Chapter I: What the Anarchist Wants

“_Ah Love! could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire,
Would we not shatter it to bits, and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart’s Desire!_”

Rubáiyát of OMAR KHÁYYÁM.

“Le moins de gouvernement possible.”

VICTOR HUGO (Programme Politique).

_“The state is the curse of the individual.”_—IBSEN.

“_Manual labour, far from being an occasion for shame, honours
man. What is shameful is to use man as a vile instrument of
lucre, to esteem him only in proportion to the vigour of his
arms._”—Encyclical of LEO XIII.

“_Enough of these ambiguous formulas, such as ‘the right to
work’ or ‘to each the integral product of his labour.’ What we
proclaim is the right to a competency, to a competency for
all._”—KROPOTKINE.

“_And the savants will be troubled in their knowledge, and this
knowledge will appear to them like a little black point when the
sun of the intelligences shall rise._”—LAMENNAIS.

“There is nothing new under the sun,” and anarchism is no exception to the truth of this maxim. But the beginnings of anarchistic philosophy and the development of anarchism, however suggestive they may be, do not fall within the province of this volume. Therefore it is not necessary to expound the tenets or to trace the influence of the anarchist or semi-anarchist devotees through the ages: the Taoists of China (whose founder, Lao-Tse (600 B.C.), was a contemporary of Pythagoras and Confucius), the social prophets of Islam from Mazdak in the sixth century to the wonderful Bab in the first half of the nineteenth century, Saint Anthony of Padua and Jean Vicenza in the thirteenth century, Savonarola at the end of the fifteenth, the Anabaptists under Thomas Munzer, Mathiesen, and Jean de Leyde in the sixteenth, Razine the Cossack and the Scottish Covenanters in the seventeenth, Mandrin the brigand in the eighteenth, and the Jesuits of Paraguay in the last half of the eighteenth and first half of the nineteenth centuries. I do not pretend to determine whether the Guelph-Ghibelline feud, which rent Europe for more than two hundred years, was or was not a struggle between despotism and religious democracy, or whether Gregory VII., Alexander III., Gregory IX., Innocent IV., and Boniface VIII. were or were not revolutionary popes endeavouring to realise the social dreams of the Franciscans and Dominicans. I do not try to discover what there is of truth in the astonishing claims of certain exalted students of occultism, mysticism, and comparative religions, that anarchism found expression in the worship of the Indian Siva, the Persian Mithras, the Chaldean Baal-Moloch, and the Greek Bacchus; in the conspiracy of the Bacchanals (described by Livy) in the first half of the second century before Christ; in the colossal extravagances of the Cæsars; in the _bizarreries_ of the Nicolaites, the Cainites, the Carpocratians, the Ophites, and other Gnostics of Egypt during the first five centuries of the Christian era; in the _Consortia_ under Constantine; and in the fanaticisms of the Inquisitors, the Lollards, Flagellants, Bégards, Patarins, Templars, and Devil-worshippers during the Middle Ages. I do not dwell upon nor so much as collate the anarchistic tendencies and sanctions which anarchist scholars discern in the writings or sayings of Job and the Old Testament prophets, of Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Saint Francis of Assisi, Plato, Jesus, Rabelais, Bourdaloue, and Bossuet, and the pre-Revolutionary Encyclopedists (especially Diderot and Rousseau). I even pass by the far more pertinent teachings, systems, personalities, and careers of the admitted precursors of modern anarchism; of Max Stirner and Fourier, of Proudhon, the father of modern anarchist doctrine, and of “the mysterious Russian,” Bakounine, the father of the modern anarchist party. I also pass by the agrarian revolt of Gracchus Babœuf (guillotined by Barras in 1797); the emergence of the learned Russian Kropotkine, and of the Italians Cafiero and Malatesta; the relations between French anarchism and Russian nihilism; the struggle for Italian liberation; the founding of the _Internationale_ and of the _Fédération Jurasienne_; the epic struggle for the control of the _Internationale_ between Karl Marx, representing authoritative centralisation, and Bakounine, representing anti-authoritative federalism. I neglect, in a word, the more than interesting history of the slow evolution of modern anarchism, and coming directly, without further ado, to the France of to-day, attack the questions,—What is anarchy? What does the anarchist want? And how does he hope to get it?

