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FOURTH EDITION
ANARCHIST
AN
ANARCHY.
ON
BY
Elisee Reclus.
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Loxºdox -
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY JAMES TOCHATTL
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Inazarr Perss, 13, Brapon Road,
Hammºnsutra, W.
1897.
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One Penny.


AN ANARCHIST ON ANARCHY.
by ELISEE RECLUs.
[Reprinted by permission ºrom the Contemporary Review.)
To most Englishmen the word Anarchy is so evil-sounding that
ordinary readers of the “Contemporary Review" will probably turn
from these pages with aversion, wondering how anybody could have
the audacity to write them. With the crowd of commonplace chatter-
ers we are already past praying for ; no reproach is too bitter for us,
no epithet too insulting. Public speakers on social and political subjects
find that abuse of Anarchists is an unfailing passport to popular
favour. Every conceivable crime is laid to our charge, and opinion,
too indolent to learn the truth, is easily persuaded that Anarchy is but
another name for wickedness and chaos. Overwhelmed with oppro-
brium and held up to hatred, we are treated on the principle that the
surest way of hanging a dog is to give it a bad name.
There is nothing surprising in all this. The chorus of imprecations
with which we are assailed is quite in the nature of things, for we
speakin a tongue unhallowed by usage, and belong to none of the part-
is that di pute the possession of power. Like all innovators, whether
they be violent or pacific, we bring not peace but a sword, and are in
nowise astonished to be received as enemies.
Yet it is uot with light hearts that we incur so much ill-will, nor
are we satisfied with merely knowing that it is undeserved. To risk
the loss of so precious an advantage as popular sympathy without
first patiently seaching out the truth and carefully considering our duty
were an act of reckless folly. To a degree never dreamt of by men
who are borne unresistingly on the great current of public opinion, are
we bound to render to our conscience a reason for the faith that is in
us, to strengthen our convictions by study of nature and mankind, and
above all, to compare them with that ideal justice which has been
slowly elaborated by the untold generations of our race. This ideal is
known to all, and is almost too trite to need repeating. It exists in
the moral teaching of every people, civilized or savage; every religion
has tried to adapt it to its dogmas and precepts, for it is the ideal of
equality of rights and reciprocity of services. “We are all brethren,”
is a saying repeated from one end of the world to the other, and the
principle of universal brotherhood expresseb in this saying implies a
complete solidarity of interests and efforts.
Accepted in its integrity by simple souls, does not this principle
seem to imply as a necessary consequence the social state formulated
by modern socialists: “To each according to his needs, from each ac-
cording to his powers?” Well, we are simple souls, and we hold firmly

7 lossº on-
– 3-
to this ideal of human morality. Of a surety there is much dross
mixed with the pure metal, and the personal and collective egoisms of
families, cities, castes, peoples, and parties have wrought on this
groundwork some startling variations. But we have not to do here
with the ethics of selfish interests, it is enough to identify the central
points of convergence towards which all partial ideas more or less
tend. This focus of gravitation is justice. If humanity be not a vain
dream, if all our impressions, all our thoughts, are not pure halluci-
nations, one capital fact dominates the history of man — that every
kindred and people yearns after justice. The very life of humanity is
but one long cry for that fraternal equity which still remains unattain-
ed. Listen to the words, uttered nearly three thousand years ago, of
old Hesiod, answering beforehand all those who contend that the
struggle for existence dooms us to eternal strife. “Let fishes, the
wild beasts and birds, devour one another—but our law is justice."
