{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_36568/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_36568","id":"gutenberg_36568","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/36568","summary":null,"tags":["Anarchism","Atheism","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity -- Controversial literature"],"text":"</pre>\n\nE-text prepared by Fritz Ohrenschall, Ren\u00e9 Anderson Benitz, and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net)\n\n\n\nNote: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this\n      file which includes the original illustration.\n      See 36568-h.htm or 36568-h.zip:\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36568/pg36568-images.html)\n      or\n      (https://www.gutenberg.org/files/36568/36568-h.zip)\n\n\n\n\n\nGOD AND THE STATE\n\nby\n\nMICHAEL BAKUNIN\n\nMother Earth Publishing Association\n\n\n[Illustration: MICHAEL BAKUNIN]\n\n\nGOD AND THE STATE\n\nby\n\nMICHAEL BAKUNIN\n\nWith a Preface by Carlo Cafiero and Elisee Reclus\n\nFirst American Edition\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nMother Earth Publishing Association\n20 East 125th Street\nNew York City\n\n\n\n\nPreface to the First French Edition\n\n\nOne of us is soon to tell in all its details the story of the life of\nMichael Bakunin, but its general features are already sufficiently\nfamiliar. Friends and enemies know that this man was great in thought,\nwill, persistent energy; they know also with what lofty contempt he\nlooked down upon wealth, rank, glory, all the wretched ambitions which\nmost human beings are base enough to entertain. A Russian gentleman\nrelated by marriage to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one\nof the first to enter that intrepid society of rebels who were able\nto release themselves from traditions, prejudices, race and class\ninterests, and set their own comfort at naught. With them he fought the\nstern battle of life, aggravated by imprisonment, exile, all the dangers\nand all the sorrows that men of self-sacrifice have to undergo during\ntheir tormented existence.\n\nA simple stone and a name mark the spot in the cemetery of Berne where\nwas laid the body of Bakunin. Even that is perhaps too much to honor the\nmemory of a worker who held vanities of that sort in such slight esteem.\nHis friends surely will raise to him no ostentatious tombstone or\nstatue. They know with what a huge laugh he would have received them,\nhad they spoken to him of a commemorative structure erected to his\nglory; they knew, too, that the true way to honor their dead is to\ncontinue their work--with the same ardor and perseverance that they\nthemselves brought to it. In this case, indeed, a difficult task\ndemanding all our efforts, for among the revolutionists of the present\ngeneration not one has labored more fervently in the common cause of\nthe Revolution.\n\nIn Russia among the students, in Germany among the insurgents of\nDresden, in Siberia among his brothers in exile, in America, in\nEngland, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, among all earnest men,\nhis direct influence has been considerable. The originality of his\nideas, the imagery and vehemence of his eloquence, his untiring zeal in\npropagandism, helped too by the natural majesty of his person and by a\npowerful vitality, gave Bakunin access to all the revolutionary groups,\nand his efforts left deep traces everywhere, even upon those who, after\nhaving welcomed him, thrust him out because of a difference of object or\nmethod. His correspondence was most extensive; he passed entire nights\nin preparing long letters to his friends in the revolutionary world,\nand some of these letters, written to strengthen the timid, arouse the\nsluggish, and outline plans of propagandism or revolt, took on the\nproportions of veritable volumes. These letters more than anything else\nexplain the prodigious work of Bakunin in the revolutionary movement of\nthe century. The pamphlets published by him, in Russian, French, and\nItalian, however important they may be, and however useful they may have\nbeen in spreading the new ideas, are the smallest part of Bakunin's\nwork.\n\nThe present memoir, \"God and the State,\" is really a fragment of a\nletter or report. Composed in the same manner as most of Bakunin's other\nwritings, it has the same literary fault, lack of proportion; moreover\nit breaks off abruptly: we have searched in vain to discover the end of\nthe manuscript. Bakunin never had the time necessary to finish all the\ntasks he undertook. One work was not completed when others were already\nunder way. \"My life itself is a fragment,\" he said to those who\ncriticised his writings. Nevertheless, the readers of \"God and the\nState\" certainly will not regret that Bakunin's memoir, incomplete\nthough it be, has been published. The questions discussed in it are\ntreated decisively and with a singular vigor of logic. Rightly\naddressing himself only to his honest opponents, Bakunin demonstrates to\nthem the emptiness of their belief in that divine authority on which all\ntemporal authorities are founded; he proves to them the purely human\ngenesis of all governments; finally, without stopping to discuss those\nbases of the State already condemned by public morality, such as\nphysical superiority, violence, nobility, wealth, he does justice to the\ntheory which would entrust science with the government of societies.\nSupposing even that it were possible to recognize, amid the conflict of\nrival ambitions and intrigues, who are the pretenders and who are the\nreal savants, and that a method of election could be found which would\nnot fail to lodge the power in the hands of those whose knowledge is\nauthentic, what guarantee could they offer us of the wisdom and honesty\nof their government? On the contrary, can we not foresee in these new\nmasters the same follies and the same crimes found in those of former\ndays and of the present time? In the first place, science is not: it\nis becoming. The learned man of to-day is but the know-nothing of\nto-morrow. Let him once imagine that he has reached the end, and for\nthat very reason he sinks beneath even the babe just born. But, could he\nrecognize truth in its essence, he can only corrupt himself by privilege\nand corrupt others by power. To establish his government, he must try,\nlike all chiefs of State, to arrest the life of the masses moving below\nhim, keep them in ignorance in order to preserve quiet, and gradually\ndebase them that he may rule them from a loftier throne.\n\nFor the rest, since the _doctrinaires_ made their appearance, the true\nor pretended \"genius\" has been trying his hand at wielding the sceptre\nof the world, and we know what it has cost us. We have seen them at\nwork, all these savants: the more hardened the more they have studied;\nthe narrower in their views the more time they have spent in examining\nsome isolated fact in all its aspects; without any experience of life,\nbecause they have long known no other horizon than the walls of their\ncheese; childish in their passions and vanities, because they have been\nunable to participate in serious struggles and have never learned the\ntrue proportion of things. Have we not recently witnessed the foundation\nof a whole school of \"thinkers\"--wretched courtiers, too, and people of\nunclean lives--who have constructed a whole cosmogony for their sole\nuse? According to them, worlds have been created, societies have\ndeveloped, revolutions have overturned nations, empires have gone down\nin blood, poverty, disease, and death have been the queens of humanity,\nonly to raise up an _elite_ of academicians, the full-blown flower, of\nwhich all other men are but the manure. That these editors of the\n_Temps_ and the _Debats_ may have leisure to \"think,\" nations live and\ndie in ignorance; all other human beings are destined for death in order\nthat these gentlemen may become immortal!\n\nBut we may reassure ourselves: all these academicians will not have the\naudacity of Alexander in cutting with his sword the Gordian knot; they\nwill not lift the blade of Charlemagne. Government by science is\nbecoming as impossible as that of divine right, wealth, or brute force.\nAll powers are henceforth to be submitted to pitiless criticism. Men in\nwhom the sentiment of equality is born suffer themselves no longer to be\ngoverned; they learn to govern themselves. In precipitating from the\nheights of the heavens him from whom all power is reputed to descend,\nsocieties unseat also all those who reigned in his name. Such is the\nrevolution now in progress. States are breaking up to give place to a\nnew order, in which, as Bakunin was fond of saying, \"human justice will\nbe substituted for divine justice.\" If it is allowable to cite any one\nname from those of the revolutionists who have taken part in this\nimmense work of renovation, there is not one that may be singled out\nwith more justice than that of Michael Bakunin.\n\n                                                  Carlo Cafiero.\n                                                  Elisee Reclus.\n\n\n\n\nGOD AND THE STATE\n\n\nWho are right, the idealists or the materialists? The question once\nstated in this way hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the\nidealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before\nideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root\nlies in the material conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of\nhumanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a\nreflection of its economic history.\n\nAll branches of modern science, of true and disinterested science,\nconcur in proclaiming this grand truth, fundamental and decisive: The\nsocial world, properly speaking, the human world--in short, humanity--is\nnothing other than the last and supreme development--at least on our\nplanet and as far as we know--the highest manifestation of animality.\nBut as every development necessarily implies a negation, that of its\nbase or point of departure, humanity is at the same time and essentially\nthe deliberate and gradual negation of the animal element in man; and it\nis precisely this negation, as rational as it is natural, and rational\nonly because natural--at once historical and logical, as inevitable\nas the development and realization of all the natural laws in the\nworld--that constitutes and creates the ideal, the world of intellectual\nand moral convictions, ideas.\n\nYes, our first ancestors, our Adams and our Eves, were, if not gorillas,\nvery near relatives of gorillas, omnivorous, intelligent and ferocious\nbeasts, endowed in a higher degree than the animals of any other species\nwith two precious faculties--_the power to think_ and _the desire to\nrebel_.\n\nThese faculties, combining their progressive action in history,\nrepresent the essential factor, the negative power in the positive\ndevelopment of human animality, and create consequently all that\nconstitutes humanity in man.\n\nThe Bible, which is a very interesting and here and there very profound\nbook when considered as one of the oldest surviving manifestations of\nhuman wisdom and fancy, expresses this truth very naively in its myth of\noriginal sin. Jehovah, who of all the good gods adored by men was\ncertainly the most jealous, the most vain, the most ferocious, the most\nunjust, the most bloodthirsty, the most despotic, and the most hostile\nto human dignity and liberty--Jehovah had just created Adam and Eve, to\nsatisfy we know not what caprice; no doubt to while away his time, which\nmust weigh heavy on his hands in his eternal egoistic solitude, or that\nhe might have some new slaves. He generously placed at their disposal\nthe whole earth, with all its fruits and animals, and set but a single\nlimit to this complete enjoyment. He expressly forbade them from\ntouching the fruit of the tree of knowledge. He wished, therefore, that\nman, destitute of all understanding of himself, should remain an eternal\nbeast, ever on all-fours before the eternal God, his creator and his\nmaster. But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first\nfreethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his\nbestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his\nbrow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat\nof the fruit of knowledge.\n\nWe know what followed. The good God, whose foresight, which is one of\nthe divine faculties, should have warned him of what would happen, flew\ninto a terrible and ridiculous rage; he cursed Satan, man, and the world\ncreated by himself, striking himself so to speak in his own creation, as\nchildren do when they get angry; and, not content with smiting our\nancestors themselves, he cursed them in all the generations to come,\ninnocent of the crime committed by their forefathers. Our Catholic and\nProtestant theologians look upon that as very profound and very just,\nprecisely because it is monstrously iniquitous and absurd. Then,\nremembering that he was not only a God of vengeance and wrath, but also\na God of love, after having tormented the existence of a few milliards\nof poor human beings and condemned them to an eternal hell, he took pity\non the rest, and, to save them and reconcile his eternal and divine love\nwith his eternal and divine anger, always greedy for victims and blood,\nhe sent into the world, as an expiatory victim, his only son, that he\nmight be killed by men. That is called the mystery of the Redemption,\nthe basis of all the Christian religions. Still, if the divine Savior\nhad saved the human world! But no; in the paradise promised by Christ,\nas we know, such being the formal announcement, the elect will number\nvery few. The rest, the immense majority of the generations present and\nto come, will burn eternally in hell. In the meantime, to console us,\nGod, ever just, ever good, hands over the earth to the government of the\nNapoleon Thirds, of the William Firsts, of the Ferdinands of Austria,\nand of the Alexanders of all the Russias.\n\nSuch are the absurd tales that are told and the monstrous doctrines that\nare taught, in the full light of the nineteenth century, in all the\npublic schools of Europe, at the express command of the government.\nThey call this civilizing the people! Is it not plain that all these\ngovernments are systematic poisoners, interested stupefiers of the\nmasses?\n\nI have wandered from my subject, because anger gets hold of me whenever\nI think of the base and criminal means which they employ to keep the\nnations in perpetual slavery, undoubtedly that they may be the better\nable to fleece them. Of what consequence are the crimes of all the\nTropmanns in the world compared with this crime of treason against\nhumanity committed daily, in broad day, over the whole surface of the\ncivilized world, by those who dare to call themselves the guardians and\nthe fathers of the people? I return to the myth of original sin.\n\nGod admitted that Satan was right; he recognized that the devil did not\ndeceive Adam and Eve in promising them knowledge and liberty as a reward\nfor the act of disobedience which he had induced them to commit; for,\nimmediately they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, God himself said (see\nBible): \"Behold, the man is become as one of the gods, to know good and\nevil; prevent him, therefore, from eating of the fruit of eternal life,\nlest he become immortal like Ourselves.\"\n\nLet us disregard now the fabulous portion of this myth and consider its\ntrue meaning, which is very clear. Man has emancipated himself; he has\nseparated himself from animality and constituted himself a man; he has\nbegun his distinctively human history and development by an act of\ndisobedience and science--that is, by _rebellion_ and by _thought_.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThree elements or, if you like, three fundamental principles constitute\nthe essential conditions of all human development, collective or\nindividual, in history: (1) _human animality_; (2) _thought_; and (3)\n_rebellion_. To the first properly corresponds _social and private\neconomy_; to the second, _science_; to the third, _liberty_.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nIdealists of all schools, aristocrats and _bourgeois_, theologians and\nmetaphysicians, politicians and moralists, religionists, philosophers,\nor poets, not forgetting the liberal economists--unbounded worshippers\nof the ideal, as we know--are much offended when told that man, with\nhis magnificent intelligence, his sublime ideas, and his boundless\naspirations, is, like all else existing in the world, nothing but\nmatter, only a product of _vile matter_.\n\nWe may answer that the matter of which materialists speak, matter\nspontaneously and eternally mobile, active, productive, matter\nchemically or organically determined and manifested by the properties or\nforces, mechanical, physical, animal, and intelligent, which necessarily\nbelong to it--that this matter has nothing in common with the _vile\nmatter_ of the idealists. The latter, a product of their false\nabstraction, is indeed a stupid, inanimate, immobile thing, incapable\nof giving birth to the smallest product, a _caput mortuum_, an _ugly_\nfancy in contrast to the _beautiful_ fancy which they call _God_; as the\nopposite of this supreme being, matter, their matter, stripped by them\nof all that constitutes its real nature, necessarily represents supreme\nnothingness. They have taken away from matter intelligence, life, all\nits determining qualities, active relations or forces, motion itself,\nwithout which matter would not even have weight, leaving it nothing but\nimpenetrability and absolute immobility in space; they have attributed\nall these natural forces, properties, and manifestations to the\nimaginary being created by their abstract fancy; then, interchanging\n_roles_, they have called this product of their imagination, this\nphantom, this God who is nothing, \"supreme Being,\" and, as a necessary\nconsequence, have declared that the real being, matter, the world, is\nnothing. After which they gravely tell us that this matter is incapable\nof producing anything, not even of setting itself in motion, and\nconsequently must have been created by their God.\n\nAt the end of this book I exposed the fallacies and truly revolting\nabsurdities to which one is inevitably led by this imagination of a God,\nlet him be considered as a personal being, the creator and organizer of\nworlds; or even as impersonal, a kind of divine soul spread over the\nwhole universe and constituting thus its eternal principle; or let him\nbe an idea, infinite and divine, always present and active in the world,\nand always manifested by the totality of material and definite beings.\nHere I shall deal with one point only.\n\nThe gradual development of the material world, as well as of organic\nanimal life and of the historically progressive intelligence of man,\nindividually or socially, is perfectly conceivable. It is a wholly\nnatural movement from the simple to the complex, from the lower to the\nhigher, from the inferior to the superior; a movement in conformity with\nall our daily experiences, and consequently in conformity also with our\nnatural logic, with the distinctive laws of our mind, which being formed\nand developed only by the aid of these same experiences, is, so to\nspeak, but the mental, cerebral reproduction or reflected summary\nthereof.