The English Spirit

It was in my mind to discourse freely upon this engaging topic; but to say truth I am somewhat weary, having now written for some six hours, and being well assured that if I once laid down the pen nothing would persuade me to resume the distasteful task. For there is no ecstasy in argument and exposition as there is in Poetry. That is why journalists are such dull dogs, even when they start as brilliant men. My readers, too, may be weary. They may say to me, as Lord Tankerville said to me at eleven A. M. on the 7th of July 1907 “I'm sick of your teaching — teaching — teaching — as if you were God Almighty and I were a poor bloody shit in the street!” —

I could not blame them.

On the whole, too, I cannot see that I have left much unsaid in the proem — which was written long ago when I lived, as will be obvious from the style, in Paddington. I will therefore beg my readers to proceed to the same and thence to the work itself; and leave the Bal Bullier and his Dorothy to their glad work of restoring the victim of British stupidity — else why these miles of preface? — weary Aleister Crowley, to his Pagan rapture.

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