Yet how vast is the distance that separates us from the justice in-
voked by the poet in the very dawn of history! How great is the
rogress we have still to make before we may rightfully cease compar-
ing ourselves with wild creatures fighting for a morsel of carrion : It
is in vain that we pretend to be civilized, if civilization be that which
Mr. Alfred R. Wallace has described as “the harmony of individual
liberty with the collective will.” It is really too easy to criticise con-
temporary society, its morals its conventions, and its laws, and to
show how much its practices fall short of the ideal justice formulated
by thinkers and desired by peoples. To repeat stale censures is to
risk being called mere disclaimers, scatterers of voices in the market-
place. And yet so long as the truth is not heard, is it not our duty to
go on speaking it in season and out of season 2 A sincere man owes it
to himself to expose the frightful barbarity which prevails in the hid-
den depths of a society so outwardly well-ordered. Take for instance,
our great cities, the leaders of civilization, especially the most popul-
ous, and, in many respects, the first of all—that immense London,
which gathers to herself the riches of the world, whose every ware-
house is worth a king's ransom; where are to be found enough, and
more than enough, of food and clothing for the needs of the teeming
millions that throng her streets in greater numbers than the ants
wºich swºrm in the never-ending labyrinth of their subterranean gal-
leries. And yet the wretched who cast longing and hungry eyes on
those hoards of wealth may be counted by the hundred thousand; by
the side of untold splendors, what is consuming the vitals of entire
populations, and it is only at times that the fortunate for whom these
treasures are amassed hear, as a muffled wailing, the bitter cry which
rises eternally from those unseen depths. Below the London of fash-
ion is a London accursed, a London whose only food are dirt-stained
*agueuts, whose ouly garueute are filthy rags and whose only dwell-

– 4–
ings are fetid dens. Have the disinherited the consolation of hope?
No: they are deprived of all. There are some among them who live
and die in dampness and gloom without once raising their eyes to the
sun.
What boots it to the wretched outcast, burning with fever or crav-
ing for bread, that the Book of the Christians opens the doors of hea-
ven more widely to him than to the rich? Besides his present misery
all these promises of happiness, even if he heard them, would seem
the bitterest irony. Does it not appear, moreover, —judging by the
society in which the majority of preachers of the Gospel most delight,
—that the words of Jesus are reversed, that the “Kingdom of God."
is the guerdon of the fortunate of this world. – a world where spirit-
ual and temporal government are on the best of terms, and religion
leads as surely to earthly power as to heavenly bliss? “Religion is a
cause for preferment, irreligion a bar to it,” as a famous commentator
of the Bible, speaking to his sovereign, said it ought to be
When ambition thus finds its account in piety, and hypocrites
practise religion in order to give what they are pleased to call their
conscience a higher mercantile value, is it surprising that the great
army of the hopeless should forget the way to church? Do they deceive
themselves in thinking that, despite official invitation, they would not
always be well received in the “house of God?" Without speaking
here of churches whose sittings are sold at a price, where you ma
enter only purse in hand, is it nothing to the poor to feel themselves
arrested on the threshold by the cold looks of well-clad men and the
tightened lips of elegant women? True, no wall bars the passage,
but an obstacle still more formidable stops the way, - the dark
atmosphere of hatred and disgust which rises between the disinherited
and the world’s elect.
Yet the first word uttered by the minister when he stands up in the
º is “ Brethren,” a word which, by a characteristic differentiation,
has come to mean no more than a potential and theoretic fraternity
without practical reality. Nevertheless, its primitive sense has not
altogether perished, and if the outcast that hears it be not stupefied
by hunger, if he be not one of those boneless beings who repeat idiot-
ically all they hear, what bitter tº:oughts will be suggested by this word
“Brethren,” coming from the lips of men who feel solittle its force!
The impressions of my childhood surge back into my mind. When I
heard for the first time an earnest and eager voice beseech the “Father
who is in heaven” to give us” our daily bread,” it semeed to me that
by a mysterious act a meal would descend from on high on all the
tables of the world. I imagined that these words, repeated millions
and miliards of times, were a cry of human brotherhood, and that
each, in uttering them, thought of all. I deceived myself. With
seue the prayer is sincere; with the greater part it is but an empty

– 5–
Governments at least talk not to the poor about fraternity; they do
not torment them with so sorry a jest. It is true that in some coun-
tries the jargon of courts compares the sovereign to a father whose
subjects are his children, amid upon whom he pours the inexhaustible
dews of his love; but his formula, which the hungry might abuse by
asking for bread, is no longer taken seriously. So long as Govern-
ments were looked upon as direct representatives of a heavenly Sove-
reign, holding their powers by the grace of God, the comparison was
legitimate; but there are very few now that make any claim to this
quasi-divinity. Shorn of the sauctions of religion, they no longer
hold themselves answerable for the general weal, contenting them-
selves instead with promising good administration, impartial justice,
and strict economy in the administration of public affairs.
