The elementalism of Powys is more of a powerful opinion expressed through metaphor than a systematic philosophy expressed through logical argumentation. This does not detract at all from the work. The language is visceral:

"We need, just now, a certain fierce, bitter, indignant philosophy, a philosophy that is neither too easy-going towards the gods for the sort of world they have made, nor towards ourselves for the folly with which we make the bad the worse. We need to put into our cosmic philosophy a little of the black bile that we put into our human relations. We need a certain bone to bone austerity in our mental vision combined with a new emphasis on the power of the will and the magic of the will"

This is the author's response to an increasingly crowd-crazed megalomania he sees as being imposed on nature:

"Instead of pausing in our multifarious activities, instead of putting aside our laborious quests, we are being perpetually fooled into thinking that happiness is to be reached in the same way as pleasure is, by the possession of something."

I read a part of this on a plane while passing through two thunderstorms and experiencing very high turbulence and it kept my attention. This largely undiscovered book and author will be relevant for some time to come. ( )