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 as 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 thy countries heroes dying, than become — a dastards 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.
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 portions 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 women 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.
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; 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 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 even buy them (if he wants to) — by the carload. Behind all the hypocritical veneer of piety and fashion; women of all ranks are still a marketable commodity. Whenever the supply exceeds the demand, they are straightaway transmuted into magdalenes, concubines, slaves (or “new women”). When few in number (as in 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 of ‘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 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 a 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 stunted profligates, that nobility of national character is evolved. Why should diseased and ignoble animals (rich or poor) be encouraged to populate luxurious wigwams, with fragile, anæmic, bottle-fed, scrofulous dwarfs; when nature demands their wholesale segregation — by the edge of the sword?