\n\nThe system of the idealists is quite the contrary of this. It is the\nreversal of all human experiences and of that universal and common good\nsense which is the essential condition of all human understanding, and\nwhich, in rising from the simple and unanimously recognized truth\nthat twice two are four to the sublimest and most complex scientific\nconsiderations--admitting, moreover, nothing that has not stood the\nseverest tests of experience or observation of things and facts--becomes\nthe only serious basis of human knowledge.\n\nVery far from pursuing the natural order from the lower to the higher,\nfrom the inferior to the superior, and from the relatively simple to\nthe more complex; instead of wisely and rationally accompanying the\nprogressive and real movement from the world called inorganic to the\nworld organic, vegetables, animal, and then distinctively human--from\nchemical matter or chemical being to living matter or living being, and\nfrom living being to thinking being--the idealists, obsessed, blinded,\nand pushed on by the divine phantom which they have inherited from\ntheology, take precisely the opposite course. They go from the higher to\nthe lower, from the superior to the inferior, from the complex to the\nsimple. They begin with God, either as a person or as divine substance\nor idea, and the first step that they take is a terrible fall from the\nsublime heights of the eternal ideal into the mire of the material\nworld; from absolute perfection into absolute imperfection; from thought\nto being, or rather, from supreme being to nothing. When, how, and why\nthe divine being, eternal, infinite, absolutely perfect, probably weary\nof himself, decided upon this desperate _salto mortale_ is something\nwhich no idealist, no theologian, no metaphysician, no poet, has\never been able to understand himself or explain to the profane. All\nreligions, past and present, and all the systems of transcendental\nphilosophy hinge on this unique and iniquitous mystery.[1] Holy men,\ninspired lawgivers, prophets, messiahs, have searched it for life, and\nfound only torment and death. Like the ancient sphinx, it has devoured\nthem, because they could not explain it. Great philosophers, from\nHeraclitus and Plato down to Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz, Kant, Fichte,\nSchelling, and Hegel, not to mention the Indian philosophers, have\nwritten heaps of volumes and built systems as ingenious as sublime, in\nwhich they have said by the way many beautiful and grand things and\ndiscovered immortal truths, but they have left this mystery, the\nprincipal object of their transcendental investigations, as unfathomable\nas before. The gigantic efforts of the most wonderful geniuses that the\nworld has known, and who, one after another, for at least thirty\ncenturies, have undertaken anew this labor of Sisyphus, have resulted\nonly in rendering this mystery still more incomprehensible. Is it to be\nhoped that it will be unveiled to us by the routine speculations of some\npedantic disciple of an artificially warmed-over metaphysics at a time\nwhen all living and serious spirits have abandoned that ambiguous\nscience born of a compromise--historically explicable no doubt--between\nthe unreason of faith and sound scientific reason?\n\nIt is evident that this terrible mystery is inexplicable--that is,\nabsurd, because only the absurd admits of no explanation. It is evident\nthat whoever finds it essential to his happiness and life must renounce\nhis reason, and return, if he can, to naive, blind, stupid faith, to\nrepeat with Tertullianus and all sincere believers these words, which\nsum up the very quintessence of theology: _Credo quia absurdum_. Then\nall discussion ceases, and nothing remains but the triumphant stupidity\nof faith. But immediately there arises another question: _How comes an\nintelligent and well-informed man ever to feel the need of believing in\nthis mystery?_\n\nNothing is more natural than that the belief in God, the creator,\nregulator, judge, master, curser, savior, and benefactor of the\nworld, should still prevail among the people, especially in the rural\ndistricts, where it is more widespread than among the proletariat of the\ncities. The people, unfortunately, are still very ignorant, and are kept\nin ignorance by the systematic efforts of all the governments, who\nconsider this ignorance, not without good reason, as one of the\nessential conditions of their own power. Weighted down by their daily\nlabor, deprived of leisure, of intellectual intercourse, of reading, in\nshort of all the means and a good portion of the stimulants that develop\nthought in men, the people generally accept religious traditions without\ncriticism and in a lump. These traditions surround them from infancy in\nall the situations of life, and artificially sustained in their minds by\na multitude of official poisoners of all sorts, priests and laymen, are\ntransformed therein into a sort of mental and moral habit, too often\nmore powerful even than their natural good sense.\n\nThere is another reason which explains and in some sort justifies the\nabsurd beliefs of the people--namely, the wretched situation to which\nthey find themselves fatally condemned by the economic organization\nof society in the most civilized countries of Europe. Reduced,\nintellectually and morally as well as materially, to the minimum of\nhuman existence, confined in their life like a prisoner in his prison,\nwithout horizon, without outlet, without even a future if we believe\nthe economists, the people would have the singularly narrow souls and\nblunted instincts of the bourgeois if they did not feel a desire to\nescape; but of escape there are but three methods--two chimerical and a\nthird real. The first two are the dram-shop and the church, debauchery\nof the body or debauchery of the mind; the third is social revolution.\nHence I conclude this last will be much more potent than all the\ntheological propagandism of the freethinkers to destroy to their last\nvestige the religious beliefs and dissolute habits of the people,\nbeliefs and habits much more intimately connected than is generally\nsupposed. In substituting for the at once illusory and brutal enjoyments\nof bodily and spiritual licentiousness the enjoyments, as refined as\nthey are real, of humanity developed in each and all, the social\nrevolution alone will have the power to close at the same time all the\ndram-shops and all the churches.\n\nTill then the people, taken as a whole, will believe; and, if they have\nno reason to believe, they will have at least a right.\n\nThere is a class of people who, if they do not believe, must at\nleast make a semblance of believing. This class, comprising all the\ntormentors, all the oppressors, and all the exploiters of humanity;\npriests, monarchs, statesmen, soldiers, public and private financiers,\nofficials of all sorts, policemen, gendarmes, jailers and executioners,\nmonopolists, capitalists, tax-leeches, contractors and landlords,\nlawyers, economists, politicians of all shades, down to the smallest\nvendor of sweetmeats, all will repeat in unison those words of Voltaire:\n\n\"If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.\" For, you\nunderstand, \"the people must have a religion.\" That is the safety-valve.\n\nThere exists, finally, a somewhat numerous class of honest but timid\nsouls who, too intelligent to take the Christian dogmas seriously,\nreject them in detail, but have neither the courage nor the strength nor\nthe necessary resolution to summarily renounce them altogether. They\nabandon to your criticism all the special absurdities of religion, they\nturn up their noses at all the miracles, but they cling desperately to\nthe principal absurdity; the source of all the others, to the miracle\nthat explains and justifies all the other miracles, the existence of\nGod. Their God is not the vigorous and powerful being, the brutally\npositive God of theology. It is a nebulous, diaphanous, illusory being\nthat vanishes into nothing at the first attempt to grasp it; it is a\nmirage, an _ignis fatuus_ that neither warms nor illuminates. And yet\nthey hold fast to it, and believe that, were it to disappear, all would\ndisappear with it. They are uncertain, sickly souls, who have lost their\nreckoning in the present civilization, belonging to neither the present\nnor the future, pale phantoms eternally suspended between heaven and\nearth, and occupying exactly the same position between the politics of\nthe bourgeois and the Socialism of the proletariat. They have neither\nthe power nor the wish nor the determination to follow out their\nthought, and they waste their time and pains in constantly endeavoring\nto reconcile the irreconcilable. In public life these are known as\nbourgeois Socialists.\n\nWith them, or against them, discussion is out of the question. They are\ntoo puny.\n\nBut there are a few illustrious men of whom no one will dare to speak\nwithout respect, and whose vigorous health, strength of mind, and good\nintention no one will dream of calling in question. I need only cite the\nnames of Mazzini, Michelet, Quinet, John Stuart Mill.[2] Generous and\nstrong souls, great hearts, great minds, great writers, and the first\nthe heroic and revolutionary regenerator of a great nation, they are\nall apostles of idealism and bitter despisers and adversaries of\nmaterialism, and consequently of Socialism also, in philosophy as well\nas in politics.\n\nAgainst them, then, we must discuss this question.\n\nFirst, let it be remarked that not one of the illustrious men I have\njust named nor any other idealistic thinker of any consequence in our\nday has given any attention to the logical side of this question\nproperly speaking. Not one has tried to settle philosophically the\npossibility of the divine _salto mortale_ from the pure and eternal\nregions of spirit into the mire of the material world. Have they feared\nto approach this irreconcilable contradiction and despaired of solving\nit after the failures of the greatest geniuses of history, or have\nthey looked upon it as already sufficiently well settled? That is\ntheir secret. The fact is that they have neglected the theoretical\ndemonstration of the existence of a God, and have developed only its\npractical motives and consequences. They have treated it as a fact\nuniversally accepted, and, as such, no longer susceptible of any\ndoubt whatever, for sole proof thereof limiting themselves to the\nestablishment of the antiquity and this very universality of the\nbelief in God.\n\nThis imposing unanimity, in the eyes of many illustrious men and writers\nto quote only the most famous of them who eloquently expressed it,\nJoseph de Maistre and the great Italian patriot, Giuseppe Mazzini--is of\nmore value than all the demonstrations of science; and if the reasoning\nof a small number of logical and even very powerful, but isolated,\nthinkers is against it, so much the worse, they say, for these thinkers\nand their logic, for universal consent, the general and primitive\nadoption of an idea, has always been considered the most triumphant\ntestimony to its truth. The sentiment of the whole world, a conviction\nthat is found and maintained always and everywhere, cannot be mistaken;\nit must have its root in a necessity absolutely inherent in the very\nnature of man. And since it has been established that all peoples, past\nand present, have believed and still believe in the existence of God, it\nis clear that those who have the misfortune to doubt it, whatever the\nlogic that led them to this doubt, are abnormal exceptions, monsters.\n\nThus, then, the _antiquity_ and _universality_ of a belief should be\nregarded, contrary to all science and all logic, as sufficient and\nunimpeachable proof of its truth. Why?\n\nUntil the days of Copernicus and Galileo everybody believed that the sun\nrevolved about the earth. Was not everybody mistaken? What is more\nancient and more universal than slavery? Cannibalism perhaps. From the\norigin of historic society down to the present day there has been\nalways and everywhere exploitation of the compulsory labor of the\nmasses--slaves, serfs, or wage-workers--by some dominant minority;\noppression of the people by the Church and by the State. Must it be\nconcluded that this exploitation and this oppression are necessities\nabsolutely inherent in the very existence of human society? These are\nexamples which show that the argument of the champions of God proves\nnothing.\n\nNothing, in fact, is as universal or as ancient as the iniquitous and\nabsurd; truth and justice, on the contrary, are the least universal, the\nyoungest features in the development of human society. In this fact,\ntoo, lies the explanation of a constant historical phenomenon--namely,\nthe persecution of which those who first proclaim the truth have been\nand continue to be the objects at the hands of the official, privileged,\nand interested representatives of \"universal\" and \"ancient\" beliefs, and\noften also at the hands of the same masses who, after having tortured\nthem, always end by adopting their ideas and rendering them victorious.\n\nTo us materialists and Revolutionary Socialists, there is nothing\nastonishing or terrifying in this historical phenomenon. Strong in our\nconscience, in our love of truth at all hazards, in that passion for\nlogic which of itself alone constitutes a great power and outside of\nwhich there is no thought; strong in our passion for justice and in our\nunshakable faith in the triumph of humanity over all theoretical and\npractical bestialities; strong, finally, in the mutual confidence and\nsupport given each other by the few who share our convictions--we resign\nourselves to all the consequences of this historical phenomenon, in\nwhich we see the manifestation of a social law as natural, as necessary,\nand as invariable as all the other laws which govern the world.\n\nThis law is a logical, inevitable consequence of the _animal origin_\nof human society; for in face of all the scientific, physiological,\npsychological, and historical proofs accumulated at the present day, as\nwell as in face of the exploits of the Germans conquering France, which\nnow furnish so striking a demonstration thereof, it is no longer\npossible to really doubt this origin. But from the moment that this\nanimal origin of man is accepted, all is explained. History then appears\nto us as the revolutionary negation, now slow, apathetic, sluggish,\nnow passionate and powerful, of the past. It consists precisely in\nthe progressive negation of the primitive animality of man by the\ndevelopment of his humanity. Man, a wild beast, cousin of the gorilla,\nhas emerged from the profound darkness of animal instinct into the light\nof the mind, which explains in a wholly natural way all his past\nmistakes and partially consoles us for his present errors. He has gone\nout from animal slavery, and passing through divine slavery, a temporary\ncondition between his animality and his humanity, he is now marching on\nto the conquest and realization of human liberty. Whence it results that\nthe antiquity of a belief, of an idea, far from proving anything in its\nfavor, ought, on the contrary, to lead us to suspect it. For behind us\nis our animality and before us our humanity; human light, the only thing\nthat can warm and enlighten us, the only thing that can emancipate us,\ngive us dignity, freedom, and happiness, and realize fraternity among\nus, is never at the beginning, but, relatively to the epoch in which we\nlive, always at the end of history. Let us, then, never look back,\nlet us look ever forward; for forward is our sunlight, forward our\nsalvation. If it is justifiable, and even useful and necessary, to turn\nback to study our past, it is only in order to establish what we have\nbeen and what we must no longer be, what we have believed and thought\nand what we must no longer believe or think, what we have done and what\nwe must do nevermore.\n\nSo much for _antiquity_. As for the _universality_ of an error, it\nproves but one thing--the similarity, if not the perfect identity,\nof human nature in all ages and under all skies. And, since it is\nestablished that all peoples, at all periods of their life, have\nbelieved and still believe in God, we must simply conclude that the\ndivine idea, an outcome of ourselves, is an error historically necessary\nin the development of humanity, and ask why and how it was produced in\nhistory and why an immense majority of the human race still accept it\nas a truth.\n\nUntil we shall account to ourselves for the manner in which the idea of\na supernatural or divine world was developed and had to be developed in\nthe historical evolution of the human conscience, all our scientific\nconviction of its absurdity will be in vain; until then we shall never\nsucceed in destroying it in the opinion of the majority, because we\nshall never be able to attack it in the very depths of the human being\nwhere it had birth. Condemned to a fruitless struggle, without issue and\nwithout end, we should for ever have to content ourselves with fighting\nit solely on the surface, in its innumerable manifestations, whose\nabsurdity will be scarcely beaten down by the blows of common sense\nbefore it will reappear in a new form no less nonsensical. While the\nroot of all the absurdities that torment the world, belief in God,\nremains intact, it will never fail to bring forth new offspring. Thus,\nat the present time, in certain sections of the highest society,\nSpiritualism tends to establish itself upon the ruins of Christianity.\n\nIt is not only in the interest of the masses, it is in that of the\nhealth of our own minds, that we should strive to understand the\nhistoric genesis, the succession of causes which developed and produced\nthe idea of God in the consciousness of men. In vain shall we call and\nbelieve ourselves Atheists, until we comprehend these causes, for, until\nthen, we shall always suffer ourselves to be more or less governed by\nthe clamors of this universal conscience whose secret we have not\ndiscovered; and, considering the natural weakness of even the strongest\nindividual against the all-powerful influence of the social surroundings\nthat trammel him, we are always in danger of relapsing sooner or later,\nin one way or another, into the abyss of religious absurdity. Examples\nof these shameful conversions are frequent in society to-day.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nI have stated the chief practical reason of the power still exercised\nto-day over the masses by religious beliefs. These mystical tendencies\ndo not signify in man so much an aberration of mind as a deep discontent\nat heart. They are the instinctive and passionate protest of the human\nbeing against the narrowness, the platitudes, the sorrows, and the shame\nof a wretched existence. For this malady, I have already said, there is\nbut one remedy--Social Revolution.\n\nIn the meantime I have endeavored to show the causes responsible for the\nbirth and historical development of religious hallucinations in the\nhuman conscience. Here it is my purpose to treat this question of the\nexistence of a God, or of the divine origin of the world and of man,\nsolely from the standpoint of its moral and social utility, and I shall\nsay only a few words, to better explain my thought, regarding the\ntheoretical grounds of this belief.