Page:Konx Om Pax.pdf/91
That all his malice should confine
Itself to this one sin of mine
And this alone, when neophytes
(Confused by the excess of lights)
Perceive not what they ought to see:
"There is none other God than He."
Oh how the good converted Fiend
Worries those Postulants unweaned!
Though now he dances deosil
He pounds them many a purging pill.
He cleans them from their piggish food;
He brings them to beatitude.
"Hua is God!" quoth Asmodee:
"There is none other God than He."
A silence ensued. At last, from Denzil: You mean very much what the Hindus mean by their doctrine of Maya?
Exactly so; but of course they cannot mean what they say. The thinkable is false. All our attempts to crystallize Truth in words are just as futile as the trickery by which the artist gets his sunlight effects with some dull ochre. The impression's good enough, maybe, at a distance, as an impression. Examine it close: it goes. God sees the clever composition; man sees the untidy brushwork. So logic destroys our religions, despite their truth.
But, said Denzil, surely it is better to get nearer truth. I hate all the evil that religion has wrought. As I looked on Granada and its cathedral, this is what I thought. Can you blame me?
And from little leathern pocket-book he began to read these lines:
ON A PROSPECT OF GRANADA CATHEDRAL FROM
THE ALHAMBRA
Brown bloated toad that squattest in the sun!
Loose thankless mouth whose greed is never done!