Let history tell how these promises have been kept. Nobody can
study contemporary politics without being struck by the truth of the
words attributed alike to Oxenstierna and Lord Chesterfield: “Go,
my son, and see with how little wisdom the world is governed 1" It
is now a matter of common knowledge that power, whether its nature be
monarchic, aristocratic or democratic, whether it be based on the right
of the sword, of inheritance, or of election, is wielded by men neither
better nor worse than their fellows, but whose position exposes them
to greater temptations to do evil. Raised above the crowd, whom
they soon learn to despise, they end by considering themselves essent-
ially superior beings; solicited by ambition in a thousand forms, by
vanity, greed, and caprice, they are all the more easily corrupted that
a rabble of interested flatterers is ever on the watch to profit by their
vices. And possessing as they do a preponderant influence in all
things, kolding the powerful lever whereby is moved the immense
mechanism of the State–functionaries, soldiers, and police — every
one of their oversights, their faults or their crimes repeats itself toinfinity
and magnifies as it grows. It is only too true: a fit of impatience in
a Sovereign, a crooked look, an equivocal word, may plunge nations
into mourning and be fraught with disaster for mankind. English
readers, brought up to a knowledge of Biblical lore, will remember the
striking parable of the trees who wanted a king." The peaceful trees
and the strong, those who love work and whom man b esses; the olive
that makes oil, the fig-tree that grows good fruit, the vine that produces
wine, “which cheereth God and man,” refuse to reign; the bramble
aceepts, and of that noxious briar is born the flame which devours the
cedars of Lebanon.
But these depositaries of power who are charged, whether by right
divina or universal suffrage, with the august mission of dispensing
justice, can they be considered as in any way more infallible, or even
as impartial?

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Can it be said that the laws and their interpreters show towards aſl
men the ideal equity as it exists in the popular conception? Are the
judges blind when there come before them the wealthy and the poor—
Shvlock, with his murderous knife, and the unfortunate who has sold
beforehand pounds of his flesh or ounces of his blood? Hold they
always even scales between the king's son and the beggar's brat 7
That these magistrates should firmly believe in their own impartiality
and think themselves incarnate right in human shape, is quite natural;
every one puts on — sometimes without knowing it — the peculiar
morality of his calling; yet judges, no more than priests, can withstand
the influence of their surroundings. Their sense of what constitutes
justice, derived from the average opinion of the age, is insensibly
modified by the prejudices of their class. How honest soever they
may be, they cannot forget that they belong to the rich and powerful,
or to those, less fortunate, who are still on the look-out for preferment
and honor. They are moreover blindly attached to precedent, and
fancy that practices inherited from their forerunners must needs be
right. Yet when we examine officialjustice withont prejudice, how
many iniquities do we find in legal procedures! Thus the English
are scandalized – and rightly so –by the French fashion of examining
prisoners those sacred beings who iu strict probity ought to be held
innocent until they are proved guilty; while the French are disgusted,
and not without reason, to see English justice through the English
Government, publicly encourage treachery by ºffers of impunity and
money to the betrayer, thereby deepening the degradation of the
debased and provoking acts of shameful meanness which children in
ther schools, more moral than their elders, regard with unfeigned
horror.
Nevertheless law, like religion, plays only a secondary part in
contemporary society. It is invoked but rarely to regulate the r lations
between the poor and the rich, the powerful and the weak. These
relations are the outcome of economic laws and the evolution of a
social system based on the equality of conditions.
Laissez fire Let things alone! have said the judges of the camp.
Careers are open ; and withough the field is covered with corpses.
although the conqueror stamps on the bodies of the vanquished.
although by supply and demand, and the combinations and monopolies
in which they result, the greater part of society becomes enslaved to
the few, let things alone—for thus has decreed fair play. It is by
virtue of this beautiful system that a parvenu, without sneaking of the
great lord who receives counties as his heritage, is able to conquer
with ready money thousands of acres, expel those who cultivate his
domain, and replace men and their dwellings with wild animals and
rare trees. It is thus that a tradesman, more cunning or intelligent,
or, perhaps, more favored by luck than his fellows, is euabled to

-7–
become master of an army of workers, and as often as not to starve
them at his pleasure. In a word, commercial competition, under the
paternal agis of the law, lets the great majority of merchants—the
fact is attested by numberless medical inquests-adulterate provisiºns
and drink, sell permicious substances as wholesome food, and kill
by slow poisoning, without one day neglecting their religious duties,
their brothers in Jesus Christ. Let people say what they will, slavery,
which abolitionists strove so gallantly to extirpate in America, prevails
in another form in every civilized country; for entire populations, placed
between the alternatives of death by starvation and toils which they
detest, are constrained to choose the latter. And if we would deal
frankly with the barbarons society to which we belong, we must acknow-
ledge that murder, albeit disguised under a thousand insidons and
scientific forms, still, as in the times of primitive savagery, terminates
the majority of lives. The economist sees around him but one vast
field of carnage, and with the coldness of the statistician he counts the
slain as on the evening after a great battle. Judge by these figures.
