160 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



of their wars even into the churches and temples 

 of the Christian religion, exactly in the manner of 

 the pagan systems of old, in which truth and 

 right were no more than local expressions of suc- 

 cessful force. Western civilization throughout 

 history has professed to be the civilization founded 

 on Christianity. Yet almost every development of 

 the West has been based on war, and has taken 

 place with the menace of war or the fact of war 

 accompanying and pervading it. 



The terrible individual heredity of the fighting 

 male of the West is so blinding to the mind in all its 

 effects that the violent contradictions of standards 

 which it provokes mostly pass absolutely unnoticed. 

 Men of culture, and even the actual leaders and 

 teachers of Christianity, seem quite unconscious of 

 the spirit of a contradiction which in actual fact ex- 

 ceeds anything that has been witnessed in the world 

 under any other standards. The spectacle of the West, 

 for more than a thousand years under the influence 

 of the inborn heredity of the fight in its ruling 

 classes, devastating the world with war in the name 

 of the religion of universal peace, will beyond doubt 

 strike the mind of the world in the future as pro- 

 bably the most monstrous phenomenon in the 

 history of humanity. 



The spirit of the fight which accompanies and 



