/ 3 ?> RSI CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MIGHT is RIGHT OR THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. by RAGNAR REDBEARD. L.L..D “MUST WE THEN SPEAK OF THIS SUBJECT ALSO; AND SHALL WE WRITE GOHCERNIHG THINGS THAT ARE NOT TO BE TOLD, AND SHALL WE PUBLISH THINGS NOT TO 3E DIVULGED, AND SECRETS NOT TO BE SPOKEN ALOUD." Julian the emperor. “THE LAW IMMUTABLE, INDESTRUCTIBLE, ETERNAL: NOT LIKE THOSE Or TO BAY AND YESTERDAY, BUT MADE ERE TIME BEGAH.” Sophocles. CHICAGO. 1896. Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1897 by Arthur Uing, in the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Wasl ngton. D. C Right of translation reserved, CONTENTS. Book 1. CHAP. 1. Introductory. The living forces of Evil are to be found in the Moral Ideals of to-day. Page 1. 2. Iconoclastic. Christian Ethics impeached. Jesus the true Prince of Evil—the Mephistopheles of • the world—the King of the Slaves. 14. 3. The spinning of the web. The Ship of State, a pirate ship. ‘All men are created equal,’ is the strident doctrine of the maniac. 35. 4. Man the Carnivore. The Ideal Animal, a destract- ive warrior—not a crucified carpenter. “Moral Principles’ are slave-regulations. 67. 5. The chief end of manhood—material success. Self preservation, the First Law of Nature. Hell takes the Defeated Ones—the Failures. 96. 6. Love and Women and War. Female animals love the best fighting males. Sexual selection and the necessity of unmerciful conflict. 134. 7. The Logic of To-Day. History, Biology, and Con¬ temporary Events, all unite in demonstrating that Might is Right—absolutely. 166. Might is Right; er The Survival of the Fittest New book by Ragnar Redbeard, LL. D., U. of C. 178 pp. Cloth, gilt, $1.50; paper, 50c. postpaid. This is no ordinary book. Undeniably it is the most re¬ markable publication that has appeared in Christendom for fifteen centuries. Its philosophy is that of a scientific Satan, a realistic Anti-Christ. With grim and Pagan logic it assails the first principles of moral codes, religions, politics and law; affirming that modern civilization is a horrible hypnotic seance, a continuation of the terrorism and gloom of the Dark Ages. It also marshalls an overwhelming array of facts to prove that the man of to-day is a physical and mental dwind¬ ling, a coward, a weakling and a slave. Upon biologic Spen- cer an principles it attacks the Golden Rule, the Sermon on the Mount, the Jewish Decalogue, statute books, written con¬ stitutions and representative institutions, affirming that they are all without higher sanction or authorit> than organized duplicity or armed Power. Therefore if man is ever to be free, these artificial and domineering “Thou Shahs” must be entirely swept aside. l)r. Redbeard contends that fitness to survive must be tested by the clash of armies: all other tests being fraudu¬ lent. Victors in war are naturally entitled to dominate; and the “ defeated’’—that is, the runaways who feared to die— are equally entitled to servitude. Throughout all organic life the chief selective agency is combat. Women admire war¬ riors above all other kinds of men. Communities of cowards (and their descendants) are rightfully plundered, taxed, en¬ slaved. “Right” and “Wrong” are decided not by the Meek but by the Mighty, who, consequently may write laws, creeds, constitutions, title deeds—and re-write them at pleasure. Equality ideals are mere milenial illusions, for all life is strife—a combat to the death. As long as the struggle for existence is “moralized ” or limited by Governments and Gods, the unfit and base, in¬ stead of being trampled down (as nature intended) are; stupidly permitted to set up Imperial Injunction Seats and deal out death, bondage and ruin to Highest Types. Thus, by demanding his credentials, Darwinism is fatal to the tyrant. It rings him round with menace and destruction. It hurls against him ten thousand trained rivals. It proclaims to all men “Nothing is true; nothing is sacred; all things are open to you ; blessed be the Vanquishers.” Address, ADOtPH MUELLER (sole agent). 108 S. Clark Street. Chicago, Hi. EDITORS PREFACE. This is no ordinary book. Nothing like it has ever been permitted to see the light since A. D. 300. Even the boldest writings of Lucretius, Aristotle, Sallust, Celsus, Aggripa, Tacitus, and ‘Julian the Apostate,’ have been mutilated or entirely suppressed, by an all too triumphant Statecraft. With the discovery of America and the enforced expansion that followed, came a renascence of the realisms and heroism of the Past. Germany throttled theocratic despotism—Cromwell hacked a king’s head off, and Bonaparte pumped shot and shell into Social¬ istic Absolutism. During the Dark Ages when the Cross was supreme, all heroic Ideals in book form, were rooted-out, and the Authors roasted alive; amid the hurrahs of faith-frenzied mobs. But the deeds of Napoleon, Atilla, and Cromwell were, in the end, an effective if belated substitute, for the Thoughts that had been so cleverly suppressed. How these men (by their actions) spat upon Golden Rules and Sermons on the Mount? How they scorned the pitiful “Thou Shalt Nots” that enslave and emasculate the Vulgar and the Vile—who dream themselves the holy and the pure? Then camethe riving thnnderbolts'of Gibbon, Darwin, Spencer; and now the hypnotic myth, that centres around the execution of a Hebrew slave, stands bare before an astounded (but semi-convalescent) wrnrld as a vast political Hoax—a lunatic attempt to turn the world upside down. Gibbon tore the historical Lie into fragments. Darwin proved man to be an evolved protozoan, subject to all the restrictive pressure that the protozoa are subject to. Spencer followed demon¬ strating the ordered Majesty of Natural Law. In strict sequence this volume supplements Darwin, Gibbon, Spencer; concentrating their principia into one scient¬ ific and logical Assertive. Women will find much in this book for them to honestly consider. In these pages the feminine is classified as a bewitching animal, whose grandest occupation is to duplicate valorous sons. Altogether “The Logic of Power” is a most remarkable contribution to the study of racial Decay. Undoubtedly it is bound to meet with the antagon¬ ism of University-Monkeries, and the hatred of Idol¬ aters; yet it is destined to have a potent influence (for weal or woe) over the destiny of this and other nations. This book was completed in 1894, but the first idea of it took form seven years earlier. Now, going thro¬ ugh the press, it has been revised and condensed. It would have been brought out in ’95, but that much time was wholly wasted in searching for a publisher. The average book publisher is a very conservative an¬ imal and not at all disposed to handle books that tend to disarrange pet popular delusions. Now that the Philosophy of Power is finally sent forth on its mission, an apology to readers is required for many typographical and other errors, that have unfortunately, crept into the text. In a new edition now under consideration, these lapses are to be rect¬ ified. Meantime intelligent critics (there are a few ) cannot possibly misundersand the meaning. „ The author, who is a practical man-of-affairs, thinks and writes with a refreshing bluntness that is almost savage in its vigor. Through his inability to read German, he very deeply regrets that he cannot search thoroughly into the famous works of Freedrich Nietzsche, Felix Dahn, Alexander Tille, Karl Gutzkow, Max Stimer and other missionaries of what Huxley names “The New Ref¬ ormation.” During 1896 however, a vague inkling of the Great Thoughts that were strring Germany reach¬ ed him, through translations published by Macmmillan and through bitterly antagonistic review articles; but his principal inspiration has been derived from the world wide experience of an active life, together with a reflective mind and an inherited thoroughgoing hatred of Hypocrisy, Humility, Submissiveness, and all slave virtues. DOUGLAS K. HANDYSIDE. M. D., Pli. D. 1 INTRODUCTORY. CHAPTER I. In this arid wilderness of steel and stone I raise up my voice that you may hear. To the East and to the West I beckon. To the North and to the South I show a sign— Proclaiming “Death to the weakling, wealth to the strong.” Open your eyes that you may hear, O! men of mil¬ dewed minds and listen to me ye laborious millions! For 1 stand forth to challenge the wisdom of the world; to interrogate the “laws” of man and of “God.” I request reasons for your Golden Rule and ask the why and wherefore of your Ten Commands. Before none of your printed idols do I bend in acquiescence and he who saith “thou shalt” to me is my mortal foe. I demand proof over all things, and accept (with reservations) even that which is true. I dip my forefinger in the watery blood of your impotent mob-redeemer (your Divine Democrat—your Hebrew Madman) and write over his thorn-torn brow “The true prince of Evil—the king of the Slaves!” Death! I say death to every lie! No hoary falsehood shall be a truth to me—no cult or dogma shall encramp my pen. I break away from all conventions. Alone, untram¬ melled! I raise up in stern invasion the standard of Strong. I gaze into the glassy eye of your fearsome Jehovah and pluck him by the beard—I uplift a broad-axe and split open his worm-eaten skull. Death! I say death to every lie! I blast out the ghastly contents of philosophic whited sepulchres and laugh with sardonic wrath. Death! I say death to every lie! 2 Then reaching up the festering and varnished facades of your haughtiest moral dogmas, I write thereon in letters of blazing scorn:—“Lo and behold, all this is a fraud!” Death! I say death to every lie! I deny all things! I question all things! And yet! And yet!— —Gather around me O! ye death-defiant and the earth itself shall be thine, to have and to hold. What is your “civilization and progress” if its only outcome is hysteria and downgoing? What is “government and law” if their ripened harvests are men without sap? What are “religions and literatures” if their grandest productions are hordes of faithful slaves? What is “evolution and culture” if their noxious blossoms are sterilized women? What is education and enlightment” if their dead- s ea-fruit is a caitiff race, with rotteness in its bones 9 2 How is it that “men of light and leading” hardly ever call in question the manufactured “moral codes, under which they themselves are'born and tamed— under which our once vigorous Northern race is slowly and surely eating out its heart in peaceful inaction and laborious dry-rot? Standard “moral principles” are arbitrarily assumed by their orthodox apologist to be a fixed and unalter¬ able quantity, and that to doubt the divine-rightness of these “principles” is treason and sacrilege. When the greatest thinkers of a race are incapable, or afraid to perform their manifest and logical function, it is scarcely to be wondered that average citizens are also somewhat unwilling to “risk life, fortune and sacred honor” for the overthrow of popularized “right and wrong” concepts, that they know from bitter personal experience, are unworkable falsities. Al¬ though the average man feels in his heart that nearly all political and religious conventionalisms are dynamic deceits, yet how cautiously he avoids any 3 open display of antagonism thereto? He has not the courage of his opinions. He is afraid to say openly what he thinks secretly. In other words he is living- in a state of snbjectiveness; of vassalage. He allows his brain to be dominated and held in bondage by the brain of another. From his infancy he has been deliberately subjected to a continous external pressure, especially designed to coerce his understanding into strict accord with pre-arranged views of moral, political or religious “duty.” He has not been permitted one moment of real mental liberty. He imbibed fraudulent convent¬ ionalisms with his mothers milk. He listens to the most hideous lies being glorified in his presence as sublime truths.. He hears falsehoods sung in swelling chorus. He hears them sounded on bugles of silver and brass. He hears them intoned by “congregions of the faithful’ ’ amid peals of sacred music, and the solemn roll of chanted prayer. Thus his mind is sterilized by authority before it has had a chance to mature. Thus youth is mentally castrated, that its natural vitality may be afterwards used up in the yoke of'crtstOBl-^which is'the'yoke of slavery. In the nursery, at school, and at college, -plastic brain- pulp is deliberately forced into the pre-arranged mould. Everything that a corrupt civilization can do, is done to compress the growing intellect into un¬ natural channels. Thus the great mass of men who inhabit the world of to-day have no initative, no originality or independence of thought, but are mere subjective individualities, who have never had the slightest voice in fashioning the ideals that they formally revere. Although the average man has taken no part in manufacturing moral codes and statute laws, yet how he obeys them with clog-like submissiveness? He is trained to obedience, like oxen are broken to the yoke of their masters. He is a born thrall habituated from childhood to be governed by others. Chinese civilization deliberately distorts its childrens feet, by swathing them in bandages of silk and hoop- iron. Christian civilization crushes and cramps the minds of its youth by means of false philosophies, artificial moral codes and ironclad political creeds. Deleterous sub-theories of good and evil are systemat- 4 ically injected into our national literatures, and grad¬ ually (without serious obstruction) they chrystalize themselves into cast-iron formulas, infallible constitu¬ tions, will-o-the-wisp evangels, and other deadly epidemics. Modern “leaders of thought” are almost wholly wanting in originality and courage. Their wisdom is foolishness, their remedies poison. They idiot¬ ically claim that they guide the destinies of nations, whereas, in reality, they are but the flotsam and scum-froth that glides smoothly down the dark stream of decadence. “Thus all the people of the earth are helpless, Seeing those that lead are blind.” Mankind is aweary, aweary of its sham prophets; its demagogues and its statesmen. It crieth out for kings and heros. It demands a nobility—a nobility that cannot be hired with money, like slaves- or beasts of burden. The world awaits the coming of mighty men of valor, great destroyers; (destroyers of all that is vile,) angels of death. Wfe are sick unto nansea of the “good Lord Jesus,” terror-stricken under the executive of priest, mob and proconsul. We are tired to death of “Equality.” Gods are at a dis¬ count, devils are in demand. He who would rule the coming age, must be hard, cruel, and deliberately intrepid, for softness assails not successfully the idols of the multitude. Those idols must be smashed into fragments, burnt into ashes, and that cannot be done by the gospel of love. 3 The living forces of evil are to be found in the living ideals of to-day. The Commandments and laws and moral codes that we are called upon to reverence and obey are them¬ selves the insidious enginery of decadence. It is moral principles that manufacture beggars. It is golden rules that glorify meekness. It is statute laws that make spaniels of men. A man may keep every one of the Ten Command¬ ments and yet remain a fool all the days of his life. He may obey every written law of the land, and yet be a caitiff and a slave. He may “love Jesus,” delight 5 in the golden rule and yet continue to the hour of his death, a failure and dependent. Truly the way to hell is by fulfilling the commandments of God. If the all-conquering race to which we belong, is not to irretrievably dwindle into multitudinous nothingness, (like the inferior herds it has outdistanced or en¬ slaved) then it is essential that the Semitic spider webs (so astutely woven for ages into the brains of our chiefs) be remorselessly torn out by the very roots, even though the tearing out process be both painful and bloody. If we would retain and defend our inherited man¬ hood, we must mot permit ourselves to be forever rocked to repose, with the sweet lullabies of eastern idealisms. Too long already, we have been hypnotized by the occult charm of Hebrew Utopianism. If we continue to obey the insidious spell that has been laid upon us, we will wake up some dread morning with the gates of hell—“of hell upon earth” yawning wide open, to close again upon us forever. The idea of hell is in some respects a truthful con¬ ception, suggestive of actual fact. If we terrestialize the location, there is nothing inharmonious about it. Many a race, many a tribe, and many a mighty empire ha r gone down into a grimly realistic sheol. Is it not right and just, that the vile, the base and the degenerate (that is to say the slave nations of the earth) should be punished pitilessly for their creeping cowardice? Is it not right that they should be, as it were, fried and toasted—should swim in pools of boil¬ ing blood, or dance sweltering Satanic glees, with blistered feet and straining eye-balls on red-hot Saharas of gravel and sand? In actual operation Nature is cruel and merciless, to men, as to all other beings. Let a tribe of human animals live a rational life, Nature will smile upon them and their posterity; but let them attempt to organize an unnatural mode of existence an equality elysium, and they will be punished even to the point of extermination. 5 All ethics, politics and philosophies are pure as- •umptions, built upon assumptions. They rest on no 6 sure basis. They are but shadowy castles-in-the-air erected by day-dreamers, or by rogues, upon nursery fables. It is time they were firmly planted upon an enduring foundation. This can never be accomplished until the racial mind has first been thoroughly cleansed and drastically disinfected of its depraved, alien, and demoralizing concepts of right and wrong. In no human brain can sufficient space be found, for the relentless logic of hard fact, until all pre-existent delusions have been finally annihilated. Half measures are of no avail; we must go down to the very roots and tear them out, even to the last fibre. We must be, like nature, hard,- cruel, relentless. Too long the degd hand has been permitted to ster¬ ilize living thought—too long, right and wrong, good and evil, have been inverted by false prophets. In the days that are at hand, neither creed nor code must be accepted upon authority, human, superhuman or ‘divine.’ (Morality and conventionislms are for subor¬ dinates.) Religions and constitutions and all arbit¬ rary principles, every mortal theorem, must be® de¬ liberately put to the question:" ■ No moral dogma must be taken for granted—no standard of measure¬ ment deified. There is nothing inherently sacred about moral codes. Like the wooden idols of long ago, they are all the work of human hands, and what man has made, man can destroy. He that is slow to believe anything and everything, is of great understanding, for belief in one false prin¬ ciple, is the beginning of all unwisdom. The chief duty of every new age is to up-raise new men to determine its" liberties, to lead it towards material success—to rend (as it were) the rusty padlocks and chains of dead custom that always prevent healthy expansion. Theories and ideals and constitutions, that may have meant life and hope, and freedom, for our ancestors, may now mean destruction, slavery and dishonor to us. As enviroments change no human ideal standeth sure. Wherever, therefore, a lie has built unto itself a throne, let it be assailed without pity and without regret, for under the domination of a falsehood, no nation can permantly prosper. Let established soph- 7 isms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are a standing menace to all true nobility of thought and action. Whatever alleged “truth” is proven by results, to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage. The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie—the lie that “every¬ body’ ’ believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors aud delusions. It is hydra-headed. It has a thousand roots. It is a social cancer. The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons regard as a sacred fact—the lie that has been incul¬ cated around a mothers knee—is more dangerous to contend against than a creeeping pestilence. Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of person¬ al liberty. There is only one way to deal with them. Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers are. Exterminate them root and branch, or they will surely eat us all up. We must annihilate them, or they wiil us. Half and half remedies are of no avail. 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 oblivon, they must go, to be there righteously consumed. From their ashes some¬ thing 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. 