The mean mortality among the well-to-do is, at the utmost, one in
sixty. Now the population of Europe being a third of a thousand mil-
lions, the avera re deaths, according to the rate of mortality among the
fortunate, should not exceed five millions. They are three times five
millions 1 What have we done with these ten million human beings
killed before their time 2 If it be true that we have duties, one towards
the other, are we not responsible for the servitude, the cold, the huncer,
the miseries of every sort, which doom the unfortunate to mtimely
deaths º Race of Cains, what have we done with our brothers?
And what are the remedies proposed for the social ills which are con-
suming the very marrow of our bones? Can charity, as assert many
good souls—who are answer d in chorus by a crowd of egoists—can
charity by any possibility deal with so vast an evil? True, we know
some devoted ones who seem to live only that they may do good. In
England, above all, is this the case. Among childless women who are
constrained to lavish their love on their kind are to be found many of
those admirable beings whose lives are passed in consoling the afflicted.
visiting the sick, and ministering to the young. We cannot help
being touched by the exquisite benevolence, the indefatigable solicitude
shown by these ladies towards their unhappy fellow-creatures; but,
taken even in their entirety, what economic value can be attached to
these well-meant efforts? What sum represents the charities of a year
in comparison with the gains which hucksters of money and hawkers
of loans oftentimes make by the speculations of a single day? While
Ladies Bountiful are giving a cup of tea to a pauper, or preparing a .
potion for the sick, a father or a brother, by a hardy stroke on the
Stock Frchange or a successful transaction in produce, may reduce to
ruin thousands of British workmen or Hindoo coolies. And how
worthy of respect soever may be deeds of unostentatious charity, is it

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not the fact that the bestowal of alms is generally a matter of personal
caprice, and that their distribution is too often influenced rather by
the political and religious sympathies of the giver than by the moral
worth of the recipient? Even were help always given to those who
most need it, charity would be none the less tainted with the capital
vice, that it infallibly constitutes relations of inequality between the
benefited and the benefactor. The latter rejoices in the consciousness
of doing a good thing, as if he were not simply discharging a debt; and
the former asks bread as a favor, when he should demand work as a
riºht, or, if helpless, human solidarity. Thus is created and developed
hideous mendicity with its lies, its tricks, and its base, heart-breaking
hypocrisy. How much nobler are the customs of some so-called “bar-
barons countries” where the hungry man simply stops by the side of
those who eat, is welcome by all, and then, when satisfied, with a friendly
greeting withdraws—remaining in every respect the equal of his host,
and fretting under no painful sense of obligation for favours received
But charity breeds patronage and platitudes — miserable fruits of a
wretched system, yet the best which a society of capitalists has to offer
us!

– 9 -
Hence we may say that, in letting those whom they govern—and the
responsibility for whose fate they thereby accept—waste by want, sink
under exposure, and deteriorate by vice, the leaders of modern society
have committed moral bankruptcy. But where the masters have come
short, free men may, perchance, succeed. The failure of governments
is no reason why we should be discouraged; on the contrary it shows us
the danger of entrusting to others the guardianship of our rights, and
makes us all the more firmly resolved to take our own cause into our
own care. we are not among those whom the practice of sou. . . .
risies, the long weariness of a crooked life, and the uncertainty of the
future have reduced to the necessity of asking ourselves – without
daring to answer it—the sad question: “Is life worth living?" Yes,
to us life does seem worth living, but on condition that it has an end —
not personal happiness, not a paradise, either in this world or the next
—but therealization of a cherished wish, an ideal that belongs to us and
springs from ourinnermost conscience. We are striving to draw nearer
to that ideal equality which, century after century, has hovered before
subject peoples like a heavenly dream. The little that each of us can do
offers an ample recompense for the perils of the combat. On hese
terms life is good, even a life of suffering and sacrifice – even though
it may be cut short by premature death.
