When Jefferson dictated his fatal and untenable abstraction, he was not even original but plagiarized Zeno the Stoic, Jack Cade, Savonarola, 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, Robenspierre 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 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 rain-rot and of physical decay. “A crown of thorns on every brow — that is the wage they’re earning now.”[8]
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 than its predecessor. All the scientific evidences of mental, moral, and bodily deterioration, are markedly accentuated in them — their timidity is proverbial.[9]
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 or the young colt. 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 lash. Look upon their shrunken cheeks, their thin 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 or 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 hearts blood! Born thralls are they — or, born madmen!
Their days are without hope, and their years are consumed for — naught. When their Masters speak 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,[10] 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.
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 a 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 everywhere being acknowledged thanks to the researches of Galton, Lombrosso, Mosso, Otto Ammon, Ferri, 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-drudgers from their youth up and I will show you a herd of cattle whose ancestors were also propertyless 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.
10
When the Roman Empire was tottering to its fall, the worship of the State was an established cult: just as it is to-day. Better to adore blocks of wood or stone, than to bow our hearts, our heads and our knees, before those troops of Unclean Beasts — Politicians!