Decalogues and “be it enacteds” are mud ramparts the decadent ages vainly erect against the irresistible flow of natural events. Sooner or later these feeble barriers go down, or are surmounted; just as the river surmounts the dam. Cardinal Newman tersely describes the Church of England as a “serviceable breakwater” and he speaks with astuteness. All sacredotalisms are “serviceable breakwaters.” They may last for one century or twenty, but they down-tumble in the end. Artificial obstructions cannot last for if they did, then the cankerous ancient civilizations would never have been overwhelmed; for they also had their serviceable breakwaters; that is to say, gods and temples, mob-politics, mob-morals, mob-philosophies.
Legal and ethical barricades may not be depended upon to protect dwindlings from the judgments they bring upon themselves; and which they richly deserve.
Every People that have been blotted-out, were rightfully blotted-out. What a frightful maggot-heap this earth would now be, if the “civilized” populations of the past, had not perished? If nature had permitted them to live and multiply and propagate their “progress”, that is to say, their iniquity, what a noisome sink it would be? What must near Futurity be like, if wars and plagues do not come, burning contemporary infernalisms and purifying the air?
Thus, the utter extermination of enfeebled breeds is in accordance with the Highest Wisdom: and whether we personally approve thereof or not, it must persist. There is nothing unjust, nothing ultra-natural, nothing diabolic about the elimination of the vile — to make room for the “sound in mind and limb.”
Clearly therefore, in every department of life, the lesser force must be overthrown by the greater; which (being interpreted) meaneth: — might is right, absolutely, unreservedly. From the records of history, the facts of life, and the discoveries of science, this startling deduction may be thoroughly proved. “The law of life” as Benjamin Kidd writes, “has been always the same from the beginning, ceaseless and inevitable struggle, ceaseless and inevitable selection and rejection.” That ‘Might is Master’ should require demonstrating is in itself a proof of the mental and moral perversity that pervades the world. Perhaps however the ‘age we live in,’ may not be an ‘age of enlightenment and progress,’ but an age of darkness, arrested development, and psychic paralysis. Mayhap the theologies and intellectualisms of our time may be but a magical hoodwink. We might (for example) be enchanted on the down-grade track, that leads to eternal extinction; while insanely imagining “progress and enlightenment.” Also the imagining process may be part of the complicated mechanism that facilitates the descent — the descent into Sheol. Official statistics show that racial deterioration (begun centuries ago as a sequence of ultra-naturalism) is now proceeding at a tremendous rate.
Dr. Haycraft, F.R.S.E. in his book ‘Darwinism and Race Progress’ asserts “there are strong grounds for believing that during the last 30 years, the race has decidedly degenerated.” The decadence of character is obvious to the most obtuse understanding, especially in this land of Liberty and Light; were you can buy statesmen with a snuff-box — editors with a dollar — women with a gew-gaw.
Undoubtedly degenerative forces prevail in our social life, and yet it is impressed upon us from our youth up, that: — “A Great Light hath come down upon the earth and all the ends of the world hath seen the Salvation of our God.” Salvation indeed! What lunacy?
To act as the hunted ostrich on an African karoo — to hide our heads from the cosmic vengeance in hot pursuit, is as futile and ridiculous as it is base. No empiric reorganization of the social system — no rock of ages — no legislative meliorism — no fungus virtues — no scheme of fool redemption — no patent economic plan — no Israelitish codes of “Thou Shalts” and “Thou Salt Nots;” can deliver whimpering defectives, from the wrath that is their just reward. Sooner or later THEIR “Day of Judgment” cometh; bringing in its train of desolation, reparation and rolling doom.
Even as I write — with wrecked civilizations lying around me, cold and chill — outraged Nature is preparing her whirlblasts of wholesale avengement. Europe is a vast powder magazine, with a strident maniac in the middle waving a burning torch; and from Asia is wafted the odorous stench of plague-smitten millions.
Any day, any hour, “Civilization” may be startled from its hypnotic trance, to gaze upon the mightiest drama that has ever been unrolled when the ‘tempest flings out its red banner of lightning,’ and great nations groan, and reel, and surge, and rock; beneath the thunderous tread of trampling legions, drilling for the savage shock. Military arsenals are preparing in every city, and floating defiantly on Seven Seas are the steel-clad fortresses of rival MIGHTS.
Foolish and blind (or mad) are they who think the struggle for existence ended. It is only begun. This Planet is in its infancy, not in its decrepitude. The ‘end of all things’ is afar off. The kingdom of heaven in not at hand. Incessant is the rivalry for supremacy among men, and manifold are its metamorphoses. Not for a single hour, for a single second, is there an armistice. Night and day the combat rages, and with renewed virulence on Sundays. When we fall asleep and when we wake up, the clashing of the Weapons and the crunching of the bones, is sounding on our ears. Everywhere “the sword is uplifted on man.” Everywhere Cain’s bludgeon is cracking skulls, and with bloodhounds Americans hunt each other. The hands of “Congregations of the Faithful” are red with the blood of the innocent; yet how they boast of being washed clean in the blood of their Brother — the Lamb.
Eternal battle is the main condition upon which man holds his life tenure. When the brand is shattered in his hand, that is death or — slavery. When his enemies are beneath his heel, that is life, honor, success. Indeed the struggle between men is more pitiless, and more unmerciful, than among brutes.
The brute beasts do not enslave, but permit the unfit to die off. Man enslaves his “brother man” on business principles, and makes fuel of the widow and the fatherless. The “failures in life” may be counted by millions and everyone knows their horrible fate — their blazing death. Behold them being whirled into the blazing maw of the great iron furnaces.
Overt action is not always needful for the drastic removal of lower organisms. Very often, if left alone, degenerates cremate themselves. If given control of governmental mechanisms, they immediately commence to grind one another into mincemeat — (that is to say, into dividends); crying Holy! Holy! Holy! Mentally, physically, morally, they are past redemption. Doomed souls are they — miserable sinners!
Seventy-five per cent of the inmates of state orphan asylums (for example) are the children of parents that perish from chronic alcoholism. Poverty, helotism, are the results of chronic ballot-boxing. Alcoholism and politics are convenient Destructives — Crematories; whereby weak-minded “flocks” may eliminate themselves with beneficient results —
Nature having already condemned them, they provide each other with palatable poisons — for slow but sure suicide. They build Gehenna-fires and cast themselves headlong into blazes.