NOTEBOOK

go there and find it has been imagined, and applied, before
you.

Find absolute power unrestrained by a trained public
opinion and you will know without going to inquire, that
le Droit du Seigneur exists there. Observe, it existed in
Scotland; there are traces of it in England, you find it
lodged in the big medicine man of various savage tribes.

In some savage lands it was an honor to the girl and her
family. In modern times it is an honor to a subject to be
reigned over (that is to have his liberty debauched) by a
family called royal—a family with no decenter right than
a medicine man. The stupid loyalty of today is the same
sentiment unaltered that made le Droit possible, and the
degradation is the same in quality and quantity—the form
of it is changed, that is all.

Loyalty is a word which has worked vast harm; for it
has been made to trick men into being "loyal" to a thou-
stand iniquities, whereas the true loyalty should have been
to themselves—in which case there would have ensued a
rebellion, and the throwing off of that deceptive yoke.

Note for Yankee

The first thing I want to teach is disloyalty, till they
get used to disusing that word loyalty as representing a
virtue. This will beget independence—which is loyalty to
one's best self and principles, and this is often disloyalty
to the general idols and fetishes.

I use compulsion in establishing my several breeds of
Protestant churches, because no missionarying has ever
been accomplished except by force which was not con-
temptible by comparison of the paltry result with the
gigantic outlay of cash and labor.

The building of the Mansion House: A dissenter could
not be Sheriff of London, because he would have to take

199