Of the contemporary French Encyclopedists who are preparing, or think they are preparing, the revolution of the twentieth century, three are eminently fitted by their learning, by their capacity for straight thinking and utterance, by their sense of historical perspective, their power of keen analysis and bold synthesis, by their breadth, their tolerance, their humanity, their integrity, and their consecration, to answer these questions. They are Pierre Kropotkine, Elisée Reclus, and Jean Grave. But Kropotkine, while the author of such epoch-making works as _La Conquête du Pain, L’Anarchie: son Idéal_, and _Les Paroles d’un Révolté_, is a Russian, not a Frenchman, by birth and breeding, and has been little in Paris of late; and Reclus[1] (one of the most learned geographers of his time), though never far away from the anarchist movement, is, by reason of his devotion to his specialty, rarely in the thick of it. Besides, he has made his home in Belgium for many years.

It is to Jean Grave, therefore, the youngest of the three, the present editor of the journal _Les Temps Nouveaux_ and author of _La Société Mourante_, _La Société Future_, _La Société au Lendemain de la Révolution_, _L’Individu et la Société_, and _L’Anarchie: son But, ses Moyens_, that it seems best to confide the delicate task of presenting the French anarchistic idea and ideal; and, because I cannot trust myself to summarise without bias the _credo_ of a sect to which I do not belong, I quote in full the comprehensive first chapter of his important doctrinal volume, _L’Anarchie: son But, ses Moyens_:—

“In spite of the fact that the idea of anarchy has emerged
from the obscurity in which men have attempted to stifle it,
in spite of the fact that to-day (thanks to persecution,
thanks to laws of exception such as are made in the worst
monarchies) the words ‘anarchy’ and ‘anarchist’ are unfamiliar
to none, there are not many who know exactly what anarchy is.

“The intervention of the anarchists in the Dreyfus affair,
where they were much in evidence, had the effect of bringing
them into contact with bourgeois politicians, who knew
absolutely nothing about them; but anarchy did not come out
into a clearer light from this association.

“Anarchy, in the eyes of some, is robbery, assassination,
bombs, a return to savagery; anarchists are only
house-breakers, loafers, who would divide all wealth in order
to be able to amuse themselves with doing nothing.

“In the eyes of others, anarchy is a sort of Utopia, of
golden-age dream which they readily grant to be very
beautiful, but a dream good at best to illustrate books of
ethics or fantastic social schemes with. The most kindly
disposed regard anarchy as a vague aspiration which they do
not hesitate to recognise as desirable for humanity to attain,
but as so completely inaccessible that there is no reason for
making any decided effort to realise it, and consider the
anarchist as a species of lunatic whom it is prudent to avoid,
a pitiful _illuminé_ who strays from the practicable paths to
lose himself in the vagueness of Utopia.

“They are very few who know that anarchy is a theory resting
on rational bases, that anarchists are men who, having
collated the complaints of those who suffer from the actual
social order, and having saturated themselves with human
aspirations, have undertaken a critique of the institutions
which control us, analysing them, weighing their worth, and
estimating what they are capable of producing, and who, from
the sum total of their observations, deduce logical natural
laws for the organisation of a better society.

“Of course, the anarchists do not pretend to have invented the
critique of the social order. Others had done that before
them. As soon as power began to exist, there were malcontents
who made no bones of railing at its acts; and, if we possessed
the legends which men handed down from generation to
generation before writing was known, we should probably find
therein satires against the chiefs. It is quite possible to
criticise the existing order of things without being an
anarchist, and there are those who have done this in a
successful fashion which the anarchists will never surpass.

“But what anarchists believe they have done more than the
other critics, more than the existing socialistic schools or
the socialistic schools which preceded them, is to have gotten
their bearings in the midst of the confused mass of errors
which spring from the complexity of social relations, to have
remounted to the causes of misery, of exploitation, and
finally to have laid bare the political error which made men
place hope in good governments, good governors, good
legislation, good dispensers of justice, as efficacious
remedies for the ills from which humanity suffers.

“Anarchy, studying man in his nature, in his evolution,
demonstrates that there cannot be good laws or good
governments or faithful appliers of the laws.

