Magic, or the Secret System

XIV

Preface.

proves: then this should move every ignorant critic critic: Beurtheiler, one who evaluates or judges a work and reviewer more to reflection and silence than to disparagement. Who would not know that one can sin greatly even through reviews original: Recensionen? Even if the man they target stands in no connection with us—neither ideal, nor political, nor economic—there is still a Judge of all judges who will punish every harmful word, and consequently every false word. And how—I will not say ridiculous—but how highly unjust it is to make a matter contemptible merely because we, for lack of the first basic concepts basic concepts: Grundbegriffe, the foundational principles of a system of thought, do not understand it, and are generally unaccustomed to the light in which such things wish to be seen. Since the circle of ideas circle of ideas: Ideenkreis, the scope of an individual's intellectual horizon of one man is not the treasury of all truth and knowledge, no one should set himself up as a general-controller original: General-Controlleur; the author uses this administrative title metaphorically to mock critics who believe they have the authority to "permit" or "reject" new ideas. of things whose stamp he does not recognize.

Finally, as concerns the allegorical presentation allegorical presentation: allegorischer Vortrag, a method of teaching through symbolic stories or metaphors rather than literal explanation of our Unknown Ones, this was

for