\n\nAll religions, with their gods, their demigods, and their prophets,\ntheir messiahs and their saints, were created by the credulous fancy of\nmen who had not attained the full development and full possession of\ntheir faculties. Consequently, the religious heaven is nothing but a\nmirage in which man, exalted by ignorance and faith, discovers his own\nimage, but enlarged and reversed--that is, _divinized_. The history of\nreligions, of the birth, grandeur, and decline of the gods who have\nsucceeded one another in human belief, is nothing, therefore, but the\ndevelopment of the collective intelligence and conscience of mankind. As\nfast as they discovered, in the course of their historically progressive\nadvance, either in themselves or in external nature, a power, a quality,\nor even any great defect whatever, they attributed them to their gods,\nafter having exaggerated and enlarged them beyond measure, after the\nmanner of children, by an act of their religious fancy. Thanks to this\nmodesty and pious generosity of believing and credulous men, heaven\nhas grown rich with the spoils of the earth, and, by a necessary\nconsequence, the richer heaven became, the more wretched became humanity\nand the earth. God once installed, he was naturally proclaimed the\ncause, reason, arbiter, and absolute disposer of all things: the world\nthenceforth was nothing, God was all; and man, his real creator, after\nhaving unknowingly extracted him from the void, bowed down before him,\nworshipped him, and avowed himself his creature and his slave.\n\nChristianity is precisely the religion _par excellence_, because it\nexhibits and manifests, to the fullest extent, the very nature and\nessence of every religious system, which is _the impoverishment,\nenslavement, and annihilation of humanity for the benefit of divinity_.\n\nGod being everything, the real world and man are nothing. God being\ntruth, justice, goodness, beauty, power, and life, man is falsehood,\niniquity, evil, ugliness, impotence, and death. God being master, man is\nthe slave. Incapable of finding justice, truth, and eternal life by his\nown effort, he can attain them only through a divine revelation. But\nwhoever says revelation says revealers, messiahs, prophets, priests,\nand legislators inspired by God himself; and these, once recognized as\nthe representatives of divinity on earth, as the holy instructors of\nhumanity, chosen by God himself to direct it in the path of salvation,\nnecessarily exercise absolute power. All men owe them passive and\nunlimited obedience; for against the divine reason there is no human\nreason, and against the justice of God no terrestrial justice holds.\nSlaves of God, men must also be slaves of Church and State, _in so far\nas the State is consecrated by the Church_. This truth Christianity,\nbetter than all other religions that exist or have existed, understood,\nnot excepting even the old Oriental religions, which included only\ndistinct and privileged nations, while Christianity aspires to embrace\nentire humanity; and this truth Roman Catholicism, alone among all the\nChristian sects, has proclaimed and realized with rigorous logic. That\nis why Christianity is the absolute religion, the final religion; why\nthe Apostolic and Roman Church is the only consistent, legitimate, and\ndivine church.\n\nWith all due respect, then, to the metaphysicians and religious\nidealists, philosophers, politicians, or poets: _The idea of God implies\nthe abdication of human reason and justice; it is the most decisive\nnegation of human liberty, and necessarily ends in the enslavement of\nmankind, both in theory and practice._\n\nUnless, then, we desire the enslavement and degradation of mankind,\nas the Jesuits desire it, as the _momiers_, pietists, or Protestant\nMethodists desire it, we may not, must not make the slightest concession\neither to the God of theology or to the God of metaphysics. He who, in\nthis mystical alphabet, begins with A will inevitably end with Z; he who\ndesires to worship God must harbor no childish allusions about the\nmatter, but bravely renounce his liberty and humanity.\n\nIf God is, man is a slave; now, man can and must be free; then, God does\nnot exist.\n\nI defy anyone whomsoever to avoid this circle; now, therefore, let all\nchoose.\n\nIs it necessary to point out to what extent and in what manner religions\ndebase and corrupt the people? They destroy their reason, the principal\ninstrument of human emancipation, and reduce them to imbecility, the\nessential condition of their slavery. They dishonor human labor, and\nmake it a sign and source of servitude. They kill the idea and sentiment\nof human justice, ever tipping the balance to the side of triumphant\nknaves, privileged objects of divine indulgence. They kill human pride\nand dignity, protecting only the cringing and humble. They stifle in the\nheart of nations every feeling of human fraternity, filling it with\ndivine cruelty instead.\n\nAll religions are cruel, all founded on blood; for all rest principally\non the idea of sacrifice--that is, on the perpetual immolation of\nhumanity to the insatiable vengeance of divinity. In this bloody\nmystery man is always the victim, and the priest--a man also, but a man\nprivileged by grace--is the divine executioner. That explains why the\npriests of all religions, the best, the most humane, the gentlest,\nalmost always have at the bottom of their hearts--and, if not in their\nhearts, in their imaginations, in their minds (and we know the fearful\ninfluence of either on the hearts of men)--something cruel and\nsanguinary.\n\nNone know all this better than our illustrious contemporary idealists.\nThey are learned men, who know history by heart; and, as they are at the\nsame time living men, great souls penetrated with a sincere and profound\nlove for the welfare of humanity, they have cursed and branded all these\nmisdeeds, all these crimes of religion with an eloquence unparalleled.\nThey reject with indignation all solidarity with the God of positive\nreligions and with his representatives, past, present, and on earth.\n\nThe God whom they adore, or whom they think they adore, is distinguished\nfrom the real gods of history precisely in this--that he is not at all\na positive god, defined in any way whatever, theologically or even\nmetaphysically. He is neither the supreme being of Robespierre and J. J.\nRousseau, nor the pantheistic god of Spinoza, nor even the at once\nimmanent, transcendental, and very equivocal god of Hegel. They take\ngood care not to give him any positive definition whatever, feeling very\nstrongly that any definition would subject him to the dissolving power\nof criticism. They will not say whether he is a personal or impersonal\ngod, whether he created or did not create the world; they will not even\nspeak of his divine providence. All that might compromise him. They\ncontent themselves with saying \"God\" and nothing more. But, then, what\nis their God? Not even an idea; it is an aspiration.\n\nIt is the generic name of all that seems grand, good, beautiful, noble,\nhuman to them. But why, then, do they not say, \"Man.\" Ah! because King\nWilliam of Prussia and Napoleon III. and all their compeers are likewise\nmen: which bothers them very much. Real humanity presents a mixture of\nall that is most sublime and beautiful with all that is vilest and most\nmonstrous in the world. How do they get over this? Why, they call one\n_divine_ and the other _bestial_, representing divinity and animality as\ntwo poles, between which they place humanity. They either will not or\ncannot understand that these three terms are really but one, and that to\nseparate them is to destroy them.\n\nThey are not strong on logic, and one might say that they despise it.\nThat is what distinguishes them from the pantheistical and deistical\nmetaphysicians, and gives their ideas the character of a practical\nidealism, drawing its inspiration much less from the severe development\nof a thought than from the experiences, I might almost say the emotions,\nhistorical and collective as well as individual, of life. This gives\ntheir propaganda an appearance of wealth and vital power, but an\nappearance only; for life itself becomes sterile when paralyzed by a\nlogical contradiction.\n\nThis contradiction lies here: they wish God, and they wish humanity.\nThey persist in connecting two terms which, once separated, can come\ntogether again only to destroy each other. They say in a single breath:\n\"God and the liberty of man,\" \"God and the dignity, justice, equality,\nfraternity, prosperity of men\"--regardless of the fatal logic by\nvirtue of which, if God exists, all these things are condemned to\nnon-existence. For, if God is, he is necessarily the eternal, supreme,\nabsolute master, and, if such a master exists, man is a slave; now, if\nhe is a slave, neither justice, nor equality, nor fraternity, nor\nprosperity are possible for him. In vain, flying in the face of good\nsense and all the teachings of history, do they represent their God as\nanimated by the tenderest love of human liberty: a master, whoever he\nmay be and however liberal he may desire to show himself, remains none\nthe less always a master. His existence necessarily implies the slavery\nof all that is beneath him. Therefore, if God existed, only in one way\ncould he serve human liberty--by ceasing to exist.\n\nA jealous lover of human liberty, and deeming it the absolute condition\nof all that we admire and respect in humanity, I reverse the phrase of\nVoltaire, and say that, _if God really existed, it would be necessary to\nabolish him_.\n\nThe severe logic that dictates these words is far too evident to require\na development of this argument. And it seems to me impossible that the\nillustrious men, whose names so celebrated and so justly respected I\nhave cited, should not have been struck by it themselves, and should not\nhave perceived the contradiction in which they involve themselves in\nspeaking of God and human liberty at once. To have disregarded it, they\nmust have considered this inconsistency or logical license _practically_\nnecessary to humanity's well-being.\n\nPerhaps, too, while speaking of _liberty_ as something very respectable\nand very dear in their eyes, they give the term a meaning quite\ndifferent from the conception entertained by us, materialists and\nRevolutionary Socialists. Indeed, they never speak of it without\nimmediately adding another word, _authority_--a word and a thing which\nwe detest with all our heart.\n\nWhat is authority? Is it the inevitable power of the natural laws which\nmanifest themselves in the necessary concatenation and succession of\nphenomena in the physical and social worlds? Indeed, against these\nlaws revolt is not only forbidden--it is even impossible. We may\nmisunderstand them or not know them at all, but we cannot disobey them;\nbecause they constitute the basis and fundamental conditions of our\nexistence; they envelop us, penetrate us, regulate all our movements,\nthoughts, and acts; even when we believe that we disobey them, we only\nshow their omnipotence.\n\nYes, we are absolutely the slaves of these laws. But in such slavery\nthere is no humiliation, or, rather, it is not slavery at all. For\nslavery supposes an external master, a legislator outside of him whom he\ncommands, while these laws are not outside of us; they are inherent\nin us; they constitute our being, our whole being, physically,\nintellectually, and morally: we live, we breathe, we act, we think, we\nwish only through these laws. Without them we are nothing, _we are not_.\nWhence, then, could we derive the power and the wish to rebel against\nthem?\n\nIn his relation to natural laws but one liberty is possible to man--that\nof recognizing and applying them on an ever-extending scale in\nconformity with the object of collective and individual emancipation or\nhumanization which he pursues. These laws, once recognized, exercise an\nauthority which is never disputed by the mass of men. One must, for\ninstance, be at bottom either a fool or a theologian or at least a\nmetaphysician, jurist, or bourgeois economist to rebel against the law\nby which twice two make four. One must have faith to imagine that fire\nwill not burn nor water drown, except, indeed, recourse be had to some\nsubterfuge founded in its turn on some other natural law. But these\nrevolts, or, rather, these attempts at or foolish fancies of an\nimpossible revolt, are decidedly the exception; for, in general, it may\nbe said that the mass of men, in their daily lives, acknowledge the\ngovernment of common sense--that is, of the sum of the natural laws\ngenerally recognized--in an almost absolute fashion.\n\nThe great misfortune is that a large number of natural laws, already\nestablished as such by science, remain unknown to the masses, thanks to\nthe watchfulness of these tutelary governments that exist, as we know,\nonly for the good of the people. There is another difficulty--namely,\nthat the major portion of the natural laws connected with the\ndevelopment of human society, which are quite as necessary, invariable,\nfatal, as the laws that govern the physical world, have not been duly\nestablished and recognized by science itself.\n\nOnce they shall have been recognized by science, and then from science,\nby means of an extensive system of popular education and instruction,\nshall have passed into the consciousness of all, the question of\nliberty will be entirely solved. The most stubborn authorities must\nadmit that then there will be no need either of political organization\nor direction or legislation, three things which, whether they emanate\nfrom the will of the sovereign or from the vote of a parliament elected\nby universal suffrage, and even should they conform to the system of\nnatural laws--which has never been the case and never will be the\ncase--are always equally fatal and hostile to the liberty of the masses\nfrom the very fact that they impose upon them a system of external and\ntherefore despotic laws.\n\nThe liberty of man consists solely in this: that he obeys natural laws\nbecause he has _himself_ recognized them as such, and not because they\nhave been externally imposed upon him by any extrinsic will whatever,\ndivine or human, collective or individual.\n\nSuppose a learned academy, composed of the most illustrious\nrepresentatives of science; suppose this academy charged with\nlegislation for and the organization of society, and that, inspired only\nby the purest love of truth, it frames none but laws in absolute harmony\nwith the latest discoveries of science. Well, I maintain, for my part,\nthat such legislation and such organization would be a monstrosity,\nand that for two reasons: first, that human science is always and\nnecessarily imperfect, and that, comparing what it has discovered with\nwhat remains to be discovered, we may say that it is still in its\ncradle. So that were we to try to force the practical life of men,\ncollective as well as individual, into strict and exclusive conformity\nwith the latest data of science, we should condemn society as well as\nindividuals to suffer martyrdom on a bed of Procrustes, which would soon\nend by dislocating and stifling them, life ever remaining an infinitely\ngreater thing than science.\n\nThe second reason is this: a society which should obey legislation\nemanating from a scientific academy, not because it understood itself\nthe rational character of this legislation (in which case the existence\nof the academy would become useless), but because this legislation,\nemanating from the academy, was imposed in the name of a science which\nit venerated without comprehending--such a society would be a society,\nnot of men, but of brutes. It would be a second edition of those\nmissions in Paraguay which submitted so long to the government of the\nJesuits. It would surely and rapidly descend to the lowest stage of\nidiocy.\n\nBut there is still a third reason which would render such a government\nimpossible--namely that a scientific academy invested with a\nsovereignty, so to speak, absolute, even if it were composed of the most\nillustrious men, would infallibly and soon end in its own moral and\nintellectual corruption. Even to-day, with the few privileges allowed\nthem, such is the history of all academies. The greatest scientific\ngenius, from the moment that he becomes an academician, an officially\nlicensed _savant_, inevitably lapses into sluggishness. He loses his\nspontaneity, his revolutionary hardihood, and that troublesome and\nsavage energy characteristic of the grandest geniuses, ever called\nto destroy old tottering worlds and lay the foundations of new. He\nundoubtedly gains in politeness, in utilitarian and practical wisdom,\nwhat he loses in power of thought. In a word, he becomes corrupted.\n\nIt is the characteristic of privilege and of every privileged position\nto kill the mind and heart of men. The privileged man, whether\npolitically or economically, is a man depraved in mind and heart. That\nis a social law which admits of no exception, and is as applicable to\nentire nations as to classes, corporations, and individuals. It is the\nlaw of equality, the supreme condition of liberty and humanity. The\nprincipal object of this treatise is precisely to demonstrate this truth\nin all the manifestations of human life.\n\nA scientific body to which had been confided the government of society\nwould soon end by devoting itself no longer to science at all, but to\nquite another affair; and that affair, as in the case of all established\npowers, would be its own eternal perpetuation by rendering the society\nconfided to its care ever more stupid and consequently more in need of\nits government and direction.\n\nBut that which is true of scientific academies is also true of all\nconstituent and legislative assemblies, even those chosen by universal\nsuffrage. In the latter case they may renew their composition, it is\ntrue, but this does not prevent the formation in a few years' time of a\nbody of politicians, privileged in fact though not in law, who, devoting\nthemselves exclusively to the direction of the public affairs of a\ncountry, finally form a sort of political aristocracy or oligarchy.\nWitness the United States of America and Switzerland.\n\nConsequently, no external legislation and no authority--one, for that\nmatter, being inseparable from the other, and both tending to the\nservitude of society and the degradation of the legislators themselves.\n\nDoes it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought.\nIn the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker;\nconcerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect\nor engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such\na _savant_. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the\n_savant_ to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and\nwith all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character,\ntheir knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism\nand censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority\nin any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions,\nand choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognize no\ninfallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever\nrespect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an\nindividual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would\nbe fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my\nundertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an\ninstrument of the will and interests of others.\n\nIf I bow before the authority of the specialists and avow my readiness\nto follow, to a certain extent and as long as may seem to me necessary,\ntheir indications and even their directions, it is because their\nauthority is imposed upon me by no one, neither by men nor by God.\nOtherwise I would repel them with horror, and bid the devil take their\ncounsels, their directions, and their services, certain that they would\nmake me pay, by the loss of my liberty and self-respect, for such scraps\nof truth, wrapped in a multitude of lies, as they might give me.\n\nI bow before the authority of special men because it is imposed upon\nme by my own reason. I am conscious of my inability to grasp, in all\nits details and positive developments, any very large portion of\nhuman knowledge. The greatest intelligence would not be equal to a\ncomprehension of the whole. Thence results, for science as well as for\nindustry, the necessity of the division and association of labor. I\nreceive and I give--such is human life. Each directs and is directed\nin his turn. Therefore there is no fixed and constant authority, but\na continual exchange of mutual, temporary, and, above all, voluntary\nauthority and subordination.\n\nThis same reason forbids me, then, to recognize a fixed, constant, and\nuniversal authority, because there is no universal man, no man capable\nof grasping in that wealth of detail, without which the application of\nscience to life is impossible, all the sciences, all the branches of\nsocial life. And if such universality could ever be realized in a single\nman, and if he wished to take advantage thereof to impose his authority\nupon us, it would be necessary to drive this man out of society, because\nhis authority would inevitably reduce all the others to slavery and\nimbecility. I do not think that society ought to maltreat men of genius\nas it has done hitherto; but neither do I think it should indulge them\ntoo far, still less accord them any privileges or exclusive rights\nwhatsoever; and that for three reasons: first, because it would often\nmistake a charlatan for a man of genius; second, because, through such\na system of privileges, it might transform into a charlatan even a real\nman of genius, demoralize him, and degrade him; and, finally, because\nit would establish a master over itself.\n\nTo sum up. We recognize, then, the absolute authority of science,\nbecause the sole object of science is the mental reproduction, as\nwell-considered and systematic as possible, of the natural laws inherent\nin the material, intellectual, and moral life of both the physical and\nthe social worlds, these two worlds constituting, in fact, but one and\nthe same natural world. Outside of this only legitimate authority,\nlegitimate because rational and in harmony with human liberty, we\ndeclare all other authorities false, arbitrary and fatal.\n\nWe recognize the absolute authority of science, but we reject the\ninfallibility and universality of the _savant_. In our church--if I may\nbe permitted to use for a moment an expression which I so detest: Church\nand State are my two _betes noires_--in our church, as in the Protestant\nchurch, we have a chief, an invisible Christ, science; and, like the\nProtestants, more logical even than the Protestants, we will suffer\nneither pope, nor council, nor conclaves of infallible cardinals, nor\nbishops, nor even priests. Our Christ differs from the Protestant and\nChristian Christ in this--that the latter is a personal being, ours\nimpersonal; the Christian Christ, already completed in an eternal past,\npresents himself as a perfect being, while the completion and perfection\nof our Christ, science, are ever in the future: which is equivalent to\nsaying that they will never be realized. Therefore, in recognizing\n_absolute science_ as the only absolute authority, we in no way\ncompromise our liberty.\n\nI mean by the words \"absolute science,\" the truly universal science\nwhich would reproduce ideally, to its fullest extent and in all its\ninfinite detail, the universe, the system or co-ordination of all the\nnatural laws manifested by the incessant development of the world. It is\nevident that such a science, the sublime object of all the efforts of\nthe human mind, will never be fully and absolutely realized. Our Christ,\nthen, will remain eternally unfinished, which must considerably take\ndown the pride of his licensed representatives among us. Against that\nGod the Son in whose name they assume to impose upon us their insolent\nand pedantic authority, we appeal to God the Father, who is the real\nworld, real life, of which he (the Son) is only a too imperfect\nexpression, whilst we real beings, living, working, struggling, loving,\naspiring, enjoying, and suffering, are its immediate representatives.\n\nBut, while rejecting the absolute, universal, and infallible authority\nof men of science, we willingly bow before the respectable, although\nrelative, quite temporary, and very restricted authority of the\nrepresentatives of special sciences, asking nothing better than to\nconsult them by turns, and very grateful for such precious information\nas they may extend to us, on condition of their willingness to receive\nfrom us on occasions when, and concerning matters about which, we are\nmore learned than they. In general, we ask nothing better than to see\nmen endowed with great knowledge, great experience, great minds, and,\nabove all, great hearts, exercise over us a natural and legitimate\ninfluence, freely accepted, and never imposed in the name of any\nofficial authority whatsoever, celestial or terrestrial. We accept all\nnatural authorities and all influences of fact, but none of right; for\nevery authority or every influence of right, officially imposed as such,\nbecoming directly an oppression and a falsehood, would inevitably impose\nupon us, as I believe I have sufficiently shown, slavery and absurdity.\n\nIn a word, we reject all legislation, all authority, and all privileged,\nlicensed, official, and legal influence, even though arising from\nuniversal suffrage, convinced that it can turn only to the advantage of\na dominant minority of exploiters against the interests of the immense\nmajority in subjection to them.\n\nThis is the sense in which we are really Anarchists.\n\nThe modern idealists understand authority in quite a different way.\nAlthough free from the traditional superstitions of all the existing\npositive religions, they nevertheless attach to this idea of authority\na divine, an absolute meaning. This authority is not that of a truth\nmiraculously revealed, nor that of a truth rigorously and scientifically\ndemonstrated. They base it to a slight extent upon quasi-philosophical\nreasoning, and to a large extent on vaguely religious faith, to a large\nextent also on sentiment, ideally, abstractly poetical. Their religion\nis, as it were, a last attempt to divinize all that constitutes humanity\nin men.\n\nThis is just the opposite of the work that we are doing. In behalf\nof human liberty, dignity, and prosperity, we believe it our duty to\nrecover from heaven the goods which it has stolen and return them to\nearth. They, on the contrary, endeavoring to commit a final religiously\nheroic larceny, would restore to heaven, that divine robber, finally\nunmasked, the grandest, finest, and noblest of humanity's possessions.\nIt is now the freethinkers' turn to pillage heaven by their audacious\nimpiety and scientific analysis.\n\nThe idealists undoubtedly believe that human ideas and deeds, in order\nto exercise greater authority among men, must be invested with a divine\nsanction. How is this sanction manifested? Not by a miracle, as in the\npositive religions, but by the very grandeur or sanctity of the ideas\nand deeds: whatever is grand, whatever is beautiful, whatever is noble,\nwhatever is just, is considered divine. In this new religious cult every\nman inspired by these ideas, by these deeds, becomes a priest, directly\nconsecrated by God himself. And the proof? He needs none beyond the\nvery grandeur of the ideas which he expresses and the deeds which he\nperforms. These are so holy that they can have been inspired only by\nGod.\n\nSuch, in few words, is their whole philosophy: a philosophy of\nsentiments, not of real thoughts, a sort of metaphysical pietism. This\nseems harmless, but it is not so at all, and the very precise, very\nnarrow, and very barren doctrine hidden under the intangible vagueness\nof these poetic forms leads to the same disastrous results that all the\npositive religions lead to--namely, the most complete negation of human\nliberty and dignity.\n\nTo proclaim as divine all that is grand, just, noble, and beautiful in\nhumanity is to tacitly admit that humanity of itself would have been\nunable to produce it--that is, that, abandoned to itself, its own nature\nis miserable, iniquitous, base, and ugly. Thus we come back to the\nessence of all religion--in other words, to the disparagement of\nhumanity for the greater glory of divinity. And from the moment that the\nnatural inferiority of man and his fundamental incapacity to rise by his\nown effort, unaided by any divine inspiration, to the comprehension of\njust and true ideas, are admitted, it becomes necessary to admit also\nall the theological, political, and social consequences of the positive\nreligions. From the moment that God, the perfect and supreme being, is\nposited face to face with humanity, divine mediators, the elect, the\ninspired of God spring from the earth to enlighten, direct, and govern\nin his name the human race.\n\nMay we not suppose that all men are equally inspired by God? Then,\nsurely, there is no further use for mediators. But this supposition is\nimpossible, because it is too clearly contradicted by the facts. It\nwould compel us to attribute to divine inspiration all the absurdities\nand errors which appear, and all the horrors, follies, base deeds, and\ncowardly actions which are committed, in the world. But perhaps, then,\nonly a few men are divinely inspired, the great men of history, the\n_virtuous geniuses_, as the illustrious Italian citizen and prophet,\nGiuseppe Mazzini, called them. Immediately inspired by God himself and\nsupported upon universal consent expressed by popular suffrage--_Dio e\nPopolo_--such as these should be called to the government of human\nsocieties.[3]\n\nBut here we are again fallen back under the yoke of Church and State.\nIt is true that in this new organization, indebted for its existence,\nlike all the old political organizations, to the _grace of God_, but\nsupported this time--at least so far as form is concerned, as a\nnecessary concession to the spirit of modern times, and just as in the\npreambles of the imperial decrees of Napoleon III.--on the (pretended)\n_will of the people_, the Church will no longer call itself Church; it\nwill call itself School. What matters it? On the benches of this School\nwill be seated not children only; there will be found the eternal minor,\nthe pupil confessedly forever incompetent to pass his examinations,\nrise to the knowledge of his teachers, and dispense with their\ndiscipline--the people.[4] The State will no longer call itself\nMonarchy; it will call itself Republic: but it will be none the less the\nState--that is, a tutelage officially and regularly established by a\nminority of competent men, _men of virtuous genius or talent_, who will\nwatch and guide the conduct of this great, incorrigible, and terrible\nchild, the people. The professors of the School and the functionaries of\nthe State will call themselves republicans; but they will be none the\nless tutors, shepherds, and the people will remain what they have been\nhitherto from all eternity, a flock. Beware of shearers, for where there\nis a flock there necessarily must be shepherds also to shear and devour\nit.\n\nThe people, in this system, will be the perpetual scholar and pupil. In\nspite of its sovereignty, wholly fictitious, it will continue to serve\nas the instrument of thoughts, wills, and consequently interests not its\nown. Between this situation and what we call liberty, the only real\nliberty, there is an abyss. It will be the old oppression and old\nslavery under new forms; and where there is slavery there is misery,\nbrutishness, real social _materialism_, among the privileged classes as\nwell as among the masses.\n\n_In deifying human things the idealists always end in the triumph of a\nbrutal materialism._ And this for a very simple reason: the divine\nevaporates and rises to its own country, heaven, while the brutal alone\nremains actually on earth.\n\nYes, the necessary consequence of theoretical idealism is practically\nthe most brutal materialism; not, undoubtedly, among those who sincerely\npreach it--the usual result as far as they are concerned being that they\nare constrained to see all their efforts struck with sterility--but\namong those who try to realize their precepts in life, and in all\nsociety so far as it allows itself to be dominated by idealistic\ndoctrines.\n\nTo demonstrate this general fact, which may appear strange at first,\nbut which explains itself naturally enough upon further reflection,\nhistorical proofs are not lacking.\n\nCompare the last two civilizations of the ancient world--the Greek\nand the Roman. Which is the most materialistic, the most natural,\nin its point of departure, and the most humanly ideal in its results?\nUndoubtedly the Greek civilization. Which on the contrary, is the most\nabstractly ideal in its point of departure--sacrificing the material\nliberty of the man to the ideal liberty of the citizen, represented by\nthe abstraction of judicial law, and the natural development of human\nsociety to the abstraction of the State--and which became nevertheless\nthe most brutal in its consequences? The Roman civilization, certainly.\nIt is true that the Greek civilization, like all the ancient\ncivilizations, including that of Rome, was exclusively national and\nbased on slavery. But, in spite of these two immense defects, the former\nnone the less conceived and realized the idea of humanity; it ennobled\nand really idealized the life of men; it transformed human herds into\nfree associations of free men; it created through liberty the sciences,\nthe arts, a poetry, an immortal philosophy, and the primary concepts\nof human respect. With political and social liberty, it created free\nthought. At the close of the Middle Ages, during the period of the\nRenaissance, the fact that some Greek emigrants brought a few of those\nimmortal books into Italy sufficed to resuscitate life, liberty,\nthought, humanity, buried in the dark dungeon of Catholicism. Human\nemancipation, that is the name of the Greek civilization. And the name\nof the Roman civilization? Conquest, with all its brutal consequences.\nAnd its last word? The omnipotence of the Caesars. Which means the\ndegradation and enslavement of nations and of men.\n\nTo-day even, what is it that kills, what is it that crushes brutally,\nmaterially, in all European countries, liberty and humanity? It is the\ntriumph of the Caesarian or Roman principle.\n\nCompare now two modern civilizations--the Italian and the German. The\nfirst undoubtedly represents, in its general character, materialism; the\nsecond, on the contrary, represents idealism in its most abstract, most\npure, and most transcendental form. Let us see what are the practical\nfruits of the one and the other.\n\nItaly has already rendered immense services to the cause of human\nemancipation. She was the first to resuscitate and widely apply the\nprinciple of liberty in Europe, and to restore to humanity its titles to\nnobility: industry, commerce, poetry, the arts, the positive sciences,\nand free thought. Crushed since by three centuries of imperial and papal\ndespotism, and dragged in the mud by her governing bourgeoisie, she\nreappears to-day, it is true, in a very degraded condition in comparison\nwith what she once was. And yet how much she differs from Germany! In\nItaly, in spite of this decline--temporary let us hope--one may live\nand breathe humanly, surrounded by a people which seems to be born for\nliberty. Italy, even bourgeois Italy, can point with pride to men like\nMazzini and Garibaldi. In Germany one breathes the atmosphere of an\nimmense political and social slavery, philosophically explained and\naccepted by a great people with deliberate resignation and free will.\nHer heroes--I speak always of present Germany, not of the Germany of the\nfuture; of aristocratic, bureaucratic, political and bourgeoise Germany,\nnot of the Germany of the _proletaires_--her heroes are quite the\nopposite of Mazzini and Garibaldi: they are William I., that ferocious\nand ingenuous representative of the Protestant God, Messrs. Bismarck\nand Moltke, Generals Manteuffel and Werder. In all her international\nrelations Germany, from the beginning of her existence, has been slowly,\nsystematically invading, conquering, ever ready to extend her own\nvoluntary enslavement into the territory of her neighbors; and, since\nher definitive establishment as a unitary power, she has become a\nmenace, a danger to the liberty of entire Europe. To-day Germany is\nservility brutal and triumphant.\n\nTo show how theoretical idealism incessantly and inevitably changes into\npractical materialism, one needs only to cite the example of all the\nChristian Churches, and, naturally, first of all, that of the Apostolic\nand Roman Church. What is there more sublime, in the ideal sense, more\ndisinterested, more separate from all the interests of this earth, than\nthe doctrine of Christ preached by that Church? And what is there more\nbrutally materialistic than the constant practice of that same Church\nsince the eighth century, from which dates her definitive establishment\nas a power? What has been and still is the principal object of all her\ncontests with the sovereigns of Europe? Her temporal goods, her revenues\nfirst, and then her temporal power, her political privileges. We must do\nher the justice to acknowledge that she was the first to discover, in\nmodern history, this incontestable but scarcely Christian truth that\nwealth and power, the economic exploitation and the political oppression\nof the masses, are the two inseparable terms of the reign of divine\nideality on earth: wealth consolidating and augmenting power, power ever\ndiscovering and creating new sources of wealth, and both assuring,\nbetter than the martyrdom and faith of the apostles, better than divine\ngrace, the success of the Christian propagandism. This is a historical\ntruth, and the Protestant Churches do not fail to recognize it either. I\nspeak, of course, of the independent churches of England, America, and\nSwitzerland, not of the subjected churches of Germany. The latter have\nno initiative of their own; they do what their masters, their temporal\nsovereigns, who are at the same time their spiritual chieftains,\norder them to do. It is well known that the Protestant propagandism,\nespecially in England and America, is very intimately connected with\nthe propagandism of the material, commercial interests of those two\ngreat nations; and it is known also that the objects of the latter\npropagandism is not at all the enrichment and material prosperity of the\ncountries into which it penetrates in company with the Word of God, but\nrather the exploitation of those countries with a view to the enrichment\nand material prosperity of certain classes, which in their own country\nare very covetous and very pious at the same time.