The first condition of equality, without which any other progress
merest mockery—the object of all socialists without exception is
that every man shall have bread. To talk of duty, of renunciation, of
ethereal virtues to the famishing, is nothing less than cowardice.
Dives has no right to preach morality to the beggar at his gates. If it
were true that cºvilized lands did not produce food enough for all, it
might be aid that, by virtues of vital competitions, bread should be re-
serve? for the strong, and that the weak must content themselves with
the crumbs that fall from the feasters’ table. In a family where love
trevails things are not ordered in this way; on the contrary, the
small and the ailing receive the fullest measure; yet it is evident that
dearth may strengthen the hands of the violent and make the power-
ful monopolizers of bread. But are our modern societies really reduced
to these straits? On the contrary, whatever may be the value of
Malthus's forecast as to the distant future, it is an actual, incontestable
fact that in the civilized countries of Europe and America the sum total
of provisions produced, or received in exchange for manufactures, is
mere than enough for the sustenance of the people. Even in times of
partial dearth the granaries and warehouses have but to open their doors
that every one may have a sufficient sºare. Notwithstanding waste and
prodigality, despite the enormous losses arising from moving about aud
“handling" in warehouses and shops, there is always enough to feed
generously all the world. And yet there are some who die of hunger!
And wet there are fathers who kill their children because when the little
oues cry for bread they have none to give them. -

-10–
Others may turn their eyes from these horrors; we Socialists look
them full in the face, and seek out the cause. That cause is the
monopoly of the soil, the appropriation by a few of the land which
belongs to all. We Anarchists are not the ol.ly ones to say it: the cry
for nationalization of the land is rising so high that all may hear it
who do not wilfully close their ears. The idea spreads fast, for private
property, in its present form, has had its day, and historians are every-
where testifying that the old Roman law is not synonymous with
etermal justice. Without doubt it were vain to hope that holders of
the soil, saturated, so to speak, with ideas of caste, of privilege, and of
inheritance, will voluntarily give back to all the bread-yielding furrows;
the glory will not be theirs of joining as equals their fellow-citizens;
but when public opinion is ripe—and day by day it grows—individ-
uals will oppose in vain the concourse of wills, and the axe will be
applied to the upas tree's roots. Arable land will be held once more
in common; but instead of being ploughed and sown almost at hazard
by ignorant hands, as it has hitherto been, science will aid us in the
choice of climate, of soils, of methods of culture, of fertilizers, and of
machinery. Husbandry will be guided by the same prescience as
mechanical combinations and chemical operations; but the fruits of
his toil will not be lost to the laborer. Many so-called savage socie-
ties hold their land in common, and humble though in our eyes they
may seem, they are our betters in this: want among them is unknown.
Are we, then, too ambitious in desiring to attain a social state which
shall add to the conquests of civilization the privileges of these prim-
itive tribes? Through the education of our children we may to some
extent fashion the future.
After we have bread for all, we shall require something more —
equality of rights; but this point will soon be realized, for a man who
needs not incline himself before his fellows to crave a pittance is already
their equal. Equality of conditions, which is in no way incompatible
with the infinite diversity of human character, we ardently desire and
look upon as indispensable, for it offers us the only means whereby a
true public morality can be developed. A man can be truly moral only
when he is his own master. From the moment when he awakens to a
comprehension of that which is equitable and good it is for him to direct
his own movements, to seek in his conscience reasons for his actions
and to perform them simply, without either fearing punishment or
looking for reward. Nevertheless his will cannot fail to be strength-
ened when he sees other men guided like himself by their own volition
following the same line of conduct. Mutual example will soon consti-
tute a collective code of ethics to which all may conform without effort;
but the moment that orders, enforced by legal penalties, replace the
personal impulses of the conscience, there is an end to morality. Hence
the saying of the Apostle of the Gentiles, “the law makes sin.” Even

more, it is sin itself, because, instead of appealing to man's better part,
to his bold initiative, it appeals to his worst—it rules by fear. It thus
behooves every one to resist laws that he has not made, and to defend
his personal rights, which are also the rights of others. People often
speak of the antagonism between rights and duties. It is an empty
phrase; there is no such antagonism. Whoso vindicates his own rights
fulfils at the same time his duty towards his fellow-men. Privilege,
not right, is the converse of duty.
