Races of Helots are never wanting! See to it that you Men, that you breed fighters! See to it that you train them too! “The harper is not made otherwise than by harping” nor the warrior otherwise than by war. Let muscle force be pitted against muscle force, brain power against brain power and let winners wear the laurel and losers wear the rasping sackcloth. Let there be no compromise — no half-hearted philandering — no backing down but as Darwin commands, let the strongest live and the vilest die.
Black, furious and tragic are the bloody annals of man’s evolution, and there is no rational evidence upon which to conclude that it shall ever be otherwise — or that it would be wise for us to attempt the making of it otherwise.
Why then be discontented with that which we cannot alter, even if we dared. Better after all, fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Let it be as it has ever been — as the grim old Norseland skald chanted it, when our Race began to emerge into the dim distant twilight of the gods.
“An age of axes — an age of swords;
An age of tempests — an age of wolves.”
Be it among animalculæ, moth or mollusc, birds of the air, beasts of the field, fishes of the sea, planets, suns, stars or solar systems; Force reigns unchangeable, unchallengeable, inexorable.
When the kindly Roman emperor imagined that peace had settled down permanently upon the ancient world; even then, the (dissemulating) assassin’s dagger was sharpening for his throat: and now, while Lower Organisms dream of a “world of lovers” — of arbitration instead of hostility — of conciliation between rival carnivores; the mechanism of deletion is silently under construction: that (when completed) will sweep them off the face of the earth.
The Strongest organisms are always the determinants. They hold in their hands (absolutely) the destinies of weaker organisms. Further, in all the interwoven differentiations of matter and mind; equality, mercy, pity, are wholly at a discount — except alone in family relationship. (A man’s family is his property — it is part of himself. Therefore his natural business is to defend it, as he would his own life. Women and children belong to man; who must hunt for them as well as for himself. He is their lord and master, in theory and in fact.
Under natural conditions, there is no haven for the wretched, no hope for the weaklings, no resting place for the weary, no quarter for the beaten. Nature loathes Infirm Ones. Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve. This is an Ultimatum.
Life is a race for Power into the very jaws of death and “hell take the hindmost.”
Hell take the hindmost! No! — that isn’t so! Christ takes the hindmost! Exactly! that is correct! In real life he is the true Prince of Evil. Soothingly he saith: — “Come unto me all ye that are weary or heavy laden;” and, those who obey are sure of — hell. Nay, ascendeth up for ever and ever.”
In ancient ages the Incapables were permitted to perish without comment: but with us it is different.
Almsgiving, first by the monastery, now by the State, has preserved them and their leprous seed, until modern nations are actually swarming with men and women (rich and poor) who are totally useless and totally vile. Selective influences that operate under natural conditions, have been kept in abeyance by religions and moralisms: until the whole human race is saturated with inherited mental disease and rottenness-of-the-bones. Our Christian civilization is a forcing-chamber for weakly animalculæ. Natural conditions are a lethal-chamber for them. The proper home for incurables is — the grave.
Competition must be to the death. If retarded in any way it fails of beneficial results. The chief intent of false religions and false moralisms is to arrest competition half-way to safe-guard degenerates in possessing that which they could neither seize nor defend if competition was unlimited. Humanitarian institutionalisms have been invented to handicap and eliminate the elite of mankind — vainly however.
With the normal man, it is a pleasure to struggle, a pastime to fight, and nothing is sweeter to him than to confiscate his confiscator and surpass his surpasser — to, as it were, smite his enemy hip and thigh and spoil him of that which he spoiled from others. The normal man prefers to eat others than to be eaten.
With the abnormal man, it is otherwise. He is of the mob — he sheepishly obeys public opinion — he is one of a flock. That word flock! — Does it not postulate the existence of shepherds to “round-up” and drove — of specialists to castrate — of shearers to shear — of cattle dealers to purchase — of butchers to kill — of tanneries — wire fences — corrals — abattoirs; and finally of “roast lamb and mint sauce,” with fat Carnivores sitting round, lapping blood and purring gently?
