The Law is for All

Chapter I A- Verses 52-53 75 We must study the subject openly and impersonally, we must read textbooks, listen to lectures, watch demonstrations, earn our diplomas ere we enter practice. We do not mean what the bourgeois means when we say “the act of love.” To us it is not the gross gesture as of a man in a seizure, a snorting struggle, a senseless spasm, and a sudden revul­ sion of shame, as it is to him. We have an art of expression; we are trained to interpret the soul and the spirit in terms of the body. We do not deny the existence of the body, or despise it; but we refuse to regard it in any other light than this: it is the organ of the Self. It must never­ theless be ordered according to its own laws; those of the mental or moral Self do not apply to it. We love; that is, we will to unite: then the one must study the other, divine every butterfly thought as it flits, and offer the flower it most fancies. The vocabulary of Love is small, and its terms are hackneyed; to seek new words and phrases is to be affected, stilted. It chills. But the language of the body is never exhausted; one may talk for an hour by means of an eyelash. There are intimate, delicate things, shadows of the leaves of the Tree of the Soul that dance in the breeze of Love, so subtle that neither Keats nor Heine in words, neither Brahms nor Debussy in music, could give them body. It is the agony of every artist, the greater he the more fierce his despair, that he cannot compass expression. And what they cannot do, not once in a life of ardour, is done in all fulness by the body of any that, loving, hath learnt the lesson of how to love. Addendum: More generally, any act soever may be used to attain any end soever by the magician who knows how to make the necessary links. 53. This shall regenerate the world, the little world my sister, my heart 8c my tongue, unto whom I send this kiss. Also, o scribe and prophet, though thou be of the princes, it shall not assuage thee nor absolve thee. But ecstasy be thine and joy of earth: ever To me! To me! Commentary: It is clear that this “kiss” (i.e. this Book) will regenerate Earth by establishing the Law of Liberty, “my heart 8c my tongue” seems a mere phrase of endearment; but has possibly some deep significance which at present escapes me.