6 Whatsoever a people believeth shall make it free, 8 enslave it, or corrode its very marrow in strict accord¬ ance 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. Homan 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 artifical 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 an¬ nihilates 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, per¬ suaded with honeyed words to don (on horseback) a set of brightly polished steel manacles; it being cun¬ ningly 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 mto foseted 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 sig- 9 nificance. Their ‘sovereignity’ is now an acknowledged sham, and their freedom a dream. The sovereign people be —. It is clear, therefore, that the man or nation that would retain liberty, or be really safe, must ac¬ cept no formula as final—must trust in nothing, written or unwritten, living or dead—must believe neither in spectral Jehovahs, nor weeping Saviours— neither in raging devils, nor in devilish philosophies— neither in ghosts, nor in idols, nor in laws—nor in woman, nor in man. “O! threats of hell, and hopes of paradise, One thing at least is certain-this life flies; One thing is certain and all the rest is—lies, The flower that once has bloomed forever dies.” 7 He who saith unto himself, “I must believe, I must not question” is not a man but a mere pusilanimous 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 mans own heart. He who obeys any standard of right and wrong, but the one set up by his own consience, betrays himself into the hands of his enemies, who are ever laying in wait to bind him to their millstones. And generally a mans 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 conquer¬ ed vassals. The free man does not reqnire 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 10 slaves and fools. Very useful are they, for control¬ ling the herds of sentenced convicts, who fill the factories, and cultivate the fields. All moral princ¬ iples, 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, be¬ cause 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 oh 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, declar¬ ation, 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 11 in actual life, the ballot-box votes of ten million sub¬ jective personalities are as thistle down in the balance, when weighed against the far seeing thought, and material prowess of, say, ten strong, silent men? 8 It is notorious, universally so, that the blackest falsehoods are ever decked out in the most brilliant and gorgeous regalia. Clearly, therefore it is the brave mans dnty to regard all sacred things, all legal things, all constitutional things, all holy things, with more than usual suspicion. “I deny, and I affirm,” is the countersign of material freedom; “I believe, and I obey” is the shibboleth of serfage. Belief is a flunkey, a feminine—Doubt is a creator, a master. He who denies fundamentals is in triple armor clad. Indeed he is invulnerable. On the other hand, it has been said that every belief, every philosophy, has some truth in it, but so we might add has every insanity. Strong men are not deterred from pursuing their aim by anything. They go straight to the goal, and that goal is Beauty, Wealth, and Material Power. The mission of Power is to control and exploit the powerless, for to be powerless is to be criminal. The world would indeed be a house of horrors, if all men were “good” and all women—padlocked. As far as human searchlights have , yet penetrated, into the darkness that enshrouds the origin of nations, we see the subduers and the subdued, the plebeins and the patricians, the chiefs who governed, and the vassals who obeyed. And there is nothing in the most modem social developements, (of these deedless days,) to warrant any belief that this ancient and nat¬ ural division of human animals, into castes of super¬ iors and inferiors, sovereigns and serfs, can ever be dispensed with. The slave-owners whip cracked from the beginning and it will crack till the day of doom. In every kingdom, republic, and empire on earth, we have (in one disguise or another) the master and the slave—the ruler and the ruled. In the course of cen¬ turies, names alone have changed, essentials have remained the same. Forms of royalty may alter but kings can never die. There was mastership at the beginning, aud there will be mastership to the end. 12 We build, but as our fathers built. Change is not progress, nor numbers advance. Every one who would be free must show his power. Unalterable remains the basis of all earthly greatness. He who exalteth himself shall be exalted, and he who humbleth himself shall be righteously trodden beneath the hoofs of the herd. “The humble” are only fit for dogs meat. Bravery includes every virtue, humility, every crime. He who is afraid to' risk his life mnst never be permitted to win anything. Human rights and wrongs are not determined by Justice, but by Might, Disguise it as you may, the naked sword is still king-maker and king-breaker, as of yore. All other theories are lies and — lures. Therefore! If you would conquer wealth and honor, power and fame you mnst be practical, grim, cool, and merciless. You must ride to success (by preference) over the necks of your foemen. Their defeat is your strength. Their downfall is your uplifting. Only the powerful can be free, and Power is non-moral. Life is real, life is earnest, and neither heaven nor hell its final goal. And love, and joy, and birth, and death, and fate, and strife, shall be forever. This earth is a vast whirl of warring atoms—a ver¬ itable revolving cock-pit. Each molecule, each an¬ imal, fights for its life. You must fight for yours, or surrender. Look well to it, therefore, that your beaks and spurs, your fangs and claws are as sharp as steel, and as effective as science can make them. Though, the survival of the strongest is the logic of events, yet personal cowardice is the great vice of our demoralized age. Cowardice is corroding the brain and blood of our race, but men have learnt to disguise this terrible infirmity, behind the canting whine of “humanity” and “goodness.” Words flow instead of blood, and terrible insults are exchanged, instead of terrrible blows. How rich this degenerate world is in small, petty - souled, good-for-nothings, who are forever excusing their infantile ineptitude behind some plausable phrase—some conventional make-believe? Courage, I say! Courage, not goodness, is the great desideratum—courage, that requires neither tin 13 horns, nor calcium lights, nor brass bands, nor shout¬ ing multitudes to call it into effective action. But courage that goes its way alone, as undaunted¬ ly a^ when it marches to ‘victory or death ’ amid the mens ung stride of armed and bannered legions. Courage, that delights in danger—Courage, that knows not despair! Courage that proudly, defiantly, smiles on death! Courage, that regards with equal loathing the multitudes mad howls of hate, its stupid hee-haws and its stridulating ‘tremendous applause’. Courage, that asks no quarter, even with the knife at its throat—courage that is stiff-necked, unyielding, sullen, pitiless! Courage, that never falters!—never retreats! Courage, that looks down with supreme disdain upon all slave regulations, upon all rights and wrongs, upon all good and evil! Courage, that has made up its mind to conquer or — perish! That is the kind of courage this world lacks. That is the kind of courage that aids by active co-operation the survival of the Fittest—the survival of the Best. That is the kind of courage that has never turned a masters mill. That is the kind of courage that never will turn it. That is the kind of courage that will die, rather than turn it. “When Svipdag came to the enclosure, the gate “of the burg was shut, (for it was customary to “ask leave to come in and see, or take part in “the war games.) Svipdag did not take that “trouble, but broke open the gate and rode into “the yard.”* ‘Queen Yisa said:-‘This man will be welcome here.’ * Ancient Norse Saga. 14 ICONCLASTIC. CHAPTER II. As far as Sociology is concerned, we must either abandon our reason, or abandon Christ. He is pre-eminently, the prophet of unreason—the preacher of rabble-rabies. All that is enervating and destructive of manhood, he glorifies,—all that is self- reliant and heroic, he denounces. Lazarus the filthy and diseased vagrant, is his hero of heros; and Dives the sane, energetic citizenis his ‘awful’ example of baseness and criminality. He praises “the humble” and he curses the proud. He blesses the failures, and damns the successsfnl. All that is noble, he perverts— all that is atrocious he upholds. He inverts all the natural instincts of mankind, and urges us to live artificial lives. He commands the demonitization of virtues that aggrandise a people, and advises his ad¬ mirers to submit in quietness to every insult, contum¬ ely, indignity; to be slaves, de-facto. Indeed there is scarce one thought in the whole of his Dicta that is practically true. O, Christ! O, Christ! Thou artful fiend! Thou Great Subverter!—What an amazing Eblis-glamour, thou hast cast over the world? Thou mean insig¬ nificant-minded Jew! Why is it that our modern philosophers are so mort¬ ally afraid to boldly challenge the ‘inspired’ utopian¬ ism of this poor self-deluded Gallilean mountaineer, —this preacher of all eunuch-virtues—of self-abase¬ ment, of passive suffering? The sickly humanitarian ethics, so eloquently rayed forth by Jesus Christ and his superstitious successors, in ancient Judea, and throughout the moribund Roman empire, are generally accepted in Anglo-Sax- ondom as the very elixir of immortal wisdom, the purest, wisest, grandest, most incontrovertible of all ‘divine revelations,’ or occult thaumauturgies. And yet when closely examined, they are found to be ^either divine, occult, reasonable, nor even honest; 15 but composed, almost exclusively» of the stuff that nightmares are made of; together with a strong dash of oriental legerdermain. Through a thousand different channels, current politico-economic belief is dominated by the base commun/stic caballa of the ‘man of many sorrows;’ yet as a practical theorem, it is hardly ever critically examined. Why is it that the suggested social solu¬ tions promulgated by Jesus, Peter, Paul, James, and other Asiatic cataleptics, are accepted so meekly by us, upon trust? If these men were anything, they were crude socialist reformers with mis-shapen souls, preachers of ‘a new heaven, and a new earth,’ that is to say, demagogues—politicians-of-the-slums; and out of the slums, nothing that is noble can ever be born. As agitators, Jesus and his modern continuators, shall be exclusively considered in these pages. How¬ ever it must be distinctly understood, that the spirit¬ ual and temporal in all cosmogonies, are so intricate¬ ly interwoven, that it is almost impossible to com¬ pletely divorce them. Like the Siamese twins, Gods and Governments are inextricably bound together; so much so indeed, that if you kill one, the other cannot live. Hence the open or secret alliance, that has always existed between the politician and the priest. Whatever their primitive purity (or impurity,) all operative creedal philosophies, are essentially civil and military codes, police regulations. ‘Religion is a power, a political engine, and if there was no God, I would have to invent one,’ said the great Napo- lo' n. In letter and in spirit, Christianity is above all things a political theory, and a theory that often takes the form of raging hysterics. Religions are the matrix in which public instit¬ utions are generally moulded. This has ever been well understood by the dominant leaders of mankind, from Numa to Brigham Young, from Solon to Loyola, from Constantine to the lowest Levite hireling, who gets paid in dimes and cents for his unctious mock —ditthyrambs. 2 ‘All ye are brethren.’ Are all men really brethren?—Negro and Indian, 16 Blackfellow, Kalmuck, and Coolie—the well-born, and the base-bred, *■—beer-soaked loafer, and hero-hearted patriot—belted chieftain and ignoble mechanic-slave, —pot of iron and pot of clay? What proof is there that the brotherhood-of-man hypothesis is in accordance with nature? On what trustworthy biologic, historic or other evidence does it rest? If it is natural, then rivalry, competition, and strife are unnatural. (And it is proposed to prove in this book, that strife, competition, rivalry, and the whole¬ sale destruction of feeble types of men, is not only nat¬ ural, but highly neccessary.) Has ‘brotherhood’ ever been tried upon earth? Where, when, and with what final result? Is not self-assertion nobler, grander, and more truly heroic than self-denial? Is not self-abase¬ ment but another term for voluntary vassalage; vol¬ untary burden-bearing? Christ might well and truthfully have said unto his followers ‘Come unto me all ye that are weary and heavy laden and I will bind you in unbreakable bonds, and load you down like an ass between two burdens.’ The ‘poor and ignorant’ were his first followers — the vagrants, the disinherited shiftless classes; and to this very day, the poorer and more ignorant men and women are, the more eager are they to follow his relgious ideals, or the political millenialisms that are distilled out of his delusions. ‘If we only lived as Christ lived, what a beautiful world this would be,’ saith all thoughtless ones. If we lived as Christ lived, there would be none of us left to live. He begat no children; he labored not for his bread; he possessed neither house nor home: he merely talked. Consequently he must have existed on charity, or have stolen bread. <, ‘If we all lived like Christ’ would there have been anyone left to labor, to be begged from, to be stolen from? ‘If we all lived like Christ’ is thus a self-evident absurdity. No wonder that it is recorded: ‘Not many wise after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called; but God chose the foolish things of the world, * * * * and God chose the weak things of the * These terms are used in the strict Darwinian sense. 17 world, and tlie things that are despised.’ Nothing, else would have anything to do with him. Christ, was indeed, the prophet of the credulous rabble, during three years of active agitation, and it abandon¬ ed him in his hour of need, (what always happens under similar circumstances,) for the rabble is ever cowardly, ungenerous, suspicious, unfathomably base. It has never yet had a leader of commanding ability, (either in peace or in war,) that it did not ultimately desert or betray, i. e. if he did not take the precaution to make himself its master. After permitting Christ to be butchered, the mob thereupon set him up as their Divinity, and erected altars to his renown. Slaves, women, madmen, lepers, magdalenes, were the earliest Christians, and to this hour, women, children, slaves and lunatics are the raw material of the Christian Church. Primitive Christianity cunningly appealed to the imagination of a world of superstitious slaves. (Eager for some mode of escape that meant not the giving and receiving of battle-strokes.) It organized them for the overthrow of Heroic Principles; and substituted, for a genuine nobility based on battle-selection, a crafty theocracy founded upon priest-craft, hell-craft, alms-giving, politicalisms, and all that is impure and subterrenean. It is a doctrine at once disgraceful in its antecedents, its teachers, and in itself. Truly has it been called ‘the fatal dower of Constantine,’ for it has suffocated, or is suffocating the seeds of Heroism. Both ancient and modern Christianism and all that has its root therein, is the negation of everything grand, noble, generous, heroic, and- the glorification of everything feeble, atrocious, dishonorable, dastard¬ ly. The cross is now, and ever has been, an escutch¬ eon of shame. It represents a gallows, and a Semite slave swinging thereon. For two thousand years it has absolutely overturned human reason; overthrown common sense, infected the world with madness, sub¬ missiveness, degeneracy. Truly, there is a way which seemeth right unto a people, but the ends thereof are the ways of death. Sound the loud timbrel, O’er lands and o’er waves; 18 The Israelite triumphs! The nations are — graves! 3 Is the Golden Rule a rational rule—Is it not rather a menial rule—a coward rule—a best-policy rule? Why is it ‘right.’ for one man to do unto others as lie would have others do to him and, what is right? If ‘others’ are unable to injure him or ‘do good’ to him, why should he consider them at all? Why should he take any more notice of them than of so many worms? If they are endeavoring to injure him, and able to do it, why should he refrain from returning the compli¬ ment? Should he not combat them, does not that give them carte-blanche to injure and destroy him? May it not be ‘doing good’ to others, to war against them, to annihilate them? May it not also be ‘good’ for them to war against others? (Again, what is ‘good’ ?) Is it reasonable to ask preying animals, to do unto others as they would be done by—If they acted accordingly would they, could they survive? If some only, accepted the Golden Rule as their guiding moral maxim, would they not become a prey to those who refused to abide thereby? Upon what reasonable and abiding sanction does this ‘Rule’ rest—Has it ever been in actual operation among men—Can it ever be successfully practiced on earth—or any were else—Did Jesus Christ practice it' himself upon all occasions—Did His apostles, his ‘sons of thunder’ practice it—Did Peter the boaster do so, when he ‘denied Him’ for fear of arrest at the camp-fire—Did Judas the financier, when he sold him for net cash? Also how many of his modern lip- servants actually practice it in their daily business intercourse with each other. How many? These questions require no formal answering. They answer themselves in the asking. And here it must; be remembered that the best test of a witness, is cross-examination, ‘Do unto others as you would have others do to you,’ No baser precept ever fell from the lips of a feeble Jew.- It is from alleged moralisms of this sort, and fab* ulous ‘principles’ that our mob orators, our commun 19 ards, revivalists, anarchists, red-republicans, demo¬ crats, and other mob-worshippers in general derive the infernal inspiration that they are perpetually hissing forth. Even the subversive pyrotechnic watchwords of their mephisto-millenuim, are to be found in the ‘holy gospels.’ Is it not written, ‘and God sendetli angels to destroy the people?’—Behold! these men are the ‘angels’ that He sends: — politicians and reformers! 4 ‘Love one another’ you say is the supreme law, but what power made it so—Upon what rational author¬ ity does the Gospel of Love rest—Is it even possible of practice, and what would result from its universal application to active affairs? Why should I not hate mine enemies, and hunt them down like the wild beasts that they are? Again I ask, why? If I ‘love’ them does that not place me at their mercy? Is it natural for enemies to ‘do good’ unto each other and, what is ‘good? Can the torn and bloody victim ‘love’ the blood-splashed jaws that rend it limb from limb? Are we not all predatoiy animals by instinct? If humans ceased wholly from preying upon each other, could they continue to exist? ‘Love your enemies and do good to them that hate you and despitefully use you,’ is the despicable phil¬ osophy of the spaniel that rolls upon its back, when kicked. Odey it, O! reader, and you and all your posterity to the tenth generation shall be irretrievably and literally damned. They shall be hewers of wood, and carriers of water, degenerates, Gibeonites. But hate your enemies with a whole heart, and if a man smite you on one cheek, smash him down; smite him hip and thigh for self-preservation is the highest law. ' He who turns the ‘other cheek’ is a cowardly dog— a Christian dog. Give blow for blow, scorn for scorn, doom for doom; with compound interest liberally added thereunto. Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, aye four-fold, a hundred¬ fold. Make yourself a Terror to your adversary, and when he goeth his way, he will possess much additional wisdom to ruminate over. Thus shall you make your¬ self respected in all the walks of life, and your spirit 20 —your immortal spirit—sliall live, not in an intan¬ gible paradise * but in the braips and thews of your aggressive and unconquerable sons. After all, the true proof of manhood is a splendid progeny; and it is a scientific axiom that the timid animal transmits timidity to its descendents. If men lived ‘like brothers’ and had no powerful enemies (neighbors) to contend with and surpass, they would rapidly lose all their best qualities; like certain oceanic birds that lose the use of their wings, because they do not have to fly from pursuing beasts of prey. If all men had treated each other with brotherly love since the beginning, what would have been the result now? If there had been no wars, no rivalry, no competition, no kingship, no slavery, no survival of the Toughest, no racial extermination; truly what a festering ‘hell fenced in’ this old globe w ould be? 5 Reverend Ferdinand M. Sprague, of Chicago, (who may be taken as a common specimen of the priest- politician,) in a little pamphlet lately published, en¬ titled ‘The Laws of Social Evolution’ writes thus:- ‘The sheet anchor of Socialism according to its ablest exponents, is the Holy Christian religion. Its motto founded on the precept ‘love thy neighbor as thyself’ is — ‘each for all, and all for each.’ Its working principle for the present is altruism.’ * Nearly all the canonized ‘Fathers’ of the early Roman propganda (most of whom, by the way, were slaves, freedmen, or eunuchs.) advocated similar Ideals. Even now, the anointed and sanctified head of the Catholic Church resurrects the same hoary old utopianism, in a Jesuitic encyclical addressed to his flock. (How suggestive of being shorn and skinned, is that word ‘flock.’) Again, the Epistle of James who is known to have been Christs full brother killed by a special policemans club, in a street riot; has been reprinted and widely circulated by Socialists, in order to sow * ‘The ethics of Socialism are identical with the teachings of Christianty.’ Encyclopedia Brittanica. 21 broadcast their illogical theories of a universal brotherhood, founded upon enforced labor, regimen¬ tation of the herd, and majority vbtes. Many modern cities are also infested with plaus¬ ible epileptoid priestlings of unreason, like Dr. Me Glynn, Professor Bemis, Hugh Price Hughes, W. T. Stead, Myron Reed, and Professor Herron of Califor¬ nia. All these men are unrivalled masters in the art of persuasive declamation. They accept the New Testament as their text book and preach therefrom to morbid multitudes, the atrocious and shallow gos¬ pel of equal rights, equal liberty, equal brotherhood, as the veritable omnific word, the newly discovered emancipating protocol of the Crucified (yet all-mighty) Don Quixote—the Saviour-god of Asia Minor—he who was born in a cattle-shed and died on a gallows. A god begging his bread from door to door!