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Title: Anarchy
Author: Elisée Reclus
Date: 1894
Language: en
Topics: anarchy, anarcho-communism, anti-religion, theory, geography
Source: https://libcom.org/library/anarchism-documentary-history-libertarian-ideas-volume-1-2

Elisée Reclus

Anarchy

Anarchy is not a new theory. The word itself taken in its meaning

“absence of government”, of “society without leaders”, is of ancient

origin and was used well before Proudhon.

Besides, what do the words matter? There were “acrates” before the

anarchists, and the acrates had not yet imagined the name of their

learned formation that countless generations would succeed. In all ages

there have been free men, those contemptuous of the law, men living

without any master and in accordance with the primordial law of their

own existence and their own thought. Even in the earliest ages we find

everywhere tribes made up of men managing their own affairs as they

wish, without any externally imposed law, having no rule of behaviour

other than “their own volition and free will,” as Rabelais expresses it

[in Gargantua and Pantagruel, Book 1, Chapter 57]. But if anarchy is as

old as humanity, those who represent it nevertheless bring something new

to the world. They have a keen awareness of the goal to be attained, and

from all corners of the earth they join together to pursue their ideal

of the eradication of every form of government. The dream of worldwide

freedom is no longer a purely philosophical or literary utopia. It has

become a practical goal that is actively pursued by masses of people

united in their resolute quest for the birth of a society in which there

are no more masters, no more official custodians of public morals, no

more jailers, torturers and executioners, no more rich or poor. Instead

there will be only brothers who have their share of daily bread, who

have equal rights, and who coexist in peace and heartfelt unity that

comes not out of obedience to law, which is always accompanied by

dreadful threats, but rather from mutual respect for the interest of

all, and from the scientific study of natural laws .

No doubt, this ideal seems chimerical to many of you, but I am sure that

it seems desirable to most and that you can see in the distance the

ethereal image of a peaceful society where the men now reconciled will

melt their swords, reshape their cannons and disarm their ships.

Besides, are not you one of those who, for a long time, for thousands of

years, you say, are working to build the temple of equality? You are

“masons”, at the end of masonry is a building of perfect proportions,

where only free men enter as equals and brothers, working unceasingly to

their perfection and reborn by the force of their love of this new life

of justice and kindness. That’s right, isn’t it? You’re not alone. You

do not claim the monopoly of a spirit of progress and renewal. You do

not even commit the injustice of forgetting your adversaries, those who

curse and excommunicate you, the ardent Catholics who condemn the

enemies of the Holy Church to hell, but who nevertheless prophesy the

coming of an age of final peace. Francis of Assisi, Catherine of Sienna,

Teresa of Avila, and many others among those of different faiths,

certainly loved humanity with the most sincere love, and we owe them to

count them among those who lived for an ideal of universal happiness.

And now, millions and millions of socialists, at whatever school they

belong, are also fighting for a future where the power of capital will

be broken and men will finally be able to say “equals” without irony.

The aim of the anarchists is therefore common to them with many generous

men belonging to religions, sects, and the most diverse parties, but

they are clearly distinguished by means, as their name indicates in the

least doubtful manner. The conquest of power has almost always been the

great preoccupation of revolutionaries, including the best intentioned

of them. The prevailing system of education does not allow them to

imagine a free society operating without a conventional government, and

as soon as they have overthrown their hated masters, they hasten to

replace them with new ones who are destined, according to the ancient

maxim, to “make the people happy.” Generally, no one has dared to

prepare for a change of princes or dynasties without having paid homage

or pledged obedience to some future sovereign. “The king is dead! Long

live the king!” cried the eternally loyal subjects — even as they

revolted. For many centuries this has been the unvarying course of

history. “How could one possibly live without masters?” said the slaves,

the spouses, the children, and the workers of the cities and

countryside, as they quite deliberately placed their shoulders under the

yoke, like the ox that pulls the plow. The insurgents of 1830

proclaiming “the best of the republics” in the place of a new king are

well remembered, as are the Republicans of 1848, who quietly withdrew

into their slums after putting in “three months of misery in the service

of the provisional government”. At the same time, a revolution broke out

in Germany, and a popular parliament met in Frankfurt: “the old

authority is a corpse” claimed one of the representatives. “Yes,”

replied the president, “but we are going to resurrect him, we will call

new men who will regain power by the power of the nation itself.”

