Friday, July 13, 2007

Chapter 4-6

6.
From the scientific point of view, it is but a single step from the eating of captive cattle, horses, sheep, hares, rabbits, deer, hogs, etc. to the eating of captive men.

It may grate upon unstrung nerves to be harshly told these gruesome facts in straight language. However, calm, sensible readers must unreservedly admit that Man is not a pretty, harmless, little cherub; not even a ‘lamb,’ but the fiercest, most ferocious, most cunning, and most bloodthirsty of all the vertebrates. He is the fighting, roving, pillaging, lusting, cannibalistic animal, par excellence, the King of the Great Carnivore. When he takes his walks abroad, the ‘wild beasts’ of the field and the birds of the air, even the most courageous of them, are stricken dumb. Shuddering they fly from his shadow(or his odor down the wind) hiding in trembling and quaking with terror.

It is man’s destructive energy, not his altruism, that makes him absolute monarch of all he surveys, and yet, how feeble he is if compared to the powers of Nature that gave him being? No other beast will stand and face him, except if it cannot run away, not even a snake, a tiger, or a wolf.

Structurally, men are fashioned for purposes of inflicting and suffering pain. Every human anatomy is an elaborate nerve and bone infernal machine, a kind of breathing, perambulating Juggernaut, a superb engine of lethal immolation that automatically stokes its furnace fire with its victims.

Men rush upon each other (or upon their prey) with hoarse war-shouts and bloodshot eyes, as prowling beasts of the deserts and jungles do. Man banquets upon his quarry with greediness, snarling, and growling with ferocious triumphant delight, just like unto wolves; but he loves to act the hypocrite, turn up the whites of his protesting eyes to ‘heaven’, weep crocodile tears over his mangled, bleeding, and palpitating carrion. How exultantly he lilts his Te Deum, his Kyrie Eleison, his Et in terra pax, his Glorias, and Alleluias, while with blood-clotted jaw and distended paunch he licks his gaping wounds?
.
As the painted Redskin chants his vengeful ghost-song; so the furious Paleface whoops his double-leaded editorial. As the hungry lion roars at midnight on African karoo, or in Himalayan jungle, so the piratical Anglo-Teuton roars his “Battle Hymn of the Republic”, his “Brittania Rules the Waves”, or his “Watch by the Rhine.” Exactly as the Moslem fanatic yells “Allah Akbar”, while slicing up hated “Christian dogs”, so the vicious Englishman thunders forth his “Hip, Hip, Hurrah!” while driving an elegant bayonet dagger into the liver of “wicked heathens”, whose property he there after annexes, as a matter of course; for ‘business is business, don’t you know.’

Man’s anatomy, external and internal, his eyes, his teeth, his muscles, his blood, his viscera, his brain, his vertebra; all speak of fighting, passion, aggressiveness, violence, and prideful egoism.

Even the component elements of a human body are themselves in a constant state of internecine warfare. Our bony framework and pulsating tissues, are vast campaigning grounds, whereon microscopical animalculae in countless myriads, fight out their ephemeral lives, as we ourselves do, with tooth and claw. When one swarm of microbes, germs or spores conquer (in the struggle for sustenance) disease, or death supervenes to us, as the case may be. When rival hosts vanquish, then our flesh, nerves, bones, and blood become their happy hunting grounds, and our health returns, at least until the bacilli-battalions have finally eaten us out; or have been, themselves, conquered and exterminated by fiercer swarms.

It is not improbable that this earth itself is a living breathing organism and that Tribes of Man are microbes and blood sucking vermin (on it’s outer cuticle) imagining themselves ‘the whole thing.’ Just as itch creating parasites burrow themselves into out own hide, so (in our own turn) we may be unpleasant parasites, burrowing in the hide of some nobler and grander Being.

Chapter 4-5

5.
Professor Huxley pictorially describes an African butcher’s shop, where human steaks, roasts and sirloins, were systematically retailed.

Josephus tells us of mothers who ate their own infants during the last siege of Jerusalem, and in many later sieges human flesh has been consumed.

Oriental traditions record of King Richard Lion Heart, that once upon a time when presiding at a feast of Moslem heads, he remarked with grim matter-of-factness “one roast Saracen made good entertainment for nine or ten of my good Christian men.” An English Crusading rhymer is even proud of this:

“King Richard shall warrant,
There is no flesh so nourissant,
Unto an English man;
Partridge, plover, heron, ne swan,
Cow, ne ox sheep, ne swine,
As the (roast) head of a Saracen.”