—A god without a place to lay his head!—A god spiked to two pieces of crossed scantling!—A god stabbed to death by an hired officer!—A god executed by order of a stipendary magistrate!—What an insane Idea— Is it an idea, or rather a wasting cranial disease? Talk about ‘the heathen in his blindness’ and super¬ stitious madness in past ages! Why it is as childplay to the hysteric Idolatry of to-day—the deification of a Jew. The ‘Divine Democrat’ was executed upon a f overnment gibbet, because the Rulers of Imperial tome were more powerful men than he was. His strength, and that of his followers was not equal to theirs. He died an abysmal failure—a Redeemer who did not redeem—a Saviour who did not save—a Messiah whipped like a calf—a slave-agitator deservedly destroyed for preaching a Falsehood—the monsterous gospel of Love, Brotherhood, Equality. Even from the spiritual point of view, there is nothing whatever in his life or its after effects to show that - ‘The pale man upon the cross,’ when he moaned and wept so bitterly, ‘beheld any further down the Void, than those who gathered round to see him die.’ Of what use was that ‘pale dreamer’ to the iron-con¬ ditions that existed in the conquered and garrisoned Fortress of Jerusalem? For once the city mob were 22 on the right trail, when they petitioned for the release of Bar Abbas, rather than the supple singer of a ‘Sweet bye and bye.’ Bar Abbas is described in ‘the Scriptures’ as a petty thief. He was really an armed insurgent leader—the slayer of Roman tax- S atherers — a guerilla chief (like Rob Roy, Robin [ood, William Wallace, William Tell.) who levied toll upon opulent Hebrews, for patrotic purposes. Had I been there that day, I also would have joined in the demand:- ‘Release Bar Abbas unto us.’ -Better one Bar Abbas than a thousand Christs. Alas! Alas! 0! Gallilean! Thou art neither the Way, the Truth, nor the Light! 7 Reverting however, to Chicago’s reverened Utopia- constructor. Thus waileth he with cajoling crudity “The laws of social evolution, far from being the blind, barbarous, and brutal struggle for organic existence, consists in the physical, intellectual, and moral well being of all the members of society, so constituted that the politico-ethical principles of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity shall have the largest possible realization throughout the social or¬ ganism. The main features of the condition of progress are Christian churches, Christian schools, Christian governments, Christian ethics and economics. ’ ’ Another seductive but most malignent State Social¬ ist, (Henry George) roundly proclaims that ‘The sal¬ vation of society, the hope of the free, and full devel- opement of Humanity, is in the gospel of brotherhood, the gospel of Christ,’ and thereupon he proposes to make politicians the national rent-tax collectors, Administrators of everything in general, and all-round Distributors of State Pensions to ‘the poor and needy.’ Has not mankind had sufficient experience of what politcians are?—Those black-hearted creeping thieves and frauds. Their sting is deadlier than the bite of a cobra, and in the breath of their mouth there is— death. Curses be upon you, O! ye Politicians, and upon all who advocate increasing your prerogatives! Presidental candidates, from Jefferson, to Lincoln, (also their apish imitators) have generally indulged in equally shallow rhodomontade, because it means yotes, and for votes, office-seekers would dress up in 23 glowing language, and ray forth any devilish deception. For two thousand years these effeminate super¬ latives have been trumpeted to the remotest corner of every Christian land, and yet (while enervating the morale of people,) they have dismally failed to in¬ augurate the much foretold Earthly Paradise. They were preached by bare-foot monks at the inaugur¬ ation of the Dark Ages, in order that those saintly lovers of the common people might creep into the administration of co-operative wealth and power. Now, the same general ideas are revived and dressed up (this time in politico-economic garb) by the eloq¬ uent agitator, in order that he may rule and plunder in the future, through the agency of the State; just as the priest once ruled and plundered through the equally rapacious agency of the Church. W hen the Church triumphed the Dark Ages began, and when it is finally rooted out, (together with all its social antense) the Heroic Age dawns once more. True heros shall be born again as of old, for our women may yet be someting more than rickety per¬ ambulating dolls and drug-stores in spectacles. The ‘Church’ is the idol of the priestly parasite—The ‘State’ is the idol of the political parasite. Beware, O, America! that in escaping from the holy trickery of the monk, you fall not an easy prey to ‘the loving kindness’ of the politician. Even if the ‘reformer’ succeeds in re-establishing upon majority-votes, the dark tyranny of ‘the greatest number;’ we have this consolation to fall back upon. Such organization must ultimately tumble down of its own weight, and then re-divide up into warring fragments. Nothing that is unnatural can last for long. The Universal Church is no more; all we see of it now is jealous remnants. And the Universal State, the Social Democracy, the Economic Republic, the Brotherhood of Man, should they take practical form, are pre-ordained to similar failure. All they could do, would be to postpone the operation of the survival of the fittest—drugging nations in temporary sedatives. No matter how eagerly madmen may try to do it, there is no known process, whereby they can jump out of their own skins. Christian or socialist churches, paternalisms, schools, governments, administration*, 24 ethics, and moralisms, (aye! if genuinely Christian and Fraternal) would be wholly impotent to change the natural course of things, and therefore powerles to command the survival of mental and physical cripples; even although those cripples were as canon¬ ized saints for ‘goodness’, and as the sands of the sea shore for number. Shrieking sentimentalism is in¬ deed a feeble lever wherewith to overturn the immutable order of the Uuiverse. It cannot do it. No! not if it were whooped till the crack of doom! Not even if it had a Lamb of God in every city, ready to be butchered each Friday afternoon, in order to make a Christian Holiday. 8 ‘Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,’ those three great lights of Modern Democracies are three colossal False¬ hoods,-ignoble slave-shibboleths; impossible of actual¬ ization even if proclaimed by some superhuman Satan, followed by armed hosts of un-killable demons, all armed to the teeth with flaming swords, greek-fire, and dynamite cannon. You may trace Equality in letters of silver on tablets of burnished gold, but without enginering a perpetual miracle, you cannot make it—true. You may write Fraternity in blazing diamonds on walls of enduring granite, but without reversing the mechanism of the Universe, you cannot make it fact. And, though you enscroll Freedom on countless sheepskins and rivet statutes of Liberty on every harbor-rock, yet with ‘all the kings horses and all the kings men ’ one being, born to be a hireling and a subordinate— no power can free. Can you build up a marble palace with mud and slime, O! ye drivelling bedlamites? Can you raise up a conqueror from the dunghill, or make the stupid great? Can you manufacture heros out of hogs, O! ye snuffling ‘Educated’ swine? ‘We can! We can! We can!’ shrieketh the raging rhetoricians of the market place and the editorial mill. ‘We can! We can!’ bellows the herd as it stupidly pours through the slip-rails to the pithing pen. ‘Yes, O! Yes! with the love of Jesus and our collection plate,’ whines the soft-skinned preacher as he turns over the sybiline leaves of his Black-Art. ‘Of a cer- 25 tainty, we can,’ hisseth the plastic politician, the rattlesnake!—the hungry basilisk!—- whose law making is more blighting than the breath of a simoom. - Thereupon, toward you, O! America! they, one and all, point the finger of pride! Towards you! Oh, my country! My country! America! Where the politicians rage and the people imagine vain things!-and the dogs in the alleys are-baying at the moon! Then, turn I away! Sadly! Sadly! Sadly! And I brush against a slave in copper-rivetted overalls, hurry¬ ing to his mill; and against another in gold chain and silken hat, hasting to his money-changing—and a lean woman in sordid rags, with a pile of lumber bal¬ anced upon her crown; and a splendid harlot in diam¬ onds and brilliant plumage, rideth slowly by. And the cattle in the slaughter-yard are lowing for then’ hay; and a draught mare, with a galled shoulder, lieth swollen and dead on the frozen paving blocks. -How nauseous it all is? How sickening? Loathsome! Loathsome! O, how loathsome? 9 Man is part and parcel of the animal kingdom and (notwithstanding Jefferson, Franklin, and Lincoln— Karl Marx, La Salle, and Liebknecht—Christ, Robes¬ pierre, and Rousseau—Hyndman, Tennyson, and Mazzini—Hr. Adler, Bebel, George, and Isaiah—Bel¬ lamy, Gronlund, and W. T. Stead ) he cannot escape from the draconic ordinances that despotically govern that kingdom and environ his being. like an atmos¬ phere on every side. Altruism, meek and lowly self-abiegation, upon any extended scale is, among predatory organisms (and all organisms are predatory ) impossible of prac¬ tice on pain of wholesale felo-de-se. Every man is under an obligation to fight and bear his own burden. If he cannot do so, others cannot do his fighting or his burden-bearing and their own at the same time with reasonable safety to themselves. He, therefore who finds it impossible to carry his own burden, had better sink down and die in his tracks than impose an additional load upon the shoulders of his kind hearted fellow strugglers. For then, they would be overloaded and consequently unable to 26 fight successfully; so all might perish together. Practical fraternal sympathy (upon any universal scale) has always had in the end, a most destructive effect upon the internal structure of communities. Men will always love and cherish those that are near and dear to them; but when it is proposed to extend the circle of their ‘near and dear ones’ to all mankind, that is going rather too far. Indeed all must perish ignominiously if that foolish idea prevails. ‘All’ are even now enervating themselves, undermining their strength, by futile over-exertion in that very direction. They are straining themselves to death, by endeavor¬ ing to carry an impossible load. The majority of men are bom far too weak constitutionally, for their con¬ ditions; and the few who do possess the neccessary stamina and grit, will have quite enough to do in proving by deeds, their fitness to survive, propogate, and possess. Many are projected—few are selected. Yet altruism, wholesale self-renunciation—wholesale burden-bearing, for the sake of ‘Outraged and Suffer¬ ing Humanity,’ is the maddening basis upon which ‘our good Lord Jesus,’ and his demented imitators have erected their sporadic sociolgy—their Magnificient Satanism. Does not simple business acumen whisper to us, that every mans chief occupation upon earth is to sustain himself. ‘I mean to subsist at any cost; you shall want ere I shall—business is business.’ If men had sufficient personal initiative to think along these stern lines, there would be little use on earth for the theologian and ‘the reformer;’ those twin Mephistos who find their renown and grandeur, in the abase¬ ment of mankind. The battle of life, would then, be so grim, terrible, and realistic; (so Trojan in fact) that those holy dissimulators, and crafty deceivers, would rapidly die off, or be eaten off; for in the clash of naked interests, the Best and Bravest only could possibly survive; and no one would ever dream of including them among the Best or Bravest. 10 Count Leo Tolstoi, undoubtably the ablest modern expounder of primitive Christliness, in a much tran¬ slated volume, entitled:-“Work While Ye Have 27 Light,” writes thus;- ‘Our Faith tells us that bliss is to be found, not in resistance, bitt in submission; not in riches, but in giving everything away; * * * * we have not quite succeeded in casting off every habit of violence and property.” To the most inept understanding, could any pro¬ position be placed in a clearer light? Is it not as simple as ‘rolling off a log,’ that the individual who even attempts to become a true and honest Christian must become like unto a tame sheep? What a sub¬ lime Ideal? How heroic? The bliss of a sheep! How superlatively delightful? How divinely glorious? And a Jew as the Good Shepherd, who leadeth his lambs “to green pastures, and quiet resting places, the pleasant waters by’ ’. For two thousand years, or so, His fleecy flock have been fattening themselves up with commendable dilig¬ ence—for the shearing-shed and the butchers-block. Let any nation throw away all ‘habits of violence,’ and before long it must cease to exist as a nation. It will be laid under tribute—it will become a province, a satrapy. It will be taxed and looted in a thousand different ways. Let any man abandon all property, also all overt re¬ sistance to aggression and behold, the first sun will scarcely have sank down in the west, before he is a bondservant, a tributary, a beggar, or—a corpse. Property is neccessary to the complete and free de¬ velopment of personality, and therefore human animals should somehow obtain a full and fair proportion thereof, at any cost—or perish in the attempt; for lie who cannot possess himself of property is much better buried out of sight. Our cities are literally honey¬ combed with treasure caverns, heaped up with gold, title-deeds, silver, and instruments of credit: our valleys and our mountains are actually bubbling over with wealth untold; and yet, poor miserable ‘servants of Christ’ pass idly by. Men, they call themselves! I call them—castrates. If Tolstoi’s obsequious principles are derived from the Sermon on the Mount, then who can deny but that the sermon on the Mount, is a sermon unto decay and slavery? If they are derived from the Golden Rule, and if the Golden Rule is the word of God, 28 then can it be doubted that the word of God is the word of Fraud There is far too much of this ghastly ‘goodness’ in the nation, far and away too much. It is time men who can think began to emancipate themselves, and consider the fact that:- Morals, laws and decalogues were made by liars, thieves and rogues. All good citizens however are hereby warned and solemnly advised, not to smash-up the Ten Command¬ ments—not to burn-up the Golden Rule—not to break¬ up the Moral Law—for that would be terribly wicked! terribly! On the other hand they must obey All Law implicitly (no matter how it originated) and be sure (above everything) to order themselves lowly and reverently before executive officers of the Law; even if in doing so they are deprived of their Property and their Liberty for ever. Obedience you see is of God ‘who so loveth the world’ but Disobediance is horrible, and of the Devil, and the Devil is a frightful rascal, who has not the slightest respect for anybody or anything: not even the American Constitution. Let us curse the Devil then, and, obey—the Law. Liberty is honestly definable, as a state of complete bodily and mental self-mastership (which includeth the possession of property; also defensive weapons ) and thorough-going Independence from all official coercion or restraint. Liberty in the conventional sense is a miserable Lie. To be independent is synonymous with proprietor¬ ship. To be property-less, and unarmed, is the con¬ dition of actual dependence and servitude. Unarmed citizens are always enslaved citizens, always. Liberty without Property is a myth, a nursery tale, believable only by babbling babies, and ‘fools-i-th-forest’—fools th’ city also. “Liberty regulated by Law” is, in practice, tyranny of the darkest and foulest descrip¬ tion; because, so impersonal. There are numerous worthy, reasonable, and practical methods whereby individual tyrants may be removed; but a tyranny ‘regulated by Law’ is only removable by one method —the sword in the hands of men who are not afraid to use it, or to have it used against them: that is to say —the Sword in the hands of the Strongest. During the whole course of human history, there is not upon record, one authenetic instance wherein a 29 Subjugated people has ever regained property-holding Liberty, without first butchering its tyrants (or its tyrants armed slaves, in battle ) thereafter confiscating to its own use, the lands and realized property that previously had been in the possession of its defeated foes and masters. This statement is made with cool deliberation and aforethought. Let it be dis¬ proved by any one creditable example to the contrary and the Author is prepared to forfeit 50,000 ounces of pure gold and enough ‘dimes and dollars’ to erect in Chicago, a bronze statue of ‘Our Blest Redeemer’(crown of thorns and all) 100 cubits higher than the Masonic Temple. This offer is strictly bona-fide and shall remain open till 1906, so that philosophers, editors, statesmen, divines (and other accomplished liars) may have enough time to blind themselves, wading through National Archives ^ and the putrid rubbish heaps that men call Public Libraries. Should some or all of said Mutual Admiration Society maniac-genius’s go blind, also deaf, dumb, and silly: this wicked old world may probably whoop with delight—should it happen to hear of the fact. 11 During the three years of Christ Jesus’ peripatetic trampings, he never said anything that had not been better said a thousand times before, by Dervishes, Spell-binders, and Mahatmas. Neither did he do anything that had not previously been better done, by the j ugglers and wonder-workers of Egypt, India, and Assyria. Not a few of his ‘miracles’ are to this day, part of the ordinary stock-in-trade of fortune- telling gypsies, third-class strolling players, and char¬ latans in general. The very phrase that He uses to sum-up and memor¬ ize His patent Cure-all, was undoubtedly stolen (directly or indirectly ) from Plato, the Rig Veda, or Confucius. The Golden Rule, is, not only a snare and a tangle, but it also is—a literary piracy. ‘He raised the dead’, you indignantly protest: and even supposing that he did, wherein is the positive advantage? What is gained by restoring vitality to the decomposing corpse of an animal that may be so easily duplicated — an animal that is a positive nuisance, numerically. What is the “good” of SO breathing the ‘breath of life’ into an odorous winding-sheet-full of maggots and mouldy bones? Are there not plenty of animalculae on earth, without dragging them out of tombs? (Especially are there not plenty of leprous Asiatics?) Death and destruc¬ tion are neccessary to the health of this world and therefore as natural, and lovable, as birth and life. Only priests and born cowards moan and weep over dying. Brave men face it with approving nonchalance. “Come lovely and soothing Death, undulate around “the world. Serenely Arriving! Arriving! In the “day, in the night; to all, to each. Sooner or later, “delicate Death.” * He fed the hungry—but to what end, I say? Why should a famishing multitude be fed by a god? And that too, in a land said to be flowing with milk and honey! Would not such a mob be far better dead? Would not Napoleon with his cosmic Svhifl of grape- shot’ be just the right man for such an occassion? Prom the harmonious nature of things, it is clear that men were intended to feed themselves by their own personal exertions or perish like dogs. He there¬ fore who ‘feeds the hungry’ is really encouraging poltroonry (which includeth all other crimes) for men who quietly starve within reach of abounding plenty are—all poltroons. ‘He clothed the naked,’ you shriek; and why it may be asked should ‘the naked’ be clothed—they being able-bodied? What right have they to broadcloth and line linen? If men possess not enough sense to clothe themselves (in a literal Weaving Mill of in- exhaustable looms ) why should a ‘God ’—the son of a ghost, come down from Cloudland ( via a Jewess maiden’s womb ) to robe such grovelling, miserable hounds in swaddling cloths, made of cotton or wool? ‘Clothing the naked* is purely—a business affair. Here, it may be suggested en-passant—is the wear¬ ing of garments, in itself, a natural and necessary con¬ dition of adult existence? It certainly does not render the ‘human form divine’ more healthy or more beautiful to gaze upon (although it may prevent Ten¬ derlings from perishing of cold). Was it really in¬ tended that the man-animal only, should wrap ‘itse lf * Walt Whitman’s “Ode to Death”. Si tip, from birth to death in layer over layer of disease¬ breeding rags? Was there not a secret vital strength in the wind, and rain, and storms that whirled around our forefathers giant limbs and shaggy brows? All ethnic legends tell us that our first parents were most elegantly attired in glorious sunshine and gaudy fresh air. Who ever saw a Cherubim painted in pointed shoes, pantaloons, cuffs, collars, and overcoat; or a smirking angel in bloomers, steel-ribbed corsets and a delicate little ‘O! dear me! how awfully awful!’ style? Clothing serves most effectively to hide the abomin¬ able physical deformity of modern men and women, just as superiticial educationalisms serve to hide their dwarfed minds. If they were to perambulate around in the nude, even the street curs would bark at them out of sheer terror. Indeed, they would be more hideous to the eye than the stuffed scarecrow that adorns a relatives harrowed field: and at which our old dog “Danger” generally barks himself into hysterics over, whenever he gets off the chain. What a horrible sight a crowd of free and indepen¬ dent electors would be, all sitting in solemn conclave, sucking their thumbs; absorbing political opiates and divine euthanasia? Just think of it! (Even Carlyle the dyspeptic, would faint at the sight.) The very conception of such a saddening horror makes one ill. It would be as if they had all just emerged from a tomb—a tomb of wool, and cotton, and leather. Physical distortion and mental malformation, are the direct result of two thousand years of bad-breed¬ ing: that is to say, of Mongrelism, of Democracy, of Equality, of Moody-and-Sankeyism. Christian-ism, originating in the despairful and fallacious philosophy of a Crucified Wanderer (suffering from acute morbus sacer ) is now developed into an organized and world¬ wide conspiracy of Clercals, Politicals, and Decadents dir ected en-masse; with Jesuitic cunning against all the primitive and Heroic Virtues. Our clean-skinned ‘heathenish’ ancestors with all their vital forces unimpaired, were really the nobler type of animal. We on the other hand, with our corrupt, irresolute, civilized hearts, our trembling nerves, our fragile anaemic constitutions, are actually the lower, the viler type —notwithstanding the base- 32 less optimism that courtly rhymers drivel into their “Heirs of all the ages,” etc., etc. No People can long retain hardihood and independ¬ ence, whose minds become submissive to a False Ideal. 12 Blessed are the Strong for they shall possess the earth—Cursed are the Weak for they shall inherit the yoke. Blessed are the Powerful for they shall be reverenced among men—Cursed are the Feeble for they shall be blotted out. Blessed are the Bold for they shall be masters of the world—Cursed are the Humble for they shall be trodden under hoofs. Blessed are the Victorious for victory is the basis of Right—Cursed are the Van¬ quished they shall be vassals for ever.' Blessed are the battle-blooded, Beauty shall smile upon them—Cursed are the Poor-in-Spirit, they shall be spat upon. Blessed are the Audacious for they have imbibed true wisdom—Cursed are the Obedient for they shall breed Creeplings. Blessed are the Iron-handed, the unfit shall flee before them—Cursed are the haters of battle, subjugation is their portion. Blessed are the Death-defiant, their days shall be long in the land—Cursed are the Feeble¬ brained for they shall perish amidst plenty. Blessed are destroyers of False-hope, they are true Messiahs—Cursed are the God-adorers, they shall be as shorn sheep. Blessed are the Valiant for they shall obtain great treasure— Cursed are the believers in Good and Evil for they are frighted by shadows. Blessed are they who believe in Nothing—never shall it terrorize their minds—Cursed are the ‘lambs of God’ they shall be bled ‘whiter than snow’. Blessed is the man who hath powerful enemies, they shill make him a hero—Cursed is he who “doeth good” unto others, he shall be despised. Blessed the man whose foot is swift to serve a friend, he is a friend indeed —Cursed are the organizers of Charities, they are propogators of plagues. Blessed are the Wise and Brave for in the Struggle they shall win—Cursed are the Unfit for they shall be righteously exterminated. Blessed are the sires of Noble Maidens, they are the 33 salt of the earth-Cursed the mothers of strumous Ten¬ derlings. for they shall be ashamed. Blessed are the Mighty-minded for they shall ride the whirlwinds— Cursed are they who teach Lies for Truth, and Truth for Lies, for they are—abomination. Blessed are the Unmerciful, their posterity shall own the world—Cursed are the Pitiful for they shall receive no pity. Blessed are the Destroyers of Idols for they shall be feared by tyrants—Cursed are the famous Wiselings, their seed shall perish off the earth. Thrice cursed are the Yile for they shall serve and suffer. Contrast this with an orthodox Sermonette—one that is repeated every seventh day, in thousands of sacred sanctuaries by consecrated black-robed clericals, who have been specially trained from boyhood to weepfully, unctiously, rehearse the same with upturn¬ ed eyes and skillful snuffle or in classic diction, sound¬ ing, sonorous, nay! sublime—as suits the occassion. Dearly Beloved brethren!!! -Gawd answers all who kneel and pray, is a Trewth accepted, day by day. Behold! their bright and joy¬ ful lot, who’ve faith in what Christ Jesu taught! If you’ve empty pockets and tables bare, demand ye not your natural share; that would be wrong; but, creep and sigh and ‘you’ll go to heaven when you die’. For the meek and humble who obey, there’s a hajipy land, far, far away; but a fearsome, fiery, brimstone pit, shall melt their marrow, who wont—submit. If foemen smite you on one cheek, turn round the other, tearful, meek: if perjured knaves your votes betray: come ‘wicked sinners ’ kneel and— pray. If Hebrews fleece and flay your hide, heaven’s gates for you, shall open wide; Christ your Shepherd, wont lead astray, O! lambs of Gawd! come bleat and pray. If bruised and beaten, shorn and sold, your’ e sure of stalls in your Fathers fold; but —robbers rob, or rulers slay! Hell roast your souls for ever and aye. If elected persons invade your wealth, with bribes and lies or deadly stealth, and threat your bones with a bannered host: Christs your refuge and the Holy Ghost. You’ll triumph thus ‘in the dawning years ’ hope on! toil on! in this vale of tears—sing “Bock of Ages cleft for me, O! let me hide myself in thee”. CHRIST! THE TRUE PRINCE OF EVIL. Blonde prince of all Evil, In the garb of a Saint: A weaving, a weaving: Thy magical Feint. How wily the web is, Of meshes for flies? -Woof of false morals, Weft of dream-lies. Yon tell ns ‘the humble’ Are angels of light: Inferring the valiant, Are demons of night. You curse all that’s noble, You praise all that’s vile: Invert all that’s righteous; With satanic guile. Round millions you’ve woven, A hypnotic spell: Christ! thou art Mephisto, The mocker of hell. You urge us to bless them, Wlio plunder and cheat us: -To love and caress them, Who hate and illtreat us. Theres’ not in thy Teachings One Thought that is true: -Thou art a false prophet: O! cruc ified Jew. 35 CHAPTER III. THE SPINNTNGr-OF-THE-WEB ! Just as the spider weaves his silky web, to lure flies into the larder of his banqueting hall, in order that he may at his leisure, pick the flesh from off their bones; so, deceitful Ideals are cunningly woven by dexterous political spiders, to capture and exploit swarms of human flies. What are the grandoise paragraphs of the Declarat¬ ion of Independence, but the weft and woof of a dazing spider-web? And what are the American People but the fool-flies that have been cleverly entangled in its gossamer meshes? For over a century this ‘Declar¬ ation’ has been the parchment divinity of all public orators, from the curbstone dervish at the street corner, to our Elective Monarch in the White House. Every 4th of July, Americans habitually scream them¬ selves hoarse over its sounding generalities: making the welkin ring with tin-horns, giant fire-crackers, flag-idolatry, brass bands, toy pistols and herd-bellow¬ ing generally. Although the great majority of them are mental and physical dwindlings, poverty-stricken, and property-less yet how insanely they delight in amusing a sardonic world with their loquacious flam- buoyant charlatanery. ‘We are soverigns and equals’ is their everlasting Barmecide chorus. ‘Sovereigns and Equals!’ Alas! Alas! In all lunatic asylums may be found inmates, who fancy themselves kings and queens, and lords of the earth. These sorrowful creatures, if only permitted to wear imaginary crowns and issue imaginary com¬ mands, are the most docile and harmless of all maniacs. As for the American People of to-day: is not their written constitution but a cunningly constructed straight-jacket?-their moral codes, padded prison- cells: their statute laws, handcuffs and leg-irons?- their Captains of Industry, keepers and turnkeys in clever disguise? One hundret years ago they ostens- 36 ibly commenced ‘independent’ operations with the richest continent on earth as their private property— their subrscribed capital; and during the whole of that period, have they not been as busy as so many relays of draught beasts-of-burden, pumping the tremendous natural wealth out of their home soil, and pouring it over-sea, into the cess-pools of Europe? Is not that the work of lunatics? They smashed and splintered the wooden political yoke of an English king and then proceeded to rivet around their necks a bran new yoke of bolted steel, which they had forged especially to fit themselves; and which they dignified under the name of ‘ ‘Consti¬ tutional Freedom”. Is not that also the work of lunatics? Cursed indeed are the harnessed ones! Cursed are they even though their harness be home made—even although it tinkle musically with silver bells—aye! even though every buckle and link, and rivet thereof ■» made of solid gold. How absurd of men to hurrah over their ‘glorious political liberty ’ who have not even been able to retain possession of the substantial products of their own laboriousness. After a century of ‘constitutional progress,’ ten per cent of the population are absolute owners of ninety-two per cent of all the property. How, O! reader! Are not these things the out¬ ward and visible sign of organic dementia? 2 The Declaration of Independence commences by proclaiming an unctious falsehood, a black degrading self-evident lie—a lie which no one could possibly believe but a born fool. With insolent effrontery it brazenly proclaims as ‘a self evident truth’ that ‘all men are created equal ’ and that they are ‘endowed, by their ‘Creator’ * with certain ‘inalienable’ rights —rights which it thereupon proceeds to define in canting phraseology, imbecile and florid as it is false. Indeed the mock-heroic preamble of this rhetorical pronounciamento is but a cunningly constructed piece of blague deliberately intended to deceive and betray. * A mythical airy being who roams about Eternity manufacturing Things out of No-Things—A fable. 37 It consists of a patchwork of plagiarized catchwords, annexed wholesale from the ravings of seventeenth- century Levellers, crazed puritanic Mattoids and eighteenth-century cretinous French Jacobins:—all mixed up and jumbled together with a long rigmarole of semi-meaningless pretty phrases; culled mostly from an old time melodrama. The Declaration of Independence has less real mean¬ ing for present conditions; than a bottled-up Indian war-whoop of the same period would have, if un¬ corked now. It is a back-number, musty, high smell¬ ing, and worm-eaten: only fit for the walls of a museum or the brain-cells of—a daft philosopher. Its ethical, and most of its poltiical conclusions are shams, deceptions, and cold-blooded dishonesties —in¬ candescent Lies —glorified, belauded, printed in letters of gold, but nevertheless—Lies. Indeed it has always been considered a piece of amusing mockery, by those who really understood the secret intent for which it was originally construct¬ ed: viz:—as a lasso for the bellowing Herds, that, about one hundred years ago, were beginning to run wild, and escape from their herdsmen, and herds¬ mens stock-whip, in this (theu) boundless New World. To all contempory demagogues, the high-sounding phraseology of the “Declaration” is aslioney from paradise. Everywhere its seductive abstractions are the Avatars of anarchism, communism, republicanism, and scores of other zymotic convulsionisms. Why then should sane men continue giving lip-service to this subtle deception? Why shonld they, by their silence, acquiesce in the malefic efforts of Organic Weaklings, (instigated by prattlers of a false philosophy ) to en¬ force by electioneering mass-pressure, an impossible and hideous Equality Ideal? Every national appeal is now made, not to the Noblest and the Best, but to the riff-raff —the slave- hordes —who possess less intelligence than night-owls. All that is brave, honorable, heroic, is ignored tacitly, for fear of offending the deified Herd, u ■ - ‘the Majority’. “Equality of conditions” is its debasing shibboleth and veeily! he who has temerity enough to spit upon Equality is liable to be horned to death. — J 0Ii ]y p e compared to 38 the fearsome shrieks of agony, that may now and then be heard, issuing forth from the barred windows of a roadside madhouse. ‘The voice of God!’ Alas! Alas! 3 There are two methods whereby masterful ambit¬ ious men may hold any population in a state of ordered subjectivity. The first and by far the most honorable method is, through an irresistable and high¬ ly-trained standing army, ready to deploy anywhere; with mechanical precision at a telegraphic nod 1 in order to lay down the Law at the cannons mouth and sweep away all dangerous opposition. The second and cheaper method is, first of all to innoculate those intended to be exploited, with some poisonous political soporific, superstition, or theoria; something that operating insidiously, hypodermically, may render them laborious, meek, and tractable. The latter plan has ever proved itself most effective because, Aryan populations that would fight to the last gasp against undisguised military despotism; may be induced to passively submit to any indignity or extortion, if their brains are first carefully soaked in some Abstract Lie. At the period of the War of Independence, North America was far too wide, far too sparsely settled, and far too poor in concentrated wealth- to be effect¬ ively ruled and plundered upon the standing army principle: either by King George or the successful Junta of power-wielding Revolutionists. Hamilton, Hancock, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Henry, and all the vested material interests that stood a solid phalanx behind those voluble patriots- cast about for some safer method of ruling the minds of the uninformed but extremely valorous yeomanry, backwoodsmen, and mountaineers. After mature consideration, they determined to lull and lure the armed peasantry back again into a con¬ dition of blissful somnolence, by instilling into their newly aroused minds, false but seductive political Idealisms, as subtle supplements to the fallacious, and equally delusive, (but pre-existent) religionisms and moralisms. This cunning plot worked like a charm, for Equity of Rights seemed to puritanic minds the 39 logical outcome of that other hoary oldlie —‘Equality before GocP. (“What a set of damned rascals they were!” was Gouvernour Morris’s terse, rugged, but ever memorable description of the Congress of smart Corruptionists; that adopted and formally proclaimed those famous and fatal Abstractions.) Thereupon the Sword of Power, that had conquered on the battlefield, was carefully hidden away out of sight and ‘Constitutionalism’ invoked to aid in the re-harnessing of the Conquerors of Cornwallis, by their new masters. The old systems of Jurisprudence and Government (founded on naked force) were cleverly retained even amplified; and at the same time the white skinned populations were cunningly proclaimed ‘free and equal.’ Never having enjoyed genuine per¬ sonal freedom (except on the Indian border) being for the most part, descendents of hunted-out European starvelings and fanatics, (defeated battlers) they now stupidly thought that they had won Freedom at last by the patent device of selecting a complete outfit of new tax-gatherers every fourth year. 4 When we look back upon the childlike faith in Con¬ stitutionalism, displayed by our Revolutionary Fathers- together with their infantile republican spec¬ ifics for the redemption of mankind, we cannot help smiling. At every general election, since 1776, Americans have voted solidly for increasing the des¬ potic authority of their elective rulers and task-mas¬ ters. Personal liberty is very nearly unknown (except in the newspaper) and any citizen who dares to think, in direct opposition to the dogma of the Majority, does so at the risk of his life, if he thinks too loudly. Indeed, men of initative and enterprise are now in the regular habit of purchasing immunity from Com¬ munal molestion, by bribing legislatures and officials upon a wholesale scale. The Sate is a blackmail agency. Enterprises necessitating state-permits and large preliminary expenditures of capital, cannot be safely undertaken, until elective satraps (Aldermen, Judges, Governors, Congressmen, Presidents, Senators, etc.,) have first negotiated a percentage ‘ ‘rake-off ’. Neither life nor property is safe from the malignance, revenge or greed of government officials or their confederates, 40 He who would assert himself in this Republic, under present conditions, must be a man of unscrupulous acumen and shrewdness. He must know the exact price of every ‘patriot,’ with whom business brings nim in contact and be ready to pay it without demur nay—with an appearance of hearty enthusiasm: other¬ wise it will go hard with him. Should he be a poor man, his chances in life are infinitesimal; so long as he is conscientious. No citizen can ‘call his soul his own,’ who dares to openly attack the administrative scoundrelism —scoundrelism based securely upon pur¬ chasable majority votes. Those thievish official pec¬ ulators of Turkey, China, Persia, and Morocco, would hang their heads in utter shame at their own clumsy methods of robbery, i if they once beheld the magnifi- cient mechanism and finesse, wherewith American politicians enrich themselves by bleeding the treas¬ uries, stealing public lands, and sweating the revenues. Indeed, our Grand Yizers (heaven bless them) not only plunder living generations, but they even make Futurity contribute to their hungry rapacity. Their schemes of financial legerdermain are of un¬ paralleled brilliance and grandeur. They borrow thou¬ sands of millions upon National Credits from the Usurers, and then proceed to apportion the money unto each other, under the elaborate pretence of needful public expenditure, redeeming the currency, etc., etc. In order that the Jew may be secured in his usurous ‘slient-per-shent,’ oppressive taxes are laid on the Peasantry, wherewith to pay the annual interest charge upon the Bonded Millions. All of these tributes are collectable (in appreciating gold) at the point of the Supreme Courts bayonet. However, mil¬ itary assistance is very seldom needed to enforce the tax-collectors demands, because most Americans are exceptionally docile and ‘good.’ No need of coercion with a palsied people, ever eager to obey the slightest nod of their—Masters. America! America! Never shall you realize the true meaning of thorough-going Independence and Self-Proprietorship, until an American Cromwell, or an American Cseser- has signed the death-warrant of an American King. The Executive that sells his people into bondage is a Public Enemy; whether he bean 41 elective Monarch or an hereditary King. Such a Scoundrel and Traitor, has no rights that property¬ holding Freeman are bound to respect: no! not one. By accepting the gold of Public Plunderers, he makes himself an Ishmaelite. His hand is against every mans hearth and every mans property. Therefore every mans hand should be uplifted against him. In days not long gone by, men of our Race have hung bribe-takers with scant ceremony; and even rolled the heads of Kings into the executioneers basket. If we are not to be robbed now of everything we possess and reduced to conditions of absolute State servitude, we must not shrink from doing so again. Despotism, if it is to be overthrown, must be fought with its own weapons, and the vilest of Despotisms are ever founded upon Majority Votes. As for ‘the Common People,’ they are energetically chasing shadowy paternalisms, and allowing their sub¬ stance to be ‘appropriated’ on a gigantic scale. They are living in a fools paradise of ‘progress,’ and ‘peace¬ ful industrial evolution’ as the cant phrases go. Some of these days, they may possibly wake up (when too late) and discover, with alarm and astonishment, that all their mock iambics have been of no avail against the insidious growth of centralized Oligarchic Hebra¬ ism, ballot-box desolation, and industrial imperialism. Americans have yet to learn, that each generation must fight out its own good fight, and not rely for the preservation of its hardihood and independence, upon moth-eaten parchments: nor on fraudulent states¬ men, ' now in the graveyard i—statesmen who spent their petty babblesome lives; not in doing heroic things, but in founding and enthroning the abomin¬ ations that afflict us all to-day, like a palsy. Our nat¬ ional hero-worship badly wants reconstruction. 5 Many years after the “Declaration” was issued, our written Constitution was constructed, with much voluble sophistry and mimic strife. That document considered as a whole, is the most cunningly worded and at the same time most terrible instrument of Government and Mastership that any Anglo-Tuetonic tribe has ever yoked itself up under. Pretending to ‘grant’ liberty and self-government, it practically an- 43 nihilates both. Under the show of “guaranteeing” personal independence and civil rights, it has organ¬ ized an elective tyranny; wherein the mob-monarch possesses more arbitary authority, than any dynastic despot since the days of Darius or Balschazzar. The highest crime is actually ‘written in the highest law of the land.’ “Thus, did the great Guile-Masters, Their toils and their tangles set; And, as wide as was the water: So wide was woven the net.” Indeed the written Constitution of our Republic, is a monstrous mechanical contrivance, that bids fair (when once it has got properly under way) to squeeze the very heart out of all the Best Elements in America. Our Federal Government may be, very appropiately compared to a pirate ship, cleverly disguised as a friendly armed cruiser; convoying a fleet of peaceful merchantmen loaded with an immense treasure and 70,000,000 passengers. When it first came to their ‘as¬ sistance’ it was—O! so kindly! so affectionate! so full of loving regard for its intended prey, for the welfare and bon-voyage of its quarry. Now however that its forty-five ships of state are out in the open ocean, and absolutely at its mercy, it strips off its decoy rig; hoists the ‘Deatb.s-head-and-bloody-bones,’ opens its hidden portholes, runs out its round-lipped broadsides, and yells through its editoral speaking-trumpets:- “Heave too there, or you’ll be blown out of the water”. Thus it will be seen the Jesuitic ‘Evangel of Equality’ has proved itself * a tremendous success. It seduced the American People into a feeling of contentment and security: till their ‘bonds’ and fetters were proper¬ ly forged, polished, and neatly riveted on. Well fashioned, indeed, was the Net!