Is not this the case for repeating the verses of Victor Hugo: “An old

human instinct leads to turpitude?”

In contrast to this instinct, anarchy truly represents a new spirit. One

can in no way reproach the libertarians for seeking to get rid of a

government only to put themselves in its place. “Get out of the way to

make room for me!” are words that they would be appalled to speak. They

would condemn to shame and contempt, or at least to pity, anyone who,

stung by the tarantula of power, aspired to an office under the pretext

of “making his fellow citizens happy.” Anarchists contend that the state

and all that it implies are not any kind of pure essence, much less a

philosophical abstraction, but rather a collection of individuals placed

in a specific milieu and subjected to its influence. Those individuals

are raised up above their fellow citizens in dignity, power, and

preferential treatment, and are consequently compelled to think

themselves superior to the common people. Yet in reality the multitude

of temptations besetting them almost inevitably leads them to fall below

the general level.

This is what we constantly repeat to our brothers-including all our

fraternal enemies, like the state socialists- “Watch out for your

leaders and representatives!”. Like you they are surely motivated by the

best of intentions. They fervently desire the abolition of private

property and of the tyrannical state. But new relationships and

conditions change them little by little. Their morality changes along

with their self-interest, and, thinking themselves eternally loyal to

the cause and to their constituents, they inevitably become disloyal. As

repositories of power they will also make use of the instruments of

power: the army, moralizers, judges, police, and informers. More than

three thousand years ago the Hindu poet of the Mahabharata expressed the

wisdom of the centuries on this subject: “He who rides in a chariot will

never be the friend of the one who goes on foot!” Thus the anarchists

have the firmest principles in this area. In their view, the conquest of

power can only serve to prolong the duration of the enslavement that

accompanies it. So it is not without reason that even though the term

“anarchist” ultimately has only a negative connotation, it remains the

one by which we are universally known. One might label us

“libertarians,” as many among us willingly call themselves, or even

“harmonists,” since we see agreement based on free will as the

constituting element of the future society. But these designations fail

to distinguish us adequately from the socialists. It is in fact our

struggle against all official power that distinguishes us most

essentially. Each individuality seems to us to be the center of the

universe and each has the same right to its integral development,

without interference from any power that supervises, reprimands or

castigates it.

You know our ideal. Now the first question that arises is this: “Is this

ideal really noble and deserving the sacrifice of devoted men, along

with the terrible risks that all revolutions entail after it?” Is

anarchist morality pure? And in libertarian society, if it is

constituted, will man be better than in a society based on the fear of

power and laws? I answer with confidence and I hope that soon you will

answer with me “Yes, anarchist morality is the one that best fits the

modern conception of justice and goodness.”

The foundation of the old morality, as you know, was nothing but dread,

“trembling,” as the Bible says, and as many precepts taught you in your

youth. “The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom” was once the

starting point of all education: society as a whole was based on terror.

Men were not citizens, but subjects or flocks; the wives were servants,

the children were the slaves, over whom the parents held a relic of the

old right of life and death. We find everywhere, in all social

relations, positions of superiority and subordination; finally, even

today, the guiding principle of the state itself and of all the

particular states that make it up, is hierarchy, by which is meant

“holy” archy or “sacred” authority, for that is the true meaning of the

word. And this sacrosanct system domination encompasses a long

succession of superimposed classes in which the highest have the right

to command and the lowest have the duty to obey. The official morality

consists in bowing humbly to one’s superiors and in proudly holding up

one’s head before one’s subordinates. Each person must have, like Janus,

two faces, with two smiles: one flattering, solicitous, and even

servile, and the other haughty and nobly condescending. The principle of

authority (which is the proper name for this phenomenon) demands that

the superior should never give the impression of being wrong, and that

in every verbal exchange he should have the last word. But above all,

his orders must be carried out. That simplifies everything: there is no

more need for quibbling, explanations, hesitations, discussions, or

misgivings. Things move along all by themselves, for better or worse.

And if a master isn’t around to command in person, one has ready-made

formulas-orders, decrees, or laws handed down from absolute masters and

legislators at various levels. These formulas substitute for direct

orders and one can follow them without having to consider whether they

are in accord with the inner voice of one’s conscience.

