Cover Art:
Alexander the Great • Teutonic Berserker • General Patton
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IS
RIGHT
or
THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
by Ragnar Redbeard, LL.D.
(University of C.)
Reprint of the 1910 edition, London
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Edited by : IKatja Jlane
Illustrated by : ^Ron iJMcHJan
Exclusive
MILLENNIAL WOTANSVOLK EDITION
1999
14 Words:
' ,( ^Jc must secure the existence oj our -people and a future jor ^White children."
— David Lane
14 Word Press
HC01 Box 268K
St. Maries, Idaho 83861 USA
Copyright © 1 999 Fourteen Word Press
4IIMII / >
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-Sophocles
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things that are not to be told, and shall we publish things not to be divulged,
and secrets not to be spoken aloud?"
— Julian the Emperor
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Table of Contents
Editor's Note x
PREFACE — Commentary by Katja Lane
Preview xiii
POEMS & PIECES — Logic of To-day. AH else is error.
Chapter l i
INTRODUCTORY — The living forces of Evil are to be found
in the Moral Ideal of To-day.
Chapter «
15
ICONOCLASTIC — Christian ethics impeached. Jesus, the true
Prince of Evil — Mephistopheles of the world, King of Slaves.
Chapter m
39
THE SPINNING Of 7 THE WEB — The Ship of State, a pirate ship.
"All men created equal" is the strident doctrine of the maniac.
Chapter Ib
77
MAN THE CARNIVORE — The Ideal Animal, a destructive
warrior— not a crucified carpenter. "Moral Principles" are
slave regulations.
Chapter o
109
THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERIAL SUCCESS — Self-
preservation, the First Law of Nature. Hell takes the Defeated
Ones — the Failures.
Chapter U
151
LOVE AND WOMEN AND WAR — Female animals love the
best fighting males. Sexual selection and the necessity of
unmerciful conflict.
Editor's Note
A title like Might Is Right almost precludes the necessity
of an introduction, since all history, natural law and common sense
declare its truth.
The "author" of this epic manifesto remains an enigmatic
issue. As most of history is merely "the propaganda of the Victor,' 1
we shall never be certain of many details. Due to the nature of
Might Is Right and the brutal truth of its dynamic
pronunciamentos, it has never before been published with the
critical eye of a major publishing house. It appears that the raw text
(of the original with additions) has been meticulously preserved in
a near unadulterated form.
14 Word Press is honored to present here, for Wotansvolk
world-wide, this exclusive Millennial Edition. For the first time
since its original release a century ago, Might Is Right has now
been published with particular and much-deserved scrutiny to
detail, leaving the 1910 text nearly unaltered.
Having had the task and privilege of editing this powerful
piece, the arcane evidence of authorship in the work itself became
quite apparent. Ragnar Redbeard indeed ranks with Nietzsche-if
he himself was not the initial author-as an intelligent and erudite
thinker and writer.
Many believe that Jack London was Ragnar Redbeard.
Nevertheless, the literary styles reveal unequivocally that Might Is
Right had at least two distinct authors. The original, "Redbeard,"
wrote in a clean, technical style, consistent and methodical. In fact
it is very possibly the product of a skilled translator who retained
many of the upper-case nouns and punctuation typical of the
German language; the entire text is laced with numerous foreign
phrases and translations. ^
However, interspersed throughout this treatise are
sentences, often whole paragraphs, of passionate commentary
expounding upon and contrasted to the near clinical approach of
Ragnar Redbeard. It seems convincingly clear that these
complimentary addenda were authored by Jack London, a brilliant,
creative talent, naturalist, lucid visionary and exceptional
philosopher with an incandescent imagination.
Solely on a grammatical basis this is an airtight conclusion.
London, a purely artistic genius, had no regard for standard
punctuation or sentence structure. His personal writing style was
as idiosyncratic as his trademark passion was pronounced. The
poorly punctuated, verbose, adjectival out-pourings of abundant
vocabulary and run-on sentences are unmistakably London. Aside
from Londonesque writing style and philosophy, the fact that
some claim to have seen portions of the Might is Right manuscript
in London's own hand lends credence to this theory.
A careful reader will instinctively sense the temperamental
roller-coaster created by the blend of these markedly distinct
writers, as the cultural references swing back-and-forth between
European and American orthography, colloquialisms, syntax and
historical perspectives. And just as Jack London was infectiously
enticed, it is assured that the reader will have his own personal,
emotional and eloquent reaction to the illuminisms apotheosized
herein.
Regardless of the true identity of the authors, truth is
indisputable; truth is its own author.
Some have criticized this iconoclastic masterpiece for
"advocating anarchy." The fact that we might perceive the ruthless
cruelty of Nature as chaos does not change our reality: Man and all
his laws are subject to the mercilessly indomitable Laws of Nature.
Our racial survival depends on Aryan man rediscovering his
Nature-ordained manhood. He must choose between cowardice and
courage, between comfort and freedom, between extinction and a
future for White children. There is no compromise.
Victory sanctifies. Nature rules.
IKatja J&
20 May 1999
am
As an editor and publisher with 14 WORD PRESS, Katja (Mrs. David Lane)
supports her husband's political struggle and distributes his writings. Mr. Lane is a
political prisoner serving 190 years in the United States Federal Penitentiary for alleged
"civil rights violations." The daughter of an MIA pilot in Vietnam, Katja has spent over
30 years "seeking truth where tyrants would deny it."
p
REViEW
£W k |
THE LOGIC OF TO-DAY
"Dnjerior organisms succumb and perish or arc enslaved. Superior organisms
survive, propagate, and possess." —Darwin.
"i^/T,ll men are created equal" — is an infernal Lie.
"DSlot by speechifying and majority votes can the great questions oj r Lo~ r Day
be settled . . . but by iron and by blood." —Bismarck.
/t\
PAX VOBISCUM
Fill high your vaults with booty,
Bid evolution cease,
And chant Belzchazzar's anthem -
"O, Baal preserve the peace.
MIGHT IS RIGHT
THE LOGIC OF TO-DAY
Might was right when Caesar bled
upon the stones of Rome,
Might was right when Joshua led
his hordes o'er Jordan's foam,
And Might was right when German troops
poured down through Paris gay;
It's the Gospel of the Ancient World
and the Logic of To-Day.
Behind all Kings and Presidents —
all Government and Law,
Are army-corps and cannoneers —
to hold the world in awe.
And sword-strong races own the earth
and ride the Conqueror's Car—
And Liberty has ne'er been won,
except by deeds of war.
What are the lords of hoarded gold —
the silent Semite rings?
What are the plunder-patriots —
high-pontiffs, priests and kings
What are they but bold master-minds,
best fitted for the fray
Who comprehend and vanquish by —
the Logic of To-Day.
Cain's knotted club is scepter still —
the "Rights of Man" is fraud;
Christ's Ethics are for creeping things —
true manhood smiles at "God."
For Might is Right when empires sick
in storms of steel and flame;
PREVIEW
And it is right when weakling breeds —
are hunted down like game.
Then what's the use of dreaming dreams —
that "each shall get his own"
By forceless votes of meek-eyed thralls,
who blindly sweat and moan?
No! a curse is on their cankered brains —
their very bones decay;
Go! trace your fate in the Iron Game,
is the Logic of To-Day.
The Strong must ever rule the Weak,
is grim Primordial Law —
On earth's broad racial threshing floor,
the Meek are beaten straw —
Then ride to Power o'er foemen's neck
let nothing bar your way;
If you are fit you'll rule and reign,
is the Logic of To-Day.
You must prove your Right by deeds of Might —
of splendour and renown.
If need-be march through flames of hell,
to dash opponents down.
If need-be die on scaffold high —
in the mornings misty gray
For "Liberty or Death" is still
the Logic of To-Day.
Might was Right when Gideon led,
the "chosen" tribes of old,
And it was right when Titus burnt,
XV
MIGHT IS RfGHT
PREVIEW
their Temple roofed with gold;
And Might was Right from Bunkers Hill,
to far Manila Bay,
By land and flood it's wrote in blood —
the Gospel of To-Day.
"Put not your trust in princes"
is a saying old and true,
"Put not your hope in Governments"
translated! it anew.
All 'Books of Law' and 'Golden Rules'
are fashioned to betray
'The Survival of the Strongest'
is the Gospel of To-Day.
Might was Right when Carthage flames
lit up the Punic foam —
And — when the naked steel of Gaul
weighed down the spoil of Rome;
And Might was Right when Richmond fell —
and at Thermopalye —
It's the Logic of the Ancient World —
and the Gospel of To-Day.
OPPORTUNITIES
A man's opportunities are never exhausted so long as other
men (who are not his friends) possess millions of acres and
thousands of tons of gold.
The guarded treasure halls and iron-clad temples of modern
kings and presidents, high priests and millionaires, are positively
the richest the world has even known.
Bulging are they with the vast hoards of silver and
diamonds and gold.
Here, then, is opportunity on a colossal scale. Here is the
goal of Ciesars, Nebuchadnezzars and Napoleons in the days that
are coming.
All is ready and prepared for them, even as in olden times.
Caesar carried off the treasures of Egypt, Greece, Gaul and Rome.
Napoleon looted the money vaults of Venice, Vienna, Madrid,
Berlin and Moscow. London only escaped him.
Nebuchadnezzar plundered the Temple of Zion, where the
Jews kept all their deposits and drank his beer and wine out of
Jehovah's pots of gold.
Napoleon, Caesar, Nebuchadnezzar! There were three great
men, were they not? And in this their greatness consisted — they
seized their opportunities.
Where pendant suns in millions swing,
around this whirling earth,
It's Might, it's Force that holds the brakes,
and steers through life and death;
Force governs all organic life,
inspires Right and Wrong.
It's Natures plan to weed-out man,
and test who are the Strong.
XV)
xvn
MIGHT IS RIGHT
PREVIEW
THE HIGHER LAW
From Sandy Hook to London tower
From Jaffa to Japan ,
They can take who have the power
They may keep who can.
This is the law of Heaven ad Hell
Stupendous and divine
The highest, holiest law of all
That governs "mine and thine."
The law it is of Sun and Star,
Of President and Pope-
It is "the prisoner at the bar"
The gallows and the rope.
It is the lawyer and his fee;
The shearer and his sheep —
The eagle soaring swift and free;
The Dreadnaught on the deep.
It is the Bond; it is the Loan —
The profit and the loss —
The usurer on his Bullion Throne —
The Idol of the Cross.
From Sandy Hook to London tower,
From Greenland to Japan —
They will take who have the Power
And they may keep who can.
— Redbeard's Review
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It is the Goth; it is the Hun —
The tyrant and his prey,
And flame and saber, club and gun;
0, taxes that we pay!
It is the law of all the climes,
And all the things to be;
And all the bold tremendous times
That you and I shall see.
THE VICTOR GETS THE GOLD
Virtue is rewarded in this world, remember. Natural law
makes no false judgments. Its decisions are true and just, even
when dreadful. The victor gets the gold and the land every time. He,
also, gets the fairest maidens, the glory tributes. And — why should
it be otherwise? Why should the delights of life go to failures and
cowards? Why should the spoils of battle belong to the unwarlike?
That would be insanity, utterly unnatural and immoral.
XVIll
XIX
IVHGHT fS RIGHT
ALL ELSE IS ERROR
The natural world is a world of war; the natural man is a
warrior; the natural law is tooth and claw. All else is error. A
condition of combat everywhere exists. We are born into perpetual
conflict. It is our inheritance, even as it was the heritage of previous
generations. This 'condition of combat' may be disguised with the
holy phrases of St. Francis, or the soft deceitful doctrines of a
Kropotkin or Tolstoi, but it cannot be eventually evaded by any
human being or any tribe of human beings. It is there and it stays
there, and each man (whether he will or not) has to reckon with it.
It rules all things; it governs all things; it reigns over all things and
it decides all who imagine policemanized populations,
internationally regulated tranquillity, and State organized
industrialism so joyful, blessed and divine.
Behold the crucifix, what does it symbolize? Pallid
incompetence hanging on a tree.
Lo, I hear the fighters coming
Over hill and dale and plain.
With battle cry of ages
In a Rebel world again.
Who'd forge their swords to plow-shares.
Shall sweat in bitter yokes.
The free-born race and fearless
Must deal out battle strokes.
In the wars of the Great Caesar, and Grim Hannibal, in the
times of Belzchazzar, the Pharaohs and all; the days of Rienzi and
Roland the Bold; all banners were waving for women and gold.
It is might against might, remember, by land and sea, man
against man, money against money, brains against brains, and —
everything to the winner.
\
NTRODUCTORY
Chapter I
In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice
that you may hear.
To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to
the South I show a sign —
Proclaiming, "Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong."
Open your eyes that you may hear, O! men of mildewed
minds and listen to me, ye laborious millions!
For I stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to
interrogate the "laws" of man and of "God."
I request reasons for your Golden Rule and ask the why and
wherefore of your ten Commands.
Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence
and he who saith "thou shalt" to me is my mortal foe.
I demand proof over all things, and accept (with
reservations) even that which is true.
I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent
mad-redeemer (your Divine Democrat— your Hebrew Madman)
and write over his thorn-torn brow, "The true Prince of Evil — the
King of the Slaves!"
No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me — no cult or
dogma shall encamp my pen.
I break away from all conventions. Alone, untrammelled. I
MIGHT IS RIGHT
raise up in stern invasion the standard of Strong.
I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah, and
pluck him by the beard — I uplift a broad-axe and split open his
worm-eaten skull.
I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophic whited
sepulchres and laugh with sardonic wrath.
Then reaching up the festering and varnished facades of
your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing
scorn: — "Lo and behold, all this is fraud!"
I deny all things! I question all things!
And yet! And yet! —
— Gather around me O! ye death-defiant and the earth itself
shall be thine, to have and to hold.
What is your 'civilization and progress' if its only outcome
is hysteria and downgoing?
What is 'government and law' if their ripened harvests are
men without sap?
What are 'religions and literatures' if their grandest
productions are hordes of faithful slaves?
What is 'evolution and culture' if their dead-sea-fruit is a
caitiff race, with rotteness in its bones.
How is it that 'men of light and leading' hardly ever call in
question the manufactured 'moral codes,' under which our once
vigorous Northern race is slowly and surely eating out its heart in
peaceful inaction and laborious dry-rot?
Standard 'moral principles' are arbitrarily assumed by their
orthodox apologist to be a fixed and unalterable quantity, and that
to doubt the divine-rightness of these 'principles' is treason and
sacrilege. When the greatest thinkers of a race are incapable, or
afraid to perform their manifest and logical function, it is scarcely
INTRODUCTORY
to be wondered that average citizens are, also, somewhat unwilling
to 'risk life, fortune, and sacred honor' for the overthrow of
popularized 'right and wrong' concepts, that they know from bitter
personal experience, are unworkable falsities. Although the average
man feels in his heart that nearly all political and religious
conventionalisms are dynamic deceits, yet how cautiously he
avoids any open display of antagonism thereto? He has not the
courage of this opinions. He is afraid to say openly what he thinks
secretly. In other words he is living in a state of subjectiveness; of
vassalage. He allows his brain to be dominated and held in bondage
by the brain of another. From his infancy he has been deliberately
subjected to a continuous external pressure, especially designed to
coerce his understanding into strict accord with pre-arranged views
of moral, political or religious 'duty.' He has not been permitted
one moment of real mental liberty. He imbibed fraudulent
conventionalisms with his mother's milk. He listens to the most
hideous lies being glorified in his presence as sublime truths. He
hears falsehoods sung in swelling chorus. He hears them sounded
on bugles of silver and brass. He hears them intoned by
congregations of the faithful amid peals of sacred music, and the
solemn roll of chanted prayer. Thus his mind is sterilized by
authority before it has had a chance to mature. Thus youth is
mentally castrated, that its natural vitality may be afterwards used
up in the yoke of custom — which is the yoke of slavery. In the
nursery, at school, and at college, plastic brain-pulp is deliberately
forced into the pre-arranged mould. Everything that a corrupt
civilization can do, is done to compress the growing intellect into
unnatural channels. Thus the great mass of men who inhabit the
world of to-day have no initiative, no originality of independence
of thought, but are mere subjective individualities, who have never
had the slightest voice in fashioning the ideals that they formally
revere.
Although the average man has taken no part in
manufacturing moral codes and statute laws, yet how he obeys
them with dog-like submissiveness? He is trained to obedience, like
oxen are broken to the yoke of their masters. He is a born thrall
MIGHT IS RIGHT
habituated from childhood to be governed by others.
Chinese civilization deliberately distorts its children's feet,
by swathing them in bandages of silk and hoop-iron. Christian
civilization crushes and cramps the minds of its youth by means of
false philosophies, artificial moral codes and ironclad political
creeds. Deleterious sub-theories of good and evil are systematically
injected into our natural literatures, and gradually (without serious
obstruction) they crystallize themselves into cast iron formulas,
infallible constitutions, will-o-the-wisp evangels and other deadly
epidemics.
Modern 'leaders of thought' are almost wholly wanting in
originality and courage. Their wisdom is foolishness, their
remedies poison. They idiotically claim that they guide the
destinies of nations, whereas, in reality, they are but the flotsam and
scum-froth that glides smoothly down the dark stream of
decadence.
"Thus all the people of the earth are helpless, seeing those
that lead are blind."
Mankind is aweary, aweary of its sham prophets, its
demagogues and its statesmen. It crieth out for kings and heroes. It
demands a nobility — a nobility that cannot be hired with money,
like slaves or beasts of burden. The world awaits the coming of
mighty men of valor, great destroyers; destroyers of all that is vile,
angels of death. We are sick unto nausea of the 'good Lord Jesus,'
terror-striken under the executive of priest, mob and proconsul. We
are tired to death of 'Equality.' Gods are at a discount, devils are in
demand. He who would rule the coming age must be hard, cruel
and deliberately intrepid, for softness assails not successfully the
idols of the multitude. Those idols must be smashed into fragments,
burnt into ashes, and that cannot be done by the gospel of love.
The living forces of evil are to be found in the living ideals
of to-day.
The Commandments and laws and moral codes that we are
called upon to reverence and obey are themselves the insidious
enginery of decadence. It is moral principles that manufacture
beggars. It is golden rules that glorify meekness. It is statute laws
INTRODUCTORY
that make spaniels of men.
A man may keep every one of the Ten Commandments and
yet remain a fool all the days of his life. He may obey every written
law of the land, and yet be a caitiff and a slave. He may 'love
Jesus,' delight in the golden rule and yet continue to the hour of his
death, a failure and dependent. Truly the way to hell is by fulfilling
the commandments of God.
If the all-conquering race to which we belong, is not to
irretrievably dwindle into multitudinous nothingness, (like the
inferior herds it has outdistanced or enslaved) then it is essential
that the Semitic spider webs (so astutely woven for ages into the
brains of our chiefs) be remorselessly torn out by the very roots,
even though the tearing out process be both painful and bloody.
If we would retain and defend our inherited manhood, we
must not permit ourselves to be forever rocked to repose, with the
sweet lullabies of eastern idealisms. Too long we have been
hypnotized by the occult charm of Hebrew Utopianism. If we
continue to obey the insidious spell that has been lad upon us, we
will wake up some dread morning with the gates of hell — 'of hell
upon earth' yawning wide open, to close again upon us forever.
The idea of hell is in some respects a truthful conception,
suggestive of actual fact. If we terrestialize the location, there is
nothing inharmonious about it. Many a race, many a tribe, and
many a mighty empire has gone down into a grimly realistic sheol.
Is it not right and just, that the vile, the base and the degenerate
(that is to say the slave nations of the earth) should be punished
pitilessly for their creeping cowardice? Is it not right that they
should be, as it were, fried and toasted — should swim in pools of
boiling blood, or dance sweltering satanic glees, with blistering feet
and straining eye-balls on red-hot Saharas of gravel and sand?
In actual operation Nature is cruel and merciless to men, as
to all other beings. Let a tribe of human animals live a rational life,
Nature will smile upon them and their posterity; but let them
attempt to organize an unnatural mode of existence an equality
elysium, and thy will be punished even to the point of
extermination.
MIGHT IS RIGHT
All ethics, politics and philosophies are pure assumptions,
built upon assumptions. They rest on no sure basis. They are but
shadowy castles-in-the-air erected by day-dreamers, or by rogues,
upon nursery fables. It is time they were firmly planted upon an
enduring foundation. This can never be accomplished until the
racial mind has first been thoroughly cleansed and drastically
disinfected of its depraved, alien, and demoralizing concepts of
right and wrong. In no human brain can sufficient space be found,
for the relentless logic of hard fact, until all pre-existent delusions
have been finally annihilated. Half measures are of no avail, we
must go down to the very roots and tear them out, even to the last
fibre. We must be, like nature, hard, cruel, relentless.
Too long the dead hand has been permitted to sterilize living
thought— too long, right and wrong, good and evil, have been
inverted by false prophets. In the days that are at hand, neither
creed nor code must be accepted upon authority, human,
superhuman or 'divine.' (Morality and conventionalism are for
subordinates.) Religions and constitutions and all arbitrary
principles, every mortal theorem, must be deliberately put to the
question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted — no standard
of measurement deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about
moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are all the
work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy.
He that is slow to believe anything and everything is of
great understanding, for belief in one false principle, is the
beginning of all. unwisdom. The chief duty of every new age is to
up-raise new men to determine its liberties, to lead it towards
material success — to rend (as it were) the rusty padlocks and chains
of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories
and ideals and constitutions, that may have meant life and hope,
and freedom, for our ancestors, may now mean destruction, slavery
and dishonor to us. As environments change, no human ideal can
standeth sure.
Wherever, therefore, lie has built unto itself a throne, let it
INTRODUCTORY
be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the
domination of a falsehood, no nation can permanently prosper. Let
established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed,
for they are standing menace to all true nobility of thought and
action. Whatever alleged 'truth' is proven by results, to be but an
empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer
darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies,
and other useless lumber and wreckage.
The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the
sanctified, the privileged lie — the lie that 'everybody' believes to
be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors
and delusions. It is hydra-headed. It has a thousand roots. It is a
social cancer. The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated , but
the lie that even intelligent persons regard as a sacred fact — the lie
that has been inculcated around a mother's knee — is more
dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence. Popular
lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty.
There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very
core, just as cancers are. Exterminate them root and branch, or they
will surely eat us all up. We must annihilate them, or they will us.
Half and half remedies are of no avail .
However, When a lie has gone too far— when it has taken
up its abode in the very tissues, bones, and brains of a people, then
all remedies are useless. Even the lancet is of no avail. Repentance
of past misdeeds cannot 'save' decadents from extermination. The
fatal bolt is shot; and into the fiery furnace of wholesale slavery,
and oblivion, they must go, to be there righteously consumed. From
their ashes something new, something nobler, may possibly evolve,
but even that is the merest optimistic supposition.
In nature the wages of sin is always death. Nature does not
love the wrong-doer, but endeavors in every possibly way to
destroy him. Her curse is on the brow of the 'meek and lowly.' Her
blessing is on the very hearts' blood of the strong and the brave.
Only Jews and Christians and other degenerates, think that
rejuvenation can ever come through law and prayer. 'All the tears
of all the martyrs' might just as well have never been shed.
MIGHT IS RIGHT
Whatsoever a people believeth shall make it free, enslave it,
or corrode its very marrow in strict accordance with natural order.
Consequently if a people place implicit faith in what philosophers
teach them, they are liable to be duped. If many nations are so
duped, their deception is a menace to the liberty of the world.
Freemen should never regulate their conduct by the
suggestions or dicta of others, for when they do so, they are no
longer free. No man ought to obey any contract, written or implied,
except he himself has given his personal and formal adherence
thereto, when in a state of mental maturity and unrestrained liberty.
It is only slaves that are born into contracts, signed and sealed by
their progenitors. The freeman is born free, lives free, and dies free.
He is (even though living in an artificial civilization) above all
laws, all constitutions, all theories of right and wrong. He supports
and defends them of course, as long as they suit his own end, but if
they don't, then he annihilates them by the easiest and most direct
method.
There is no obligation upon any man to passive obedience,
when his life, his liberty, and his property are threatened by
footpad, assassins or statesman.
One of Columbus's lieutenants in the West Indies, captured
a Carib chief by means of a subtle stratagem. The chief was invited
to a feast and when there, persuaded with honeyed words to don (on
horseback) a set of brightly polished steel manacles; it being
cunningly represented to him, that the irons were the regalia of
sovereignty. He foolishly believed his astute flatterer, and when the
chains were firmly clasped around his limbs, he was led away, to
die of vermin, turning a mill in a Spanish dungeon. What those
glittering manacles were to the Indian chieftain, constitutions, laws,
moral codes, and Hebrew dominated civilizations, are to the
nations of the earth. Indeed, under the name of Progress and Social
Evolution, mankind has been lured into foasted dungeons, where it
labors unceasingly and for naught, in darkness, despair, and shame.
Like the Spanish Lieutenant, the masters of the earth first flatter
their dupes, in order to more easily enchain them. Who talks
INTRODUCTORY
nowadays of the 'sovereign people,' without a laugh of derision?
And yet it was once thought to be a term full of significance. Their
'sovereignty' is now acknowledged sham, and their freedom a
dream. The sovereign people be damned.
It is clear, therefore, that the man or nation that would retain
liberty, or be really safe, must accept no formula as final — must
trust in nothing written or unwritten, living or dead — must believe
neither in special Jehovahs, nor weeping Saviours — neither in
Raging devils, nor in devilish philosophies — neither in ghosts, nor
in idols, nor in laws — nor in woman, nor in man.
" O threats of hell, and hopes of paradise,
One thing at least is certain — this life flies;
One thing is certain and all the rest is — lies,
The flower that once has bloomed forever dies."
He who saith unto himself, "I must believe, I must not
question" is not a man but a mere pusillanimous mental gelding. He
who believes "because it has been handed down" is a menial in his
heart; and he who believes "because it has been written" is a fool
in his folly. Sagacious spirits doubt all things, and hold fast only to
that which is demonstrably true.
The rules of life are not to be found in Korans, Bibles,
Decalogues and Constitutions , but rather the rules of decadence and
death. The law of laws is not written in Hebrew consonants or upon
tables of brass and stone, but in every man's own heart. He who
obeys any standard of right and wrong, but the one set up by his
own conscience, betrays himself into the hands of his enemies, who
are ever laying in wait to bind him to their millstones. And
generally a man's most dangerous enemies are his neighbors.
Masterful men laugh with contempt at spiritual thunders,
and have no occasion to dread the decisions of any human tribunal.
They are above and beyond all that. Laws and regulations are only
for conquered vassals. The free man does not require them. He may
MIGHT IS RIGHT
manufacture and post up Decalogue regulations, to bind and control
dependents with, but he does not himself bow down before those
inventions of his own hands,— except as a lure.
Statute books and golden rules, were made to fetter slaves
and fools. Very useful are they, for controlling the herds of
sentenced convicts, who fill the factories, and cultivated the fields.
All moral principles, therefore, are the servitors, not the masters of
the strong. Power made moral codes, and Power abrogates them.
A man is under no obligation to obey anything or anybody.
It is only serving-men that must obey, because they are caitiffs by
birth, breeding, and condition. Morals are only required in an
immoral community, that is to say a community held in a state of
conquest.
Fear God, bridle the spirit, and obey the law, is advice most
excellent, as from a philosopher to a yokel, but when directed in all
earnestness at a man of inherent might, he smiles to himself in
silent scorn. Full well he knows that in actual life the path to victory
and renown, does not lie through Gethsemanies, but over fallen
enemies, the ruins of rival combines, through Aceldamas.
'Meekness of spirit' is regarded by him as a convenient
superstition, very useful for regulating the lives of his servants, his
women, and his children, but otherwise inoperative.
"I rest my hopes on nothing" proclaimed Goethe, and
masterful minds in all ages have never done otherwise. This
unspoken thought gives to all truly great men their manifest
superiority over the brainless, vociferating herd. The 'common
people' have always had to be be fooled with some written or
wooden or golden Idol — some constitution, declaration or gospel.
Consequently the majority of them have ever been mental thralls,
living and dying in an atmosphere of strong illusion. They are be-
fooled and hypnotized even to this hour, and a large proportion of
them must remain so, until time is no more. Indeed the masses of
mankind are but the sediment from which all the more valuable
elements have been long ago distilled. They are totally incapable of
real freedom, and if it were granted to them, they would
straightway vote themselves a master, or a thousand masters within
INTRODUCTORY
twenty-four hours. Mastership is right — Mastership is natural —
Mastership is eternal. But only for those who cannot overthrow it,
and trample it beneath their hoofs. Is it not a fact that in actual life,
the ballot-box votes of ten million subjective personalities are as
thistle down in the balance, when weighed against the far seeing
thought, and material prowess of, say, ten strong silent men?
It is notorious, universally so, that the blackest falsehoods
are ever decked out in the most brilliant and gorgeous regalia.
Clearly, therefore it is the brave man's duty to regard all sacred
things, all legal things, all constitutional things, all holy things,
with more than usual suspicion. "I deny, and I affirm," is the
countersign of materia] freedom. "I believe, and I obey" is the
shibboleth of serfage. Belief is a flunkey, a feminine — Doubt is a
creator, a master. He who denies fundamentals is in triple armor
clad. Indeed he is invulnerable. On the other hand, it has been said
that every belief, every philosophy, has some truth in it, but so we
might add has every insanity.
Strong men are not deterred from pursuing their aim by
anything. They go straight to the goal, and that goal is Beauty,
Wealth, and Material Power. The mission of Power is to control and
exploit the powerless, for to be powerless is to be criminal. The
world would indeed be a house of horrors, if all men were 'good'
and all women — padlocked.
As far as human searchlights have yet penetrated, into the
darkness that enshrouds the origin of nations, we see the subduers
and the subdued, the plebeians and the patricians, the chiefs who
governed, and the vassals who obeyed. And there is nothing in the
most modern social developments (of these deedless days) to
warrant any belief that this ancient and natural division of human
animals, into castes of superiors and inferiors, sovereigns and serfs,
can ever be dispensed with. The slave-owners whip cracked from
the beginning and it will crack till the day of doom. In every
kingdom, republic, and empire on earth, we have (in one disguise
MIGHT IS RIGHT
or another) the master and the slave — the ruler and the ruled. In the
course of centuries, names alone have changed, essentials have
remained the same. Form of royalty may alter, but kings can never
die. There was mastership at the beginning, and there will be
mastership to the end. We build, but as our fathers built. Change is
no progress, nor numbers advance.
Every one who would be free must show his power.
Unalterable remains the basis of all earthly greatness. He who
exalteth himself shall be exalted, and he who humbleth himself
shall be righteously trodden beneath the hoofs of the herd. 'The
humble' are only fit for dog's meat. Bravery includes every virtue,
humility, every crime. He who is afraid to risk his life must never
be permitted to win anything.
Human rights and wrongs are not determined by Justice, but
by Might. Disguise it as you may, the naked sword is still king-
maker and king-breaker, as of yore. All other theories are lies and —
lures.
Therefore! If you would conquer wealth and honor, power
and fame, you must be practical, grim, cool, and merciless. You
must ride to success (by preference) over the necks of your foemen.
Their defeat is your strength. Their downfall is your uplifting. Only
the powerful can be free, and Power is non-moral. Life is real, life
is earnest, and neither heaven nor hell its final goal. And love, and
joy, and birth, and death, and fate, and strife, shall be forever.
This earth is a vast whirl of warring atoms — a veritable
revolving cock-pit. Each molecule, each animal, fights for its life.
you must fight for yours, or surrender. Look well to it, therefore,
that your beaks and spurs, your fangs and claws are as sharp as
steel, and as effective as science can make them.
Though, the survival of the strongest is the logic of events,
yet personal cowardice is the great vice of our demoralized age.
Cowardice is corroding the brain and blood of our race, but men
have learnt to disguise this terrible infirmity, behind the canting
whine of 'humanity' and 'goodness.' Words flow instead of blood,
and terrible insults are exchanged, instead of terrible blows.
How rich this degenerate world is in small, petty-souled,
12
INTRODUCTORY
good-for-nothings, who are forever excusing their infantile
ineptitude behind some plausible phrase — some conventional
make-believe?
Courage, I say! Courage, not goodness, is the great
desideratum — courage, that requires neither tin horns, nor calcium
lights, nor brass bands, nor shouting multitudes to call it into
effective action.
But courage that goes its way alone, as undauntedly as
when it marches to 'victory or death' amid the menacing stride of
armed and bannered legions.
13
MIGHT IS RIGHT
Courage, that delights in danger-
Courage, that knows not despair!
Courage that proudly, defiantly,
smiles on death!
Courage, that regards with equal loathing
the multitude's mad howls of hate,
its stupid hee-haws
and its stridulating 'tremendous applause.'
Courage, that asks no quarter,
even with the knife at its throat.
Courage that is stiff-necked,
unyielding, sullen, pitiless!
Courage, that never falters —
never retreats!
Courage, that looks down with supreme disdain
upon all slave regulations,
upon all rights and wrongs,
upon all good and evil!
Courage, that has made up its mind
to conquer or— perish!
That is the kind of courage
this world lacks.
That is the kind of courage
that aids by active co-operation
the survival of the Fittest —
and the survival of the Best.
That is the kind of courage
that has never turned a master's mill.
That is the kind of courage
that never will turn it.
That is the kind of courage
that will die, rather than turn it.
"When Svipdag came to the enclosure, the gate of the burg
was shut, (for it was customary to ask leave to come in and see, or
take part in the war games). Svipdag did not take that trouble, but
broke open the gate and rode into the yard."*
Queen Yisa said:— "This man will be welcomed here."
Ancient Norse Saga.
5
CONQCLASTSC
Ciiaptr H
As far as Sociology is concerned, we must either abandon
our reason or abandon Christ.
He is pre-eminently, the prophet of unreason— the preacher
of rabble-rabies. All that is enervating and destructive of manhood,
he glorifies, — all that is self-reliant and heroic, he denounces.
Lazarus, the filthy and diseased vagrant, is his hero of heroes; and
Dives the sane, energetic citizen, is his 'awful' example of baseness
and criminality. He praises 'the humble' and he curses the proud.
He blesses the failures and damns the successful. All that is noble,
he perverts — all that is atrocious he upholds. He inverts all the
natural instincts of mankind and urges us to live artificial lives. He
commands the demonization of virtues that aggrandize a people,
and advises his admirers to submit in quietness to every insult,
contumely, indignity; to be slaves, de-facto. Indeed, there is scarce
one thought in the whole of his Dicta that is practically true.
O, Christ! O, Christ! Thou artful fiend! Thou Great
Subverter! — What an amazing Eblis-glamour, thou hast cast over
the world? Thou mean insignificant-minded Jew!
Why is it that our modern philosophers are so mortally
afraid to boldly challenge the 'inspired' utopianism of this poor
self-deluded Galilean mountaineer,— this preacher of all eunuch-
virtues— of self abasement, of passive suffering?
The sickly humanitarian ethics, so eloquently rayed forth by
WIGHT IS RIGHT
Jesus Christ and his superstitious successors, in ancient Judea, and
throughout the moribund Roman empire, are generally accepted in
Anglo-Saxondom as the very elixir of immortal wisdom, the purest,
wisest, grandest, most incontrovertible of all 'divine revelations,' of
occult thaumaturges. And yet when closely examined, they are
found to be neither divine, occult, reasonable, nor even honest; but
composed, almost exclusively of the stuff that nightmares are made
of, together with a strong dash of oriental legerdemain.
Through a thousand different channels, current politico-
economic belief is dominated by the base communistic cabala of
the 'man of many sorrows'; yet as a practical theorem, it is hardly
ever critically examined. Why is it that the suggested social
solutions promulgated by Jesus, Peter, Paul, James, and other
Asiatic cataleptics, are accepted so meekly by us, upon trust? If
these men were anything, they were crude socialist reformers with
mis-shapen souls, preachers of 'a new heaven, and a new earth,'
that is to say, demagogues — politicians-of-the-slums; and out of the
slums, nothing that is noble can ever be born.
As agitators, Jesus and his modern continuators, shall be
exclusively considered in these pages. However, it must be
distinctly understood, that the spiritual and temporal in ail
cosmogonies, are so intricately interwoven, that it is almost
impossible to completely divorce them. Like the Siamese twins,
Gods and Governments are inextricably bound together; so much
so indeed, that if you kill one, the other cannot live. Hence the open
or secret alliance, that has always existed between the politician
and the priest.
Whatever their primitive purity (or impurity) all operative
creedal philosophies are essentially civil and military codes, police
regulations. 'Religion is a power, a political engine, and if there
was no God, I would have to invent one,' said the great Napoleon.
In letter and in spirit, Christianity is above all things a political
theory, and a theory that often takes the form of raging hysterics.
Religions are the matrix in which public institutions are
generally moulded. This has ever been well understood by the
dominant leaders of mankind, from Numa to Brigham Young, from
iCONOCLASTiC
Solon to Loyola, from Constantine to the lowest Levite hireling,
who gets paid in dimes and cents for his unctuous mock —
dithyrambs.
"All ye are brethren."
Are all men really brethren? — Negro and Indian,
Blackfellow, Kalmuck, and Coolie— the well-born, the base-bred, *
— beer-soaked loafer, and hero-hearted patriot— belted chieftain
and ignoble mechanic-slave,— pot of iron and pot of clay?
What proof is there that the brotherhood-of-man hypothesis
is in accordance with nature? On what trustworthy biologic,
historic or other evidence does it rest? If it is natural, then rivalry,
competition and strife are unnatural. (And it is proposed to prove in
this book, that strife, competition, rivalry and the wholesale
destruction of feeble types of men is not only natural, but highly
necessary.) Has 'brotherhood' ever been tried upon earth? Where,
when and with what final result? Is not self-assertion nobler,
grander, and more truly heroic than self-denial? Is not self-
abasement but another term for voluntary vassalage, voluntary
burden-bearing?
Christ might well and truthfully have said unto his
followers "Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and
I will bind you in unbreakable bonds, and load you down like an ass
between two burdens."
The 'poor and ignorant' were his first followers — the
vagrants, the disinherited shiftless classes; and to this very day, the
poorer and more ignorant men and women are, the more eager are
they to follow his religious ideals, or the political millennialisms
that are distilled out of his delusions.
