Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law!
Hello everybody,
I thought it wise to put the commentary of Aleister Crowley on the word manyhood and the rest of the verse here.
So here you go:
`Manyhood bound and loathing.' An organized state is a
free association for the common weal. My personal will to
cross the Atlantic, for example, is made effective by
co-operation with others on agreed terms. But the forced
association 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, mob rule, unless every individual is absolutely
disciplined to serve his own, and the common, purpose without
friction. It is of course better to expel or destroy an
irreconcilable. `If thine eye offend thee, cut it out.' The
error in the interpretation of this doctrine has been that it
has not been taken as it stands. It has been read: If thine
eye offend some artificial standard 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.
Love is the law, love under will.
Walter