s so entirely the opposite of love as that inert condition
of malignant lifelessness which inevitably succeeds it.

The demonic ecstasy, full of invincible magnetism, which looks
forth from the countenance of a soul obsessed with, evil, has much
more in common with the magnetic exultation of a soul possessed
with love than has that ghastly inertness, with its insane malignant
attraction to death. For out of the countenance of this latter looks
forth everything that is hostile to life; and its expression has in it
the obscene cunning, mixed with frozen despair, of a corpse which
has become utterly dehumanized.

It is frequently a matter of surprise to minds whose view of what is
"good" has excluded the concept of energy that persons obviously
under the obsession of "evil" are able to display such immense
reserves of inexhaustible power. But this surprise disappears when
it is realized that such "worshippers of Satan" are drawing upon
the creative energy and corrupting it, in the process of drawing
upon it, by the malignant power which resists creation.

The "illusion of dead matter" conceived as we have conceived it,
as a thing made up of unconscious chemical elements, is after all
only one aspect of the phantom-world of illusive soullessness
which the abysmal malice delights to project. It is only to
particular sensitive natures that this peculiar "despair of the
inanimate" takes the form of mud or sand or refuse or water or
dead planetary bodies or empty space.

To other natures it may take the form of those innumerable
off-shoots of economic necessity, which are not themselves necessary
either to human life or human welfare but which are the arbitrary
creations of economic avarice divorced from necessity and
indulged in out of an inert hatred of what is beautiful and real. Any
labour, whether mental or physical, which directly satisfies the
economic needs of humanity carries with it the unfathomable thrill
of creative happiness. But when we come to consider those
innumerable forms of financial and commercial enterprise which
in no way satisfy human needs but exist only for the sake of
exploitation we find ourselves confronted by a weight of unreal
soulless hideousness which by reason of the fact that it is
deliberately protected by organized society is a more devastating
example of "the thing which is in the way" than any amount of
mud and litter and refuse and excremental debris. For this
unproductive commercia