"If we only lived as Christ lived, what a beautiful world this
would be," saith all thoughtless ones. If we lived as Christ lived,
there would be none of us left to live. He begat no children; he
* These terms are used in the strict Darwinian sense.
17
WHGHT fS RIGHT
labored not for his bread; he possessed neither house nor home; he
merely talked. Consequently, he must have existed on charity or
have stolen bread. "If we all lived like Christ," would there have
been anyone left to labor, to be begged from, to be stolen from? "If
we all lived like Christ" is, thus a self-evident absurdity.
No wonder that it is recorded: "Not many wise after the
flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; but God chose
the foolish things of the world, and God chose the weak things of
the world, and the things that are despised." Nothing else would
have anything to do with him. Christ was indeed, the prophet of the
credulous rabble during three years of active agitation, and it
abandoned him in his hour of need (what always happens under
similar circumstances) for the rabble is ever cowardly, ungenerous,
suspicious, unfathomable — base. It has never yet had a leader of
commanding ability (either in peace or in war) that it did not
ultimately desert or betray, i.e. if he did not take the precaution to
make himself its master.
After permitting Christ to be butchered, the mob thereupon
set him up as their Divinity and erected altars to his renown. Slaves,
women, madmen, lepers, magdalenes, were the earliest Christians,
and to this hour, women, children, slaves and lunatics are the raw
material of the Christian Church.
Primitive Christianity cunningly appealed to the
imagination of a world of superstitious slaves (eager for some
mode of escape that meant not the giving and receiving of battle-
strokes). It organized them for the overthrow of Heroic Principles;
and substituted for a genuine nobility based on battle-selection, a
crafty theocracy founded upon priest-craft, hell-craft, alms-giving,
politicalisms and all that is impure and subterranean. It is a doctrine
at the disgraceful in its antecedents, its teachers and in itself. Truly
has it been called 'the fatal dower of Constantine,' for it has
suffocated or is suffocating the seeds of Heroism.
Both ancient and modern Christianism and all that has its
root therein is the negation of everything grand, noble, generous,
heroic, and the glorification of everything feeble, atrocious,
dishonorable, dastardly. The cross is now, and ever has been, an
18
ICONOCLASTIC
escutcheon of shame. It represents a gallows, and a Semite slave
swinging thereon. For two thousand years it has absolutely
overturned human reason, overthrown common sense, infected the
world with madness submissiveness, degeneracy.
Truly, there is a way which seemeth right unto a people, but
the ends thereof are the ways of death.
Sound the loud timbrel,
O'er lands and o'er waves;
The Israelite triumphs!
The nations are — graves!
Is the Golden Rule a rational rule?— Is it not rather a menial
rule — a coward rule — a best-policy rule? Why is it 'right' for one
man to do unto others as he would have others do to him and, what
is right? If 'others' are unable to injure him or 'do good' to him,
why should he consider them at all? Why should he take any more
notice of them than of so many worms? If they are endeavoring to
injure him and able to do it, why should he refrain from returning
the compliment? Should he not combat them, does not that give
them carte-blanche to injure and destroy him? May it not be 'doing
good' to others, to war against them, to annihilate them? May it not,
also, be 'good' for them to war against others? (Again, what is
'good?')
Is it reasonable to ask preying animals to do unto others as
they would be done by? If they acted accordingly, would they,
could they survive? If some only accepted the Golden Rule as their
guiding moral maxim, would they not become a prey to those who
refuse to abide thereby?
Upon what reasonable and abiding sanction does this 'Rule'
rest? — Has it ever been in actual operation among men? — Can it
ever be successfully practiced on earth— or anywhere else?— Did
Jesus Christ practice it himself upon all occasions? — Did his
apostles, his 'sons of thunder' practice it?— Did Peter the boaster
MIGHT IS RIGHT
do so, when he 'denied Him' for fear of arrest at the camp-fire? —
Did Judas the financier, when he sold him for net cash? Also, how
many of his modern lip servants actually practice it in their daily
business intercourse with each other? How Many?
These questions require no formal answering. They answer
themselves in the asking. And here it must be remembered that the
best test of a witness is cross-examination. "Do unto others as you
would have others do to you." No baser precept ever fell from the
lips of a feeble Jew.
It is from alleged moralisms of this sort and fabulous
'principles' that our mob orators, our communards, revivalists,
anarchists, red republicans, democrats and other mob-worshippers
in general derive the infernal inspiration that they are perpetually
hissing forth. Even the subversive pyrotechnic watchword of their
mephisto-millennium are to be found in the 'holy gospels.' Is it not
written, "and God sendeth angels to destroy the people?" — Behold!
These men are the 'angels' that He sends: politicians and reformers!
4
"Love one another" you say is the supreme law, but what
power made it so? — Upon what rational authority does the Gospel
of Love rest? — Is it even possible to practice, and what would
result from its universal application to active affairs? Why should I
not hate mine enemies, and hunt them down like the wild beasts
that they are? I ask again, why? If I 'love' them, does that not place
me at their mercy? Is it natural for enemies to 'do good' unto each
other and, what is 'good?' Can the torn and bloody victim 'love' the
blood-splashed jaws that rend it limb from limb? Are we not all
predatory animals by instinct? If humans ceased wholly from
preying upon each other, could they continue to exist?
"Love your enemies and do good to them that hate you and
despitefully use you" is the despicable philosophy of the spaniel
that rolls upon its back when kicked. Obey it, O! Reader and you
and all your posterity to the tenth generation shall be irretrievably
and literally damned. They shall be hewers or wood and carriers of
20
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water, degenerates, Gibeonites. But hate your enemies with a whole
heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, smash him down; smite
him hip and thigh, for self-preservation is the highest law.
He who turns the 'other cheek' is a cowardly dog — a
Christian dog.
Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom, with
compound interest liberally added thereunto. Eye for eye, tooth for
tooth, aye four-fold, a hundred-fold. Make yourself a Terror to your
adversary, and when he goeth his way, he will possess much
additional wisdom to ruminate over. Thus shall you make yourself
respected in all the walks of life, and your spirit — your immortal
spirit — shall live, not in an untangible paradise, but in the brains
and thews of your aggressive and unconquerable sons. After all, the
true proof of manhood is a splendid progeny; and it is a scientific
axiom that the timid animal transmits timidity to its descendants.
If men lived 'like brothers' and had no powerful enemies
(neighbors) to contend with and surpass, they would rapidly lose all
MIGHT IS RIGHT
their best qualities; like certain oceanic birds that lose the use of
their wings, because they do not have to fly from pursuing beasts
of prey.
If all men had treated each other with brotherly love since
the beginning, what would have been the result now? If there had
been no wars, no rivalry, no competition, no kingship, no slavery,
no survival of the Toughest, no racial extermination, truly what a
festering 'hell fenced in' this old globe would be?
Reverend Ferdinand M. Sprague of Chicago (who may be
taken as a common specimen of the priest-politician) in a little
pamphlet lately published, entitled The Laws of Social Evolution,'
writes thus: — "The sheet anchor of Socialism according to its
ablest exponents, is the Holy Christian religion. Its motto founded
on the precept 'love thy neighbor as thyself is— 'each for all, and
all for each.' Its working principle for the present is altruism." :,:
Nearly all the canonized 'Fathers' of the early Roman
propaganda (most of whom, by the way, were slaves, freedmen, of
eunuchs) advocated similar Ideals. Even now, the anointed and
sanctified head of the Catholic Church resurrects the same hoary
old utopianism, in a lesuitic encyclical addressed to his flock.
(How suggestive of being shorn and skinned, is that word 'flock.')
Again, the Epistle of James, who is known to have been
Christ's full brother killed by a special policeman's club in a street
riot, has been reprinted and widely circulated by Socialists in order
to so broadcast their illogical theories of a universal brotherhood,
founded upon enforced labor, regimentation of the herd and
majority votes.
Many modern cities are, also, infested with plausible
epileptoid priestlings of unreason, like Dr. McGlynn, Professor
Bemis, Hugh Price Hughes, W. T. Stead, Myron Reed and Professor
'The ethics of socialism are identical with the teachings of Christianity.' Encyclopedia
Brittainca.
22
ICONOCLASTIC
Herron of California. All these men are unrivalled masters in the art
of persuasive declamation. They accept the New Testament as their
text book and preach therefrom to morbid multitudes the atrocious
and shallow gospel of equal rights, equal liberty, equal
brotherhood, as the veritable omnific word, the newly discovered
emancipating protocol of the Crucified (yet all-mighty) Don
Quixote, the Saviour, God of Asia Minor, he who was born in a
cattle-shed and died on a gallows.
A God begging his bread from door to door!— A God
without a place to lay his head! — A God spiked to two pieces of
crossed scantling! — A God stabbed to death by a hired officer!— A
God executed by order of a stipendiary magistrate! What an insane
idea. Is it an idea or rather a wasting cranial disease? Talk about
'the heathen in his blindness' and superstitious madness in past
ages! Why it is as childplay to the hysteric Idolatry of today, the
deification of a Jew. The 'Divine Democrat' was executed upon a
government gibbet, because the Rulers of Imperial Rome were
more powerful men than he was. His strength and that of his
followers was not equal to theirs.
He died an abysmal failure— a Redeemer who did not
redeem, — a Saviour who did not save — a Messiah whipped like a
calf— a slave-agitator deservedly destroyed for preaching a
Falsehood — the monstrous gospel of Love, Brotherhood, Equality.
Even from the spiritual point of view, there is nothing
whatever in his life or its after effects to show that 'The pale man
upon the cross,' when he moaned and wept so bitterly, 'beheld any
further down the Void, than those who gathered round to see him
die.'
Of what use was that 'pale dreamer' to the iron conditions
that existed in the conquered and garrisoned Fortress of Jerusalem?
For once the city mob were on the right trail, when they petitioned
for the release of Bar Abbas, rather than the supple singer of a
'Sweet bye and bye.' Bar Abbas is described in the 'Scriptures' as
23
MIGHT IS RIGHT
a petty thief. He was really an armed insurgent leader, the slayer of
Roman tax-gatherers, a guerrilla chief (like Rob Roy, Robin Hood,
William Wallace, William Tell) who levied toll upon opulent
Hebrews for patriotic purposes.
Had I been there that day, I, also, would have joined in the
demand: — "Release Bar Abbas unto us." — Better one Bar Abbas
than a thousand Christs.
Alas! Alas! O Galilean! Thou art neither the Way, the Truth
nor the Light!
7
Reverting, however, to Chicago's reverend Utopia
constructor, thus waileth he with cajoling crudity: "The laws of
social evolution, far from being the blind, barbarous and brutal
struggle for organic existence, consists in the physical, intellectual
and moral well-being of all the members of society, so constituted
that the politico-ethical principles of Liberty, Equality and
Fraternity shall have the largest possible realization throughout the
social organism. The main features of the condition of progress are
christian churches, christian schools, christian governments,
christian ethics and economics."
Another seductive but most malignant State Socialist
(Henry George) roundly proclaims that "The salvation of society,
the hope of the free and full development of Humanity is in the
gospel of brotherhood, the gospel of Christ," and thereupon he
proposes to make politicians the national rent-tax collectors,
Administrators of everything in general and all-round Distributors
of State Pensions to 'the poor and needy.' Has not mankind had
sufficient experience of what politicians are? Those black-hearted,
creeping thieves and frauds. Their sting is deadlier than the bite of
a cobra, and in the breath of their mouth there is — death. Curses be
upon ye, O ye Politicians, and upon all who advocate increasing
your prerogatives!
Presidential candidates, from Jefferson, to Lincoln,
(also their apish imitators) have generally indulged in equally
24
ICONOCLASTIC
shallow rhodomontade, because it means votes, and for votes,
office-seekers would dress up in glowing language and ray forth
any devilish deception.
For two thousand years these effeminate superlatives have
been trumpeted to the remotest corner of every Christian land, and
yet (while enervating the morale of people), they have dismally
failed to inaugurate the much foretold Earthly Paradise. They were
preached by bare-foot monks at the inauguration of the Dark Ages,
in order that those saintly lovers of the common people might creep
into the administration of cooperative wealth and power. Now, the
same general ideas are revived and dressed up (this time in politico-
economic garb) by the eloquent agitator, in order that he may rule
and plunder in the future, through the agency of the State; just as
the priest once ruled and plundered through the equally rapacious
agency of the Church.
When the Church triumphed the Dark Ages began, and
when it is finally rooted out (together with all its social antennae)
the Heroic Age dawns once more. True heroes shall be born again
as of old, for our women may yet be something more than rickety
perambulating dolls and drug-stores in spectacles.
The 'Church' is the idol of the priestly parasite. The 'State'
is the idol of the political parasite. Beware, O, America! that in
escaping from the holy trickery of the monk, you fall not an easy
prey to 'the loving kindness' of the politician. Even if the
'reformer' succeeds in re-establishing upon majority-votes, the
dark tyranny of the 'greatest number,' we have this consolation to
fall back upon, such organization must ultimately tumble down of
its own weight, and then re-divide up into warring fragments.
Nothing that is unnatural can last for long.
The Universal Church is no more; all we see of it now is
jealous remnants. And the Universal State, the Social Democracy,
the Economic Republic, the Brotherhood of Man, should they take
practical form, are pre-ordained to similar failure. All they could
do, would be to postpone the operation of the survival of the
fittest — drugging nations in temporary sedatives.
No matter how eagerly madmen may try to do it, there is no
25
MIGHT IS RIGHT
known process whereby they can jump out of their own skins.
Christian or socialist churches, paternalisms, schools, governments,
administrations, ethics and mora] isms (even if genuinely Christian
and Fraternal) would be wholly impotent to change the natural
course of things and, therefore, powerless to command the survival
of mental and physical cripples, even although those cripples were
as canonized saints for 'goodness,' and as the sands of the seashore
for number. Shrieking sentimentalism is indeed a feeble lever
wherewith to overturn the immutable order of the Universe. It
cannot do it. No! Not if it were whooped till the crack of doom! Not
even if it had a Lamb of God in every city, ready to be butchered
each Friday afternoon in order to make a Christian Holiday.
'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,' those three great lights of
Modern Democracies are three colossal Falsehoods,— ignoble
slave-shibboleths; impossible of actualization, even if proclaimed
by some superhuman Satan, followed by armed hosts of un-killable
demons, all armed to the teeth with flaming swords, Greek-fire and
dynamite cannon.
You may trace Equality in letters of silver on tablets of
burnished gold, but without engineering a perpetual miracle, you
cannot make it — true.
You may write Fraternity in blazing diamonds on walls of
enduring granite, but without reversing the mechanism of the
Universe, you cannot make it a fact.
And, though you enscroll Freedom on countless sheepsins
and rivet Statues of Liberty on every harbor-rock, yet with 'all the
king's horses and all the king's men' one being born to be a hireling
and a subordinate — no power can free.
Can you build up a marble palace with mud and slime, O!
ye drivelling bedlamites? Can you raise up a conqueror from the
dunghill , or make the stupid great? Can you manufacture heroes out
of hogs, O! ye snuffling 'Educated' swine?
"We can! We can! We can!" shrieketh the raging
26
ICONOCLASTIC
rhetoricians of the market place and editorial mill. "We can! We
can!" bellows the herd, as it stupidly pours through the slip-rails to
the pithing pen. "Yes, O! Yes! With the love of Jesus and our
collection plate," whines the soft-skinned preacher as he turns over
the sybaline leaves of his Black-Art. "Of a certainty, we can,"
hisseth the plastic politician, the rattlesnake! The hungry basilisk!
whose lawmaking is more blighting than the breath of a simoom.
Thereupon, toward you, O! America! They, one and all,
point the finger of pride! Towards you!
America! Where the politicians rage and the people imagine
vain things! And the dogs in the alleys are baying at the moon!
Then, turn I away! Sadly! Sadly! Sadly! And I brush against
a slave in copper-rivetted overalls, hurrying to his mill, and against
another in gold chain and silken hat, hasting to his money-
changing— and a lean woman in sordid rags, with a pile of lumber
balanced upon her crown; and a splendid harlot in diamonds and
brilliant plumage, ndeth slowly by.
And the cattle in the slaughter yard are lowing for their hay;
and a draught mare, with galled shoulder, lieth swollen and dead on
the frozen paving blocks. How nauseous it all is?
Loathsome! Loathsome! 0,how loathsome?
Man is part and parcel of the animal kingdom and
(notwithstanding Jefferson, Franklin, and Lincoln — Karl Marx, La
Salle, and Liebknecht — Christ, Robespierre, and Rousseau —
Hyndman, Tennyson, and Mazzini— Dr. Alder, Bebel, George, and
Isaiah — Bellamy, Gronlund, and W. T. Stead) he cannot escape
from the draconic ordinances that despotically govern that kingdom
and environ his being like an atmosphere on every side.
Altruism, meek and lowly self-abnegation, upon any
extended scale is among predatory organisms (and all organisms
are predatory) impossible of practice on pain of wholesale felo-de-
se.
27
MIGHT IS RIGHT
Every man is under an obligation to fight and bear his own
burden. If he cannot do so, others cannot do his fighting or his
burden-bearing and their own at the same time with reasonable
safety to themselves. He, therefore, who finds it impossible to carry
his own burden, had better sink down and die in his tracks than
impose an additional load upon the shoulders of his kind-hearted
fellow strugglers. For then, they would be overloaded and
consequently unable to fight successfully; so all might perish
together.
Practical fraternal sympathy (upon any universal scale) has
always had in the end a most destructive effect upon the internal
structure of communities. Men will always love and cherish those
that are near and dear to them; but when it is proposed to extend the
circle of their 'near and dear ones' to all mankind, that is going
rather too far. Indeed, all must perish ignominiously if that foolish
idea prevails. 'AIT are, even now, enervating themselves,
undermining their strength, by futile overexertion in that very
direction. They are straining themselves to death by endeavoring to
carry an impossible load. The majority of men are born far too
weak constitutionally for their conditions; and the few who do
possess the necessary stamina and grit, will have quite enough to do
in proving by deeds their fitness to survive, propagate and possess.
Many are projected — few are selected.
Yet altruism, wholesale self-renunciation — wholesale
burden-bearing, for the sake of 'Outraged and Suffering Humanity,'
is the maddening basis upon which 'our good Lord Jesus,' and his
demented imitators have erected their sporadic sociology — their
Magnificent Satanism.
Does not simple business acumen whisper to us that every
man's chief occupation upon earth is to sustain himself? T mean
subsist at any cost; you shall want ere I shall, business is business.'
Tf
hoH
lTTiPi £»n f" nprcnn ol initiotn;p tr\ t h i n 1/ <-i 1 <-\t-i cy tlioco r> t-^r-i-i
ICONOCLASTIC
holy dissimulators and crafty deceivers would rapidly die off or be
eaten off; for in the clash of naked interests, the Best and Bravest
only could possibly survive; and no one would ever dream of
including them among the Best or Bravest.
10
Count Leo Tolstoi, undoubtedly the ablest modern
expounder of primitive Christliness, in a much translated volume,
entitled: "Work While Ye Have Light," writes thus;— "Our Faith
tells us that bliss is to be found, not in resistance, but in submission;
not in riches, but in giving everything away; we have not quite
succeeded in casting off every habit of violence and property."
To the most inept understanding, could any proposition be
placed in a clearer light? Is it not as simple as 'rolling off a log,'
that the individual who even attempts to become a true and honest
Christian must become like unto a tame sheep? What a sublime
Ideal? How heroic?
The bliss of a sheep! How superlatively delightful? How
divinely glorious? And a Jew as the Good Shepherd, who leadeth
his lambs "to green pastures, and quiet resting places, the pleasam
waters by." For two thousand years or so, his fleecy flocks hav
been fattening themselves up with commendable diligence— for tl
shearing-shed and the butchers-block.
Let any nation throw away all 'habits of violence,' a
before long it must cease to exist as a nation. It will be laid unclt
tribute — it will become a province, a satrapy. It will be taxed anc
looted in a thousand different ways.
Let any man abandon all property, also, all overt resistance
to aggression and behold, the first sun will scarcely have sunk
down in the West before he is bondservant, a tributary, a beggar
_o rr\rncp
MIGHT IS RIGHT
better buried out of sight. Our cities are literally honeycombed with
treasure caverns, heaped up with gold, title-deeds, silver and
instruments of credit; our valleys and our mountains are actually
bubbly with wealth untold; and yet, poor miserable 'servants of
Christ' pass idly by. Men, they call themselves! I call them—
castrates.
If Tolstoi's obsequious principles are derived from the
Sermon on the Mount, then who can deny but that the Sermon on
the Mount is a sermon unto decay and slavery? If they are derived
from the Golden Rule and if the Golden Rule is the word of God,
then can it be doubted that the word of God is the word of Fraud.
There is far too much of this ghastly 'goodness' in the nation, far
and away too much. It is time men who can think began to
emancipate themselves, and consider the fact that: — Morals, laws
and decalogues were made by liars, thieves and rogues.
All good citizens however are hereby warned and solemnly
advised, not to smash-up the Ten Commandments — not to burn the
Golden Rule — not to break-up the Moral Law— for that would be
terribly wicked! terribly! On the other hand they must obey all Law
implicitly (no matter how it originated) and be sure (above
everything) to order themselves lowly and reverently before
executive officers of the Law even if in doing so, they are deprived
of their Property and their Liberty forever. Obedience, you see, is
of God 'who so loveth the world,' but Disobedience is horrible and
of the Devil, and the Devil is a frightful rascal, who has not the
slightest respect for anybody or anything; not even the American
Constitution. Let us curse the Devil then and obey — the Law.
Liberty is honestly definable, as a state of complete bodily
and mental self-mastership (which includeth the possession of
property; also defensive weapons) and thorough-going
Independence from all official coercion or restraint. Liberty in the
conventional sense is a miserable Lie.
To be independent is synonymous with proprietorship. To
be property-less and unarmed is the condition of actual dependence
and servitude. Unarmed citizens are always enslaved citizens,
always. Liberty without Property is a myth, a nursery tale,
30
ICONOCLASTIC
believable only by babbling babies, and 'fools-in-th'-forest' — fools
in th' city, also. 'Liberty Regulated by Law' is, in practice, tyranny
of the darkest and foulest description, because it is so impersonal.
There are numerous worthy, reasonable and practical methods
whereby individual tyrants may be removed; but a tyranny
'regulated by Law' is only removable by one method — the sword
in the hands of men who are not afraid to use it, or to have it used
against them. That is to say — the Sword in the hands of the
Strongest.
During the whole course of human history, there is not upon
record, one authentic instance wherein a subjugated people has ever
regained property-holding Liberty, without first butchering its
tyrants (or its tyrant's armed slaves in battle,) thereafter
confiscating to its own use the lands and realized property that
previously had been in the possession of its defeated foes and
masters. This statement is made with cool deliberation and
aforethought. Let it be disproved by any one creditable example to
the contrary, and the Author is prepared to forfeit 50,000 ounces of
pure gold and enough 'dimes and dollars' to erect in Chicago a
bronze statue of 'Our Blessed Redeemer' (crown of thorns and all)
100 cubits higher than the Masonic Temple. This offer is strictly
bona-fide and shall remain open till 1906, so that philosophers,
editors, statesmen, divines (and other accomplished liars) may have
enough time to blind themselves, wading through National
Archives, and the putrid rubbish heaps that men call Public
Libraries. Should some or all of said Mutual Admiration Society
maniac-geniuses go blind, also deaf, dumb, and silly: this wicked
old world may probably whoop with delight — should it happen to
hear of the fact.
11
During the three years of Christ Jesus's peripatetic
trappings, he never said anything that had not been better said a
thousand times before, by Dervishes, Spellbinders and Mahatmas.
Neither did he do anything that had not previously been better
31
MIGHT «S RIGHT
done, by the jugglers and wonder-workers of Egypt, India and
Assyria. Not a few of his 'miracles' are to this day, part of the
ordinary stock-in-trade of fortune-telling gypsies, third-class
strolling players, and charlatans in general.
The very phrase that 'He' uses to sum-up and memorize
'His' patent Cure-all, was undoubtedly stolen (directly or
indirectly) from Plato, the Rig Veda or Confucius. The Golden Rule
is not only a snare and tangle, but it also — is a literary piracy.
"He raised the dead," you indignantly protest. And even
supposing that he did, wherein is the positive advantage? What is
gained by restoring vitality to the decomposing corpse of an animal
that may be so easily duplicated — an animal that is a positive
nuisance, numerically. What is the 'good' of breathing the 'breath
of life' into an odorous winding-sheet-full of maggots and mouldy
bones? Are there not plenty of animalcula on earth, without
dragging them out of tombs? (Especially are there not plenty of
leprous Asiatics?) Death and destruction are necessary to the health
of this world and, therefore, as natural and lovable as birth and life.
Only priests and born cowards moan and weep over dying. Brave
men face it with approving nonchalance.
"Come lovely and soothing Death, undulate around the
world. Serenely Arriving! Arriving! In the day, in the night; to all,
to each. Sooner or later, delicate Death."*
He fed the hungry — but to what end, I say? Why should a
famishing multitude be fed by a god? And that too, in a land said to
be flowing with milk and honey! Would not such a mob be far
better dead? Would not Napoleon with his cosmic 'whiff of grape-
shot' be just the right man for such an occasion? From the
harmonious nature of things, it is clear that men were intended to
feed themselves by their own personal exertions or perish like dogs.
He therefore, who 'feeds the hungry,' is really encouraging
poltroonery (which includeth all other crimes) for men who quietly
starve within reach of abounding plenty are — all poltroons.
"He clothed the naked," you shriek; and why, it may be
* Walt Whitman's "Ode to Death"
32
ICONOCLASTIC
asked, should 'the naked' be clothed— they being able bodied?
What right have they to broadcloth and fine linen? If men possess
not enough sense to clothe themselves (in a literal Weaving Mill of
inexhaustible looms) why should a 'God' — the son of a ghost,
come down from Cloudland (via a Jewess maiden's womb) to robe
such groveling, miserable hounds in swaddling clothes made of
cotton or wool? 'Clothing the naked' is purely a business affair.
Here, it may be suggested en-passant — is the wearing of
garments, in itself, a natural and necessary condition of adult
existence? It certainly does not render the 'human form divine,'
more healthy or more beautiful to gaze upon (although it may
prevent Tenderlings from perishing of cold.) Was it really intended
that the man-animal only, should wrap itself up from birth to death
in layer over layer of disease-breeding rags? Was there not a secret
vital strength in the wind and rain and storms that whirled round
our forefathers giant limbs and shaggy brows? All ethnic legends
tell us that our first parents were most elegantly attired in glorious
sunshine and gaudy fresh air. Who ever saw a Cherubim painted in
pointed shoes, pantaloons, cuffs, collars, and overcoat; or a
smirking angel in bloomers, steel-ribbed corsets, and a delicate
little '0! dear me! how awfully awful!' style? Clothing serves most
effectively to hide the abominable physical deformity of modern
men and women, just as superficial educationalisms serve to hide
their dwarfed minds. If they were to perambulate around in the
nude, even the street curs would bark at them out of sheer terror.
Indeed, they would be more hideous to the eye than the stuffed
scarecrow that adorns a relative's harrowed field; and at which our
old dog "Danger" generally barks himself into hysterics over,
whenever he gets off the chain.
What a horrible sight a crowd of free and independent
electors would be, all sitting in solemn conclave, sucking their
thumbs, absorbing political opiates and divine euthanasia? Just
think of it! (Even Carlyle the dyspeptic would faint at the sight.)
The very conception of such a saddening horror makes one ill. It
would be as if they all had just emerged from a tomb, a tomb of
wool and cotton and leather.
33
MIGHT fS RIGHT
Physical distortion and mental malformation are the direct
result of two thousand years of bad-breeding: that is to say, of
Mongrelism, of Democracy, of Equality, of Moody-and-
Sankeyism. Christian-ism, originating in the despairful and
fallacious philosophy of a Crucified Wanderer (suffering from
acute morbus sacer) is now developed into an organized and
world-wide conspiracy of Clericals, Politicals and Decandents
directed en-masse; with Jesuitic cunning against all the primitive
and Heroic Virtues.
Our clean-skinned 'heathenish' ancestors with all their vital
forces unimpaired, were really the nobler type of animal. We on the
other hand, with our corrupt irresolute, civilized hearts, our
trembling nerves, our fragile anemic constitutions are actually the
lower, the viler type -notwithstanding the baseless optimism that
courtly rhymers drivel into their "Heirs of all the ages," etc., etc.
No people can long retain hardihood and independence,
whose minds become submissive to a False Ideal.
12
Blessed are the Strong for they shall possess the earth —
Cursed are the Weak for they shall inherit the yoke. Blessed are the
Powerful for they shall be reverenced among men -Cursed are the
Feeble for they shall be blotted out.
Blessed are the Bold for they shall be masters of the
world -Cursed are the Humble for they shall be trodden under
hoofs. Blessed are the Victorious for victory is the basis of Right —
Cursed are the Vanquished for they shall be vassals for ever.
Blessed are the battle-blooded, Beauty shall smile upon
them- Cursed are the Poor-in-Spirit, they shall be spat upon.
Blessed are the Audacious for they have imbibed true wisdom -
Cursed are the Obedient for they shall breed Creeplings.
Blessed are the iron-handed, the unfit shall flee before
them- Cursed are the haters of battle, subjugation is their portion.
Blessed are the Death defiant, their days shall be long in the land-
Cursed are the feeble brained, for they shall perish amidst plenty.
34
rnmm is right
Blessed are the Strong lor they shall possess the earth.
Cursed are the Weak lor they shall inherit the yoke.
Blessed are the Powerful lor they shall be reverenced among men.
Cursed are the Feeble lor they shall be blotted out.
Blessed are the Bold lor they shall be masters ol the world.
Cursed are the Humble
lor they shall be trodden under hoots.
Blessed are the Victorious
lor victory is the basis ol Right.
Cursed are the Vanquished
lor they shall be vassals lorever.
Bles'sed are the Battle-blooded, Beauty shall smile upon Ihem.
Cursed are the Poor-in-Spiril, Ihey shall be spat upon.
Blessed are the Audacious lor Ihey have imbibed true wisdom.
Cursed are the Obedient lor they shall breed Creeplings.
Blessed are the Iron-handed, the unfit shall llee before them.
Cursed are the Haters ol Battle, subjugation is their portion.
Blessed are the Death-defiant, their days shall be long in the land
Cursed are the Feeble-brained for they shall perish amidst plenty
Blessed are the Destroyers ol False Hope, they are true Messiahs.
Cursed are the God-adorers, Ihey shall be shorn sheep.
Blessed are the Valiant lor Ihey shall obtain great treasure
Cursed are the Believers in Good and Evil lor Ihey are Irightened by shadows.
Blessed are they who believe in Nothing, never shall it terrorize their minds.
Cursed are Ihe "lambs ol God", they shall be bled "whiter than snow"
Blessed Ihe man who hath powerful enemies, they shall make him a hero.
Cursed is he who "doeth good" unlo others, he shall be despised.
Blessed Ihe man whose loot is swift to serve a Iriend, he is a friend indeed.
Cursed are the Organizers ol Charities, Ihey are propagators of plagues.
Blessed are the Wise and Brave lor in the Struggle Ihey shall win
Cursed are the Unlit lor they shall be righteously exterminated.
Blessed are the Sires of Noble Maidens, they are the salt ol Ihe earth
'Cursed Ihe Mothers ol Strumous Tenderlings lor Ihey shall be shamed.
Blessed are Ihe Mighty-minded for they shall ride Ihe whirlwinds.
Cursed are they who teach Lies for Truth, Ihey are abomination.
Blessed are Ihe Unmerciful, their posterity shall own Ihe world.
Cursed are Ihe famous Wiselings, their seed shall perish off Ihe earth.
Thrice cursed are the Vile for fhey shall serve and suffer.
WHGHTIS RIGHT
Blessed are the destroyers of false hope, they are the true
Messiahs — Cursed are the God-adorers, they shall be shorn sheep.
Blessed are the Valiant for they shall obtain great treasure — Cursed
are the believers in Good and Evil for they are frightened by
shadows.
Blessed are they who believe in Nothing, never shall it
terrorize their minds — Cursed are the "lambs of God,' they shall be
bled 'whiter than snow.' Blessed is the man who hath powerful
enemies, they shall make him a hero — Cursed is he who 'doeth
good' unto others, he shall be despised.
Blessed is the man whose foot is swift to serve his friend,
he is a friend indeed — Cursed are the organizers of Charities, they
are propagators of plagues. Blessed are the Wise and Brave, for in
the Struggle they shall win — Cursed are the unfit for they shall be
righteously exterminated.
Blessed are the sires of Noble Maidens, they are the salt of
the earth — Cursed are the mothers of strumous Tenderlings for they
shall be shamed. Blessed are the mighty-minded for they shall ride
the whirl-winds — Cursed are they who teach Lies for Truth, and
Truth for Lies for they are an abomination.
Blessed are the Unmerciful, their posterity shall own the
world — Cursed are the Pitiful for they shall receive no pity. Blessed
are they destroyers of Idols for they shall be feared by tyrants —
Cursed are the famous Wiselings, their seed shall perish off the
earth. Thrice cursed are the Vile for they shall serve and suffer.
Contrast this with an orthodox Sermonette, one that is
repeated every seventh day in thousands of sacred sanctuaries by
consecrated black-robed clericals, who have been specially trained
from boyhood to weepfully, unctuously rehearse the same with
upturned eyes and a skillful snuffle or in classic diction, sounding,
sonorous, nay! Sublime — as suits the occasion.
Dearly Beloved Brethren!!!
Gawd answers all who kneel and pray, is a Trewth accepted
day by day. Behold! their bright and joyful lot, who've faith in what
Christ Jesus taught!
If you've empty pockets and tables bare, demand ye not
36
iCONOCLASTSC
your natural share; that would be wrong; but, creep and sigh and
'you '11 go to heaven when you die.'
For the meek and humble who obey, there 's a happy and far,
far away; but a fearsome, fiery brimstone pit, shall melt their
marrow, who won't— submit.
If foe men smite you on one cheek, turn round the other,
tearful, meek; if perjured knaves your votes betray: come 'wicked
sinners, ' kneel and— pray.
If Hebrews fleece and flay your hide, heaven 's gates for you,
shall open wide; Christ your Shepherd, won't lead astray, Of
Lambs of God! come bleat and pray.
If bruised and beaten, shorn and sold, you're sure of stalls
in your Father's fold; but— robbers rob, or rulers slay! Hell roast
your souls for ever and aye.
If elected persons invade your wealth, with bribes and lies
or deadly stealth, and threat your bones with a bannered host;
Christ is your refuge and the Holy Ghost.
You'll triumph thus 'in the dawning years' hope on! Toil on!
In this vale of tears sing, "Rock of Ages cleft for me, O! let me hide
myself in thee . "
37
MIGHT IS RIGHT
BOLDLY STAND ERECT
Jewish books are for the Jews,
And Jew Messiahs, too.
But if you're not of Jewish blood,
How can they be for you?
To make an Idol of a book,
Is poison for the brain;
A dying God upon a cross
Is reason gone insane.
Beware of all the Holy books
And all the creeds and schools,
And every law that man has made
And all the golden rules.
"Laws" and "Rules" imposed on you
From days of old renown.
Are not intended for your "good"
But for your crushing down.
Then dare to rend the chains that bind
And to yourself be true.
Dare to liberate your mind,
From all things, old and new.
Always think your own thought.
All other thoughts reject;
Learn to use your own brain
And boldly stand erect.
38
THE SPiNNiNG
of the Web
Chapter m
Just as the spider weaves his silky web, to lure flies into the
larder of his banqueting hall in order that he may, at his leisure, pick
the flesh off their bones, so, deceitful Ideals are cunningly woven
by dexterous political spiders, to capture and exploit swarms of
human flies.
What are the grandiose paragraphs of the Declaration of
Independence, but the weft and woof of a dazing spider-web? And
what are the American People but the flies that have been cleverly
entangled in its gossamer meshes? For over a century this
'Declaration' has been the parchment divinity of all public orators,
from the curbstone dervish at the street corner, to our Elective
Monarch in the White House. Every 4th of July, Americans
habitually scream themselves hoarse over its sounding generalities:
making the welkin ring with tin-horns, giant fire-crackers, flag-
idolatry, brass bands, toy pistols and herd-bellowing generally.
Although the great majority of them are mental and physical
dwindlings, poverty-striken, and property-less, yet how insanely
they delight in amusing a sardonic world with their loquacious
flamboyant charlatanery. "We are sovereigns and equals" is their
everlasting Barmecide chorus. "Sovereigns and Equals!"
In all lunatic asylums may be found inmates who fancy
themselves kings and queens, and lords of the earth. These
sorrowful creatures, if only permitted to wear imaginary crowns
39
MIGHT IS RfGHT
and issue imaginary commands, are the most docile and harmless
of all maniacs.
As for the American People of to-day: is not their written
constitution but a cunningly constructed straight jacket— their
moral codes, padded prison cells; their statute laws, handcuffs and
leg-irons — their Captains of Industry, keepers and turnkeys in
clever disguise? One hundred years ago they ostensibly
commenced 'independent' operations with the richest continent on
earth as their private property -their subscribed capital, and during
the whole of that period, have they not been as busy as so many
relays of draught beasts-of-burden, pumping the tremendous
natural wealth out of their home soil, and pouring it over-sea into
the cess-pools of Europe?
Is not that the work of lunatics? The smashed and splintered
the wooden political yoke of an English king and then proceeded to
rivet around their necks a brand new yoke of bolted steel, which
they forged especially to fit themselves; and which they dignified
under the name of "Constitutional Freedom."
Is not that also the work of lunatics? Cursed indeed are the
harnessed ones! Cursed are they even though their harness be home
made— even although it tinkle musically with silver bells — aye!
even though every buckle and link and rivet thereof made of solid
gold.
How absurd of men to hurrah over their 'glorious political
liberty' who have not even been able to retain possession of the
substantial products of their own laboriousness. After a century of
'constitutional progress,' ten per cent of the population are absolute-
owners of ninety-two percent of all the property.
Now, O reader! Are not these things the outward and visible
sign of organic dementia?
