...it cannot be disguised that the prime effect of knowledge in the universe in which we are shipwrecked is a feeling of despair and disgust, often developing into an energetic desire to escape reality altogether... This escape, since from Truth, can only be into Illusion, the sublime comfort and refuge... There is the usual human poverty of its possible varieties.... there are all the drugs... There is religion, of course, and music... these are the major euphorias. But the queerest and oldest is the sidepath of Magic... At its deepest, this Magic is concerned with the creative powers of the Will; at lowest it is but a barbarous rationalism, the first of all our attempts to force the heavens to be reasonable.