_Which treats of the Masterfolk_
The big man faced the people, and squaring his great shoulders he threw
back his cloak and gazed solemnly down upon them:
“That is a fool,” he said, “yet he spoke much truth.”
There was a shout of laughter, and some mock cries of “Vive l’Anarchie!”
“It is perfectly true that they, who are the fittest, survive in the
mighty struggle for life. The supreme law of life is the Survival of
the Best. The best are the fittest. But mark the law: it is not the
individual that survives, but the race. Thus, hadst thou been the most
exclusive aristocrat of apes, tracing thy lineage to thy uttermost
jibbering beginnings in the ooze, thou hadst still gone under the heel
of the most bucolic community of men, though, ape to man thou hadst had
the greater body’s strength, the deeper egoism, the harder wish to slay.
Dominion goes to the race; it is mightier to be of the commonweal
of the Masterfolk than to hold the king’s baubles over weaklings.
To be sure, he that is king of a little people is a king--of an
Insignificance. But they that are the companions of the Masterfolk are
lords of a commonwealth that hath set its heel upon the neck of him who
rules so small a parish.
The Masterfolk have not their eyes upon whence they came, but on
whither they go.
This Gavroche fellow speaks of strength as if there were only brute
strength.
The Masterfolk must be free to live the fullest life.
To be free, the Masterfolk must be strong of thew. But this is not
enough. If strength of body made the overlord, then the lion had been
overlord to man, and the negro overborne the white man. But man’s brain
wrought the knit brotherhood of the clan and weapons and wondrous
defence and the science of war. So the brain’s strength came to be
above the body’s strength.
The Masterfolk, to be free, must be free in their thinking. Yet it is
not enough. For the strong man may have in body a giant’s strength,
and in thinking a giant’s strength, but, foot to foot with them that
are of his own strength, he goes down before the overlordship of them
that are strong in conduct; for he that hath not self-discipline,
who debaucheth his powers and maketh license of his body’s gifts and
loosely scattereth his brain’s will, falls to disease of his faculties,
and his nerve grows weak, and the will, which is the centre of life,
grows enfeebled and melts to water, so that he arouses ill-will and
contempt amongst his companions; and the enmity of his fellows blotteth
him out, and his body rots. Nature, the silent judge, sets the seal of
her obliteration upon them that she hath rejected, so that they shall
not further increase in power.
The Masterfolk to be free must be strong in conduct. Yet again this
is not enough. For the strong man to be free must be strong of will.
Yet even this is not enough; for the will that acteth against the
conscience becomes a bully’s strength and will reel before it finish.
Through the conscience shall each man receive purification in his
search, which has been the eternal search, for the godhead within him
that leads to the fullest life. Therefore the Masterfolk to be free
must be strong in conscience--for instinct is at the mystic centre of
life. Yet even to be spiritually free is not enough.
For the spirit cannot live but through the body. Therefore the
Masterfolk must be strong alike in all the freedoms--for in each is the
foundation of the other, and in the failure of each is the obliteration
of the other. Strong and alert in body, and in thinking, and in will,
and in conduct, and in conscience.
That man cannot be wholly free who shall ignore any of these
freedoms.”...