—A splendid spider web it has proved itself, and withal, needful. Under the hypnotic spell of a ‘free and equal’ dream, Americans have been hustled into a convict- prison of laboriousness, to piratical masters a thou¬ sand times more terrible and more unyielding than any history can describe. All that is now left of Liberty is its name, and the harmless privilege the common people have of scolding their Proprietors in vulgar editorial diatribes; at or about election times. Occas- 43 sionaly they do descend into the streets, indulging in sanguinary vociferations upon the same general prin¬ ciple that impels a mangy cur to howl most dis¬ mally—if struck with a brick. The conflict between the masters and the helots is over for the present and the masters having conquered, are in possession of the booty and the field. Hark! their songs of victory -the flap of their battle-pennons! Indeed, considering all the circumstances, the com¬ mon people are ‘lost souls’—no matter what they now do they must remain in hell. Their position is that of a worm trying to escape from its hole in a heated burning log; if it runs to the right it runs into heat and smoke, - ~ if it runs to the left it runs into blazes. A few minutes more and—it is roasted alive. Even should America’s servile multitudes appeal to the arbiterment of Physical Force; they cannot possibly win. Possessing neither the strength, courage, brains, arms, money, nor leaders: they must be blown into eternal fragments by their masters highly trained artillerists, and scientific destroyers. 6 The citidal of Power is now consolidated and pre¬ pared with the most improved armaments to repel any assault, no matter how well sustained. The nation is now intersected in all directions, with iron highroads and splendid waterways, whereon armies and navies may be moved from city to city, with facility and dread effect. The war of Secession, (or rather the war for the annihilation of Self-Government) demonstrated conclusively that a Centralized Authority, resting on herd-votes of the vulgar and fanatic- is (in practice) military Absolutism. There is no other Power in the land that can effectively hold it in check. The Czar of Russia possesses less actual authority than our Federal Government. With a standing army in the hollow of its hand, it can do exactly as it pleases, i. e. if it can collect enough revenue to purchase ‘statesmen ’ and pay the salaries of its praetorian cohorts. Most Americans are only now beginning to perceive these things, but they were forseen (and also foretold in part) by clear-sighted individuals; even before the Constitution itself was formally Enthroned. To-day all the old sphinx questions are up again for 44 solution. No man of balanced sense can honestly believe that these problems are to be settled by bal¬ lot-box stuffing or Editorialism. Settled they must be upon ‘the good old rule, the simple plan,’ and thereafter settled, and re-settled. again and again; for, there is no finality in social adjustments; and there should not be. Material strength is the basis of all human greatness and material strength must ‘settle’ the tyranny of the greatest number; probably with fire and steel. All other theories are chimeras—lies—delu¬ sions—make-believe- and of no account. The Philosophy of Power has slumbered long, but whenever men of sterling w r orth are found, it must again sweep away the ignoble dollar-damned Pedlar- isms of to-day and openly as of old, dominate the destiny of an emancipated and all-conquering race. What is viler than a government of slaves and usurous Jews? What is grander than a government of the Noblest and the Best —who have proved their Fit¬ ness on the plains of Death? Cromwell and his Ironsides—Caesar and his Legions shall be born again; and the thunderous tread of Sullas’s fierce destroyers shall roll and rumble, amid the fire and glare and smoke of crumbling constitu¬ tionalisms: ‘as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be’—warfare without end. Yawping politicians may harangue base city mobs of hirelings and Christlings with •— -- ‘ ‘Alas, poor Yorick!” rhapsody, as if struggle and strife w~- the evil of all evils. - figures of speech, however, cannot breathe the breath of life into feline philos¬ ophies, that never have had the slightest foundation in Fact. The survival of the Fittest—the Toughest is the logic of events; and also of all time. They who declare otherwise are blind. The chief point is this: that Fitness, must honestly demonstrate itself not by ignoble theft and theory, j but by open conflict as per Darwin’s law of battle. ■ft*******? How can citizens be honestly described as free and equal who are not, who never were, “free and equal” in any reasonable sense of the phrase? How can they be even considered men, whose whole lives are governed by cast-iron regulations; whose every 45 movement is circumscribed and restrained by penal threats —even whose secret thoughts are in a constant state of silent repression? It is no apology whatever, to affirm that the People themselves enact all laws that they are commanded to obey. Even that statement is a falsity and if it were true; it would not justify majority Dictatorship, or any other kind of Dictatorship. The Constitution, under which all other laws are born, was accepted, not by us but by bewigged in¬ dividuals who are long since rotten. We are ruled, in fact by cadavers—the inhabitants of tombs. Why should agreements made by coffined dead men, bind and mortgage living, pulsing, breathing beings? Their bones have long ago mouldered into ozone and fertilizers, who drew up and signed the Bill of Rights, Magna Charta, the Sermon on the Mount, the Declar¬ ation of Independence, our Glorious Constitution, etc., etc. Rotten are the brains that concocted them and the lingers that signed and sealed them. Equally rot¬ ten are their irrational and infantile philosophies. Rotten also in their heart, are the men who obey undek compulsion voices from the tomb. No doubt those old documents served their purpose at the time, but ‘new occassions teach new duties,’ and new ages require, not only new leaders, but new deeds. Again, most Acts of Congress are the Machiavellian work of eminent rogues, .curse them, whose very names are almost forgotten except by partisan chron¬ iclers, and printers of public school histories. As for the Common Law, it is an inheritance from those interesting old days, when Saxon and Norman earls (they were genuine noblemen then, for they had won their position by risking their lives in battle ) administered ‘Justice’ direct, per media of knotted clubs, hilted knives, and long handled cleavers. That was the only kind of ‘Law’ understood by our ‘un¬ civilized’ forefathers, for they had not been ‘educated’ into the profound conviction, that governments and laws ‘derive all their just powers from the consent of the governed.’ Such an expression would have sent them into convulsions, and lie who uttered it would be considered—a most excellent fool. No doubt our ancestors were somewhat rude in 46 their manners, somewhat deficient in sweetness and culture but in matters of frozen fact they were decid- ely logical. They did not sneak to public meetings and swagger about ‘Liberty,’ ‘Justice,’ and ‘Equality of Opportunity,’ or ‘Rights of Man,’ when they knew full well that not only their lives, but everything they nominally possessed was ‘by leave’ of their con¬ querors and proprietors. They accepted their position pro-tem, and when again ready, honestly re-entered the doom-ring- to test anew their Fate. If they could come alive again how those old Pirates and Freebooters would stare in shame and scorn, at the sight of their ‘tenderfoot’ posterity, walk¬ ing up in solemn, horny-handed, hump-backed pro¬ cession in shoddy rags, before an idol-altar called a ballot-box —. dropping into its gilded maw, printed invocations for Justice, Mercy, Liberty, “Peace in our time O! Lord!”—Protection,—Cheap Money,— ‘more laws! more laws! more laws!’ How our blonde, clean-limbed ancestors would guffaw? Indeed, they would probably keep on guffawing, till they guffawed themselves to death again. ‘Oh!’ they would say:—‘to think that our seed should have sank so low!’ 7 But, Equality before the Law is all we mean- whimpers the everlasting sophist —the cunning liar! Let us see! By what rational method can any two litigants be placed in a position of unconditional ‘Equality before the Law?’ First of all, plaintiff and defendant always possess totally different physical and mental characteristics, different personal magne¬ tisms, and—different sized bank balances. Also all judges, juries, and legal officials are unequals in tem¬ perament, ability, courage, and honesty. Each one has his own peculiar idiosnocracies, prejudices, in¬ feriorities, superstitions, and —price. Each again, may be more or less dishonest and more or less sub¬ ject to financial pressure, or caste bias. No two men are born alike: each one being literally born under his his own particular star, formed of different material; swayed by different ideals: educated and moulded in a different mill: by a different process. Even if all tribunals of J ustice were founded upon 47 blind Impartiality, and administered .free of cost, it will be plainly seen, that ‘Equality before the Law’ ..- remains a mere chimera, a dream: and of no real value. ‘Equality before the Law,’ is just a meaningless catchword, something like that famous Jesuitism —‘Liberty regulated by Law.’ Statute Law may formally confer equal rights and privileges upon unequal citizens, but it cannot enforce itself—it must execute its mandate through human media, and that media is full up to the brim, with superiorities, inferiorities, and inequalities. No legalism has ever been devised that Strength can not drive its coach and four through and it is a popular proverb (in all lands) that somehow, there is ‘one law for the rich, and another for the poor.’ In¬ deed the poor can never be placed upon an equality with the rich —not even by the pillage of the rich. Whether they are the Fittest or not, the present proprietors of Wealth, should never permit themselves to be plundered, without a savage struggle. No one doubts but, that, they will be put to the test. Sooner or later, the hour of this struggle in its acute form shall arrive, but the Rich must not dread it. If they prepare in time, the result shall not only justify their mastership, but render it impregnable —if they are Fit. To be respected and secure, Aristocracies must rest themselves upon Sworded Might, not upon paper-credits, consols, and bond issues. Should the Opulents be conquered and pillaged, that in itself will be conclusive evidence that they are neither the Fittest nor the Best. Upon this earth there is no such thing as Equal Justice.' All legal tribunals are based, not upon ideal con¬ cepts of Justice and Fair Play, but upon .effective armed Strength. This is a truism. Robbery under arms, laid the comer stone of every Court House in Christendom, and elsewhere. How then can the rob¬ bers and the robbed—the eagle and the pigeon—the chicken and the hawk, be placed in positions of genuine equilibrium before removable officials, special¬ ly paid and appointed, to ‘vindicate the Law’—that is to give forcible effect to the Dicta of the Strongest. All jndges are authorized avengers armed to the teeth and all hangmen are licensed assassins, trained 48 to kill. These words are not spoken in disparage¬ ment. Assassins and avengers! Ha! If that be so. . . . Truly they that “seek the Lord” do suffer hunger but—lions seek for prey. When an army of occupation settles down upon an enemies territory, it issues certain ‘rules of procedure ’ for the orderly transference of the property and per¬ sons of the conquered; into the absolute possession and unlimited control of the conquerors. These ‘rules of procedure’ may at first take shape as orders issued by military generals; but after a time they develop themselves into Statute Books, Precedents, and Con¬ stitutions. Indeed all Law is now and ever has been, the mandate of successful belligerents or rather the mandate of the few masterful personalities that ever inspire the operations of successful belligerents. Equality before the Law, is thus a contradiction in terms for Law itself is an incarnation of Inequality. It is true only in the subjective sense, that all who obey the Law are equally the servants of those who made it or caused it to be made. Drum-head court martials are really Law Courts in embryo. Congresses and Parliments are merely com- mittes of rapacious tax-gatherers. Legislators may describe themselves as ‘representatives of the people,’ but that is only a cunning masquerade. Their chief vocation is to strengthen ‘the Law,’ uphold ‘the Con¬ stitution,’ vote the annual ‘Approbations’ and devise ways and means of exploiting the nation or of permit¬ ting it to be systematically looted by their accom¬ plices, or—their Masters. The principles that govern a ‘hold-up’ are the self¬ same principles that govern government. No gov¬ ernment on earth rests on the consent of the governed. Is it reasonable therefore for a confederation of masterful bandits to place themselves in positions of absolute equality, before their intended victims. The idea is absurd on the face of it. Brigandage neces¬ sitates inequality: and every government on earth, is organized and enthroned Brigandage.* Las Casas was the first prominent sophist in America * “Have we not shown that Government is essen¬ tially immoral?” — Herbert Spencer, 49 to spread about the false, subversive* and shameful theory of ‘equal human rights ’ but since his time, it has been boastfully accepted on all sides, by vast hordes of witless persons who are in all countries, the numerical majority. ‘The race of fools’ as Plato sagaciously remarked, “is not to be counted”—not even in this—‘land of the free.’ Although Equality (in any; shape ) has never been scientifically proven nor logically defended: neverthe¬ less it passes from tongue to tongue, from brain to brain in current discussions, for ‘gospel truth’—just as clever counterfeit coins are passed unsuspectingly, from hand to hand. The Equality superstition, is tolerated by clear-see¬ ing mea, for one reason only. It assists them to govern the thoughts: and by governing the thoughts, to ex¬ ploit the property, energy, and labor-force, of their soft- minded, good natured neighbors: who really believe it to be true —who think it, glad tidings of Great Joy. Behold! when the fraudulent ‘equality of natural rights’ evangel, is mellifluously poured forth in the Market Places by sauve dollar-hunting attornies; or half-educated mechanics; even those staid citizens (whose whole life is of it a direct disproof) lead the roar¬ ing, raving, yelling crowd, in its maniacal bellowings. Lo! the Angel of Lunacy is camped in their souls! 8 Every atom of organic matter has its own vital peculiarity. Every animate being is different in osseous structure and chemical composition. Ethnol¬ ogy, Biology, History, all proclaim Equality to be a myth. Even the great epics of antiquity are all glori¬ fications of inequality: inequality of mind—inequal¬ ity of birth - courage or condition. Can equality of body, equality of mind, equality of origin, equality before the law, or any other kind of ‘equality’ be demonstrated by any one fact? Mentally and morally, every breathing being is a self poised monad—a differentiated ego. No two germs, planets, suns, or stars, are alike. Among the higher verbetrabates this is especially so and consequently, the only law that men ought to honor or respect; is the law that originates, and finds its final sanction in themselves —in their own conciousness. 60 ( - Inequality is summed up in the scientific axiom ‘ ‘inferior organisms succumb, that superior organisms may survive, propogate, and possess.” In other words, the proper place for Lazarus is to rot among the dogs. And the proper place for Cseser is at the head of his irresistable legions. From the soles of his feet to the crown of his head— the bones, skin, and fiesh of his body—even the grey brain pulp—the electric nerves and tissues—mental ganglia, and internal viscera of a man belonging to the African, Mongolian, Semite, or Negrito breeds are all fundamentally different in formation, constitutents, and character; from the corresponding anatomical sec¬ tions in men of Aryan descent. The points of non¬ resemblance may be superficially imperceiveable, but they are organic —deep seated. Notwithstanding the dexterous writers of strategic fables, dross is dross, gold is gold: and some men are born better, born nobler, bom braver, than others. Aristocracy by birth rests upon an unalterable scient¬ ific basis of heredity and selection; but an aristocracy of money rests mainly upon bolts and bars; i. e. upon laws, that may be abrogated at a moments notice. Though unable to reason out, in logical sequence their inherent abhorrence of social and racial equality yet most men instinctively detest it—in practice. What white father for example, would encourage the marriage of a hulking thick skulled Negro with his beautiful and accomplished daughter? Would he enthusiastically ‘give her away’ to the matrimonial em¬ braces of a Chinamen, a Coolie or the leper-hugs of a polluted ‘mean white’? Is there ten such citizens even in North America, where equality of birth and condition, is so much speechified and —never seen? Is there five? Is there one who would not rather see the daughter of his loins, stiff, stark, and cold in her shroud? Should that one exist (he being of sound mind) let him speak. Then, and only then, can this diabolical gospel of intrinsic equality be reconsidered. Meanwhile, plain practical citizens are justified in regarding it, not as a self-evident truth, but an in¬ solent, malignant, and abominable lie—a lie that shall yet be stamped out forever—with blood and fire. You have only to look at some men, to know that 51 they belong to an inferior breed. Take the Negro for example. His narrow cranial development, his prog¬ nathous jaw, liis projecting lips, his wide nasal aper¬ ture, his simian disposition, his want of forethought, originality, and mental capacity: are all peculiarities strictly inferior. Similar language may be applied to the Chinaman, the Coolie, the Kanaka, the Jew, and to the rotten-boned city degenerates of Anglo-Saxon- dom: rich and poor. Vile indeed are the inhabitants of those noxious cattle kraals: London, Liverpool, New York, Chicago, New Orleans: and yet, in those places is heaped up, the golden plunder of the world. Ethnographists of the very highest authority, assert that over ten thousand years ago, the black, white, and yellow types of men-animals were as pronounced, and as ineffaceable, as they are to-day. The hierogly¬ phics and records of ancient tombs and monuments, cunieform inscriptions, antiquarian researches, and the systematic study of pre-historic skulls and skeletons, all bear the same uniform testimony. Inequality of birth and condition, can never perish from off the earth. Never! and why should it? Who can fill the valleys up and lay the mountains low? 9 Even the giddy doctrinaire who so cunningly concoted the bombastes-furioso fictions of the Declaration * could not apparently have believed them himself. W as he not a slave-driver (residing among slave-drivers,) who bought and auctioned human cattle for dollars and cents all the days of his life? N o doubt for pur¬ poses of state-craft and necessary war-craft he wove his philosophic preamble of Strong Deceit. Probably also, he was comparatively honest, and even sincere but among the alluring priests ot Unreason, the most dangerous is the fanatical propogandist. When Jefferson dictated his fatal and untenable abstractions, he was not even original but_ plagiarized Zeno the Stoic, Jack Cade, Savanarola, Milton, Plato, John Ball, etc. Zeno said: “All men are by nature * Mayhap, Franklin (who had a comic vein,) wrote them as grinning jokes. By the way every signature, attached thereto^ represents a slave-holding, slave¬ trading constituency. All the colonies traded in niggers. 52 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, Robespierre and Christ were also failures —ghastly failures. ‘‘If human experience proves anything at all,’ writes James Fitzjames Stephens ‘it proves, that if the res¬ traints 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 grot¬ esque abracadabra of silly phrases, parroted from ant¬ ique philosophers or blue-mouldy documents; but by actual deeds —that is to say, by producing his creden¬ tials. Constitutional theories are all very well to humbug stridulating slaves but in a freemans house¬ hold, 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 perhaps 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 sea¬ port, 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 unsymeterical- 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. 63 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.”f Nine-tenths of them are positively repulsive in lang¬ uage, mentality, and in general appearance. They even display an extraordinary low average of animal¬ ity; 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 circul¬ ation. For all that, they breed like rabbits; but every new generation is feebler, and more debased than its predecessor. All the scientific evidences of mental, moral, and bodily deterioration, are markedly ac¬ centuated in them: and -their timidity is proverbial.