\n\nIn a word, it is not at all difficult to prove, history in hand, that\nthe Church, that all the Churches, Christian and non-Christian, by the\nside of their spiritualistic propagandism, and probably to accelerate\nand consolidate the success thereof, have never neglected to organize\nthemselves into great corporations for the economic exploitation of the\nmasses under the protection and with the direct and special blessing of\nsome divinity or other; that all the States, which originally, as we\nknow, with all their political and judicial institutions and their\ndominant and privileged classes, have been only temporal branches of\nthese various Churches, have likewise had principally in view this same\nexploitation for the benefit of lay minorities indirectly sanctioned by\nthe Church; finally and in general, that the action of the good God and\nof all the divine idealities on earth has ended at last, always and\neverywhere, in founding the prosperous materialism of the few over the\nfanatical and constantly famishing idealism of the masses.\n\nWe have a new proof of this in what we see to-day. With the exception\nof the great hearts and great minds whom I have before referred to as\nmisled, who are to-day the most obstinate defenders of idealism? In the\nfirst place, all the sovereign courts. In France, until lately, Napoleon\nIII. and his wife, Madame Eugenie; all their former ministers,\ncourtiers, and ex-marshals, from Rouher and Bazaine to Fleury and\nPietri; the men and women of this imperial world, who have so completely\nidealized and saved France; their journalists and their _savants_--the\nCassagnacs, the Girardins, the Duvernois, the Veuillots, the Leverriers,\nthe Dumas; the black phalanx of Jesuits and Jesuitesses in every garb;\nthe whole upper and middle bourgeoisie of France; the doctrinaire\nliberals, and the liberals without doctrine--the Guizots, the Thiers,\nthe Jules Favres, the Pelletans, and the Jules Simons, all obstinate\ndefenders of the bourgeoise exploitation. In Prussia, in Germany,\nWilliam I., the present royal demonstrator of the good God on earth; all\nhis generals, all his officers, Pomeranian and other; all his army,\nwhich, strong in its religious faith, has just conquered France in that\nideal way we know so well. In Russia, the Czar and his court; the\nMouravieffs and the Bergs, all the butchers and pious proselyters of\nPoland. Everywhere, in short, religious or philosophical idealism, the\none being but the more or less free translation of the other, serves\nto-day as the flag of material, bloody, and brutal force, of shameless\nmaterial exploitation; while, on the contrary, the flag of theoretical\nmaterialism, the red flag of economic equality and social justice, is\nraised by the practical idealism of the oppressed and famishing masses,\ntending to realize the greatest liberty and the human right of each in\nthe fraternity of all men on the earth.\n\nWho are the real idealists--the idealists not of abstraction, but of\nlife, not of heaven, but of earth--and who are the materialists?\n\nIt is evident that the essential condition of theoretical or divine\nidealism is the sacrifice of logic, of human reason, the renunciation of\nscience. We see, further, that in defending the doctrines of idealism\none finds himself enlisted perforce in the ranks of the oppressors and\nexploiters of the masses. These are two great reasons which, it would\nseem, should be sufficient to drive every great mind, every great heart,\nfrom idealism. How does it happen that our illustrious contemporary\nidealists, who certainly lack neither mind, nor heart, nor good\nwill, and who have devoted their entire existence to the service of\nhumanity--how does it happen that they persist in remaining among the\nrepresentatives of a doctrine henceforth condemned and dishonored?\n\nThey must be influenced by a very powerful motive. It cannot be logic or\nscience, since logic and science have pronounced their verdict against\nthe idealistic doctrine. No more can it be personal interests, since\nthese men are infinitely above everything of that sort. It must,\nthen, be a powerful moral motive. Which? There can be but one. These\nillustrious men think, no doubt, that idealistic theories or beliefs are\nessentially necessary to the moral dignity and grandeur of man, and that\nmaterialistic theories, on the contrary, reduce him to the level of the\nbeasts.\n\nAnd if the truth were just the opposite!\n\nEvery development, I have said, implies the negation of its point\nof departure. The basis or point of departure, according to the\nmaterialistic school, being material, the negation must be necessarily\nideal. Starting from the totality of the real world, or from what\nis abstractly called matter, it logically arrives at the real\nidealization--that is, at the humanization, at the full and complete\nemancipation--of society. _Per contra_ and for the same reason, the\nbasis and point of departure of the idealistic school being ideal,\nit arrives necessarily at the materialization of society, at the\norganization of a brutal despotism and an iniquitous and ignoble\nexploitation, under the form of Church and State. The historical\ndevelopment of man according to the materialistic school, is a\nprogressive ascension; in the idealistic system it can be nothing\nbut a continuous fall.\n\nWhatever human question we may desire to consider, we always find this\nsame essential contradiction between the two schools. Thus, as I have\nalready observed, materialism starts from animality to establish\nhumanity; idealism starts from divinity to establish slavery and condemn\nthe masses to an endless animality. Materialism denies free will and\nends in the establishment of liberty; idealism, in the name of human\ndignity, proclaims free will, and on the ruins of every liberty founds\nauthority. Materialism rejects the principle of authority, because it\nrightly considers it as the corollary of animality, and because, on the\ncontrary, the triumph of humanity, the object and chief significance of\nhistory, can be realized only through liberty. In a word, you will\nalways find the idealists in the very act of practical materialism,\nwhile you will see the materialists pursuing and realizing the most\ngrandly ideal aspirations and thoughts.\n\nHistory, in the system of the idealists, as I have said, can be nothing\nbut a continuous fall. They begin by a terrible fall, from which they\nnever recover--by the _salto mortale_ from the sublime regions of pure\nand absolute idea into matter. And into what kind of matter! Not into\nthe matter which is eternally active and mobile, full of properties and\nforces, of life and intelligence, as we see it in the real world; but\ninto abstract matter, impoverished and reduced to absolute misery by the\nregular looting of these Prussians of thought, the theologians and\nmetaphysicians, who have stripped it of everything to give everything\nto their emperor, to their God; into the matter which, deprived of all\naction and movement of its own, represents, in opposition to the divine\nidea, nothing but absolute stupidity, impenetrability, inertia and\nimmobility.\n\nThe fall is so terrible that divinity, the divine person or idea, is\nflattened out, loses consciousness of itself, and never more recovers\nit. And in this desperate situation it is still forced to work miracles!\nFor from the moment that matter becomes inert, every movement that takes\nplace in the world, even the most material, is a miracle, can result\nonly from a providential intervention, from the action of God upon\nmatter. And there this poor Divinity, degraded and half annihilated by\nits fall, lies some thousands of centuries in this swoon, then awakens\nslowly, in vain endeavoring to grasp some vague memory of itself, and\nevery move that it makes in this direction upon matter becomes a\ncreation, a new formation, a new miracle. In this way it passes through\nall degrees of materiality and bestiality--first, gas, simple or\ncompound chemical substance, mineral, it then spreads over the earth as\nvegetable and animal organization till it concentrates itself in man.\nHere it would seem as if it must become itself again, for it lights in\nevery human being an angelic spark, a particle of its own divine being,\nthe immortal soul.\n\nHow did it manage to lodge a thing absolutely immaterial in a thing\nabsolutely material; how can the body contain, enclose, limit, paralyze\npure spirit? This, again, is one of those questions which faith alone,\nthat passionate and stupid affirmation of the absurd, can solve. It is\nthe greatest of miracles. Here, however, we have only to establish the\neffects, the practical consequences of this miracle.\n\nAfter thousands of centuries of vain efforts to come back to itself,\nDivinity, lost and scattered in the matter which it animates and\nsets in motion, finds a point of support, a sort of focus for\nself-concentration. This focus is man, his immortal soul singularly\nimprisoned in a mortal body. But each man considered individually is\ninfinitely too limited, too small, to enclose the divine immensity; it\ncan contain only a very small particle, immortal like the whole, but\ninfinitely smaller than the whole. It follows that the divine being, the\nabsolutely immaterial being, mind, is divisible like matter. Another\nmystery whose solution must be left to faith.\n\nIf God entire could find lodgment in each man, then each man would be\nGod. We should have an immense quantity of Gods, each limited by all the\nothers and yet none the less infinite--a contradiction which would imply\na mutual destruction of men, an impossibility of the existence of more\nthan one. As for the particles, that is another matter; nothing more\nrational, indeed, than that one particle should be limited by another\nand be smaller than the whole. Only, here another contradiction\nconfronts us. To be limited, to be greater and smaller are attributes of\nmatter, not of mind. According to the materialists, it is true, mind\nis only the working of the wholly material organism of man, and the\ngreatness or smallness of mind depends absolutely on the greater or less\nmaterial perfection of the human organism. But these same attributes\nof relative limitation and grandeur cannot be attributed to mind as\nthe idealists conceive it, absolutely immaterial mind, mind existing\nindependent of matter. There can be neither greater nor smaller nor any\nlimit among minds, for there is only one mind--God. To add that the\ninfinitely small and limited particles which constitute human souls are\nat the same time immortal is to carry the contradiction to a climax. But\nthis is a question of faith. Let us pass on.\n\nHere then we have Divinity torn up and lodged, in infinitely small\nparticles, in an immense number of beings of all sexes, ages, races, and\ncolors. This is an excessively inconvenient and unhappy situation, for\nthe divine particles are so little acquainted with each other at the\noutset of their human existence that they begin by devouring each other.\nMoreover, in the midst of this state of barbarism and wholly animal\nbrutality, these divine particles, human souls, retain as it were a\nvague remembrance of their primitive divinity, and are irresistibly\ndrawn towards their whole; they seek each other, they seek their whole.\nIt is Divinity itself, scattered and lost in the natural world, which\nlooks for itself in men, and it is so demolished by this multitude of\nhuman prisons in which it finds itself strewn, that, in looking for\nitself, it commits folly after folly.\n\nBeginning with fetichism, it searches for and adores itself, now in a\nstone, now in a piece of wood, now in a rag. It is quite likely that it\nwould never have succeeded in getting out of the rag, if _the other_\ndivinity which was not allowed to fall into matter and which is kept in\na state of pure spirit in the sublime heights of the absolute ideal, or\nin the celestial regions, had not had pity on it.\n\nHere is a new mystery--that of Divinity dividing itself into two halves,\nboth equally infinite, of which one--God the Father--stays in the purely\nimmaterial regions, and the other--God the Son--falls into matter. We\nshall see directly, between these two Divinities separated from each\nother, continuous relations established, from above to below and from\nbelow to above; and these relations, considered as a single eternal and\nconstant act, will constitute the Holy Ghost. Such, in its veritable\ntheological and metaphysical meaning, is the great, the terrible mystery\nof the Christian Trinity.\n\nBut let us lose no time in abandoning these heights to see what is going\non upon earth.\n\nGod the Father, seeing from the height of his eternal splendor that the\npoor God the Son, flattened out and astounded by his fall, is so plunged\nand lost in matter that even having reached human state he has not yet\nrecovered himself, decides to come to his aid. From this immense number\nof particles at once immortal, divine, and infinitely small, in which\nGod the Son has disseminated himself so thoroughly that he does not know\nhimself, God the Father chooses those most pleasing to him, picks his\ninspired persons, his prophets, his \"men of virtuous genius,\" the great\nbenefactors and legislators of humanity: Zoroaster, Buddha, Moses,\nConfucius, Lycurgus, Solon, Socrates, the divine Plato, and above all\nJesus Christ, the complete realization of God the Son, at last collected\nand concentrated in a single human person; all the apostles, Saint\nPeter, Saint Paul, and Saint John before all, Constantine the Great,\nMahomet, then Charlemagne, Gregory VII., Dante, and, according to some,\nLuther also, Voltaire and Rousseau, Robespierre and Danton, and many\nother great and holy historical personages, all of whose names it is\nimpossible to recapitulate, but among whom I, as a Russian, beg that\nSaint Nicholas may not be forgotten.\n\nThen we have reached at last the manifestation of God upon earth. But\nimmediately God appears, man is reduced to nothing. It will be said that\nhe is not reduced to nothing, since he is himself a particle of God.\nPardon me! I admit that a particle of a definite, limited whole, however\nsmall it be, is a quantity, a positive greatness. But a particle of the\ninfinitely great, compared with it, is necessarily infinitely small.\nMultiply milliards of milliards by milliards of milliards--their\nproduct compared to the infinitely great, will be infinitely small, and\nthe infinitely small is equal to zero. God is everything; therefore man\nand all the real world with him, the universe, are nothing. You will not\nescape this conclusion.\n\nGod appears, man is reduced to nothing; and the greater Divinity\nbecomes, the more miserable becomes humanity. That is the history of\nall religions; that is the effect of all the divine inspirations and\nlegislations. In history the name of God is the terrible club with which\nall divinely inspired men, the great \"virtuous geniuses,\" have beaten\ndown the liberty, dignity, reason, and prosperity of man.\n\nWe had first the fall of God. Now we have a fall which interests us\nmore--that of man, caused solely by the apparition of God manifested on\nearth.\n\nSee in how profound an error our dear and illustrious idealists find\nthemselves. In talking to us of God they purpose, they desire, to\nelevate us, emancipate us, ennoble us, and, on the contrary, they\ncrush and degrade us. With the name of God they imagine that they can\nestablish fraternity among men, and, on the contrary, they create pride,\ncontempt; they sow discord, hatred, war; they establish slavery. For\nwith God come the different degrees of divine inspiration; humanity is\ndivided into men highly inspired, less inspired, uninspired. All are\nequally insignificant before God, it is true; but, compared with each\nother, some are greater than others; not only in fact--which would be of\nno consequence, because inequality in fact is lost in the collectivity\nwhen it cannot cling to some legal fiction or institution--but by the\ndivine right of inspiration, which immediately establishes a fixed,\nconstant, petrifying inequality. The highly inspired _must_ be listened\nto and obeyed by the less inspired, and the less inspired by the\nuninspired. Thus we have the principle of authority well established,\nand with it the two fundamental institutions of slavery: Church and\nState.\n\nOf all despotisms that of the _doctrinaires_ or inspired religionists is\nthe worst. They are so jealous of the glory of their God and of the\ntriumph of their idea that they have no heart left for the liberty or\nthe dignity or even the sufferings of living men, of real men. Divine\nzeal, preoccupation with the idea, finally dry up the tenderest souls,\nthe most compassionate hearts, the sources of human love. Considering\nall that is, all that happens in the world from the point of view of\neternity or of the abstract idea, they treat passing matters with\ndisdain; but the whole life of real men, of men of flesh and bone, is\ncomposed only of passing matters; they themselves are only passing\nbeings, who, once passed, are replaced by others likewise passing, but\nnever to return in person. Alone permanent or relatively eternal in men\nis humanity, which steadily developing, grows richer in passing from one\ngeneration to another. I say _relatively_ eternal, because, our planet\nonce destroyed--it cannot fail to perish sooner or later, since\neverything which has begun must necessarily end--our planet once\ndecomposed, to serve undoubtedly as an element of some new formation in\nthe system of the universe, which alone is really eternal, who knows\nwhat will become of our whole human development? Nevertheless, the\nmoment of this dissolution being an enormous distance in the future, we\nmay properly consider humanity, relatively to the short duration of\nhuman life, as eternal. But this very fact of progressive humanity is\nreal and living only through its manifestations at definite times, in\ndefinite places, in really living men, and not through its general idea.\n\nThe general idea is always an abstraction and, for that very reason, in\nsome sort a negation of real life. I have stated in the Appendix that\nhuman thought and, in consequence of this, science can grasp and name\nonly the general significance of real facts, their relations,\ntheir laws--in short, that which is permanent in their continual\ntransformations--but never their material, individual side, palpitating,\nso to speak, with reality and life, and therefore fugitive and\nintangible. Science comprehends the thought of the reality, not reality\nitself; the thought of life, not life. That is its limit, its only\nreally insuperable limit, because it is founded on the very nature of\nthought, which is the only organ of science.