“As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.’ - Kipling
Kipling always delivers. Have you read Kipling? If not, you should.
Every civilization writes its own obituary in the same ink: hubris. Rome thought it had outgrown discipline; the French Revolution thought it had outgrown God; our own age thinks it has outgrown reality itself. Yet Kipling’s The Gods of the Copybook Headings insists on a harsher truth: the fundamentals endure. Ignore them, and they return with “terror and slaughter.”
The poem, written in 1919, is no relic. It is a mirror. Its images of Market Gods promising “wealth without work” or “pleasure without pain” describe not only the illusions of Kipling’s day but ours: AI salvationism, perpetual debt, utopian politics, pharmaceutical escape. To read Kipling is to confront our own delusions.
But Kipling does more than lament. He joins a long line of thinkers, from Burke to Nietzsche, from Spengler to Strauss, from Chesterton to the Stoics, who tell us the same thing: do not tear down the fence of reality until you know why it was built.
The Market Gods and Their Seduction
Kipling begins with a contrast. On one side, the “Gods of the Market Place”seductive, fashionable, promising liberation from limits. On the other, the “Gods of the Copybook Headings” dull, stern, repeating eternal truths.
Burke saw this same conflict. Against the revolutionaries of France who promised a new world born overnight, he defended “prejudice”, that accumulated wisdom handed down by tradition. For Burke, civilization itself rests on memory: we are trustees of truths larger than ourselves. Kipling’s copybook headings are the same: compressed tradition, wisdom boiled down to a line a child can copy.
Yet men tire of old truths. Nietzsche diagnosed the sickness: the “last men,” desiring comfort over greatness, seek worlds without suffering, peace without struggle, wealth without effort. The Market Gods are Nietzsche’s “last men,” blinking contentedly while they trade discipline for illusion. They promise freedom from struggle, but as Nietzsche warned, it is precisely in struggle that man forges strength.
Wealth Without Work, Peace Without Sacrifice, Pleasure Without Pain
Kipling lists the lies: wealth without work, peace without victory, pleasure without pain. These are not just Victorian delusions. They are the slogans of our own politics.
“Modern man,” Spengler wrote, “believes himself free because he has lost the capacity to obey.” That is, he mistakes license for liberty. The Market Gods encourage the same error. Central banks pretend they can print prosperity. States pretend they can secure peace without enforcing order. Consumers pretend they can glut themselves without consequence. But debts compound, enemies march, appetites enslave.
Strauss warned of this temptation too. Liberalism, when unmoored from natural right, becomes utopian, believing it can abolish scarcity and hierarchy. In truth, politics is the art of governing limits, not abolishing them. The Market Gods promise abolition; the Copybook Gods insist on recognition.
Chesterton’s fence belongs here. When a man comes across a fence and declares, “I see no use for this, let us tear it down,” he proves his ignorance. He must first understand why it was erected. Likewise, when societies dismantle the disciplines of family, work, faith, and sacrifice, they think they are abolishing burdens. In reality, they are destroying protections. The fence is there for a reason. Remove it, and you rediscover its purpose, usually in blood.
The Reckoning
Kipling says the Copybook Gods return, walking “with terror and slaughter.” Crises are not surprises; they are the bill coming due.
2008 was not a black swan. It was mathematics catching up with fantasy: interest cannot be conjured away. COVID was not an unforeseeable shock. It was biology reminding us that germs have no respect for ideology. Wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are not aberrations. They are history reminding us that force still decides questions when words fail.
Burke again foresaw it: a revolution built on abstractions, detached from reality, always ends in terror. The “age of chivalry” gave way to the “age of sophisters,” and soon to the guillotine. Kipling’s terror and slaughter are the same guillotine. When truth is denied long enough, it returns as violence.
Human Nature is Fixed
Kipling reminds us that “water will wet, fire will burn.” His point is simple: human nature does not change. Here, Strauss is blunt: political philosophy begins with nature. Deny it, and politics dissolves. Spengler adds that civilizations in decline always attempt to remake man, whether through ideology, drugs, or technology. But no civilization has yet succeeded. The attempt only accelerates decay.
Nietzsche would say: man is not to be abolished but to be overcome. But even in his “overman,” he did not deny nature; he transfigured it through will. Our age is weaker. It seeks not to overcome but to erase: to pretend sex is plastic, that aggression is accidental, that discipline is optional. The result is not the Übermensch but the Last Man, blinking contentedly, blind to decline.
Chesterton again: “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.” Biological reality, family structure, hierarchy, punishment, these are fences. Tear them down, and you rediscover why they existed: crime rises, fertility collapses, decadence spreads.
The Price of Denial
Every time we deny the Copybook Gods, Kipling says, we relearn them in slaughter. This is the central rhythm of history. Spengler described civilizations as organisms: they grow, flower, and decay. In youth, they obey reality; in age, they deny it. Denial leads to collapse. Kipling’s slaughter is Spengler’s decline phase.
Burke knew the same: liberty divorced from virtue is license, and license devours liberty itself. Nietzsche sharpened it: those who cannot impose discipline on themselves will be disciplined by the world. The Market Gods say “no limits.” The Copybook Gods say “limits or death.”
The twentieth century proved it. Communism promised paradise, delivered gulags. Fascism promised strength, delivered ruin. Technocratic liberalism promised comfort, delivered spiritual emptiness. Each utopia tore down a fence it did not understand, and each rediscovered its purpose in ruin.
The Final Warning
Kipling ends with the darkest truth: when we ignore reality, it votes last. No democracy, no dictatorship, no utopia can repeal the laws of nature and economics.
Debt compounds until it strangles. Demographics collapse until civilizations vanish. Virtue erodes until barbarism returns. “The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.”
Chesterton would say: the fence will not move because you dislike it. Nietzsche would say: the abyss will not disappear because you avert your eyes. Strauss would say: natural right is not repealed by legislation. Spengler would say: civilizations that refuse discipline end in dust. Burke would say: men who despise prejudice end in servitude. Kipling simply condenses them all: reality returns.
The Copybook for Our Age
Why does Kipling’s poem resonate now? Because it names the disease of our age: the worship of illusions. We believe technology will abolish scarcity, ideology will abolish conflict, pleasure will abolish pain. We are tearing down every fence. Family, work, faith, nation, without understanding why it stood. And already we see the results: debt beyond measure, declining birthrates, wars, addictions, despair.
The task, then, is not novelty but remembrance. To live as if the Copybook Gods are real, because they are. To recover discipline, virtue, and sacrifice before slaughter does it for us.
Kipling’s warning is Burke’s prudence, Nietzsche’s demand for strength, Spengler’s cycle of decline, Strauss’s natural right, Chesterton’s fence all in one. Ignore it, and we will learn again in blood what our ancestors learned in proverbs. The Gods of the Market Place will fade. The Copybook Headings will remain.