* Hard, continous, 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 continously have no power to think. It requires all their vital force to keep their muscles in trim. Indeed, the civilized city working-man, and work¬ ing-woman are the lowest and worst type of animal- culae, 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 lips, their narrow retreating irresolute jaws, their decayed teeth, sharp puny noses, small watery eyes, yellow bloodless complexions, bent shoulders, dry hair tend¬ ing to baldness, struggling thin beard: the women with pinched features, waspish fragile waists, want of bust development, consumptive, nuerotic, artifically 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 * “The brave man may fail sometimes, but the coward fails always.” Angelo Mosso. f Ibsen. 54 conditions of base loathsome hirelingism, were they not deficient in all the Primitive Virtues —in all that is manly and womanly? Behold!—upon their brow is stamped (with red-hot cattle brands ) the word‘DAMNED.’ Eternally tort¬ ured are they in a patent purgatory invented by Pol¬ iticians. Their tribulations however may really be but Progression in disguise, because, their shameful self- degradation, must ultimately end in their utter ex¬ tinguishment. 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! Which? 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! Crippeld 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, (f)aye and grind their dry bones into baskets of coal. At thoughts of battle they blench with terror: —at 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 —cut down like the grass. My soul abhorreth them as an abomination. My hand reacheth out to clutch them by the throat. 10 Heredity has ever so much more to do with social con- ditionSj than the majority of modern men are willing to admit. It is plain however, 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, f When the Roman Empire was tottering to is 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 bow our hearts, our heads and our knees, before those troops of Unclean Beasts —Politicians! 65 and permits all his cattle to mix-up promiscuosly together: what kind of a herd would h% have, say in one 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 be¬ tween ancestry and degeneracy, crime, genius, insan¬ ity, etc.,etc. is now everywhere being acknowledged- thanks to the researches of Gal ton, Lombroso, 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 heros and strong, powerful, resolute, per¬ sonalities, have derived their solid stamina from their forefathers? Indeed all history and all geneologies proves that this is a mathematical fact. Great men ai'e ever the descendents of mighty warriors, and con¬ querors: that is to say, of mighty animals. Yon Otto Ammon cites a remarkable instance, which f oes 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-drudges 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 qualifi¬ cation, 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 civil¬ ized “hell” on earth. The nexus between self mastership and breed, is of tremendous significance. Therein is the Lost Secret. Undoubtedly new born infants ake daily coming wailing into this world, with the words—statesman, tramp, wastrel, warrior, priest, philosopher, criminal, thief, king, slave and coward, indelibly branded upon their brows, their hearts and their brains. Our talents, our virtues and our vices, depend entirely upon our individual mechanism; and that mechanism is the result of countless chemic trans¬ formations, extending over ages but modified to a large extent by climate and soil. “ What is bred in the bone, will never come out of the flesh,” wrote Pilpay thousands of years agone. There is a pregnant ethnic philosophy in four lines (quoted from Keramos): “This clay well mixed with marl and sand, Follows the motion of my hand; For some must follow, and some command: Though all are made of clay.” Although all may be made of clay, in the poetic sense, it must never be forgotten that the clay itself, is com¬ posed of differentiated elements. The clay that is in a Blackfellow or a Chinaman, is not the clay that is in a Shakespeare or a Bismarck. Some “clay” will grow good wheat and make very bad bricks: just as some breeds of animals are born to be hunters and others born to be hunted. Some clay will raise splendid crops, even from poor seed; and some never produces anything (no matter how highly cultivated), except thorns and weeds and nettles and poisons. The natures of men are moulded almost entirely, by the nature of the soil from which they have been grown. Man is a perambulating crop. In some places he grows to perfec¬ tion: in other localities he wont grow at all, or runs to seed. In India, the Anglo Saxon dwines and dwindles, but in Canada and the Northern States he even develops increased stamina—outside the great cities. All science, all history, and all experience are unan¬ imous in disproof of equal natural rights for all men (that strident doctrine of the fool); and yet the insolent, proofless assertions of a Zeno, a Jefferson, a Jack Cade, Robespierre, or a Jewish Carpenter (when fantastically engrossed and framed or bound in a book) are pass¬ ively accepted by the intellectual serfs of this degenerate nineteenth century, and trumpeted to the ends of the earth as a sublime and holy revelation. Equalityism passes almost unchallenged in public orations, because to openly question its veracity, is felt to be unpopular; 07 and with the ignoble leaders of public opinion in all democracies, popularity is everything—the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. The result in Anglo-Saxondom is simply nauseous. Young men are mentally mutilated, systematically “educated” by schools, press, and literature, upon fundamental hallucinations, pyrotechnic shams, and glittering illusions—illusions that are the perennial source of fruitless servile uprisings, social heart-burn¬ ings, internecine unpleasantnesses and sundry other secondary symptoms of social cancer. Our Government Educational Sytems are absolutely under the direct control of Politicians. These Priests- of-the-State select and train the teachers, also vote the salaries and dictate what Truths and Lies, the text¬ books shall contain. Indeed our National Schools are managed upon the same jesuitic plan, whereby the monks and prelates of old, successfully “worked” the Universal Church. “Come right in here and we’ll improve your minds free of cost,” suavely saith the high priests of this New Idolatry—this devouring Dragon—this Impersonal State. So the pure-hearted rosy-cheeked little ones enter unsuspectingly. Gradu¬ ally as they are “brought under the influence” the grey brain-pulp is forced out of their plastic young skulls, and lies, nice pretty poetic lies (mixed with unavoidable facts and perverted truths) skilfully in¬ jected. Did you ever see medical students extract the brain of a frog, and then fill up the vacuum with pith ? The frog does not die, it lives, hops about quite lively, and seems to possess its former intelligence and vitality, but it is all illusion. AYhat experimental vivisectionists do to frogs, state-priests do to the children of men. Bit by bit, with dates and lists and emasculated his¬ tories; the iniquitous brain-wrecking deviltry proceeds. When completed, young men and women are turned out with addled brains , into a warring world, incapables, semi-imbeciles, unable to defend or assert themselves— footballs of fate, ready to sekve anyone.. Is it not notorious, the ineptitude, mechanical imitativeness, and want of initiative, displayed by state-educated young men ? Instead of being urged to think and act for themselves^- they are taught, like well-drilled slaves to Believe and Obey. They are even trained to glorify 58 and worship Idols, with strident shouts and modulated canticles—not honest Idols of wood and stone, but Idols of sheepskin, bound pamphlets, variegated rags and the falsified Renown of dead Scoundrels, i.e. Statesmen. It requires a stout rope, a firm post, and muscular men to hold an unbroken colt; but when by Force and petting, he has once been subdued i. e. tamed, educated, saddled, bridled , he may be led anywhere even with a piece of twine in the hands of a little child. O, ye State-Priests, so adroit, so eloquent! Ye cunning demons! Ye wolves in sheeps clothing! Ye corrupters of Youth ! Ye generation of vipers ! How can you escape from the wrath to come ? How can you escape someday from being “hung up, by the tongue on the red-hot hooks, of a real live hell.” Thirty years ago the United States quixotically essayed to demonstrate racial equality, with rifle bullets and bomb-shells; but failed most ignominously. Southern valleys were strewn with Northern and Southern bones, and millions of tax-treasure blown from the lips of cannon without any tangible result, except to demonstrate before an interested world, the utter failure and hollowness of equality principles. A people that deliberately enters upon a gigantic war in order to firmly establish a Centralized Despotism; and at the same time reduce itself to the social level of the Negro, the Russian Jew, the Coolie, the Chinaman, and the European Serf, must indeed (to use a suggest¬ ive vernacularism) have “wheels in its head.” The “man and brother” lie has certainly succeeded in writing itself in a “constitutional amendment” but in real life it is as far from actuality as ever it was. The “free” negro of New Orleans or Charleston is a more degraded, more despised being; and of less money value to his proprietors now then when it was customary to buy and sell him at the auction block, instead of as at present on the Stock Exchange, j What the late civil war really accomplished, was to degrade the white slave to the lower level of the plant¬ ation nigger: and in that respect it was a triumph of ingenuity. The Whites fought—actually fought each other to demonetize themselves. Equality! Equality! what brilliant deeds have been “perpetrated” in thy 'name? Lincoln however! was he not “a great states- 59 man?” Decidedly lie was! Well indeed iie knew how to ‘round-up’ the "herd with bewitching phrases? Hark ! do you hear those drunken slaves caterwaul¬ ing down the street? Lo! it is election night! “Hurrah! hurrah!” they sing, “We’ll sound the jubilee! Glory be to Lincoln, the man who made us free.” In Mooroco the eunuchs and other menials, bless their fate and the Prince, at the very time he condesends to cut their throats with his own hands. Americans however, are a free-born people not to be duped that way. Alas! Alas! Throughout both Northern and Southern states, the social chasm between the highest and lowest human organisms (whether white or black, or black-and-tan), is even more pronounced now, than ever it was pre¬ viously. For example, although the Negros are a majority in many States, they are never permitted to attain actual administrative power and they never shall. You cannot paint the Negro white, with laws and constitutions: though you write it in the fire and smoke of wars and revolutions. 11 To solemnly proclaim that “all men are created equal,” is as stupid and unscientific, as to assert that all dogs, cattle, apes and trees are created equal. Is there not as many diverse varieties of dogs, cattle, apes and trees, as there are of men, planets, germs, stars and suns? Where then is the intrinsic equality between an oak tree and a currant bush—between a mettlesome wolf-hound and a yelping street cur—be¬ tween a buffalo bull and a hand-fed steer—between an untameable gorilla of the woods and an organ-grinder’s castrated monkey-between a co smic -brained Bismarck and that famous Christling, “the good young man that died.” Cannot a blooded bulldog whip a solid score of lean half-starved street mongrels? Upon exactly the same principle, a small body of bold, self-reliant, brainy men are ever more than a match (under any cir¬ cumstances), for 10,000, nay, 10,000,000 greasy mech¬ anics. What is a mechanic anyhow but a specially trained slave?—and it would take the spirit of 1,000 American slaves to make that of one live man. Theo¬ retically all these organisms are of “the same species,” but in the savage rush for bread, love, space and life, there are as much functional difference between them, 60 as there is between a royal Bengal tiger and “Mary’s little lamb.” The lamb was made to be eaten and the tiger was made to eat it; and man was born to struggle as the sparks fly upwards. The necessities of environment makes of each man, the enemy or rival of other men. more especially, those with whom he comes in direct personal conflict. Where then does equality come in? It does not ‘come in’ at all. It is an idiotic myth. There must always be a sub¬ stratum of victimized organisms. How could the tiger live if there were no lambs to devour? How could there be heros if there were no slaves? How could there be great nations if there were no contemptible ones? Compare the noble qualities inherent in some dogs with the obsequious “virtues” that distinguish nine men out of ten. Now, give to canine or homo equal liberty of action—equal opportunity—equal “rights:” and what will be the result? Must not the fiercest fighter fatten, while the skeletons of lean weaklings project through their scrofulous hides? What power originating among themselves could dictate and enforce—equality of opportunity? Socialism, Cliristianism, Democratism, Equalityism, are really the whining yelpings of base-bred mongrel- multitudes. They howl aloud for State intervention- protection for suffering humanity”—regulated mill- ? rinding as it were; with the State to be their Supreme dol, their God and Master, their All in All, their Great Panjandrum. Poor deluded base spirited “weeds.” Truly the ‘ ‘Curse of God’ ’ is in the very marrow of their bones-in every pump-stroke of their dying hearts. The man who prays to be “protected” by politic¬ ians, guarded by armed Janissaries, saved by idolatrous priests, and redeemed by State Regimentation is indeed a miserable sinner-a vile, despicable, un-manly wretch. 12 No paternalistic governmental mechanism (however theoretically perfect), can ever keep the base-born and the well-born, the thoroughbreds and the hybrids, in a state of perpetual equilibrium. You might as well try to bind down an earthquake with hoop-iron, as to rule the Strong with a “be it enacted.” “Be it epacteds” were invented only to frighten captives with. 61 What power on earth can permently keep the Negro on a parity with the Anglo-Saxon? The Strong must have their way in spite of all purit¬ anic proscribings. all mock moralisms, all degrading legalisms, all constitutional covenantings. Neither the machinery nor the raw material of equality has ever existed; only the dream, the idea of it. Equality! Equality! in that one word is summed up the accum¬ ulated dementia of two thousand years! The thought of it was born in the brain of an inferior organism: and the brains of inferior organisms nourish it still. How can beings who for ages have been born and bred to toil and subjectivity, ever comprehend the feelings of those who are free-born, and of valorous descent—of those who understand the cosmic law that Might is — Master? You cannot muzzle a tempest with a cobweb, bridle a volcano with a shoe-string, bottle up a cyclone in a powder horn, nor catch a tidal wave with a boat-hook. Neither can you put a bit between the teeth of the Strong. They will see you — in Sheol first. No artifical plan of society—no pious incantations; however sincere and well intentioned; can ever prevent the pot that is of iron from smashing and sinking, the pot that is of clay—and why should it? If social equilibrium had been feasable, it would have been established, ages and ages ago. It never has been established—and it never shall. * What then is the good of eternally dreaming, theor¬ izing, and constructing phantom castles-in-the-air, cities of god, and gardens of delight, upon foundations of deliberate unveracity? Let us be men—whole men —not clamorous, tearful little children demanding infantile sugar-plums. Let us face the fierce challeng¬ ing facts of existence as boldly as our forefathers did before “Christly comfort and consolation” was intro¬ duced to un-man them—not like crouching, cringing, terrorized, oriental pariahs. Let us not be lured to wholesale annihilation by sonorous Asiatic evangel- * ‘‘Man has a right to subsistence,” wrote Thomas Paine. “Yes” replied an English philosopher: “he has a right to live one thousand years, if he can.” It is not a problem of Right, but of Ability,-Strength. 62 isms, that have proved themselves worthless and un¬ suitable to our temperament, our climate, and our breed. Let us be sensible, brave, practical; and as Virchow somewhat trenchantly recommends:- “accept THINGS AS THEY REALLY ARE, NOT AS WE CHOSE TO imagine them’ ’ —or rather as they have been imagined by dotard philosophers, daft poets, and castrated clerics. 13 The problem that we are ever called upon to solve or be eaten up, is not how to make life ‘happy and equal ’ for happiness is a moving mirage, and equality an im¬ possibility but how men may conquer their Opport¬ unities, surpass their Rivals, extirpate their Pursuers. The race is still to the swift and the battle to the strong. Beauty and booty are always the prerogatives of victorous valor. Woe unto the outgeneralled. ones! “Tis a battle for bread, for love, and for breath, ‘Tis a race for life to the jaws of death.”* Upon the island of Java there is a remarkable valley of death. It is literally strewed with the bones, and skulls, and skeletons of innumerable dead animals and creeping things. In the due season, giant turtles, live foot by three in diameter, travel up through it from the sea, to lay their eggs. En-route, they are set upon by packs of wild dogs and these dogs roll the turtles over upon their backs and then devour them alive, by tearing out their unprotected entrails. When the dogs are gorged, they in their turn, fall an easy prey to ambushed tigers. Then hunters kill these tigers for their variegated skins. Rank grass springs up after the rainy season, through the skulls and bones that litter this tropical golgotha and droves of cattle gather there to fatten. Again the cattle are hunted for their hides, horns, and flesh, and their bones are also left where they fall, to manure the val¬ ley and prepare it for new generations of hunters and hunted. Such is in miniature, a picture of the every¬ day world as it actually is. All living beings are pursuing and—being pursued. Woe unto those that stumble! Woe unto Ye who fall! They who accept the “Equality, Faith, Hope, and Charity’ ’ ideal, in any shape or form whatever, inter- *P. Luftig. —“Bulletin,” Australia. fSchopenhauer. 63 pret the facts of mortal life as they are not—as they have never been; as they can never Ibe. Indeed when the animal world becomes ‘moralized’ and ‘equalized’ it will be extinct. No doubt when contemplating the dark side of all this, Pascal was impelled to write with superstitious medieval diapasson:- ‘lam affrighted like a man who in his sleep has been carried unto some horrible desert island, and there awakes not knowing where he is, nor how he shall escape.’ Degenerates only are thus affrighted at the tragic majesty of their surroundings. If this struggle is ordained of us, why not enter into it with kingly courage, with dauntless delight? Why not go forward, daring all things, to conquer or to die? Is it not better to perish than to serve? “Liberty or death’ ’ is wot a meaningless phrase. No! it is of tremen¬ dous import to those who —comprehend. What is death that it should make cowards of us all? What is life that it should be valued so highly? There are worse things than death and among them is a life of dishonor. All men lead dishonorable lives who serve a master, with hand or brain. Life itself is but a spark in the gloom that flashes out and disappears. Why therefore not make the most of it here and now?—Here and Now! There is no “heaven of glory bright,” and no hell where sinners roast. There is no Right, there is no Wrong—nor God—nor Son—nor Ghost. Death endeth all for every man, For every “son of thunder:” Then be a Lion in the path; And don’t be trampled under. For us there is no rest—no Kingdom of Indolence, either on this earth or beyond the skies—no Isles of the Blest—no Elysian Fields— no garden of the Hes- perides. No! No! All these magical legends are but fanciful waking dreams?—“fiction of mortals of yore.” Here and wow is our day of torment! Here and wow is our day of joy! Here and wow is our Opportunity —to eat or to be eaten—to be Lion or Lamb! Here and wow it is war to the knife—no escape—no retreat. Choose ye this day, this hour, for no Redeemer liveth! Every attempt made to organize the Future must necessarily collapse. The Present is our Domain and 64 our chief duty is, to take immediate possession thereof upon strict business principles. Strive therefore against them that strive against you, and war against them that war against thine. Lay hold of shield and buckler (or their equivalents , stand up! Be a Terrible one in thine own defence. Raise up also the Clenched Hand, and stop the way of them that would persecute you. Say unto thine own heart and soul “I, even I, am mine own redeemer.” Let them be hurled back to confusion and infamy, who devise thine undoing. Let them be as chaff be¬ fore the cyclone and let the Angel of Death pursue them, nay overtake them. In a pit, they have hidden a trap for thy feet: into that very destruction let them fall. Then, exultant,‘‘sound the loud timbrel.” Rej-. oice! Rejoice! in thine own salvation. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully “who is like unto me?”— Have I not delivered myself by mine own brain? Have I not been too strong for mine adversaries?