Besides the possession of a man's own person, sound morality
involves yet another condition—mutual goodwill, which is likewise the
outcome of equality. The time-honored words of Mahabarata are as
true as ever: “The ignorant are not the friends of the wise; the man
who has no cart is not the friend of him who has a cart. Friendship
is the daughter of equality; it is never born of inequality.” Without
doubt it is given to some men, great by their thoughts, by sympathy,
or by strength of will, to win the multitude; but if the attachment of
their followers and admirers comes otherwise than of an enthusiastic
affinity of idea to idea, or of heart to heart, it is speedily transformed
either into fanaticism or servility. He who is hailed lord by the
acclamations of the crowd must almost of necessity attribute to him-
self exceptional virtues, or a “grace of God,” that marks him in his
own estimation as a predestined being, and he usurps without hesitation
or remorse privileges which he transmits as a heritage to his children.
But, while in rank exalted, he is morally degraded, and his partisans
and sycophants are more degraded still; they wait for the word of
cºmu, and which fall from the master's lips; when they hear in the
depths of their conscience some faint note of dissent, it is stifled; they
become practiced liars, they stoop to flattery, and lose the power of
looking honest men in the face. Between him who commands and
him who obeys, and whose degradation deepens from generation to
generation, there is no possibility of friendship. The virtues are trans-
formed; brotherly frankness is destroyed; independence becomes a
crime; above is either pitying condescension or haughty contempt,
below either envious admiration or hidden hate. Let each of us recall
the past and ask ourselves in all sincerity this question: “Who are
the men in whose society we have experienced the most pleasure?”
Are they personages who have “honored" us with their conversation,
or the humble with whom we have “deigned” to associate. Are they
not rather our equals, those whose looks neither implore nor command,
and whom we may love with open hearts without afterthought or
reserve 2
It is to live in conditions of equality, and escape from the falsehoods
and hypocrisies of a society of superiors and inferiors, that so many
men and women have formed themselves into close corporations and
little worlds apart.

- 12-
America abounds in communities of this sort. But these societies,
few of which prosper while many perish, are all ruled more or less by
force; they carry within themselves the seeds of their own dissolution,
and are reabsorbed by Nature's law of gravitation into the world which
they have left. Yet even were they perfection, if man enjoyed in them
the highest happiness of which his nature is capable, they would be
none the less open to the charge of selfish isolation, of raising a
wall between themselves and the rest of their race, their pleasures are
egoistical, and devotion to the cause of humanity would draw back
the best of them into the great struggle.
As for us Anarchists, never will we separate ourselves from the world
to build a little church hidden in some vast wilderness, Here is the
fighting ground and we remain in the ranks, ready to give our help
wherever it may be most needed. We do not clerish premature hopes,
but we know that our efforts will not be lost. Many of the ignorant,
who either out of love of routine or simplicity of soul now anathematize
us, will end by associating themselves with our cause. For every man
whom circumstances permit to join us freely, hundreds are hindered by
the hard necessities of life from openly avowing their opinions, but they
listen from afar and cherish our words in the treasury of their hearts.
We know that we are defending the cause of the poor, the disinher-
ited, the suffering : we are seeking to restore to them them the earth,
personal rights, confidence in the future; and is it not natural that they
should encourage us by look and gesture, even when they dare not come
to us. In times of trouble, when the “groups,” freed for an instant
from the pressure above, reform themselves according to their natural
affinities, on which side will be the many? Though making no
pretention to prophetic insight, may we not venture without temerity
to say that the great multitude would join our ranks? Albeit they
never weary of repeating that Anarchism is merely the dream of a few
visionaries, do not even our enemies, by the insults they heap upon us
and the projects and machinations they impute to us, make an
incessant propaganda in our favor? It is said that, when the
magicians of the Middle Ages wanted to raise the devil, they began
their incantations by painting his image on a wall. For a long time
past modern exorcists have adopted a similar method for conjuring
Anarchists.