2
The Declaration of Independence commences by
proclaiming an unctuous falsehood, a black, degrading, self-
evident lie— a lie which no one could possibly believe but a born
40
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
fool. With insolent effrontery it brazenly proclaims as 'a self
evident truth' that 'all men are created equal' and that they are
'endowed by their Creator* with certain inalienable rights'— rights
which it thereupon proceeds to define in canting phraseology,
imbecile and florid as it is false.
Indeed the mock-heroic preamble of this rhetorical
pronunciamento is but a cunningly constructed piece of blague,
deliberately intended to deceive and betray. It consists of a
patchwork of plagiarized catchwords, annexed wholesale from the
ravings of seventeenth-century Levellers, crazed puritanic Mattoids
and eighteenth-century cretinous French Jacobeans, all mixed up
and jumbled together with a long rigmarole of semi-meaningless,
pretty phrases, culled mostly from an old time melodrama.
The Declaration of Independence has less real meaning for
present conditions than a bottled-up Indian war-whoop of the same
period would have, if uncorked now. It is a back-number, musty,
high smelling, and worm-eaten: only fit for the walls of a museum
or the brain-cells of— a daft philosopher.
Its ethical and most of its political conclusions are shams,
deceptions and cold-blooded dishonesties — incandescent Lies-
glorified, belauded, printed in letters of gold, but nevertheless —
Lies.
Indeed it has always been considered a piece of amusing
mockery by those who really understood the secret intent for which
it was originally constructed: viz: — as a lasso for the bellowing
Herds, that, about one hundred years ago were beginning to run
wild, and escape from their herdsmen, and herdsmen's stock-whip,
in this (then) boundless New World.
To all contemporary demagogues, the high-sounding
phraseology of the 'Declaration is as honey from paradise.'
Everywhere its seductive abstractions are the Avatars of anarchism,
communism, republicanism, and scores of other zymotic
convulsionisms. Why then should sane men continue giving lip-
* A mythical airy being who wains about Eternity manufacturing Things out of No-
Things— A fable.
41
MIGHT IS RIGHT
servke to the subtle deception? Why should they, by their silence,
acquiesce in the malefic efforts of Organic Weaklings, (instigated
by prattles of a false philosophy) to enforce by electioneering mass-
pressure an impossible and hideous Equality Ideal?
Every national appeal is now made, not to the Noblest and
the Best, but to the riff-raff— the slave hordes-who possess less
intelligence than night-owls. All that is brave, honorable, heroic is
ignored tacitly, for fear of offending the deified Herd, 'the
Majority.' 'Equality of conditions' is its debasing shibboleth and
verily he who has temerity enough to spit upon Equality is liable to
be horned to death.
The 'Voice of the People' can only be compared to the
fearsome shrieks of agony that may now and then be heard issuing
forth from the barred windows of a roadside madhouse. 'The voice
of God!' Alas! Alas!
There are two methods whereby masterful, ambitious men
may hold any population in a state of ordered subjectivity. The first
and by far the most honorable method is through an irresistible and
highly-trained standing army, ready to deploy anywhere; with
mechanical precision at a telegraphic nod in order to lay down the
Law at the cannon's mouth and sweep away all dangerous
opposition.
The second and cheaper method is, first of all, to inoculate
those intended to be exploited with some poisonous political
soporific, superstition, or theora; something that operating
insidiously, hypodermically, may render them laborious, meek, and
tractable.
The latter plan has ever proved itself most effective because
Aryan populations that would fight to the last gasp against
undisguised military despotism may be induced to passively submit
to any indignity or extortion, if their brains are first carefully
soaked in some Abstract Lie.
At the period of the War of Independence, North America
42
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
was far too wide, far too sparsely settled, and far too poor in
concentrated wealth to be effectively ruled and plundered upon the
standing army principle, either by King George of the successful
Junta or power-wielding Revolutionists.
Hamilton, Hancock, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Henry and
all the vested material interests that stood a solid phalanx behind
those voluble patriots cast about for some safer method of ruling
the minds of the uninformed but extremely valorous yeomanry,
backwoodsmen, and mountaineers.
After mature consideration they determined to lull and lure
the armed peasantry back again into a condition of blissful
somnolence, by instilling into their newly aroused minds false but
seductive political idealisms, as subtle supplements to the
fallacious, and equally delusive, (but pre-existent) religionisms and
moralisms. This cunning plot worked like a charm, for Equity of
Rights seemed to puritanic minds the logical outcome of that other
hoary old lie— 'Equality before God.' ("What a set of damned
rascals they were!" was Governor Morris's terse, rugged, but ever
memorable description of the Congress of smart Corruptionists that
adopted and formally proclaimed those famous and fatal
Abstractions.)
Thereupon, the Sword of Power that conquered on the
battlefield was carefully hidden away out of sight and
'Constitutionalism' invoked to aid in the re-harnessing of the
Conquerors of Cornwallis by their new masters. The old systems of
Jurisprudence and Government (founded on naked force) were
cleverly retained, even amplified, and at the same time the white
skinned populations were cunningly proclaimed 'free and equal.'
Never having enjoyed genuine personal freedom (except on the
Indian border) being for the most part descendants of hunted-out
European starvelings and fanatics, (defeated battlers) they now
stupidly thought that they had won Freedom at last by the patent
device of selecting a complete outfit of new tax-gatherers every
fourth year.
43
MIGHT IS RIGHT
When we look back upon the childlike faith in
Constitutionalism, displayed by our Revolutionary Fathers together
with their infantile republican specifics for the redemption of
mankind, we cannot help smiling. At every general election, since
1776, Americans have voted solidly for increasing the despotic
authority of their elective rulers and task-masters. Personal liberty
is very nearly unknown (except in the newspaper) and any citizen
who dares to think in direct opposition to the dogma of the Majority
does so at the risk of his life, if he thinks too loudly.
Indeed, men of the initiative and enterprise are now in the
regular habit of purchasing immunity from Communal molestation
by bribing legislatures and officials upon a wholesale scale. The
State is a blackmail agency.
Enterprises necessitating state-permits and large
preliminary expenditures of capitol cannot be safely undertaken
until elective satraps (Aldermen, Judges, Governors, Congressmen,
Presidents, Senators, etc.) have first negotiated a percentage 'rake-
off.' Neither life nor property is safe from the malignancy, revenge
or greed of government officials or their confederates. He who
would assert himself in this Republic, under present conditions,
must be a man of unscrupulous acumen and shrewdness. He must
know the exact price of every 'patriot,' with whom business brings
him in contact and be ready to pay it without demurnay — with an
appearance of hearty enthusiasm: otherwise it will go hard with
him. Should he be a poor man, his chances in life are infinitesimal,
so long as he is conscientious. No citizen 'can call his soul his
own,' who dares to openly attack the administrative
scoundrelism — scoundrelism based securely upon purchasable
majority votes. Those thievish official peculators of Turkey, China,
Persia, and Morocco would hang their heads in utter shame at their
own clumsy methods of robbery, if they once beheld the
magnificent mechanism and finesse wherewith American
politicians enrich themselves by bleeding the treasuries, stealing
public lands, and sweating the revenues.
44
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
Indeed, Grand Vizers (heaven bless them) not only plunder
living generations, but they even make Futurity contribute to their
hungry rapacity.
Their schemes of financial legerdemain are of unparalleled
brilliance and grandeur. They borrow thousands of millions upon
National Credits from the Usurers, and then proceed to apportion
the money unto each other, under the elaborate pretense of needful
public expenditure, redeeming the cun"ency, etc., etc.
In order that the Jew may be secured in his usurious 'shent-
per-shent,' oppressive taxes are laid on the Peasantry wherewith to
pay the annual interest charge upon the Bonded Millions. All of
these tributes are collectable (in appreciating gold) at the point of
the Supreme Court's bayonet. However, military assistance is very
seldom needed to enforce the tax-collectors' demands, because
most Americans are exceptionally docile and 'good.' No need of
coercion with a palsied people, ever eager to obey the slightest nod
of their Masters.
America! America! Never shall you realize the true
meaning of thorough-going Independence and Self-Proprietorship
until an American Cromwell or an American Caesar has signed the
death-warrant of an American King. The Executive who sells his
people into bondage is a Public Enemy, whether he be an elective
Monarch or a hereditary King. Such a Scoundrel and Traitor has no
rights that property holding Freeman are bound to respect: no not
one. By accepting the gold of Public Plunderers he makes himself
an Ishmaelite. His hand is against every man's hearth and every
man's property. Therefore, every man's hand should be uplifted
against him.
In days not long gone by, men of our Rave have hung bribe-
takers with scant ceremony; and even rolled the heads of Kings into
the executioner's basket.
If we are not to be robbed now of everything we possess and
reduced to conditions of absolute State servitude, we must not
shrink from doing so again.
Despotism, if it is to be overthrown, must be fought with its
own weapons, and the vilest of Despotisms are ever founded upon
45
MIGHT IS RIGHT
Majority Votes.
As for 'the Common People,' they are energetically chasing
shadowy paternalisms and allowing their substance to be
'appropriated' on a gigantic scale. They are living in a fool's
46
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
paradise of 'progress,' and 'peaceful industrial evolution,' as the
cant phrases go. Some of these days they may possibly wake up
(when too late) and discover with alarm and astonishment that all
their mock iambics have been of no avail against the insidious
growth of centralized Oligarchic Herbariums, ballot-box desolation
and industrial imperialism.
Americans have yet to learn that each generation must fight
out its own good fight, and not rely for the preservation of its
hardihood and independence, upon moth-eaten parchments nor on
fraudulent statesmen, now in the graveyard — statesmen who spent
them petty babblesome lives; not in doing heroic things, but in
founding and enthroning the abominations that afflict us all to-day
like a palsy. Our national hero-worship badly wants reconstruction.
Many years after the 'Declaration' was issued, our written
Constitution was constructed with much voluble sophistry and
mimic strife. That document considered as a whole, is the most
cunningly worded and at the same time most terrible instrument of
Government and Mastership that any Anglo-Teutonic tribe has ever
yoked itself up under. Pretending to 'grant' liberty and self-
government, it practically annihilates both. Under the show of
'guaranteeing' personal independence and civil rights, it has
organized an elective tyranny, wherein the mob-monarch possess
more arbitrary authority than any dynastic despot since the days of
Darius or Balschazzar.
The highest crime is actually written in the 'highest law of
the land.'
"Thus, did the great Guile-Masters,
Their toils and their tangles set;
And, as wide as was the water:
So wide was woven the net."
Indeed the written Constitution of our Republic is a
monstrous mechanical contrivance that bids fair (when once it has
47
MIGHT IS RIGHT
got properly under way) to squeeze the very heart out of all the Best
Elements in America.
Our Federal government may be very appropriately
compared to a pirate ship cleverly disguised as a friendly armed
cruiser convoying a fleet of peaceful merchantmen loaded with an
immense treasure and 70,000,000 passengers. When it first came to
their 'assistance' it was-O! so kindly! so affectionate! so full of
loving regard for its intended prey, for the welfare and bon-voyage
of its quarry. Now, however that its forty-five ships of state are out
in the open ocean and absolutely at its mercy, it strips off its decoy
rig, hoists the 'Death's-head-and-bloody-bones,' opens its hidden
portholes, runs out its round-lipped broadsides and yells through its
editorial speaking-trumpets, "Heave to there, or you'll be blown
out of the water."
Thus it will be seen, the Jesuitic 'Evangel of Equality' has
proved itself a tremendous success. It seduced the American People
into a feeling of contentment and security till their 'bonds' and
fetters were properly forged, polished, and neatly riveted on.
Well fashioned, indeed, was the Net! A splendid spider web
it has proved itself, and withal, needful.
Under the hypnotic spell of a 'free and equal' dream,
Americans have been hustled into a convict-prison of labonousness
to piratical masters a thousand times more terrible and more
unyielding than any history can describe. All that is now left of
Liberty is its name, and the harmless privilege the common people
have of scolding their Proprietors in vulgar editorial diatribes at or
about election times. Occasionally they do descend into the streets,
indulging in sanguinary vociferations upon the same general
principle that impels a mangy cur to howl most dismally, if struck
with a brick.
The conflict between the masters and the helots is over for
the present and the masters having conquered are in possession of
the booty and the field. Hark! the songs of victory — the flap of the
battle-pennons!
Indeed, considering all the circumstances, the common
people are 'lost souls' — no matter what they now do, they must
48
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
remain in hell. Their position is that of a worm trying to escape
from its hole in a heated burning log; if it runs to the right it runs
into heat and smoke, if it runs to the left it runs into blazes. A few
minutes more and it is roasted alive.
Even should America's servile multitudes appeal to the
arbitrement of Physical Force, they cannot possibly win.
Possessing neither the strength, courage, brains, arms, money nor
leaders, they must be blown into eternal fragments by their master's
highly trained artillerists, and scientific destroyers.
The citadel of Power is now consolidated and prepared with
the most improved armaments to repel any assault, no matter how
well sustained. The nation is intersected in all directions with iron
highroads and splendid waterways, whereon armies and navies may
be moved from city to city with facility and dread effect. The War
of Secession (or rather the war for the annihilation of self-
government) demonstrated conclusively that a Centralized
Authority, resting on herd-votes of the vulgar and fanatic is (in
practice) military Absolutism. There is no other Power in the land
that can effectively hold it in check. The Czar of Russia possesses
less actual authority than our Federal Government. With a standing
army in the hollow of its hand, it can do exactly as it pleases, i.e. if
it can collect enough revenue to purchase 'statesmen' and pay the
salaries of its praetorian cohorts.
Most Americans are only now beginning to perceive these
things, but they were foreseen (and also foretold in part) by clear-
sighted individuals before the Constitution itself was formally
Enthroned.
Today all the old sphinx questions are up again for solution.
No man of balanced sense can honestly believe that these problems
are to be settled by ballot box stuffing of editorialism. Settled they
must be upon 'the good old rule, the simple plan,' and thereafter
settled and re-settled again and again; for, there is no finality in
social adjustments and there should not be. Material strength is the
49
MIGHT IS RIGHT
basis of all human greatness and material strength must 'settle' the
tyranny of the greatest number, probably with fire and steel. All
other theories are chimeras — lies — delusions — make-believe and
of no account.
The Philosophy of Power has slumbered long, but whenever
men of sterling worth are found, it must again sweep away the
ignoble dollar-damned Pedlarisms of to-day and openly, as of old,
dominate the destiny of an emancipated and all-conquering race.
What is viler than a government of slaves and usurious
Jews? What is grander than a government of the Noblest and the
Best — who have proved their Fitness on the plains of Death?
Cromwell and his Ironsides — Caesar and his Legions shall
be born again; and the thunderous tread of Sulla's fierce destroyers
shall roll and rumble amid the fire and glare and smoke of
crumbling constitutionalisms: "as it was in the beginning, is now,
and ever shall be" — warfare without end.
Yawping politicians may harangue base city mobs of
hirelings and Christlings with "Alas, poor Yorick!" rhapsody, as if
struggle and strife were the evil of all evils. Figures of speech,
however, cannot breathe the breath of life into feline philosophies
that never have had the slightest foundation in Fact. The survival of
the Fittest — the Toughest is the logic of events and of all time. They
who declare otherwise are blind. The chief point is this: that Fitness
must honestly demonstrate itself not by ignoble theft and theory,
but by open conflict as per Darwin's law of battle.
How can citizens be honestly described as free and equal
who are not, who never were 'free and equal' in any reasonable
sense of the phrase? How can they be even considered men, whose
whole lives are governed by cast-iron regulations; whose every
movement is circumscribed and restrained by penal threats, even
50
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
whose secret thoughts are in a constant state of silent repression?
It is no apology whatever to affirm that the people
themselves enact all laws they are commanded to obey. Even that
statement is a falsity and if it were true; it would not justify
majority Dictatorship of any other kind of Dictatorship.
The Constitution, under which all other laws are born, was
accepted, not by us, but by bewigged individuals who are long
since rotten. We are ruled, in fact by cadavers — the inhabitants of
tombs .
Why should agreements made by coffined dead men, bind
and mortgage living, pulsing, breathing beings?
Their bones have long ago mouldered into ozone and
fertilizers, who drew up and signed the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta,
the Sermon on the Mount, the Declaration of Independence, our
Glorious Constitution, etc., etc. Rotten are the brains that concocted
them and the fingers that signed them and sealed them. Equally
rotten are their irrational and infantile philosophies. Rotten also in
their heart, are the men who obey under compulsion voices from
the tomb.
No doubt those old documents served their purpose at the
time, but 'new occasions teach new duties,' and new ages require,
not only new leaders, but new deeds.
Again, most Acts of Congress are the Machiavellian work
of eminent rogues, curse them whose very names are almost
forgotten except by partisan chroniclers and printers of public
school histories.
As for the Common Law, it is an inheritance from those
interesting old days, when Saxon and Norman earls (they were
genuine noblemen then, for they had won their position by risking
their lives in battle) administered 'Justice' direct, per media of
knotted clubs, hilted knives, and long handled cleavers. That was
the only kind of 'Law' understood by our 'uncivilized' forefathers,
for they had not been 'educated' into the profound conviction that
governments and laws 'derive all their just powers from the consent
of the governed.' Such an expression would have sent them into
convulsions, and he who uttered it would be considered — a most
51
MIGHT IS RIGHT
excellent fool.
No doubt our ancestors were somewhat rude in their
manners, somewhat deficient in sweetness and culture, but in
manners of frozen fact they were decidedly logical. They did not
sneak to public meetings and swagger about 'Liberty,' 'Justice,' and
'Equality of Opportunity,' or 'Rights of Man,' when they knew full
well that not only their lives, but everything they nominally
possessed was 'by leave' of their conquerors and proprietors. They
accepted their position pro-tern, and when again ready, honestly re-
entered the doom-ring to test anew their Fate.
If they could come alive again how those old Pirates and
Freebooters would stare in shame and scorn at the sight of their
'tenderfoot' posterity, walking up in solemn, horny-handed, hump-
backed procession in shoddy rags, before an idol-altar called a
ballot-box, dropping into its gilded maw, printed invocations for
Justice, Mercy, Liberty, "Peace in our time O! Lord" —
Protection,— Cheap Money,— "more laws! more laws! more laws!"
How our blonde, clean-limbed ancestors would guffaw? Indeed,
they would probably keep on guffawing, till they guffawed
themselves to death again.
"Oh!" they would say:— "to think that our seed should have
sunk so low!"
7
But, Equality before the Law is all we mean, whimpers the
everlasting sophist— the cunning liar! Let us see! By what rational
method can any two litigants be placed in a position of
unconditional 'Equality before the Law?' First of all, plaintiff and
defendant always possess totally different physical and mental
characteristics, different personal magnetisms, and — different sized
bank balances. Also, all judges, juries, and legal officials are
unequals in temperament, ability, courage, and honesty. Each one
has his own peculiar idiosyncrasies, prejudices, inferiorities,
superstitions, and — price. Each again, may be more or less
dishonest and more or less subject to financial pressure or caste
52
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
bias . No two men are born alike, each one being literally born under
his own particular star, formed of different material, swayed by
different ideals, educated and moulded in a different mill, by a
different process.
Even if all tribunals of Justice were founded upon blind
Impartiality and administered free of cost, it will be plainly seen,
that 'Equality before the Law' remains a mere chimera, a dream;
and of no real value. 'Equality before the Law' is just a meaningless
catchword, something like that famous Jesuitism — 'Liberty
regulated by Law.'
Statute Law may formally confer equal rights and privileges
upon unequal citizens, but it cannot enforce itself— it must execute
its mandate through human media and that media is full up to the
brim with superiorities, inferiorities, and inequalities.
No legalism has even been devised that Strength can not
drive its coach and four through. And it is a popular proverb (in all
lands) that somehow, there is "one law for the rich and another for
the poor." Indeed the poor can never be placed upon an equality
with the rich — not even by the pillage of the rich.
Whether they are the Fittest or not, the present proprietors
of Wealth should never permit themselves to be plundered without
savage struggle.
Sooner or later, the hour of this struggle in its acute form
shall arrive, but the Rich must not dread it. If they prepare in time,
the result shall not only justify their mastership, but render it
impregnable — if they are Fit. To be respected and secure,
Aristocracies must rest themselves upon a Sworded Might, not
upon paper-credits, consols, and bond issues.
Should the Opulents be conquered and pillaged, that in
itself will be conclusive evidence that they are neither the Fittest
nor the Best. Upon this earth there is no such thing as Equal Justice.
All legal tribunals are based, not upon ideal concepts of
Justice and Fair Play, but upon effective armed Strength. This is a
truism. Robbery under arms, laid the corner stone of every Court
House in Christendom and elsewhere. How then can the robbers
and the robbed — the eagle and the pigeon — the chicken and the
53
MIGHT IS RIGHT
hawk be placed in positions of genuine equilibrium before
removable officials, specially paid and appointed to 'vindicate the
Law' —that is to give forcible effect to the Dicta of the Strongest?
All judges are authorized avengers, armed to the teeth, and
all hangmen are licensed assassins, trained to kill. These words are
not spoken in disparagement. Assassins and avengers! Ha! If that
be so
Truly they that 'seek the Lord' do suffer hunger, but lions
seek for prey.
When an army of occupation settles down upon an enemy's
territory, it issues certain rules of 'procedure' for the orderly
transference of the property and persons of the conquered into the
absolute possession and unlimited control of the conquerors. These
'rules of procedure' may at first take shape as orders issued by
military generals, but after a time they develop themselves into
Stature Books, Precedents and Constitutions. Indeed all Law is
now and ever has been, the mandate of successful belligerents or
rather the mandate of the few masterful personalities that ever
inspire them.
Equality before the Law, is thus a contradiction in terms for
Law itself is an incarnation of Inequality. It is true only in the
subjective sense, that all who obey the Law are equally the servants
of those who make it or caused it to be made.
Drum-head court martials are really Law Courts in embryo.
Congresses and Parliaments are merely committees of rapacious
tax-gatherers. Legislators may describe themselves as
'representatives of the people,' but that is only a cunning
masquerade. Their chief vocation is to strengthen 'the Law," uphold
'the Constitution,' vote the annual 'Appropriations' and devise
ways and means of exploiting the nation or of permitting it to be
systematically looted by their accomplices, or — their Masters.
The principles that govern a 'hold-up' are the self-same
principles that govern government. No government on earth rests
on the consent of the governed.
It is reasonable therefore for a confederation of masterful
bandits to place themselves in positions of absolute equality, before
54
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
their intended victims. The idea is absurd on the face of it.
Brigandage necessitates inequality: and every government on earth,
is organized and enthroned Brigandage.*
Las Casas, the Spanish Jesuit, was the first in America to
spread word about the false, subversive, and shameful theory of
'equal human rights,' but since his time it has been boastfully
accepted on all sides, by vast hordes of witless persons who are in
all countries, the numerical majority. "The race of fools" as Plato
sagaciously remarked, "is not to be counted" — not even in this —
'land of the free.'
Although Equality (in any shape) has never been
scientifically proven nor logically defended: nevertheless it passes
from tongue to tongue, from brain to brain in current discussions
for 'gospel truth'— just as clever counterfeit coins are passed
unuspectingly from hand to hand.
The Equality superstition is tolerated by clear-seeing men,
for one reason only. It assists them to govern the thoughts: and by
governing the thoughts, to exploit the property, energy, and labor-
force, of their soft-minded, good natured neighbors: who really
believe it to be true— who think it, glad tidings of Great Joy.
Behold! when the fraudulent 'equality of natural rights'
evangel is mellifluously poured forth in the Market Places by suave
dollar-hunting attorneys or half educated mechanics, even those
staid citizens (whose whole life is of it a direct disproof) lead the
roaring, raving, yelling crowd in its maniacal bellowings.
Lo! the Angel of Lunacy is camped in their souls!
Every atom of organic matter has its own vital peculiarity.
Every animate being is different in osseous structure and chemical
composition. Ethnology, Biology, History, all proclaim Equality to
be a myth. Even the great epics of antiquity are all glorifications of
* "Have we not shown that government is essentially immoral? " —Herbert Spencer
55
MIGHT IS RIGHT
inequality: inequality of mind — inequality of birth, of courage or
condition. Can equality of body, equality of mind, equality of
origin, equality before the law or any other kind of 'equality' be
demonstrated by any one fact?
Mentally and morally, every breathing being is a self poised
monad- a differentiated ego. No two germs, planets, suns, or stars,
are alike. Among the higher vertebrates this is especially so, and
consequently, the only law that men ought to honor or respect; is
the law that originates, and finds its final sanction in themselves —
in their own consciousness.
Inequality is summed up in the scientific axiom "inferior
organisms succumb, that superior organisms may survive,
propagate, and possess." In other words, the proper place for
Lazarus is to rot among the dogs. And the proper place for Caesar is
at the head of his irresistible legions.
From the soles of his feet to the crown of his head -the
bones, skin, and flesh of his body -even the grey brain pulp -the
electric nerves and tissues — mental ganglia and internal viscera of
a man belonging to the African, Mongolian, Semite, or Negrito
breeds are all fundamentally different in formation, constituents,
and character; from the corresponding anatomical sections in men
of Aryan descent. The points of non-resemblance may be
superficially imperceiveable, but they are organic — deep seated.
Notwithstanding the dexterous writers of strategic fables,
dross is dross, gold is gold, and some men are better, born nobler,
born braver than others .
Aristocracy by birth rests upon an unalterable scientific
basis of heredity and selection; but an aristocracy or money rests
mainly upon bolts and bars, i.e. upon laws that may be abrogated at
a moments notice.
Though unable to reason out in logical sequence their
inherent abhorrence of social and racial equality, most men
instinctively detest it— in practice.
What white father for example, would encourage the
marriage of a hulking thick-skulled Negro with his beautiful and
accomplished daughter? Would he enthusiastically 'give her away'
56
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
to the matrimonial embraces of a Chinaman, a Coolie or the leper-
hugs of a polluted 'mean white?' Are there ten such citizens even in
North America, where equality of birth and condition is so much
speechified and — never seen? Are there five? Is there one who
would not rather see the daughter of his loins, stiff, stark and cold
in her shroud? Should that one exist (he being of sound mind) let
him speak. Then and only then, can this diabolical gospel of
intrinsic equality be reconsidered.
Meanwhile, plain practical citizens are justified in
regarding it, not as a self-evident truth, but an insolent, malignant
and abominable lie — a lie that shall yet be stamped out forever,
with blood and fire.
You have only to look at some men, to know that they
belong to an inferior breed. Take the Negro for example. His
narrow cranial development, his prognathous jaw, his projecting
lips, his wide nasal aperture, his simian disposition, his want of
forethought, originality and mental capacity: are all peculiarities
strictly inferior. Similar language may be applied to the Chinaman,
the Coolie, the Kanaka, the Jew, and to the rotten-boned, city
degenerates of Anglo-Saxondom, rich and poor. Vile indeed are the
inhabitants of those noxious cattle kraals: London, Liverpool, New
York, Chicago, New Orleans: and yet, in those places is heaped up
the golden plunder of the world.
Ethnographists of the very highest authority, assert that over
then thousand years ago, the black, white, and yellow types of men-
animals were as pronounced, and as ineffaceable as they are to-day.
The hieroglyphics and records of ancient tombs and monuments,
cuneiform inscriptions, antiquarian researches, and the systematic
study of pre-historic skulls and skeletons all bear the same uniform
testimony.
Inequality of birth and condition, can never perish from off
the earth. Never! and why should it? Who can fill the valleys up and
lay the mountains low?
57
MIGHT IS RIGHT
Even the giddy doctrinaire who so cunningly concocted the
bombastes-furioso fictions of the Declaration* could not apparently
have believed them himself. Was he not a slave-driver (residing
among slave-drivers) who bought and auctioned human cattle for
dollars and cents all the days of his life'! No doubt for purposes of
state-craft and necessary war-craft he wove his philosophic
preamble of Strong Deceit. Probably also, he was comparatively
honest, and even sincere but among the alluring priests of
Unreason, the most dangerous is the fanatical propagandist.
When Jefferson dictated his fatal and untenable
abstractions, he was not even original but plagiarized Zeno the
Stoic, Jack Cade, Savanarola, Milton, Plato, John Ball, etc. Zeno
said: "All men are by nature equal," but carefully refrained from
attempting to demonstrate it. Milton defended it in his prose essays,
Plato voiced it in his "Republic," John Ball preached it in medieval
England, Savonarola perished trying to establish it in Florence.
Jack Cade, Robespierre and Christ were also failures, ghastly
failures.
"If human experience proves anything at all," writes James
Fitzjames Stephens, "it proves that, if the restraints are minimized,
if the largest possible measure of Liberty is accorded to all human
beings; the result will not be equality but inequality, reproducing
itself in a geometrical ratio" Remove the restraints and see how
quickly an aristocracy based on Merit would mow down an
aristocracy based on Credit.
In actual life, he who claims equality with another, is ever
called upon to prove his claim, not by a grotesque abracadabra of
silly phrases, parroted from antique philosophers or blue-mouldy
documents but by actual deeds — that is to say, by producing his
credentials. Constitutional theories are all very well to humbug
* Mayhap, Franklin (who had a comic vein,) wrote them as grinning jokes. By ihv way
every signature, attached thereto, represents a slave-holding, slave-trading constituency.
All the colonies traded in niggers.
58
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
stridulating slaves but in a freeman's household, or business, they
are not 'legal tender.' Among men of affairs, natural egalitarianism,
is regarded as amusing moonshine — mere spread-eagleism, fit for
public meetings only. Business minds thoroughly understand,
(having learnt by bitter experience) that some men are destined by
Nature to bear command and some to obey: aye, even for a
thousand years before their birth.
No one can study the laborers on a farm, the 'hands' in a big
foundry or factory, the seamen in a large seaport, the nomadic
hirelings on a railroad construction gang: or the clerks and
salesmen in a city warehouse, without perceiving at a glance, that
the vast majority of them are extremely poor specimens of
humanity.
The ideal type of manhood or womanhood, (that is to say,
'Ye Thoroughbred') is not to be found among these captive
hordes— for captives they really are. Their heads are to a large
extent unsymmetrical, their features distorted, ape-like,
unintelligent. Their bodies are out of all proportion, dwarfed,
stunted, diseased, malformed, cretinous.
Their movements are contracted, artificial, ungainly, and
their minds (outside of routine) are utter vacuums. When compared
with the traditional idea of Strength, Beauty, Courage, and
Nobleness of character, they are an extremely ill-bred herd of
cattle: exhibiting all the psychological stigmata of inherited brain-
rot and of physical decay. "A crown of thorns on every brow — that
is the wage they're earning now."*
Nine-tenths of them are positively repulsive in language,
mentality, and in general appearance. They even display an
extraordinary low average of animality; and upon the slightest
exposure perish off, like sheep that have the lung worm. Heated
rooms, woolen clothing, and stimulating beverages, are the means
whereby their watery blood is kept in languid circulation. Every
new generation is feebler, and more debased that its predecessor.
All the scientific evidences of metal, moral, and bodily
Ibsen .
59
MIGHT IS RIGHT
deterioration , are markedly accentuated in them and — their timidity
is proverbial,* hard, continuous, methodical labor, destroys
courage, saps vitality, and demoralizes character. It tames and
subdues men; just as it tames and subdues the wild steer of the
young cold. Men who labor hard and continuously have no power
to think. It requires all their vital force to keep their muscles in trim.
Indeed, the civilized city working-man and working-
woman are the lowest and worst type of animal ever evolved from
dust and slime and oxygen.
They actually worship Work: and bow down before Law as
an ox-team crouches and strains under the last. Look upon their
shrunken cheeks, their thin lips, their narrow, retreating, irresolute
jaws, their decayed teeth, sharp puny noses, small watery eyes,
yellow bloodless complexions, bent shoulders, dry hair tending to
baldness, struggling thin beard: the women with pinched features,
waspish fragile waists, want of bust development, consumptive,
neurotic, artificially barren, emaciated, hungry, dwarfed, hysterical.
The minds of average workmen and workwomen, are either
total vacuums or stuffed to the brim with every conceivable species
of lies, iniquity, superstition, and sham. Indeed how could they
remain in such conditions of base loathsome hirelingism, were they
not deficient in all the Primitive Virtues— in all that is manly and
womanly?
Behold!— upon their brow is stamped (with red-hot cattle
brands) the word 'damned.'' Eternally tortured are they in a patent
purgatory invented by Politicians. Their tribulations however may
really be but Progression in disguise, because their shameful self-
degradation, must ultimately end in their utter extinguishment.
Hopelessly are they entangled in the snare — hopelessly defeated.
For them there is no escape— No! not even through fields of blood.
Poor trembling wretches! — washing their own hands in
their own sweat! — nay, in their own heart's blood! Born thralls are
they — or, born madmen!
* "The brave man may fail sometimes, but the coward fails always.
ANGELO MOSSO.
60
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
Their days are without hope and their years are consumed
for naught. When their Master speaks unto them there is trembling
in all their joints.
They waste their lives pursuing shadows, and for hire, build
their own tombs. Their minds are below freezing point, nay! below
zero! Crippled souls are they.
They knead their own flesh into daily bread, and transmute
their 'contrite hearts' into basins of gruel.
They look unto idols for deliverance,* aye and grind their
dry bones into baskets of coal. At thoughts of battle they blench
with terror; at the sight of naked bayonets, they run like whipped
hounds.
Therefore, strength leapeth down upon them as the panther
leaps upon his quarry. And in a moment of time they are blotted out.
My soul abhorreth them as an abomination. My hand
reacheth out to clutch them by the throat.
10
Heredity has ever so much more to do with social
conditions than the majority of modern men are willing to admit.
Judging by results, that nations ignore Birth and Breeding at their
peril, for just as there are noble animals, there are noble men. If a
stock-raiser throws down his dividing fences and permits all his
cattle to mix-up promiscuously together, what kind of a herd would
he have, say, in one decade? Nothing but weeds, hybrids, and
mongrels!
Now, that is exactly what nations attempt when they
endeavor to establish an equality of privileges and of happy,
peaceful conditions.
The close psychological connection that exists between
ancestry and degeneracy, crime, genius, insanity, etc., etc., is now
* When the Roman Empire was tottering to its fall, the worship of the stale was an
established cult, just as it is to-day. Better to adore blocks of wood or stone, than bow our
hearts, our heads, rind our knees before those troops of Unclean Beasts-Politicians!
61
MIGHT IS RIGHT
everywhere being acknowledged, thanks to the researches of
Galton, Lombroso, Mosso, Otto Ammon, Fern, Kraft Ebbing, and
others.
If criminals are criminals, by descent or by birth, is it not
equally probable that slaves are slaves by the facts of their breed
and ancestry? Does it not also follow that heroes and strong,
powerful, resolute, personalities, have derived their solid stamina
from their forefathers? Indeed all history and all genealogies prove
that this is a mathematical fact. Great men are ever the descendants
of mighty warriors and conquerors, that is to say, of mighty
animals.
Von Otto Ammon cites a remarkable instance, which goes
to prove the selective and ethnic advantages of Warfare. He states
that all German children born during the Franco-Prussian campaign
of '71 (also, the years immediately following) show a strikingly
high average excellence, both of body and mind.
The converse is equally demonstrable. Show me a herd of
humans who have been underfed day-drudges from their youth up
and I will show you a herd of cattle whose ancestors were, also,
propertyiess vassals and serfs, beaten in diplomacy and in war for
ages past. (Take the Irish peasantry and the fellaheen of Egypt as
examples.) This statement admits of no qualification, for if one
exception can be discovered, it will serve to prove the general rule.
A man in the full possession of all his faculties, of leonine ancestry,
well-born, self-contained, would rather cut his own throat from ear
to ear with a blacksmiths rasp, than live the life of an average hired
laborer in any civilized 'hell' on earth.
The nexus between self mastership and breed is of
tremendous significance. Therein is the Lost Secret.
Undoubtedly new born infants are daily coming wailing
into this world, with the words — statesman, tramp, wastrel, warrior,
priest, philosopher, criminal, thief, king, slave and coward,
indelibly branded upon their brows, their hearts and their brains.
Our talents, our virtues and our vices, depend entirely upon
our individual mechanism; and that mechanism is the result of
countless chemic transformations, extending over ages but
62
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
modified to a large extent by climate and soil. "What is bred in the
bone, will never come out of the flesh," wrote Pilpay thousands of
years ago. There is a pregnant ethnic philosophy in four lines
(quoted from Keramos):
"This clay well mixed with marl and sand,
Follows the motion of my hand;
For some must follow, and some command:
Though all are made of clay."
Although all may be made of clay in the poetic sense, it
must never be forgotten that the clay itself is composed of
differentiated elements. The clay that is in a Blackfellow or a
Chinaman is not the clay that is in a Shakespeare or a Bismarck.
Some 'clay' will grow good wheat and make very bad bricks, just
as some breeds of animals are born to be hunters and others born to
be hunted. Some clay will raise splendid crops, even from poor
seed, and some never produces anything (no matter how highly
cultivated) except thorns and weeds and nettles and poisons. The
natures of men are moulded almost entirely by the nature of the soil
from which they have been grown. Man is a perambulating crop. In
some places he grows to perfection; in other localities he won't
grow at all or runs to seed. In India the Anglo Saxon dwines and
dwindles, but in Canada and the Northern States he even develops
increased stamina.
All science, all history, and all experience are unanimous in
disproof of equal, natural rights for all men (that strident doctrine
of the fool); and yet the insolent, proofless assertions of a Zeno, a
Jefferson, a Jack Cade, Robespierre, or a Jewish Carpenter (when
fantastically engrossed and framed or bound in a book) are
passively accepted by the intellectual serfs of this degenerate
nineteenth century, and trumpeted to the ends of the earth as a
sublime and holy revelation. Equal ityism passes almost
unchallenged in public orations, because to openly question its
veracity is felt to be unpopular, and with the ignoble leaders of
public opinion in all democracies, popularity is everything — the
63
MIGHT IS RIGHT
alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. The result in
AngloSaxondom is simply nauseous.
Young men are mentally mutilated, systematically
'educated' by schools, press and literature upon fundamental
hallucinations, pyrotechnic shams and glittering illusions-
illusions that are the perennial source of fruitless servile uprisings,
social heart-burnings, internecine unpleasantnesses and sundry
other secondary symptoms of social cancer.
