The surface of the soil is a lethal chamber — the bottom of the sea a charnel 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 that you Men, that you breed fighters! See to it that you train them too! “The harper is not made otherwise than by harping” nor the warrior otherwise than by war. Let muscle force be pitted against muscle force, brain power against brain power and let winners wear the laurel and losers wear the rasping sackcloth. Let there be no compromise — no half-hearted philandering — no backing down but as Darwin commands, let the strongest live and the vilest die.
Black, furious and tragic are the bloody annals of man’s evolution, and there is no rational evidence upon which to conclude that it shall ever be otherwise — or that it would be wise for us to attempt the making of it otherwise.
Why then be discontented with that which we cannot alter, even if we dared. Better after all, fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. Let it be as it has ever been — as the grim old Norseland skald chanted it, when our Race began to emerge into the dim distant twilight of the gods.
Be it among animalculæ, moth or mollusc, birds of the air, beasts of the field, fishes of the sea, planets, suns, stars or solar systems; Force reigns unchangeable, unchallengeable, inexorable.
When the kindly Roman emperor imagined that peace had settled down permanently upon the ancient world; even then, the (dissemulating) assassin’s dagger was sharpening for his throat: and now, while Lower Organisms dream of a “world of lovers” — of arbitration instead of hostility — of conciliation between rival carnivores; the mechanism of deletion is silently under construction: that (when completed) will sweep them off the face of the earth.
The Strongest organisms are always the determinants. They hold in their hands (absolutely) the destinies of weaker organisms. Further, in all the interwoven differentiations of matter and mind; equality, mercy, pity, are wholly at a discount — except alone in family relationship. (A man’s family is his property — it is part of himself. Therefore his natural business is to defend it, as he would his own life. Women and children belong to man; who must hunt for them as well as for himself. He is their lord and master, in theory and in fact.
Under natural conditions, there is no haven for the wretched, no hope for the weaklings, no resting place for the weary, no quarter for the beaten. Nature loathes Infirm Ones. Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve. This is an Ultimatum.
Life is a race for Power into the very jaws of death and “hell take the hindmost.”
Hell take the hindmost! No! — that isn’t so! Christ takes the hindmost! Exactly! that is correct! In real life he is the true Prince of Evil. Soothingly he saith: — “Come unto me all ye that are weary or heavy laden;” and, those who obey are sure of — hell. Nay, ascendeth up for ever and ever.”
In ancient ages the Incapables were permitted to perish without comment: but with us it is different.
Almsgiving, first by the monastery, now by the State, has preserved them and their leprous seed, until modern nations are actually swarming with men and women (rich and poor) who are totally useless and totally vile. Selective influences that operate under natural conditions, have been kept in abeyance by religions and moralisms: until the whole human race is saturated with inherited mental disease and rottenness-of-the-bones. Our Christian civilization is a forcing-chamber for weakly animalculæ. Natural conditions are a lethal-chamber for them. The proper home for incurables is — the grave.
Competition must be to the death. If retarded in any way it fails of beneficial results. The chief intent of false religions and false moralisms is to arrest competition half-way to safe-guard degenerates in possessing that which they could neither seize nor defend if competition was unlimited. Humanitarian institutionalisms have been invented to handicap and eliminate the elite of mankind — vainly however.
With the normal man, it is a pleasure to struggle, a pastime to fight, and nothing is sweeter to him than to confiscate his confiscator and surpass his surpasser — to, as it were, smite his enemy hip and thigh and spoil him of that which he spoiled from others. The normal man prefers to eat others than to be eaten.
With the abnormal man, it is otherwise. He is of the mob — he sheepishly obeys public opinion — he is one of a flock. That word flock! — Does it not postulate the existence of shepherds to “round-up” and drove — of specialists to castrate — of shearers to shear — of cattle dealers to purchase — of butchers to kill — of tanneries — wire fences — corrals — abattoirs; and finally of “roast lamb and mint sauce,” with fat Carnivores sitting round, lapping blood and purring gently?
Herbert Spencer (referring to the origin of manners, customs, and political institutions) says: — “The will of the victorious chief, of the strongest, was the rule of all conduct. When he passed judgment on private quarrels, his decisions were the origin of law. The mingled respect and terror inspired by his person and his peerless qualities, then deemed super-natural by the rude minds that had scarcely an idea of the powers and limits of human nature, were the origins of religions, and his opinions were the first dogmas. The signs of obedience by which the vanquished, whom he spared, repaid his mercy, were the first examples of those marks of respect that are now called good manners and forms of courtesy.”
How human history duplicates itself over and over again? How it revolves in a never ending panorama.
Wherever human herds congregate, the “Victorious Chief” still governs; though not without envy and impotent opposition. Everywhere he is Master in one guise or another: but it behooves him to beware that his power is not undermined by the teredo of sanctified utopianism — founded on the multitudinous votes of the vile, the vulgar, and the vitiated. Blighting indeed is the tyranny of Collective Humanity.
“The great political superstition of the present,” (also writes Spencer) is “the divine right of parliaments and the implied divine right of majorities.”
The supremacy of Living Manhood over devout dreaming, over literature, dogma, law and tradition; must be boldly asserted and aggressively maintained; as it was, in the days of yore. Woe unto you Strong Ones if you ever get beneath the hoofs of the trampling, bellowing, maddened mob. Ha! — ‘You must meet the guile and death-snare with battle and with wrack.’
“Woe to the vanquished, was stern Brenno’s words, when sand proud Rome beneath the Gallic sword. Woe to the vanquished, when his massive blade bore down the scales against his massive her ransom weighed: and on the field of foughten battle still, woe knows no limits — save the victors will.”
“The Survival of the Fittest” is the scientist’s translation of the heroic age’s “Viæ Victus.” Grim and harsh it may appear to nervous souls, but it is true to nature . Neither legislative enactments nor pious incantations can deflect or nullify it. It may be thwarted and turned aside for a time, but only for a time; just as a river may be banked back by the building of a breastwork. The waters cease to flow onward until the dam is brim-full, and then, over the top the flood leaps, with resounding crash and uproar, finally sweeping away the obstruction itself.