The Law is for All

Chapter I * Verses 41-42 45 42. Let it be that state of manyhood bound and loathing. So with thy all; thou hast no right but to do thy will. Commentary: “manyhood bound and loathing.” An orga­ nized state is a free association for the common weal. My personal will to cross the Atlantic, for example, is made effective by cooperation with others on agreed terms. But the forced asso­ ciation of slaves is another thing. A man who is not doing his will is like a man with cancer, an independent growth in him, yet one from which he cannot get free. The idea of self-sacrifice is a moral cancer in exactly this sense. Similarly, one may say that not to do one’s will is evidence of mental or moral insanity. When “duty points one way, and inclination the other,” it is proof that you are not one, but two. You have not centralized your control. This dichotomy is the beginning of conflict, which may result in a Jekyll-Hyde effect. Stevenson suggests that man may be discovered to be a “mere polity” of many individuals. The sages knew it long since. But the name of this polity is Choronzon,1 mob rule, unless every individ­ ual is absolutely disciplined to serve his own, and the common, purpose without friction. 1 [See Liber 418, Tenth Aithyr.] 2 [Matthew 18:9, Mark 9:47.] It is of course better to expel or destroy an irreconcilable. “If thine eye offend thee, cut it out.”1 2 The error in the interpreta­ tion of this doctrine has been that it has not been taken as it stands. It has been read: If thine eye offend some artificial stan­ dard of right, cut it out. The curse of society has been Procrustean morality, the ethics of the herd-men. One would have thought that a mere glance at Nature would have sufficed to disclose Her scheme of Individuality made possible by Order.