Between equals, the task is more difficult, but also more exalted. We

must search fiercely for the truth, discover our own personal duty,

learn to know ourselves, engage continually in our own education, and

act in ways that respect the rights and interests of our comrades. Only

then can one become a truly moral being and awaken to a feeling of

responsibility. Morality is not a command to which one submits, a word

that one repeats, something purely external to the individual. It must

become a part of one’s being, the very product of one’s life. This is

the way that we anarchists understand morality. Are we not justified in

comparing this conception favourably with the one bequeathed to us by

our ancestors?

Perhaps you will give me reason? But again here, many of you will

pronounce the word “chimera”. Happy already, that you see at least a

noble chimera, I go further, and I affirm that our ideal, our conception

of morality is entirely in the logic of history, brought naturally by

the evolution of humanity.

Pursued formerly by the terror of the unknown as well as by the feeling

of their helplessness in the search for causes, men had created by the

intensity of their desire, one or more helpful deities who represented

at once their formless ideal and the fulcrum of all this mysterious

world visible, and invisible, of the surrounding things. These ghosts of

the imagination, clothed with omnipotence, also became in the eyes of

men the principle of all justice and all authority: masters of heaven,

they naturally had their interpreters on earth, magicians, advisers,

warlords before whom they learned to prostrate themselves as before the

representatives from above. It was logical, but the man lasts longer

than his works, and these gods he created have constantly changed as

shadows projected on the infinite. Visible first, animated by human

passions, violent and formidable, they retreated little by little in an

immense distance; they ended by becoming abstractions, sublime ideas,

which even gave no name, and then they became confounded with the

natural laws of the world; they returned to that universe they were

supposed to have brought out of nothingness, and now the man finds

himself alone on the earth, above which he has drawn up the colossal

image of God.

The whole conception of things changes at the same time. If God dies,

those who draw obedience from their titles also see their shine

tarnished: they too must gradually return to the ranks, accommodate

their best to the state of things. No one would find Tamerlane nowadays

who would order his forty courtiers to throw themselves off a tower,

sure that, in the twinkling of an eye, he would see the forty bloody and

broken corpses. The freedom to think of all men as anarchists without

knowing it. Who does not reserve a little corner of the brain now to

think? Now, this is precisely the crime of crimes, sin par excellence,

symbolized by the fruit of the tree which revealed to men the knowledge

of good and evil. Hence the hatred of science which the Church always

professed. Hence the fury that Napoleon, a modern Tamerlane, always had

for the “ideologues”.

But the ideologues have come. They blew on the illusions of yesteryear

as on a mist, starting all the scientific work again by observation and

experience. One of them, a nihilist before our time, an anarchist at

least in words, began by making a “clean slate” of all he had learned.

There is now hardly any scholar, no literary man, who professes to be

himself his own master and model, the original thinker of his thought,

the moralist of his morals. “If you want to be enlightened, enlighten

yourself!” Goethe said. And do not artists seek to make nature as they

see it, as they feel it and understand it? It is usually there, it is

true, what could be called an “aristocratic anarchy,” claiming liberty

only for the chosen people of the Musantes, rather than for the

engravers of Parnassus. Each of them wants to think freely, to seek at

will his ideal in the infinite while saying that “a religion for the

people!” is necessary, he wants to live as an independent man but

insists “obedience is made for women”; he wants to create original

works, but “the mob from below” must remain enslaved as a machine to the

ignoble functioning by the division of labor! However, these aristocrats

of taste and thought no longer have the strength to close the great lock

through which the current flows. If science, literature and art have

become anarchists, if all progress, all new forms of beauty are due to

the flourishing of free thought, this thought is also working in the

depths of society and now it is no longer possible to contain it. It’s

too late to stop the flood.

Is the diminution of respect not the phenomenon par excellence of

contemporary society? I once saw in England crowds rushing by the

thousands to beg from the empty plate of a great lord. I will not see

him now. In India, the pariahs devoutly stopped at the hundred and

fifteen regulations that separated them from the proud Brahmin: since

the rushes in the stations, there is nothing between them but the

closing wall of a waiting room. Examples of baseness and vile

reptilation are not lacking in the world, but there is progress in the

direction of equality. Before showing respect, one sometimes wonders if

the man or the institution are really respectable. We study the value of

individuals, the importance of works. Faith in greatness has

disappeared; now, where faith no longer exists, institutions disappear

in their turn. The suppression of the state is naturally implied in the

extinction of respect.