\n\nUpon this nature are based the indisputable rights and grand mission of\nscience, but also its vital impotence and even its mischievous action\nwhenever, through its official licensed representatives, it arrogantly\nclaims the right to govern life. The mission of science is, by\nobservation of the general relations of passing and real facts,\nto establish the general laws inherent in the development of the\nphenomena of the physical and social world; it fixes, so to speak, the\nunchangeable landmarks of humanity's progressive march by indicating the\ngeneral conditions which it is necessary to rigorously observe and\nalways fatal to ignore or forget. In a word, science is the compass of\nlife; but it is not life. Science is unchangeable, impersonal, general,\nabstract, insensible, like the laws of which it is but the ideal\nreproduction, reflected or mental--that is cerebral (using this word to\nremind us that science itself is but a material product of a material\norgan, the _brain_). Life is wholly fugitive and temporary, but also\nwholly palpitating with reality and individuality, sensibility,\nsufferings, joys, aspirations, needs, and passions. It alone\nspontaneously creates real things and beings. Science creates nothing;\nit establishes and recognizes only the creations of life. And every time\nthat scientific men, emerging from their abstract world, mingle with\nliving creation in the real world, all that they propose or create is\npoor, ridiculously abstract, bloodless and lifeless, still-born, like\nthe _homunculus_ created by Wagner, the pedantic disciple of the\nimmortal Doctor Faust. It follows that the only mission of science is\nto enlighten life, not to govern it.\n\nThe government of science and of men of science, even be they\npositivists, disciples of Auguste Comte, or, again, disciples of the\n_doctrinaire_ school of German Communism, cannot fail to be impotent,\nridiculous, inhuman, cruel, oppressive, exploiting, maleficent. We may\nsay of men of science, _as such_, what I have said of theologians and\nmetaphysicians: they have neither sense nor heart for individual and\nliving beings. We cannot even blame them for this, for it is the natural\nconsequence of their profession. In so far as they are men of science,\nthey have to deal with and can take interest in nothing except\ngeneralities; that do the laws[5] ... they are not exclusively men\nof science, but are also more or less men of life.[6]\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nNevertheless, we must not rely too much on this. Though we may be well\nnigh certain that a _savant_ would not dare to treat a man to-day as he\ntreats a rabbit, it remains always to be feared that the _savants_ as\na body, if not interfered with, may submit living men to scientific\nexperiments, undoubtedly less cruel but none the less disagreeable to\ntheir victims. If they cannot perform experiments upon the bodies of\nindividuals, they will ask nothing better than to perform them on the\nsocial body, and that is what must be absolutely prevented.\n\nIn their existing organization, monopolizing science and remaining thus\noutside of social life, the _savants_ form a separate caste, in many\nrespects analogous to the priesthood. Scientific abstraction is their\nGod, living and real individuals are their victims, and they are the\nconsecrated and licensed sacrificers.\n\nScience cannot go outside of the sphere of abstractions. In this respect\nit is infinitely inferior to art, which, in its turn, is peculiarly\nconcerned also with general types and general situations, but which\nincarnates them by an artifice of its own in forms which, if they are\nnot living in the sense of real life, none the less excite in our\nimagination the memory and sentiment of life; art in a certain sense\nindividualizes the types and situations which it conceives; by means of\nthe individualities without flesh and bone, and consequently permanent\nand immortal, which it has the power to create, it recalls to our minds\nthe living, real individualities which appear and disappear under our\neyes. Art, then, is as it were the return of abstraction to life;\nscience, on the contrary, is the perpetual immolation of life, fugitive,\ntemporary, but real, on the altar of eternal abstractions.\n\nScience is as incapable of grasping the individuality of a man as that\nof a rabbit, being equally indifferent to both. Not that it is ignorant\nof the principle of individuality: it conceives it perfectly as a\nprinciple, but not as a fact. It knows very well that all the animal\nspecies, including the human species, have no real existence outside of\nan indefinite number of individuals, born and dying to make room for new\nindividuals equally fugitive. It knows that in rising from the animal\nspecies to the superior species the principle of individuality becomes\nmore pronounced; the individuals appear freer and more complete. It\nknows that man, the last and most perfect animal of earth, presents the\nmost complete and most remarkable individuality, because of his power to\nconceive, concrete, personify, as it were, in his social and private\nexistence, the universal law. It knows, finally, when it is not vitiated\nby theological or metaphysical, political or judicial _doctrinairisme_,\nor even by a narrow scientific pride, when it is not deaf to the\ninstincts and spontaneous aspirations of life--it knows (and this is its\nlast word) that respect for man is the supreme law of Humanity, and that\nthe great, the real object of history, its only legitimate object, is\nthe humanization and emancipation, the real liberty, the prosperity and\nhappiness of each individual living in society. For, if we would\nnot fall back into the liberticidal fiction of the public welfare\nrepresented by the State, a fiction always founded on the systematic\nsacrifice of the people, we must clearly recognize that collective\nliberty and prosperity exist only so far as they represent the sum of\nindividual liberties and prosperities.\n\nScience knows all these things, but it does not and cannot go beyond\nthem. Abstraction being its very nature, it can well enough conceive the\nprinciple of real and living individuality, but it can have no dealings\nwith real and living individuals; it concerns itself with individuals in\ngeneral, but not with Peter or James, not with such or such a one, who,\nso far as it is concerned, do not, cannot, have any existence. Its\nindividuals, I repeat, are only abstractions.\n\nNow, history is made, not by abstract individuals, but by acting, living\nand passing individuals. Abstractions advance only when borne forward by\nreal men. For these beings made, not in idea only, but in reality of\nflesh and blood, science has no heart: it considers them at most as\n_material for intellectual and social development_. What does it care\nfor the particular conditions and chance fate of Peter or James? It\nwould make itself ridiculous, it would abdicate, it would annihilate\nitself, if it wished to concern itself with them otherwise than as\nexamples in support of its eternal theories. And it would be ridiculous\nto wish it to do so, for its mission lies not there. It cannot grasp the\nconcrete; it can move only in abstractions. Its mission is to busy\nitself with the situation and the _general_ conditions of the existence\nand development, either of the human species in general, or of such a\nrace, such a people, such a class or category of individuals; the\n_general_ causes of their prosperity, their decline, and the best\n_general_ methods of securing their progress in all ways. Provided it\naccomplishes this task broadly and rationally, it will do its whole\nduty, and it would be really unjust to expect more of it.\n\nBut it would be equally ridiculous, it would be disastrous to entrust it\nwith a mission which it is incapable of fulfilling. Since its own nature\nforces it to ignore the existence of Peter and James, it must never be\npermitted, nor must anybody be permitted in its name, to govern Peter\nand James. For it were capable of treating them almost as it treats\nrabbits. Or rather, it would continue to ignore them; but its licensed\nrepresentatives, men not at all abstract, but on the contrary in very\nactive life and having very substantial interests, yielding to the\npernicious influence which privilege inevitably exercises upon men,\nwould finally fleece other men in the name of science, just as they\nhave been fleeced hitherto by priests, politicians of all shades, and\nlawyers, in the name of God, of the State, of judicial Right.\n\nWhat I preach then is, to a certain extent, the _revolt of life against\nscience_, or rather against the _government of science_, not to destroy\nscience--that would be high treason to humanity--but to remand it to its\nplace so that it can never leave it again. Until now all human history\nhas been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor\nhuman beings in honor of some pitiless abstraction--God, country, power\nof State, national honor, historical rights, judicial rights, political\nliberty, public welfare. Such has been up to to-day the natural,\nspontaneous, and inevitable movement of human societies. We cannot undo\nit; we must submit to it so far as the past is concerned, as we submit\nto all natural fatalities. We must believe that that was the only\npossible way to educate the human race. For we must not deceive\nourselves: even in attributing the larger part to the Machiavellian\nwiles of the governing classes, we have to recognize that no minority\nwould have been powerful enough to impose all these horrible sacrifices\nupon the masses if there had not been in the masses themselves a dizzy\nspontaneous movement which pushed them on to continual self-sacrifice,\nnow to one, now to another of these devouring abstractions, the vampires\nof history, ever nourished upon human blood.\n\nWe readily understand that this is very gratifying to the theologians,\npoliticians, and jurists. Priests of these abstractions, they live only\nby the continual immolation of the people. Nor is it more surprising\nthat metaphysics, too, should give its consent. Its only mission is to\njustify and rationalize as far as possible the iniquitous and absurd.\nBut that positive science itself should have shown the same tendencies\nis a fact which we must deplore while we establish it. That it has done\nso is due to two reasons: in the first place, because, constituted\noutside of life, it is represented by a privileged body; and in the\nsecond place, because thus far it has posited itself as an absolute and\nfinal object of all human development. By a judicious criticism, which\nit can and finally will be forced to pass upon itself, it would\nunderstand, on the contrary, that it is only a means for the realization\nof a much higher object--that of the complete humanization of the _real_\nsituation of all the _real_ individuals who are born, who live, and who\ndie, on earth.\n\nThe immense advantage of positive science over theology, metaphysics,\npolitics, and judicial right consists in this--that, in place of the\nfalse and fatal abstractions set up by these doctrines, it posits true\nabstractions which express the general nature and logic of things, their\ngeneral relations, and the general laws of their development. This\nseparates it profoundly from all preceding doctrines, and will assure it\nfor ever a great position in society: it will constitute in a certain\nsense society's collective consciousness. But there is one aspect in\nwhich it resembles all these doctrines: its only possible object being\nabstractions, it is forced by its very nature to ignore real men,\noutside of whom the truest abstractions have no existence. To remedy\nthis radical defect positive science will have to proceed by a different\nmethod from that followed by the doctrines of the past. The latter have\ntaken advantage of the ignorance of the masses to sacrifice them with\ndelight to their abstractions, which, by the way, are always very\nlucrative to those who represent them in flesh and bone. Positive\nscience, recognizing its absolute inability to conceive real individuals\nand interest itself in their lot, must definitely and absolutely\nrenounce all claim to the government of societies; for if it should\nmeddle therein, it would only sacrifice continually the living men whom\nit ignores to the abstractions which constitute the sole object of its\nlegitimate preoccupations.\n\nThe true science of history, for instance, does not yet exist; scarcely\ndo we begin to-day to catch a glimpse of its extremely complicated\nconditions. But suppose it were definitely developed, what could it give\nus? It would exhibit a faithful and rational picture of the natural\ndevelopment of the general conditions--material and ideal, economical,\npolitical and social, religious, philosophical, aesthetic, and\nscientific--of the societies which have a history. But this universal\npicture of human civilization, however detailed it might be, would never\nshow anything beyond general and consequently _abstract_ estimates. The\nmilliards of individuals who have furnished the _living and suffering\nmaterials_ of this history at once triumphant and dismal--triumphant by\nits general results, dismal by the immense hecatomb of human victims\n\"crushed under its car\"--those milliards of obscure individuals without\nwhom none of the great abstract results of history would have been\nobtained--and who, bear in mind, have never benefited by any of these\nresults--will find no place, not even the slightest, in our annals. They\nhave lived and been sacrificed, crushed for the good of abstract\nhumanity, that is all.\n\nShall we blame the science of history? That would be unjust and\nridiculous. Individuals cannot be grasped by thought, by reflection, or\neven by human speech, which is capable of expressing abstractions only;\nthey cannot be grasped in the present day any more than in the past.\nTherefore social science itself, the science of the future, will\nnecessarily continue to ignore them. All that we have a right to demand\nof it is that it shall point us with faithful and sure hand to the\n_general causes of individual suffering_--among these causes it will not\nforget the immolation and subordination (still too frequent, alas!) of\nliving individuals to abstract generalities--at the same time showing\nus the _general conditions necessary to the real emancipation of the\nindividuals living in society_. That is its mission; those are its\nlimits, beyond which the action of social science can be only impotent\nand fatal. Beyond those limits being the _doctrinaire_ and governmental\npretentions of its licensed representatives, its priests. It is time to\nhave done with all popes and priests; we want them no longer, even if\nthey call themselves Social Democrats.\n\nOnce more, the sole mission of science is to light the road. Only Life,\ndelivered from all its governmental and _doctrinaire_ barriers, and\ngiven full liberty of action, can create.\n\nHow solve this antinomy?\n\nOn the one hand, science is indispensable to the rational organization\nof society; on the other, being incapable of interesting itself in that\nwhich is real and living, it must not interfere with the real or\npractical organization of society.\n\nThis contradiction can be solved only in one way: by the liquidation of\nscience as a moral being existing outside the life of all, and\nrepresented by a body of breveted _savants_; it must spread among the\nmasses. Science, being called upon to henceforth represent society's\ncollective consciousness, must really become the property of everybody.\nThereby, without losing anything of its universal character, of which\nit can never divest itself without ceasing to be science, and while\ncontinuing to concern itself exclusively with general causes, the\nconditions and fixed relations of individuals and things, it will become\none in fact with the immediate and real life of all individuals. That\nwill be a movement analogous to that which said to the Protestants at\nthe beginning of the Reformation that there was no further need of\npriests for man, who would henceforth be his own priest, every man,\nthanks to the invisible intervention of the Lord Jesus Christ alone,\nhaving at last succeeded in swallowing his good God. But here the\nquestion is not of Jesus Christ, nor good God, nor of political liberty,\nnor of judicial right--things all theologically or metaphysically\nrevealed, and all alike indigestible. The world of scientific\nabstractions is not revealed; it is inherent in the real world, of which\nit is only the general or abstract expression and representation. As\nlong as it forms a separate region, specially represented by the\n_savants_ as a body, this ideal world threatens to take the place of a\ngood God to the real world, reserving for its licensed representatives\nthe office of priests. That is the reason why it is necessary to\ndissolve the special social organization of the _savants_ by general\ninstruction, equal for all in all things, in order that the masses,\nceasing to be flocks led and shorn by privileged priests, may take into\ntheir own hands the direction of their destinies.[7]\n\nBut until the masses shall have reached this degree of instruction, will\nit be necessary to leave them to the government of scientific men?\nCertainly not. It would be better for them to dispense with science than\nallow themselves to be governed by _savants_. The first consequence of\nthe government of these men would be to render science inaccessible to\nthe people, and such a government would necessarily be aristocratic,\nbecause the existing scientific institutions are essentially\naristocratic. An aristocracy of learning! from the practical point of\nview the most implacable, and from the social point of view the most\nhaughty and insulting--such would be the power established in the name\nof science. This _regime_ would be capable of paralyzing the life\nand movement of society. The _savants_ always presumptuous, ever\nself-sufficient and ever impotent, would desire to meddle with\neverything, and the sources of life would dry up under the breath\nof their abstractions.\n\nOnce more, Life, not science, creates life; the spontaneous action of\nthe people themselves alone can create liberty. Undoubtedly it would be\na very fortunate thing if science could, from this day forth, illuminate\nthe spontaneous march of the people towards their emancipation. But\nbetter an absence of light than a false and feeble light, kindled only\nto mislead those who follow it. After all, the people will not lack\nlight. Not in vain have they traversed a long historic career, and paid\nfor their errors by centuries of misery. The practical summary of their\npainful experiences constitutes a sort of traditional science, which in\ncertain respects is worth as much as theoretical science. Last of all, a\nportion of the youth--those of the bourgeois students who feel hatred\nenough for the falsehood, hypocrisy, injustice, and cowardice of the\nbourgeoisie to find courage to turn their backs upon it, and passion\nenough to unreservedly embrace the just and human cause of the\nproletariat--those will be, as I have already said, fraternal\ninstructors of the people; thanks to them, there will be no occasion\nfor the government of the _savants_.