196 THE SCIENCE OF POWER 



institutions has been either absolutely or relatively 

 for A to be able to kill B before B is able to kill A. 



Now it is evident that in all Power systems in 

 this stage of the human world the fighting male 

 has been, in the nature of things, the ultimate source 

 and origin of supreme Power. He has been the 

 maker, the doer, the creature of the instant and 

 urgent need from the beginning of things. All the 

 qualities based ultimately on his sex have been in 

 the fighting male of the race those of instant realiza- 

 tion. It has been the imperious condition of his 

 efficiency in the struggle for Power that there should 

 be no to-morrow in him like to-day. The idealisms 

 of the long sequences, the long-drawn-out dramas 

 of renunciation and sacrifice, have never in reality 

 had more than a pallid meaning for the man of the 

 fighting races of the West. 



For this reason there is no practical or business 

 people of the West in which the typical male in 

 his inner heart does not despise idealism and all 

 the characteristic emotion on which idealism rests. 

 At the back of the male mind of every fighting and 

 business people the spirit of the pagan rules and 

 the philosophy of Omar Khayyam is enthroned. 

 In the course of my life, in which my experience has 

 been considerable, I have never known an English- 

 man who really believed any of the dogmas of the 



