Chapter 4-1

1.

It has taken countless evolutionary epochs 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 sewer 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, millions of suns?’

To overmaster and devour his neighbor, in 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 foreordained to fathomless failure. Indeed it would be much more reasonable of them to attempt the transfiguration of a grizzly bear into a parlor poodle or propose the transformation of a bald-headed eagle into a gently cooing turtle-dove.

Nearly all the prophetic demigods of Democracy from Paul and Isaiah to Carlyle and Ruskin, have ever been madly screeching by the roadside, vainly endeavoring to stay the march! March! March! Of a world of bannered armies; striding grimly, sternly by. What 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, confident, inspired as it were by some over-mastering instinct. “We may be going to the devil” is the unspoken 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? Can you block the march of Might with magnificent howls of declamatory despair? No! No! Skyward or hellward, 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 monarchs have to be rooted-out with weapons as demoniac and deadly as their own.

This world is too peaceful, too acquiescent, and 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 unfolding process with ‘humanitarian’ Cagliostroism, and ‘rescue the perishing’ mummery. Maniacs are they who would ward off the suns blazing rays from withering 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.