Product Description

One would think that in our liberal, enlightened times a book dating from the Victorian Age would be viewed as a quaint curiosity. Not so Dr. Ragnar Redbeard's notorious Might Is Right or the Survivial of the Fittest. It is hated and denounced as much today as when it first made the rounds of the Victorian Age's elite and influential, which explains why the book is often featured on banned-book lists. Perhaps a 1905 ad for Might Is Right will give offer some insight: This is a pitiless and appalling book by an author of extraordinary virility and rugged primeval force, whose sense perceptions borders on the supernatural. Ten years ago private typewritten copies of this startling work sold in London and Berlin for $150. Since then the most powerful living minds have absorbed its teachings with satisfaction, but in guarded silence. Unquestionably it is the most pregnant and remarkable publication that has appeared in Christendom for 15 centuries. From its pages [Theodore] Roosevelt’s celebrated philosophy of ‘Strenuousness,’ ‘Race Suicide’ and ‘the Big Stick’ has been distilled and—diluted. Prince Bismarck, Paul Kruger and President McKinley read it in manuscript before they died; and it has given nerve and decisiveness to the world-shaking aggressive activity of men like Cecil Rhodes, Von Buelow, Chamberlain, Elihu Root, Kaiser William, Abdul Hamid and Von Phleve. It has also had its effect on General Castro, Admiral Togo, Senator Tillman, Grand Duke Sergius, Lord Kitchener, General Trepoff, and their ablest adversaries. Indeed it has influenced public opinion throughout the whole world by changing the thoughts and opinions of national leaders and editors in the most wonderful way. It positively alters the course of mens lives. It has affected the destinies of nations, races, religions. It has annihilated many popular Ideals hitherto believed sacred and impregnable. Nevertheless it is written as interestingly as any romance. Dr. Russell Wallace and Count Tolstoi criticize it in frank despair: and Bernard Shaw has written a drama (“Man & Superman”) with Redbeard’s thought as his theme: — and its power over the more intelligent followers of Marx, Lasalle, Jaures, Hearst, Bebel, Bernstein, is beyond calculation. In fact this book is a veritable religious and political earthquake, marking the complete collapse of a false and depressing philosophy that has held sway for nearly 2,000 years. The thought in this book is positively startling. It thrills across the empires and republics like the wakening trump of a Warrior Archangel. It out Darwins Darwin; it out Spencers Spencer; and, compared to some of its splendid chapters the writings of Machiavelli are as the babble of a babe. ‘Nothing is true’ it declares, ‘nothing is permanent; all things are open to you; the world is to the Strong; struggle is forever; they may take who have the power; they can keep who CAN.’ The author proclaims himself a Messiah of Evolution; — a re-incarnate Odin, whose mission it is to journey from nation to nation, and city to city, teaching and preaching the ancient, true, heroic and masculine Evangel of valor and gold. You cannot buy ‘Might Is Right’ in more than half a dozen book stores of the world; nevertheless it has been translated into four modern languages; and over 120,000 copies have been sold in this country and in Europe. Orders are received from the most distant nations of the earth. You never saw anything like it before in all your life. It condenses centuries of experience and whole libraries of current futilities and idolatries into half a dozen splendid epigrams, that ‘once read can never be forgotten.’ This is an unprecedented book — an extraordinary book — and YOU should read it — then read it again, and lend it to your friends. Get its meaning into your nature, and (if your spirit is not broken) it will do to you what it has done to others; it will open your eyes; it will make a new man of you; it wi

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #92182 in Books
• Published on: 2005-08-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 96 pages

Review
It will hynotize your very soul, and send you forth into this world of pitiless... combat a Conqueror of Men. -- The Chicago Tribune, November 12 1905

From the Publisher
This new edition of Might is Right from Dil Pickle Press, is edited by Darrell W. Conder, and features over 350 new footnotes and other clarifications. It also features Conder’s extensive history of the book and an investigation to the identity of its elusive author, making the Conder edition by far the best-ever reprint of Might is Right.

From the Back Cover
How is it that "men of light and leading" hardly ever call into question the manufactured "moral codes," under which our once vigorous [people] is slowly and surely eating out its heart in peaceful inaction and laborious dry-rot?

Standard "moral principles" are arbitrarily assumed by their orthodox apologist to be a fixed and unalterable quantity, and that to doubt the divine-rightness of these "principles" is treason and sacrilege. When the greatest thinkers of a [people] are incapable, or afraid to perform their manifest and logical function, it is scarcely to be wondered that average citizens are, also, somewhat unwilling to "risk life, fortune, and sacred honor" for the overthrow of popularized "right and wrong" concepts, that they know from bitter personal experience, are unworkable falsities. Although the average man feels in his heart that nearly all political and religious conventionalisms are dynamic deceits, yet how cautiously he avoids any open display of antagonism thereto? He has not the courage of his opinions. He is afraid to say openly what he thinks secretly. In other words he is living in a state of subjectiveness; of vassalage. He allows his brain to be dominated and held in bondage by the brain of another. From his infancy he has been deliberately subjected to a continuous external pressure, especially designed to coerce his understanding into strict accord with pre-arranged views of moral, political or religious "duty." He has not been permitted one moment of real mental liberty. He imbibed fraudulent conventionalisms with his mother’s milk. He listens to the most hideous lies being glorified in his presence as sublime truth. He hears falsehoods sung in swelling chorus. He hears them sounded on bugles of silver and brass. He hears them intoned by congregations of the faithful amid peals of sacred music, and the solemn roll of chanted prayer. Thus his mind is sterilized by authority before it has had a chance to mature. Thus youth is mentally castrated, that its natural vitality may be afterwards used up in the yoke of custom — which is the yoke of slavery. In the nursery, at school, and at college, plastic brain-pulp is deliberately forced into the! pre-arranged mold. Everything that a corrupt civilization can do, is done to compress the growing intellect into unnatural channels. Thus the great mass of men who inhabit the world of to-day have no initiative, no originality of independence of thought, but are mere subjective individualities, who have never had the slightest voice in fashioning the ideals that they formally revere.