“Every human law is necessarily arbitrary; for, however just
it may be, and whatever may be the breadth of view of those
who make it, it represents only a part of human development,
only an infinitesimal fragment of the aspirations of all.
Every law formulated by a parliament, far from being the
product of a great conception, is, on the contrary, only the
mean of public opinion, since parliament itself, by its very
manner of recruitment, represents only a very mediocre mean.

“Applied to all in the same fashion, the law becomes thus, by
the very force of things, arbitrary and unjust for those who
are on this side or on that side of the mean.

“A law, then, not being able to represent the aspirations of
all, can be made effective on those who would infringe it only
by fear of punishment. Its application involves the existence
of a judicial and repressive apparatus, and it becomes thus
the more odious as its coercive force is the more sure.

“The law unjust to start with, because, conception of minority
or majority, it wishes to impose itself on the whole, becomes
still more unjust because applied by men who, having the
defects and the passions, the prejudices and the personal
errors, of appreciation of men, cannot act, whatever be their
probity, except under the influence of these prejudices and
errors.

“There can be no good laws, nor good judges, nor,
consequently, good government, since the existence of these
implies a single rule of conduct for all, while it is
diversity which characterises individuals.”

“No society based on human laws, then,—and this is the case of
all societies past and present,—can fully satisfy the ideal of
every one.

“The minority of idlers alone who, by ruse and by force, have
managed to seize the power, and who use, to their own profit,
the forces of the collectivity,—this minority alone, I say,
can find their account in this order of things and interest
themselves in its prolongation. But they can only make it last
with the help of the ignorance of individuals regarding their
own personalities, their possibilities, and their capacities.

“But however great the ignorance of the people may be, when
the pressure is too strong, they revolt. This is why our
society is so unstable, why the laws are repeatedly violated
by those who make them or by those who are charged to apply
them, when their interest points that way; for, power being
based on force, it is to force that all those resort who are
in power and wish to maintain themselves there, as well as all
those who are in pursuit of power.

“Made to be applied to all and to content everybody, the laws
derange more or less every individual, who wishes, while he is
under them, to abolish or relax them, but who wishes them more
vigorous when it is his turn to apply them.

“Nevertheless, new aspirations do arise; and, when the
antagonism becomes too great between these aspirations and the
political laws, the door opens wide to disorders and to
revolution.

“And it will always be the same so long as no other way is
found to repair the harm done by a law recognised as bad than
the application of a new law. This ignorance on the part of
men makes human institutions, once established, resist
changes. The names vary, but the things remain.

“Men, not having yet been able to arrive at a social
conception other than that of authority, are condemned to turn
in the same circle, and will be condemned to turn in the same
circle so long as they shall not have altered their
conception. Royalty, empire, dictatorship, republic,
centralisation, federalism, communalism,—these are all at
bottom so many phases of authority. Whether in the name of a
single person or in the deceitful name of the majority, always
the will of some is imposed on all.

“_There is no more intimate or
engaging business interior in Paris._”]

“Furthermore, if the individual increases his knowledge in a
continuous fashion, it is only in a very slow fashion. Still
he has arrived to-day at the point where, to develop himself
in his integrity, it is necessary that his autonomy be
complete, that his aspirations express themselves freely, that
he be permitted to cultivate them in all their breadth, that
nothing fetter his free initiative and his evolution.

“And so it is that now, at last, anarchists draw from their
study of the existing social organisation this important
lesson: that human laws ought to disappear, carrying with them
the legislative, executive, judicial, and repressive systems
which impede human evolution by causing murderous crises in
which many thousands of human beings perish, by delaying all
humanity in its forward march, and, sometimes, even by
dragging it backward.”

“While the politicians have not got beyond this formula, which
they believe the _ne plus ultra_ of liberty,—‘_l’individu
libre dans la commune, la commune libre dans l’état_,’—we know
that these political forms are incompatible with liberty,
since they tend always to submit a number of men to the same
rule; and we formulate our device, ‘_l’individu libre dans
l’humanité libre_,’—the individual, left free to attach
himself according to his tendencies, his affinities, free to
seek out those with whom his liberty and his aptitudes can
accord, unfettered by the political organisations which are
determined by geographical or territorial considerations.