Our Government Educational Systems are absolutely under
the direct control of Politicians. These Priests-of-the-State select
and train the teachers, vote the salaries and dictate what Truths and
Lies the textbooks shall contain. Indeed our National Schools are
managed upon the same Jesuitic plan, whereby the monks and
prelates of old, successfully worked the Universal Church. "Come
right here and we'll improve your mind free of cost," suavely saith
the high priests of this New Idolatry-this devouring Dragon — the
Impersonal State. So the pure-hearted, rosy-cheeked, little ones
enter unsuspectingly. Gradually, as they are 'brought under the
influence,' the grey brain-pulp is forced out of plastic young skulls,
and lies, nice pretty poetic lies (mixed with unavoidable facts and
perverted truths) skillfully injected. Did you ever see medical
students extract the brain of a frog and then fill up the vacuum with
pith? The frog does not die, it lives, hops about quite lively and
seems to possess its former intelligence and vitality, but it is all
illusion. What experimental vivisectionists do to frogs, state-priests
do to the children of men.
Bit by bit, with dates and lists and emasculated histories, the
iniquitous brain-wrecking deviltry proceeds. When completed,
young men and women are turned out with addled brains, into a
warring world, incapables, semi-imbeciles, unable to defend or
assert themselves— footballs of fate, ready to serve anyone. Is it not
notorious, the ineptitude, mechanical imitativeness and want of
initiative, displayed by state-educated young men? Instead of being
urged to think and act for themselves, they are taught, like well-
drilled slaves to Believe and Obey. They are even trained to glorify
and worship Idols, with strident shouts and modulated canticles —
64
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
not honest Idols of wood and stone, but Idols of sheepskin, bound
pamphlets, variegated rags and the falsified renown of dead
Scoundrels, i.e. Statesmen.
It requires a stout rope, a firm post and muscular men to
hold an unbroken colt. But when by Force and petting he has once
been subdued, i.e. tamed, educated, saddled, bridled, he may be led
anywhere, even with a piece of twine in the hands of a little child.
O, ye State-Priests, so adroit, so eloquent! Ye cunning demons! Ye
wolves in sheep's clothing! Ye corrupters of Youth! Ye generation
of vipers! How can you escape someday from being "hung up by
the tongue on the red-hot hooks of a real live hell."
Thirty years ago the United States quixotically essayed to
demonstrate racial equality with rifle bullets and bomb-shells, but
failed most ignominiously. Southern valleys were strewn with
Northern and Southern bones and millions of tax-treasures blown
from the lips of cannons without any tangible result, except to
demonstrate before an interested world, the utter failure and
hollowness of equality principles.
A people that deliberately enters upon a gigantic war in
order to firmly establish a Centralized Despotism, and at the same
time reduce itself to the social level of the Negro, the Russian Jew,
the Coolie, the Chinaman, and the European Serf must indeed (to
use a suggestive vernacularism) have 'wheels in its head.'
The 'man and brother' lie has certainly succeeded in writing
itself in a 'constitutional amendment' but in real life it is as far from
actuality as ever it was. The 'free' Negro of New Orleans or
Charleston is a more degraded, more despised being; and of less
money value to his proprietors now than when it was customary to
buy and sell him at the auction block, instead of as at present on the
Stock Exchange.
What the late civil war really accomplished was to degrade
the white slave to the lower level of the plantation nigger, and in
that respect it was a triumph of ingenuity. The Whites fought,
actually fought each other to demonetize themselves. Equality!
Equality ! What brilliant deeds have been 'perpetrated' in thy name?
Lincoln however! was he not 'a great statesman?' Decidedly he
65
MJGHTJS RfGHT
was! Well indeed he knew how to 'round-up' the herd with
bewitching phrases?
Hark! do you hear those drunken slaves caterwauling down
the street? Lo! it is election night! "Hurrah! hurrah!" they sing,
"We'll sound the jubilee! Glory be to Lincoln, the man who made
us free." In Morocco the eunuchs and other menials, bless their fate
and the Prince, at the very time he condescends to cut their throats
with his own hands. Americans however, are a free-born people not
to be duped that way.
Throughout both Northern and Southern states, the social
chasm between the highest and lowest human organisms (whether
white or black, or black-and-tan,) is even more pronounced now,
than ever it was previously. For example, although the Negroes are
a majority in many States, they are never permitted to attain actual
administrative power and they never shall.
You cannot paint the Negro white with laws and
constitutions, though you write it in the fire and smoke of wars and
revolutions.
11
To solemnly proclaim that 'all men are created equal' is as
stupid and unscientific as to assert that all dogs, cattle, apes, and
trees are created equal.
Are there not as many diverse varieties of dogs, cattle, apes,
and trees as there are of men, planets, germs, stars, and suns?
Where then is the intrinsic equality between an oak tree and a
currant bush — between a mettlesome wolf-hound and a yelping
street cur— between a buffalo bull and a hand-fed steer— between
an untameable gorilla of the woods and an organ-grinder's
castrated monkey — between a cosmic-brained Bismark and that
famous Christling, 'the good young man who died' Cannot a
blooded bulldog whip a solid score of lean half-starved street
mongrels? Upon exactly the same principle, a small body of bold,
self-reliant, brainy men are ever more than a match (under any
circumstances) for 10,000, nay, 10,000,000 greasy mechanics.
66
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
What is a mechanic anyhow but a specially trained slave? — and it
would take the spirit of 1 ,000 American slaves to make that of one
live man. Theoretically all these organisms are of 'the same
species,' but in the savage rush for bread, love, space and life, there
are as much functional difference between them, as there is
between a royal Bengal tiger and 'Mary's little lamb.' The lamb
was made to be eaten and the tiger was made to eat it; and man was
born to struggle as the sparks fly upwards.
The necessities of environment make of each man, the
enemy or rival of other men, more especially, those with whom he
comes in direct personal conflict. Where then does equality come
in? It does not 'come in' at all. It is an idiotic myth. There must
always be a substratum of victimized organisms. How could the
tiger live if there were no lambs to devour? How could there b<
heroes if there were no slaves? How could there be great nations i
there were no contemptible ones?
Compare the noble qualities inherent in some dogs with the
obsequious 'virtues' that distinguish nine men out of ten. Now, give
to a canine or homo equal liberty of action — equal opportunity —
equal 'rights' and what will be the result? Must not the fiercest
fighter fatten, while the skeletons of lean weaklings project through
their scrofulous hides? What power originating among themselves
could dictate and enforce — equality of opportunity?
Socialism, Christianism, Democratism, Equalityism, are
really the whining yelpings of base-bred mongrel-multitudes. They
howl aloud for State intervention— 'protection for suffering
humanity'— regulated mill-grinding as it were; with the State to be
their Supreme Idol, their God and Master, their All in All, their
Great Panjandrum. Poor deluded base spirited 'weeds.' Truly the
'Curse of God' is in the very marrow of their bones — in every
pump-stroke of their dying hearts.
The man who prays to be 'protected' by politicians, guarded
by armed Janissaries, saved by idolatrous priests, and redeemed by
State Regimentation is indeed a miserable sinner — a vile,
despicable, un-manly wretch.
67
MIGHT IS RIGHT
12
No paternalistic governmental mechanism (however
theoretically perfect), can ever keep the base-born and the well-
born, the thoroughbreds and the hybrids, in a state of perpetual
equilibrium. You might as well try to bind down an earthquake with
hoop-iron, as to rule the Strong with "be it enacted." "Be it
enacteds" were invented only to frighten captives with.
What power on earth can permanently keep the Negro on a
parity with the Anglo-Saxon?
The Strong must have their way in spite of all puritanic
proscribings, all mock moralisms, all degrading legalisms, all
constitutional covenantings. Neither the machinery nor the raw
material of equality has ever existed; only the dream, the idea of it.
Equality! Equality! in that one word is summed up the accumulated
dementia of two thousand years! The thought of it was born in the
brain of an inferior organism: and the brains of inferior organisms
nourish it still.
How can beings who for ages have been born and bred to
toil and subjectivity, ever comprehend the feelings of those who are
free-born, and of valorous descent — of those who understand the
cosmic law that Might is— Master?
You cannot muzzle a tempest with a cobweb, bridle a
volcano with a shoe-string, bottle up a cyclone in a powder horn,
nor catch a tidal wave with a boat-hook. Neither can you put a bit
between the teeth of the Strong. They will see you — in Sheol first.
No artificial plan of society — no pious incantations
however sincere and well intentioned; can ever prevent the pot that
is of iron from smashing and sinking, the pot that is of clay — and
why should it? If social equilibrium had been feasible, it would
have been established ages and ages ago. It never has been
established — and it never shall. *
* "Man has a right to substance," wrote Thomas Paine. "Yes" replied an observant
reader, "he has a right to live one thousand years, IF HE CAN." It is not a problem of
Right but of Ability — Strength.
68
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
What then is the good of eternally dreaming, theorizing, and
constructing phantom castles-in-the-air, cities of god, gardens of
delight, upon foundations of deliberate unveracity? Let us be
men — whole men — not clamorous, tearful little children
demanding infantile sugar-plums. Let us face the fierce challenging
facts of existence as boldly as our forefathers did before 'christly
comfort and consolation' was introduced to un-man them— -not like
crouching, cringing, terrorized, oriental pariahs. Let us not be lured
to wholesale annihilation by sonorous Asiatic evangelisms, that
have proved themselves worthless and unsuitable to our
temperament, our climate, and our breed. Let us be sensible, brave,
practical; and as Virchow somewhat trenchantly recommends: —
"Accepting things as they really are, not as we choose to imagine
them," — or rather as they have been imagined by dotard
philosophers, daft poets, and castrated clerics.
13
The problem that we are ever called upon to solve or be
eaten up, is not how to make life 'happy and equal' for happiness is
a moving mirage, and equality an impossibility, but how men may
conquer their Opportunities, surpass their Rivals, extirpate their
Pursuers.
The race is still to the swift and the battle to the strong.
Beauty and booty are always the prerogatives of victorious valor.
Woe unto the outgeneralled ones!
"Tis a battle for bread, for love, and for breath,
'Tis a race for life to the jaws of death."*
Upon the island of Java there is a remarkable valley of
death. It is literally strewed with the bones and skulls and skeletons
of innumerable dead animals and creeping things. In the due
season, giant turtles, five foot by three in diameter, travel up
* P. Luftig.— "Bulletin," Australia.
69
MIGHT IS RIGHT
through it from the sea, to lay their eggs. En-route, they are set
upon by packs of wild dogs and these dogs roll the turtles over upon
their backs and then devour them alive, by tearing out their
unprotected entrails. When the dogs are gorged, they in their turn,
fall an easy prey to ambushing tigers. Then hunters kill these tigers
for their variegated skins. Rank grass springs up after the rainy
season, through the skulls and bones that litter this tropical
golgotha and droves of cattle gather there to fatten. Again the cattle
are hunted for their hides, horns, and flesh, and their bones are also
left where they fall, to manure the valley and prepare it for new
generations of hunters and hunted. Such is in miniature, a picture of
the every day world as it actually is. All living beings are pursuing
and — being pursued.
Woe unto those that stumble! Woe unto Ye who fall!
They who accept the 'Equality, Faith, Hope, and Charity'
ideal, in any shape or form whatever, interpret the facts of mortal
life as they are not — as they have never been, as they can never be.
Indeed when the animal world becomes 'moralized' and
'equalized' it will be extinct. No doubt when contemplating the
dark side of all this, Pascal was impelled to write with superstitious
medieval diapason:— "I am affrighted like a man who in his sleep
has been carried unto some horrible desert island, and there awakes
not knowing where he is, nor how he shall escape."
Degenerates only are thus affrighted at the tragic majesty of
their surroundings.
If this struggle is ordained of us, why not enter into it with
kingly courage, with dauntless delight? Why not go forward, daring
all things, to conquer or die?
Is it not better to perish than to serve? 'Liberty or death' is
not a meaningless phrase. No! it is of tremendous import to those
who — comprehend.
What is death that it should make cowards of us all? What
is life that it should be valued so highly? There are worse things
than death and among them is a life of dishonor. All men lead
dishonorable lives who serve a master with hand or brain.
Life itself is but a spark in the gloom that flashes out and
70
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
disappears. Why therefore not make the most of it here and now —
Here and Now !
There is no 'heaven of glory bright,' and no hell where
sinners roast. There is no Right, there is no Wrong — nor God — nor
Son — nor Ghost.
Death endeth all for every man,
For every "son of thunder:"
Then be a Lion in the path;
And don't be trampled under.
For us there is no rest— no Kingdom of Indolence, either on
this earth or beyond the skies — no Isles of the Blest— no Elysian
Fields — no garden of the Hesperides. No! No! All these magical
legends are but fanciful waking dreams — 'fiction of mortals of
yore.'
Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our
day of joy! Here and now is our Opportunity — to eat or to be
eaten— to be Lion or Lamb! Here and now it is war to the knife—
no escape — no retreat. Choose ye this day, this hour, for no
Redeemer liveth!
Every attempt made to organize the Future must necessarily
collapse. The Present is our Domain and our chief duty is to take
immediate possession thereof upon strict business principles.
Strive therefore against them that strive against you, and
war against them that war against thine. Lay hold of shield and
buckler or their equivalents, stand up! Be a Terrible one in thine
own defence. Raise up also the Clenched Hand and stop the way of
them that would persecute you. Say unto thine own heart and soul
"I; even I, am mine own redeemer."
Let tern be hurled back to confusion and infamy, who
devise thine undoing. Let them be as chaff before the cyclone and
the Angel of Death pursue them, nay overtake them. In a pit, they
have hidden a trap for thy feet: into that very destruction let them
fall. Then, exultant, 'sound the loud timbrel.' Rejoice! Rejoice! in
thine own salvation. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully "who is
like unto me?" — Have I not delivered myself by mine own brain?
MIGHT IS RIGHT
Have I not been too strong for mine adversaries? — Have I not
spoiled them that would have spoiled me?
14
This circling planet-ball is no navel-contemplating Nirvana,
but rather a cast whirling star-lit Valhalla, where victorious battlers
quaff the foaming heart's-blood of their smashed-up adversaries,
from the scooped out skull goblets of the slain in never-ending war.
And behold it is good! It is good! It is very good!
"Blending in bloody strife,
Throat to throat, life for life;
Struggles the human still."
And in that invigorating struggle strength is renewable.
Fitness to reign, propagate and possess, can there alone be tested
with mathematical precision (in nature's majestic ludgement Hall),
that is to say on the plains of Conquest where foeman looks into
foeman's eye and death lurks, like a ravenous leopard, in every
bush.
They who claim Mastership upon any other basis than
Conquest are Upstarts, Usurpers and ought therefore to be deposed
without pity, and without mercy in accordance with the cosmic
decree of ethnic displacement. Death I say!— Death!
Life is a duel and only the Fittest can possibly hope to
succeed. If you would Survive O reader! (in the highest meaning of
that word) go to, and put some splendor in your deeds. Beware of
false philosophies that equalize you with slavelings and dastards!
Beware of fattened priestlings and tax-collecting statesmen!
Beware the tongue that is smoothly hung, and never forget
for one moment, that your greatest enemies upon earth, are those
crafty courtiers who eloquently, cunningly flatter you, that they
may first win your heart, and then skin you alive. The modern
Mephistopheles is the soft-toned preacher in his pulpit, — the
editorial sophist in his net-work of lies,— the political crocodile on
72
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
his 'planks" and his "platforms.'
A trinity of hell-hounds are they! Oh! Would that they had
but one neck and I was— Judge Lynch!
America! America! in spite of all the surreptitious bonds
that in thy sleep have been laid upon thee yet pregnant thy womb is
with men of Nerve — men of Valor— men of Might. Lo! the hour
approacheth when in dire travail thou shalt give birth unto
Thunderbolts, and Joves to handle them.
Behold that time cometh! Nay, it is at hand! But it will not
be a period of pure delight. No! No! — it will be a day of wrath, a
dreadful day — a day of Judgement, Tribulation, Triumph.
And Democracy! Democracy! thou leprous thing!— thou
loathsome disease! — thou plastic demon!— thou murderer of man!
Many nations have bowed down to thy infection, and perished from
off the earth, but America! America! shall wipe thee out,— thou
blightsome malady — thou human rinderpest!
Verily! Verily! a new nobility shall be born unto thee O
America!— a breed of Terrible Commanders! — of Grim
Destroyers — a nobility unpurchasable with the minted tokens of
money-changers — a nobility of Valor, of Power and of Might — a
nobility honorable, clear-sighted, clean-sinned, unconquerable.
Through the Future shines the sun of splendid struggle.
Heroic Natures there lead on, as they led at Illion. The Natural Man
steps forth once more in all his daring grandeur, smashing unclean
Idols, defying Gods and Laws and slave- made Morals.
73
MIGHT IS RIGHT
'R* K1N*M«N MU4* ALWAYS &<•
I* NO^NINO MOK HOM*l&L< 4NAN
<ULtUI*AL AN^AtlONAL^j^'
74
THE SPINNING OF THE WEB
THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER- Condensed
How did the government of man by man originate?
By force of arms. Victors became rulers.
But among us government by force is abolished?
That is a popular delusion. It is stronger than ever.
How is it that we do not see it clearly?
No need of compulsion with inferiors ever eager to obey.
How can the Mastership of man be destroyed?
It can never be destroyed. It is essential.
But for one man to reign over another is wrong?
What is 'wrong?' The Strong do as they please.
Who are the 'Strong?'
They who conquer, they who take the spoil and camp on the
battlefield. All life is a battlefield.
How did subjectiveness originate?
The first slave was a defeated fighter, afterwards tamed by hunger
and blows. His descendants being born and trained to
submissiveness are more tractable. All the Servile Classes are
posterity of beaten battlers.
Then vassalage still flourishes as of yore?
Certainly. In the pitiless strife for existence, all weaklings and
feeble-minded persons are justly subordinated.
But we are taught 'all men are created equal'?
You are taught many a diplomatic Lie.
How can a slave recover his liberty?
By re-conquering his conqueror. If he feels that he is not man
enough then he must submit, cut his own throat, or die fighting
unsubdued.
But freedom may be granted to him?
'Freedom cannot be granted, it must be taken.'
Then Strife is perpetual, inevitable, nay, glorious?
Yes! It is intended as an ordeal, a trial by combat. It unmistakably
divides the guilty from the non-guilty.
But that is a harsh philosophy?
Nature is harsh, cruel, merciless to all unlovely things. Her smile is
75
MIGHT IS RIGHT
only for the Courageous, the Strong, the Beautiful and the All-
Daring.
You have no comfort for the 'poor and lowly,' the 'innocent
ones,' the 'downtrodden.'
The poor and lowly are a creeping pestilence — there are no
innocent ones, and the downtrodden are the justly damned — sinners
in a hell they've made.
You praise the Strong, you glorify the Mighty ones?
1 do. They are Nature's noblemen. In them she delights: the
All-Vanquishers! the Dauntless Ones!
76
Man
the carnsvore
Chapter Id
It has taken countless evolutionary epochs to make man
what he is, the most ferocious hirsute beast of prey that inhabits the
caverns and jungles of earth.
Can his osseous mechanism and pathologic instincts be
summarily extinguished or reversed, merely by connecting him, per
an electric wire, laid through the sewers of Rome, to the feeble
dynamos of Bethlehem, and Tarsus? Can his structural anatomy,
intended for conflict and slaughter, be transformed in a day, a year,
or even in 'a million, million of suns?'
To overmaster and devour his neighbor, in the reasoned
effort to obtain food and booty, land, love, renown and gold is bred
into the very marrow of his bones. Therefore all efforts made by
Reformers and Messiahs, to transfigure him into a 'lamb' are
foreordained to fathomless failure. Indeed it would be much more
reasonable of them to attempt the transfiguration of a grizzly bear
into a parlor poodle or propose the transformation of a bald-headed
eagle into a gently cooing turtle-dove.
Nearly all the prophetic demi-gods of Democracy from Paul
and Isaiah to Carlyle and Ruskin, have ever been madly screeching
by the roadside, vainly endeavoring to stay the march! march!
march! of a world of bannered armies; striding grimly, sternly by.
What are these howling prophets of Evil but dogs eloquently
baying at the moon? "Right wheel there! Right wheel! Turn back!
77
MIGHT tS RIGHT
Turn back! You are going to the devil!" is their resounding, ear-
splitting chorus. But the human flood sweeps on silently,
scornfully, confident, inspired as it were by some over-mastering
instinct. "We may be going to the devil" is the unspoken retort of
these thundering legionaries — these Nations "but even so! is not
the Devil honest— the Destroyer of Deception! — the Disobedient
One?"
Can you lasso the stars with a green-hide lariat? Can you
block the march of Might with magnificent howls of declamatory
despair? No! No! Skyward or hell ward, man moves on and on and
on. If there are barricades in his way, he must surmount them or
blast them aside. If there are Wild Beasts ready to spring upon him,
he must destroy them or they will destroy him. If the highroad leads
through hells, then those infernos must be besieged, assailed and
taken possession of— aye, even if their present monarchs have to be
rooted-out with weapons as demoniac and deadly as their own.
This world is too peaceful, too acquiescent, too tame. It is a
circumcised world. Nay! — a castrated world! It must be made
fiercer, before it can become grander and better and — more natural.
Fools indeed are they who would arrest the unfolding
process with 'humanitarian' Cagliostroism, and 'rescue the
perishing' mummery. Maniacs are they who would ward off the
suns blazing rays from withering souls or the blighting frosts of
winter from hearts that are already broken. For, I doubt not, through
the ages, one tremendous purpose runs; and maturing crops are
ripened with the process of the suns — to be sickled down, threshed
and rolled away.
2
Undoubtedly the Black Magic of the Christ Myth,
combined with the subterranean sorcery of medieval sacerdotalism
has partially succeeded, not only in sapping individual initiative,
but also in suppressing in our Race many of its ancestral leonine
traits and superb Barbarian Virtues. But as yet, it has not wholly
triumphed in its emasculating necromancy. No! it has not
78
MAN THE CARNIVORE
transfigured us all into teams of contented oxen and bunches of
earmarked sheep, although that is its final hope. There are some of
the grand old stock, left alive. Few indeed are they amidst a world
of slaves and swine.
The lion is still the lion, although his teeth have been most
foully filed down by abominable moral codes; his skin made
scrofulous with the mange and leprosy of caged peacefulness — his
paws fettered by links of slave-voted statutes and an iron collar of
State Officialism wound around his regal neck.
Someday, sometime, he is destined to break through the vile
bonds that have been cunningly laid on him, escape from the
wasting decline that originates from unnatural confinement and
regain once more his primitive freedom of Action. The treacherous
legislators and illustrious statesmen, who are now so eager to teach
him the method of growing wool like sheep and how to fit his
battle-scarred shoulders to a horse collar, may then be sorry and sad
(if they have time) — for he will probably chew them up.
Great and powerful governments, Commanding Peace,
come into existence only in ages of decadence; when nations are on
the downward grade. If the human animal lives a natural, cleanly
life, out on the plains and forests away, where oceans rollers crash
along the shore, or on the banks of the pouring rivers he requires no
police-force to 'protect' him — no usurious Jew to rob him of his
harvests — no tax-gathering legislators to vote away his property,
and no 'priests of the Idol' to 'save' his soul.
It is false standards of morality that debase and enfeeble
individuals, tribes and nations. First, in obedience to some
sovereign code, they lose their hardihood and increase their
numbers. Then that all may live, they become laborious,
submissive to Regulations; and finally-with Death held up by
priestcraft as a fearsome Terror, all personal valor fades away. Thus
nations of spaniels are manufactured.
The normal man is the man that loves and feasts and fights
and hunts, the predatory man. The abnormal man is he that toils for
a master, half-starves, and 'thinks' — the Christly dog. The first is a
perfect animal; the second, a perfect — monster.
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
Every belief that makes a duty of humility — that inspires
people with 'moral' courage only, enervates their fibre, corrupts
their spirit, and prepares them first for thralldom and then for—
throttling.
It is not possible to conceive of Grand Life without
incessant rivalry, perpetual warfare and the implacable hunting of
man by man.
Terror, torture, agony and the wholesale destruction of
feeble and worn out types, must mark in future, as in the past, every
step forward, or backward in evolution, homo-culture and racial
displacement.
The soil of every nation is an arena, a stamping ground,
where only the most vigorous animals may hope to hold their own.
What is all history but the epic of a colossal campaign, the final
Armageddon of which is never likely to be fought, because, when
men cease to fight— they cease to be — Men.
This old earth is strewn to the very mountain tops with the
fleshless skulls and rain bleached bones of perished combatants in
countless myriads.
Every square foot, every inch, of soil contains its — man.
The evolution (or de-volution) of mankind demands the
perpetual transfiguration of one man into another, continuous re-
incarnation, eternal re-birth and re-construction. Scientifically
considered, the 'resurrection of the dead' is not an illusion. Every
living organism is formed from the decomposed essence of pre-
existent organisms. The 'man' of to-day is actually built out of the
grave-mould of his prototypes; perhaps of ages long forgotten.
Thus, without death there could be no birth-material; and without
conflict, fierce and deadly, there could be no surpassing.
But to individuals foolishly trained to bewail their fate, all
these commonplace facts are agonizing.
"When we solemnly look upon this perpetual conflict,"
writes Schelling with true theocratic pessimism, "it fills us with
80
MAN THE CARNIVORE
shuddering sorrow, and with boundless alarm— but how can we
help it? Hence the veil of sadness that is spread over all nature, the
deep indestructible melancholy of all life."
Like many other philosophers, deceived by appearances,
Schelling fancies savage and dreadful that which is pure,
mischievous that which is preservative, and calamitous that which
is benign.
The flow of Destruction is as natural and as needful as the
flow of water. No human ingenuity can destroy the Immolation of
Man, nor prevent the shedding of blood — and why should it?
Majestic Nature continues on her tragic way serenely,
caring naught for the wails of the agonized and panic-stricken nor
the protests of defeat; but smiling sadly, proudly (yet somewhai
disdainfully in her passing stride) at the victor's fierce Hurrah. She
loves the writhing of sword-blades— the rending of tradition, the
crunching of bones, and the flap of shredded shot-torn banners,
streaming out savagely (in the night, in the day), over the battle-
weary, the mangled dying and the swollen dead. Christs may come
and Christs may go but Caesar lives for ever.
Deep, permanent, and abiding is the elemental antagonism
between the Sociology of 'the Man of Nazareth' and the
imprescriptible Laws of the Universe. They are as fire and water to
each other— irreconcilable. Indeed our planetary system itself shall
melt with fervent heat ere the Gallileans Philosophy can conquer.
No human being can ever hope to attain 'the perfectibility
that is in Christ.' So long as we remain animals, we shall be
dominated by animal wants and animal passions and animal
rivalries.
Undoubtedly the Messiah ideal is unattainable, hopeless,
and especially so upon its reformatory side. However the world
loves to be deceived by some ghastly delusion and that is the reason
perhaps, that it has taken to its bosom this rustic fable; this Gospel
of Ineffectuality — this Evangel of Darkness— this Dream of an
Israelite slave. "When the Assyrians and after them the Medes and
Persians" writes Tacitus, "were masters of the Oriental world, the
Jews of all nations, then held in subjection, were deemed the most
MIGHT IS RIGHT
contemptible." Christ was a pariah Jew.
Among virile conquering tribes, the Ideal Man is ever the
all-daring Jove, the splendid Apollo, the self-reliant Achilles, of the
Constructive Genius. It is only in centuries of dotage — in ages of
cankersome down-going and nervous disease, that the Model Man
becomes a Christ. The Model Man of our forefathers was Odin, a
War Lord, but our Ideal Man is a weeping, horsewhipped Jew.*
A Jew for a God!
The deities of the Greeks and Vikings, Goths and Romans,
were all (originally) mighty-men-of-valor, or virile women of
surpassing beauty, afterwards held up (before their warlike
posterity) as splendid examples of natural nobility, conscious
power, daring courage, shrewdness, sexual vigor and boundless
strength of character. The gods and heroes of antiquity spent their
vital force in the destruction of monsters, in the seizure of new
hunting-grounds, in the slaughtering of tyrants, and in the breeding
of unconquerable sons.
But Christ! the God of Christendom! the Divine Exemplar!
'that Majestic Figure!' What godlike deed did he ever do? What
unconquerable sons did he beget?
If the 'first principles of Christianity' should, by an
unforeseen miracle triumph in the elemental conflict that is
approaching, assuredly the Anglo-Saxon is played-out, his days
numbered, his dominion ended, his sepulchre prepared.
Multitudinous multiplication of Unfit Millions (broods of strumous
semi-idiots) must then proceed through dreary, barren, brain-
paralyzing centuries, winding up perhaps in a blast of pestilential
plague — a Black Death.
The 'dead and alive' conditions of the 'Celestial Empire
'will then be applied to this Western World and under the thin
disguise of 'advancement,' 'Progress,' and 'Civilization,' an
atmosphere of excruciating torture must be artificially created,
hostile to all but degenerative forces as in China. In the name of
'goodness,' 'righteousness,' and 'morality,' Woe shall be poured
* 'Taunts and blows the portion of the slave.' Macauley.
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
out upon our Seed, as it has already been poured out on the rotten
Swarms of the Orient.
Congenital enfeeblement of body, together with organic
degeneracy of mind, must then go on and on, at an ever accelerating
ratio, until our posterity may end (as Darwin imagined we began)
by becoming chattering apes, without sense enough to light a fire,
crack a coconut or swing by their tails.
Behold the modern man! this 'heir of all the ages — in the
foremost ranks of time!' His sight, taste, smell and hearing are all
notoriously defective. He can harness thunderbolts, but the
unerring instinct of a carrier-pigeon is beyond him. His brain has
become an over-heated thinking engine, but he may not read the
Daily Morning Liar — without spectacles. He 'understands' more
things (or thinks he does) but if suddenly removed from his
artificial environment, he would perish helplessly as the Babes-in-
the-Wood. He can gauge sound-waves; photograph broken bones;
construct gigantic iron monsters; whisper across miles of copper
wire; but, when the pointer-dog sniffs the hidden pheasant from
afar off, this erudite Bundle-of-Nerves looks on in blank
amazement. The fact is that the civilized man is gradually 'losing
his senses.' If he continues to 'progress' at the existing rate, in a
comparatively little while, he will have no smell, no sight, no
hearing.
"Direr visions worse foreboding,
Glare upon me through the gloom!
Europe's smoke-cloud sinks, corroding
On the land, in noisome fume; ....
. . . Showering down like rain of ashes,
On the Cities of God's doom ....
.... Bustling smug, a pygmy pack,
Plucks it prey from ores embraces;
Walks with crooked soul and back:
Glares like dwarfs with greedy eyes,
For the golden glittering lies." *
* Henrick Ibsen.— Adapted in the translating.
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
It is good for a degraded people to be utterly consumed.
In the department of Natural History is it axiomatic that all
kinds of living beings, from protozoa to man, subsist and
propagate, through and by the destruction of feebler competitors,
belonging to the same species or to kindred species.
Thus, the big fish eat the little fish — the big trees (by
absorbing and monopolizing the nutriment) "eat up" the little
trees— the strongest animals eat the weak animals and so on — ad
infinitum.
Man is no exception. Conquering and masterful nations
have ever been ravenous devourers of flesh-food; and most of them
have also been man-eaters. The slaughter-houses of Christendom
reek with the dying effluvia of millions and millions of butchered
brutes; that man — the King of Animal — may day by day eat flesh,
drink blood and gnaw bones.
Even cannibalism is not extinct in far lands, nor quite
unknown in the centres of our proudest civilizations. With the first
great revolutionary cataclysm, its revival upon a gigantic scale is
not an improbability.
During the eleventh century, man's flesh was cooked, sold
and eaten in England, and Englishmen may again revert to
anthropophagy, if ever their imported food supplies should be
suddenly and entirely cut off; either by convulsion of nature or acts
of war. Ship-wrecked crews have repeatedly saved themselves by
casting lots and devouring some of their number: and shipwrecked
nations (loaded up to the hatches with seething cargos of festering
useless non-descripts) may yet be driven to do the same.
Innumerable are the folk-lore legends, relating to ancient
and modern man-eaters. Formal human sacrifices upon the Altars
of Idols are quite common. In Mexico and Ancient Britain, prelates
butchered their victims (generally young virgins) in public, amid
the acclaim of musical instruments, the chanting of beautiful
liturgies, and the hosanna shouts of the mob.
MAN THE CARNIVORE
The modern prelate does not employ the rude smoking
gully-knife, but uses other weapons, ten times more keen and more
destructive. For every human sacrifice 'offered-up' in olden times,
millions are offered now.
Professor Huxley pictorially describes an African butcher's
shop, where human steaks, roasts and sirloins, were systematically
retailed.
Josephus tells us of mothers who ate their own infants
during the last siege of lerusalem, and in many later sieges human
flesh has been consumed.
Oriental traditions record of King Richard Lion Heart, that
once upon a time when presiding at a feast of moslem heads, he
remarked with grim matter-of-factness "one roast Saracen made
good entertainment for nine of ten of my good Christian men." An
English Crusading rhymer is even proud of this: —
" King Richard shall warrant,
There is no flesh so nourissant,
Unto an English Man;
Partridge, plover, heron, ne swan,
Cow, ne ox, sheep, ne swine,
As the (roast) head of a Sarazan."
Very intelligent New Zealand aboriginals may still be
found, who describe with much apparent gusto, how (in
comparatively recent dates) they satiated their ravenous hunger, by
banqueting all night upon the grilled flesh of foemen they had
tomahawked during the day. Neither is it uncommon to hear
tattooed old veterans, tell how war-captives were penned up like
cattle and fattened upon each other, until required for the tribal
oven (formed of red-hot stones, paved into an oval hollow in the
ground): — how then the fattest were selected, one by one taken out,
systematically bled, disembowelled and hung up by the heels on
85
MIGHT IS RIGHT
neighboring trees; just as sheep, swine, and cattle are exposed for
sale, in our own abattoirs and meat-markets. The Maoris also have
a tradition, that if a man kills and eats his enemy, he by doing so,
absorbs all the dead man's vitality, strength, and courage.
In the nascent Colony of New Zealand, missionaries,
soldiers, whalers and pioneers were often cooked and eaten; but by
a general consensus of epicurean opinion the 'Pakeha's' flesh was
voted bad form, principally because it was 'too tough and too salty.'
During the War of Secession, Northern infantrymen
accidently imprisoned in a Virginian mine, devoured each other one
at a time; the last man (John Ewing) dying of hunger, and leaving
a written record of the facts, sealed up in a flask.
The story of Sawny Bean is well known, also the classical
legends of the Cyclops, the Giants, the Phalaris Bull, the Moloch
holocausts and Homer's Polyphemus.
Anthropophagy has been practiced in Australia, both by
whites and blackfellows. In New Guinea and portions of Africa,
man-eating is quite an ordinary custom to this hour. Marcus Clarke
describes how Gabbet, an English-born Botany Bay convict,
induced his prison comrades to escape with him (into the bush) in
order that he might have a holiday and feast, picking their succulent
bones and sucking out the marrow thereof.
All over continental Europe there is a popular superstition
that Jew Rabbis steal and murder Christian infants and maidens, in
order to use the blood on the door-lintels, at Passover and other
ceremonials.
A similar charge was brought against the early Christians,
and even proved in the Imperial Law Courts, if we are to judge by
the verdicts.
Human fat is regularly retailed in modern drug stores and
human heads are even how a marketable commodity in the South
Seas. There are also mystic brotherhoods in our mist, whose
initiates pledge fidelity, and obligate themselves to life-long
secrecy, by drinking blood out of a skull, over emblems of violent
death — with daggers pointed at their throats.
The foundation stones of many famous buildings, palaces,
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
castles, temples, and monuments, have been emblematically laid
upon the living body of a man — the Kremlin for example.
Is not the Communion Service allegorical anthropophagy?
Is it not a pious periodical cannibal feast in more ways than one?
Does not the wine symbolize human blood, and the wafers typify
human flesh?
Metaphorically considered, every trading Christian State is
a meat market, wherein the flesh, bones, and blood not only of men,
but of women and little children are bought and sold daily —
'offered up' nominally for the 'Love of God' really for the Love of
Dollars.
Atrocities of the most revolting description are of daily,
hourly occurrence, not only in Turkey and Siam, but in New York
and Chicago; not only in Cuba and Port Arthur, but in London,
Madrid, and Paris; not only in Mashonaland, and on the Congo, but
in St. Petersburg and Berlin. Men, women, and little children are
being everywhere starved slowly to the grave, worked till they fall
down, driven insane by legislation, and even tortured to death, inch
by inch.
Great financial corporations (backed by the State) directed
mostly by Hebrews, literally coin Great Empires into golden
dividends; and upon the share lists of mortgage banks and man-
devouring institutions generally, may be found the names ol
bishops, popes, preachers, generals, governors, statesmen — anc
other human Carnivores by the thousand. He who doubts, should
look up the official share registers, and behold the long rows ol
adorable names belonging to High Priests, Philanthropists and
Rulers, appearing thereon.
Cannibalism was practiced in Ancient Greece at the period
of highest culture. Herodotus describes Asian feasts where man's
flesh was the chief dish; and down to the Thirteenth Century the
Tibetans were in the habit of making their parents into broth.
There are confraternities still in existence, into which no
one is ever admitted until he has first killed a man. Among the
Dyaks (as among our own ancestors) a youth is never considered a
full-grown person capable of founding a home until he has slain at
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MfGHT IS RIGHT
least one enemy in battle. The Thugs of India (a religious sect)
brought the science of holy murder, by strategic violence, to such a
pitch of perfection that they have never been surpassed — not even
by Grant or Moltke.
The Kinderawas of India, make a regular practice of eating
all their diseased, useless, senile, and decrepit relations; just as
packs of wolves fall upon any of their number that is seriously
wounded in foray.
In portions of Sumatra, law-breakers are neither imprisoned
nor electrocuted, but actually carved up and eaten alive — piece by
piece. The Capanagugas of South America make of their own
stomachs the sepulchre of their dead relatives. A funeral with them
is a banquet— the collation being a corpse. The Terra Del Fuegans
throttle and eat all very old women.
The Monbuttas of Central Africa carry on aggressive wars
to capture flesh food. They also dry human flitches in the sun and
smoke them for export.
During the Tae Ping rebellion, Chinese soldiers (under
General Gordon) were in the habit of cutting out and devouring the
hearts of their dead enemies (on the battle-field) like the Maoris and
Britons.