Although the average man has taken no part in manufacturing moral codes and statutes laws, yet how he obeys them with dog-like submissiveness. He is trained to obedience, like oxen are broken to the yoke of their masters. He is a born thrall [slave] habituated from childhood to be governed by others.

Chinese civilization deliberately distorts its children’s feet by swathing them in bandages of silk and hoop-iron. Christian civilization crushes and cramps the minds of its youth by means of false philosophies, artificial moral codes and ironclad political creeds. Deleterious [destructive] sub-theories of good and evil are systematically injected into our natural literatures, and gradually (without serious obstruction) they crystallize themselves into cast iron formulas, infallible constitutions, will-o-the-wisp evangels and other deadly epidemics.

Customer Reviews

powerful
The author makes it clear that "rights" can only exist when people have the power to claim them.

Possibly the most incendiary book ever written
"Might is Right - the Survival of the Fittest", by Ragnar Redbeard, is a case for Social Darwinism. It is not a philosophical treatise in the strict sense, but more of a "manifesto" for racism, sexism, the worship of strength and the virtues of war, such as unbridled rapine, extreme unscrupulousness, joy in risk and contempt of danger. The author makes it clear that he is a foe to weakness, servility, Christianity and "turning the other cheek." Impassioned, and at times, quite inspiring, it is characterised by its enamelled nineteenth century prose, its rhetorical splendours and thunderous declamations. Redbeard's message -- that "you can go further with a handful of might than a bagful of right" -- is repeated with very little variation throughout his treatise, to the effect of monotony. Most of his precepts are fairly commonsensical, or else mined from already extant literature. When he raves, however, Redbeard is truly original. His utterances, in a large measure, contain no sense at all, not even nonsense. At times, the style comes close to self-mockery and the arguments are riddled with contradictions. He makes it very plain that he is opposed to woman's emancipation: - "Woe unto the Race if ever these lovable creatures should break loose from mastership, and become the rulers or equals of Man." It is this section in particular, that shows Redbeard at his silliest and most self-contradictory. At one point, he declares: "It has been said of Mahomet that he said that 'Woman hath no soul'." Redbeard concurs enthusiastically with this view, only to add, about two lines later: - "It is a proven fact that woman has no soul (and neither has man, for that matter) but in woman's case, one has greater grounds for doubting the existence of her soul even less." What kind of brain-shattered nonsense is this? Most of the work is childish, and filled with arguments that range far beyond the area of rational examination or refutation. For a more coherent and more logical presentation of similar views, I would recommend Max Stirner's "The Ego and Its Own" -- a testament of philosophical anarchism.

Become truly Elite
Ayn Rand's philosophy, Objectivism, deliberately points out that there exists a world external of yourself. This book explains the reality of this external world, composed of uncaring atoms swirling about: Might is Right.

The author's guns are aimed at the slave morality of the masses. Religious philosophies, and their secular equivilents, demand that men have "empathy" for the people he or she happens to share this world with.

I'm sure everyone has faked a smile, or faked a laugh, because you are afraid of offending another person's sentimentalities. Imagine what you could accomplish if you didn't feel compelled to appeal to weaklings and good-for-nothing people.

This book points out two things: that the atoms in the vacuum of space don't care about your misery. That morality and ethical codes today keep men subservient.

Ayn Rand said it best: "Nature, to be mastered, must be obeyed". Look around you. How many people get angry at the most trivial things? How many people consider their thoughts and ideas as components of their Self, instead of tools in the mind like the shovel is to the gardener. Truth, especially moral truth, is just one model of reality, and models come and go with time. Rational consistency is not sacred: mathematics exists only in the minds of the human animal. It is a tool. Everything must be kept in context. Don't worry about problems that do not personally pertain to you. Use the best "tool" for the current obstacle to be overcome. Be your own "God".

FAILURE IS FOR FAILURES.

True understanding of this book's message will empower you with a bottomless well of ambition, energy, and vitality. It teaches you that everything that we as men and women get, we get through decisive action, not getting upset at things beyond our control. The sand is slipping away, and death is the end for us. Fight for glory. Fight for material things. Fight for pleasure. Fight, struggle, and win!

As far as the world is concerned, everything is always as it should be.

Have courage! Every organism, every human being, must conquer or serve. This is an ultimatum. Nil Desperandum!