Most of us are just indifferent, mixed-up creatures we muddle through the world without realizing the meaning and the inner sense of things, and, consequently, our wickedness and our goodness are alike second-rate, unimportant. His long story The Great God Panmade him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreamsis generally considered his masterpiece. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. The merely carnal, sensual man can no more be a great sinner than he can be a great saint. Arthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. I think you are falling into the very general error of confining the spiritual world to the supremely good but the supremely wicked, necessarily, have their portion in it. There are many, I think, who eat dry crusts and drink water, with a joy infinitely sharper than anything within the experience of the "practical" epicure.' 'You are speaking of the saints?' 'Yes, and of the sinners, too. 'Yes,' he went on, 'magic is justified of her children. He had been brought by a friend to this mouldering house in a northern suburb, through an old garden to the room where Ambrose the recluse dozed and dreamed over his books. The White People by Arthur Machen was written in 1899 but not published until it appeared in Horlickās Magazine, January 1904. Each is an ecstasy, a withdrawal from the common life.' Cotgrave listened, interested. 'Sorcery and sanctity,' said Ambrose, 'these are the only realities.
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