82 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



offenders against the State short shrift and the 

 nearest lamp-post. Every citizen must learn to 

 say with Louis XIV, ' 1'etat c'est moi ! ' " * These 

 are his words. Nothing more. From the apostle 

 of Eugenics in his ideal socialist State short shrift 

 and the nearest lamp-post for the offender at the 

 hands of the bystander ! 



From savagery onwards every excess of the human 

 mind has tended to be surpassed when it brings 

 force to support these limited absolutisms of its 

 own conception. But Karl Pearson seemed to 

 have outbid all precedents, even those of the 

 terrible drama of the Anabaptists of Minister, in 

 his intolerance of offenders against the standards 

 of his own ideal State. Even the zealots of the 

 Inquisition gave the right of trial. Even the lynch 

 law of the backwoods sometimes gave the offender 

 a jury of his peers. 



In the passage quoted above, I have given Pro- 

 fessor Pearson's exact words. It is necessary thus 

 to repeat them ipsissima verba. For it is not 

 improbable that future generations will find it 

 difficult to believe that such things could be in our 

 time. We can imagine that to those who come 

 after it may appear almost incredible that men 

 could stand in the modern West and, in the name of 



1 The Ethic of Free Thought, p. 307. 



