The Messiah of the CylinderEmanuel, V. R. (Victor Rousseau)
Philosophy
The Messiah of the Cylinder
Emanuel, V. R. (Victor Rousseau)
Science fiction
The second is eugenics. Looking back, we see how this madness over-ran
the world until, within a century from the time of its inception, it had
enslaved humanity. The theory of Galton, that because the
university-trained son of a distinguished man became distinguished,
while the illiterate son of a burglar died unknown, ability is
inherited, may have appealed powerfully to our ancestors, but to us it
is symptomatic of that inability to reason which we think characterized
the twentieth century. Eugenics was the natural product of a time which,
steeped in materialism, laughed at the belief in a human soul, or its
concomitant, that each soul needed to work out its earthly pilgrimage in
a body adapted to its abilities. But even from the material viewpoint we
see that the movement was fallacious. We know that the proportion of
those afflicted with inherited maladaptations has remained constant
through history; moreover, since there was no human norm, the demands of
the eugenists increased continually, till they had bound nine-tenths of
the world to their hideous Juggernaut car.
So the first act after our victory was to burn the Bureaux of Prints and
Indexes and Pedigrees and Relationships. That was our only vandalism.
But more than everything we hold to Christianity as the foundation of
our State. We see now that the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were
the worst since pagan times. Our ancestors read, without qualms, of
negroes burned at the stake, of equatorial nations massacred, not in
excess of misplaced zeal, as heretics, but only for—rubber! We know that
without Christian ethics human nature is back in the days of Rome,
Bagdad, and Carthage. We hope that there will be established, as in the
olden days, Christian orders of young men, who shall serve three years
in them before they come of age, bound by the triple vow, to fight these
renascent wrongs wherever they can be found.
Having found truth once more, we are not greatly troubled by doctrines.
The critical investigation which destroyed the Protestant theory of the
Bible’s literal inspiration has only strengthened the older claim of the
universal Church to be herself the repository of truth. Not rejecting
the claims of criticism, we feel the living truth of Christianity so far
to transcend its theological garb that, if the formula has been
misstated, many would revise it. The consensus of opinion is, however,
that the minds which drew up the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds arrived as
nearly as possible at a correct formula.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account