—Have I not spoiled them that would have spoiled me? 14 This circling planet-ball, is no navel-contemplating Nirvana, but rather a vast whirling star-lit Valhalla, where victorious battlers quaff the foaming hearts- blood of their smashed-up adversaries, from the scooped out skull goblets of the slain in neverending war. And, behold it is good! It is good! It is very good! “Blending in bloody strife, Throat to throat, life for life; Struggles the human still.” And in that invigorating struggle strength is renewable. Fitness to reign, propogate, and possess, can there alone be tested with mathematical precision (in natures majestic Judgment Hall), that is to say on the plains of Conquest where foeman look into foemans eye and death lurks, like a ravenous leopard, in every bush. They who claim Mastership upon any other basis then Conqust are Upstarts, Usurpers, and ought there¬ fore to be deposed without pity, and without mercy in accordance with the cosmic decree of ethnic dis¬ placement. Death I say!—Death! to every Lie! Life is a duel and only the Fittest can possibly hope to succeed. If you would Survive O reader! (in the highest meaning of that word) go to, and put some 65 splendor in your deeds. Beware ol false philosophies that equalize you with slavelings and dastards! Beware of fattened priestlings and tax-collecting statesmen! Beware the tongue that is smoothly hung, and never forget for one moment, that your greatest enemies upon earth, are those crafty courtiers who eloquently, cun¬ ningly, flatter you, that they may first win your heart, and then-skin you alive. The modern Mephistopheles is the soft-toned preacher in his pulpit,—the editorial sophist in his net-work of lies,—the political crocodile on his “planks” and his “platforms.” A trinity of hell-hounds are they! Oh! Would that they had but one neck and I was— Judge Lynch! ' America! America! in spite of all the surreptious bonds, that in thy sleep have been laid upon thee yet pregnant thy womb is with men of Nerve —men of Yalor —men of Might. Lo! the hour approacheth when in dire travail thou shalt give birth unto Thun¬ derbolts, and Joves to handle them. Behold that time cometh! Nay, it is at hand! But it will not be a period of pure delight. No! No!—it will be a day of wrath, a dreadful day—a day of Judge¬ ment, Tribulation, Triumph. And Democracy! Democracy! thou leprous thing!— thou loathsome disease!—thou plastic demon!—thou murderer of man! Many nations have bowed down to thy infection, and perished from off the earth, but America! America! shall wipe thee out,—thou blight- some malady—thou human rinderpest! Verily! Verily! a new nobility shall be born unto theeO America!—a breed of Terrible Commanders!—of Grim Destroyers —A nobility unpurchasable with the minted tokens of money-changers —a nobility of Valor, of Power, and of Might —a nobility honorable, clear¬ sighted, clean-skinned, unconquerable. ********* Through the Future shines the sun of splendid struggle. Heroic Natures there lead on, as they led on at Illion. The Natural Man steps forth once more, in all his daring grandeur. Smashing unclean Idols, defying Gods and Laws, and slave-made Morals. THE PHILOSOPHY OF POWER. Condensed How did government of man by man originate? By force of arms. Victors became rulers. But among us government by force is abolished? That is a popular delusion. It is stronger than ever. How is it that we do not see it clearly? No need of compulsion with inferiors ever eager to obey. How can the Mastership of man be destroyed? It can never be destroyed. It is essential. But for one man to reign over another is wrong? What is ‘wrong’? The Strong can do as they please. Who are the ‘Strong’? They who conquer. They who take the spoil and camp on the battlefield. All life is a battlefield. How did subjectiveness originate? The first slave was a defeated fighter, afterwards tamed by hunger and blows. His descendents being born and trained to submissiveness are more tractable. All the Servile Classes are posterity of beaten battlers. Then vassalage still flourishes among us as of yore? Certainly. In the pitiless strife for existence, all weak¬ lings and feeble-minded persons are justly subordinated Bat we are taught ‘all men are created equal’? You are taught many a diplomatic Lie. How can a slave recover his liberty? By re-conquering his conqueror. If he feels that he is not man enough for his master, then he must submit, cut his o wn throat, or die fighting unsubdued. Bat freedom may be granted to him? ‘Freedom cannot be granted, it must be taken’. Then Strife is perpetual, inevitable, nay, glorious? Yes! It is intended as an ordeal, a trial by combat. It unmistakably divides the guilty from the non-guilty. But that is a harsh philosophy? Nature is harsh, cruel, merciless to all unlovely thinga Her smile is only for the Courageous, the Strong, the Beautiful and the All-Daring. You have no comfort for the ‘poor and lowly’, the ‘innocent ones’, the ‘downtrodden’. The poor and lowly are a creeping pestilence—there are no innocent ones, and the downtrodden, are the justly damned—sinners in a hell they’ve made. You praise the Strong, you glorify the Mighty ones? I do. They are Natures noblemen. In them she delights: the All-Vanquishers! the Dauntless Ones! CHAPTER IV. MAN — THE CARNIVORE! It lias taken countless evolutionary epoclis to make man what he is. the most ferocious hirsute beast of prey that inhabits the caverns and jungles of earth. Can his osseous mechanism and pathologic instincts be summarily extinguished, or reversed, merely by connecting him, per an electric wire, laid through the sewers of Rome, to the feeble dynamos of Bethlehem, and Tarsus? Can his structural anatomy, intended for conflict and slaughter, be transformed in a day, a year, or even in “a million, million of suns?” To overmaster and devour his neighbors, iu the reasoned effort to obtain food and booty, land, love, renown, and gold: is bred into the very marrow of his bones. Therefore all efforts made by Reformers and Messiahs, to transfigure him into a “lamb ” are fore¬ ordained to fathomless failure. Indeed it would be much more reasonable f them, to attempt the trans¬ figuration of a grizzly bear into a parlor poodle or propose the transformation of a bald-headed eagle in¬ to a gently cooing turtle-dove. Nearly all the prophetic demi-gods of Democracy from Paul and Isaiah to Carlyle and Ruskin, have ever been madly screeching by the roadside, vainly endeav¬ oring. to stay-the march! march! march! of a world of bannered armies; striding grimly, sternly by. Wliat are these howling prophets of Evil but dogs eloquently baying at the moon? “Right wheel there! Right wheel! Turn back! Turn back! You are going to the devil!” is their resounding ear-splitting chorus. But the human flood sweeps on. silently, scornfully, con¬ fident, inspired as it were by some over-mastering in¬ stinct. “We may be going to the devil,” is the xrn- spoken retort of these thundering legionaries—these Nations “but even so! is not the Devil honest—the Destroyer of Deception!—the Disobedient One ?” Can you lasso the stars with a green-hide lariat? 68 Can you block the march of Might with magnificient howls of declamatory despair? No! No! Skyward or kellward, man moves on and on and on. If there are barricades in his way, he must surmount them or blast them aside. If there are Wild Beasts ready to spring upon him, he must destroy them or they will destroy him. If the highroad leads through hells, then those infernos must be besieged, assailed, and taken possession of—aye, even if their present mon- archs have to be rooted-out with weapons as demoniac and as deadly as their own. This world is too peaceful, too acquiescent, too tame. It is a circumcised world. Nay!—a castrated world! It must be made fiercer, before it can become grander, and better, and—more natural. Fools indeed are they who would arrest the unfold¬ ing process with “humanitarian” Cagliostroism, and “rescue the perishing” mummery. Maniacs are they who would ward off the suns blazing rays from wither¬ ing souls or the blighting frosts of winter from hearts that are already broken. For, I doubt not, through the ages, one tremendous purpose runs; and maturing crops are ripened with the process of the suns —to be sickled down, threshed, and rolled away. Nations rise, rule, decay and every dog—has his day. 2 Undoubtedly the Black Magic of the Christ Myth, combined with the subterrenean sorcery of medieval sacredotalism has partially succeeded, not only in sapping individual initiative, but also in suppressing in our Race, many of its ancestral leonine traits, and superb Barbarian Virtues. But as yet, it has not wholly triumphed in its emasculating necromancy. No! it has not transfigured us all into teams of con¬ tented oxen, and bunches of earmarked sheep, al¬ though that is, evidently, its final hope. There are some of the grand old stock, yet left alive. Few in¬ deed. are they, amidst a world of slaves and swine. The lion is still the lion, although his teeth have been most foully filed down by abominable moral codes; his skin made scrofulous with the mange and leprosy of caged peacefulness—his paws fettered by links of slave-voted statutes; and an iron collar of State Offipial- ism, wound around his regal neck. Someday, sometime, he is destined to break through the vile bonds that have been cunningly laid on him, escape from the wasting decline that originates from unnatural confinement; and regain once more his f >rimitive freedom of Action. The treacherous legis- ators and illustrious statesmen, who are now so eager to teach him the method of growing wool like sheep and how to fit his battle-scarred shoulders to a horse collar, may then be sorry and sad (if they have time ) —for he will probably chew them up. Great and powerful governments, Commanding Peace , come into existence oxly in ages of decadence; when nations are on the downward grade. If the human animal lives a natural, cleanly life, out on the plains and forests; away, where oceans rollers crash along the shore; or on the banks of the pouring rivers’ he requires no police-force to “protect” him—no usurous Jew to rob him of his harvests—no tax-gather¬ ing legislators to vote away his property, and no ‘priests of the Idol’ to “save” his soul. It is false standards of morality that debase and en¬ feeble individuals, tribes, and nations. First, in obe¬ dience to some sovereign code, they lose their hardi¬ hood, and increase their numbers. Then that all may live, they become laborious, submissive to Regul¬ ations; and finally—with Death held up by priest¬ craft as a fearsome Terror, all personal valor fades away. Thus nations of spaniels are manufactured. The normal man is the man that loves and feasts and fights and hunts, the predatory man. The abnor¬ mal man is he that toils for a master, half-starves, and “thinks”—the Christly dog. The first is a perfect animal; the second, a perfect—monster. Every belief that makes a duty of humility—that inspires a people with “moral” courage only, enervates their fibre, corrupts their spirit, and prepares them first for thraldom and then for—throttling. It is not possible to conceive of Grand Life without incessant rivalry, prepetual warfare, and the implac¬ able hunting of man by man. Terror, torture, agony, and the wholesale des¬ truction of feeble and worn out types, must mark in fti+iiro as in the rifist. everv steD forward, or backward 70 in evolution, liomo-culture, and racial displacement. The soil of every nation is an arena, a stamping g round, where only the most vigorous animals may ope to hold their own. What is all history but the epic of a colossal campaign, the final Armageddon of which, is never likely to be fought; because, when men cease to fight—they cease to be—Men. This old earth is strewn to the very mountain-tops with the fleshless skulls and rain bleached bones of perished combatants in countless myriads. Every square foot, every inch, of soil contains its-man. 3 The evolution (or de-volution) of mankind demands the perpetual transfiguration of one man into another, continous re-incarnation, eternal re-birth, and re-con¬ struction. Scientifically considered, the “resurrection of the dead” is not an illusion. Every living organ¬ ism is formed from the decomposed essence of pre¬ existent organisms. The ‘ ‘man’ ’ of to-day is actually built-up out of the grave-mould of his prototypes; perhaps of ages long forgotten. Thus, without death there could be no birth-material; and without conflict, fierce and deadly, there could be no surpassing. But to individuals foolishly trained to bewail their fate, all these commonplace facts are agonizing. “When we solemnly look upon this perpetual con¬ flict,” writes Schelling with true theocratic pessimism, “it fills us with shuddering sorrow, and with bound¬ less alarm—but how can we help it? Hence the veil of sadness that is spread over all nature, the deep in¬ destructible melancholy of all life.” Like many other philosophers, deceived by appear¬ ances; Schelling fancies savage and dreadful that which is pure, mischevious that which is preservative, and calamitous that which is benign. The flow of Destruction is as natural and as needful as the flow of water. No human ingenuity can de¬ stroy the Immolation of Man, nor prevent the shedding of blood—and why should it? Majestic Nature continues on her tragic way serenely, caring naught for the wails of the agonized and panic- striken, nor the protests of defeat; but smiling sadly, proudly (yet somewhat disdainfully in her passing stride) at the victors fierce Hurrah. She loves the 71 writhing of sword-blades—the rending of tradition, the crunching of bones, and the dap of shredded shot- torn banners, streaming out savagely (in the night, in the day), over the battle-weary, the mangled dying, and the swollen dead. Christs may come, and Christs may go, but Ceeser reigns for ever. Deep, permanent, and abiding, is the elemental ant¬ agonism betAveen the Sociology of “the Man of Naz¬ areth” and the imprescriptible Laws of the Universe. They are as fire and water to each other—irreconcilable. Indeed our planetary system itself, shall melt with fervent heat ere the Gallileans philosophy can conquer. No human being can ever hope to attain “the per¬ fectibility that is in Christ.” * So long as we remain animals, we shall be dominated by animal wants and animal passions and animal rivalries. Undoubtedly the Messiah ideal is unattainable, hopeless, and especially so upon its reformatory side. HoAvever the world loves to be deceived by some ghastly delusion and that is the reason perhaps, that it has taken to its bosom this rustic fable; this Gospel of Ineffectuality—this Evangel of Darkness — this Dream of an Israelite slave. ‘ ‘When the Assyrians and after them the Medes and Persians’ ’ writes Tacitus, “were masters of the Oriental world; the Jews of all nations, then held in subjection, were deemed the most contemptible.” Christ was a pariah Jew. Among virile conquering tribes, the Ideal Man is ever the all-daring Jove, the splendid Apollo, the self- reliant Achilles, or the Constructive Genius. It is only in centuries of dotage—in ages of cankersome down-going and nervous disease, that the Model Man becomes a Christ. The Model Man of our forefathers was Odin, a War Lord, but our Ideal Man is a weep¬ ing, horsewhipped Jew. * A Jew for a God! O, horrible! The deities of the Greeks and Vikings, Goths and Romans, were all (originally) mighty-men-of-valor, or virile women of surpassing beauty: afterwards held up (before their warlike posterity ) as splendid examples of natural nobility, conscious power, daring courage, shrewdness, sexual vigor, and boundless strength of character. The gods and heros of antiquity spent their vital force in the destruction of monsters, in the * ‘Taunts and bloAvs the portion of the slave.’ Macauley. 72 seizure of new hunting-grounds, in the slaughtering of tyrants, and in the breeding of unconquerable sons. But Christ! the God of Christendom! the Divine Ex¬ emplar! ‘that Majestic Figure!’ What godlike deed did he ever do? What unconquerable sons did he beget? If the “first principles of Christianity” should, by an unforseen miracle triumph in the elemental conflict that is approaching, assuredly the Anglo-Saxon is played-out- his days numbered, his dominion ended, his sepulchre prepared. Multitudinous multiplication of Unfit Millions (broods of strumous semi-idiots) must then proceed through dreary, barren, brain-par¬ alyzing centuries: winding up perhaps in a blast of pestilential plague—a Black Death. The -‘dead and alive” conditions of the “Celestial” Empire will then be applied to this Western World and under the thin disguise of “Advancement,” “Pro¬ gress,” and “Civilization,” an atmosphere of excruciat¬ ing torture must be artificially created; hostile to all but degenerative forces- as in China. In the name of “goodness,” “righteousness,” and “morality,” Woe shall be poured out upon our Seed, as it has already been poured out on the rotten Swarms of the Orient. Congenital enfeeblement of body, together with organic degeneracy of mind, must then go on and on, at an ever accelerating ratio, until our posterity may end (as Darwin imagined we began) by becoming chattering apes, without sense enough to light a fire, crack a cocoanut, or swing by their tails. Behold the modern man! this “heir of all the ages— in the foremost ranks of time!” His sight, taste, smell and hearing are all notoriously defective. He can harness thunderbolts, but the unerring instinct of a carrier-pigeon is beyond him. His brain has become an over-heated thinking engine, but he may not read the Daily Morning Liar —without spectacles. He “understands” more things than he used to (or thinks he does) but if suddenly removed from his artificial environment, he would perish as helplessly as the Babes-in-the-Wood. He can gauge sound-waves; photograph broken bones; construct gigantic iron monsters; whisper across miles of copper wire; but, when the pointer-dog sniffs the hidden pheasant from afar off, this erudite Bundle-of-Nerves looks on in 73 blank amazement.. The fact is that the civilized man is gradually “losing his senses.” If he continues to ‘‘progress” at the existing rate, in a comparatively little while, he will have no smell, no sight, no hearing. “Direr visions worse foreboding, Glare upon me through the gloom! Europe’s smoke-cloud sinks, corroding On the land, in noisome fume; .... . . . Showering down like rain of ashes, On the Cities of Gods doom. . . . .... Bustling smug, a pigmy pack, Plucks its prey from ores embraces; Walks with crooked soul and back: Glares like dwarfs with greedy eyes, For the golden glittering lies.” * It is good for a degraded people to be utterly consumed. 4 In the department of Natural History, it is axiomatic that all kinds of living beings, from protozoa to man; subsist and propogate, through and by the destruc¬ tion of feebler competitors, belonging to the same species or to kindred species. Thus the big fish eat the little fish—the big trees (by absorbing and monopolizing the nutriment) “eat up” the little trees—the strong animals eat the weak animals and so on—ad infinitum. Man is no exception. Conquering and masterful nations have ever been ravenous devourers of flesh-food; and most of them have also been man-eaters. The slaughter-houses of Christendom reek with the dying effluvia of millions and millions of butchered brutes; that man—the King of Animals—may day by day eat flesh, drink blood, and gnaw bones. Even cannibalism is not extinct in far lands, nor quite unknown in the centres of our proudest civil¬ izations. With the first great revolutionary cataclysm, its revival upon a gigantic scale is not an improbibility. During the eleventh century, man’s flesh was cooked, sold, and eaten in England, and Englishmen may again revert to anthropophagy, if ever their imported food supplies should be suddenly and entirely cut off; either by convulsions of nature or acts of war. Ship- i * Henrice: Ibsen.— Adapted in the translating. 74 wrecked crews have repeatedly saved themselves by casting lots and devouring some of their number: and shipwrecked nations (loaded up to the hatches with seething cargos of festering useless nondescripts), may yet be driven to do the same. Innumerable are the folk-lore legends, relating to ancient and modern man-eaters. Formal human sac¬ rifices upon the Altars of Idols are quite common. In Mexico and Ancient Britain, prelates butchered their victims (generally young virgins) in public, amid the acclaim of musical instruments, the chanting of beaut¬ iful liturgies, and the liossanna shouts of the mob. The modern prelate does not employ the rude smoking gully-knife, but uses other weapons, ten times more keen and more destructive. For every human sacrifice ‘offered-up’ in olden times, millions are offered up now. 5 Professor Huxley pictorially describes an African butchers shop, where human steaks, roasts, and sir¬ loins, were systematically retailed. Josephus tells us of mothers who ate their own infants during the last siege of Jerusalem, and in many later sieges human flesh has been consumed. Oriential traditions record of King Richard Lion Heart; that once upon a time when presiding at a horrible feast of moslem heads; he remarked with grim nmtter-of-factness ‘one roast Saracen made good entertainment for nine or ten of my good Christin men.’ An English Crusading rhymer is even proud of this:— “King Richard shall warrant, There is no flesh so nourissant, Unto an English Man; Partridge, plover, heron, ne swan, Cow, ne ox, sheep, ne swine, As the (roast) head of a Sarazan.” Very intelligent New Zealand aboriginals may still be found, who will describe with much apparent gusto, how (in comparatively recent dates) they satiated their ravenous hunger, by banqueting all night, upon the grilled flesh of foemen they had tomahawked during the day. Neither is it uncommon to hear tatooed old veterans, tell how war-captives were penned up like cattle and fattened upon each other, until required 75 for the tribal oven (formed of red-hot stones, paved into an oval hollow in the ground):—how then the fat¬ test were selected one by one taken out, system¬ atically bled, disembowelled, and hung up by the heels on neighboring trees; just as sheep, swine, and cattle are exposed for sale, in our own abattoirs and meat- markets. The Maoris also have a tradition, that if a man kills and eats his enemy, he by doing so, absorbs all the dead mans vitality, strength, and courage. In the nascent Colony of New Zealand, missionaries soldiers, whalers, and pioneers were often cooked and eaten; but by a general consensus of epicurean opinion the‘Pakeha’s’flesh was voted bad form, principally because it was ‘too tough, and too salt.’ During the War of Secession, Northern infantry¬ men accidently imprisoned in a Virginian mine, de¬ voured each other one at a time; the last man (John Ewing) dying of hunger, and leaving a written record of the facts, sealed up in a flask. The story of Sawny Bean is well known, also the classical legends of the Cyclops, the Giants, the Phalaris Bull, the Moloch holocausts, and Homers Polyphemus. Anthropophagy has been practiced in Australia, both by • — whites and blackfellows. In New Guinea, and portions of Africa, man-eating is quite an ordinary custom to this hour. Marcus Clarke describes how Gabbet, an English-born Botany Bay convict, induced his prison comrades to escape with him (into the bush), in order that he might have a holiday and a feast, picking their succulent bones and sucking out the marrow therof. All over contintental Europe there is a popular superstition that Jew Rabbis steal and murder Christian infants and maidens, in order to use the blood on the door-lintels, at Passover and other ceremonials. A similar charge was brought against the early Christians, and even proved in the Imperial Law Courts, if we are to judge by the verdicts. Human fat is regularly retailed in modern drug stores and human heads are even now a marketable commodity in the South Seas. There are also mystic brotherhoods in our midst, whose initiates pledge fidelity, and obligate themselves to life-long secrecy, by drinking blood out of a skull, over emblems of 76 violent death—with daggers pointed at their throats. The foundation stones of many famous buildings, palaces, castles, temples, and monuments, have been emblematically laid upon the living body of a man— the Kremlin for example. Is not the Communion Service allegorical anthropop¬ hagy? Is it not a pious periodical cannibal feast in more ways than one? Does not the wine symbolize human blood, and the wafers typify human flesh? Metaphorically considered, every trading Christian State is a meat market, wherein the flesh, bones, and blood; not only of men, but of women and little child¬ ren are bought and sold daily—“offered up” nominally for the “Love of God;” really for the Love of Dollars. Atrocities of the most revolting description are of daily, hourly occurence, not only in Turkey and Siam, but in New York and Chicago; not only in Cuba and Port Arthur, but in London, Madrid, and Paris; not only in Mashonaland, and on the Congo, but in St. Petersburg and Berlin. Men, women, and little child¬ ren are being everywhere starved slowly to the grave, worked till they fall down, driven insane by legisla- tation, and even tortured to death, inch by inch. Great financial corporations (backed by the State) directed mostly by Hebrews, literally coin Great Em¬ pires into golden dividends: and upon the share lists of mortgage banks and man-devouring institutions generally, may be found the names of bishops, popes, E reachers, generals, governors, statesmen—and other uman Carnivores by the thousand. He who doubts, should look up the official share registers, and behold the long rows of adorable names belonging to High Priests, Philanthropists and Rulers, appearing thereon. Cannibalsm was practiced in Ancient Greece at the period of highest culture. Herodotus describes Asian feasts where man’s flesh was the chief dish: and down to the Thirteenth Century the Thibetans were in the habit of making their parents into broth. There are confraternities still in existence, into which no one is ever admitted until he has first killed a man. Among the Dyaks (as among our own ances¬ tors) a youth is never considered a full-grown person capable of founding a home; until he has slain at least one enemy in battle. The Thugs of India (a religious 77 sect) brought the science of holy murder, by strategic violence, to such a pitch of perfection that they have never been surpassed—not even by Grant or Moltke. The Kinderawas of India, make a regular practice of eating all their diseased, useless, senile, and de¬ crepit relations: just as packs of wolves fall upon any of their number that is seriously wounded in foray. In portions of Sumatra, law-breakers are neither im¬ prisoned nor electrocuted, but actually carved up and eaten alive— piece by piece. The Capanagugas of South America make of their own stomachs the sep¬ ulchre of their dead relatives. A funeral with them is a banquet—the collation being a corpse. The Terra Del Fuegans throttle and eat all very old women. The Monbnttas of Central Africa carry on aggres¬ sive wars to capture flesh food. They also dry human flitches in the sun and smoke them for export. During the Tae Ping rebellion, Chinese soldiers (under General Gordon) were in the habit of cutting out and devouring the hearts of their dead enemies (on the battle-field) like the Maoris and Britons. Mistresses were specially kept by opulent ancient Peruvians, to breed sucklings—for the table. When these women became too old for child-bearing, they were likewise cast into the pot, as useless incumber- ances. In 1782 more than forty gypsies were executed in Austria, upon a proved charge of cannibalism. The case of the herdsman Goldsmidt, must not be forgot¬ ten; nor the gruesome London legends, regarding sausages being manufactured out of dead cats, deaf dogs, dead paupers, and murdered sailors. The Ancient Scandinavians, Tuetons, Celts, (vide St. Jerome), Sythians, Mongols, Sarmatians, Cannanites, Goths, and Huns were all anthropophagi. Indeed the detailed facts of how men have tortured each other for pleasure, revenge, or profit, would fill 10,000 volumes. No man in his lifetime could read or comprehend all the horrors that have been perpetrated, say in the Tower of London-the Paris Bastile-the Spanish Inquisition-the Rhine Castle Dungeons-by the Bridge of Sighs-the Bosphorous-or in the prison-hells of Chicago, Newgate, Mazas, Siberia, Sing Sing, New Caledonia, Botany Bay or Van Dieman’s Land. The cold-blood cruelty of man to man, surpasses anything 78 that poet-cranks could conceive of, as happening in hell. Cannibalism undoubtedly originated amid over¬ crowded populations in some pre-historic age. Among moderns (civilized and savage.) it merely exists as a survival of social conditions that have long since passed away. At some former era of the world’s pro¬ foundly mysterious history, men-animals increased in swarming myriads as they are doing now; until at last on the surface of the soil there was scarcely standing room for all. Then the air became laden with the reeking effluvia of their strumous bodies, breeding decimating pestilences, cholera, small-pox, leprosy, poisoning the wells and rivers, and trans¬ forming Babylons into charnel houses and tombs. The rearing of tame cattle for food in such an environ¬ ment, probably became too expensive and cumber¬ some. Perhaps even the cattle would also be swept away by some blight or rinderpest. Under such hor¬ rible circumstances, survivors might from necessity resort to anthropophagy. Gradually the new habit would grow upon them and become a settled custom. The segmental fragments of pre-historic civilizations are—the Cannibal Savages of to-day—the savages that we are displacing, pushing aside in order that we may enslave them and repeat over again the same weary old round of growth, power, and decay. Shiploads of dead soldiers, dug out of old battle¬ fields, possess a regular commercial value. They are imported into England, to be chemically treated and manufactured into fertilizers for enriching exhausted wheat fields. Human hair commands a steady sale, and “cadavers” may be bought for dissection, in any great city for a dollar, C. O. D. The tanning of human skins for glove-making and book-binding (Meudonl)is an old established industry. The transfusion of blood from animals into human veins, and from healthy humans into unhealthy ones (for a price), is regularly practiced by medical men. The grafting of flesh, bone, and skin, has also been successfully performed. American sheriffs and detectives hunt down tramps and criminals with specially trained bloodhounds, just as Russians hunt wolves, and sheepfarmers hunt coyotes and dingos. It is nowise unusual for Negros v9 to be first captured, then chained to a stake, flayed alive, soaked in kerosene, and burnt to death amid exultant shrieks of corybantic delight. Roman Senators fattened their lampreys and eels upon the drowned bodies of old worn out slaves and patrician maids and matrons, (with uplifted thumb), sent many a gladiator to kingdom come. For innate cruelty of deed, no animal can surpass woman. In Mahomedan Europe, boys are unsexed by the lancet, that they may thereafter be more safely em¬ ployed as harem-attends nts: and in Christian Europe ‘ ‘eunuchs are made and trained and priced, to sing the praise of a risen Christ.’ ’ Young girls are nightly bought and sold for cur¬ rency, like horses and hogs, at the street corners: and upon the profits of licenced polyandry “pillars of the church” become millionaires. Even the salaries of fulminating evangelists are paid out of Rahab’s rent. Baths of human blood are not unknown to students of history: and Jack the Ripper, with his letters writ¬ ten in harlots blood; enclosing; pieces of fried womans liver to the London Chief of Police, is certainly not a fabulous ancient legend. Is this the record of a breed of “dearly beloved brethren” ? What hollow mockery these holy phrases aro, to be sure?—The Brotherhood of man! Ha! Ha! The Brotherhood of Devils rather! Allegorically speaking the clothes we wear—tl* houses we live in—the food we eat—the books we read, have been carved (by force) out of other mens bones and flesh. Literally they are the hides, sinews, flesh, pulp, and outer woolen covering of captive animals, transmuted by human slavery into garments, lumber, implements, thoughts, shoes, and daily dinners. In¬ deed mans tushes are against all other animate beings whatsoever; and in turn, their fangs are against him. So it goes on, and on, and on, as merrily as marriage bells. Vife Victus! And behold, it is good! This world is no Nirvana, where peaceful pleasure flows. It is a gruesome butcher-shop, where slain men hang in rows. 6 From the scientific point of view, it is but a single step from the eating of captive cattle, horses, sheep, hares, rabbits, deer, hogs, etc. to the eating of captive men. 80 It may grate upon unstrung nerves to be harshly told these gruesome facts in straight language. However, calm sensible readers must unreservedly admit that Man is not a pretty, harmless little cherub; not even a “lamb,” but the fiercest, most ferocious, most cun¬ ning, and most bloodthirsty of all the verterbates.. He is tiie fighting, roving, pillaging, lusting, cannibal¬ istic animal, par excellence—the King of the Great Carnivore. When he takes his walks abroad, the “wild beasts” of the field and the birds of the air, even the most courageous of them, are stricken dumb. Shuddering they fly fromhis shadow (or his odor down the wind) hiding in trembling and quaking with terror. It is man’s destructive energy—not his altruism; that makes him absolute monarch of all he surveys; and yet, how feeble he is if compared to the powers of Nature that gave him being? No other beast will stand and face him, except it cannot run away—not even a snake, a tiger, or a wolf. Structurally, men are fashioned for purposes of inflicting and suffering pain. Every hnman anatomy is an elaborate nerve and bone infernal machine—a kind of breathing, perambulating Juggernaut —a superb engine of lethal immolation that, automatic¬ ally stokes its furnace fires with its *— victims. Men rush upon each other (or upon their prey) with hoarse war-shouts and bloodshot eyes, as prowling beasts of the deserts and jungles do. Man banquets upon his quarry with greediness, snarling, and growl¬ ing with ferocious triumphant delight, just like unto wolves: but HE loves to act the hyprocrite—turn up the whites of his protesting eyes to ‘heaven’—weep crocodile tears over his mangled, bleeding, and palp¬ itating carrion. How exultantly he lilts his Te Deum, his Kyrie Eleison, his Et in terra pax, his Gloria’s, and his Alleluia’s; while with blood-clotted jaw and distended paunch, he licks his gaping wounds? g As the painted Redskin chants his vengeful ghost- song; so the furious Paleface whoops his double-leaded editorial. As the hungry lion roars at midnight on African karoo, or in Himalayan jungle; so the piratical Anglo-Tueton roars his ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ his ‘Brittania Rules the Waves,’ or his ‘Watch by the Rhine.’ Exactly as the Moslem fanatic yells “Allah 81 Akbar,” while slicing up hated “Christian dogs,” so the vicious Englishman thunders forth his “Hip, Hip, Hurrah!” while driving an elegant bayonet-dagger into the liver of “wicked heathens;” whose property he therafter annexes—as a matter of course; for “bus¬ iness is business, don’t you know.” Man’s anatomy, external and internal; his eyes, his teeth, his muscles, his blood, his viscera, his brain, his vertebra; all speak of fighting, passion, aggressive¬ ness, violence, and prideful egoism. Even the component elements of a human body are themselves in a constant state of internecine warfare. Our bony framework and pulsating tissues, are vast campaigning grounds; whereon microscopical animal- cube in countlesss myriads, fight out their ephemeral lives, as we ourselves do—with tooth and claw. When one swarm of microbes, germs, or spores, conquer (in the struggle for sustenance) disease, or death super¬ venes to us, as the case may be. When rival hosts vanquish, then our flesh, nerves, bones, and blood be¬ comes their happy hunting grounds, and our health returns—at least until the bacilli-battalions have finally eaten us out: or they have been, themselves, conquered and exterminated by fiercer swarms. It is not improbable that this earth itself is a living breathing organism, and that the Tribes of Man are microbes and bloodsucking vermin (on its outer cuticle) imagining themselves “the whole thing.” Just as itch-creating parasites burrow into our own hide, so (in our turn) we may be unpleasant parasites, burrow¬ ing in the hide of some nobler and grander Being. 7 From youth to hoary age, man takes an instinctive delight in all that pertains to warfare and the chase. As a boy he twangs his arrows at the sparrows, trains and loads his toy-cannon, marshals his tin sold¬ iers, brandishes his wooden sword, fights his mimic battles, builds his snow fortifications on the play ground; and the proudest day of his life is that on which he becomes the proprietor of “a real gun.” As a full grown citizen he practices homicide with repeating rifle, at moving targets—slaughters tame pigeons with choke-bore breechloaders—hunts foxes, wolves, bears, pumas, over mountain and mere—wades 82 tip to his neck in swamps to kill teal, and travels to far lands in search of Big Game and nigger shooting. The Indian fighters of North America take supreme joyaunce in slaying red devils; and to “pot a black- fellow” in Queensland is boasted of round camp-fires under gum trees, as —“great fun.” The Cape of Good Hope, Australia, New Zealand, North and South America, have been made into verit¬ able human shambles and gory hunting grounds, with¬ in the memory of middle-aged men. Indeed the delight which men take in slaying wild animals, is tameness itself, compared with the exultation they dis¬ play in hunting, trailing and slaughtering each other. Man-hunts were organized systematically in Laca- dsemon, when the helots became too numerous and too restive. It is not improbable that as our own surplus “submerged tenths” increase in numbers, they may be thinned out by similar battues. At every meal we rend flesh, scrape bones, suck marrow, and daintily lap blood; just as our hairy trog¬ lodyte progenitors did. The food supply of all Christian nations is composed of the body and blood— the hides and marrow of both human herds and vast swarms of inferior brutes, living, dying, dead. The lives of countless hordes of hirelings, are daily being transmuted into juicy steaks and sirloins; that those who have money may buy and eat thereof. Not only do we ferociously compete for prey i. e. for subsistence; but we literally eat each other with voracity, relish, and mutual toleration. Thus properly understood, Darwinism is no very comforting doctrine for fat men. Public buildings and frowning fortresses; capitols and prisons; “temples of freedom” and cross-crowned cathedrals, have (everyone of them ) been constructed upon exactly the same general principles whereby the Pyramids of On and the Palaces of Ninevah were built —every riveted girder, every iron transom, every block of concrete, every solid, squared, and polished stone, has been bedded literally in a dying groan; by the hands of dehumanized and conquered decadents, insensate,—“of reason void, of reverence full.” There is nothing immoral, nothing abnormal, in these grim facts. All is in strict harmony with that cosmic enactment—the Survival of the Strongest. 83 In the proud language of Germany’s chansonist:- ‘ ‘The living current through the jpr is heaving, Breathing blessings, see them bending; Balanced worlds from change defending, While everywhere diffused is harmony unending.” Instinctively we understand that the struggle for ex¬ istence is absolutely needful. We feel that Nature makes no mistakes, and therefore we accept her dicta because we must: not because it has been eloquently formulated, by sublimated visionaries; or re-echoed, again and again, by thousands of human microphones. 8 When not thwarted by artificial contrivances, what¬ ever argument Nature promulgates is —right. The further man gets away from Nature, the further he departs from right. To be right is to be natural, and to be natural is to be right. The sun shines, therefore it is right that it should shine—the rain falls, therefore it is right that it should fall—the tides ebb and flow, therefore it is right that they should ebb and flow. Darwin’s law exists—may be seen in operation—is practicable—of daily demonstration—therefore it also is right. It is not a dream like “Religion,” it is not an invention like “Morals;” it is not an assumption like “God.” It is a cosmic Fact, like the sunshine, the rain, and the tides! Nature does not set up Idols, does not found Superstitions, does not invent Dec¬ alogues. These toys and fetters have been constructed by man, for his own infinite—damnation. Neither morals, laws, nor creeds are First Principles, but they may (probably) have their uses; just as guillotines, and gardeners hoes have their uses. They may be convenient engines for the deleton of Lower Organisms, for extirpating individuals of infant¬ ile intellect. Indeed the secret object of all super¬ stitions possibly is, to provide an ultra-rational sanct¬ ion for fraudulent standards of Right and Wrong. To base a Lie upon a Myth, is certainly much safer than to base it on a Realty, for you cannot run a tape- measure over a Myth. Christliness, as social quietism, has never yet been accepted by men of super-eminent strength, courage, and wisdom. Such men have everywhere regarded the Christ Ideal as a model for slavish souls only — to be 84 humored for strategic purposes but never practiced by masters, conquerors, kings. “Don’t do as I do, but do as I say” has ever been the dicta of High Priests and Rulers—to docile multitudes. . . The evolution of sovereignty satisfactorily exhibits this ethical dictatorship, as an historical common¬ place. Moral codes, (always and everywhere imposed upon the common people by “immoral” combinations of cumulative craft) are never obeyed by Ruling Castes. 9 If the Masters of Christiendom are to be judged by Moral Codes, by the Common Law, or by Gospel Injunctions, there is not one ‘moral’ individual among them. Measured by Religo-Ethical dogmas, they are one and all, an amalgamated Mafia of blackmailers, confidence-men, thieves, murderers and infidels, as far as the codes are concerned, honesty must un¬ doubtedly be searched for among the dregs of society, rather than among the elite. But it is essentially un¬ just to measure the Conquerors of Mankind by fallac¬ ious Christly standards. Christ, together with his moral measuring rod, is their subordinate agent—an effective instrument of State. Indeed “Moral Principles” are one of the tricks in the game of “dog eat dog;” all are playing. They are effectively narcotized out of the deal, who fancy themselves “Safe in the arms of Jesus.” Never yet has there been a Christian king, a Christ¬ ian president, a Christian congress, nor a Christian synod. Of course many prominent celebreties have professed Christianism—for example: Judas Iscariot, St. Peter, Torquemada, Cromwell, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon, Gladstone, and Jabez Spencer Balfour; but only minds paralytic judge of men by professions. Christian and Ruler are direct contradictions. The ridiculous ineffectuality of all Gospel Theories, shows that they were only invented as campaign lies. Christ explicitly condemns the use of force, and yet all existent nations (without exception) were founded by unlimited throat-cutting and piracy. The rulers