This rebellious criticism to which the state is subjected is also

exercised against all social institutions. The people no longer believe

in the holy origin of private property, produced, economists told us —

we dare not repeat it now — by the personal work of the proprietors; he

is not unaware that his individual labor never creates millions upon

millions, and that this monstrous enrichment is always the consequence

of a false social state, attributing to one the product of the labor of

thousands of others; he will always respect the bread that the worker

has won hard, the hut he has built with his own hands, the garden he has

planted, but he will certainly lose respect for the thousand fictional

properties represented by the papers of all kinds contained in the

banks. The day will come, I do not doubt, where it will quietly regain

possession of all the products of common labor, mines and estates,

factories and castles, railways, ships and cargoes. When the masses,

this “vile” mass by its own ignorance and cowardice will suffer the

fatal consequence, ceasing to deserve the qualifier by which they were

insulted, when they know in all certainty that the hoarding of this

immense asset rests only on a chirographic fiction, on faith in blue

paperwork, the current social state will be well threatened! In the

presence of these profound, irresistible evolutions, which are made in

all human brains, how stupid, how meaningless will these furious

clamours that we launch against the capitalists appear to our

descendants! What will matter of the foul words dumped by a press forced

to pay its subsidies in good prose, what would matter even of the

insults honestly uttered against us by these “holy but simple” devotees

who carried wood to the pyre of Jan Huss! The movement that carries us

away is not the act of mere fanatics, or poor dreamers, it is the

movement of society as a whole. It is necessitated by the march of

thought, now fatal, inescapable, like the rolling of the Earth and the

Heavens.

Some doubt may remain in your minds whether anarchy has ever been any

more than a mere ideal, an intellectual exercise, or subject of

dialectic. You may wonder whether it has ever been realized concretely,

or whether any spontaneous organization has ever sprung forth, putting

into practice the power of comrades working together freely, without the

command of any master. But such doubts can easily be laid to rest. Yes,

libertarian organizations have always existed. Yes, they constantly

arise once again, each year in greater numbers, as a result of advances

in individual initiative. To begin with, I could cite diverse tribal

peoples called “savages,” who even in our own day live in perfect social

harmony, needing neither rulers nor laws, prisons nor police. But I will

not stress such examples, despite their significance. I fear that some

might object that these primitive societies lack complexity in

comparison to the infinitely complicated organism of our modern world,

organisms with infinite complication. So let us leave aside these

primitive tribes and focus entirely on fully constituted nations that

possess developed political and social systems.

No doubt, I could not show you any of them in the course of history

which was constituted in a purely anarchic sense, for all were then in

their period of struggle between various elements not yet associated; it

is because each of these partial societies, though not fused into a

harmonic whole, was all the more prosperous, the more creative the more

it was freer, than the personal value of the individual was best

recognized. Since the point at which human society emerged from

prehistory, awakened to the arts, sciences, and industry, and was able

to hand down its experience to us through written records, the greatest

periods in the lives of nations have always been those in which men,

shaken by revolution, have suffered least under the long-lasting and

heavy burden of a duly-constituted government. Judged by the progress in

discovery, the towering of thought, and the beauty of their art, the two

greatest epochs for humanity were both tumultuous epochs, ages of

“imperiled liberty.” Order reigned over the immense empires of the Medes

and the Persians, but nothing great came out of it. On the other hand,

while republican Greece was in a constant state of unrest, shaken by

continual upheavals, it gave birth to the founders of all that we think

exalted and noble in modern civilization. It is impossible for us to

engage in thought or to produce any work of art without recalling those

free Hellenes who were our precursors and who remain our models. Two

thousand years later, after an age of darkness and tyranny that seemed

incapable of ever coming to an end, Italy, Flanders and the Europe of

the Free Cities reawakened. Countless revolutions shook the world.

[Giuseppe] Ferrari brought no less than seven thousand local shocks to

Italy alone; in addition, the fire of free thought burst forth and

humanity began once again to flourish. In the works of Raphael, de Vinci

and Michelangelo it felt the vigor of youth once more.

Then came the great century of the encyclopedia with the ensuing world

revolutions and the proclamation of Human Rights. Now, try if you can,

to enumerate all the great progress that has been accomplished since

this great shock of humanity. One wonders if during this last century

did not concentrate more than half of history. The number of men has

increased by more than half a billion; trade has increased more than

tenfold, industry has become transfigured, and the art of modifying

natural products has been magnificently enriched; new sciences have

appeared, and, whatever may be said of them, a third period of art has

begun; conscious and global socialism is born in its magnitude. At least

one feels to live in the century of great problems and great struggles.

