Chapter 2-11

11.

During three years of Christ Jesus’ peripatetic trappings, he never said anything that had not been better said a thousand times before, by Dervishes, Spellbinders, and Mahatmas. Neither did he do anything that had not previously been better done, by the jugglers 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 charlatans in general.

The very phrase that ‘He’ uses to sum-up and memorize ‘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 so easily be duplicated, an animal that is a positive nuisance, numerically? What is the ‘good’ of breathing the ‘breath of life’ into an odorous winding-sheet-full of maggots and moldy bones? Are there not plenty of animalcula on earth, without dragging them out of the tombs? (Especially are there not plenty of leprous Asiatics?) Death and destruction are necessary to the health of this world and, therefore, as natural and loveable 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.”
Walt Whitman’s “Ode to 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 ‘whiff of grape-shot’ be just the right man for such an occasion? From 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 therefore, who ‘feeds the hungry,’ is really encouraging poltroonery (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 fine linen? If men possess not enough sense to clothe themselves (in a literal Weaving Mill of inexhaustible looms) why should a ‘God,’ the son of a holy ghost, come down from Cloudland (via a Jewess maiden’s womb) to robe such groveling, miserable hounds in swaddling clothes made of cotton or wool? ‘Clothing the naked’ is purely a business affair.

Here, it may be suggested en-passant, is the wearing of garments, in itself, a natural and necessary condition of adult existence? It certainly does not render the ‘human form divine,’ more healthy or more beautiful to gaze upon (although it may prevent Tenderlings from perishing of cold.) Was it really intended that the man-animal only, should wrap itself up 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 forefather’s 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 angle in bloomers, steel-ribbed corsets, and delicate little ‘O! dear me! how awful!’ style? Clothing serves most effectively to hide the abominable physical deformity of modern men and women, just as superficial 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 relative’s 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 independent 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 all had 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-breeding: that is to say, of Mongrelism, of Democracy, of Equality, of Moody-and-Sankyism, 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 Clericals, Politicals and Decadents directed 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 anemic constitutions are actually the lower, viler type, notwithstanding the baseless optimism that courtly rhymers drivel into their “Heirs of all the ages,” etc., etc.

No people can long retain hardihood and independence whose minds become submissive to a False Ideal.