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 possible 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 Christs 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.
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, assassin 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 foæted dungeons, where it labors unceasingly and for naught, in darkness, despair and shame. Like that Spanish lieutenant the masters of the earth first flatter their dupes, in order to more easily enchain them. Who talks 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 Saviors — neither in raging devils, nor in devilish philosophies — neither in ghosts, nor in idols, nor in laws — nor in woman, nor in man.
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 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 cultivate 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 befooled 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 befooled 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 was granted to them, they would straightway vote themselves a master, or a thousand masters within 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?