“For man to develop himself freely in his physical,
intellectual, and moral nature, for him to reveal all his
capacities, it is necessary that each individual be able to
satisfy all his physical, intellectual, and moral needs. And
this satisfaction can only be assured to all if the soil,
which is the creation of no one, is placed at the free
disposition of whoever is capable of tilling it, and if the
existing equipment, product of the labour of preceding
generations, ceases to belong to a minority of parasites who
exact a large tithe upon the resultant of its activity and
the activity of those who work it.

“The earth too much cut up, on the one hand, to permit the
small land-holders to employ the powerful machinery which
would effectively second their efforts, appropriated in
immense lots, on the other hand, by a class of idlers who
secure, without work, an income from the production of those
to whom they consent to rent,[2]—the earth nourishes its
existing population with difficulty. And I have not counted
the ignorance which is fostered by a defective education and
which causes the greater part of the cultivators to cling to
the traditional processes of cultivation,—processes which
demand far too much work and effort for the results.

“Yet, in spite of these sources of waste, the earth would
still manage to nourish, after a fashion, every living being
if the middlemen were not there to warehouse the products and
to speculate and gamble upon them, in such a way that the
majority of persons are never in a condition to buy what they
need. The fault, then, if all have not enough to eat, lies
with the defective social organisation, and is not due to lack
of production. A better distribution of products would alone
be sufficient to give every one enough to eat, while a better
management of the soil and a better use of the instruments of
production would bring about abundance for all.

“A clearer comprehension of things will bring the peasant to
understand that his interest, properly understood, is to unite
his parcel of land with the parcels of his neighbours, to
associate his efforts with their efforts, in order to diminish
his toil and increase his production.

“And as no one has the right to sterilise, for his sole
pleasure, the slightest parcel of land, so long as there is a
single being who has not plenty to eat, the coming revolution
will have for one of its objects to put the soil into the
hands of those who shall wish to cultivate it and the farm
machines into the hands of those who shall wish to operate
them.

“All this, anarchy seeks to demonstrate to the peasant,
explaining to him that the masters who impose upon him exploit
likewise the workman of the towns, trying to make him
comprehend that, far from considering the town workman as an
enemy, he should stretch out his hand to him, to the end that
they may aid each other in the struggle for life, and arrive
thus at disembarrassing themselves of their common parasites.

“To the workman, anarchy demonstrates that he must not expect
his enfranchisement to come from providential saviours, nor
from the palliatives with which the puppets of politics, who
wish to control his vote and so dominate him, try to dazzle
him; that the emancipation of the individual can be brought
about only by the individual’s own action, can result only
from his own energy and his own efforts when, knowing how to
act, he shall use his liberty in place of demanding it.”

“It is not alone to those who are dying of want that anarchy
addresses itself. To satisfy one’s hunger is a primordial
right which takes precedence over all other rights and stands
at the head of the claims of a human being. But anarchy
embraces all the aspirations and neglects no need. The list of
its demands includes all the demands of humanity.

“Mirbeau, in his _Mauvais Bergers_, makes one of the
characters proclaim to workmen on a strike their right to
beauty. And, indeed, every being has a right not only to what
sustains life, but also to whatever renders it easy, enlivens
it, and embellishes it. They are rare, alas! in our social
state, who can live their lives amply.

“Some there are whose physical needs are satisfied, but who
are retarded in their evolution by a social organisation which
is conditioned by the narrowness of conception of the average
intellect,—artists, littérateurs, savants, all who think,
suffer morally, if not physically, from the present order of
things.

“Daily they are wounded by the pettinesses of current
existence, and disheartened by the mediocrity of the public to
whom they address themselves, and whom they must consider if
they wish to sell their works,—a situation which conducts
those who would not die of hunger to compromise, to vulgar and
mediocre art.

“Their education has led many of them to believe that they are
of an essence superior to the peasant, to the manual worker,
from whom, for the matter of that, they are for the most part
descended. They have been persuaded that it is necessary, if
their ‘talent’ is to develop and their imagination is to have
full swing, that the ‘vile multitude’ take upon its shoulders
the heavy tasks, devote itself to serving them, and wear
itself out in making, by its labour, life easy for them; that
they must have, if their genius is to attain its complete
fruition, the same atmosphere of luxury and of idleness as the
aristocratic classes.

“A healthy conception of things teaches that a human being, to
be complete, must exercise his limbs as well as his brain,
that labour is degrading only because it has been made a sign
of servitude, and that a man truly worthy of the name does not
need to impose the cares of his existence on others.