\n\nIf the people should beware of the government of the _savants_, all the\nmore should they provide against that of the inspired idealists. The\nmore sincere these believers and poets of heaven, the more dangerous\nthey become. The scientific abstraction, I have said, is a rational\nabstraction, true in its essence, necessary to life, of which it is the\ntheoretical representation, or, if one prefers, the conscience. It may,\nit must be, absorbed and digested by life. The idealistic abstraction,\nGod, is a corrosive poison, which destroys and decomposes life,\nfalsifies and kills it. The pride of the idealists, not being personal\nbut divine, is invincible and inexorable: it may, it must, die, but it\nwill never yield, and while it has a breath left it will try to subject\nmen to its God, just as the lieutenants of Prussia, these practical\nidealists of Germany, would like to see the people crushed under the\nspurred boot of their emperor. The faith is the same, the end but little\ndifferent, and the result, as that of faith, is slavery.\n\nIt is at the same time the triumph of the ugliest and most brutal\nmaterialism. There is no need to demonstrate this in the case of\nGermany; one would have to be blind to avoid seeing it at the present\nhour. But I think it is still necessary to demonstrate it in the case\nof divine idealism.\n\nMan, like all the rest of nature, is an entirely material being. The\nmind, the facility of thinking, of receiving and reflecting upon\ndifferent external and internal sensations, of remembering them when\nthey have passed and reproducing them by the imagination, of comparing\nand distinguishing them, of abstracting determinations common to\nthem and thus creating general concepts, and finally of forming\nideas by grouping and combining concepts according to different\nmethods--intelligence, in a word, sole creator of our whole ideal world,\nis a property of the animal body and especially of the quite material\norganism of the brain.\n\nWe know this certainly, by the experience of all, which no fact has ever\ncontradicted and which any man can verify at any moment of his life. In\nall animals, without excepting the wholly inferior species, we find a\ncertain degree of intelligence, and we see that, in the series of\nspecies, animal intelligence develops in proportion as the organization\nof a species approaches that of man, but that in man alone it attains\nto that power of abstraction which properly constitutes thought.\n\nUniversal experience,[8] which is the sole origin, the source of all our\nknowledge, shows us, therefore, that all intelligence is always attached\nto some animal body, and that the intensity, the power, of this animal\nfunction depends upon the relative perfection of the organism. The\nlatter of these results of universal experience is not applicable only\nto the different animal species; we establish it likewise in men, whose\nintellectual and moral power depends so clearly upon the greater or less\nperfection of their organism as a race, as a nation, as a class, and as\nindividuals, that it is not necessary to insist upon this point.[9]\n\nOn the other hand, it is certain that no man has ever seen or can see\npure mind, detached from all material form, existing separately from\nany animal body whatsoever. But if no person has seen it, how is it\nthat men have come to believe in its existence? The fact of this belief\nis certain, and if not universal, as all the idealists pretend, at\nleast very general, and as such it is entirely worthy of our closest\nattention, for a general belief, however foolish it may be, exercises\ntoo potent a sway over the destiny of men to warrant us in ignoring it\nor putting it aside.\n\nThe explanation of this belief, moreover, is rational enough. The\nexample afforded us by children and young people, and even by many men\nlong past the age of majority, shows us that man may use his mental\nfaculties for a long time before accounting to himself for the way in\nwhich he uses them, before becoming clearly conscious of it. During\nthis working of the mind unconscious of itself, during this action of\ninnocent or believing intelligence, man, obsessed by the external\nworld, pushed on by that internal goad called life and its manifold\nnecessities, creates a quantity of imaginations, concepts, and ideas\nnecessarily very imperfect at first and conforming but slightly to the\nreality of the things and facts which they endeavor to express. Not\nhaving yet the consciousness of his own intelligent action, not knowing\nyet that he himself has produced and continues to produce these\nimaginations, these concepts, these ideas, ignoring their wholly\n_subjective_--that is, human--origin, he must naturally consider them as\n_objective_ beings, as real beings, wholly independent of him, existing\nby themselves and in themselves.\n\nIt was thus that primitive peoples, emerging slowly from their animal\ninnocence, created their gods. Having created them, not suspecting\nthat they themselves were the real creators, they worshipped them;\nconsidering them as real beings infinitely superior to themselves, they\nattributed omnipotence to them, and recognized themselves as their\ncreatures, their slaves. As fast as human ideas develop, the gods, who,\nas I have already stated, were never anything more than a fantastic,\nideal, poetical reverberation or an inverted image, become idealized\nalso. At first gross fetiches, they gradually become pure spirits,\nexisting outside of the visible world, and at last, in the course of a\nlong historic evolution, are confounded in a single Divine Being, pure,\neternal, absolute Spirit, creator and master of the worlds.\n\nIn every development, just or false, real or imaginary, collective or\nindividual, it is always the first step, the first act that is the\nmost difficult. That step once taken, the rest follows naturally as a\nnecessary consequence. The difficult step in the historical development\nof this terrible religious insanity which continues to obsess and crush\nus was to posit a divine world as such, outside the world. This first\nact of madness, so natural from the physiological point of view and\nconsequently necessary in the history of humanity, was not accomplished\nat a single stroke. I know not how many centuries were needed to develop\nthis belief and make it a governing influence upon the mental customs of\nmen. But, once established, it became omnipotent, as each insane notion\nnecessarily becomes when it takes possession of man's brain. Take a\nmadman, whatever the object of his madness--you will find that obscure\nand fixed idea which obsesses him seems to him the most natural thing in\nthe world, and that, on the contrary, the real things which contradict\nthis idea seem to him ridiculous and odious follies. Well, religion is\na collective insanity, the more powerful because it is traditional\nfolly, and because its origin is lost in the most remote antiquity. As\ncollective insanity it has penetrated to the very depths of the public\nand private existence of the peoples; it is incarnate in society; it\nhas become, so to speak, the collective soul and thought. Every man\nis enveloped in it from his birth; he sucks it in with his mother's\nmilk, absorbs it with all that he touches, all that he sees. He is so\nexclusively fed upon it, so poisoned and penetrated by it in all his\nbeing, that later, however powerful his natural mind, he has to make\nunheard-of efforts to deliver himself from it, and even then never\ncompletely succeeds. We have one proof of this in our modern idealists,\nand another in our _doctrinaire_ materialists--the German Communists.\nThey have found no way to shake off the religion of the State.\n\nThe supernatural world, the divine world, once well established in the\nimagination of the peoples, the development of the various religious\nsystems has followed its natural and logical course, conforming,\nmoreover, in all things to the contemporary development of economical\nand political relations of which it has been in all ages, in the world\nof religious fancy, the faithful reproduction and divine consecration.\nThus has the collective and historical insanity which calls itself\nreligion been developed since fetichism, passing through all the stages\nfrom polytheism to Christian monotheism.\n\nThe second step in the development of religious beliefs, undoubtedly the\nmost difficult next to the establishment of a separate divine world,\nwas precisely this transition from polytheism to monotheism, from\nthe religious materialism of the pagans to the spiritualistic faith\nof the Christians. The pagan gods--and this was their principal\ncharacteristic--were first of all exclusively national gods. Very\nnumerous, they necessarily retained a more or less material character,\nor, rather, they were so numerous because they were material, diversity\nbeing one of the principal attributes of the real world. The pagan gods\nwere not yet strictly the negation of real things; they were only a\nfantastic exaggeration of them.\n\nWe have seen how much this transition cost the Jewish people,\nconstituting, so to speak, its entire history. In vain did Moses and\nthe prophets preach the one god; the people always relapsed into their\nprimitive idolatry, into the ancient and comparatively much more natural\nand convenient faith in many good gods, more material, more human, and\nmore palpable. Jehovah himself, their sole God, the God of Moses and the\nprophets, was still an extremely national God, who, to reward and punish\nhis faithful followers, his chosen people, used material arguments,\noften stupid, always gross and cruel. It does not even appear that\nfaith in his existence implied a negation of the existence of earlier\ngods. The Jewish God did not deny the existence of these rivals; he\nsimply did not want his people to worship them side by side with him,\nbecause before all Jehovah was a very jealous God. His first commandment\nwas this:\n\n\"I am the Lord thy God, and thou shalt have no other gods before me.\"\n\nJehovah, then, was only a first draft, very material and very rough, of\nthe supreme deity of modern idealism. Moreover, he was only a national\nGod, like the Russian God worshipped by the German generals, subjects of\nthe Czar and patriots of the empire of all the Russias; like the German\nGod, whom the pietists and the German generals, subjects of William I.\nat Berlin, will no doubt soon proclaim. The supreme being cannot be a\nnational God; he must be the God of entire Humanity. Nor can the supreme\nbeing be a material being; he must be the negation of all matter--pure\nspirit. Two things have proved necessary to the realization of the\nworship of the supreme being: (1) a realization, such as it is, of\nHumanity by the negation of nationalities and national forms of worship;\n(2) a development, already far advanced, of metaphysical ideas in order\nto spiritualize the gross Jehovah of the Jews.\n\nThe first condition was fulfilled by the Romans, though in a very\nnegative way no doubt, by the conquest of most of the countries known to\nthe ancients and by the destruction of their national institutions. The\ngods of all the conquered nations, gathered in the Pantheon, mutually\ncancelled each other. This was the first draft of humanity, very gross\nand quite negative.\n\nAs for the second condition, the spiritualization of Jehovah, that was\nrealized by the Greeks long before the conquest of their country by the\nRomans. They were the creators of metaphysics. Greece, in the cradle of\nher history, had already found from the Orient a divine world which had\nbeen definitely established in the traditional faith of her peoples;\nthis world had been left and handed over to her by the Orient. In her\ninstinctive period, prior to her political history, she had developed\nand prodigiously humanized this divine world through her poets; and when\nshe actually began her history, she already had a religion ready-made,\nthe most sympathetic and noble of all the religions which have existed,\nso far at least as a religion--that is, a lie--can be noble and\nsympathetic. Her great thinkers--and no nation has had greater than\nGreece--found the divine world established, not only outside of\nthemselves in the people, but also in themselves as a habit of feeling\nand thought, and naturally they took it as a point of departure. That\nthey made no theology--that is, that they did not wait in vain to\nreconcile dawning reason with the absurdities of such a god, as did the\nscholastics of the Middle Ages--was already much in their favor. They\nleft the gods out of their speculations and attached themselves directly\nto the divine idea, one, invisible, omnipotent, eternal, and absolutely\nspiritualistic but impersonal. As concerns Spiritualism, then, the Greek\nmetaphysicians, much more than the Jews, were the creators of the\nChristian god. The Jews only added to it the brutal personality of\ntheir Jehovah.\n\nThat a sublime genius like the divine Plato could have been absolutely\nconvinced of the reality of the divine idea shows us how contagious, how\nomnipotent, is the tradition of the religious mania even on the greatest\nminds. Besides, we should not be surprised at it, since, even in our\nday, the greatest philosophical genius which has existed since Aristotle\nand Plato, Hegel--in spite even of Kant's criticism, imperfect and too\nmetaphysical though it be, which had demolished the objectivity or\nreality of the divine ideas--tried to replace these divine ideas upon\ntheir transcendental or celestial throne. It is true that Hegel went\nabout his work of restoration in so impolite a manner that he killed the\ngood God for ever. He took away from these ideas their divine halo, by\nshowing to whoever will read him that they were never anything more\nthan a creation of the human mind running through history in search\nof itself. To put an end to all religious insanities and the divine\n_mirage_, he left nothing lacking but the utterance of those grand words\nwhich were said after him, almost at the same time, by two great minds\nwho had never heard of each other--Ludwig Feuerbach, the disciple and\ndemolisher of Hegel, in Germany, and Auguste Comte, the founder of\npositive philosophy, in France. These words were as follows:\n\n\"Metaphysics are reduced to psychology.\" All the metaphysical systems\nhave been nothing else than human psychology developing itself in\nhistory.\n\nTo-day it is no longer difficult to understand how the divine ideas were\nborn, how they were created in succession by the abstractive faculty of\nman. Man made the gods. But in the time of Plato this knowledge was\nimpossible. The collective mind, and consequently the individual mind as\nwell, even that of the greatest genius, was not ripe for that. Scarcely\nhad it said with Socrates: \"Know thyself!\" This self-knowledge existed\nonly in a state of intuition; in fact, it amounted to nothing. Hence it\nwas impossible for the human mind to suspect that it was itself the\nsole creator of the divine world. It found the divine world before\nit; it found it as history, as tradition, as a sentiment, as a habit\nof thought; and it necessarily made it the object of its loftiest\nspeculations. Thus was born metaphysics, and thus were developed and\nperfected the divine ideas, the basis of Spiritualism.\n\nIt is true that after Plato there was a sort of inverse movement in the\ndevelopment of the mind. Aristotle, the true father of science and\npositive philosophy, did not deny the divine world, but concerned\nhimself with it as little as possible. He was the first to study, like\nthe analyst and experimenter that he was, logic, the laws of human\nthought, and at the same time the physical world, not in its ideal,\nillusory essence, but in its real aspect. After him the Greeks of\nAlexandria established the first school of the positive scientists. They\nwere atheists. But their atheism left no mark on their contemporaries.\nScience tended more and more to separate itself from life. After Plato,\ndivine ideas were rejected in metaphysics themselves; this was done by\nthe Epicureans and Skeptics, two sects who contributed much to the\ndegradation of human aristocracy, but they had no effect upon the\nmasses.\n\nAnother school, infinitely more influential, was formed at Alexandria.\nThis was the school of neo-Platonists. These, confounding in an impure\nmixture the monstrous imaginations of the Orient with the ideas of\nPlato, were the true originators, and later the elaborators, of the\nChristian dogmas.\n\nThus the personal and gross egoism of Jehovah, the not less brutal\nand gross Roman conquest, and the metaphysical ideal speculation of\nthe Greeks, materialized by contact with the Orient, were the three\nhistorical elements which made up the spiritualistic religion of the\nChristians.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nBefore the altar of a unique and supreme God was raised on the ruins\nof the numerous altars of the pagan gods, the autonomy of the various\nnations composing the pagan or ancient world had to be destroyed first.\nThis was very brutally done by the Romans who, by conquering the\ngreatest part of the globe known to the ancients, laid the first\nfoundations, quite gross and negative ones no doubt, of humanity. A God\nthus raised above the national differences, material and social, of all\ncountries, and in a certain sense the direct negation of them, must\nnecessarily be an immaterial and abstract being. But faith in the\nexistence of such a being, so difficult a matter, could not spring\ninto existence suddenly. Consequently, as I have demonstrated in the\nAppendix, it went through a long course of preparation and development\nat the hands of Greek metaphysics, which were the first to establish\nin a philosophical manner the notion of _the divine idea_, a model\neternally creative and always reproduced by the visible world. But the\ndivinity conceived and created by Greek philosophy was an impersonal\ndivinity. No logical and serious metaphysics being able to rise, or,\nrather, to descend, to the idea of a personal God, it became necessary,\ntherefore, to imagine a God who was one and very personal at once. He\nwas found in the very brutal, selfish, and cruel person of Jehovah, the\nnational God of the Jews. But the Jews, in spite of that exclusive\nnational spirit which distinguishes them even to-day, had become in\nfact, long before the birth of Christ, the most international people of\nthe world. Some of them carried away as captives, but many more even\nurged on by that mercantile passion which constitutes one of the\nprincipal traits of their character, they had spread through all\ncountries, carrying everywhere the worship of their Jehovah, to whom\nthey remained all the more faithful the more he abandoned them.\n\nIn Alexandria this terrible god of the Jews made the personal\nacquaintance of the metaphysical divinity of Plato, already much\ncorrupted by Oriental contact, and corrupted her still more by his own.