Terror, torture, agony and the wholesale destruction of feeble and worn out types, must mark in future, as in the past, every step forward, or backward in evolution, homo-culture and racial displacement.
The soil of every nation is an arena, a stamping ground, where only the most vigorous animals may hope 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.
The evolution (or de-evolution) of mankind demands the perpetual transfiguration of one man into another, continuous re-incarnation, eternal re-birth and re-construction. Scientifically considered, the “resurrection of the dead” is not an illusion. Every living organism is formed from the decomposed essence of pre-existent organisms. The “man” of to-day is actually built 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 conflict,” writes Schelling with true theocratic pessimism, “it fills us with shuddering sorrow, and with boundless alarm — but how can we help it? Hence the veil of sadness that is spread over all nature, the deep indestructible melancholy of all life.”
Like many other philosophers, deceived by appearances, Schelling fancies savage and dreadful that which is pure, mischievous 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 destroy 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-stricken nor the protests of defeat; but smiling sadly, proudly (yet somewhat disdainfully in her passing stride) at the victor’s fierce Hurrah. She loves the writhing of sword-blades — the rending of tradition, the crunching of bones, and the flap 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 Cæsar lives for ever.
Deep, permanent, and abiding is the elemental antagonism between the Sociology of “the Man of Nazareth” 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 Galilean’s philosophy can conquer.
No human being can ever hope to attain “the perfectibility 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. However 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 out forefathers was Odin, a War Lord, but our Ideal Man is a weeping, horsewhipped Jew.[13] A Jew for a God!
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 heroes of antiquity spent their vital force in the destruction of monsters, in the 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 Exemplar! ‘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 unforeseen 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-paralyzing 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,” “Progress” and “Civilization,” an atmosphere of excruciating 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 (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 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.
It is good for a degraded people to be utterly consumed.
In the department of Natural History, it is axiomatic that all kinds of living beings, from protozoa to man; subsist and propagate, through and by the destruction of feebler competitors, belonging to the same species or to kindred species.