“One man is as good as another: that there are degrees of
development is due to causes of which we are ignorant, but
such or such an illiterate may have moral qualities superior
to the moral qualities of those who are more learned than he.
In any case, intelligence, if it blesses him who possesses it,
does not confer on him the right to exploit or govern others.
These differences of development merely imply differences of
desires, of aspirations, of ideals; and it is for the
individual himself who is so favoured to realise what responds
best to his conception of happiness.

“Besides, these differences of development only appear to us
as great as they do because education, ill understood and ill
distributed, perpetuates prejudices and errors. Imagination,
invention, observation, judgment, if they vary somewhat in
intensity in different individuals, do not differ in essence.
They are simple faculties of our brain which do not lose their
quality for being employed to construct a machine or a house,
solder a kettle, or make a shirt, rather than to write a
romance or a treatise on anatomy.

“Greedy of hierarchy, we humans have divided into high and low
occupations the diverse employment of our forces. The
parasites who have made themselves our masters, all in
proclaiming themselves superior, have established that there
is nothing truly noble but idleness, that there is nothing
truly beautiful but force exerted to destroy; that force
expended to produce, to draw out of the earth and out of
industry whatever is necessary to sustain life, is of a vile,
inferior quality, and that its use should be reserved to the
servile classes.

“On this basis we continue to declare certain occupations low,
forgetting that they are such only because one class is forced
to pursue them in the service of another class, to submit to
its orders and caprices, to abdicate its liberty; but there
can be nothing base in no matter what work which consists in
ministering to our own needs.

“The artist and the littérateur belong to the masses. They
cannot isolate themselves, and inevitably feel the effects of
the surrounding mediocrity. It is vain for them to intrench
themselves behind the privileges of the ruling classes, to
attempt to withdraw into their ‘_tour d’ivoire_’: if there is
debasement for him who is reduced to performing the vilest
tasks to satisfy his hunger, the morality of those who condemn
him to it is not superior to his own; if obedience degrades,
command, far from exalting character, degrades it also.

“To live their dream, realise their aspirations, they, too,
must work—for the moral and intellectual elevation of the
masses. They, too, must understand that their own development
is made up of the intellectuality of all; that, whatever the
heights they believe they have attained, they belong to the
multitude. If they strain to rise above the multitude, a
thousand bonds hold them to it, fetter their action and their
thought, preventing them forever from reaching the summits
they have glimpsed. A society normally constituted does not
admit slaves, but a mutual exchange of services between
equals.”

“The very savant, who considers dealing with knowledge the
noblest employ of the human faculties, must learn that
knowledge is not a private domain reserved for a few adepts
uttering oracles before a public of ignoramuses, who take them
at their word; and that in science, as in art and in
literature, the faculties of judgment, of observation, and of
comparison, do not differ from the faculties employed in
occupations which we consider more vulgar.

“In spite of the intellectual compression which has held
humanity down for so many centuries, science has been able to
progress and develop, thanks to the critical spirit of
individuals refractory to official teaching and ready-made
conceptions. It ought, then, to be put within the reach of
all, to become accessible to all aptitudes, in order that this
spirit of criticism which has saved it from obscurantism may
contribute to hasten its full efflorescence.

“Knowledge is divided into so many diverse branches that it is
impossible for the same individual to know them all in their
entirety, the duration of a human life being far from
sufficient for a man to acquire enough ideas to be able to
investigate them in their minutest details.

“To study them,—that is, if he expects to be able to criticise
them,—he is forced to have recourse to the labours of his
predecessors and also of his contemporaries.

“It is from all human knowledge that the general synthesis
must proceed. What we know to-day is only a means for
acquiring the knowledge of to-morrow. And an individual
obtains reliable knowledge only in accepting the help of all.
The observations of the humblest persons are not always to be
disdained. Let the savants also, then, cease to believe
themselves a caste apart, let them understand once for all
that knowledge does not demand special aptitudes, and that it
must be accessible to all, in order that all, in developing
themselves, may contribute thus to the general development.”

