Altogether primitive Christianity is in its renaissance. Behold it cometh to pass! “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven;” is being rapidly and joyously materialized.
Deity hath established Himself as Statute Law. ‘The State which is the People’ is His throne, and ‘the Church which is righteousness’ is his footstool. Glory! Glory! Glory! “All the ends of the world hath seen the salvation of our God.” Behold Christliness realizing itself through social institutionalisms! Behold the golden harvests grown from the seed of Legislation!
O for the Barbarian swarms of the Danube and the Rhine! — for the Blonde Pirates from the Northern Seas! O for men of a spirit, with lion hearts and lion brains! — for one cohort of True Knights, who would consolidate their Hopes and Convictions into Naked Swords! Alas! Alas! Vanity of vanities, all is vanity! The age of Chivalry is dead and gone. “So sleeps the proud of former days — so glory’s thrill is o’er.”
In all practical operations, non-principled persons possess a distinctive advantage over “principled” ones. Honesty never succeeds for when it succeeds, it is not honesty. There is no fair play in Love and War; and all life is made up of Love and War. Genuinely honest men, die as a rule like dogs — in a ditch; and in business affairs they are “nowhere.” In their dotage or ‘in God’s good time’ — they (nearly always) go over the hill to State Infirmaries, unknown, friendless.
What chance has a conscientious man, when pitted in statesmanship, literature, or commerce, against the Organized Knavery of sanctimonious and powerful cut-throats? To them he is a pigeon to be plucked — a buck to be hunted — a criminal to be chained — a madman to be made sport of — a lamb to be skinned — a heretic to be — burnt alive.
Certainly it is not good strategy for a man to openly proclaim his loss of faith in conventional moralisms: if he desires to get-on in the world. A wiseling keeps his real sentiments on this point to himself — guards them as his own life. The best mask for moral heresy is one of pretended sanctity. It is very effective. Nearly all the Higher Thieves are ostentatiously pious. Thus when you hear pulpiteers and journalists vociferously proclaiming their profound acquiescence in “moral principles,” it is safe to conclude that they are engineering some subterranean swindle.
‘Belief’ is a war-stratagem — an instrument of deceit, a convenient falsification formula — a beautiful hoodwink. Hence it is, that very religious and very holy persons, are almost always thorough-going scoundrels at heart — utterly unreliable — utterly untrustworthy. Generally their whole lives are one long drawn our mendacity, and genuineness-of-Thought or Action is in their mind, attenuated to a mere sham.
Politicians, authors, pastors, ‘prophets,’ historians, philosophers, and editors, are notorious falsifiers of nature and fabricators of subterfuge. Soaked in unnaturalism, saturated through and through with delirium-breeding hashish-literature, they become organically incapable of speaking, let alone of thinking or writing honestly. Artificialism has trained them to be prevaricators, and prevaricators they must remain until the clods from the grave-diggers shovel rattle down on their coffin lids. As the Old Man of the Mountains trained his fanatical Assassins, and sent them forth to slay, so Civilization trains its Fiendling Intellectuals and sends them forth to assassinate Human Nature. They are the murderers of manliness — the regicides of Thought — the annihilators of heroism. Would that I had a legion of demons, to wring their necks. They have smothered the grand and masterful old Northern realisms beneath pestiferous rubbish-heaps of Oriental Mythology — of Hebrew old clothes. They repeat automatically in sounding diction, what has already been stuffed into them, as it were, with a ramrod. Their learning is the learning of the ‘learned pig’ in a menagerie; and their virtue is the virtue of a conscientious Jesuit. March of Mind they call it! — ‘As organs grind the note they’re set to…brains jejune…Grind, year in year out, the same Old Tune.’
The men who conspicuously “succeed in life” — the generals and nobles, merchant-princes, powerful prelates, opulent bankers, wealthy manufacturers, never overload themselves with artificial moral principles. In their secret hearts they utterly despise all evangelicalisms and as for written law, they are above and beyond its reach. Kings, conquerors, millionaires, are perpetually being denounced for not abiding by Laws and Regulations enacted by Majority Votes.
The man who plays ‘the game of life; in strict accord with certain cut and dried principles — principles that everybody knows by heart, is not likely to come out a winner. He who in his younger days, incommodes himself with copy-book moralisms and terror of the Law; is like unto a soldier who (before entering the battlefield) ties his right hand behind his back and pledges himself to strike and shoot his adversaries on one pre-arranged spot of their bodies only. Could such a mad-man soldier hope to conquer? What chance would he have if pitted against brave, dauntless, well-equipped antagonists; who had not foolishly bound themselves by such a stupid obligation?
“The right of Nature, which writers commonly call jus naturale, is the liberty each man hath, to use his own power for the preservation of his own nature: that is to say his own life, and consequently of doing anything, which in his own judgement and reason he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereto” writes Hobbes in his “Leviathan.” The man who permits himself to be directed and mastered by the insolent moral principles of the Multitude, is like an eagle with clipped wings and broken talons.
In war, your chief end is to smash and paralyze your enemies’ combinations. To do this effectually you must meet wile with wile, steel with steel, and blow with blow. You must be equally prepared to fight in the open or fight under cover; to fight on sea, to fight on land, or to fight in the air. You shall wage your own war — you shall think your own thought. It is pusillanimity that evolves the Slave, and breeds the Idolator. ‘Quit yourselves like men, O ye Philistines!’
Tacitus with true Roman stateliness observes: — “The gods look with favor upon supreme courage;” and Herbert Spencer savagely asserts that “a creature not energetic enough to maintain itself must die.” Cursed are the white-livered, they make excellent fertilizer. Truly — ‘The seed of the wicked shall be cut off.’
This age of ours wants men above all things — “men of spirit” — men ever ready to look into the eyes of death, without winking. Behold! I post up this New Proclamation. ‘The man who made Justice was a Liar.’
Whatever weapon your Enemy possesses, must be duplicated, or improved upon by you. If it suits him to challenge battle in open front, be sure and ambush him in the flank; or straightaway make a hidden detour to and charge him in the rear. It is your chief business to delude him, deceive him, decoy him, out-general him, if you can. If moral scruples and fear of “what the world will say,” prevents you from doing this, then you were born to subordination; and you had better surrender; for you can never hope to vanquish. You must be born again.
“Over an open grave” ever lies the road to success. In “the worlds broad field of battle,” every man is a combatant; and to be a successful combatant, he must not only be calculating, cool-headed, and brave but possessed of merciless strategy, a stout heart, a strong arm, and quiet indomitable determination.