Chapter 3-13

13.

The problem that we are ever called upon to solve or be eaten up, is not how to make life ‘happy and equal’ for happiness is a moving mirage, and equality an impossibility, but how men may conquer their Opportunities, surpass their Rivals, and extirpate their Pursuers.

The race is still to the swift and the battle to the strong. Beauty and booty are always the prerogatives of victorious valor. Woe unto the outgeneraled ones!

“Tis a battle for bread, for love, and for breath,
‘Tis a race for life to the jaws of death.” *

* P. Luftig. “Bulletin,” Australia

Upon the island of Java there is a remarkable valley of death. It is literally strewed with the bones and skulls and skeletons of innumerable dead animals and creeping things. In the due season, giant turtles, five foot by three in diameter, travel up through it from the sea, to lay their eggs. En-route, they are set upon by packs of wild dogs and these dogs roll the turtles upon their backs and then devour them alive, by tearing out their unprotected entrails. When the dogs are gorged, they in their turn, fall an easy prey to ambushing tigers. Then hunters kill these tigers for their variegated skins. Rank grass springs up after the rainy season, through the skulls and the bones that litter this tropical Golgotha and droves of cattle gather there to fatten. Again the cattle are hunted for their hides, horns, and flesh, and their bones are also left where they fall, to manure the valley and prepare it for new generations of hunters and hunted. Such is in miniature, a picture of the every day world as it actually is. All living beings are pursuing and, being pursued.

Woe unto those that stumble! Woe unto ye who fall!
They who accept the ‘Equality, Faith, Hope, and Charity’ ideal, in any shape or form whatever, interpret the facts of mortal life as they are not, as they never have been, as they can never be. Indeed when the animal world becomes ‘moralized’ and ‘equalized’ it will be extinct. No doubt when contemplating the dark side of all this, Pascal was impelled to write with superstitious medieval diapason: “I am affrighted like a man who in his sleep has been carried unto some horrible desert island, and there awakes not knowing where he is, nor how he shall escape.”

Degenerates only are thus affrighted at the tragic majesty of their surroundings.

If this struggle is ordained of us, why not enter into it with kingly courage, with dauntless delight? Why not go forward, daring all things, to conquer or die?

Is it not better to perish than to serve? ‘Liberty or death’ is not a meaningless phrase. No! It is of tremendous import to those who, comprehend.

What it death that it should make cowards of us all? What is life that it should be valued so highly? There are worse things than death and among them is a life of dishonor. All men lead dishonorable lives who serve a master with the hand or brain.

Life itself is but a spark in the gloom that flashes out and disappears. Why therefore not make the most of it here and now, Here and Now!

There is no ’heaven of glory bright,’ and no hell where sinners roast. There is no Right, there is no Wrong, nor God, nor Son, nor Ghost.

Death endeth all for every man,
For every “son of thunder:”
Then be a Lion in the path;
And don’t be trampled under.

For us there is no rest, no Kingdom of Indolence, either on this earth or beyond the skies, no Isles of the blest, no Elysian Fields, no garden of the Hesperides. No! No! All these magical legends are but fanciful waking dreams, ‘fiction of mortals of yore.’

Here and now is our day of torment! Here and now is our day of joy! Here and now is our opportunity, to eat or be eaten, to be Lion or Lamb! Here and now it is war to the knife, no escape, no retreat. Choose ye this day, this hour, for no Redeemer liveth!

Every attempt made to organize the Future must necessarily collapse. The Present is our Domain and our chief duty is to take immediate possession thereof upon strict business principles.

Strive therefore against them that strive against you, and war against them that war against thine. Lay hold of shield and buckler or their equivalents, stand up! Be a Terrible one in thine own defense. Raise up also the Clenched Hand and stop the way of them that would persecute you. Say unto thine own heart and soul “I; even I, am mine own redeemer.”

Let them be hurled back into confusion and infamy, who devise thine undoing. Let them be as chaff before the cyclone and the Angel of Death pursue them, nay overtake them. In a pit, they have hidden a trap for thy feet: into that very destruction let them fall. Then, exultant, ‘sound the loud timbrel.’ Rejoice! Rejoice! In thine own salvation. Then all thy bones shall say pridefully “who is like unto me?” Have I not delivered myself by mine own brain? Have I not been too strong for mine adversaries? Have I not spoiled them that would have spoiled me?