“What is true for individuals is true for nations. Just as an
individual cannot live without the support of all, a people
cannot exist without the co-operation of the other peoples. A
nation which should shut itself up within its frontiers,
ceasing all relations with the rest of the world, would not be
slow to retrograde and perish. It is then absurd and criminal
to foment, under colour of patriotism, hatreds nominally
national, but which are in reality only pretexts for the
governing classes to legitimise the scourge, militarism, of
which they have need to assure their power.

“Every nation has need of the other nations. There is not a
region which, for one product or another, is not the customer
of another region. And it is no reason for you to hate your
neighbours because they speak a different language, because a
hundred years ago they invaded and ravaged regions which are
indifferent to you to-day; and it is no reason for you to feel
yourselves outraged by this ancient invasion because, once
upon a time, the inhabitants of the invaded regions suffered
under the yoke which now galls you.

“There is not a single nation which cannot reproach its
neighbours with some crime of this sort; not a single nation
which at the present moment does not hold within its borders
some province incorporated against the desire of its
inhabitants. And, if those who performed these acts of
brigandage were highly detestable, in what respect are their
descendants responsible therefor? Should we also be held
responsible for the acts of brigandage which our histories
teach us to admire as glorious achievements?

“Who among those who aspire to live solely by their own work
can take delight in seeing one nation rush upon another
nation? It is only those who have made themselves the masters
of nations, and who find it for their interest to augment the
numbers of those whom they exploit, who feel the need of
supplying aliment to the troops they train for the work of
slaughter. These understand perfectly that a menace of war
with a neighbour serves to justify the existence of the armies
which are their main prop.

“The despots who have exalted patriotism into a new religion
know very well how to ignore frontiers when the defence of
their privileges or the extension of their exploitation is at
stake. If it is a question of hunting down subversive ideas,
the French, German, Italian, Swiss, Russian, and other
bourgeois are ready enough to lend to each other their
diplomats and their police.

“Is it a question of putting down a strike? The exploiters are
not slow to engage foreign workmen, so that they consent to
work at the lowest wage; and governments would not hesitate,
if there were need, to lend each other their armies.

“And do not all the international understandings which have
been established for finance, the postal service, commerce,
navigation, railroads, prove that it is the _entente
pacifique_, after all, which is the supreme law?

“The anarchists would bring the workers to see a brother in
every workingman, on whichever side of the frontier he chances
to have been born.

“Brothers in misery, suffering from the same ills, bowed
beneath the same yoke, they have the same interests to defend,
the same ideal to pursue. Their veritable enemies are those
who exploit them, who enslave them and prevent their
development. It is against their masters that they should arm
themselves.”

“Anarchy pays little attention to the shady combinations of
politics. It professes the most profound disdain for
politicians. The promises of the place-seekers interest it
only as they disclose all the inanity of politics, and only as
they can be made use of to demonstrate that the social
organisation will not be transformed until the day when a
resolute attack shall be made against its economic defects.

“If the politicians believe the lies they retail, they are
simple ignoramuses or imbeciles; for the slightest reasoning
should suffice to make them understand that, when a disease is
to be cured and its return prevented, its causes must be
attacked. If they lie purposely, they are rascals; and, in the
one case as in the other, they deceive those whose confidence
they win by their babble and their intrigue.

“Those who exploit the actual economic organisation will
always seek to direct to their own profit all the attempts at
amelioration that are suggested, and there will always be
people who are dismayed by brusque changes and who prefer to
rely on middle terms which seem to them to conciliate all
interests.

“It will always be for the advantage of the masters to deceive
the oppressed regarding the veritable means of
enfranchisement, and there will always be enough cormorants
greedy of power to assist them in their work of muddling
questions.

“Anarchy demonstrates the inanity of every attempt at
amelioration which attacks only the effect while letting
subsist the cause.

“So long as the wealth of society shall be the appanage of a
minority of loafers, this minority will employ it in living at
the expense of those whom it exploits. And, as it is the
possession of capital which makes strength and gives the
mastery of the social organisation, they are always in a
position to turn to their own profit every amelioration which
is undertaken.

“For an amelioration to benefit all, privileges must be
destroyed. It is to re-enter into the possession of that of
which they have been despoiled that the efforts of those who
possess nothing ought to tend. To break the power which
crushes them, to prevent its reconstitution, to take
possession of the means of production, to create a social
organisation in which social wealth can no more be
concentrated in the hands of a few,—this is what the
anarchists dream.

