Pax Hominibus Bonae Voluntatis by Aleister Crowley in International, Dec 1917.

“However, there are certain animals whose idea of biological adaptation is not quite so simple. There is the tiger, who adjusts his environment, or himself to his environment, by means of tooth and claw.” [via]

Consider also:

  1. “Now, as explained above, biology counsels adaptation to circumstance. We shall save ourselves knocks if we do what the other man tells us without any grumbling. We may go so far perhaps as to say ‘brute’ or ‘pig’ when he is not within an ear shot, but even that is a little dangerous, tending rather to the calamity of thinking for ourselves.”
  2. “Herbert Spencer has shown that the animal which adapts himself to his circumstances is going to survive longer than those who resist their environment. Away then with all considerations of principle!”
  3. “Religion is in some respects a difficult if not a fallacious guide. Quot homines tot sentential; or, as the Indians say, ‘A new language every eight miles.’ Our true guide is certainly the biological indication.”
  4. “The idea of resisting repression is a totally wrong one. Christ submitted willingly to what is generally admitted to be the greatest crime ever perpetrated, although, as he himself explained, he had twelve legions of angels actually mobilized, which would have made as short work of the Romans as the angels of Mons did of the Germans in the early part of the war.”
  5. “The idea of moral character is outworn and ridiculous.”