Mistresses were specially kept by opulent ancient
Peruvians, to breed sucklings— for the table. When these women
became too old for child-bearing, they were likewise cast into the
pot, as useless incumbrances. In 1782 more than forty gypsies were
executed in Austria, upon a proved charge of cannibalism. The case
of the herdsman Goldsmidt, must not be forgotten; nor the
gruesome London legends, regarding sausages being manufactured
out of dead cats, dead dogs, dead paupers, and murdered sailors.
The Ancient Scandinavians, Teutons, Celts, (vide St.
Jerome) Sythians, Mongols, Sarmatians, Canaanites, Goths, and
Huns were all anthropophagy.
Indeed the detailed facts of how men have tortured each
other for pleasure, revenge, or profit, would fill 10,000 volumes.
No man in his lifetime could read or comprehend all the horrors
that have been perpetrated say in the Tower of London, the Paris
MAN THE CARNIVORE
Bastille, the Spanish Inquisition, the Rhine Castle Dungeons, by the
Bridge of Sighs, the Bosphorous, or in the prison-hells of Chicago,
Newgate, Mazas, Siberia, Sing Sing, New Caledonia, Botany Bay
or Van Dieman's Land. The cold-blooded cruelty of man to man,
surpasses anything that poet-cranks could conceive of, as
happening in hell. Cannibalism undoubtedly originated amid over-
crowded populations in some pre-historic age. Among moderns
(civilized and savage) it merely exists as a survival of social
conditions which have long since passed away. At some former era
of the world's profoundly mysterious history, men-animals
increased in swarming myriads as they are doing now; until at last
on the surface of the soil there was scarcely standing room for all.
Then the air became laden with the reeking effluvia of their
strumous bodies, breeding decimating pestilences, cholera, small-
pox, leprosy, poisoning the wells and rivers, and transforming
Baby Ions into charnel houses and tombs. The rearing of tame cattle
for food in such an environment, probably became too expensive
and cumbersome. Perhaps even the cattle would also be swept
away by some blight or rinderpest. Under such horrible
circumstances, survivors might from necessity resort to
anthropophagy. Gradually the new habit would grow upon them
and become a settled custom.
The segmental fragments of pre-historic civilizations are —
the Cannibal Savages of to-day — the savages that we are
displacing, pushing aside in order that we may enslave them and
repeat over again the same weary old round of growth, power, and
decay.
Shoploads of dead soldiers, dug out of old battlefields,
possess a regular commercial value. They are imported into
England, to be chemically treated and manufactured into fertilizers
for enriching exhausted wheat fields. Human hair commands a
steady sale, and "cadavers" may be bought for dissection, in any
great city for a dollar, c.o.D.
The tanning of human skins for glove-making and book-
binding (Meudon!) is an old established industry.
The transfusion of blood from animals into human veins,
MIGHT IS RIGHT
and from healthy humans into unhealthy ones (for a price), is
regularly practiced by medical men. The grafting of flesh, bone,
and skin, has also been successfully performed.
American sheriffs and detectives hunt down tramps and
criminals with specially trained bloodhounds, just as Russians hunt
wolves, and sheep farmers hunt coyotes and dingos. It is nowise
unusual for Negroes to be first captured, then chained to a stake,
flayed alive, soaked in kerosene, and burnt to death amid exultant
shrieks of corybantic delight.
Roman Senators fattened their lampreys and eels upon the
drowned bodies of old worn out slaves and patrician maids and
matrons (with uplifted thumb) sent many a gladiator to kingdom
come. For innate cruelty of deed, no animal can surpass woman.
In Mahometan Europe boys are unsexed by the lancet, that
they may thereafter be more safely employed as harem attendants
and in Christian Europe 'eunuchs are made and trained and priced,
to sing the praise of a risen Christ.'
Young girls are nightly bought and sold for currency, like
horses and hogs at the street corners; and upon the profits of
licensed polyandry 'pillars of the church' become millionaires.
Even the salaries of fulminating evangelists are paid out of Rahab's
rent.
Baths of human blood are not unknown to students of
history; and Jack the Ripper, with his letters written in harlot's
blood; enclosing pieces of fried woman's liver to the London Chief
of Police, is certainly not a fabulous ancient legend.
Is this the record of a breed of 'dearly beloved brethren?'
What hollow mockery these holy phrases are, to be sure?— The
Brotherhood of man! Ha! Ha! The Brotherhood of Devils rather!
Allegorically speaking the clothes we wear — the houses we
live in — the food we eat— the books we read, have been carved (by
force) out of other men's bones and flesh. Literally they are the
hides, sinews, flesh, pulp, and outer woolen covering of captive
animals, transmuted by human slavery into garments, lumber,
implements, thoughts, shoes, and daily dinners. Indeed man's
tushes are against all other animate beings whatsoever; and in turn,
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MAN THE CARNSVORE
their fangs are against him. So it goes on, and on, and on, as merrily
as marriage bells. Vise Yictus! And behold, it is good!
This world is no Nirvana, where peaceful pleasure flows.
It is a gruesome butcher-shop, where slain men hang in rows.
From the scientific point of view, it is but a single step from
the eating of captive cattle, horses, sheep, hares, rabbits, deer, hogs,
etc. to the eating of captive men.
It may grate upon unstrung nerves to be harshly told these
gruesome facts in straight language. However, calm, sensible
readers must unreservedly admit that Man is not a pretty, harmless
little cherub; not even a 'lamb,' but the fiercest, most ferocious,
most cunning, and most bloodthirsty of all the vertebrates. He is tht
fighting, roving, pillaging, lusting, cannibalistic animal, pa
excellence — the King of the Great Carnivore. When he takes hi:
walks abroad, the 'wild beasts' of the field and the birds of the ah
even the most courageous of them, are stricken dumb. Shuddering
they fly from his shadow (or his odor down the wind) hiding in
trembling and quaking with terror.
It is man's destructive energy — not his altruism; that makes
him absolute monarch of all the surveys; and yet, how feeble he is
if compared to the powers of Nature that gave him being? No other
beast will stand and face him, except if it cannot run away — not
even a snake, a tiger, or a wolf.
Structurally, men are fashioned for purposes of inflicting
and suffering pain. Every human anatomy is an elaborate nerve and
bone infernal machine — a kind of breathing, perambulating
Juggernaut — a superb engine of lethal immolation that
automatically stokes its furnace fires with its victims.
Men rush upon each other (or upon their prey) with hoarse
war-shouts and bloodshot eyes, as prowling beasts of the deserts
and jungles do. Man banquets upon his quarry with greediness,
snarling, and growling with ferocious triumphant delight, just like
unto wolves; but he loves to act the hypocrite — turn up the whites
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
of his protesting eyes to 'heaven'— weep crocodile tears over his
mangled, bleeding, and palpitating carrion. How exultantly he lilts
his Te Deum, his Kyrie Eleison, his Et in terra pax, his Glorias, and
his Alleluias; while with blood-clotted jaw and distended paunch he
licks his gaping wounds?
As the painted Redskin chants his vengeful ghost-song; so
the furious Paleface whoops his double-leaded editorial. As the
hungry lion roars at midnight on African karoo, or in Himalayan
jungle; so the piratical Anglo-Teuton roars his "Battle Hymn of
the Republic" his "Brittania Rules the Waves," or his "Watch
by the Rhine." Exactly as the Moslem fanatic yells "Allah Akbar,"
while slicing up hated 'Christian dogs,' so the vicious Englishman
thunders forth his "Hip, Hip, Hurrah!" while driving an elegant
bayonet-dagger into the liver of 'wicked heathens,' whose property
he thereafter annexes — as a matter of course; for 'business is
business, don't you know.'
Man's anatomy, external and internal; his eyes, his teeth, his
muscles, his blood, his viscera, his brain, his vertebra; all speak of
fighting, passion, aggressiveness, violence, and prideful egoism.
Even the component elements of a human body are
themselves in a constant state of internecine warfare. Our bony
framework and pulsating tissues, are vast campaigning grounds;
whereon microscopical animalculae in countless myriads, fight out
their ephemeral lives, as we ourselves do — with tooth and claw.
When one swarm of microbes, germs, or spores conquer (in the
struggle for sustenance) disease, or death supervenes to us, as the
case may be. When rival hosts vanquish, then our flesh, nerves,
bones, and blood become their happy hunting grounds, and our
health returns — at least until the bacilli-battalions have finally
eaten us out; or they have been, themselves, conquered and
exterminated by fiercer swarms.
It is not improbable that this earth itself is a living breathing
organism and that the Tribes of Man are microbes and
bloodsucking vermin (on its outer cuticle) imagining themselves
'the whole thing.' Just as itch-creating parasites burrow themselves
into our own hide, so (in our own turn) we may be unpleasant
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
parasites, burrowing in the hide of some nobler and grander Being.
7
From youth to hoary age, man takes an instinctive delight in
all that pertains to warfare and the chase.
As a boy he twangs his arrows at the sparrows, trains and
loads his toy-cannon, marshals his tin soldiers, brandishes his
wooden sword, fights his mimic battles, builds his snow
fortifications on the play ground; and the proudest day of his life is
that on which he becomes the proprietor of 'a real gun.'
As a full grown citizen he practices homicide with repeating
rifle, at moving targets — slaughtering tame pigeons with choke-
bore breechloaders — hunts foxes, wolves, bears, pumas, over
mountain and mere — wades up to his neck in swamps to kill teal,
and travels to far lands in search of Big Game and nigger shooting.
The Indian fighters of North America take supreme joyance
in slaying red devils; and to 'pot a blackfellow' in Queensland is
boasted of round camp-fires under gum trees, as — 'great fun.'
The Cape of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, North
and South America, have been made into veritable human shambles
and gory hunting grounds, within the memory of middle-aged men.
Indeed the delight which men take in slaying wild animals, is
tameness itself, compared with the exultation they display in
hunting, trailing and slaughtering each other.
Man-hunts were organized systematically in Lacadaemon,
when the helots became too numerous and too restive. It is not
improbable that as our own surplus 'submerged tenths' increase in
numbers, they may be thinned out by similar battues.
At every meal we rend flesh, scrape bones, suck marrow,
and daintily lap blood; just as our hairy troglodyte progenitors did.
The food supply of all Christian nations is composed of the body
and blood — the hides and marrow of both human herds and vast
swarms of inferior brutes, living, dying, dead. The lives of
countless hordes of hirelings, are daily being transmuted into juicy
steaks and sirloins; that those who have money may buy and eat
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
thereof. Not only do we ferociously compete for prey i.e. for
subsistence; but we literally eat each other with voracity, relish, and
mutual toleration. Thus properly understood, Darwinism is not very
comforting doctrine for fat men.
Public buildings and frowning fortresses; capitols and
prisons; 'temples of freedom' and cross-crowned cathedrals, have
(every one of them) been constructed upon exactly the same
general principles whereby the Pyramids of On and the Palaces of
Nineveh were built— every riveted girder, every iron transom,
every block of concrete, every solid, squared, and polished stone,
has been bedded literally on a dying groan; by the hands of
dehumanized and conquered decadents, insensate, — 'of reason
void, of reverence full.'
There is nothing immoral, nothing abnormal, in these grim
facts. All is in strict harmony with that cosmic enactment— the
Survival of the Strongest.
In the proud language of Germany's chansonist: —
"The living current through the air is heaving,
Breathing blessings, see them bending;
Balanced worlds from change defending,
While everywhere diffused is harmony unending."
Instinctively we understand that the struggle for existence is
absolutely needful. We feel that Nature makes no mistakes, and
therefore we accept her dicta because we must; not because it has
been eloquently formulated, by sublimated visionaries; or re-
echoed, again and again, by thousands of human microphones.
8
When not thwarted by artificial contrivances, whatever
argument Nature promulgates is — Right. The further man gets
away from Nature, the further he departs from right. To be right is
to be natural, and to be natural is to be right. The sun shines,
therefore it is right that it should shine— the rain falls, therefore it
is right that it should fall — the tides ebb and flow, therefore it is
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
right that they should ebb and flow.
Darwin's law exists — may be seen in operation — is
practicable — of daily demonstration— therefore it also is right. It is
not a dream like 'Religion,' it is not an invention like 'Morals'; it is
not an assumption like 'God.' It is a cosmic Fact, like the sunshine,
the rain, and the tides! Nature does not set up Idols, does not found
Superstitions, does not invent Decalogues. These toys and fetters
have been constructed by man, for his own infinite — damnation.
Neither morals, laws, nor creeds are First Principles, but
they may (probably) have their uses; just as guillotines, and
gardeners' hoes have their uses. They may be convenient engines
for the deletion of Lower Organisms, for extirpating individuals of
infantile intellect. Indeed the secret object of all superstitions
possibly is, to provide an ultra-rational sanction for fraudulent
standards of Right and Wrong.
To base a Lie upon a Myth is certainly much safer than to
base it on a Reality, for you cannot run a tape-measure over a Myth.
Christliness, as social quietism, has never yet been accepted
by men of super-eminent strength, courage, and wisdom. Such men
have everywhere regarded the Christ Ideal as a model for slavish
souls only — to be humored for strategic purposes but never
practiced by masters, conquerors, kings. "Don't do as I do, but do
as I say" has ever been the dicta of High Priests and Rulers — to
docile multitudes.
The evolution of sovereignty satisfactorily exhibits this
ethical dictatorship, as an historical commonplace. Moral codes,
(always and everywhere imposed upon the common people by
'immoral' combinations of cumulative craft) are never obeyed by
Ruling Castes.
If the Masters of Christiandom are to be judged by Moral
Codes, by the Common Law, or by Gospel Injunctions, There is not
one 'moral' individual among them. Measured by Religio-Ethical
dogmas, they are one and all, an amalgamated Mafia of
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IVHGHT IS RIGHT
blackmailers, confidence-men, thieves, murderers and infidels. As
far as the codes are concerned, honesty must undoubtedly be
searched for among the dregs of society, rather than among the
elite. But it is essentially unjust to measure the Conquerors of
Mankind by fallacious Christly standards. Christ, together with his
moral measuring rod, is their subordinate agent— an effective
instrument of State.
Indeed 'Moral Principles' are one of the tricks in the game
of 'dog eat dog'; all are playing. They are effectively narcotized out
of the deal, who fancy themselves 'Safe in the arms of Jesus.'
Never yet has there been a Christian king, a Christian
president, a Christian congress, not a Christian synod. Of course
many prominent celebrities have professed Christianism — for
example: Judas Iscariot, St. Peter, Torquemada, Cromwell,
Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Gladstone, and Jabez Spencer
Balfour: but only minds paralytic judge of men by professions.
Christian and Ruler are direct contradictions.
The ridiculous ineffectuality of all Gospel Theories, shows
that they were only invented as campaign lies.
Christ explicitly condemns the use of force, and yet all
existent nations (without exception) were founded by unlimited
throat-cutting and piracy. The rulers of the world, the directors of
concentrated Power, are not now, and never have been, sad-eyed
Saviors — mournful, immaculate tramp-gods — but masters of
majestic violence. To use the language of Isaiah, not only Zion, but
every nation on earth 'has been built with blood.' Nations cannot
be built otherwise.
The Romans first appear in history as a gang of banditti —
the English as a nest of pirates — the Germans as a horde of roving
freebooters — the Russians as a band of mounted horse-thieves —
the Americans as pious anarchists and nigger stealers — the
Australians as exiled cut-purses — the Turks as Bedouin brigands.
Everywhere symbols of Kingship, tribal totems, and
insignia of state, speak of Violence, Defiance and War.
The fasces carried before a Roman Praetor, consisted of an
axe for chopping necks, and a bundle of rods for whipping backs.
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
The Mace of the English parliamentary organization, of which the
American system is an imitative offshoot ('that bauble of
Cromwell') also all Royal Sceptres are but carved and gilded clubs.
Originally both Mace and Sceptre were in daily use for breaking
recalcitrant skulls. They are still emblematic of Legislative
Authority — and offensive Violence — as much so indeed, as the
knotted bludgeon, the barbed lance, or the greenstone skullsplitter
of an orthodox cannibal chief.
National crests are selected, not as a rule from doves, lambs,
goats, magpies, and hares; but from lions, tigers, she-wolves,
serpents, dragons, bears, eagles, and the Fighting Man.
In the centres of 'our highest civilization,' force is
recognized as the underlying principle of Authority. Between
nation and nation it is in constant requisition, as the basis of all
diplomacy, and between contending factions (within the nation) it
is often effectively applied. The policeman's loaded truncheon, the
huzzar's slicing sabre, and the artillery company's field piece, are
still the ultimo ratio of Order, Liberty, Peace. The maxim-gun is a
development, and a decided improvement upon the old time
bludgeon; especially when dealing with rabid revolutionary
masses. One of those beautiful engines and a half dozen trained
men, if supplied with plenty of ammunition, could wipe out in half
a day, the largest mob of would-be insurgents that London, Paris, or
Chicago ever saw. "We have found in most cases that one regiment
of regular infantry, is quite capable of managing the biggest and
wildest mob" writes millionaire editor Kohlsaat. Chicago Times-
Herald. (13- 11 -'96.)
When citizens disobey legal 'regulations' they are generally
interviewed at first, by a blue-coated 'guardian of the Peace,' with
an official warrant and varnished club; who tamely leads them
away to a State dungeon, or indicts them before a State Inquisitor.
Behind the armed police and the suave Judge, stand in threatening
array, the whole military and naval forces of Government and Law.
Law Courts and Thrones are (de facto) built upon bayonets.
Likewise all Statutes, Constitutions, and Moral Codes are written
by the Sword. Material Strength is now, and ever has been, and ever
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
must be, the true basis upon which all political institutions rest. No
other foundation is feasible.
What the sword has established the sword must defend.
Symbolic thereof, every emperor and president, every sultan, king,
shah, or savage chief, is proclaimed before drilled legions and
raucous multitudes; amid the fan-fare of battle trumpets — the
unsheathing of battle-sword — and the thundering roar of battle-
cannon. Two examples, from two continents,— from two different
systems of Government,— may be quoted as sufficient proof of
this: —
Sir Edwin Arnold describes the recent Coronation of the
Emperor or Russia, an hereditary absolute monarch: — "Behind and
between the royal chairs, stood the new Commander of the silver-
eagled regiment, his saber bared and gleaming." When cannon
volleys, and booming across two continents, from Riga to
Vladivostock, announced the final crowning of their Suzerian;
2,000,000 Sclavonian warriors bared their heads in
acknowledgement, clanged their weapons in token of pride, and
swore eternal allegiance.
"Governor John R. Tanner (of Illinois) mounted on a black
horse, and wearing a broad-brimmed felt hat, with gold braid and
tassel (also, cavalry saber) will ride down Pennsylvania Avenue
(Washington) at the head of the First Regiment .... National
Guards, in the President's inaugural .... crack Illinois soldiery
marching .... next the President's Personal Escort .... Troop A.
8th Infantry .... Along with the regiment will go to the gun corps
and the Galling guns that did service .... During the Debs
insurrection." The President of these United States, an elective
Monarch, is Commander-in-Chief of the federal armed forces: and
possesses more administrative authority than any Asiatic despot.
Every military and naval officer in England receives his
commission direct from the Queen. Until recently it was customary
at Coronation ceremonials for an hereditary Champion (armed cap-
a-pie) to ride out into the courtyard and there, before assembled
commoners, knights, nobles, generals; officially challenge to
personal encounter, anyone who dared to even question the royal
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
titles.
European land-title deeds may be (in every instance) traced
back to military and kingly power. In all the English colonies, waste
lands are occupied and cleared, under 'Crow grants.' The same
principle prevails in this Republic and among all savage tribes.
10
By force all things that exist are evolved maintained and
perpetuated. Force aggregates and separates the atoms that go to
make up this cosmic universe of mind and matter. It integrates them
into forms, organic and inorganic. It disintegrates them again and
again. It builds up and pulls down, without the slightest respect to
man's wishes or desires. It theorizes, creates, constructs, annihilates,
attacks, and repels. It is literally in all, through all, and over all.
Even the undulatory migration of races, that now proceeds
(over sea and continent,) in great animalistic waves, as it did in the
days of Akbar and Tamerlane, is also the vibrations of force, acting
through human media. It is the incarnate pulsations of Power.
Antiquarian delvings in America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and
the Islands of the Sea, corroborate the written annals, folk-lore, and
legends of tribes and nations. The past of this pendant ball, is one
long awe-inspiring chronicle of cannibalisms, invasions,
ravishments, cataclysms, 'battle, murder, and sudden death.'
The surface of the soil is a lethal chamber — the bottom of
the sea is a channel house. Both are littered from pole to pole with
the ruins of forgotten 'civilizations' that men and nature have
delighted to destroy. Everywhere and always the debilitated have
perished, everywhere and always the mightiest have won. As it was
in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, Power, Slavery, Pain,
Joyance, side by side.
Races of Helots are never wanting! See to it O 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 laurel and losers
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
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 animalcuke, moth or mollusk, 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' —
that 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
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
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 going to hell. Nay,
they are already in it! "The smoke of their torment ascendeth upon
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) totally
useless and totally vile. Selective influences that operate under
natural conditions, have been kept in abeyance by religions and
moral isms; 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 animalculae. 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 were unlimited. Humanitarian
institutionalisms have been invented to handicap and eliminate the
elite of mankind — vainly however.
With 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.
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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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MAN THE CARNIVORE
11
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 judgement 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 oppositions.
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 ever you 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, when his massive blade bore down
the scales against her ransom weighed; and on the field of foughten
battle still, woe knows no limits — save the victor's will."
'The Survival of the Fittest' is the scientist's translation of
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
the heroic age's 'Viae 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 the speaks with astuteness. All sacerdotalisms 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 judgements 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 up 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.'
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MAN THE CARNIVORE
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; where
you can buy statesmen with a snuff-box— editors with a dollar
and — 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."
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
To act as the hunted ostrich on an African karoo — to hide
our heads from cosmic vengeance in hot pursuit, is as futile and
ridiculous as it is base. No empiric reorganization of the social
system— not 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 Shalt Nots,'
can deliver whimpering defectives, from the wrath that is their just
reward. Sooner or later their 'Day of Judgement' cometh; bringing
in its train 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 is 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.
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MAN THE CARNiVORE
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 living 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 results of chronic ballot-
boxing. Alcoholism and politics are convenient Destructives —
Crematories; whereby weak-minded 'flocks' may eliminate
themselves with beneficent 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 were clearly
realized.
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MIGHT fS RIGHT
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 has 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 or 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 Christhng.
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 thee on one
cheek, turn the other to him and the other also."
But I say unto you:— "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!
Courage I say! Courage! and evermore Courage! Even the
stars in their courses fight for the bold.
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The Chsef End of Manhood
Material Success
Chapter c
"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 over 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-tern 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
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
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.
Power and proprietorship cover a multitude of sins — of
alleged sins; but men and women, (especially women) have an
overflowing fund of sympathy and forgiveness — for the 'Bold Bad
Man' if he is victorious. How women admire men of leonine
resolution and Eagle Principles. How they detest cowardice,
'goodness,' feebleness, effeminacy, failure. There is no character in
history so universally applauded, as the bold 'bad' rebel and the
mighty conqueror.
Therefore get you gold and land and power somehow. If
foiled and baffled one way, try another. Where there's a will, there
are a thousand ways. If the worn and beaten tracks are intentionally
blockaded against you, do not hesitate to cut-out a new highway
through the jungle — for yourself. Never mind the pulpiteers and
editors. They are hired to blind and blockade you. Above all things
do not follow the multitude, for it tramples downward, ever
downward along Via Del Mortes to abysses of poverty, chains, and
shame. Retreat not, turn not aside to the right hand nor to the left,
but zig-zag on. Ask no quarter, no sympathy. 'Die the death' rather
than surrender and perishing — strike at your conqueror. 'Withhold
not good from him to whom it is due, when it is in the power of
thine hand to do it.' But withal be honorable and upright; never
forgetting that bravery (which includeth all other virtues) is the
highest wisdom — and material success the chief end of man.
'Upward thou must rise, or falter— bend the neck and stand
triumphant— be the anvil or the hammer.'
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD -MATERIAL SUCCESS
Battle and conquer Here and Now, for behold! — to-
morrow you die! you die!— and that is the end of you. Let
Napoleon's ideal be thine. Napoleon was Darwin on horseback.
When addressing the ragged and famishing army of Italy, these
were his words: — "Soldiers! abundance courts you in the fertile
plains below — (the plains of Italy) ... are you deficient in
constancy and courage?" Events proved that they were not
deficient in constancy and courage.
Consequently the spoils of Italy and the stored-up treasures
of the great Venetian Bank were equalized among them.
Everywhere similar conditions have prevailed absolutely, and
always will prevail. There is land for the taking, and gold for the
raking; and fame, and power, and song; for the brave, the bold, and
the strong — and for none other. Therefore, be thou a Napoleon —
do not be a Christ.
Get you Property by whatever method comes easiest to you.
Reverting to terms economic 'but power in the cheapest market and
sell it in the dearest.' Gratify your life-hopes as the lions and eagles
do, i.e. along the lines of least resistance — even as do growing
plants in a dark cellar. Do they not endeavor to reach sunshine by
the most direct route.
Scorn all insolent dictation as to right and wrong. Decide
right and wrong for yourself. Get property, honestly if you can; but
remember 'business is business.' ("Mr. Cecil Rhodes under heavy
fire for fifteen minutes, captured one herd of cattle himself.")*
Life is life and defeat is hell. Obey thine Inner Voice! It can
never err. It is thy very soul. Be a Darwin in active operation. Do
noble deeds, don't dream about them all thy life long.
'Moral principles' you say! What are moralisms that they
should paralyze your arm and brain? Are they not artificial human
enactments, apparently sanctified; but not necessarily natural,
honest, just, or true? Moral codes are the Black Terror of all
dastards.
The ethical principles of Christendom, judging by daily
St. James Gazelle, '96. cablegram from Mashonaland.
MIGHT IS RIGHT
developments, are the principles of a mocking, sneaking, hypocritic
devil— if there is a devil.
Readers must distinctly understand that sexual morality is
nowise condemned in these pages. In all sexual relations (as in
everything else) 'morality' is what Strength decrees. Women are
frail beings at the best of times and in their secret hearts are
probably lovers of the unlimited. For the welfare of the breed, and
the security of descent, they must be held in thorough subjection.
Man has captured them and besides providing for, and protecting
them it is necessary to keep them 'on the chain' as it were. Woe
unto him, woe unto them, and woe unto our Race, if ever these
lovable creatures should break loose from mastership, and become
the rulers or equals of Man. (But that is impossible.) From the
earliest ages, Man has captured his wife by force or stratagem and
to this day he does the same. Marriage ceremonies symbolize his
proprietorship — his capture. The marriage ring is one link of a
chain, emblematic of the fact that the pre-historic bridegroom
chained his 'beloved one' in a cave; till she became tame, tractable,
reciprocative.
The sexual degeneracy that is now so prevalent among us,
is the result of Christian Civilization; that is to say, the
Demonetization of Man and the equalization of woman. As long as
the husband is absolute Imperator within his own four walls, the
poisoning of the marriage bed (now so common, and so
loathsome), cannot take place. If his wife or an intruder dares to
dishonor him, their death is an effective deterrent. His daughters,
controlled with equal vigor, are not permitted to mate with every
strumous Dick, Tom, and Harry, that comes smirking along; but are
'given away' to men who are born of Good Stock; or who have
proved their inherent manhood and capacity — in carnivorous
combat.
In his sexual relations, the insolent interference of Church
and State, is gradually reducing Man to a mere cipher, and
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERIAL SUCCESS
establishing a system of organized concubinage; or rather
promiscuity. The records of our divorce courts show that sexual
infidelity is spreading like wildfire. A prominent New Yorker has
publicly asserted that two-thirds of the 'married' women in that city
are systematically unfaithful; and a fat sordid priestling (named
Moody) openly advises his female lambs, to enter into the joys of
'godly freedom' via that harlot factory, the Divorce Court.
A woman is two-thirds womb. The other third is a network
of nerves and sentimentality. To 'emancipate' her, is to hand her
over to the tender mercies of clerics, who have learned to
'play'upon her emotionalism. Then Credos become illegitimately
powerful and even try to dictate 'the whole duty of Man.' After a
time diabolical pastor-theories inspire politics and rule nations.
Then the State becomes the individual's Dictator. Man are
demonetized while degeneracy and socialistic hybridism sets in,
like a slimy flood.
Prostitution (for hire) is also the direct outcome of unnatural
conditions, brought about and established, by the harmonious
infernalism of statesmen and prelates. In many countries this vile
thing is 'regulated' by law, and in all great cities it is a sure source
of revenue, not only to the police forces, but to every man who
invests in real-estate or banking scrip. A great city is a great ulcer,
and a great ulcer is a sure symptom of congenital blood poisoning.
Undoubtedly the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah was a good
thing.
If our modern Sodoms were all razed to the ground, how
Nature in all her perennial purity would rejoice exultantly? How
she would wrap their tombs and crumbling tumuli with a blaze of
shining glory.
If development persists along present lines, the time is not
remote when it shall be truthfully recorded: "There is no marriage
in America." A terrible menace to manhood lurks in the dictation of
Slave Majorities in this as in all other affairs. Under the plausible
form of Divorce Proceedings, a devilish enginery has been
established; by means of which the once pure Saxon Invaders of
North America, are rapidly transforming themselves into hordes of
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
semi-socialistic free-lovers.
The sanctity of the Home is disappearing. No longer can it
be asserted that a 'man's house is his castle.' Marriages are
becoming proportionately less and less; and baby-farming by the
Government, is in full blast. Home life is withering away under the
blight of State Interference and Pastoral Benediction.
Look over at France where (with the growth of government
supervision) the absolutism of the husband is attenuated to a mere
fiction — and what do you see? A nation steeped in communistic
eroticism, as in a stygian sewer. French women are notoriously
unfaithful, and the most horrible sexual lusts are practiced and
pleasantly laughed at. There promiscuity results in barrenness; and
this, when supplemented by correlated self-sterilization, is rapidly
transmuting the once all-powerful Frankish Confederacy, into a
feeble and decaying tribe of wasted marasma-struck manlings,
sheltering themselves beneath the all-protecting wing of an Asiatic
Despot.
The title of a man to the proprietorship of his wife does not
originate with Church, or State, or Majority Votes. It is inherent in
the Man himself. It began in capture and is continued by capture,
modified of course by mutual affection,* mutual toleration, and
parental love. It existed before the State Monstrosity was invented,
and it must be maintained intact, even if both Church and State
(those twin devils), have to be utterly annihilated. The Christian
Church commenced operations among Roman slaves and Syrian
harlots. Its founder himself was the fruit of clandestine intercourse.
He never married but consorted with publicans, pariahs,
magdalenes, all his life. By his silence upon one famous occasion,
he condoned adultery; and in his nebulous Paradise (which
socialists and anarchists and other priestlings assert will 'come'
upon earth) he insinuatingly states there is 'no marriage or giving
in marriage.'
During the first three centuries 'Christians' was another
name for 'free lovers'— meeting in catacombs and secret places, to
* 'To nuptial bower he LED her, blushing like the morn.'
14
THE CHiEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERIAL SUCCESS
enjoy promiscuous sexualism, before the 'end of the world' came—
an event they expected every day, for three hundred years.
The leprous repulsiveness of medieval sodalities and
modern monasticism, is all too well known, and requires no more
than a passing allusion. 'The cells where corralled onanism dwells'
are as notorious as they are ultra-natural. Not only the lairs of male
and female celibates, but the vestries of churches and temples, have
ever been hot-beds of lasciviosness, seduction, and all
uncleanliness.
"The harlot is Christ's sister, and the tramp is Christ's
brother;" proclaims 'our dear comrade, W.T. Stead,' and he ought
to know. Has he not theatrically tried his hand at 'being a Christ'
(vide 'Liza Armstrong and Modern Babylon') — in order to turn an
honest penny?
In deference to Barbarian prejudices (after the Alaric and
Attila immigrations) the Early Church abandoned its communistic
Free Loverisms. But to provide holy sanctions and written authority
for its change of heart; monkish forgeries of 'Epistles from the
Saints' were manufactured on an extensive scale and cautiously
published throughout Europe.
To-day, with the advent of Triumphant Democracy, all vile
old slave-practices are being actively revived.
Verily! Verily! Triumphant Democracy, thou art a foul
thing!— Triumphant Desolation!— Triumphant Amphimixis! Lo!
this is the redeeming spirit that was to 'cleanse the heathen as white
as snow.'
Many modern chapels are little better than assignation
houses; and the tambourined, uniformed Christlings of the slum-
corners are boastfully recruited from the vilest of the vile. An
enterprising Chicago pastor has even started a free-love seraglio
(with himself as the divine Thunder Thrower) which he calls
'Heaven'; and one of its ugliest angels has boldly sworn in open
Court, that she was impregnated by the Holy Ghost; to whom she
bore a son — in the orthodox style.
Altogether primitive Christianity is in its renaissance.
Behold it cometh to pass! "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done,
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
on earth as it is in heaven" is being rapidly and joyously
materialized.
Deity hath established Himself as Statute Law. 'The State
which is the People' is His throne, and 'the Church which is
righteousness' is his footstool. Glory! Glory! Glory! 'All the ends
of the world hath seen the salvation of our God.' Behold
Christliness realizing itself through social institutionalisms! Behold
the golden harvests grown from the seed of Legislation!
O for the Barbarian swarms of the Danube and the Rhine ! —
for the Blonde Pirates from the Northern Seas! O for men of a
spirit, with lion hearts and lion brains!— for one cohort of True
Knights, who would consolidate their Hopes and Convictions into
Naked Swords! Alas! Alas! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! The age
of Chivalry is dead and gone, 'So sleeps the proud of former
days — so glory's thrill is o'er.'
3
In all practical operations, non-principled persons possess a
distinctive advantage over 'principled' ones. Honesty never
succeeds for when it succeeds, it is not honesty. There is not fair
play in Love or War; and all life is made up of Love and War.
Genuinely honest men, die as a rule like dogs — in a ditch; and in
their business affairs they are 'nowhere.' In their dotage or 'in
God's good time' — they (nearly always) go over the hill to State
Infirmaries, unknown, friendless.
What chance has a conscientious man, when pitted in
statesmanship, literature, or commerce, against the Organized
Knavery of sanctimonious and powerful cut-throats? To them he is
a pigeon to be plucked — a buck to be hunted — a criminal to be
chained — a madman to be made sport of— a lamb to be skinned —
a heretic to be — burnt alive.
Certainly it is not good strategy for a man to openly
proclaim his loss of faith in conventional moralisms; if he desires
to get-on in the world. A wiseling keeps his real sentiments on this
point to himself— guards them as his own life. The best mask for
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERIAL SUCCESS
moral heresy is one of pretended sanctity. It is very effective.
Nearly all the Higher Thieves are ostentatiously pious. Thus when
you hear pulpiteers and journalists vociferously proclaiming their
profound acquiescence in 'moral principles,' it is safe to conclude
that they are engineering some subterranean swindle.
'Belief is a war-strategem — an instrument of deceit, a
convenient falsification formula — a beautiful hood-wink. Hence it
is, that very religious and very holy persons, are almost always
thorough-going scoundrels at heart— utterly unreliable — utterly
untrustworthy. Generally their whole lives are one long drawn out
mendacity, and genuiness-of-Thought or Action is in their mind,
attenuated to a mere sham.
Politicians, authors, pastors, 'prophets,' historians,
philosophers, and editors, are notorious falsifiers of nature and
fabricators of subterfuge. Soaked in unnaturalism, saturated
through and through with delirium-breeding hashish-literature,
they become organically incapable of speaking, let alone of
thinking or writing honestly. Artificialism has trained them to be
prevaricators, and prevaricators they must remain until the clods
from the grave-diggers shovel rattle down on their coffin lids. As
the Old Man of the Mountains trained his fanatical Assassins, and
sent them forth to slay, so Civilization trains its Fiendling
Intellectuals and sends them forth to assassinate Human Nature.
They are the murderers of manliness — the regicides of Thought—
the annihilators of Heroism. Would that I had a legion of demons,
to wring their necks. They have smothered the grand and masterful
old Northern Realisms beneath pestiferous rubbish heaps of
Oriental Mythology — of Hebrew old clothes. They repeat
automatically in sounding diction, what has already been stuffed
into them, as it were, with a ramrod. Their learning is the learning
of the 'learned pig' in a menagerie; and their virtue is the virtue of
a conscientious Jesuit. March of Mind they call it! — 'As organs
grind the note they're set to . . . brains jejune . . Grind, year in year
out, the same Old Tune.'
JVHGHT fS RJCHT
The men who conspicuously 'succeed in life' —the generals
and nobles, merchant-princes, powerful prelates, opulent bankers,
wealthy manufacturers, never overload themselves with artificial
moral principles. In their secret hearts they utterly despise all
evangelisms and as for written law, they are above and beyond its
reach. Kings, conquerors, millionaires, are perpetually being
denounced for not abiding by Laws and Regulations enacted by
Majority Votes.
The man who plays 'the game of life' in strict accord with
certain cut and dried principles — principles that everybody knows
by heart, is not likely to come out a winner. He who in his younger
days, incommodes himself with copy-book moralisms and terror of
the Law; is like unto a soldier, who (before entering the battlefield)
ties his right hand behind his back and pledges himself to strike and
shoot his adversaries on one pre-arranged spot of their bodies only.
Could such a madman-soldier hope to conquer? What chance
would he have if pitted against brave, dauntless, well equipped
antagonists; who had not foolishly bound themselves by such a
stupid obligation?
"The right of Nature, which writers commonly call jus
naturale, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power for
the preservation of his own nature; that is to say his own life, and
consequently of doing anything, which in his own judgment and
reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereto" writes
Hobbes in his "Leviathan." The man who permits himself to be
directed and mastered by the insolent moral principles of the
Multitude, is like an eagle with clipped wings and broken talons.
In war, your chief end is to smash and paralyze your
enemy's combinations. To do this effectually you must meet wile
with wile, steel with steel , and blow with blow. You must be equally
prepared to fight in the open or fight under cover; to fight on sea,
to fight on land, or to fight in the air. You shall wage your own
war— you shall think your own thought. It is pusillanimity that
evolves the Slave, and breeds the Idolator. "Quit yourselves like
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men, O ye Philistines!"