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Herbert Spencer (referring to the origin of manners, customs, and political institutions) says: — “The will of the victorious chief, of the strongest, was the rule of all conduct. When he passed judgment on private quarrels, his decisions were the origin of law. The mingled respect and terror inspired by his person and his peerless qualities, then deemed super-natural by the rude minds that had scarcely an idea of the powers and limits of human nature, were the origins of religions, and his opinions were the first dogmas. The signs of obedience by which the vanquished, whom he spared, repaid his mercy, were the first examples of those marks of respect that are now called good manners and forms of courtesy.”
How human history duplicates itself over and over again? How it revolves in a never ending panorama.
Wherever human herds congregate, the “Victorious Chief” still governs; though not without envy and impotent opposition. Everywhere he is Master in one guise or another: but it behooves him to beware that his power is not undermined by the teredo of sanctified utopianism — founded on the multitudinous votes of the vile, the vulgar, and the vitiated. Blighting indeed is the tyranny of Collective Humanity.
“The great political superstition of the present,” (also writes Spencer) is “the divine right of parliaments and the implied divine right of majorities.”
The supremacy of Living Manhood over devout dreaming, over literature, dogma, law and tradition; must be boldly asserted and aggressively maintained; as it was, in the days of yore. Woe unto you Strong Ones if you ever get beneath the hoofs of the trampling, bellowing, maddened mob. Ha! — ‘You must meet the guile and death-snare with battle and with wrack.’
“Woe to the vanquished, was stern Brenno’s words, when sand proud Rome beneath the Gallic sword. Woe to the vanquished, when his massive blade bore down the scales against his massive her ransom weighed: and on the field of foughten battle still, woe knows no limits — save the victors will.”
“The Survival of the Fittest” is the scientist’s translation of the heroic age’s “Viæ Victus.” Grim and harsh it may appear to nervous souls, but it is true to nature . Neither legislative enactments nor pious incantations can deflect or nullify it. It may be thwarted and turned aside for a time, but only for a time; just as a river may be banked back by the building of a breastwork. The waters cease to flow onward until the dam is brim-full, and then, over the top the flood leaps, with resounding crash and uproar, finally sweeping away the obstruction itself.
Decalogues and “be it enacteds” are mud ramparts the decadent ages vainly erect against the irresistible flow of natural events. Sooner or later these feeble barriers go down, or are surmounted; just as the river surmounts the dam. Cardinal Newman tersely describes the Church of England as a “serviceable breakwater” and he speaks with astuteness. All sacredotalisms are “serviceable breakwaters.” They may last for one century or twenty, but they down-tumble in the end. Artificial obstructions cannot last for if they did, then the cankerous ancient civilizations would never have been overwhelmed; for they also had their serviceable breakwaters; that is to say, gods and temples, mob-politics, mob-morals, mob-philosophies.
Legal and ethical barricades may not be depended upon to protect dwindlings from the judgments they bring upon themselves; and which they richly deserve.
Every People that
have been blotted-out, were rightfully blotted-out. What a frightful maggot-heap this earth would now be, if the “civilized” populations of the past, had not perished? If nature had permitted them to live and multiply and propagate their “progress”, that is to say, their iniquity, what a noisome sink it would be? What must near Futurity be like, if wars and plagues do not come, burning contemporary infernalisms and purifying the air?
Thus, the utter extermination of enfeebled breeds is in accordance with the Highest Wisdom: and whether we personally approve thereof or not, it must persist. There is nothing unjust, nothing ultra-natural, nothing diabolic about the elimination of the vile — to make room for the “sound in mind and limb.”
