CHAPTER LXXX
Which treats of the Masterfolk
Thebig 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 notself-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.”...