Chapter 1-3

3.

All ethics, politics and philosophies are pure assumptions, built upon assupmtions. They rest on no 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 untill 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, untill 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 dead hand has been permitted to sterilize 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 conventionalism are for subordinates.) Religions and constitutions and all arbitrary principles, every moral theorem, must be deliberately put to the question. No moral dogma must be taken for granted-no standard of measurement 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 principle, 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 environments change, no human ideal can standeth sure.

Whatever, therefore, 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 permanently prosper. Let established sophisms be dethroned, rooted out, burnt and destroyed, for they are 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 'everybody' believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is hydra-headed. It had 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 inculcated around a mother's knee-is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence. Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal 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 annihiliate them, or they will 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 oblivion, they must go, to be there righteously consumed. From their ashes something 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 heart's blood of the of the strong and the brave. Only Jews and Christians 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.