Tacitus with true Roman stateliness observes: — "The gods
look with favor upon supreme courage"; and Herbert Spencer
savagely asserts that "a creature not energetic enough to maintain
itself must die." Cursed are the white-livered, they make excellent
fertilizer. Truly — "The seed of the wicked shall be cut off."
This age of ours wants men above all things— 'men of a
spirit' — men ever ready to look into the eyes of death, without
winking. Behold! I post up this New Proclamation. "The man who
made Justice was a Liar."
Whatever weapon your Enemy possesses, must be
duplicated, or improved upon by you. If it suits him to challenge
battle in open front, be sure and ambush him in the flank; or
straightway make a hidden detour and charge him in the rear. It is
your chief business to delude him, deceive him, decoy him, out-
general him, if you can. If moral scruples and fear of 'what the
world will say,' prevent you from doing this, then you were born to
subordination; and you had better surrender; for you can never
hope to vanquish. You must be born again.
'Over an open grave' ever lies the road to success. In 'the
worlds broad field of battle,' every man is a combatant; and to be a
successful combatant, he must not only be calculating, cool-
headed, and brave; but possessed of merciless strategy, a stout
heart, a strong arm, and quiet indomitable determination.
Even the Siamese twins waged a life-long civil war. Man, as
we have proved, is the King of the Great Carnivores. Homo,
Homini Lupus. By heredity and by training, all carnivores are
instinctively strategic in their hunt-operations. They lie in wait for
their prey, when they cannot capture it by other methods; but they
do not hesitate to hunt in the open, if it pleases them to do so. Great
animals (whether man or brute) never operate in strict accordance
with prearranged rules of procedure. If they did do so, they could
never prosper— and would die of hunger. Their greatness lies in
springing surprises — in doing exactly what their antagonists (or
intended quarry) don't expect them to do — in being beyond and
above all moral measurements whatsoever.
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Genius in a first-class commander is always exemplified,
not by his 'goodness,' but by the originality and aggressive
boldness of his pitiless tactics. When he is thought to be in full
retreat, he whirls around and annihilates his pursuers. When his
adversaries are preparing to give him a hot reception, 'he foldeth
his tents like the Arabs,' and silently wendeth away.
When it is whispered he will embattle his defensive legions
on the frontiers of the Fatherland; he bridges the Rhine and bounds
upon Paris with tooth and claw. When to invaders, he is expected to
abandon Moscow and retire; he burns it to the ground; and while
his foemen (imbedded in snow and ice) are freezing to death; he
shells them with his field batteries. When wiselings predict that he
will seize Gaul and establish a Colonial Dictatorship; he fords the
Rubicon, marches on Rome and throttles the Law. When his
nation's foemen are embattled on Italian plains, he crosses the
Punic foam and carries the war into Africa. When he is reported to
be assaulting Babylonian Ramparts he digs a new channel for 'the
River' and writeth "mene mene tekel upharisin" on Balshazaar's
walls. When defenders believe he will march up the Slope with
drums and banners gay he quietly scales the Heights of Abraham
(in the night) and captures Quebec. When western diplomats think
he is about to pounce on Constantinople; he runs Baldwin engines
through the Great Wall and stuffs the title deeds of the moribund
Chinese empire into his overcoat pocket.
5
The man-animal can never be rendered absolutely 'moral'
because by nature he is as full of wiles as a fox or a Jew. Should he
insanely endeavor to abandon his predatory propensities, then he
immediately begins to degenerate and ultimately becomes a feeble,
diseased, ghost-ridden monstrosity, a horror to look at. Therefore
those who conscientiously try to become 'honest' and 'good' are
permitting themselves to be sacrificed — as burnt offerings on Idol
Altars.
If all men were scrupulously honest, then honesty might be
[20
THE CHiEF END OF MANHOOD -MATERIAL SUCCESS
all right (although even that is questionable), but if one per cent are
deliberately dishonest, then it is assuredly all wrong. Under such
resultant circumstances the 'ninety nine' actually become victims
of 'the one.' Honest merchants are ruined by dishonest merchants,
honest commanders out-maneuvered by dishonest commanders,
honest workmen displaced by dishonest workmen, honest judges
undermined by dishonest judges, and honest nations reduced to
beggary and vassalage by dishonest nations.
Honesty is merely a policy — under given circumstances
'the best policy' — nothing more. In all departments of human
effort, honesty is used as a cloak for real designs; just as a wood, a
ravine, or a stretch of rising ground serves (in campaigning) to hide
squadrons deploying for flank movements.
Why then do parents inoculate the plastic minds of their
children, with false conceptions of moral conduct, when they
themselves must know (from personal experience) that all such
conceptions are a positive handicap in the race for Wealth and
Power. What a witless procedure, to teach Ideals (at home, at
school, and at college), that we know in our hearts, are thorough-
going Lies, and then expect nobility of personal conduct to be the
resultant? Turn out into the world a young man well trained in
'moral principles' and the chances are ninety-nine to one against
him.
Indeed the majority of men never win success until they are
middle aged; until they have had time to slough off the false
Idealisms, they began the world with. Un-naturalism has never yet
bred a race of heroes and never will. All great Races are predatory.
The 'hungry-to-eat-a-man,' tiger knows that if he first
growls out his intentions, and then openly bounds up to his
intended victim, he will (most probably) get an explosive bullet
neatly lodged in his cerebrum. Consequently he ambushes himself
hind the shadow of a rock or behind a log, and leaps upon his
'dinner' with varying results. It is the same— exactly the same,
among carnivorous bipeds. A few of them are tigers, hungry-to-eat-
a-man, and the rest are — tiger 's-meat, hungry to be eaten. The fact
is that Civilization's moralisms are wholly ultra-rational,
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fundamentally un-natural and utterly inoperative. Christian
principles and Natural principles mutually antagonize one another.
Nature is Anti-Christ. Darwinism is the mortal foe of Hebraism.
Nature's command is, "Be egoistic, possess the earth and
fight it out." Jesus insists, "Be altruistic, abandon the world, and
love your enemies." Darwin proclaims, "All ye are rival
carnivores! Be strong therefore, and bold, and fear— Nothing."
Christ teaches, "All ye are dearly beloved brethren. Be obedient
therefore and "good" and fear — Ghosts." Jesus urges his devotees
to PRAY for deliverance. Darwin gently intimates his heartfelt
belief in the Law of Battle. "He who will not work, neither shall he
eat" is the Apostolic pronunciamento. "He who will not fight,
neither can he eat" is Nature's savage logic.
"It is more blest to give than to receive" is the vacuous
baby-prattle of the Pastor. It is more blest to capture than to receive,
is ordinary Common Sense.
He who denies man's right to exploit man, impeaches, not
the conduct of man, but the order of nature.
Who then is right — the Anglo-Saxon or the Israelite? The
scientists of the oratorical wonder-worker? The Western thinker or
the Eastern dreamer? Which is the True Faith:— Japhet's logic or
Shem's Fabulism?
Common-sense provides no precise solution of Right or
Wrong. "All moral philosophy is false and vain," for man is
unlimited. In the realm of Ethics, most modern wiselings are
fanatical and unreasonable bigots. They really believe that Ethical
Principles are as a house built on a rock; whereas 'the House' is an
unfounded hypothesis, and 'the Rock' non existent.
Good and Evil liveth only in men's minds. They are not
Realities but shadows — credos — ghosts — and only the maddest of
the mad worship their own Shade.
What is Right — what is Wrong? These elemental
interrogatories have been asked in every age, and every age
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formulates replies to suit itself. De Facto Right and Wrong are no
more than arbitrary algebraic signs, representing hypnagogic
phantasies. They are mere symbols emblematic of belated
fragments of insolent ecclesiastical crudities. In nature, all
developments are essentially one and the same phenomenon
infinitely transfused and intermingled. Good and Evil are human
inventions, born of human foolery, narrowness, and short-
sightedness. The organic brain is far too small and too
contemptible, to completely comprehend what nature is driving at.
What appears to be wrong to us, may be right in nature, and vice
versa.
We can no more establish an infallible system of ethics,
than we can establish infallible systems of religion, philosophy or
politics. All the Universe is in a state of flux, and men are but a
swarm of querulous, heat-evolved insectivores, living aimlessly on
the top of a floating cork, that whirls and darts and rolls over and
over and over; amid the scum and froth and slime of a boiling
bubbling Alembic. Within his own sphere individual man is, and
ought to be the supreme determinant. Outside of that sphere he
knows absolutely nothing — and philosophy less than nothing.
As for the prophets of Futurity, from the days of Guatama,
Bel, and Ishtar, down to Christ, Mahomet, Peter, Luther, Calvin,
and Bringham Young; they have been strident 'deceivers all'
working on the emotional credulity of women — and doltish
rabbles. A false teacher may be earnestly and honorably sincere in
all his theoria, but that does not necessarily demonstrate intrinsic
divinity. Many false prophets have been murdered (because of their
opinions) besides Jesus of Nazareth, Judea; and Smith of Nauvoo,
Illinois. The execution of the founder of Mormonism (inspired by
political clamor) is an exact parallel to the execution of the founder
of Christianity (inspired by priestly clamor). The point is — neither
shooting nor crucifixion are satisfactory proofs of divinity or
probity.
Right and Wrong, like Up and Down, East and West, are
relative terms, without any fixed or finite meaning. What is good
for the goose is not always good for the gander. Newfoundland lies
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
East from Chicago, but West from Berlin. All depends upon the
point of view. Consequently what may be 'right' in one age may, in
another age, be wholly 'wrong.'
In ancient Rome it was considered the height of impiety,
heresy, and treason, for free born citizens to adore a circumcised
Asiatic; but in modern Europe and America, it is considered pious
and fashionable and highly commendable to do so.
Even what is right to one man, under one set of
circumstances, may be utterly wrong to the same man under a
different set of circumstances. Cromwell as colonel of the
Ironsides, thought regal absolutism the essence of all diabolism; but
as President of the Republic, he defended it (in himself) as— 'a
crowning mercy.'
When Government soldiers shoot down American 'rebels'
that is called 'a glorious victory' but when Government soldiers
shot Colonial rebels during the Red Flag Riots (inaugural of the
War of Independence) that is conventionally labelled 'wicked
massacre.'
When a band of rich men plunder the poor, that is business
shrewdness, practical statesmanship, or financial integrity; but if
bands of poor men plunder the rich, that is larceny, burglary,
highway robbery, and rebellion. When the Anglo-Saxon invader is
cooped-up and slaughtered in India, that is mutiny and red-handed
murder; but when he mows down the sepoys in battalions, or
fastens them to the muzzles of cannon and blows them into ribbons,
that is upholding the majesty of Law and of Order. When Cuban
guerrillas kill Spaniards, all American papers describe it as 'war'
but when the Spaniards retaliate and kill the Cubans, that is
'horrible butcheries by General Weyler.' Spanish cut-throats are
glorified (in Spain) as dashing heroes, and the Cuban patriots
described as brigands, outlaws, and brutal Negro Murderers. All
depends on the point of view.
Victory sanctifies. In the realm of abstract Ethics there is no
other Fact upon which the plain man can finally make up his mind.
As far as Sociology is concerned, ethical principles are decided by
the shock of contending armies. Right has always been emblazoned
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on the standards of Victory, and Wrong on the draggled rags of Lost
Causes.
"When Brennus, commander of the ancient Gauls, attacked
the Clusians, a Roman ambassador protested, asking 'what offense
have the Clusians, given you?' Brennus laughed at the question,
and replied:— 'Their offense is the refusal they make to divide the
country with me. It is the same offense that the people of Alba, the
Fidenians and Ardeans gave you; and lately the Vienians, the
Falisci, and the Volsci. To avenge yourselves, you took up arms and
washed your injury in their blood; you subdued the people, pillaged
their houses, and laid waste their cities and their countries; and in
this you did no wrong or injustice; you obeyed the most ancient
laws, which gave to the Strong the possessions of the Weak; the
sovereign law of nature, that begins with the gods and ends with the
animals. Suppress therefore O Romans, your pity for the Clusians.
Compassion is yet unknown to the Gauls; do not inspire them with
the sentiments, lest they should have compassion upon those you
oppress.' "
History is full of similar logic. Brutus for instance, who
poindered Julius Caeser (his friend and benefactor), has always
been held up to public estimation as 'the noblest Roman of them
all'; whereas Booth, who slew Abraham Lincoln, is everywhere
and at all times, spoken of as a malevolent assassin.
The operation of the 'Law' itself, is also an apt illustration
of the paradoxical nature of Right and Wrong. Citizens who break
the written law are hauled before judges, inquisitorially cross-
examined, and chained for long years in State dungeons; but the
statesmen and legislators may sell their country for gold, and break
every statute law and constitution in the land; without the least fear
of legal intimidation. Indeed the approbation of the State, is all-
sufficient nowadays to sanctify any crime — even the most
abominable. In this particular (of granting absolution) the State is
gradually supplanting and absorbing the Church.
(The protesters of the past demolished the infallible
imperialism of clericals over religio-individual thought; and the
Protestantism of the future must demolish the insolent dictatorship
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of Politicals over private judgement, and the development of
Personality.)
All 'good christian men' regard the judicial murder of Jesus
as a crime of the blackest dye, but they chant church-paeans of joy
over Jael 's murder of Sisera, and the assassination of Eglon King of
Moab, etc. It is not very long ago since Catholic and Protestant
idolators, mutually roasted each other alive 'for the glory of God
and the uplifting of his Holy Name.' Each side proclaimed
themselves right, with rack and thumbscrew, and other little
instruments of persuasion. Protestants still think it a crime and a
scandal to worship the mother of their God; but Catholics consider
it right and proper to deify the Hebrew maid, who remained a maid
(what a paradox?) after borning a son.
To eat pork and beans is frightfully wicked for a Jew, but
passable for a cultured Bostonian. To drink whiskey is iniquity to a
Turk, but exhilarating to a Scotlander. Roast beef is a goodly dish
to an English 'barbarian,' but famine-stricken orthodox Hindoos
die rather than taste thereof. Duelling is honorable in some
countries but dishonorable in others. So also pugilism, private
revenge, tyrannicide, bull-fighting, regicide, and warfare. The
Quakers, Anarchists, and Young Men's Christian Associations, are
unceasingly railing against 'war and all its horrors,' whereas there
are not a few benighted infidels, (including the author) who regard
war as nature's Greatest Prophylactic.
Polygamy is 'wrong' in England and America, but
monogamy is righteousness, and polyandry 'right' (being licensed
by the State); whereas in eastern Europe and among all 'savage'
tribes, polyandry is iniquity; polygamy — blessedness; and
monogamy — vileness .
In ancient Lacadasmon stealing was considered highly
meritorious if not found out, as in modem America. Solon places
theft among the professions, and he knew what he was doing.
Aristotle includes 'robbery' among the different kinds of hunting.
There was no hypocrisy about these classical authors. They called
a spade a spade, and searched Nature (not libraries) for facts,
(Herein is the secret of their genius and undying renown.) If a man
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD -MATERIAL SUCCESS
steals a horse or a steer, he is lynched (if captured) as an 'enemy of
society' but if he steals the value of a million horses by wrecking a
savings bank; he is straightway made a Senator or Knighted. It is a
criminal act to burglarize another man's house, but it's 'enlarging
our markets' to steal Texas from the Mexicans; Alsace and
Lorainne from the French; Egypt from the Turks; or Madagascar
from the Hovas. The fact is, that all the greatest statesmen and
kings have been (most commendably) the Higher Criminals. Wars
are marauding expeditions and all kingship and property originates
in Warfare.
Slay one man (in order to rob him) and you are a murderer.
Slay a million men (in order to rob them) and you are a renowned
general. Annex from one person and you are a felonious ruffian, but
annex from the whole population, or from rival nations, and you are
made Chancellor of the Exchequer; Chairman of Ways and Means;
or decorated with the grand cross of the Legion of Honor. Maraud
direct for your own profit, and you are a heinous rascal,
counterfeiter, forger, bandit; but maraud indirect, 'on public service
only' and you are proclaimed "our opulent fellow-citizen and
distinguished patriot."
Take from the peasantry even an infinitesimal proportion of
their petty property, and they will lynch you as a lazy thievish
tramp; but take two-thirds of their harvests by law and rule (rent,
interest or tax assessments) and they will turn out in the middle of
the night, to cheer you in your steam-horsed palace car, as it whirls
through their 'God forsaken' villages.
To 'steal the goose from off the common' is awful rascality,
but 'to steal the common from the goose' is splendid statesmanship.
Men who write down Holy Fables in books are called Apostles of
God, or canonized as saints; but men who tell regulation lies in the
ordinary course of business are popularly supposed to be wicked
and ungodly scamps. The delightful story-teller who prints a
pleasing yarn, coined out of his alcoholic imagination, is known as
a gifted author; but the plain blunt writer who interprets Facts and
proclaims them openly, is an incarnation of iniquity, madness,
blasphemy — a veritable Apolly on, Satan. "What is one man's meat
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is another man's poison."
Again, he who prevaricates in a pulpit for 'the Glory of
God' is everywhere known as a Doctor of Divinity, but he who
bears false witness in an ordinary Court of Justice, is universally
condemned as a perjured villain.
It is questionable if there is one codified crime that would
be considered a crime in every land on earth. Just as there are a
thousand different icons and ideals of god, so there are a thousand
mutually repellent views of Right and Wrong. Every climate, every
nation, every community, has its own notion of what Virtue means.
Moral Dogmas are manufactured to suit the occasion, and are
always used as instruments of intimidation. They are not
necessarily in harmony with, or based upon Nature; except in the
sense that Fraud is natural. Biologically and historically
considered — "there is nothing either Right or Wrong, but thinking
makes it so."
Every age and nation must interpret Right and Wrong for
itself. So must every man. It is each man's manifest duty to invent
his own Ethical Credo. If he neglects this duty, and supinely
(without thinking) adopts the Credo of the herd into which he is
born; then his individuality is merged and lost. Other men with
more personal will-power, may then set up fallacious, maladroit
Dogmas— counterfeit twenty-four inch gauges — and compel him
to 'conform' against his wish. They become rulers and proprietors,
while he descends to the position of a dependent or vassal. Here is
the permanent menace to freedom that lies imbedded in all ethical,
political, and religious Codes.
He who 'keeps the commandments' of another, is
necessarily the servant of that other. He who curbs his own thought,
to please a majority; has already lost his mental liberty. He who
implicitly relies upon 'public opinion' becomes a mere
marionette— a bloodless dummy. Professing independence, he is
practically a prisoner in his own domain.
The pride of life is in deciding and doing — in taking the
initiative — not in obeying the dictation of others. He who 'keeps
the commandments' is, and must always remain a subordinate — in
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a beggardom of rules and regulations. He who disobeys 'the
commandments' becomes himself a Commandment-Maker; that is
to say, a ruler over the minds and bodies and property of inferior
organisms. Obedience is characteristic of the menial. Disobedience
is the stamp of the hero. "Man is the measure of all things." —
(Protagoras)
"He who takes no initiative, and determines no issues,
however intelligent and trustworthy, plays a subordinate part."*
All great deeds are the result, not of Majority Votes, but of
Individual Activity.
Every man who is free (and freedom means something
more than the mere privilege of dropping regulation pieces of print
into a Majority Box) should judge 'all things' by his own
personality. He should regard himself as the measuring rod — the
determinant — the unit of value, and carefully abstain from blindly
adopting other men's measurements, without personal verification
and reasonable tests.
The easiest way for a band of public robbers to plunder a
nation, is for them to issue counterfeit currency, and exchange it for
intrinsic values; and the easiest way to enslave a Race is to wheedle
it into, or impose upon it counterfeit Ethics, that is to say,
fraudulent standards of morality.
When the weighing scales (or measures) are falsified, all
subsequent exchange becomes marauding. Then foreclosing
bankers become cattle-lifters, and machine politicians develop into
pirates. Thus it happeneth that the words 'politician' and 'thief are
now interchangeable terms; more especially in America, France,
and Australia. "Government is the Great Blackmailer."
7
Better far, for a free animal to be killed outright, than to be
mastered, subordinated, and enchained.
Mentally, morally, physically, a full-grown man should
* Admiral Walker, U.S.N. , in Forum, Dec, 1896.
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
swear allegiance to no extraneous moralism, custom, or arbitrary
rule-of-conduct. He ought to take a special pride in developing his
own individuality; independent of all other men whatsoever. In the
maxim "union is strength" there lies an abiding fallacy. Very often,
in practical affairs, he is greatest who stands most apart. "Every
man for himself is the law of life. Every man for an Institution, a
God, or a Dogma, is the law of death. "Mind your own business" is
a line of thought very much neglected in this infirm age; when
every sodden degenerate fancies that it is his 'business' to be every
other degenerate's keeper, guardian, and nurse. Cain's wrathful
retort "am I my brother's keeper?" contains a far reaching practical
philosophy, that is deserving of calm consideration, in the light of
contemporary socialistic maladjustments and biologic
evolutionism. Only the terrorized repent. But non-moralists found
families, build cities, rule the earth and laugh at the Gods.
Each individual should think as he pleases — as l the spirit
moves him' — without the least respect for what others think or
do — the only limit to his actions being (of course) the materialized
opposition he actually meets with; for the Strong are the natural
limit of the Strong. No one is bound to obey another (or a majority)
except 'the other' can coerce obedience; and to do that at all times,
under all circumstances, would be terribly troublesome, expensive,
and — dangerous.
When actualized antagonism is met with, it is every
dauntless man's business to surmount it— if he can. Should he find
that beyond his strength (or the massed power of his friends and
supporters), then death or submission are the only reasonable
alternatives. If he has not the nerve to fall (as the maligned Catiline
fell at Pistoria*), then he and his posterity to the third and fourth
generation must sink to subjectivity.
If he is coerced by superior Strength (or strategy) into
temporary retreat; he then owes no allegiance whatever to his
triumphant adversaries; and he should be ever ready (when time
* "All wounded in from; not a man taken alive; Catiline himself gasping out his life,
ringed round with corpses of his foemen ." ' —SALLUST.
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERiAL SUCCESS
and tide seem propitiatory) to overwhelm and destroy their
dictation. "Get there!" I say, get there! — Get there at any cost!
Be thou a True Knight. Save thyself by thine own deeds. If
a man wound you on one cheek, lay him low — smite him hip and
thigh. Self preservation is the first law of thy being. Hate for hate,
and ruth for ruth — scorn for scorn, and tooth for tooth. Get there, I
say!— Get there! Get there at any cost!
Let him no longer boast of his bravery who merely weeps
with his Dear-Ones, when his Dear-Ones weep for bread. The
gallant and the brave, have never yet been known to want for
anything. Women shed tears; men shed blood. Cowards serve
masters. Bold men make themselves Masters.
When passing through the Valley of Humiliation, slaves and
dastards, exposing their sores, sob aloud for consolation and
sympathy. Brave men stand apart and ponder vengeance or
conquest.
The fear of death is the beginning of Slavery. Majority-Box
despotism can only be maintained, by making a sudden and violent
death its final sanction. 'Civilized' men are terrorized at the idea of
death, and as long as that is so, those who wield sudden death in the
hollow of their hand , are masters of the world. Hence a small body
of disciplined fighters (if protected by the death penalty) are
capable of dominating a nation of ten thousand times their number.
Hence also, in accordance with the 'fight-fire-with-fire'
principle, all secret associations aiming at the destruction of
established tyrannies, in Church or State, have ever been organized
(from the most ancient times) upon a 'death penalty' basis. When
successful, these societies become 'Government' in their turn;
merely re-forming as defence forces instead of aggressive forces.
On this account the inner workings of 'government' are unknown
to the outer world.
Every ministerial Cabinet is oath-bound and all the higher
officials are pledged and obligated under a death penalty, to the
most strict secrecy. Indeed under the cover of Popular Government,
the Financial Empire of the World is an established Fact.
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
No man has (or ever had) any inherent right to the use of
the earth; nor to personal independence; nor to property, nor to
wives, nor to liberty of speech; nor to freedom of thought; nor to
anything except he can (by himself or in conjuction with his allies)
assert his 'rights' by Power. What are (in popular parlance) called
'rights,' are really 'spoil' — the prerogatives of formerly exerted
Might; but a 'right' lapses immediately, when those who are
enjoying it, become incapable of further maintaining it.
Consequently all 'rights' are as transient as morning rainbows,
international treaties, or clauses in a temporary armistice. They may
be abrogated at any moment, by any one of the contracting parties,
holding the necessary Power.
Broadly speaking therefore, Might is incarnated Right, and
rights are metamorphosed mights. Power and Justice are synonyms;
for Might is mighty and does prevail. They who possess the
undisputable Might (be they one, ten, or ten million) may and do
proclaim the Right. Government is founded on property, property is
founded on conquest, and conquest is founded on Power— and
Power is founded on brain and brawn — on Organic Animality. Just
as parents dictate right to their children, so masterful animals
dictate right to millions and millions of sodden-livered, baby-
minded men. Monarchic rulers are the gaudy jumping-jacks, and
representative institutions the tax gathering mechanism of the
Mighty-Ones. Banks and safe-deposits are their treasure-stores, and
armies and navies their sentinels, executioners, watchmen.
"There is much to be said for the opinion" writes Professor
Huxley, "that Force effectually and thoroughly used, so as to render
further opposition useless, establishes an ownership that should be
recognized as soon as possible." Professor Jevons expresses a
parallel thought: — "The first step must be, to rid our minds of the
idea that there are such things as abstract rights." 'Spiritual right'
and 'moral right' cannot possibly be explained, because they are
merely verbalisms without solid substance. They are not even
shadows; for a shadow implies a materialized actuality. It is
somewhat difficult to define what is non-existent. That task may be
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD -MATERIAL SUCCESS
left to University professors and Sunday school divines. They are
adepts at clothing their mental nudity in clouds of wondrous
verbosity.
Right, in its broadest and deepest sense can be logically
defined however, as the manifestations of solar energy,
materialized through human thought and thew, upon Battlefields —
that is to say, in Nature's Supreme Court. Might is victory and
victory establishes rightness. Might is cosmic power in chemic
operation; and Man (in his own sphere) is heliocentric force on two
legs. Might is mighty and must prevail.
It does prevail, for verily it is as the Law of Gravitation-
Nay! — ft is the law of Gravitation.
All arbitrary rules of Right and Wrong are insolent
invasions of personal liberty. He who would maintain his manhood,
must ignore them and abandon them, wherever and whenever
possible; except he has investigated them— paralleled them with
Nature, and without coercion agrees to abide thereby as a modus-
vivendi. If he accepts them (on other conditions) as his life-long
load, that is — his funeral. If he is eager to handicap himself or
commit suicide, why shouldn't he? That is his own business.
A sensible man should never conform to any rule or custom
simply because it has been highly commended by others, alive or
dead. If they are alive he should suspect their motives. If dead they
are out of Court. He should be a law unto himself in all things;
otherwise he permits himself to be demonetized to the level of a
domestic animal.
The real man must depend upon himself absolutely,
determine his own ends, decide his own plan of campaign; and
savagely resent any authoritarian interference; (especially if it takes
the form of socialistic officialism). He must be resolutely on his
defence, against all those meddlesome 'dogs' who dare to impose
their squalid ideals upon his private or public life.
It would be well for him also to be a thorough-going and
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MIGHT iS RIGHT
dangerous adversary; as well as an unswerving friend. To his
foemen he should be as pitiless as 'the gods' to his friends in all
days of difficulty, and danger, he should be, as— 'an army with
banners.'
Therefore I say be manly!— be both manly and wise! Be
fearless, tenacious, resolute, and bold; for (as Von Clausewitz
sagaciously insists), "boldness, directed by an overruling
intelligence is the brand of the hero."
A man's first duty in this world is to himself, and the word
'himself includes those near and dear ones, who have twined their
tendrils around his heart. A man's kindred are part of himself. He
should not forget that when fighting for his own hand, he is fighting
for them. His strength is their rampart. Their strength is his glory.
The family and the individual are a unit.
Henry Watterson, an insolent editor of the New
Dispensation, on a studied oration before the Wall St. Board of
Trade, thus brazenly re-voices the divine-right of Communalism
over the fates of men: — "We are to teach the lesson that the citizen
exists for the government, not the government for the citizen."
Ignatius Loyolas; Calvins; Dukes of Alva; Torquemadas; and
Piuses by the score; have been equally eloquent in expounding
parallel diabolical sophisms. For ages those Destroyers of Liberty
proclaimed that the individual existed for the Holy Church; not the
Holy Church for the individual. However the despotism of
socialistic-sacerdotalism has been thoroughly tamed — blown to
fragments as it were; and the right of private judgment fully
maintained. Its cunning recrudescence under the guise of State
Infallibility, by the Jesuits of journalistic Diablerie must be met as
resolutely, and smashed as savagely relentlessly, as its informal
theocratic prototype. The majesty of the Individual first, foremost,
and above all things. 'Hell's blazes' are realized among us, when
'the individual withers and the State grows more and more.'
Should then Wattersonian ideal triumph, every man who
then dares to open his mouth (except to extol Authority) will run the
risk of having streams of lead pumped into it, as a gentle hint to be
constitutional.
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERiAL SUCCESS
He who acts upon self-denial principles in his dealings with
rival carnivores casts himself down that they may climb over his
prostrate personality to their success. He abdicates his inherent
royalty who bends before any human being or any human dogma—
but his own. Humbleness is a crime in a man, though it may be a
virtue in a menial. The 'modest' man permits his rivals to occupy
all the High Places and make him their footstool— nay, their very
doormat.
Of course there are certain Higher Laws, which no one can
even try to rebel against, without being quietly executed. The
transgressor of a natural Ordinance may think he has escaped, even
while the noose-knot is under his chin and the bolt about to be
sprung. Nature has a very long arm and a vengeful one. Many a
'city of the plain' has been incinerated, besides Sodom and
Gomorrah. Individual transgressors of nature are always driven
mad; and nations that organize defiance of the nature of their being,
become regimented hordes of incoherent manlings, sootily
perspiring downward to their 'heaven' dancing the dance of death,
shrieking the songs of 'Progress.' Observe for example the working
classes of civilization and the utter lunacy of their doings.
Undoubtedly their god has struck them blind or mayhap they are
'possessed of a devil.' Certainly they are not sane. The day is near
at hand when they shall cry out with shame "O, would that we were
dead!"
As rapidly as machinery can be perfected, to perform the
work now being done by these animals; they are being 'dispensed
with,' — tuned adrift in hordes to find fodder and shelter as best they
can. Hiredmen are rapidly becoming cheaper than horses and dogs,
but as yet somewhat dearer than electric motors and steam engines.
The average workman therefore feels instinctively that his 'virtues'
may not, after all, preserve his throat from the knife — that is to say,
from the logical consequences of his own, or his forefathers' defeat
in the struggle. His 'virtues' (as he calls them, poor devil) are
extreme laboriousness, extreme docility, extreme political and
religious credulity — together with extreme pusillanimity in his own
defence. As long as Power requires these hordes of slave-hirelings,
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
they will be provided with enough necessaries to keep themselves
in proper trim; but when their Labor Force is no longer a profitable
investment, they will assuredly be eliminated.*
Why should prisoners of war be kept alive anyhow at vast
expense; when it becomes cheaper and more convenient, to turn
them adrift— to perish as valueless stock perish on ranges in winter
time? Already many of these 'freebom citizens' are cutting their
throats daily in despair, at being unable to find a master. Millions
are slowly drugging themselves with succulent poisons, in the
shape of alcoholic and other stimulants. Scientific sterilization is an
established custom; infanticide a regular trade; and celibacy
increasing by leaps and bounds. The fact is that the industrial world
is run on business principles and 'business principles' are a
synonym for 'woe to the vanquished,' 'hell takes the hindmost,'
'the survival of the fittest' and 'might is right.'
Right, like water, finds its own level. Man's consent is not
necessary to the operations of Natural Forces. It is not required. It
is not even asked. He is like unto a patient strapped firmly on a
dissecting table. He may feel the surgeon's lance sinking through
his quivering flesh — he may shiver in terror and break out into a
cold sweat— he may groan in convulsive agony and pray to his
Idol — but, he cannot escape.
Knowing all this, why not let Nature alone to work out her
own silent ends? Why should communities of creeping-things try to
safe-guard their incapables? Why obstruct the drastic and
significant removal of corrupt organisms? The Jesus type of men
were clearly made to be crucified and flogged. The Buddha type
were (evidently) born to die of pestilence and famine — poor, weak,
cowardly swarms of rotting vermin that they are! Behold them in
the distance there, with their ribs sticking through their hides,
accepting with doleful thankfulness the alms of their Conquerors.
Brahma! Buddha! Confucius! Juggernaut! Christ! —
Behold — Your glorious handiwork!
'The muzzles of the repealing rifles pointed at their heads, had a quieting effect on the
miners;' Daily Paper
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERiAL SUCCESS
Let the cowardly and the vile die off— let them annihilate
themselves: — that is the logic of the spheres. The atmosphere of
this terrestrial ball will be purer, when these 'heavy laden souls' are
gone; and there will be elbow-room upon its surface, for the
regeneration of Purity and Cleanliness of mind and body.
At the banquet of life, let no seat be reserved for those who
cannot win it — who cannot break into the enchanted circle, by force
of character and force of deeds. [See page 14.] The impotent and the
brainless, who call themselves 'the righteous' are better dead
anyhow — better for themselves, and better for their successors. Is it
not the height of madness, for communities to deliberately nourish
and foster the bacteria of hereditary degeneration?
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IWIGHT IS RIGHT
Superiority can only be decided by Battle. Conflict is an
infallible method of Selection and Rejection. Evolution has no end.
That is undoubtedly, the logical deduction of Darwin's famous
pronouncement: — "If he (man) is to advance still higher, it is to be
feared that he must remain subject to a severe struggle. Otherwise
he would sink into indolence; and the more gifted men would not
be more successful than the less gifted."
It is only Incoherents of subjective will-power or of servile
extraction (bottle-fed beings as it were) that even dream of an
'ordered state of society' wherein Right and Wrong (or personal
merit) can be decisively decided upon other than biological
principles.
Hebrew decadents harped upon this fool-thought of
Universal Peace, Equality, Justice, and Fair Play for ages; but have
they not been a pestilent tribe of un-warlike slaves from their
leprous beginning? The 'virtue' of patience and submission under
intolerable Injustice. All their gyrating prophets scream, and sob,
and yell over the wholesale failure of epileptoid ethical standards;
and insanely proclaim a 'good' time coming; when every Israelite
'shall recline under his own vine and fig tree, with no one to make
him afraid.' How delightful? Moses, Jesus, Isaiah, Peter— Mark,
Matthew, Luke, and John, were all squalid Jews, and rhapsodical
Communards. Those Hebrew breeders of desolation — LaSalle, Dr.
Alder, Jacobi, Karl Marx, are modernized transplanted Essenes —
Ebionites.
All moral injunctions, all millennialisms; are arbitrary
infernalisms — the results of crafty hypnotic suggestion. Their
secret object is the overthrow of human reason and individual
independence; in order to establish a vast bedlamite penitentiary to
be called 'God's kingdom on earth' alias 'pandemonium in full
blast.'
The fact is, Humanity is going stark staring mad in
consequence of having eaten the fruit that grows on that devilish
tree, 'the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.' Luscious it is to
look upon — pleasant it is to the palate, but a deadly atropine — a
cunning poison lurks in its core. Cursed are they that eat thereof.
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERIAL SUCCESS
Aye, thrice cursed are the believers in Right and Wrong —
for they are — the erring ones.
Attraction and gravitation holds the stars in their courses
and (upon exactly the same general operative method) all human
swarms and animal herds, are integrated and disintegrated by
effective manifestations of derivative solar heat and power.
Strong-Men are magnetized incarnations of primordial
energy — dynamos of concentrated electricity. There is a
mysterious, almost magical charm about the personality of True
Greatness. Lesser men are attracted to their Natural Chiefs as steel
shavings are drawn to the lodestone. This peculiar attractive force
is hardly ever seen (except spasmodically) in physical weaklings. It
seems to develop only in animals of unusual vitality — men with
plenty of 'devil' in them.
Physical power is the basis of mental power. The nutriment
of the brain cells is derived from the blood-corpuscles perpetually
being pumped into it by the heart's action. If the pump valves are
weak or out of gear- if the food stream is impure — if the stomach
is disordered — if the liver is congested or the lungs decaying and
corrupt; then the brain is starved, drugged, poisoned, while all the
thoughts that germinate therein are feeble, unnatural, impure.
Hence the rolling stream of literary filth that the Zolas and the
bible-boomers, the poetlings, and the 'eminent savants,' keep
pouring out upon generations of men, soaked for ages in similar
intellectual sewerage.
Hence also the remarkable fact, that neither Great Men nor
Great Heroisms are ever town bred. Cities are impure in thought,
word, and deed; and nothing that is noble can ever evolve therein.
They are the refuse heaps — the kjokken-moddings of the world.
They are matrixes of all that is shameful and base, in religion,
politics, sociology, and law. Lupanars of organized abomination are
they! -where the infamous prostitute and the still more infamous
editor poison the air, side by side; spreading abroad their leprous
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WIICHT fS RIGHT
contagion with every wind that blows. Would that I were a Nero
and could play the fiddle! But after all perhaps, it would be a waste
of matches and good cat-gut.
Great men can only evolve from out of an environment of
comparative personal independence. They come from the
mountains and the forest clearings. They grow to maturity with the
storm beating upon, and the rains dripping adown them. First,
warring against the rivalry of the elements, they develop the
tremendous motor-power necessary in after life, for the mastership
of man-herds. Entering into the centres of semi-moribund
civilizations, they straightway take the lead as a matter of natural
right. They become rulers, chancellors, kings, conquerors, electric
batteries, dynamos. Slave-bred swarms toil at their bidding, with
zealous contentment and rivals are cast down, as it were, by a 'turn
of the wrist.'