Clearly therefore, in every department of life, the lesser force must be overthrown by the greater; which (being interpreted) meaneth: — might is right, absolutely, unreservedly. From the records of history, the facts of life, and the discoveries of science, this startling deduction may be thoroughly proved. “The law of life” as Benjamin Kidd writes, “has been always the same from the beginning, ceaseless and inevitable struggle, ceaseless and inevitable selection and rejection.” That ‘Might is Master’ should require demonstrating is in itself a proof of the mental and moral perversity that pervades the world. Perhaps however the ‘age we live in,’ may not be an ‘age of enlightenment and progress,’ but an age of darkness, arrested development, and psychic paralysis. Mayhap the theologies and intellectualisms of our time may be but a magical hoodwink. We might (for example) be enchanted on the down-grade track, that leads to eternal extinction; while insanely imagining “progress and enlightenment.” Also the imagining process may be part of the complicated mechanism that facilitates the descent — the descent into Sheol. Official statistics show that racial deterioration (begun centuries ago as a sequence of ultra-naturalism) is now proceeding at a tremendous rate.
Dr. Haycraft, F.R.S.E. in his book ‘Darwinism and Race Progress’ asserts “there are strong grounds for believing that during the last 30 years, the race has decidedly degenerated.” The decadence of character is obvious to the most obtuse understanding, especially in this land of Liberty and Light; were you can buy statesmen with a snuff-box — editors with a dollar — women with a gew-gaw.
Undoubtedly degenerative forces prevail in our social life, and yet it is impressed upon us from our youth up, that: — “A Great Light hath come down upon the earth and all the ends of the world hath seen the Salvation of our God.” Salvation indeed! What lunacy?
“So the multitude goes, like the flower and the weed
That wither away to let others succeed —
So the multitude comes, even that we behold;
To repeat every tale that has often been told.”
To act as the hunted ostrich on an African karoo — to hide our heads from the cosmic vengeance in hot pursuit, is as futile and ridiculous as it is base. No empiric reorganization of the social system — no rock of ages — no legislative meliorism — no fungus virtues — no scheme of fool redemption — no patent economic plan — no Israelitish codes of “Thou Shalts” and “Thou Salt Nots;” can deliver whimpering defectives, from the wrath that is their just reward. Sooner or later THEIR “Day of Judgment” cometh; bringing in its train of desolation, reparation and rolling doom.
Even as I write — with wrecked civilizations lying around me, cold and chill — outraged Nature is preparing her whirlblasts of wholesale avengement. Europe is a vast powder magazine, with a strident maniac in the middle waving a burning torch; and from Asia is wafted the odorous stench of plague-smitten millions.
Any day, any hour, “Civilization” may be startled from its hypnotic trance, to gaze upon the mightiest drama that has ever been unrolled when the ‘tempest flings out its red banner of lightning,’ and great nations groan, and reel, and surge, and rock; beneath the thunderous tread of trampling legions, drilling for the savage shock. Military arsenals are preparing in every city, and floating defiantly on Seven Seas are the steel-clad fortresses of rival MIGHTS.
Foolish and blind (or mad) are they who think the struggle for existence ended. It is only begun. This Planet is in its infancy, not in its decrepitude. The ‘end of all things’ is afar off. The kingdom of heaven in not at hand. Incessant is the rivalry for supremacy among men, and manifold are its metamorphoses. Not for a single hour, for a single second, is there an armistice. Night and day the combat rages, and with renewed virulence on Sundays. When we fall asleep and when we wake up, the clashing of the Weapons and the crunching of the bones, is sounding on our ears. Everywhere “the sword is uplifted on man.” Everywhere Cain’s bludgeon is cracking skulls, and with bloodhounds Americans hunt each other. The hands of “Congregations of the Faithful” are red with the blood of the innocent; yet how they boast of being washed clean in the blood of their Brother — the Lamb.
Eternal battle is the main condition upon which man holds his life tenure. When the brand is shattered in his hand, that is death or — slavery. When his enemies are beneath his heel, that is life, honor, success. Indeed the struggle between men is more pitiless, and more unmerciful, than among brutes.
The brute beasts do not enslave, but permit the unfit to die off. Man enslaves his “brother man” on business principles, and makes fuel of the widow and the fatherless. The “failures in life” may be counted by millions and everyone knows their horrible fate — their blazing death. Behold them being whirled into the blazing maw of the great iron furnaces.
