to the individual elegy and the personal sadness, I doubt.
And if not ? the transition may have been from literary to
rhetorical.

But a craft that occupies itself solely with imitating
Gerrard Hopkins or in any other metrical experiment is a craft
misdirected. We engage in technical exercise faute de mieux ,
a necessary defensive activity. Out of these sentences you may
omit neither the "solely" nor the "necessary" without destroying
their meaning.

20 novels form as good a gradus ad finem
as metrical exercise, I dare say they form a better if the
gods have granted light by that route. Hardy is Gautier's
successor as Swinburne cd/ not be.

Is one however permitted to detect a damned lack of
sociability in late Victorian writers ?

Pastime and good company
I love and shall until I dye.

Henry VIII th's mind
was as good as , as good for a time as Hardy's. Wd. it be
correct to say that both of them or that neither of them
believed in polygamy ? And if they disagreed on the subject, which
was it from whither ?

A gain in narrative sense from 1600 to
1900, but the tones that went out of the English language?

The truth having been Eleusis ? and a modern Eleusis being
possible in the wilds of a man's mind only ?

The requirements being far beyond those of merely
an intelligent literary circle ( which doesn't in any case exist ).
We lack not only the means but the candidates. Think of any
modern waiting five years to know anything ! Or wanting to
know ! If ever anything but a fanaticism could ? A collection
of misfits ? Not the flower of a civilization. Was it ever
possible save with conviction and a simplicity beyond modern reach,
now that knowledge is a drug on the market, said knowledge
being a job lot of odds and ends having no order, but being
abundant, superhumanly abundant.

A divine parsimony of ideas ?
Or an ultimate sophistication ? Sophistication is not, emphatically
is not, enough. The overcoming of personal jealousies possible
only in the high light of belief or the oblivions of pure
curiosity. Says Vali, all these poets were Chibbeline. That
seems to be provable assertion, while the rest of his wanderings
in search of a secret language ( for Dante, Guido and the rest of
them ) are, at mildest estimate, unconvincing. " Something " behind it?
Certainly " something " behind it or beyond it. Which the
police called " Manichean " knowing nothing either of Manes or
of anything else.

"I wish" yodeled Lord Byron "that he wd. explain
his explanation." That was in another country and a different
connection, but I admit that the foregoing pp./ as obscure as

303

as anything in my poetry. I mean or imply that certain
truth exists. Certain colours exist in nature though
great painters have striven vainly, and, though the colour film
is not yet perfected. Truth is not un-true'd by reason of our
failing to fix it on paper. Certain objects are communicable
to a man or woman only " with proper lighting ", they
are perceptible in our own minds only with proper "lighting ",
fitfully and by instants.

½ title [PART VI
SECTION XII

304

2½ S3. Study of Physics, with R.L. Stevenson, on the individual

I offer for Mr Eliot's reflection the thesis that ~~has~~ our time ~~has~~ overshadowed the mysteries by an overemphasis on the individual. R.L. Stevenson, whom no mystic has, so far as I know, ever mentioned, had more emotional wisdom than most men. ( *Virginibus puerisque* ). Eleusis did not distort truth by exaggerating the individual, neither could it have violated the individual spirit. Only in the high air and the great clarity can there be a just estimation of values. Romantic poetry, on the other hand, almost requires reincarnation as part of its mechanism. No after metaphor having been found for certain emotional colours. I assert that the Gods exist.

And this very simple sentence leaves Mr Eliot just as much in the dark as he was before asking: What Mr P. believes?

Will he be any happier in his nest of trousty and insular parsons if I say: I assert that a great treasure of verity exists for mankind in Ovid and in the subject matter of Ovid's long poem, and that only in this form could it be registered.

That assertion in no way conflicts with a belief that knowledge increased from the fall of the Roman empire onward. And that many respectable minds collaborated in mediaeval theology. I don't in the least wish that I had missed an Xtian education, even though I shd/ be hard put

153

305

to remember a word of it, and though the Old Testament is
most certainly in the main a record of revolting barbarism
and~~ turgid ~~~ poesy. The New they tell me is written in
occurring
most disreputable greek ( misprint~~s~~ every time I endeavour
to quote that lag age must give infinite pleasure to those
students who know ( professionally ) enough of it to be
sure that I don't. ))

I am now aged enough to see nothing ridiculous
in 19th century french macons and free thinkers having had
their offspring Christianly ( that is catholyctically educated .

A culture persisted. Only in basicly pagan Italy
has Christianity escaped becoming a nuisance. Only ~~there~~
has it escaped the dastardly fanaticisms which grow into it
in barbarous climates. ~~N~~o

Set in 9<sup>th</sup> <u>W.</u>rt. Bologna 135 u.l.c. Rom. to new on from main text
As <u>a</u> note in very small print ( because it is
explanatory and not in the main <u>u</u> line of the text. In order
that the serious reader ( one in every 900 ) can calculate the
personal distortion in my writing. I was brought up in American
school and <u>sun</u>day school. Took the stuff for granted, and at one
time with great seriousness. Questionings aroused by the truly
<u>filthy</u> racket imposed on denizens of Kensington W.8 by the
parson of <u>S</u>t Mary Rabbits. It appeared to me impossible that
any clean form of teaching <u>c</u>d/ lead a man, or group, to
cause that damnable and <u>h</u>ideo's racket, and inflict it
on helpless humanity in the vicinage. Followed this through
<u>t</u>rollope and in the <u>p</u>hysic<u>e</u> physiognamy of <u>B</u>ritish
parsons. Vigorous antichedral phase ensued.

