Excerpt from On Life Letters, Vol. 1: A TranslationWe know ourselves very imperfectly, but I think your definition is a good one. I seem to myself to be a philosophical monk. I belong at heart to the Abbey of Thelema, where the rule is pleasant and obedience is easy. Perhaps they have not a great deal of faith there, but assuredly they have plenty of piety.Indulgence, tolerance, respect for oneself and for others, these are the saints who are always held in reverence in that Abbey. If, within it, there is a tendency to doubt, it must be remembered that along with Pyrrhonism there always goes a profound attachment to custom and usage. Now, morality is but the custom of the greatest number. There is no one like a sceptic for always being moral and a good citizen. A sceptic never revolts against the laws, for he has no hope that better ones can be made. He knows that the State must be forgiven for a great deal. Would you like a word of advice? Never entrust the political article in the Temps to one of our Thelemites. He would fill it with a gentle melancholy which would discourage your worthy readers. Ministries are not kept in power by philosophers. As for myself, I am becomingly modest, and I restrict myself to criticism.As I understand it, and as you allow me to practise it, criticism is, like philosophy and history, a sort of romance designed for those who have sagacious and curious minds, and every romance is, rightly taken, an autobiography. The good critic is he who relates the adventures of his own soul among masterpieces.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.