Their smile is wealth and honor to lesser men — their frown
is poverty, outlawry, or the bow-string. Second-class animals gather
around them, and are used up as satraps, governors, lieutenants. If
a nation is under process of exploitation, revolts, the revolt is
suppressed by force. If established rulers are incapable of that task,
then are they overthrown; and leaders of Revolt rule in their
stead — as a matter of course. Rulers' control depends absolutely
upon their Might. When unable any longer to wield the 'death
penalty,' their power is departed. The French aristocracy originated
in the savage deeds of fierce, long-haired, battle bred Franks; and
their effeminate descendants — were overwhelmed and guillotined
by Grim Provincials who came to Paris, hungry for money, power
and renown.
In the regions of stellar Space similar phenomena may be
noted. That sun-star with the strongest attractive power, whirls
other and lesser stars around it until finally it comes in contact with
a rival rolling mass of greater magnitude and attractiveness,
whereupon it is absorbed and loses its individuality. What the law
of gravitation is to matter and motion, the law of Might is in the
province of sociology. In this analogy there is illimitable
significance embedded.
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THE CHEF END OF MANHOOD -MATERIAL SUCCESS
Star lite is known to be an emanation of primeval plutonic
energy. Our planetary system is like unto one whirling mote
(among countless myriads) in a vitalized sunbeam. Our earth is a
by-product of secondary cyclonic rage. The sun itself (the power-
house of our world) is materialized heat-force in active operation;
manifesting itself as warmth, light, motion, electricity, and animal
life.
Man's body and sustenance is derived, directly or indirectly
from the Sun. By it he lives, dies, and has his being. Let
heliocentric force be withdrawn for an instant, and all life
straightway disappears. Thus everywhere, throughout 'Eternity,'
under all circumstances and at all times; this world, all worlds, and
all that creeps thereon are driven, inspired, vitalized, and guided by
active operating Force. Everywhere it is Might that governs,
feebleness that is governed, attracted, repelled, controlled.
Force propels iron-ribbed reindeers of the sea and hurls
them plunging through the grey green surges. Force whirls the
loaded freight cars over prairie, range, and river. Force hauls-up
from the deep sunk mines, cast treasures of gold, iron, silver, and
coal. Force rolls the red-glowing metal ingots into titanic shapes.
Force sows the seed, ploughs the field, reaps the grain, threshes the
corn, hews the stone, shapes the girders, bridges rivers, mows down
forests, builds cities, writes the book— inspires it, prints it, defends
it.
Even 'the music of the spheres' is the vibrant roar of
warring elements, chanting the Gloria of Power.
If Force is the "all in all" of the planetary systems and of the
animal world, may it not also be the open-sesame of sociology —
the primeval principle that governs, (and must continue to govern)
the relations of tribe to tribe and man to man? Is it not the gospel of
antiquity, as well as the logical reducto of To-day?
Whether in mortgaged republics, pawned monarchies, or
hypothecated despotisms, the Sword Power— (that is to say, the
military power — the clubbing power) is the ultimate ipse DrxiT in
the measuring-out of right and wrong. As it was in the days of the
fierce Sesostris; the devastating Genghis; the venturesome
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MIGHT fS RIGHT
Charlemagne; so is it even now. In all industrial relations, Might is
'monarch of all it surveys.' Authority is Authority, though it may
take on a thousand diverse forms. What is the elemental difference
between a Roman mandamus, a Turkish firman, a Russian ukase, a
'Supreme' Court injunction, or an Order in Chancery? They are
exact synonyms. Whatever their salient phraseology may be; in
operation they are visible manifestations of Imperial Power-of
Sceptred Majesty. No sacerdotal sophistry can permanently
disguise this fact; and what is more important, no emotional
demagoguery can remove it.
Authority is not an evil in itself. It is as natural for men of
Power to rule Feeble multitudes, as it is for the lion to eat the lamb.
When any nation, or class of men possess no real might, it is just
and proper that they should be subordinated; and again, if they
develop the requisite strength it is equally justifiable for them to
reconquer their former position; and subordinate their
subordinators. Evolution works through Authority but there is to it
no limitation.
The penalty of defeat is tremendous. Wage-earning is (in
modern times) the main clause in the treaty under which the
defeated are permitted to exist.
Even-handed Justice has never existed in the animate
creation and never can. The very idea of it is an absurdity.
Evolution knows it not.
Between beasts of burden and beasts of prey; also between
Capital and Labor there is an eternal combat. Natural enemies are
they of each other, and whichever proves the stronger must rule —
for the time being; or rather, until the next Test. The law of battle is
unlimited. It does not end to-day or to-morrow. It persists for all
time.
Between the Optimates and Populares of Rome — the
Aristos and Helots of Greece— the Merchant-Kings and Nubian
serfs of Carthage— the Military Caste and the slaves of Karnack
and Memphis; the same irrepressible conflict raged for long
centuries that is now being waged everywhere, between the Haves
and the Have-nots. Indeed the agrarian agitation, and the
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD -MATERIAL SUCCESS
tumultuous strife between the Debtor and the Creditor classes in
modern America, is an exact duplicate of what happened in the
Greco-Roman world. Modern leaders, however, (on both sides) are
poor miserable weaklings, compared with the chiefs of Antiquity.
Mere infants are they, delighting in toys and lullabies -seeing, they
see not; hearing, they hear not; minds have they, but they know not;
laughing and prattling they say naught— most eloquently. To them
their petty provincial cradle is the Universe, and their lives an
aimless wandering in the land o' dreams.
The men who talk of permanently reconciling conflicting
world-wide energies, are wasting their breath for naught.
Compromise is out of the question (now as of old) except as a
temporary expedient. The rich and the poor are both inevitable
natural products and complements of each other— like the opposing
currents in an electric battery. It is the business of the rich to exploit
the poor and it is equally the business of the poor to defeat and
exploit— in their turn.
The oppression of one class by another is always induced
by the physical cowardice of the victimized; and Nature has no love
for dastards — whether rich or poor. Oppression is one of the
necessary phases of evolution. In order therefore to insure the
subordination and ultimate annihilation of lower types; the struggle
for survival is imposed upon humans as upon all other animals.
Even when our 'eminent' wiselings are predicting eras of universal
peace and contentment; the contending cohorts are preparing to
jump at each others throats — as of yore. Might must decide 'all
things' in the future, as it has decided 'all things' in the past; and
they who teach otherwise, are either dishonest or have no real
conception of the magnitude and sequence of biological
determinance.
'All the world' is now in Debt and no human effort can ever
suffice to repay the interest (let alone the principal) in cash.
Business lives under a cloud of mortgage indebtedness, that must
some day be liquidated with shot and shell, for bonds infer—
bondage.
All realized wealth is transfigured Force; and want of it, a
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
sure sign of sterility and degeneracy. Industrialism is the
manipulation of Force — by Force. Brains and muscles are part of
the mechanism of gravitation. Descendants of 'prisoners-of-war'
have been trained for ages in servitude; and they make most
intelligent mechanics, specialists, and serving-men.
Capital is concentrated in Force, applied to the extraction
and storage of additional Force. It may be operated by its proprietor
in any way that he pleases. He is under no obligation to others as to
its application or proprietorship. He can 'do as he likes with his
own' as long as he has the power. He may own the earth by its
agency, if he wants to; and he may buy or sell men and nations, if
he feels so inclined or thinks it profitable. There is in Nature no
limit to his energies or ambitions. All that is needed is Power equal
to the design. But the same principles may be acted upon by any
other man or association of men; and in the conflict that ensues,
fitness is proved— absolutely and without a doubt. The 'rights of the
rich' are what they can maintain; and the 'rights of the poor' are no
less. No bounds are set to the accumulation of property, and none
whatever to its re-distribution. Fair-play is not even an essential or
a requisite. It may be established, if mutually desired by both
combinations; but it may also be wholly dispensed with. In real life
it is always 'dispensed with' by those who possess a preponderance
of material might.
Equality can only exist amongst equals. Civilization implies
division of labor and division of labor implies subordination and
subordination implies injustice and inequality. Woe to me if I speak
not truth!
At such words as these, pusillanimity blanches with
timidity — gathers in its Idol Halls, supplicating— "Lord have
mercy upon us! — Christ have mercy upon us! — Deliver us from
Evil!"
In primitive communities the Philosophy of Power is
thoroughly understood and acted upon by all classes — even by the
Servi.*
* Latin root-word of servant. Applied indiscriminately to mules, eunuchs, slaves,
philosophers, historians, scribes, prisoners-ofwar and working-cattle generally.
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THE CHiEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERIAL SUCCESS
The ideas of abstract justice, righteousness, non-resistance,
can find no lodgement in an uncorrupted brain. Life is too grim in
a camp of hunters and of warriors, for artificialism to meet with
anything more appreciative than a good natured sarcasm. He who
has to hunt for his family-dinner every forenoon (and seize land on
which to build his shelter) is not over likely to enthusiastically
swallow the depraved theoria of self-renunciation; or pledge
unbounded allegiance to a self-appointed Ring of tax-gathers —
masquerading as political philanthropists. He maintains his own
inherent independent royalty, as long as he can; and never
surrenders, except before absolutely superior force. Even then he
vows limitless vengeance and obligates his sons and son's sons, to
undying hatred against the domination and spoliation, of his
conquerors.
10
In Evolution there is no finality. It is operating always in
some form; endeavoring to blot out inferior organisms, and
perpetuate more perfect types. Like the gods of Antiquity, it is both
a Destructive and a Creative. The Powerful of the past were
overthrown by the more Powerful of the present; and in strict
sequence, the Powerful of to-day must be overthrown by — the
more Powerful of to-morrow.
All 'moral' dogmatisms and religiosities, are positive
hindrances to the evolution of the Higher Manhood; inasmuch as
men who honestly grasp at Morals, do not as energetically grasp at
Power— power being essentially non-moral. Consequently the
struggle between the propertied and the property less classes, is not
as keen as Nature evidently intends it to be. The moral man is a
feeble antagonist to a non-moral generalship. He foolishly permits
talkative personalities, (with sharper perceptive qualities), to wield
unlimited Authority over him; under numerous plausible pretexts,
and deliberately plunder him of his Property.
There is far and away too much weepful Mea Culpa about
the average mannikin. Hence the woes of the world!— Hence, the
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
origin of the morbid craving by Dwindlings for what they call "a
peaceful solution of the social problem." Weak natures are
terrorized at the idea of what 'might happen' in a death grapple with
entrenched adversaries equally as strong, if not stronger than
themselves. That is the true reason why rich men are so anxious at
all times to avoid discussion, and 'maintain the Peace' and why
poor men 'hunger with fatness around them, and thirst while the
waters flow near; for — the Law and the Gospel hath damned them,
and dulled all their senses with fear.'
The fact is that both sides are afraid of each other— afraid
of the only rational solution.
My curse be upon the white-livered and the meek; the
shameful dwindlings — who call themselves the 'virtuous' the 'law-
abiding' the 'righteous' the 'godly;' the 'obedient-ones!' May
civilization pump its vile narcotism through the flaccid ventricles
of their pigeon-hearts! May they inhale brain-leprosy through the
open windows of their Temples-of-Soot; and may their noisome
swineries and splendid Ergastlui, be unto them living tombs! May
they 'earn' their bread (also that of their conquerors) by the slimy
sweat of dishonored brows; and may they perish at last like
abandoned curs! May they vegetate in poverty and die in contempt.
May the evil works of their 'genius' be ploughed under with
Babylon and Nineveh; Anahuac and Rome! May the annals of their
dismal domination become, as the folk-tale of a fearsome
nightmare that once rolled over the brain of Mankind; — finally
dissipating itself 'midst thunders and lightnings and the breaking
up of the great deep! Verily! Verily! let them have their Reward!
It is customary for atrophied minds (like Bluntschili) to urge
that the promulgation of such grim thoughts 'endanger the
foundations of Society.' Even supposing that to be so, what is
Society anyhow, that its 'foundations' should not be threatened? Is
'Society' something immaculate, something divine, something
anointedly ultra-human — something that must be safeguarded,
right or wrong? Is it another sacred Mount Moriah Temple — a Urim
and Thummim — an Ark of the Covenant— a Sanctum Sanctorum,
or merely 'an ass's head hidden behind a veil?' Why should the
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THE CHIEF END OF MANHOOD-MATERIAL SUCCESS
phrase 'Society in danger' be equivalent to the proclamation of a
rigid taboo or a fanatical crusade? Why?
Society is altogether a matter of convenience — an
implement— an expediency. It is the creation of man and what man
manufactures he may modify or destroy.
Society may be defined as an agglomeration of carnivorous
and herbivorous animals, seeking their natural prey and browsing
along on whatever nutriment they pick-up. It is nothing more than
a 'herd' of two legged cattle and there's nothing supernaturally
divine about a herd. Indeed the word herd always suggests Gadara.
Human swarms have been integrated and disintegrated ten
thousand times ten thousand by the centrifugal and centripetal
energy of individuals.
Societies have risen and Societies have fallen; but man, the
Unit— the germ-plasm— persists; with the rising of the sun, and the
fall of the tides. Man is not only the 'clay,' but also the 'potter' —
the paramount determinant. His fate is in his own hands absolutely,
within the length of his tether.
"To the Strong all laws are cobwebs" (Solon) and when
Society becomes irksome to the Strong they may dissolve it;
otherwise it becomes their master and consequently their enemy
and oppressor. 'Society in danger' therefore is merely the hysteria
of the megalomaniac.
Society (in some shape) must exist, as long as there are two
human beings left alive; for companionship is as natural to the
homo, as swarming is to the bee. When however the word 'Society'
develops into a synonym for socialistic restraint, then it becomes a
menace to the Evolution of the Type and ought to be broken up
accordingly — without over much ceremony. Friendship is
necessary and ennobling, but impersonal despotism is destructive
of all dignity and manly virtue.
The real danger is, that innocent and natural combinations
for mutual pleasure, comradeship, profit, and defence, may
transform themselves gradually into organized majority-box
tyrannies — enslaving institutionalisms of the most dictatorial and
obnoxious character. When Society is thus transfigured into a vast
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
blackmailing corporation the lives and property of its component
units are absolutely at its mercy, and it therefore ought to be
disintegrated, consciously, deliberately, pitilessly, and at whatever
cost. Freedom cannot be bought too dear for life without liberty is
pandemonium.
Government and Society are two distinct entities, and care
must be taken not to confound them. Society is the growth of
mutual tolerance, friendship, and obligation; but 'government'
arises from physical force applied by the Strong to the control and
exploitation of vanquished foes. The sanction of government, is the
same that holds good throughout the whole zoological and
heliocentric scale — the sanction of material might. That 'sanction'
should always be under test; because the most abject weakling may
brandish a sword; but we do not know he is a weakling until
another sword in the grip of a Man is pointed at his throat.
Beowulf, a Saxon song-master, apostrophising 'the Sword,'
voices this primeval Organon, as it was instinctively understood by
our ancestors.
"The war-thing! the comrade! father of honor, and giver of
kingship! the fame-smith! — the songmaster! Clear singing! clean
slicing! sweet spoken! soft finishing! making death beautiful — life
but a coin — to be staked in the pastime; whose playing is more than
transfer of being. Arch-anarch! chief builder! prince and evangelist!
I am the will of God! I am the Sword!"
It is only in ages saturated in atmospheres of brain wrecking
artificialism— in consumptive communities steeped to the very lips
in elemental error — that senile, degrading, anthropomorphic myths
and manias are substituted for hard, bitter Common-Sense. (AH
great truths are 'hard 1 and 'bitter,' but Lies, to the morbidly
inclined, are sweeter than wild honey.)
One by one we abandon Realisms — to follow Fata
Morganas. We are mortgaging our destiny to the Pawnbrokers of
Decadence. Behold! — the legerdemain of the Orient demonetized
the Manhood of the West!
THE CHiEF END OF MANHOOD -MATERIAL SUCCESS
"We fight like women, and feel as much,
The thoughts of our heart we guard —
Where scarcely the scorn of a god could touch,
The sneer of a fool hits hard,
The treacherous tongue and the cowardly pen,
The weapons of curs decide —
They faced each other and fought like men;
In the days when the world was wide."*
And yet the world is beautiful as a blushing maiden
dreaming of her first lover. "Fair laughs the morn and soft the
breezes blow" and men only await captaining to — capture and
possess.
MANHOOD IS DEMONETIZED
This little pamphlet has been issued, not for private profit,
but to assist in uprooting the alien and pernicious Ideals that have
been for long centuries corrupting the blood and corroding the
brain of Europe and America. Conventional moral dogmas and
political standards-of-value are, like wooden idols, the work of
men's hands. They have no real basis in Nature nor have they any
supernatural sanction. Every one of them has been carved out of a
wormeaten lie, a brazen assumption or a madman's dream. They are
impositions most insolent. Why should we bow down even in
formal adulation before imbecile and unnatural principles invented
thousands of years ago for the enslavement of oriental decadents?
Have we not given lip-service long enough to false heroisms, and
fool evangels? Why feign the possession of slave virtues?
Why continue to glorify untruths that we know to be
untruths? Why should men of sterling worth obey any other man's
'thou shalt'? Let us return to Nature for our moral standards!
Let us search our own hearts and brains for the true meaning
of Right and Wrong.
Henry Lmvsmi. Angus & Robertson, Melbourne. Australia.
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
We are living and dying (mostly dying) in a poisonous
environment of deep seated moral dementia, social disease and
political illusions.
The 'Righteous and the Just'! hypocrites! deceivers!
Enemies of all that is noble, courageous and manly!
Destroyers of self-assertiveness! Annihilators of heroism!
Would that I had a legion of demons to wring their necks.
A crucified Jew slave (terrorized under Authority) is set up
as a god, as a standard of measurement for all mankind. That is why
personal valor and nobility of thought are at such a tremendous
discount.
Christendom is in bondage! Manhood is demonetized! Our
race is betrayed!
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Love and Women
and War
Chaptflr of
The best fighters are the best race-producers. This is the
verdict of Biology and the instinctive belief of the whole Feminine
world in general.
In the moulding of Organic Nature into all its diverse forms,
Love and War (with their attendant penalties and correlated
consequences) are the two most potent factors. Battle is the
furnace-alembic that has been consciously provided for chemically
separating the animate Refuse from the Gold. Sexual desire is the
amalgam that thereafter unites the golden particles, perpetuating for
the ages and ages the selected qualities— of physical beauty, vigor,
bravery, endurance — or vice-versa. "I am convinced," writes
Darwin, "that natural selection has been the main, but not the
exclusive, means of modification."
The same thought has been gemmed in a more sentimental
but equally suggestive setting, by Dryden: —
"Happy, happy happy pair,
None but the brave,
None but the brave,
None but the brave deserve the fair."
Heraclitus condensed it into the terser dictum "strife is the
parent of things." Even Solomon (the hoary old kingling) chanted
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
it in characteristic Oriental strophes: "Love is stronger than death,
the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement
flame. Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the flood
drown it— jealousy is as cruel as the grave."
Fighting is the method whereby the most fitted to propagate
conclusively prove the fact. Animals, plants, birds, reptiles, and
fishes, all exist in surroundings of unending sex-rivalry and
warfare — so do men. Organic life is one ceaseless round of Love
and War. Sexual ism and slaughter go hand in hand.
Bacteria butchers bacteria — germ wars with germ — shark
eats the shark — tigers struggle with tigers-the lion rends lion-
eagle kills eagle, and man fights man, for the favor of the female —
or the plunder of the vanquished. 'Peace on earth and mercy mild,'
is mere lunacy-babblement. Even sheep, the most 'Christly' of
animals wage tremendous duels — in due season.
There is no other earthly passion so fiercely, savagely,
egotistic, as sexual desire and it is the physical basis of all human
'Love' — even the most ethereal and romantic. Everywhere 'the
season of love, is the season of battle,' and when the fires of
sexualism burn low in nations of men, they are as unfit for freedom,
as they are unfit to reproduce their kind.
Topinard explains how sexualism operates among
Vertebrates of the deep: "The male Atrocephali (sea-bear) arrive at
the Falkland Islands in November, and scatter out along the beach.
In December the females arrive, and immediately violent battles are
being fought in all directions for their possession. Family life
follows exactly as among humans. If the females behave badly, the
male chastises them; they crouch at his feet, seen to beg his pardon,
and shed copious tears. At times the male and female weep
together."
A geographer and naturalist of world-repute (A. R. Wallace)
proclaims a series of similar facts— facts that are not new to
observant minds: —
"Among the higher animals it is a very general fact, that the
males fight together for the possession of the females. This leads
... to the stronger or better armed males, becoming the parents of
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the next generation, which inherits the peculiarities of the parents;
and thus vigor and offensive weapons are continually increased in
the males, resulting in the strength and horns of the bull, the tusks
and shield of the boar, the antlers and fleetness of the stag, and the
spurs and fighting instinct of the gamecock. But almost all male
animals fight together, though not specially armed; even hares,
moles, squirrels, and beavers, fight to the death. The same rule
applies to all male birds. From this very general phenomenon, there
necessarily results a form of natural selection, which increases the
vigor and fighting power of the male animal; the weaker being
either killed, wounded, or— driven awa/' — as among men.
In his "Descent of Man," (page 564), Darwin makes a
similar general statement:- "With social animals, the young males
have to pass through many a contest, before they win a female, and
the older males have to retain their females by renewed battles.
They have also, as in the case of mankind, to defend their females,
as well as their young, from enemies of all kinds, and to hunt for
their joint subsistence."
Among the Vertebrates, the king of the herd (or pack),
selects himself by battle-prowess — upon the same 'general
principles' that induced Napoleon to place the Iron Crown upon his
own brow — with his own hand. All the Regal Houses of the world
have been founded by fighting-men, and upheld by — fighting-men;
just as in the 'brute' creation. The chief recommendation to both
animal and human Chieftainship, is fighting capacity. The
'common herd' instinctively feels that a good fighter possesses all
the requisite virtues of good leadership, and leadership is exactly
what they want. By conquest alone can an animal-king be deposed;
and his vanquisher is always his successor. As long as his sight,
hearing, strength, and courage endures, he is absolute lord, judge,
procreator-in-chief— but not one moment longer. "The king's dead,
long live the king" is a biological affirmative.
This is the Natural Order. The un-natural order is to appoint
feeble but eloquent rhetoricians as Chief Magistrates (or
constitutional kinglings). This latter plan is adopted only by human
swarms in eras of senility and wholesale decadence.
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
Politicians are everlastingly 'fighting' each other (if we
believe the sensational headlines of our editorial Daily Liar), but
that kind of warfare is a sham intended to deceive. No real 'fight'
ever takes place between them. What they call 'fighting' is
gambling with 'Ayes' and 'Nays'; playing pitch-and-toss for the
booty other men win and the harvests other men garner. Hark! do
you hear them frothing at the mouth, loudly professing their 'divine
enthusiasm for Humanity?' For what? In order that they (squalid
scoundrels that they are) may sit on the seats of the mighty and
steer the nation down to hell while putting money in their purses
with taxes and blackmail. Nations have always risen to their highest
pitch of fame and prosperity under the guidance of mighty men of
valor, self selected; and they've sank to the lowest depths of
degradation and dishonor under the diabolical domination of
elective rhetoricians. (Their ravages are not so obtrusive in America
as in Europe, because territory here has been so vast— practically
limitless).
2
Women instinctively admire soldiers, athletes, kings,
nobles, and fighting-men generally, above all other kinds of
suitors — and rightly so.
Nothing so lowers a lover in a virile maiden's estimation,
than for him to be 'whipped' in a personal encounter with a rival.
Among all classes of females this sentiment persists. The best bid a
man can make for the admiration of any women (even the most
pious) is a display of undaunted physical prowess.
Young women have an instinctive detestation for the 'good
young man that died' kind of adorer, and they positively abhor the
pale coward— even though he be a blood relation. Strength, energy-
of-character, ferocity, and courage, she admires in her possible
husband, above all other qualities combined. Even to be carried-off
by force, is not repugnant to her feelings, if the 'bold bad man' is in
other respects acceptable.
She pines to be 'wooed and won,' (or as it were) she likes to
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feel that she has been mastered, conquered, taken possession of—
that the man who has stormed her heart is in all respects, a man
among men. This suggestive female idiosyncrasy is rhythmically
set forth by an anonymous writer thus: —
"Down a winding pathway in a garden old,
tripped a beauteous maiden, but her heart was cold.
Came a prince to woo her, said he loved her true;
maiden said he didn't, so he ceased to woo.
Came a perfumed noble — dropping on one knee;
Said his love was deeper, than the deepest sea.
But the winsome maiden, said his love was dead,
and the perfumed noble, accepted what she said.
Came a dashing Stranger, took her off by force;
said he'd make her love him, and she did — of course."
Conquersome personalities by obtaining possession of the
best and handsomest females raise up as a rule, conquersome
descendants. Hence the origin of Great Races. Second-class males
are driven by necessity to mate with second-class females; and in
strict sequence third class-males select partners from feminine
remainders. (Hence the stereotyped nature of servile Castes).
Superior males take racially superior women, and inferior
males are permitted to duplicate themselves, per media of inferior
feminines. Each class reproduces its kind (on the average) and if
the ordained struggle for earth's Good-Things is not artificially
interfered with, the leading classes are periodically called upon to
maintain their pre-eminence at every turn, by Might, or be swept
away, enslaved, supplanted, expropriated by the braver and bolder
Animals.
Aristocracies have always originated in War. Sham ones
grow up (like mushrooms) in times of peace. No 'Aristocracy'
ought to be allowed to dominate one moment longer, than it is
unable to maintain itself, by the edge of the Sword. Again,
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
subordinated classes should not permit themselves to be mastered
by Usurpers who cannot fight. It is the Natural Order for first-class
men to dominate second-class men and for second-class men to
dominate third-class men — but the classes are self-selective; by
conflict. Someday inferior breeds will be remorselessly
exterminated, as useless and noxious vermin. Behold! I judge the
future by the evolution of the Past.
Women congregate at athletic sports and gladiatorial
contests; impelled by the same universal instinct that induces the
lioness to stand expectantly by, while two or more rival males are
ripping each other to pieces in a rough-and-tumble — for her
possession. The lioness submits, as a matter of choice, to the
embraces of the Victor; and in the most fashionable society, the
stalwart footballer or the dashing soldier, has practically unlimited
selective powers, among the marriageable maidens of his own
particular set.
No nation, no empire, has ever fallen — no race has ever
been enslaved, because it delighted in manly sports — in the hunting
of boars and lions, and men — in deadly tournaments — in dueling —
in prize fighting — in gladiatorial combats — in scenes of 'cruelty
and blood.' No! not one! (Nature is cruel — a million times more
cruel than man ever was). But dozens of 'civilizations' have
perished shamefully, ignominiously, because of the spreading
canker of personal cowardice — gendered by effeminacy, luxury,
usury, laboriousness, statecraft, superstition, 'culture,' and peace.
Want of daring — enfeeblement of physique — meanness of
mind— fear of danger and dread of death (sure signs of racial
deterioration) have never originated with athletic tournaments, nor
wars of conquest, nor gladiatorial games. When Clericalism
abolished the 'holmgang,' the pride of Nordland silently waned
away; when it abolished the Olympian games, Greece rotted into
decay. And when it banned gladiatorial contests, the Eternal City
'had its day.'
Bull-dog virtues are bound to triumph in the long run, and
they can only be developed (if developed at all) by daily practice
from youth up. Hence the necessity of 'brutal' football, 'brutal'
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LOVE AND WOMEN AND WAR
warfare, 'brutal' personal encounters, 'brutal' thoughts and 'brutal'
combinations. (The word 'brutal' is written here because it is
popularly misunderstood and used as a missile.) The 'brutal' races
have always been victorious races — the greatest men have always
been supremely 'brutal.' (Alexander, Sesostns, Ceeser, Titus, Nero
Bounaparte, Cromwell, Grand, Bismark, Cecil Rhodes.)
The word 'brutal' in real life means the reverse of
effeminate. A man is brutal who will not turn the other cheek. What
is it that Brutes do that in Nature is wrong?
Emerson perceived this pivotal anachronism clearly when
he declared: "Nature is erect, but man is fallen." Christlings are
forever using the word 'brutal' to terrorize each other but who are
they anyhow? Are they not the scum, the dross, the offscourings,
and creeping things, of the Aryan migrations — mere shrieking
blubbering, fulminating dwindhngs of the very lowest intellectual
development? Let Emerson again be put on the witness stand. He
may be considered fairly impartial. Hear what he has to say: —
"The waves unashamed, in difference sweet,
Play glad with the breezes; old play-fellows meet.
The journeying atoms primordial wholes,
Firmly drawn, firmly driven by their animate poles.
Sea, earth, air, silence; plant, quadruped, bird;
By one music enchanted; one deity (nature) stirred.
Each the other adorning, accompanying still;
Night veileth the morning; the vapor, the hill.
Man crouches and blushes, absconds and conceals,
He creepeth and sneaketh, he palters and steals.
Infirm, melancholy, jealous; — glancing around;
An oaf, an accomplice; he poisons the ground."
Athletic contests (and combats of all kinds) have a powerful
influence in moulding for the better, the personnel of all
participants therein. He who must meet worthy antagonists face-to-
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
face and defeat them or be himself defeated, ennobles his own
mentality — unconsciously. Courage, coolness, intrepidity, purity of
blood, the mental balance, are the athlete's first requisites. He must
therefore be individualistic, self-reliant and calmly resourceful; i.e.
he must be brave.
The brave man is ever generous, frank, outspoken,
dauntless. His brow is open — his step fearless and firm — his
bearing self-poised, leonine. He looks at you without a tremor-
sums you up at a glance, and in business affairs, his 'word of honor'
is more binding than a Shylocks sealed bond. He may not be an
erudite philosopher— a profound scholar — nor an eminent
elocutionist— (nor be troubled over much with the 'saving' of his
soul) but he is more than all that— He is a Man. Hence, everywhere
he is first favorite, especially with the feminine gender— whose
sexual instincts are as true to Nature as the needle is to the pole.
What a tremendous difference is noticeable, between the
self-contained bearing of the bronzed soldier; and the creeping
suavity of the chalky-skinned shopkeeper— the vileness of the
Hebrew money-lender — the sweet milk-and-honeyness of the
venomous pastor— the base obsequiousness of the lean hireling —
the boorishness of the ungainly peasant— and the fat sleek cunning
of the tax-eating political? Who can look upon them (bunched
together) and honestly affirm, that — fighting does not tend to
improve the stamina, beauty, vigor, and seed of the race?
Healthy animalism is the foundation of all virtues
whatsoever. Diseased bodies produce diseased minds. Hence the
noxious degeneracy of the average 'genius.' Hence also the
shrieking madness of the blinded multitude. Average 'civilized'
men are more or less abortions anyhow — pre-natal megalomaniacs.
Sane men could never be induced to worship an Idol (made out of
a mendicant Jew) nor would they consciously erect in the name of
Progress, State sausage mills for chewing up their own flesh, and
sucking their children's marrow bones. (Deranged minds while
being very susceptible to suggestions, possess — no initiative.)
It is the gibbering 'geniuses' that are luring mankind down
to eternal damnation. If these monstrous mattoids had been
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smothered the day they were born— the earth and the air would
have been purer, to that extent. Have they not inoculated the human
race with every malady; while proclaiming nostrums and 'infallible
remedies' — for each incurable disease?
From pulpit, platform, and library, they ray out their
maniacal babblement; and rabbles, madder than march-hares, suck
it all in, with open-mouthed wonderment?
Hark! do you hear consumptive fiendlings coughing out
their literary pestilence in the High Places of the World? They
would cure 'the sufferings of the submerged,' would they?
Vain is the medicament that expels no contagion! Vain also
is the rhetoric that cures no human woe!
3
Women take supreme delight in the roll of warlike drums —
in the marching of the military, in reading the poems and romances
of 'battle, murder and sudden death.' (Police Gazettes are mostly
supported by women, because of the sensational homicide reports.)
French women (even against their deep patriotic
sentimental ism) admired the fine physique and martial bearing of
the German troops, that poured through Paris in '71. The contrast
between the tall, clean-skinned German Conquerors and the
dwarfishness of the French National Guards was then most
strikingly displayed. In France all 'brutal' sports are prohibited.
Clericalism there has had full sway for centuries and now majority-
box socialism (also cynical squalid sensualism) is ail the rage.
Wherever soldiers conquer in war, they also conquer in
love — after the first paroxysm of revengeful patriotism is over.
Women of vanquished races are usually very prone to wed with the
men who have slaughtered their kindred in battle.
Rudyard Kipling, in one of his popular ballads touches upon
this ethnic peculiarity with a masterly hand:— "By the old
Moulmein Pagoda looking eastward to the sea, there's a Burma girl
a settin', and I know she think 'o me; for the wind is in the palm
trees, and the temple bells, they say: — 'Come you back O British
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
Soldier, come you back to Mandalay.' "
After the battle of Senlac, Norman adventurers were the
'prey' of fair-haired Saxon maidens. To this hour, wherever soldiers
or men-o-wars-men go, amorous dusky daughters of conquered
Islands, absolutely leap into their arms. New Zealand Maori
women married British officers, soldiers and sailors in thousands
and when the regiments were sent home many men remained rather
than break up their families. At Gibraltar, Spanish senoritas literally
storm that rock-ribbed fortress to get at the 'widows'-sons.' The
loves of Red Indian maidens for Pale Face warriors may some day
find a Homer, to clothe them with immortality. Already many have
become world-famous; notably the epic of Pocahontas and that
erratic filibuster John Smith. Since the marriage of Strongbow to
Eva and the admixture of Celt and Sassanach blood has proceeded
continuously from the same root cause. In garrison towns it is a
matter of perpetual witticism the preference which females of all
strata display for soldier lovers.
What modern Gaul requires to reinvigorate her ethnic
stamina is wholesale and limitless conquest by some Northern
Race. The conquerors by seizing all the land and movable property
would become immediately a ruling caste, attracting to themselves
all the best feminines of France. This infusion of new blood would
">ot strengthen the inherited physique of the invaders but it would
ertainly invigorate the structural physique of the defeated tribe.
No hand should be stretched forth to shield a self-poisoned
<reed of humans from utter subordination, for an undue
preponderance of weakly organisms is not desirable. It is good that
they should be swept away and it is better that they should be swept
away by war than by pestilence — as in China and India.
Enslavement or annihilation is the just reward of wholesale
physical debilitation. The Blackfeet's ruthless warfare against the
Digger Indians was in strict accord with the Cosmic Plan.
The story of the past literally bristles with illustrations of
ethnic displacement, carried out (unconsciously perhaps) as herein
set forth. But to resume the personal factor. Breseis, after her
'dearly beloved' had been slain by Achilles, consoled herself with
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the self-delightful fact that the slayer would take her, as spoil, to his
own bed. The Valkyries (Norse battle-maidens), married only with
their conquerors. After the storming of Troy, there was very little
ceremony over the union of Ajax and Cassandra, in the temple of
Minerva. All through the Iliad epic, women are at once the
property, the conqueror's prize, and the inspiration of all the
Homeric Warriors .
It is notorious that when Roman and Greek matrons
discovered no parental virility in their debauched consorts; they
deliberately made advances to the blonde-bearded barbarians'; who
had been imported from the frontiers (prisoners of war) to wrestle
in the amphitheatre. Many a dark-eyed patrician 'maiden of Italia'
throbbed with secret joy, at the duel-victory of her favorite fighter;
and many another has wept her eyes out, as the greedy remorseless
sand, drank up the heart's blood of her 'dying gladiator.' American
women's passion for marrying foreigners, arises more or less, from
similar instincts. American born men evince an alarming tendency
towards impotency. (Vide census returns) An immense number of
them are 'old before they are young' and a very large proportion
(more especially in the cities) are lean lantern jawed profligates, or
leering bald-headed wrecks.
The noblest born maids and matrons of Rome vied with
each other for Caesar's smile -when he (after killing one million
men, and enslaving two million) became Imperator. Queens were
proud to be his concubines; and one of his own natural sons
(without knowing the fact) helped to assassinate him. The love
scandals of David, Solomon, Aaron Burr, Sigurd the Volsung,
Hercules, Jupiter, Apollo, Jehovah, Isis, Sir Galahad, Charles II,
Henry VIII, Bonaparte, Alexander, Raleigh, and that dashing
triumvir Marc Antony, have affected, for better or for worse, the
whole world.
"Better the mistress of a king, than the wife of a subject,"
was a saying once popular amongst European women, in the ages
when kings were really kings of men — when they were mail-clad
sword-swingers — mighty men-of-valor. Modern 'kings' are
simulacra — dilettante, scarecrows,— robed in purple, and paid
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liberal salaries to impersonate regalism for the delectation of the
vulgar. Marionettes are they!— fitted only to lay foundation-
stones— utter vicarious homilies — read off type-written deceptions;
or now and then dress up in swashbuckler accoutrements, to review
Messrs. Rothschild, Ikelheimer, Bleichroder & Co.'s praetorian
guards, marching by in serried column— with nodding plumes and
bannered panoply of war.
Modern kings are degenerates; even more so (if that be
possible) than their laborious subjects. They have allowed all
kingly Initiative to be wrested from them; by the diabolical cunning
of that 'plastic daemon' the Jew Banker— that Mephistophelean
manipulator of National Debts and National Credits. Kings have
not been equal to the occasion and resultantly they and their brain-
drugged subjects are 'bonded' to the Israelite. The Jew has been
supinely permitted to do — what Alexander, Caesar, Nusherwan, and
Napoleon failed to accomplish — crown himself Emperor of the
World; and collect his vast tributes from 'the ends of the earth.'
From the Mississippi valley to the plains of the Hoang-Ho — from
Spitzbergen's icy uplands to New Zealand's iron shores — his
satraps bear sway, and his tax-gatherers pillage, ravage, and rob. As
long as the Aryan Race bows down (even nominally), at the Sign of
the Cross, or vacuously endeavors to 'keep the commandments,' it
is hopelessly entangled — it is delivered up — a burt sacrificial
offering — to the dolabra of the sons of Jacob — Jacob the
supplanter.
Maimonides, the philosopher of Hebraism, boldly
suggested this view to orthodox Talmudists: — "The teachings of
the Christian Church" he proclaimed "tend to bring to perfection all
mankind, so that they serve Jehovah with one consent. For, since
the whole world is thus full of the words of the Messiah; of the
teachings of the Holy Writ, and the Commandments, these words
have spread to the ends of the earth, even if any man deny the
binding character of them now." Which being interpreted
meaneth: — "Tolerate, O children of Israel, the false religion of the
Crucified Prophet! It will serve your ends most admirably. When
the tribes of the west 'serve Jehovah with one consent'— Behold!
