The World’s Tragedy

XXX PREFACE. defining Christianity as the religious expression of the slave- spirit in man. I do not wish to argue that the doctrines of Jesus, they and they alone, have degraded the world to its present con- dition. I take it that Christianity is not only the cause but the symptom of slavery. There were slaves in Rome, of course, even under the republic. But it was only through Paul that the slime found tongue, and uttered its agony and blasphemy. Now, through the steady growth of alt- ruism pari-passu with the Gospel that advocates it, the world is come to such a pass that the canaille is throned. The Old Age Pensions folly, which is simply the offi- cial seal upon the survival of the unfittest, a check to ho- nest ambition, a playing into the hands of the unskilful and the vicious, all of those (in short) whom a healthy or- ganism crushes as the first condition of its well-being, is so “ popular ” that of all the House of Commons, the majo- rity of whom see as plainly as I do how things stand, bare- ly 1 % are found to oppose it root and branch, and they from constituencies which the act will hardly touch, while the Lords — our bulwark, oh God ! and what a fortress is that whose semi-lunes are Lord Townshend and Lord Tanker- ville ! — pass the bill with scarce a protest. We are to be taxed beyond endurance, our defences neglected, our edu- cation left to sink or swim as it may, that our whole state may be clogged with its own excrement ! It is no idle boast of the vermin socialists that their system is Christianity, and no other is genuine. And look at them ! to a man —