Overt action is not always needful for the drastic removal of lower organisms. Very often, if left alone, degenerates cremate themselves. If given control of governmental mechanisms, they immediately commence to grind one another into mincemeat — (that is to say, into dividends); crying Holy! Holy! Holy! Mentally, physically, morally, they are past redemption. Doomed souls are they — miserable sinners!
Seventy-five per cent of the inmates of state orphan asylums (for example) are the children of parents that perish from chronic alcoholism. Poverty, helotism, are the results of chronic ballot-boxing. Alcoholism and politics are convenient Destructives — Crematories; whereby weak-minded “flocks” may eliminate themselves with beneficient results —
Nature having already condemned them, they provide each other with palatable poisons — for slow but sure suicide. They build Gehenna-fires and cast themselves headlong into blazes.
Sociology is a biological problem and Nations are herds of cattle. How much demagogic he-hawing would die down into solemn self-questioning if this Grim Omnific Fact was clearly realized?
BE AS A LION IN THE PATH!
Hate for hate and ruth for ruth,
Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.
Scorn for scorn and smile for smile,
Love for love and guile for guile.
War for war and woe for woe,
Blood for blood and blow for blow.
Thou hast listened full oft, to the diabolic philosophy of the ‘Divine’ Creepling!
‘Love your enemies and bless them that hate you and despitefully use you’.
But I say unto you: — Love thy kindred, love thy friends, love thyself, and hate thine enemies with a whole heart.
Be a foe to your friend’s foe — a friend to your friend’s friend, and above all things permit no wrong, done unto thee or thine, to pass unchallenged, unredressed, unavenged.
Let thy motto be ‘Tread not on me’.
For, he that tamely submits, to insult and injury is worse than a dog: he is a dastard, a born slave, a Christling.
I’m the friend of all brave men,
The foe of all cowards;
I call up high daring,
I cast down despair.
An Evil Spirit hath inoculated our race with the hideous gospel of submissiveness, of degeneracy: — ‘Resist not evil’ it whines and ‘If a man smite you on one cheek, smash him on ‘the other’.
Resist every Evil! Be as a lion in the path!
Be ‘dangerous’ even in defeat!
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br /> Courage I say! Courage! and evermore Courage! even the stars in their courses are fight for the bold.
CHAPTER V: THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD
“You must tread on the necks of your enemies if you would win renown. It is success that makes the great man” was Napoleon’s dicta. The whole duty of man in this world is to succeed — to help himself, defeat his foes; outstrip his rivals. He who conquers not, is conquered. He who is unable to trample rough-shod over others, will assuredly be trampled by them. In the strength of his arm man eats his bread. In the sweat of his brow (and brain), the slave earns bread — for a master.
All emotional rhetoric about “love one another,” “learn to labor and to wait,” etc., has a tendency to paralyze effort — to make victims rather than victors of assentients. Every man’s hand is against every other man; except where living individuals have formed temporary co-partnerships. When one partner breaks the mutual agreement, then the Combine is necessarily dissolved, and all become enemies — as before. Fraternity between carnivores is as transient as the smoke of the morning. It is a pro-tem expedient.
Two hungry lions may engage to hunt together, but should one attempt to seize more than his fair proportion of the prey, then it is — woe to the vanquished.
Self preservation first, foremost, above all things, and at whatever cost; is the law of the jungle. So must it be among human carnivores. So it is, for society is a jungle. Therefore O reader! Go forth and win! Possess all you can of earth’s good things. Man does live by bread alone. Be strong and fear not, for all obstruction melts away before real strength of deed and strength of character. Nothing succeeds like success. Do not quibble over the order of your succeeding but — succeed. Thou shalt give thy heart to no god, for that is idiocy; neither shalt thou love thy neighbors as thyself, for that is madness. Let “Nil Desperandum” be your motto even to the death. If you fail you are righteously detestable; but if you triumph, thrice blessed art thou. (The great vice of our age is cowardice). Glory and honor be unto him that wins, but anathema maranatha be upon the head of him that fails. Failure is not only disgrace, but practical proof of organic incompetence.
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