingstone and Gordon, Havelock and Nicholson, than damned with Charles Watts and
                    John McTaggart
                    Ellis McTaggart
                    Doctor in Letters
                    Fellow and Lecturer
                    Of Trinity College
                    In Cambridge, and Fellow
                    Of the Berritish
                    Ac-ad-em-y.

I wonder, by the way, whether “letters” isn't a misprint. If not, did he really qualify at the Sorbonne?

Aleister Crowley

THE ARCANE SCHOOLS. By JOHN YARKER. William Tait, 3 Wellington Park Avenue, Belfast. 12s. net.

The reader of this treatise is at first overwhelmed by the immensity of Brother Yarker's erudition. He seems to have examined and quoted every document that ever existed. It is true that he occasionally refers to People like Hargrave Jennings, A. E. Waite, and H. P. Blavatsky as if they were authorities; but whoso fishes with a net of so wide a sweep as Brother Yarker's must expect to pull in some worthless fish. This accounts for Waite's contempt of him; imagine Walford Bodie reviewing a medical book which referred to him as an authority on paralysis!

The size of the book, too, is calculated to effray; reading it has cost me many pounds in gondolas! And it is the essential impossibility of all works of this kind that artistic treatment is not to be attained.

But Brother Yarker has nobly suppressed a Spencerian tendency to ramble; he has written with insight, avoided pedantry, and made the dreary fields of archeology blossom with flowers of interest.

Accordingly, we must give him the highest praise, for he has made the best possible out of that was nearly the worst possible.

He has abundantly proved his main point, the true antiquity of some Masonic system. It is a parallel to Frazer's tracing of the history of the Slain God.

But why is there no life in any of our Slain God rituals! It is for us to restore them by the Word and the Grip.

For us, who have the inner knowledge, inherited or won, it remains to restore the true rites of Attis, Adonis, Osiris, of Set, Serapis, Mithras, and Abel.

Aleister Crowley

{240}

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