Substitute for thought the hundred years of eighteenth-century

philosophy, replace them with a period of no history in which four

hundred million peaceful Chinese people lived under the tutelage of a

“father of the people”, courting rites and mandarins with their

diplomas. Far from living with momentum as we did, we would have

gradually come closer to inertia and death. Gaiileo, while locked away

in the prisons of the Inquisition, could only murmur secretly, “Still,

it moves!” But thanks to the revolutions and the fury of free thought,

we can today cry from the housetops and in the public squares, “The

world moves, and it will continue to move!”

In addition to this great movement that gradually transforms all of

society in the direction of free thought, free morality and freedom of

action, in short, toward the essentials of anarchy, there has also

existed a history of direct social experimentation that has manifested

itself in the founding of libertarian and communitarian colonies: these

are all small attempts that can be compared to the laboratory

experiments of chemists and engineers. These efforts to create model

communities all have the major failing of being created outside the

normal conditions of life, that is to say, far from the cities where

people intermingle, where ideas spring up, and where intellects are

reinvigorated. And yet we can cite many of these companies that have

succeeded, among others that of the “Young Icaria” transformation of the

colony of Cabet, founded half a century ago on the principles of an

authoritarian communism: With more migration, the group of communaries

became purely anarchist, now living a modest existence in the state of

Iowa, near the Desmoines River.

But where anarchist practice really triumphs is in the course of

everyday life among common people who would not be able to endure their

dreadful struggle for existence if they did not engage in spontaneous

mutual aid, putting aside differences and conflicts of interest. When

one of them falls ill, other poor people take in his children, feeding

them, sharing the meager sustenance of the week, seeking to make ends

meet by doubling their hours of work. A sort of communism is instituted

among neighbours through lending, in which there is a constant coming

and going of household implements and provisions. Poverty unites the

unfortunate in a fraternal league. Together they are hungry; together

they are satisfied. Anarchist morality and practice are the rule even in

bourgeois gatherings where they might seem to be entirely absent.

Imagine a party in the countryside at which some participant, whether

the host or one of the guests, would put on airs of superiority, order

people around, or impose his whims rudely on everyone! Wouldn’t this

completely destroy all the pleasure and joy of the occasion? True

geniality can only exist between those who are free and equal, between

those who can enjoy themselves in whatever way suits them best, in

separate groups if they wish, or drawing closer to one another and

intermingling as they please, for the hours spent in this way are the

most agreeable ones.

Here I would allow myself to tell you a personal memory. We were sailing

on one of these modern boats that splits the waves superbly with the

speed of fifteen to twenty knots per hour, and which draws a straight

line from continent to continent despite wind and tide. The air was

calm, the evening was mild and the stars were lighting up one by one in

the black sky. They were talking at the quarterdeck, and what could be

talked about except this eternal social question which grips us, which

seizes us by the throat like Oedipus’s sphinge. The reactionary of the

group was pressed by his interlocutors, all more or less socialists. He

suddenly turned towards the captain, the chief, the master, hoping to

find in him a born defender of the good principles: “You keep order

here! Is not your power sacred, what would become of the ship, directed

by your constant will, if you do not? “ — “Naïve man that you are,”

answered the captain, “between us, I can tell you that ordinarily I am

absolutely useless. The man at the helm keeps the ship in its straight

line, in a few minutes another pilot will succeed him, then others will

follow regularly, without my intervention, the usual way. Lower drivers

and mechanics work without my help, without my opinion, and better than

if I interfere to give them advice. And all these sailors, these sailors

also know what work they have to do, and, on occasion, I have only to

reconcile my small share of work with theirs, more painful though less

paid than mine. No doubt, I’m supposed to guide the ship, but do not you

think that’s just a fiction, the maps are there, and it’s not me who

drew them up. I was not me who dug for us the channel of the port from

which we come and from the port in which we will enter. And this superb

ship, barely complaining in its frames under the pressure of the waves,

swaying majestically in the swell, stroking powerfully under the steam,

it was not me who built it. What am I here in the presence of the great

dead, inventors and scholars, our predecessors, who taught us to cross

the seas? We are all comrades, the sailors are my comrades, and you also

the passengers are my comrades, because it is for you that we ride these

waves, and in case of peril, we count on you to help us fraternally. Our

work is common, and we are in solidarity with each other!” All were

silent and I gathered preciously in the treasure of my memory the words

of this captain, as we did not see much.

