The Law is for All

162 The Law is for All false. The Ethics of Liber Legis are those of Evolution itself. We are only fools if we interfere. Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law, biologically as well as in every other way. Let us take an example. I am an antivaccinationist in a sense which every other antivaccinationist would repudiate. I admit that vaccination protects from smallpox. But I should like every­ body to have smallpox. The weak would die; the strong might have pitted faces; but the race would become immune to the disease in a few generations. On somewhat similar lines, I would advocate, with Samuel Butler, the destruction of all machinery.1 (I admit the practical dif­ ficulties of defining the limits of legitimate devices. The issue is this: how are we to develop human skill? The printing press is admirable in the hands of an Aldus, a Charles T. Jacobi, or even a William Morris.1 2 But the cheap mechanical printing of luetic rub­ bish on rotten pulp with worn types in inferior ink has destroyed the eyesight, putrefied the mind, and deluded the passions, of the multitude.) For machines are dodges for avoiding Hard Work; and Hard Work is the salvation of the race. In The Time Machine, H.G. Wells draws an admirable picture of a dichotomized humanity, one branch etiolated and inane, the other brutalized and automatic. Machines have already nearly completed the destruction of individual craftsmanship. A man is no longer a worker, but a machine-feeder. The product is standardized; the result mediocrity. Nobody can obtain What He Will; he must be content with what knavery puts on the market. Instead of every man and every woman being a star, we have an amorphous pullu- lation of Vermin. 1 [Samuel Butler (the younger, 1835-1902), Erewhon: or, Over the Range (1872)., ch. 23-25.] 2 [Aldus Manutius (1450-1515) founded the Aldine press in Venice; Charles T. Jacobi was with the Chiswick Press in London, Crowley’s favorite printer; William Morris (1834-1896) founded the Kelmscott Press.] 21. Set up my image in the East: thou shalt buy thee an image which I will show thee, especial, not unlike the one thou knowest. And it shall be suddenly easy for thee to do this.