The Law is for All

182 The Law is for All tenable, they knocked the bottom out of their religion. There was nothing to fight for. So they degenerated into tame social Centres, so that Theosophy with its Black Brothers, Mrs. Eddy with her Mental Arsenic Experts,1 and the Evangelical Revivalists with their Hell Fire, made people’s flesh creep once more, and got both credit and cash. 1 [Mary Baker Eddy (1821-1910) founded Christian Science and was the author of Science and Health with a Key to the Scriptures (1895).] The Book of the Law flings forth no theological fulminations; but we have quarrels enough on our hands. We have to fight for Freedom against oppressors, religious, social, or industrial; and we are utterly opposed to compromise. Every fight is to be a fight to the finish; each one of us for himself, to do his own will; and all of us for all, to establish the Law of Liberty. We do not want “professional soldiers”, hired bravos sworn to have no souls of their own. They “dare not fight”; for how should a man dare to fight unless his cause be a love mightier than his love of life? Therefore they “play”; they have sold themselves; their Will is no more theirs; life is no longer a serious thing to them; therefore they wander wastrel in clubs and boudoirs and greenrooms; bridge, billiards, polo, petticoats puff out their emptiness; scratched for the Great Race of Life, they watch the Derby instead. Brave such may be; they may well be (in a sense) classed with the rat; but brainless and idle they must be, who have no goal beyond the grave, where, at the best, chance flings fast-withering flowers of false and garish glory. They serve to defend things vital to their country; they are the skull that keeps the brain from harm? Oh foolish brain! Wert thou not wiser to defend thyself, rather than trust to brittle bone that hinders thee from growth? Let every man bear arms, swift to resent oppression, generous and ardent to draw sword in any cause, if justice or freedom summon him! “all fools despise.” In this last phrase the word “fools” is evi­ dently not to be taken in its deeper mystical sense, the context plainly bearing reference to ordinary life.