The Law is for All

18 The Law is for All blasphemes against this godhead. In certain aspects, it has shown itself to be an arch-enemy of the soul of man. Long ago Henrik Ibsen declared that “mere democracy cannot solve the social question.” He might have added that there are many other questions that it cannot solve. But he implied this when he said that an element of aristocracy must be introduced into our life. Of course I do not mean the aristocracy of birth or of the purse, or even the aristocracy of intellect. I mean the aristocracy of character, of will, of mind. That only can free us. It is the full achievement of real freedom, by such means, that will be compassed by the adoption of the religion of The Book of the Law. Further, this Book gives a new illumination of death, of the meaning of death. With death all religions have of course been much concerned; but the extent to which the various Christian sects have succeeded in dispelling the fear of death can be judged by the prevailing attitude towards death of the great majority of professing Christian persons. When they are not refusing to think about it, they are terrified of it. They speak of one who has died as “poor,” which must mean that they regard him as having suf­ fered a calamity. The old Christian conceptions of life after death as either eternal combustion or eternal harp-strumming are no longer at all generally believed; indeed, it may be questioned whether they ever were seriously believed, except by a fanatical minority. Christianity—popular Christianity, at least—has never had anything better to offer than this everlasting torture for the damned and everlasting boredom for the saved. Or—but some­ what heretically—“rest.” Well, rest is better than torment or ennui; and “May he rest in peace” is, it would seem, the best that Christianity can do by way of hope for the “departed.” “Rest”; not activity of any valid kind on some further plane of being. This Book will also illuminate that extremely important human concern of what is now usually known as “Sex,” a con­ cern which Christianity has always, to put it very mildly, rather obscured than illuminated. Christian “morality” is in its essence anti-sexual or “sexophobic”; here, most evidently, “the praxis of