The Equinox (Volume III, Number I)

CONCERNING THE LAW OF THELEMA @ état on the part of a King and of a Pope who saw their re- actionary, obscurantist, and tyrannical programme menaced by those knights who did not scruple to add the wisdom of the East to their own large interpretation of Christianity, and who represented in that time a movement towards the light of learning and of science, which has been brought to fruition in our own times by the labours of the Orientalists from Von-Hammer-Purgstall and Sir William Jones to Professor Rhys Davids and Madame Blavatsky, to say nothing of such philosophers as Schopenhauer, on the one hand; and by the heroic efforts of Darwin, Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer, on the other. I have no sympathy with those who cry out against prop- erty, as if what all men desire were of necessity evil; the natural instinct of every man is to own, and while man re- mains in this mood, attempts to destroy property must not only be nugatory, but deleterious to the community. There is no outcry against the rights of property where wisdom and kindness administer it. The average man is not so un- reasonable as the demagogue, for his own selfish ends, pre- tends to be. The great nobles of all time have usually been able to create a happy family of their dependents, and un- flinching loyalty and devotion have been their reward. The secret has been principally this, that they considered them- selves noble as well in nature as in name, and thought it foul shame to themselves if any retainer met unnecessary mis- fortune. The upstart of to-day lacks this feeling; he must try constantly to prove his superiority by exhibiting his power; and harshness is his only weapon. In any society where each person has his allotted place, and that a place with its own special honour, mutual respect and self-respect 229