REVIEWS

                          REVIEWS

THE OCCULT REVIEW.  Monthly. 7"d."net.
   Still, as before, the best and brightest of the periodicals dealing with
transcendental subjects.  It hears all sides and has no axe to grind.    C.

SELECTED POEMS OF FRANCIS THOMPSON.  Fifth thousand.  Methuen and Co.,
     and Burns and Oates.  No price.
   Long years ago, in 1898, I was one of the very few admirers of Francis
Thompson.  His wealth of thought and pomp of diction more than atoned for
the too frequent turgidity of his music.
   Now, it seems, I am but one of five thousand just persons.  So much the
better for them!  The more the merrier!         ALEISTER CROWLEY.

SCIENTIFIC IDEALISM.  By W. Kingsland.  Rebman, Limited.  7"s." 6"d." net.
   Science and Idealism have laboured long, and have at last brought forth
a book worth reading and rereading, a book worth studying and restudying.
Mr. W. Kingsland is to be congratulated; the "Forward" alone is worth the
price asked.  Here are a few quotations:
   "The individual must ultimately claim not merely his relationship to the
Whole, but his "identity" therewith."
   "Thus the individual ... finds that reality ever appearing to evade him
... in proportion as this is realized, he must necessarily revolt against
any and every system which would "limit" him."
   ".  . Nothing can be accepted on mere authority."
   As old as the Vedas is the question "What am I?"  Ay! older, for the
first man probably asked it, and yet it crouches ever before us with
enticing eyes like some evil Sphinx.  This question Mr. Kingsland tries to
narrow down by a theoretical reconciliation of Science and Idealism.
"Where we do not really know we must be content with a working hypothesis."
But the following citations are those of a man who is, if still in the
twilight, yet no longer in the dark:
   "... Evil as well as that which we call good, are part of and essential
to that fundamental underlying Unity by and through which alone the
Universe can be conceive of as a Cosmos and not a Chaos."
   "Our apparent failures are necessary lessons.  We often learn more by
failure than by success.  The only real failure is to cease to endeavour."
   "Could we but realise this Truth in our life and consciousness, it would
be to us the end of all doubt and of all strife, for it would be the
realisation of our own inherent and inalienable divine nature, the
realisation of the Infinite Self, the attainment of which is the end and
goal of our evolution."
   Drop the conditional tense, Mr. Kingsland.  Say no longer "if I could,"
{285} but "I will!"  And then write for the nations yet another book, not
one based on "Belief," but on "Knowledge," a book of Realisation, a book of
Truth.  "Then will the health of the daughter of my people recover"; and
"in thy market will be sold the wheat of Minnith, and Pannag, and honey,
and oil, and balm."                                        F.

EUSAPIA PALLADINO AND HER PHENOMENA.  BY HEREWARD CARRINGTON,
     T. Werner Laurie.
   We remember Mr. Hereward Carrington as the author of "Fasting, Vitality,
and Nutrition."
   In six hundred odd closely printed 9 in. x 6 in. pages the author proved
that Eating Is All A Mistake.  Food supplies no nourishment, but only
causes disease; if you only fast long enough, you cure cancer and
consumption and everything else.
   Now when a man who can print drivel of this sort comes forward and
testifies to the wind that blows from the top of a medium's head, it is
unlikely that any serious person will take the trouble even to read his
statement.
   Worse, the presence of such a person at a sitting entirely invalidates
the testimony of his fellow-sitters, even be they such presumably competent
persons as Mr. W.W.Baggalay and the Hon. Everard Feilding.
   "Le grande hyst?rie," such as must play no small part in the constitution
of a person who can persuade himself that the best athletic training is
stark starvation, that tobacco is poison, alcohol fatal in doses of three
drops, and the use of the reproductive faculties under any circumstances
tantamount to suicide, "la grande hyst?rie," I say, is sufficient to explain
anything.  A sufferer is capable of assisting the medium to cheat, and of
throwing dust in the eyes of his fellow-observers, entirely unconscious
that he is doing so, under the spell of his morbid perversity.
   We hope shortly to publish studies, not of the phenomena alleged to be
produced by mediums, but of the mental make-up of those investigators who
allege them to be genuine.
   We must be understood to refer only to material phenomena; we have no
doubt concerning the mental and moral phenomena.  Spiritualism leads in
every case that we have yet investigated to mental spermatorrhoea,
culminating in obsession and complete moral and intellectual atony.
                                              ALEISTER CROWLEY.



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