Very intelligent New Zealand aboriginals may still be found, who describe with much apparent gusto, how (in comparatively recent dates) they satiated their ravenous hunger, by banqueting all night upon the grilled flesh of foemen they had tomahawked during the day. Neither is it uncommon to hear tattooed old veterans, tell how war-captives were penned up like cattle and fattened upon each other, until required for the tribal oven (formed of red-hot stones, paved into an oval hollow in the ground): how then the fattest were selected, one by one taken out, systematically bled, disemboweled and hung up by the heels on neighboring trees; just as sheep, swine, and cattle are exposed for sale, in our own abattoirs and meat-markets. The Maoris also have a tradition, that if a man kills and eats his enemy, he by doing so, absorbs all the dead man’s vitality, strength, and courage.

In the nascent Colony of New Zealand, missionaries, soldiers, whalers and pioneers were often cooked and eaten; but by general consensus of epicurean opinion the “Pakeha’s” flesh was voted bad form, principally because it was ‘too rough and too salty.”

During the War of Secession, Northern infantrymen accidently imprisoned in a Virginia mine, devoured each other one at a time; the last man (John Ewing) dying of hunger, and leaving a written record of the facts, sealed up in a flask.

The story of Sawny Bean is well known, also the classical legends of the Cyclops, the Giants, the Phalarus Bull, the Moloch holocausts, and Homer’s Polyphemus.