Pending the great work of the coming time, and to the end that this
work may be accomplished, it behooves us to utilize every opportunity
for rede and deed. Meanwhile, although our object is to live without
overnment and without law, we are obliged to submit. On the other
and, how often are we enabled to disregard their behests and to act
on nur own free will. Ours be it to let slip none of these occasions,
and to accept tranquilly whatever personal consequences may result
from doing that which we believe to be our duty. In no case will we
Q
C

– 13 –
strengthen authority by appeals or petitions, neither shall we sanction
the lºw by demanding justice from the courts,nor by giving our votes
and influence to any candidate whatsoever, become the authors of our
own ill-fortune? It is also easy for us to accept nothing from power,
to call no man “master,” neither to be called “master” ourselves, to
remain in the ranks as simple citizens and to maintain resolutely, and
in every circumstance, our quality of equal among equals. Let our
friends judge us by our deeds, and reject from among them those of
us who falter. * -
There are unquestionably many kind-hearted men who, as yet, hold
themselves aloof from us, and even view our efforts with a certain
apprehension, who would nevertheless gladly lend us their help were
they not repelled by fear of the violence which almost invariably accom-
panies revolution. And yet a close study of the present state of things
would show them that the supposed period of tranquility in which we
live is really an age of cruelty and violence. Not to speak of war and
its crimes, from the guilt of hi, no civilized State is free, can it be
denied that chief among the consequences of the existing social system
are murder, maladies, and death. Accustomed order is maintained by
rude deeds and brute force, yet things that happen every day and
every hour pass unperceived; we see in them a series of ordinary events
no more phenomenal than times and seasons. It seems less than
impious to rebel against the cycle of violence and repression which
comes to us hallowed by the sanction of ages. Far frol. desiring to
replace an era of happiness and peace by an age of disorder and war-
fare, our sole aim is to put an end to the endless series of calamities
which has hitherto been called by consent “The Progress of Civiliza-
‘tion.” On the other hand, veugeances are the inevitable incidents of
a period of violent changes. It is in the nature of things that the
'should be. Albeit deeds of violence, prompted by a spirit of hatred,
bespeak a feeble moral development, these deeds become fataland neces-
sary whenever the relations between man and man are not the relations
of perfect equity. The original form of justice as understood by primi-
tive peoples was that of retaliation, and by thousands of rude tribes
this system is still observed. Nothing seemed more just than to off-
set one wrong by a like wrong. Eye for eye! Tooth for tooth If
the blood of one man has been shed. another must die! This was the
barbarous form of justice. In our civilized societies it is forbidden to
individuals to take the law into their own hands. Governments, in
their quality of social delegates, are charged on behalf of the commu-
nity with the enforcement of justice, a sort of retaliation somewhat
more enlightened than that of the savage. It is on this condition that
the individual renounces the right of personal vengeance; but if he be
deceived by the mandatories to whom he entrusts the vindication of
his rights, if he perceives that his agents betray his cause and leavue
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themselves with his oppressors, that official justice aggravates his
wrongs; in a word, if whole classes and populations are unfairly used
and have no hope of finding in the society to which they belong a re-
dresser of abuses, is it not certain that they will resume their inherent
right of vengeance and execute it without pity? Is not this indeed an
ordinance of Nature, a consequence of the physical law of shock and
counter-shock? It were unphilosophic to be surprised by its exist-
ence. Oppression has always been answered by violence.
Neverth-ess, if great human evolutions are always followed by sad
outbreaks of personal hatreds, it is not to these bad passions that weil
wishers of their kind appeal when they wish to rouse the motive vir.
tues of enthusiasm, devotion, and generosity. If changes had no other
result than to punish oppressors, to make them suffer in their turn, to
repay evil with evil, the transformation would be only in seeming.
What boots it to him who truly loves humanity and desires the hap-
piness of all that the slave becomes master, that the master is reduced
to servitude, that the whip changes hands, and that money passes from
one pocket to another? It is not the rich and the powerful whom we
devote to destruction, but the institutions which have favored the birth
and growth of these malevolent beings. It is the medium which it be-
hooves us to alter, and for this great work we must reserve all our
strength; to waste it in personal vindications were merest puerility.
“Wengeance is the pleasure of the gods,” said the ancients; but it is
not the pleasure of self-respecting mortals; for they know that to be.
come their own avengers would be to lower themselves to the level of
their former oppressors. If we would rise superior to our adversary,
we must, after vanquishing him, make him bless his defeat. The re-
volutionary device, “For our liberty and for yours,” must not be an
empty word.
