GREAT PAGAN RETROGRESSION 51 



The contrary doctrine that Right rests on the 

 successful a plication of Force in the individual was 

 broken when the day of the highwayman passed 

 in civilization. The organized form of the same 

 doctrines in the State that no Right is above the 

 State, and that the State has no standard but that 

 of "power and expediency" l resting on omnipotent 

 force, has been the standing challenge to liberty 

 and progress in every phase of the tremendous 

 struggles which make the history of civilization. 



Now if we take up any of the superficial 

 philosophies or false systems of social science 

 of which the world is full, we have the clue at 

 once to their unsoundness. It may be distin- 

 guished immediately that they have all one un- 

 mistakable mark on them. They represent 

 endeavours to construct the science of evolving 

 humanity without the subordination of the in- 

 dividual to the universal, and therefore without the 

 iron ethic of Renunciation. They are all hopeless 

 attempts foredoomed to failure, to set out the mere 

 science of the animal efficient in his own interests 

 as the science of civilization. 



A name may be given to all these sham cults of 

 civilization. They are all essentially pagan. The 

 pagan was originally a villager, the worshipper of 



1 Bernhardi, Germany and ike Next War, chap. v. 