NOT based on noise
~~but~~ itself but on the states of mind necessary
to induce that gross and piglike tolerance of infamous
<u>s</u>ound. Plenty of evidence fortncoming as to corruption of
british mind, ecclesiastical bureaucracy etc. in set A. from sheet.

What I found was disgusting.
Idea that there could be clean and benificent Christianity
restarted in Tempio Palatestiano. Country priest not the least
disturbed that I shd/ be making my farewells " solo ai elefanti ".

The effect of
A. " trifle "like the noise wd. have been
efaced had I found any contrary evidence, i.e.
of any health or cleanliness in British religion. But for
the noise I shd. have been started investigating.

Namely that I had come for friendly word with the stone
elephants and not for altar furniture. Still further sign of en-
lighten enlightenment from old nun in hospital : E.P. not
catholic, no , thank heaven! NOT protestant, not jew, but
accepted greek deities. " Zè tutta un ' religione "! Oh well
its all a religion."

I am writing about civilization. England's new
reputation for hypocrisy is certainly not new. I remember hearing
an active sermon, I believe in that funny church with a round
front and a spike near Oxford Circus. It was that wd. have been
about 1909. Add about 30 years experience, and I record, that most
protestant and nearly all anglican parsons are uncivilized, many
are pigs, some have made a tolerable compromise i.e. are doing
certain things they don't quite believe, as a compromise (
Bloughram's Apology etc.). They think the end justifies etc. or
that things wd. be worse if they didn't administer. No intellectual
curiosity in any anglican publication. Church Assembly a year ago did
touch problem of work and employment (the latter defined as
sale of work usually under econ. pressure.)

"Thoughts after "ambeth" one of Eliot's most creditable
I wonder who suggested it?
But J.H.'s criticism " lot of dead cod about a dead
god" quite just as describing a great deal of T.S.E.'s activity.

Coughlin has effected a good deal of rough very
popular education. This can be taken as end of small print passage.

more than
I am not after 20 years interval being historical over the
bells, I simply do not believe that anyone save a corrupt and
burtal ape cd/ be responsible for such aimless anny annoyance
of others. an annoance serving no purpose, and continuable
only from lack of human organs. It belongs to a low tract
in animal life. And, of course, to a certain bullying grosness
which goes with any government and the money racket.

When I saw Wm. Baxter sold his king and his
church, he lack certain moral sensibility.

All very well to define man as laughing animal, political animal
etc. De Gourmont doing it rather better : reproducteur, electoral
contribuable.

But we may waste a deal of time expecting ethical
perception from a grade of animal utterly incapable as H.B.C.
etc. of discerning honesty from fifth monopoly from justice etc.
often

It is in lack of power to perceive and differentiate
that we must seek roots andillaments of public evil

I doubt if Zaharoff knew much of what he was doing.
I come back repeatedly to the sow and the truffles. Useless to expect
the sow to perceive anything outside her own field of reference/
Presidents, bankers, prime ministers need not
be supposed to possess a field of ethical reference much above
that of pigs. In fact it is difficult to explain the history

As against "Arry", F.B. and I are of one party (more or less).
One's measuring book shd/ not be of an author in whom one has
specialized, that wd. mean a fixed attitude, possibly
an unconscious feeling of proprietorship in the work. I can't
at this day Ap/ 10, '37. Have any sense of proprietorship in
Nichomachean Ethics.
Ease might tempt me to use
a Chinese philosopher recently edited. I have 40 pages hanging
my right. ~~Considered~~ N. A man's hand is stained in
the clay he wroks with. I have in those 40 pages branded
X. as a guide to couterfeits. I see no excuse for filling
the readers mind, even a little, with refutation of his doctrine.
My most enjoyable moment of perusal was when I found his
introducer saying that "only the most rigid Confucians" had
resisted the persuasiveness of X. The treatise for
(or notes taken by) Nichomachus ~~shers a~~ better tavola rasa.

Here at least we have a summary of
Paideuma, as built up by gk/ civilization to the year 300
and whatever ante Christum. Wide enough to serve a
card-index for the essentials of the good life.

A set of cubby holes whereinto one can sort one's
values and make them into a schema.

I take oath of impartiality. Mr. Swabey said I
had been a bit hard on Arry, and I got out Mr. R. H. Rackham's
edtn. of the N.E. Up till page xxii of R's introduction
I was quite ready to believe that my general mossy impression

of the Stageirite was wrong, and that he might be a safe guide to the young. I was already thinking of Mr Rackham as "as near wisdom as any man is likely to come in our time in Europe". I was ready to test his most admirable introduction by the text following after it, and if necessary sing balinode to my impertience as on pp. ... of this volume. He had stated so many admirable things to inhere in his author.