The people in all times have felt this; and after every temporary
triumph the generosity of the victor has obliterated the menaces of
the past. It is a constant fact that in all serious popular movements,
made for an idea, hope of a better time, and above all, the sense of a
new dignity, fills the soul with high and magnanimous sentiments.
So soon as the police, both political and civil, cease their functions and
the masses become masters of the streets, the moral atmosphere
changes, each feels himself responsible fºr the prosperity and content-
ment of all; molestation of individuals is almost unheard of; even
professional criminals pause in their sad career, for they too, feel that
something great is passing through the air. Ah! if revolutionaries,
instead of obeying a vague idea as they have almost always done had
formed a definite aim, a well-considered scheme of social conduct, if
they had firmly willed the establishment of a new order of things in
which every citizen might be assured bread, work, instruction, and the
free development of his being, there would have been no danger in open-

-15–
ing all prison gates to their full width, and saying to the unfortunates
whom they shut in, “Go, brothers, and sin no more.”
It is always to the nobler part of man that we should address our-
selves when we want to do great deeds. A general fighting for a bad
cause stimulates his soldiers with promises of booty; a benevolent man
who cherishes a noble object encourages his companions by the example
of his own devotion and self-sacrifice. For him faith in his idea is
enough. As says the proverb of the Danish peasants: “His willis his
paradise.” What matters it that he is treated as a visionary 2 Even
though his undertaking were only a chimera, he knows nothing more
beautiful and sweet than the desire to act rightly and do wood; in com-
parison with this vulgar realities are for him but shadows, the app tri-
tions of an instant.
But our ideal is not a chimera. This, public opinion well knows;
for no question more preoccupies it than that of social transformation.
Events are casting their shadows before. Among men who think is
there one who in some fashion or another is not a socialist—that is to
say, who has not his own little scheme for changes in economic rela-
tions? Even the orator who noisily denies that there is a social ques-
tion affirms the contrary by a thousand propositions. And those who
would lead us back to the Middle Ages, are they not also socialists?
They think they have found in a past, restored after modern ideas,
conditions of social justice which will establish for ever the brother-
hood of man. All are awaiting the birth of a new order of things; all
ask themselves, some with misgiving, others with hope, what the mor-
row will bring forth. It will not come with empty hands. The century
which has witnessed so many grand discoveries in the world of science
cannot pass away without giving us still greater conquests. Industrial
appliances, that by a single electric impulse make the same thought
vibrate through five continents, have distanced by far our social
morals, which are yet in many regards the outcome of reciprocally
hostile interests. The axis is displaced; the world must crack that its
equilibrium may be restored. In spirit revolution is ready; it is al-
ready thought—it is already willed; there only remains its realization,
andthis is not the most difficult part of the work. The Governments of
Europe will soon have reached the limits to the expansion of their
power and find themselves face to face with their increasing popula-
tions. The superabundant activity which wastes itself in distant wars
must then find employment at home—unless in their folly the shep-
herds of the people should try to exhaust their energies by setting
Europeans against Europeans, as they have so often done before. It is
true that in this way they may retard the solution of the social problem
but it will rise again after each postponement more formidable than
before.
Let economists and rulers invent political constitutions or salaried
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organizations, whereby the workman may be made the friend of his
master, the subject the brother of the potentate, we, “frightful An-
archists" as we are, know only one way of establishing peace and
goodwill among mer—the suppression of privilege and the recogni-
tion of right. Our Lueal, as we have said, is that of tide fraternal
equity for which all yearn, but almost always as a dream; with us it
takes form and becomes a concrete reality. It pleases us not to live
if the enjoyments of life are to be for us alone; we protest against our
good fortnine if we may not share it with others; it is sweeter for us
to wander with the wretched and the outcast than to sit, crowned with
roses, at the banquets of the rich. We are weary of these inequalities
which make us the enemies of each other; we would put an end to the
furles which are ever bringing men into hostile collision, and all of
which arise from the bondage of the weak to the strong under the
form of slavery, serfage, and service. After so much hatred we long
to love each other, and for this reason are we enemies of private
property and despiisers of the law.
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