Thus this ship, this floating world where, moreover, the punishments are

unknown, carries a model republic across the ocean in spite of

hierarchical chinoiserie. And this is not an isolated example. Each of

you knows at least hearsay, schools where the teacher, despite the

severity of the rules, still unapplied, took all students for friends

and happy collaborators. Everything is planned by the competent

authority to put down the little scoundrels, but their great friend does

not need all this paraphernalia; he treats children as men and

constantly appeals to their good will, their understanding of things,

their sense of justice and all respond with joy. A tiny anarchic

society, truly human, is thus constituted, although everything seems to

be leagued in the surrounding world to prevent its outbreak: laws,

regulations, bad examples, public immorality.

Anarchist groups thus arise incessantly, in spite of the old prejudices

and the dead weight of the old manners. Our new world is all around us,

as a new flora would sprout under the detritus of the ages. Not only is

it not chimerical, as it is constantly repeated, but it is already

showing itself in a thousand forms; blind is the man who does not know

how to observe it. On the other hand, if there is a chimeric society, it

is the pandemonium in which we live. You will do me justice that I have

not avoided criticism, so easy with regard to the world today, as

constituted by the so-called principle of authority and the fierce

struggle for existence. But finally, if it is true that, according to

the definition itself, a society is a group of individuals who come

together and consult one another for the common good, it can not be said

without ambiguity that the chaotic mass constitutes a society. According

to her lawyers, — for any bad cause has hers — she would aim at perfect

order by the satisfaction of the interests of all. But isn’t it a

laughing stock to see an orderly society in this world of European

civilization, with the following continuation of tragedies inside,

murders and suicides, violence and shootings, diebacks and famines,

robberies, tricks and deceptions of all kinds, bankruptcies, collapses

and ruins.

Who of us, coming out of this place, will see the ghosts of vice and

hunger rise beside him? In our Europe, there are five million men

waiting for a sign to kill other men, to burn houses and crops; another

ten million men in reserve outside the barracks are bound in the thought

of having to accomplish the same work of destruction; at least five

million unfortunates’ lives languish in prisons, sentenced to various

penalties, ten million die per year of anticipated deaths, and out of

370 million men, 350, if not all, quiver in the justified anxiety of the

morrow: in spite of the immensity of the social riches, who of us can

affirm that a sudden reversal of fate will not take his away from him?

These are facts which no one can dispute, and which should, it seems to

me, inspire us all to resolutely change this state of affairs, which is

full of incessant revolutions.

I once had the opportunity to talk to a senior official, drawn by the

routine of life in the world of those who enact laws and sentences:

“Defend your society!” — I told him. “How do you want me to defend it,”

he replied, “it is not defensible!” It defends itself, however, by

arguments which are not reasons, but by the schlague, the dungeon and

the scaffold.

On the other hand, those who attack him can do so in all the serenity of

their conscience. No doubt the movement of transformation will bring

about violence and revolution, but is this world anything other than a

world of continuous violence and permanent revolution? And in the

alternatives to the social war, which men will be responsible? Those who

proclaim an era of justice and equality for all, without distinction of

classes or individuals, or those who want to maintain separations and

therefore caste hatred, those who add repressive laws to repressive

laws, and who do not know how to solve questions except by infantry,

cavalry and artillery! History allows us to affirm with certainty that a

politics of hate always breeds hatred, fatally aggravating the general

situation, or even leading to permanent ruin. How many nations perished,

oppressors as well as oppressed! Will we perish in our turn?

I hope not, thanks to the anarchist thought that is emerging more and

more, renewing the human initiative. Are you not, if not anarchists, at

least highly nuanced anarchists? Who of you, in his soul and conscience,

will say to himself the superior of his neighbor, and will not recognize

in him his brother and his equal? The morality so often proclaimed here

in more or less symbolic words will certainly become a reality. For we,

anarchists, know that this morality of perfect justice, of liberty and

equality, is indeed the true one, and we live it wholeheartedly, while

our adversaries are uncertain. They are not sure of being right;

Basically, they are even convinced that they are wrong, and in advance

they deliver the world to us.