The gent. reader is warned that I shall now devote several pages to an analysis (of a sort) of the Nichomachean treatise. Those is search of daisies and scintilations had better skip the next pages.

It must however be admitted that I had not read half a page of the text of the N.E. before I had again the old feeling to wit (as on reading Aquinas) that the author was not a wise man, and that we have here a second rate book. (I speak specifically of the text of Rackham's edtn. apart from all questions of authorship, or alibis as to whether Aristotle intended this as final form, whether it were mere notes for lectures or notes taken by students at lectures. As far as I am concerned, the early latin translations wdf equally serve. "Moerbeke's" or whoever's.)

## PART IV

I have not got through 4 pages before my gorge rises, Here indeed have we a swine and a forger. (Ref. Schopenhauer's admirable essay on style, and how you tell the true man from a false one.) Aristotle's hedging, backing and filling, if you compare it with a true work like the Ta Hio ... is a give away. This bloke were he alive today, wd/ be writing crap for the "utilities ". He has lasted because " like to like ". He is not a man with the truth in him. Rackham has attained considerable beauty in his apologia, but it won't hold up for four pages of his translation.

or six
Four years ago I was scandalized at reading that Ie
University of Paris had prohibited in 1313 or whenever the teaching
of Aristotle. By p. 11 of the Ethics I am ready to say
"~~a damn good thing too~~" i.e. the exclusion of him
from curricula intended to guide the young. This is not by any means
an opinion I had this morning expected to write down this
evening (16 Ap. 1937).

BUT SUPPOSE that Aristotle knew something, suppose
that the old ( or middled - aged or whatever he was ) bastard
had " got hold of something " from Plato, from Plato's
gossip of Socrates. A word almost an ideogram. This treatise
was not written, these notes for this not given or taken after Darwin
and Huxley ( and Ball, prolonged and protracted researches of ).

This is not "well-being" in any ordinary sense, or well doing or doing well, or happiness as in any current use of the word. This was spoken a bit after Socrates had been told to drink hemlock. This is rooted in all Socrates' traces, it is not even "to be of good spirits". There is no ready made current English for it. It is not to be among good angels. It is to be possessed of one's good DAEMON. It is aperient, in the sense that it lets in all the Arabian commentators, and gives a clue to mediaeval theologians took up Aristotle, with their angelology, and their ouranology, or demonology, good-daemonology. With this word (almost an ideogram) we are down through the blither and yatter the Spectator-New-Statesman, Villard-Webbite weekly choinulism, down onto the pre-Socratic paideuma, into folk-lore. Damn the dictionaries. The bleating lexicographers have not looked at the roots of the ideogram. This word is out of thaumaturgy not out of a print shop. It don't prove that Arry was anything but a Bloomsbury simply, but he used it.

And the journalist's bleat can't be cut off from the tradition of Socrates or from the fact that the bleaters were kicked out of Rome, because their logic chopping was a public nuisance, found bad for the morale of thePHAUS =verts (con= or per=). To L.V. Consules decretum etc. as prof. Q. writes (illegibly)

We are indebted to Rackham for the hint that the text is a mass of notes. If we accept Schopenhauer's acid test for writers, the work is bad. It is an heteroclite, a hodge-podge of astute comment and utter bosh, material for a sottisier, but above all subversive, morally bad. Safe for an old bloke of 50 (like myself) if he be constantly on the watch for trickery, or let us say not even trickery, but mis-fire, sentences that are so half so, but in total effect obscurantist as often as aperient.

Rackham has given us a clue to the evil in the last sentences of p. xxii of his introduction, but I am trying (against great odds) to keep that incision for termination and summary. That is to say I want to KNOW whether the evil which shows through Rackham's sentence is his or if it really subsists in the Aristotelian text itself.

Not that there is nothing in pages succeeding the first use of the EUDAIMONIA and EUDAIMONEIN to indicate that Rackham's invention had passed Array knew he had hold of a word with a past.

Greece rotted. The story of gk/ civilization, as we have it, is the record of a decadence. Language had got down to Times and D. Telegraph level. Array wd/ have succeeded in the most louche modern milieux.

Certain books do no evil, I do not mean weak books, but books of the strongest kind. The just critic must discriminate them from books which contain poisonouspoisoned mixed in sweet cake, which a strong stomach can digest, or an alert mind read with nothing more damaging that irritation. But these books are not for curricula.

This does not imply acceptance of the statement that the young "shd/ not study moral philosophy, though the phrase may have implied a perception on Arry's part that his lectures weren't suitable pabulum for the inexperienced.

My point being that they are definitely the compost, intelligent enough to serve counterfeiters and骗人的话, i.e.; by providing them means toward the confusion and obfuscation of others.

I wd. even go further and state in parenthesis, with the date Ap. 16 anno XV. That the things still needing to be remedied in the Italian State are all due to an Aristotelic residuum left in Mussolini's own mind. Despite all he has sloughed off in evolving his totalitarian formulae.

As another species of foot note Sadakichi Hartmann sends me a sort of shelter-skelter table, which has perhaps one value, or two, its sincerity and the impossibility of its becoming academic.