THELEMIC MORALITY 
311 
the Instinct should override the decision of the Reason. 
Obviously, one must assume that both are equally "right"; 
that one's interpretation of one's Instinct is full and accurate, 
that one's solution of "how shall I act for the best?" is 
uniquely correct. 
First of all, one is tempted to argue that, that being so, 
there can be no disagreement; that is, on our general Theory 
of the Universe. True enough! The farther one goes in 
initiation, the rarer will such incidents become. Even a quite 
uninitiated person-always provided that Thelema has freed 
him morally-should 
find that nine times in ten, the 
inhibiting antagonism is accidental, or at least apparently 
irrelevant. (Notice, please, that our conditions of the 
'rightness' of both sides are rigid: the usual inhibition is a 
threat to vanity, or some instinct equally false, and to be 
weeded out.) 
Suppose that by what is hardly fraud, but "undue 
influence" (as the lawyers say) I could persuade a dying 
person to leave me a couple of hundred thousand in his will. I 
shall use every penny of it for the Great Work; it sounds 
easy! "Of course! Damn your integrity! Damn you! The 
Work is all that matters." 
All the same, I say NO. I should never be the same man 
again. I should have lost that confidence in myself which is 
the spine of my work. No need that the fraud should be 
discovered openly: it would appear in all my subsequent 
work, a subtle contamination. 
But suppose that it were not the matter of gulling a 
moribund 
half-wit; 
suppose 
that the price was a 
straightforward honest-to-God Bank Robbery under arms on 
the highway, should I hesitate then? Here I should risk my 
head, and the dice are loaded against me; nor does the deed 
imply "moral turpitude." Stalin's associates regarded him as a 
martyred hero when the law of the country, less cogent than 
Thelema, sat heavily on his devoted head. 
My retort, however, is convincing and final. Robbery in