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they shall also serve you. Christ shall 'bring them to perfection,'
and ye shall put them in bonds. They have made you weep and
suffer; ye shall make them drip tears of blood; for the Lord your
God hath said it."
Nineteen centuries of evangelization (with a Hebrew bible
as basis) has resulted in— what? The political, social, financial, and
philosophical domination of— the Hebrew. We study his falsified
chronicles, his melancholy literature, and his prophetic out-
pourings; as if alone, in such a nauseous heap of rubbish and stench
the summum bonum was to be found. Not an acre changeth hands —
not a battle-ship lifts an anchor— not a ploughshare cleaves the
soil — not a president vetoes a Bill — not a diplomat signs a
protocol — not an emperor waves a saber, without direct inspiration
from the hidden Hebrew Potentate. Behold!— "the King is in his
counting-house, counting out his money" — and such a king! Israel
is absolute dictator, because he is absolute Proprietor. The gold and
the silver and the credits of the world belong to him, and as long as
he hires politicians to utilize the military arm of 'government,' in
the collection of his 'loans' — in the defence of his ironclad safety-
vaults, he is an irresponsible Jehovah-Jirah. But should Force ever
fail him, 'the lean dogs outside the wall' will leap snarling upon
him and spoil him of his spoil; that the fittest may survive.
"The Jews are ministers of Gold — Great Bankers who see
in the People and the State a mine to be worked."*
"Our life blood is drawn from us by these harpies of finance
and the gaming table, who mock us with illusions, while they strip
us of all."**
"The harm which the Jews commit does not come from
individuals, but from the very constitution of these people; they are
locusts, caterpillars, which ravage France, to whom commerce
ought to be prohibited."***
M. Anatole L. Bcaulien, REVUEDES DEUX MONDES '96.
** Wilson, Financial Editor, INVESTORS REVIEW, London.
*** Emperor Napoleon the First — Quoted by Pre.iense.
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There are two distinct yet parallel species of the parasitical
Semite:— The first, represented by Marx, LaSalle, Stepniak, and
Jesus-the-dreamer; the second, by Goshen, Rothschild, Baring, and
Iscariot-the-B anker. Between them they have practically
extinguished civil liberty and personal independence, wherever
they have been sheltered. Viper like, do they not bite the very
mama; that gives them suck? What have they ever done to Gaul but
eat her heart out; and Gaul was first to 'emancipate' them? What
are they now doing to Germany, Russia, England, America, Africa,
Australia? Poisoning the brain-cells of the enslaved multitude
while taking-in-pledge — the plough and the harrow — the millstone
and the mill.
Over nations and empires and colonies in vassalage, hangs
the Idol-sign of the Brazen Crucifix (that cures no ill). Over a world
in bondage looms the dread shadow of the Three Golden Balls.
As the stars and the suns and primordial atoms, attract each
other by odic force, so do handsome women the brave men. The
nerve cells of splendid feminines and resolute warriors vibrate in
rhythmic unison. Between them there is a mutual free-masonry,
that neither 'creed' nor 'culture' has ever been able to eradicate;
because it is part of the cosmic plan for evolving a higher, and yet
higher type.
Womenkind mobilize in battalions-of-beauty, at football
matches, ball tournaments, aquatic carnivals, and sham battles; just
as the feminines of 'Auld-lang-syne' gathered at the archery
sports — the Coliseum combats — the Olympian games, and the
Neolithic wardances. In their worship of the warrior, Indian
squaws, lionesses and ball-room bells are in harmonious accord.
Even in years of peace, (peace may be considered a
temporary truce — a partial suspension of the struggle for survival)
civilians in female society are at a heavy discount, when the gold-
braided naval lieutenant or the 'Captain-in-his-whiskers' is
prowling around. At balls and receptions, the martial uniform
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carries all before it sexually, (more especially if there be a man
inside) just as it does among the head hunters of Borneo, the
cannibals of the Congo, the redskins of Oklahoma — or the
gruesome savages of Chicago.
University professors (priests disguised) and supersanct
demagogues, may rail in florid prose and honeyed lines of rhyme,
against 'militarism' and the 'horrors of war,' but they might, much
more logically, rear-up on their hind legs and bray furiously at the
belts of Orion; or kick out in silly desperation, at the glancing
spears of the Northern Lights. Those literary 'luminaries' (whose
business is to dwarf public opinion) wit spectacles on their noses —
madness in their cerebrums — congestion in their livers —
saplessness in their bones — fear in their hearts and pens between
their snaky fingers, are never enthusiastically 'selected' by virile
women. When these poor miserable manlings (geniuses they name
each other) do happen (by some lucky chance), to get a woman,
they make her life a torment, and scarcely ever leave any progeny
behind them, for the doom of degeneracy is upon every nerve and
filament of their bodies. Who ever heard of a lovelorn virgin risking
her life, or her reputation, to mate herself with a sanctimonious
creeping-thing, or bespectacled savant? Did you ever look upon a
great drama wherein the hero did not do a bit of fighting? Prince
Charming is ever a performer of gallant actions — he conquers
giants — outwits knaves-slaughters monsters — pulverizes wicked
enchanters and is an all round perambulating Terror to the
wicked — that is to say to 'the other fellow.'
A recent account of the Indian mutiny, states that the first
outbreak (at Meerut), was precipitated by 'a splendid native girl,
hung with jasmine garlands' who womanlike, taunted her sepoy
lover by hissing in his face, when he came to visit her:— "We of
the Bazaar kiss no cowards." He left her in a rage and went out to
recklessly precipitate the Insurrection, that ended by the blowing of
'the defeated' from the mouths of the conqueror's cannon.
As agents provocateurs women have never been surpassed
by men. Cornelia trained up her two brilliant sons, with a view to
hurl them against, and overturn the Roman Oligarchs; a city harlot
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led the Sans-Coullotes of the French Revolution. Queen
Boadicea led her own army of painted Britons against the, then all-
conquering Legions of Rome. A female epileptoid (since
canonized) dressed herself in iron armor, mounted a war-horse, and
urged her demoralized countrymen — to the forcible expulsion of an
alien army. In American wars the feminine has also played her part
with eclat; and she delights (above all other women) in tracing her
own and her family's pedigree to Revolutionary Soldiers, Pirates,
Filibusters; and through them to the mail-clad knights and heroes of
long ago. No Public Library in this Republic is without its complete
set of Stud-Books, and none are deeper students thereof than —
women. Instinctively comprehending the determinant power of
heredity, these students are vaguely endeavoring (in their own
peculiar way), to solve the renowned Spencerian Synthetic: —
"Having seen that matter is indestructible, motion continuous, and
Force persistent— having seen that Forces are everywhere
undergoing transformation; that motion always follows the line of
least resistance; is invariably rhythmic; it remains to discover the
similarly invariable formula, expressing the combined
:onsequences of the actions, thus separately formulated."
Herod's wife and daughter, and their secret alliance for
getting John the Baptizer's head chopped off, must not be
overlooked; nor the calculated 'brutality' which Jael drove that
tent-peg into General Sisera's cranium, when he slept. The folk-
fable of Delilah and Samson is also to the point. In many respects
women have proved themselves more cruel, avaricious, blood-
thirsty, and revengeful than men.
Women are also remarkably good liars. Deception is an
essential and necessary part of their mental equipment. They are
inherently deceitful . Men however reckon upon that and discount it
well in advance. Without deception of some sort, a woman would
have no defence whatever, against rivals, lovers, or husbands. We
must not forget that women really hate each other— intensely.
It is as natural for women to prevaricate, as it is for man to
resent a blow on the face. It is their weapon. Hence they take up
with false religions, priestcrafts, superstitions, much more readily
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than men. They like to play the hypocrite, and pretend to be 'O so
holy,' when their secret thoughts are carnal, self-centered and
materialistic. When women think, they think falsely — when they
follow their instinct, the do exactly what nature intended them to
do — limited of course by the inevitable 'man' — 'the brute that he
is.'
Women are beautiful animals, delightful companions,
affectionate mothers, sisters, and wives, kind-hearted friends; but
they are — born-dissimulators.
A woman is primarily a reproductive cell-organism, a
womb structurally embastioned by a protective, defensive, osseous
network; and surrounded with the antennae, and blood vessels,
necessary for supplying nutriment to the growing ovum or embryo.
Sexualism and maternity dominate the lives of all true women. To
such an extent is this so, that they have little time left (or
inclination) to 'think' and therefore they've never been fitted out
ab-initio with reasoning organs. Probably this is what Mahomet
alluded to, when he sententiously affirmed that "women have no
soul." (Even in man, the soul is probably a fiction, but in women its
absence is an absolute certainty). Women are made sexually
attractive to equilibrate their lesser masculinity. It is man — the
warrior's — business to supply their wants; and select the best of
them for his own enjoyment and the propagation of his seed. They
will not object— except in a giggling, semi-sentimental sort of way,
because they comprehend their own incapacity for self-mastership,
and logical business methods. They are never touched with any
sense of personal responsibility; are mere babies in worldly
concerns — hysterical, well supplied with tear glands, verbal
mechanism — but lovable always. Slaves and women are
notoriously incompetent of self-control — of holding their own in
'business'— when not inspired and assisted by male friends. They
are intended by nature to be loved and defended but not to be
'equalized.'
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When their passions are stirred, women have performed
deeds of heroism (and of terror), that even a man with nerves of
steei, would hesitate at. They have fought on sea and land, the
bravest of the brave. They have led armies and ruled empires, and
been criminals of the darkest dye. Messalina, Agrippina, Amestes,
Charlotte Corday, Elizabeth of Russia, Jael, Fulvia, Theroigne de
Mericourt, Jezebel — the Borgias; have all made themselves more
or less infamous. "Terrible is the rage of the billows — terrorizing is
the fear of poverty, but more terrorizing than all things is the hate
of a woman." (Euripides). Pseudo scientists have lately
investigated 'The Female Offender' with anthropocentric accuracy,
but their methods are puerile and unsatisfactory. Their very 'first
principle' is false. They begin by assuming that the 'criminal type'
is to be found in goals — a most superficial and unscientific
assumption. Only criminals who fail are found there; and by far the
largest proportion of them do not fail. Naturally enough, successful
criminals have not been 'investigated' by Messrs. Ferreri,
Lombroso, Havelock, Ellis, et. al. That being so, their sagest
conclusions are vitiated. Indeed it is an accepted truism among
criminals and police that 'only the fools are caught.' Many of out-
most eminent men in law and medicine, science, religion and
statesmanship, are criminals — criminals of the most atrocious
description. The difference between the man who rules in the
Castle, and the other man who is chained in the castle-dungeon, is
the difference between success and failure. There is a strong
affinity between the criminal and the conqueror. If Washington for
example, had failed, he would (most probably) have been hunted-
down, and hung as an outlaw and traitor. However he 'won' by
force, and consequently became a mighty potentate. King David
was a sheep-stealer and blackmailer, until he triumphed. Then he
became 'a man after God's own heart.' William the Norman was
also a criminal, and fifty per cent of his invading army were exiled
outlaws; but by conquest he became king of England, and his
followers blossomed into nobles.
LOVE AND WOMEN AND WAR
Hence the Spencerian dictum: — "The sole truth that
transcends experience, by underlying it, is the Persistence of Force.
This being the basis of experience, must be the basis of any
scientific organization of experiences. To this an ultimate analysis
brings us down; and on this a rational synthesis must be built up."
Criminals and statesmen are visible embodiments of the
Persistence of Force? Now that being so; scientists should define,
unmistakably, what they mean by 'crime,' before commencing to
elaborately tabulate 'the criminal type.'
But whether a criminal is successful or not, he seems to
have a peculiar fascination for women. He who 'risks his life to
advance his fortunes' may reckon beforehand upon unlimited
feminine approval. If he succeeds and becomes a millionaire, a
chancellor, a president, or a king; he has only to 'hold up his hand'
to be literally 'rushed' by the handsomest feminines in the land; and
even if he fails bravely, women will gather in shoals to visit him in
gaol, besieging him with bouquets and proposals of marriage, even
at the gallows. In Michigan a law has lately been enacted, to
prohibit female adorers, from sending flowers to condemned
murderers, burglars, and bank wreckers. Lombroso says
somewhere that 'good and passionate women have a fatal
propensity to love bad men,' but with characteristic want of the
logical faculty, he abstains enthusiastically, from defining 'good'
and 'bad.'
Belle Starre, the border bandit (who died in a fight with
State troops) was the daughter of a guerrilla chief. She selected her
numerous husbands from the bravest dare-devils in her band, and
on the slightest sign of cowardice, they were discarded. "I do love
a fellow who shows grit," was a common expression of hers.
A printed catalogue of the sanguinary duels, that have been
fought through jealousy, would not be less than fifty miles thick.
(The mythical Cain and Abel are supposed to have quarreled over
some ante-diluvian young woman's charms; and she must have
married Cain.) If the duels between the animals, plants, birds,
fishes, germs, and infusorians, for possession of the female, were
also added thereto; this planet would not contain the first chapter of
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the first volume. Women like to be able to say that two men have
fought over them. All female animals display similar peculiarity.
Bushrangers, freebooters, rebels, pirates, have never lacked
for love romances. Plays and novels by the thousand have been
written upon their escapades, and are always perennially popular.
From the Arabian Nights down to Mane Correli and Ouida, it is one
long rhythmic lilt of 'Love and Women and War.' Women authors
are specially prone to glorify in their heroes, beau ty-of- form,
daring, hardihood, and resolution.
Jesse James and his reckless band of outlaws, also had their
famous love adventures. The mother of the James boys had her arm
torn off by the explosion of a detective's bomb, thrown through her
bedroom window, in the darkness of the night.
The memory of 'Brennan on the Moor,' (and his dashing
inamorata, who "handed him a blunderbuss from under her cloak"),
is still as green as the hillsides of Innisfail. Like Mahomet, Tell,
William Wallace, Caesar, and Napoleon, this famous outlaw's
popularity rested on — a suggestive economic fact: —
"He never robbed a poor man,
Upon the king's highway;
But what he'd taken from the rich,
He gave unto the poor;
So bold and undaunted,
Was Brennan on the moor."
Though not cast in the American mould, Mr. Brennan was
somewhat of a 'practical statesman.' Decidedly!
According to Inspector Schaak's very cleverly written
pamphlet; each of the Chicago bomb-throwers had his own
romance. An heiress supplied money for the defence of one, whom
she proposed to marry; but the most daring and logical of them all
(when defeated) 'fell upon his sword,' like unto Brutus and Cato
and Saul. That is to say, he blew his head off with explosives
brought to him by his lady-love. It is also noteworthy that he was
the son of a Crown Prince. Heredity therefore may have had much
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to do with the magnitude of his concept. In se magna ruunt.
Another of these slave-betrayed, mob-abandoned
enthusiasts was the brother of an American General, and seems to
have led a wandering adventurous life; finally falling 'head-over-
heels' in love with a Southern quadroon; who still zealously fans
the embers of her dead husband's agitation (limited of course by
police censorship.) Whenever she rises to speak in this city, she is
surrounded by stenographic-mouchards and by armed officers of
the 'Law' in picturesque uniforms.
By direct command of the People, two of those men were
choked to death and two others had their necks neatly broken; amid
reverberating shouts of worldwide approbation. Their 'Power' was
not equal to their 'Logic,' and consequently they were snuff ed-out
in strict accordance with the Law of the survival-of-the-fittest.
"They who make half-revolutions dig their own graves" is an old
Cromwellian proverb, that they had evidently failed to properly
consider.
Thus the vibrations of Matter and Motion are to be seen in
all social phenomena; and Regal Authority is upheld by the
combined strength of arm and brain, that gave it birth. "Man, like
every other animal must remain subject to a severe struggle."
(Darwin)
Love in sexual relationship, Power in social adjustments,
Polarity and Magnetism in physics, Gravitation in astronomy, and
Might in ethics, are exact synonyms; — correlated phases of one
primary Assertive— 'the Persistence of Force.' Se Nu San— So
Na. The Sultan of Turkey has been melodramatically described by
W. E. Gladstone, that 'Grand Old Spider,' as— "the Assassin of the
Century," and yet the women of the East, (even those of Armenia),
would claw each others eyes out, for half a chance to enter his
harem.
Dr. Jamieson, the South African freebooter, and his chief,
Cecil Rhodes, though unmercifully abused and denounced as
wicked criminals, are continuously being deluged with written
proposals of marriage from heiresses on both sides of the Atlantic.
These two men, by Force and Diplomacy, 'stole' two million acres
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of the finest agricultural and pastoral land in Africa, together with
gold mines, silver mines, copper mines, diamond mines, also, vast
herds of sheep and cattle.
They carried fire and sword into the strongholds of their
enemies — shot 'gods' with riffle-bullets — cut the throats of priestly
sorcerers in scores — shed the blood of 'adversaries' like water; and
reduced the defeated Kaffirs to a respectful condition of
'constitutional freedom.' There is no cant and hypocrisy about
Cecil Rhodes!— None! He is a man made whole — blunt as
Napoleon or Bismark. He is (in his own sphere) of the Caesar,
Cromwell, Darwinian stock. Believing implicity in the survival of
the fittest, he is the despair of the priestling and the terror of the
politician. He laughs at their parchment Laws and shrieking
Editorials— he rides rough-shod over their Golden Rules — he
scorns their Sermons on the Mount— he spits upon their Tabulated
'Commandments.' He takes what he wants, if he has the Power-
not otherwise. He does not beg — he does not pray — he does not
'steal.' No! — he goes direct for what he wants and 'annexes' it, if
he can. Nor does he weep crocodile tears, over the 'enslavement' of
races that Nature manifestly stamped with inferiority. In days long
gone by, such men were the norms of Anglo-Saxondom. Now!
Alas! Alas! they are astounding exceptions.
If this Republic had produced one Cecil Rhodes forty years
ago, the Civil War (provoked by idiotic emotionalism) would never
have been fought. (Civil wars are necessary when a country is
overstocked, but these States were not over populated in 1862).
Instead of 'Sounding the Jubilee' for plantation 'niggers,' he would
have Sounded it for his own Race; by sending Grants and
Shermans, not to plunder and devastate the Shenandoah valley and
the home of Washington, but to seize, conquer, and re-colonize.
South and Central America, from El Paso to Cape Horn.
Among our Norse and Germanic forefathers, it was
considered the saddest disgrace that could befall any matron; to be
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the mother of a weakling, or a laggard in war. Only for the debasing
influence of priestcraft that would be felt by modern women — of
all grades. Roman matrons have died of broken hearts and even
drowned themselves in shame, at the poltroonery displayed by a
son. If past generations had to depend on the sweet girly-girly
fragile young thing of to-day — or the lean 'lady graduate' for its
reproductive Ova, we would long ago have became a swarm of
ring-tailed baboons. Poor things, they also feel their artificiality —
feel it in their hearts; when they look upon the spindle-shanked,
mutilated males (scarecrows of men) that they are expected to
'love, honor, and obey.'
Over intellectualism (bad enough in man) transfigures
women into freaks. The more Animal Nature a maiden possesses;
the more of a true woman she is — the better wife and mother she
will make. Culture and refinement are horrible substitutes, for the
grand old matronly virtues — beauty, naturalness, purity, maidenly
hypnotism. Intellectualism renders more sensitive. Sensitive
persons are very excitable, timid, and liable to disease. Over
cultivation of the brain-cells undoubtedly produces (in both sexes)
physical decay and leads on towards insanity.
Women's noblest occupation is not merely to read
erotic novels, pound the fiddle, waltz divinely, or fry steak and
onions, but to breed men, to raise up a race of unsubduable
fighters — fighters for their own hand. Her vilest occupation is to
duplicate anaemic poltroons, creeping Judases, laborious jackasses.
Therefore if she desires her sons to be brave, bold, and successful
in the battle of life, she should see to it that her husband is not a
coward or slave; and men ought also 'ware of marrying slave-
minded women. This point is simply set forth in the Saga of Olaf
Trygwason. Earl Rognwald had a degenerate son, who returned
from a Viking-cruise without bringing any plunder. This was
considered a shameful disgrace by the family. Earl Rognwald
remarked: "my son is not like my forefathers." So he fitted the
young man afresh, saying to him:— "I shall be pleased if you come
not again; but I have little hope that you will ever be an honor to
your kinsmen, for your mother's family are all thrall born." Have
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moderns ever improved on that thought?
There is nothing particularly inviting about barren,
dyspeptic, blue-stocking 'New Women,' in pants and spectacles;
talking idiotic snuffle through their noses; with busts made of
adjustable india-rubber; with narrow or padded hips, and 'wheels
between their legs,' scorching across the curbstones like mad.
When such women are 'captured' what good are they? They won't
even breed; or if they do so (by accident) their puny embryos, have
to be delicately nurtured into life with steam-heated incubator-
mechanism and afterwards fed and weaned on 'the bottle.' The
sons of such women — bottle fed abortions — of what good are they?
It is women of this kind (unnatural monsters they are) that
cause so much domestic unhappiness. They have been 'educated'
along false lines, filled with bookish artificialism, and thereafter
when called upon to take up their maternal duty, they are organic
incapables. Hence the divorce court scandals — the fruit of
wholesale degeneracy — encouraged by State interference with
domestic affairs.
"Our times, in sin prolific, first
The marriage bed with taint have cursed,
And family and home —
This is the fountain head of all,
The sorrows and the ills that fall —
On Romans and on Rome."— (Horace)
Gradually the curse of 'Law' invades the privacy of every
home. It encourages emotional feminines to defy husbands, and
Deify an irresponsible Authority. In other words it deliberately
promotes unfaithfulness and unlimited free-love. It undermines the
husband's Control, but at what a dreadful cost? With the
'equalization' of women comes wholesale panmixia — scientific
concubinage, State-regulated polyandry, and the poisoning of all
inter- family intercourse. When average women find in Statute Law
a 'deliverer' and a 'champion' more powerful than their husbands
and brothers, they become both unfaithful and profligate —
especially if 'well educated.' Then it cometh to pass (as in all ages
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of connubial decadence) "no man knoweth his own father." Is not
that the practical tendency of the times? Again, is that 'tendency'
itself not the horrible result of State-Paternalism — of Majority-Box
dictation — of Statecraft and Priestcraft? The Church lives by the
functional emotionalism of women. Thus the Individual wanes and
the State grows more and more. In Natural society, every woman's
husband is to her, both priest and king. When the baleful shadow of
politics and preacherisms, looms over the marriage bed, dreadful
days are at hand.
Purity of blood has played, and is yet to play, a leading role
in the drama of racial evolution. Races held in bondage are
necessarily mongrelized, degraded, 'equalized.' Homeliness is one
result of bad breeding.
When a higher type allies itself by marriage with a lower, it
paves the way for its own ultimate degeneracy. When Spartans and
Athenians mixed themselves with imported Asiatic and Egyptian
slaves, their downfall was foretold; and when 'Equality' became
the motto of Christian Italy; Latins, Asiatics, and Negroes
miscegenated, evolving the modern 'Dago' — who slaves for the
descendants of the men his ancestors conquered. What a fall?
Modern Greeks and Italians, with their dark complexions, curly
hair and sensual lips, show distinct traces of the Negro and Asiatic
blood, that (with the emancipation of the Servi) was poured into
their forefathers' veins. Hence their failure in the struggle for
mastery. Hence their conquest by Goth, Mongol, Teuton, Turk, and
Slav. A friend of Winwoode Reade's, tells a tale full of meaning. As
an African explorer, he once came across a native tribe (the Joloffs)
remarkable for their comparative fine appearance. He asked one of
them, "how is it that everyone whom I meet here is good looking,
not only your men but your women?" "That is easily explained,
(was the reply) it has always been our custom to pick out our worst
looking ones, and sell them for slaves."
Hybridism, south of Mason and Dixon's line, smoothed the
way for the Lincoln invasion of '62 and even in the Northern States
(if the present olla-podrida intermixture, with inferior breeds, is not
somehow put an end to) similar invasions may be confidently
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predicted. Our race cannot hope to maintain its predominance, if it
goes on diluting its blood with Chinamen, Negroes, Japanese, or
debased Europeans. Panmixia means both death and slavery.
Throughout South and Central America, human mongrelism is
rampant; (a half breed is president of Mexico). The Latin race is
hopelessly effete in both the old world and the new. Nations, like
horses, are bred to win.
"Can you reverse rules that stupid farmers heed,
And mend the higher by the coarser breed?"
Tremendous indeed is the occult influence of sex-love upon
the evolution of organic life. Love and glory, fidelity, emulation,
resolution, beauty, strength, and courage are directly inspired by
sex-passions. In ballad and legend they are ever inextricably
intertwined. "None but the brave deserve the fair" — "Faint heart
never won fair lady' and 'all is fair in love and war," are age-worn
proverbs.
Nature is saturated through and through, with the chemic
potency of strife and sexualism. All the world is male and female.
The saint is the only hermaphrodite. Sexual desire inspires the male
with nobility of bearing; and the female with instincts of
motherhood, devotedness, and song. The roar of the lion as he
tosses is tawny mane, by the forest water-hole — the neigh of the
high-mettled stallion, as he rears at the halter, or leaps the slip-
rail— the deep challenging bellow of the shaggy bull, as he tears up
the grass with his stamping hoofs — the nightingale pouring
piercingly into the azure vault, its magical thrill — man decked in
his shining regimentals, marching forth to victory or death, with
drum-beat and bugle-song; all bear direct testimony to the sublime,
beneficent, and all pervading Mesmerism of Force.
Military renown is now, and ever has been, the virtue of the
mightiest animals. Self-abnegation is the thesis of the slave.
Christlingism is functional derangement of the nerve centres — a
madness — a disease.
A rational Redeemer has never yet been known to
materialize, in the guise of a feeble mendicant — and humble
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petitioner; but rather the form of a mighty man-hunter, a destroyer
of tribal ravagers — a man who saith to his disciples "come on!" not
"go forth!" The Emancipator is heard of at first, with secret delight,
and some misgivings; but afterwards when better understood; he
comes on a war-horse with steel by his side; amid the roll of
saluting cannon, the throb of triumphal drums, the fierce blare of
twisted-bugles, and the ringing huzzas of the People he has
enriched by the exploitation of their foes — for all-the-world loves
a fighter; especially its sisters, its cousins, and its aunts. Liberators
never arrive from circumcised Jewry, wearing halos, briar crowns,
uttering shrieks of agonized despair; nor do they "ride on a colt the
foal of an ass," through the streets of Zion. No! No! — that is the
ideal of— dastards and dotards.
In spite of all the century-old emasculating creeds, and
debasing copy-book commercialisms; the inbred popular
conception of a Mighty Man is still a Sworded Warrior— a king of
men — a ruthless sweeper-away of blackmailers, usurers, priests
and usurpers.
"Who shall be nearest, noblest, and dearest, named with all
honor and pride evermore? He the undaunted, whose banner is
planted on Power's high ramparts, and battlements hoar. Fearless of
danger, to falsehood a stranger; looking not back, when there's
danger before. He shall be nearest, he shall be dearest; he shall be
first in our hearts evermore."
A Virginian love song expresses this grand old sentiment in
its sexual form: — "Rather would I view thee dying, on the last red-
field of strife; 'mid my counties heroes dying, than become— a
dastard's wife."
John Ruskin, (in an oft quoted passage), decidedly caught a
passing glimpse of the surging logic that lurks in armed conflicts: —
"War is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men.
It is very strange for me to discover this, but I saw it to be quite an
undeniable fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of
civil life flourished together, I found to be wholly untenable. Peace
and the vices of civil-life flourish together." Decadence and Peace
are concentric.
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
7
Next to the belted sword-swinger and the sturdy well-to-do
athlete; the successful money-making 'man of affairs' is especially
attractive to the average female mind. He also (in a lesser degree)
is a resolute professional fighter— a scalp-hunter— his scalps being
title-deeds to land, farm-mortgages, bank credits, consols, shares
and bonds. (Consols, shares, and bonds, represent sub-divided
proportions of the battle-booty). He also, climbs to success over his
prostrate rivals — for there is no other road. Success and money
come to him only, when he has outwitted his rivals, and finally
triumphed in the ruthless rough-and-tumble of daily, hourly
conflict. The 'Business Man' is a conqueror of the most merciless,
stony-hearted, and cruel kind; but we must not blame him for that.
If he displays a particle of human sympathy, with the multitudinous
victims of his business methods, he is immediately out-generaled,
bankrupted, ruined by rivals, with more iron in their strategy —
more hardness in their hearts. A kind-hearted man is always a
failure in 'business,' and he is always a failure in 'war.' War means
thorough-going smashing-up of your opponent, so that he may be
prevented from smashing you up; and it is 'ditto, ditto, ditto,' in all
the parallel phases of Commerce and Trade.
With 'money in his purse' the successful business man is
able to support a family, and rear up his children in an environment
of comparative freedom, and women are sharp to perceive this. In
such matters the female mind is preternaturally acute. Except in
sexual matters a woman has no more brains than a cock-sparrow —
but in questions of marriage and love, she is an expert. Other things
being equal, women prefer a rich-man to a poor-man for a
husband — and they are scientifically justified. He who is without
wealth amidst unlimited quantities of it, is either a coward, a born
slave, or a lunatic; and no self-respecting woman should marry
such an imbecile.
The resolute and brave, never 'hunger' to the grave;
The gallant and the bold, never lack for — gold.
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With the possession of an 'independence,' a man is free to
materialize his ideals; and if he is 'well born' it is impossible for his
ideals to partake of the ignoble.
Gold is a fierce resolvent. It is the sublimated extract of
Victory. It is the property — the booty — of the Strong. "Whoever
has sixpence (writes Carlyle) is sovereign over all men to the extent
of that sixpence; he commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to
teach him, Kings to mount guard over him — to the extent of that
sixpence." Therefore, all men who would obtain freedom must
obtain wealth 'by hook or by crook,' or as R. L. Stevenson rhymes
it: — "You also scan your life horizon, for all that you can clap your
eyes on."
To become the child-bearer of a mere hireling, a day
drudge, is the last resort of a sensible feminine.
Dowerless women never regard a poor lover with
enthusiastic favour; except in conventional romances. Without
being capable of logical reasoning, yet women intuitively
comprehend that 'there is oft a lack of courage in the race of
bondmen.' If a man possesses wealth (no matter how obtained) he
can pick and choose among the most delightful darlings in the land;
nay, he can buy them (if he wants to) — by the carload. Behind all
the hypocritic veneer of piety and fashion; women of all ranks ar<
still a marketable commodity. Whenever the supply exceeds th<
demand, they are straightway transmuted into magdalenes
concubines, slaves, (or 'new women'). When few in number (as h
young colonies) they possess a certain proportion of selective
influence, but when for every eligible man, there is a score of
eligible women, their market value dwindles, and instead oi
'selecting,' they become 'the selected' or as Darwin puts it:— "The
sexual struggle is of two kinds. In the one it is between the
individuals of the same sex, generally the males, in order to drive
away or kill their rivals, the females remaining passive; while on
the other, the struggle is likewise between the individuals of the
same sex, generally the females, which no longer remain passive,
but select the more agreeable partners." (Vide "Descent of Man")
In a reasonably natural Society, the most vigorous males
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MIGHT IS RIGHT
would possess Property and Power. Consequently (in accordance
with the instincts of sex-attraction), they would also obtain
possession and impregnate, the best and handsomest feminines;
leaving the ovum-bearing residue to be fertilized by the less
vigorous males. In an unnatural system of Society (such as the
fiendish socialistic scheme, amidst which we now retrograde)
weaklings, dotards, and semi-madmen are deliberately permitted to
retain Property Privileges; that they are manifestly unable to
defend, if put to the test. The 'Law' defends the Unfit.
Consequently opulent weaklings preponderate in the selection and
retention of the finest females. Resultantly the children of such
unnatural unions seldom reach even average perfection. More often
than otherwise they are a shame and malison to their kindred. "The
sons of vicious and very corrupt men," wrote Plutarch ages ago,
"reproduce the very nature of their parents."
This nation literally swarms with vile semi-idiotic
mannikins (leprous wretches, damned in the womb) whose
presence among us, is a standing menace to all things truly Great
and Noble. It is not by breeding meeklings and stunned profligates,
that nobility of national character is evolved. Why should diseased
and ignoble animals (rich and poor) be encouraged to populate
luxurious wigwams, with fragile, anasmic, bottle-fed, scrofulous
dwarfs; when nature demands their wholesale segregation — by the
edge of the sword?
Dr. Heycraft suggests that Society should socialistically
segregate the Unfit, but that is manifestly out of the question,
inasmuch as Society is incompetent and to provide a testing
standard, sufficiently absolute and accurate, to decide satisfactorily
who are and are not the 'Unfit.' Nature however has provided that
standard, and it is unending conflict between rival interests; with
women, power, and property as the contestants' final prize. The
surest, fairest, and most scientific method of re-distributing
monopolized plunder, and accumulated — privilege is unlimited
struggle.
Let the Best Man win! Is that not the Logic of events of
Science, of Fact and of Nature?
LOVE AND WOMEN AND WAR
Why should Anglo-Saxondom doltishly stand guard over
the copulations of opulent decadents, and shoals of creeping
unwarlike proletarians? "Nor is anyone so careless (writes Charles
Darwin) as to breed from his worst animals. Even savages, when
compelled from extreme want, to kill some of their animals, would
destroy the worst and preserve the best!'
8
The Fit are not the individuals who merely inherit stolen
property; or obtain peaceful possession thereof by subterraneanism;
but those who deliberately, and openly proprietorise themselves. If
taboos were not so insanely reverenced, proprietors who are
incapables would be unceremoniously pushed aside (most
probably) to make room for better men.
If those 'in possession' victoriously prove their capacity,
then their prerogatives cannot be abrogated or abridged; but should
they fail, then their vanquishers — presumably better men — are
biologically justified in dispossessing them. "Let the best man win"
is an assertive, at once popular, scientific and suggestive. The
mastership of the Ablest Man is exactly what science and
circumstances demand. In Nature an organism's right is
commensurate with its mentality and physique. In the realm of
Cosmic Law the only Statute of Limitations is superior Power.
A-Priori 'rights' are as non-existent as the gods, ghosts,
and moral taboos of the pontiffs and pastors. Therefore the police-
officer's club (being in harmony with the dynamic necessities of
matter and motion) is part and parcel of the Divine Order. So are
clubs in general. — Men shall ring around each other, in a fierce
unending strife; each shall strive to 'beat' his brother, wile for wile,
and life for life.
If legislative injunctions, and other bogey contrivances
were wholly disregarded; then the Strongest and the Boldest
(therefore the Wisest) would be fertilizing the pick of the best
damsels per marriage, transmit their own right-royal qualities to
their immediate descendants. Upon similar principles second-rate
MIGHT IS RIGHT
males would of necessity pair-off with second-rate females. This by
cumulative atavism, and interbreeding of underlings, would
gradually tend to eliminate, subjugate, and efface the seed of the
servile-minded — the superstitious and the over intellectualized.
Hereditary virtues can only be maintained, by keeping them
in constant use. Hence the biological necessity of unmerciful
struggles between individuals and groups of individuals. As with
muscles and organs of the body, so human aptitudes are developed
by use and attenuated by non-use. Nearly all the masterful qualities,
mental and physical, that have ever distinguished the elite of
mankind, have originated in conflict.
Racial rottenness (the conjoint result of holy hydrophobia
and State-regulated hybridism) can only be eliminated by an
intelligent application to the breeding of human beings — of the
principles of natural selection, conjoined with conscious rejection,
culminating from time to time in deadly conflicts. War is the most
important phase of racial, sex, and tribal evolution.
One panic-stricken coward may cause the loss of a battle —
and the loss of one battle may decide for ages (perhaps for ever),
the fate of a Race. Hence the necessity of breeding men who are
fighters — fighters in their heart. Hence also the need of training
them, from boyhood up, to conquer and overthrow their oppressors
and personal enemies — at any cost — at any peril. By no known
alchemy can a race of warriors and freemen be evoluted out of a
'flock of bleating, baaing, lapping lambs, suckled on teats of priest-
rid dams.'
"The qualities which have enabled the Teutonic races to
play their wonderful part in the history of Europe, are well
displayed in the valiant sons of Tancred, of Hautonville — William
Iron Arm — Robert Guiscard— Roger, and the rest; who carved out
kingdoms for themselves in Apulia and Sicily. They were a
vigorous race, large of limb, stout of heart, tenacious of will; with
abundant physical energy, taking their pleasures in drinking and
hunting. They had broad shoulders, fair hair, blue eyes; as we see
in Anna Conmenia's portrait of the son of Robert Guiscard,
Bohmend, Prince of Tatentum, who was 'a cubit taller than the
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tallest man; . . . with blue eyes, his cheeks tinted with golden red."
(Taylor's Origin Aryan Race)
All hireling labor is corroding, corrupting, degrading,
devilish. Cursed is the brow that sweats— for hire, and the back that
bends to a master's burden. Calloused hands imply calloused
minds. 'Virtue in bondage,' what an insane paradox?
There is something mutilated about men who exert the
strength of their body or mind, for the enrichment of Taskmasters ,
and women are not slow to perceive it. Women are never deluded
with the maniac philosophy that "Jack is as good as his master."
Indian squaws have no admiration for the 'brave' who has never
taken a scalp; and white women have even less for the 'bearded
man,' who — amidst gold and silver by the ton — lives hand to
mouth, like a mangy cur.
The bolder and more aggressive men are, the more women
of all classes admire them — and vice versa. Thus the surging ebb
and flow of attraction and of gravitation is ever directed towards —
the impregnation of the Fair — by the Strong. How glorious beneath
the sun is the union of the Beautiful and the Brave?
Soiled hands (is soiled for market hire or the payment of
tribute) imply a soiled manhood — a biological organism of 'low
degree.' Labor performed for ones-self is passable — when
performed for others, it is utterly debasing — ruinous to brain and
body.
From the beginning of time, the defeated classes have ever
been the laboring classes — the tenants — the vassals — the sans-
cullotes; and the conquerors (their heirs or assigns) have always
provided (or hired) the priests, generals, taskmasters, and rulers.
This is as true of the United States (a European colony) as it was of
Thebes, Troy, Babylon, Persia, Carthage, Rome.
183
Be as a Uon 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.