Anthropophagy has been practiced in Australia, both by whites and blackfellows. In New Guinea and portions of Africa, man-eating is quite an ordinary custom to this hour. Marcus Clarke describes how Gabbet, and English-born Botany Bay convict, induced his prison comrades to escape with him (into the bush) in order that he might have a holiday and feast, picking their succulent bones and sucking out the marrow thereof. All over continental Europe there is a popular superstition that Jew rabbis steal and murder Christian infants and maidens, in order to use the blood on the door-lintels, at Passover and other ceremonials. A similiar charge was brought against the early Christians, and even proved in the Imperial Law Courts, if we are to judge by the verdicts. Human fat is regularly retailed in modern drug stores and human heads are even now a marketable commodity in the South Seas. There are also mystic brotherhoods in our midst, whose initiates pledge fidelity, and obligate themselves to life-long secrecy, by drinking blood out of a skull, over emblems of violent death ---- with daggers pointed at their throats. The foundation stones of many famous buildings, palaces, castles, temples, and monuments, have been emblematically laid upon the living body of a man ---- the Kremlin for example. Is not the Communion Service allegorical anthropophagy? Is it not a pious periodical cannibal feast in more ways than one? Does not the wine symbolize human blood, and the waters typify human flesh? Metaphorically considered, every trading Christian State is a meat market, wherein the flesh, bones, and blood not only of men, but of women and little children are bought and sold daily ---- "offered up" nominally for the "Love of God", but really for the Love of Dollars. Atrocities of the most revolting description are of daily, hourly occurence, not only in Turkey and Siam, but in New York and Chicago; not only in Cuba and Port Arthur, but in London, Madrid, and Paris; not only in Mashonaland, and on the Congo, but in St. Petersburg and Berlin. Men, women, and little children are being everywhere starved slowly to the grave, worked till they fall down, driven insane by legislation, and even tortured to death, inch by inch. Great financial corporations (backed by the State) directed mostly by Hebrews, literally coin Great Empires into golden dividends; and upon the share lists of mortgage banks and man-devouring institutions generally, may be found the names of other human Carnivores by the thousand. He who doubts, should look up the official share registers, and behold the long rows of adorable names belonging to High Priests, Philanthropists and Rulers, appearing thereon. Cannibalism was practiced in Ancient Greece at the period of highest culture. Herodotus describes Asian feasts where man's flesh was the chief dish; and down to the Thirteenth Century the Tibetans were in the habit of making their parents into broth. There are confraternities still in existence, into which no one is ever admitted until he has first killed a man. Among the Dyaks (as among our own ancestors) a youth is never considered a full-grown person capable of founding a home until he has slain at least one enemy in battle. The Thugs of India (a religious sect) brought the science of holy murder, by strategic violence, to such a pitch of perfection that they have never been surpassed ----- not even by Grant or Moltke. The Kinderawas of India, make a regular practice of eating all their diseased, useless, senile, and decrepit relations; just as packs of wolves fall upon any of their number that is seriously wounded in foray. In portions of Sumatra, law-breakers are neither imprisoned nor electrocuted, but actually carved up and eaten alive ---- piece by piece. The Capanagugas of South America make of their own stomachs the sepulchre of their dead relatives. A funeral with them is a banquet ---- the collation being a corpse. The Terra Del Fuegans throttle and eat all very old women. The Monbuttas of Central Africa carry on aggressive wars to capture flesh food. They also dry human flitches in the sun and smoke them for export. During the Tae Ping rebellion, Chinese soldiers (under General Gordon) were in the habit of cutting out and devouring the hearts of their dead enemies (on the battlefield) like the Maoris and Britons.
Mistresses were specially kept by opulent ancient Peruvians, to breed sucklings ---- for the table. When these women became too old for child-bearing, they were likewise cast into the pot, as useless incumbrances. In 1782 more than forty gypsies were executed in Austria, upon a proved charge of cannibalism. The case of the herdsman Goldsmidt, must not be forgotten; nor the gruesome London legends, regarding sausages being manufactured out of dead cats, dead dogs, dead paupers, and murdered sailors. The Ancient Scandinavians, Teutons, Celts, (vide St. Jerome) Scythians, Mongols, Sarmatians, Canaanites, Goths, and Huns were all anthropophagy. Indeed the detailed facts of how men have tortured each other for pleasure, revenge, or profit, would fill 10,000 volumes. No man in his lifetime could read or comprehend all the horrors that have been perpetrated, say in the Tower of London, the Paris Bastille, the Spanish Inquisition, the Rhine Castle Dungeons, by the Bridge of Sighs, the Bosphorous, or in the prison-hells of Chicago, Newgate, Mazas, Siberia, Sing Sing, New Caledonia, Botany Bay or Van Diemen's Land. The cold-blooded cruelty of man to man, surpasses anything that poet-cranks could conceive of, as happening in hell. Cannibalism undoubtedly originated amid over-crowded populations in some pre-historic age. Among moderns (civilized and savage) it merely exists as a survival of social conditions which have long since passed away. At some former era of the world's profoundly mysterious history, men-animals increased in swarming myriads as they are doing now; until at last on the surface of the soil there was scarcely standing room for all. Then the air became laden with the reeking effluvia of their pox, leprosy, poisoning the wells and rivers, and transforming Babylons into charnel houses and tombs. The rearing of tame cattle for food in such an environment, probably became too expensive and cumbersome. Perhaps even the cattle would also be swept away by some blight or rinderpest. Under such horrible circumstances, survivors might from necessity resort to anthropophagy. Gradually the new habit would grow upon them and become a settled custom. The segmental fragments of pre-historic civilizations are ---- the Cannibal Savages of to-day ---- the savages that we are displacing, pushing aside in order that we may enslave them and repeat over again the same weary old round of growth, power, and decay. Shoploads of dead soldiers, dug out of old battlefields, possess a regular commercial value. They are imported into England, to be chemically treated and manufactured into fertilizers for enriching exhausted wheat fields. Human hair commands a steady sale, and "cadavers" may be bought for dissection, in any great city for a dollar, C.O.D. The tanning of human skins for glove-making and book-binding (Meudon!) is an old established industry. The transformation of blood from animals into human veins, and from healthy humans into unhealthy ones (for a price), is regularly practiced by medical men. The grafting of flesh, bone, and skin, has also been successfully performed. American sheriffs and detectives hunt down tramps and criminals with specially trained bloodhounds, just as Russians hunt wolves, and sheep farmers hunt coyotes and dingos. It is nowise unusual for Negroes to be first captured, then chained to a stake, flayed alive, soaked in kerosene, and burnt to death amid exultant shrieks of corybantic delight. Roman senators fattened their lampreys and eels upon the drowned bodies of old worn out slaves and patrician maids and matrons (with uplifted thumb) sent many a gladiator to kingdom come. For innate cruelty of deed, no animal can surpass woman. In Mahometan Europe boys were unsexed by the lancet, that they may thereafter be more safely employed as harem attendants and in Christian Europe "eunuchs are made and trained and priced, to sing the praise of a risen Christ." Young girls are nightly bought and sold for currency, like horses and hogs at the street corners; and upon the profits of licensed polyandry "pillars of the Church" become millionaires. Even the salaries of fulminating evangelists are paid out of Rahab's rent. Baths of human blood are not unknown to students of history; and Jack the Ripper, with his letters written in harlot's blood; enclosing pieces of fried woman's liver to the London chief of police, is certainly not a fabulous ancient legend. Is this the record of a breed of "dearly beloved brethren?" What hollow mockery these holy phrases are, to be sure? The Brotherhood of man! Ha! Ha! The Brotherhood of Devils, rather! Allegorically speaking the clothes we wear ---- the houses we live in ---- the food we eat ---- the books we read, have been carved (by force) out of other men's bones and flesh. Literally they are the hides, sinews, flesh, pulp, and outer woolen covering of captive animals, transmuted by human slavery into garments, lumber, implements, thoughts, shoes, and daily dinners. Indeed man's tushes are against all other animate beings whatsoever; and in turn their fangs are against him. So it goes on, and on, and on, as merrily as marriage bells. Vae Victus! And behold, its good! This world is no Nirvana, where peaceful pleasure flows. It is a gruesome butcher-shop, where slain men hang in rows.

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