“If the exploitation of man is to be prevented, the bases of
the economic order must be changed: the soil and all that
which is the product of anterior generations must rest at the
free disposition of those who can work them, must not be
monopolised for the gain of any party whatsoever,—individual,
group, corporation, commune, or nation.

“This is what the partisans of partial reforms do not
comprehend, and yet this is what conscientious study of
economic facts demonstrates. Nothing good can come from the
activity of the charlatans of politics. Human emancipation
cannot be the work of any legislation, of any concession of
liberty on the part of those who rule. It can only be the work
of the _fait accompli_, of the individual will affirming
itself in acts.”

“Basing itself upon the evolutionist doctrine, rejecting all
preconceived will in the phenomena by which the evolution of
worlds and beings is manifested, recognising that this
evolution is solely the work of the forces of matter in
contact, simply the result of the transformations which this
matter undergoes in the course of its own evolution, anarchy
is frankly atheistic, and repels every idea of any creating or
directing entity whatsoever.

“But, as it is absolute liberty, if it combats religious
error, it is primarily from the point of view of truth, and,
specifically, because the priesthoods which have sprung up
about the different religious dogmas pretend to use the force
which their authority and capital lend them to impose their
beliefs and to make even those who reject all religions help
pay for them.

“As to whatever concerns the intimate thought of each,
anarchists understand that an individual cannot think
otherwise than his own mentality permits. They would see no
objection to people gathering together in special buildings
for the purpose of addressing prayers and praises to a
hypothetical being if they did not attempt to impose their
beliefs on others.

“Anarchists look for the triumph of reason from, and only
from, the culture of minds; and they know from themselves that
force and oppression cannot stifle ideas.

“They demand absolute liberty in the domain of thought as in
that of deeds, in the family as in society.

“Like all the forms of human activity, the association of the
sexes has not to brook the control or solicit the sanction of
any person whatsoever. It is absurd to wish to set limits to,
raise barriers against, or impose restraints on the affections
of individuals. Love, friendship, hatred, do not come at call:
we feel them or endure them without being able to help
ourselves, without even, more often than not, being able to
explain them and unravel their motives.

“Marriage, then, can be trammelled by no rule, by no law other
than that of mutual good faith and sincerity. It can have no
duration beyond the reciprocal affection of the two beings
associated, and should be dissoluble at the will of the party
for whom it becomes a burden.

“True, there will always remain some problems which cannot be
solved without friction and pain, such as the disposition of
the children, the suffering of the party in whom love
survives, and other matters of sentiment. But these
difficulties cannot be resolved any better by pre-established
rules: on the contrary, constraint only envenoms the
difficulties. It will be the duty of the interested parties to
find the solution of the difficulties which estrange them.

“The best that can be hoped for is that the moral level of
humanity will be so far elevated that goodness and tolerance
will increase and bestow their healing balm on the human
passions, which by their very nature elude regulation and
control.

“The great objection behind which the adversaries of anarchy
intrench themselves when driven into their last redoubts is
this, that the anarchist ideal is beautiful, certainly, but
much too beautiful ever to be realised, since humanity will
never be well-behaved enough to attain it.

“This objection is specious. No one can say what humanity will
be to-morrow; and there is no phase of its past development
which, if it had been foreseen and announced to the
generations preceding, would not have been held (with reasons
galore) quite as unrealisable as the anarchist ideal is held
by those who cannot abstract themselves from the present,—a
mental state not hard to understand, since the average brain
has not yet accomplished the evolution which will smooth the
way for the new order of things.

“As long as individuals stagnate in servitude, waiting for
providential men or events to put an end to their abjectness,
as long as they shall be contented to hope without acting, so
long the ideal that is the most beautiful, the ideal that is
the simplest, will rest, necessarily, in a state of pure
reverie, of vague Utopia.

“Where, except in the fable, has Fortune been seen to descend
to the threshold of the sleeper, and wait patiently till it
pleases his indolence to take her?

“When individuals shall have reconquered their self-esteem,
when they shall be convinced of their own force, when, tired
of bending the back, they shall have found once more their
dignity, and shall know how to make it respected, then they
will have learned that the will can accomplish everything when
it is at the service of a trained intellect.

“They have only to _will_ to be free, to _be_ free.”