Satan, the Waster; a Philosophic War Trilogy with Notes and Introduction

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1920 edition. Excerpt: ... THE PRESENT MOMENT The Muse (loquitur). "The present moment is eminently propitious. . . . Mankind has attained amazing control over Science's means without an inkling of Science's discipline and aims. Twentieth-century men appear to be slum-andoffice savages retaining the worship of all the good old tribal fetishes and racy obscene emblems . . . under newfangled and decent names; yet wielding appliances which, without enlarging mind or heart, abolish space and multiply all brutish powers a thousandfold.' It would be consonant with the mental habits of Clio, and of the sociological philosophers whom that Muse has admitted to her canteen of anecdotes, rhetoric and moralizings, to look out for a single cause responsible for this war, in other words someone or something to slang for it. And many of us would, like H. G. Wells, have fallen foul of our own unworthy days, if German militarism had not offered itself as an even more handy scapegoat. I want it to be understood that the War, and its witch-hunt for Responsibilities, has checked in me the habit of relieving discomfort by fault-finding. And particularly of finding fault with our own, heaven knows, sufficiently punished times, which, for all their shortcomings, are on the whole no worse than preceding ones, let alone that preceding ones begot them, begotten in their turn by other wretchednesses, an endless series of generations like that of the Patriarchs. Having thus dissociated myself from Clio's habitual search for Historical Responsibilities, I wish to express my entire agreement in all she says about our times being propitious for Satan's Gala Performance; more by token that I have gone out of my way to make her say it. Not a link of " Guilt " is what connects the two; but a link...