\nIn spite of his national, jealous, and ferocious exclusivism, he could\nnot long resist the graces of this ideal and impersonal divinity\nof the Greeks. He married her, and from this marriage was born\nthe spiritualistic--but not spirited--God of the Christians. The\nneo-Platonists of Alexandria are known to have been the principal\ncreators of the Christian theology.\n\nNevertheless theology alone does not make a religion, any more than\nhistorical elements suffice to create history. By historical elements I\nmean the general conditions of any real development whatsoever--for\nexample in this case the conquest of the world by the Romans and the\nmeeting of the God of the Jews with the ideal of divinity of the Greeks.\nTo impregnate the historical elements, to cause them to run through a\nseries of new historical transformations, a living, spontaneous fact was\nneeded, without which they might have remained many centuries longer\nin the state of unproductive elements. This fact was not lacking in\nChristianity: it was the propagandism, martyrdom, and death of Jesus\nChrist.\n\nWe know almost nothing of this great and saintly personage, all that\nthe gospels tell us being contradictory, and so fabulous that we can\nscarcely seize upon a few real and vital traits. But it is certain\nthat he was the preacher of the poor, the friend and consoler of the\nwretched, of the ignorant, of the slaves, and of the women, and that by\nthese last he was much loved. He promised eternal life to all who are\noppressed, to all who suffer here below; and the number is immense.\nHe was hanged, as a matter of course, by the representatives of the\nofficial morality and public order of that period. His disciples and\nthe disciples of his disciples succeeded in spreading, thanks to the\ndestruction of the national barriers by the Roman conquest, and\npropagated the Gospel in all the countries known to the ancients.\nEverywhere they were received with open arms by the slaves and the\nwomen, the two most oppressed, most suffering, and naturally also the\nmost ignorant classes of the ancient world. For even such few proselytes\nas they made in the privileged and learned world they were indebted in\ngreat part to the influence of women. Their most extensive propagandism\nwas directed almost exclusively among the people, unfortunate and\ndegraded by slavery. This was the first awakening, the first\nintellectual revolt of the proletariat.\n\n       *     *     *     *     *\n\nThe great honor of Christianity, its incontestable merit, and the whole\nsecret of its unprecedented and yet thoroughly legitimate triumph, lay\nin the fact that it appealed to that suffering and immense public to\nwhich the ancient world, a strict and cruel intellectual and political\naristocracy, denied even the simplest rights of humanity. Otherwise it\nnever could have spread. The doctrine taught by the apostles of Christ,\nwholly consoling as it may have seemed to the unfortunate, was too\nrevolting, too absurd from the standpoint of human reason, ever to have\nbeen accepted by enlightened men. According with what joy the apostle\nPaul speaks of the _scandale de la foi_ and of the triumph of that\n_divine folie_ rejected by the powerful and wise of the century, but\nall the more passionately accepted by the simple, the ignorant, and the\nweak-minded!\n\nIndeed there must have been a very deep-seated dissatisfaction with\nlife, a very intense thirst of heart, and an almost absolute poverty of\nthought, to secure the acceptance of the Christian absurdity, the most\naudacious and monstrous of all religious absurdities.\n\nThis was not only the negation of all the political, social, and\nreligious institutions of antiquity: it was the absolute overturn of\ncommon sense, of all human reason. The living being, the real world,\nwere considered thereafter as nothing; whereas the product of man's\nabstractive faculty, the last and supreme abstraction in which this\nfaculty, far beyond existing things, even beyond the most general\ndeterminations of the living being, the ideas of space and time, having\nnothing left to advance beyond, rests in contemplation of his emptiness\nand absolute immobility.\n\nThat abstraction, that _caput mortuum_, absolutely void of all\ncontents, the true nothing, God, is proclaimed the only real, eternal,\nall-powerful being. The real All is declared nothing, and the absolute\nnothing the All. The shadow becomes the substance, and the substance\nvanishes like a shadow.[10]\n\nAll this was audacity and absurdity unspeakable, the true _scandale\nde la foi_, the triumph of credulous stupidity over the mind for\nthe masses; and--for a few--the triumphant irony of a mind wearied,\ncorrupted, disillusioned, and disgusted in honest and serious search\nfor truth; it was that necessity of shaking off thought and becoming\nbrutally stupid so frequently felt by surfeited minds:\n\n                    _Credo quod absurdum._\n\nI believe in the absurd; I believe in it, precisely and mainly, because\nit is absurd. In the same way many distinguished and enlightened minds\nin our day believe in animal magnetism, spiritualism, tipping tables,\nand--why go so far?--believe still in Christianity, in idealism, in God.\n\nThe belief of the ancient proletariat, like that of the modern, was\nmore robust and simple, less _haut gout_. The Christian propagandism\nappealed to its heart, not to its mind; to its eternal aspirations, its\nnecessities, its sufferings, its slavery, not to its reason, which still\nslept and therefore could know nothing about logical contradictions and\nthe evidence of the absurd. It was interested solely in knowing when the\nhour of promised deliverance would strike, when the kingdom of God would\ncome. As for theological dogmas, it did not trouble itself about them\nbecause it understood nothing about them. The proletariat converted to\nChristianity constituted its growing material but not its intellectual\nstrength.\n\nAs for the Christian dogmas, it is known that they were elaborated\nin a series of theological and literary works and in the Councils,\nprincipally by the converted neo-Platonists of the Orient. The Greek\nmind had fallen so low that, in the fourth century of the Christian\nera, the period of the first Council, the idea of a personal God, pure,\neternal, absolute mind, creator and supreme master, existing outside of\nthe world, was unanimously accepted by the Church Fathers; as a logical\nconsequence of this absolute absurdity, it then became natural and\nnecessary to believe in the immateriality and immortality of the human\nsoul, lodged and imprisoned in a body only partially mortal, there being\nin this body itself a portion which, while material, is immortal like\nthe soul, and must be resurrected with it. We see how difficult it was,\neven for the Church Fathers, to conceive pure minds outside of any\nmaterial form. It should be added that, in general, it is the character\nof every metaphysical and theological argument to seek to explain one\nabsurdity by another.\n\nIt was very fortunate for Christianity that it met a world of slaves. It\nhad another piece of good luck in the invasion of the Barbarians. The\nlatter were worthy people, full of natural force, and, above all, urged\non by a great necessity of life and a great capacity for it; brigands\nwho had stood every test, capable of devastating and gobbling up\nanything, like their successors, the Germans of to-day; but they were\nmuch less systematic and pedantic than these last, much less moralistic,\nless learned, and on the other hand much more independent and proud,\ncapable of science and not incapable of liberty, as are the bourgeois of\nmodern Germany. But, in spite of all their great qualities, they were\nnothing but barbarians--that is, as indifferent to all questions of\ntheology and metaphysics as the ancient slaves, a great number of whom,\nmoreover, belonged to their race. So that, their practical repugnance\nonce overcome, it was not difficult to convert them theoretically to\nChristianity.\n\nFor ten centuries Christianity, armed with the omnipotence of Church and\nState and opposed by no competition, was able to deprave, debase, and\nfalsify the mind of Europe. It had no competitors, because outside of\nthe Church there were neither thinkers nor educated persons. It alone\nthought, it alone spoke and wrote, it alone taught. Though heresies\narose in its bosom, they affected only the theological or practical\ndevelopments of the fundamental dogma, never that dogma itself. The\nbelief in God, pure spirit and creator of the world, and the belief in\nthe immateriality of the soul remained untouched. This double belief\nbecame the ideal basis of the whole Occidental and Oriental civilization\nof Europe; it penetrated and became incarnate in all the institutions,\nall the details of the public and private life of all classes, and the\nmasses as well.\n\nAfter that, is it surprising that this belief has lived until the\npresent day, continuing to exercise its disastrous influence even upon\nselect minds, such as those of Mazzini, Michelet, Quinet, and so many\nothers? We have seen that the first attack upon it came from the\n_renaissance_ of the free mind in the fifteenth century, which produced\nheroes and martyrs like Vanini, Giordano Bruno, and Galileo. Although\ndrowned in the noise, tumult, and passions of the Reformation, it\nnoiselessly continued its invisible work, bequeathing to the noblest\nminds of each generation its task of human emancipation by the\ndestruction of the absurd, until at last, in the latter half of the\neighteenth century, it again reappeared in broad day, boldly waving the\nflag of atheism and materialism.\n\nThe human mind, then, one might have supposed, was at last about to\ndeliver itself from all the divine obsessions. Not at all. The divine\nfalsehood upon which humanity had been feeding for eighteen centuries\n(speaking of Christianity only) was once more to show itself more\npowerful than human truth. No longer able to make use of the black\ntribe, of the ravens consecrated by the Church, of the Catholic or\nProtestant priests, all confidence in whom had been lost, it made use of\nlay priests, short-robed liars and sophists, among whom the principal\n_roles_ devolved upon two fatal men, one the falsest mind, the other the\nmost doctrinally despotic will, of the last century--J. J. Rousseau and\nRobespierre.\n\nThe first is the perfect type of narrowness and suspicious meanness, of\nexaltation without other object than his own person, of cold enthusiasm\nand hypocrisy at once sentimental and implacable, of the falsehood of\nmodern idealism. He may be considered as the real creator of modern\nreaction. To all appearance the most democratic writer of the eighteenth\ncentury, he bred within himself the pitiless despotism of the statesman.\nHe was the prophet of the doctrinaire State, as Robespierre, his worthy\nand faithful disciple, tried to become its high priest. Having heard the\nsaying of Voltaire that, if God did not exist, it would be necessary to\ninvent him, J. J. Rousseau invented the Supreme Being, the abstract and\nsterile God of the deists. And it was in the name of the Supreme Being,\nand of the hypocritical virtue commanded by this Supreme Being, that\nRobespierre guillotined first the Hebertists and then the very genius of\nthe Revolution, Danton, in whose person he assassinated the Republic,\nthus preparing the way for the thenceforth necessary triumph of the\ndictatorship of Bonaparte I. After this great triumph, the idealistic\nreaction sought and found servants less fanatical, less terrible,\nnearer to the diminished stature of the actual bourgeoisie. In France,\nChateaubriand, Lamartine, and--shall I say it? Why not? All must be said\nif it is truth--Victor Hugo himself, the democrat, the republican, the\nquasi-socialist of to-day! and after them the whole melancholy and\nsentimental company of poor and pallid minds who, under the leadership\nof these masters, established the modern romantic school; in Germany,\nthe Schlegels, the Tiecks, the Novalis, the Werners, the Schellings, and\nso many others besides, whose names do not even deserve to be recalled.\n\nThe literature created by this school was the very reign of ghosts and\nphantoms. It could not stand the sunlight; the twilight alone permitted\nit to live. No more could it stand the brutal contact of the masses.\nIt was the literature of the tender, delicate, distinguished souls,\naspiring to heaven, and living on earth as if in spite of themselves.\nIt had a horror and contempt for the politics and questions of the\nday; but when perchance it referred to them, it showed itself frankly\nreactionary, took the side of the Church against the insolence of\nthe freethinkers, of the kings against the peoples, and of all the\naristocrats against the vile rabble of the streets. For the rest, as I\nhave just said, the dominant feature of the school of romanticism was a\nquasi-complete indifference to politics. Amid the clouds in which it\nlived could be distinguished two real points--the rapid development of\nbourgeois materialism and the ungovernable outburst of individual\nvanities.\n\nTo understand this romantic literature, the reason for its existence\nmust be sought in the transformation which had been effected in the\nbosom of the bourgeois class since the revolution of 1793.\n\nFrom the Renaissance and the Reformation down to the Revolution, the\nbourgeoisie, if not in Germany, at least in Italy, in France, in\nSwitzerland, in England, in Holland, was the hero and representative of\nthe revolutionary genius of history. From its bosom sprang most of the\nfreethinkers of the fifteenth century, the religious reformers of\nthe two following centuries, and the apostles of human emancipation,\nincluding this time those of Germany, of the past century. It alone,\nnaturally supported by the powerful arm of the people, who had faith in\nit, made the revolution of 1789 and '93. It proclaimed the downfall of\nroyalty and of the Church, the fraternity of the peoples, the rights\nof man and of the citizen. Those are its titles to glory; they are\nimmortal!\n\nSoon it split. A considerable portion of the purchasers of national\nproperty having become rich, and supporting themselves no longer on the\nproletariat of the cities, but on the major portion of the peasants of\nFrance, these also having become landed proprietors, had no aspiration\nleft but for peace, the re-establishment of public order, and the\nfoundation of a strong and regular government. It therefore welcomed\nwith joy the dictatorship of the first Bonaparte, and, although always\nVoltairean, did not view with displeasure the Concordat with the Pope\nand the re-establishment of the official Church in France: \"_Religion is\nso necessary to the people!_\" Which means that, satiated themselves,\nthis portion of the bourgeoisie then began to see that it was needful\nto the maintenance of their situation and the preservation of their\nnewly-acquired estates to appease the unsatisfied hunger of the people\nby promises of heavenly manna. Then it was that Chateaubriand began to\npreach.[11]\n\nNapoleon fell and the Restoration brought back into France the\nlegitimate monarchy, and with it the power of the Church and of the\nnobles, who regained, if not the whole, at least a considerable portion\nof their former influence. This reaction threw the bourgeoisie back into\nthe Revolution, and with the revolutionary spirit that of skepticism\nalso was re-awakened in it. It set Chateaubriand aside and began to read\nVoltaire again; but it did not go so far as Diderot: its debilitated\nnerves could not stand nourishment so strong. Voltaire, on the contrary,\nat once a freethinker and a deist, suited it very well. Beranger and P.\nL. Courier expressed this new tendency perfectly. The \"God of the good\npeople\" and the ideal of the bourgeois king, at once liberal and\ndemocratic, sketched against the majestic and thenceforth inoffensive\nbackground of the Empire's gigantic victories--such was at that period\nthe daily intellectual food of the bourgeoisie of France.\n\nLamartine, to be sure, excited by a vain and ridiculously envious desire\nto rise to the poetic height of the great Byron, had begun his coldly\ndelirious hymns in honor of the God of the nobles and of the legitimate\nmonarchy. But his songs resounded only in aristocratic salons. The\nbourgeoisie did not hear them. Beranger was its poet and Courier was\nits political writer.\n\nThe revolution of July resulted in lifting its tastes. We know that\nevery bourgeois in France carries within him the imperishable type of\nthe bourgeois gentleman, a type which never fails to appear immediately\nthe parvenu acquires a little wealth and power. In 1830 the wealthy\nbourgeoisie had definitely replaced the old nobility in the seats\nof power. It naturally tended to establish a new aristocracy. An\naristocracy of capital first of all, but also an aristocracy of\nintellect, of good manners and delicate sentiments. It began to feel\nreligious.\n\nThis was not on its part simply an aping of aristocratic customs. It\nwas also a necessity of its position. The proletariat had rendered it\na final service in once more aiding it to overthrow the nobility. The\nbourgeoisie now had no further need of its co-operation, for it felt\nitself firmly seated in the shadow of the throne of July, and the\nalliance with the people, thenceforth useless, began to become\ninconvenient. It was necessary to remand it to its place, which\nnaturally could not be done without provoking great indignation among\nthe masses. It became necessary to restrain this indignation. In the\nname of what? In the name of the bourgeois interest bluntly confessed?\nThat would have been much too cynical. The more unjust and inhuman an\ninterest is, the greater need it has of sanction. Now, where find it\nif not in religion, that good protectress of all the well-fed and the\nuseful consoler of the hungry? And more than ever the triumphant\nbourgeoisie saw that religion was indispensable to the people.\n\nAfter having won all its titles to glory in religious, philosophical,\nand political opposition, in protest and in revolution, it at last\nbecame the dominant class and thereby even the defender and preserver of\nthe State, thenceforth the regular institution of the exclusive power of\nthat class. The State is force, and for it, first of all, is the right\nof force, the triumphant argument of the needle-gun, of the _chassepot_.\nBut man is so singularly constituted that this argument, wholly eloquent\nas it may appear, is not sufficient in the long run. Some moral sanction\nor other is absolutely necessary to enforce his respect. Further, this\nsanction must be at once so simple and so plain that it may convince the\nmasses, who, after having been reduced by the power of the State, must\nalso be induced to morally recognize its right.\n\nThere are only two ways of convincing the masses of the goodness of any\nsocial institution whatever. The first, the only real one, but also the\nmost difficult to adopt--because it implies the abolition of the\nState, or, in other words, the abolition of the organized political\nexploitation of the majority by any minority whatsoever--would be the\ndirect and complete satisfaction of the needs and aspirations of the\npeople, which would be equivalent to the complete liquidation of the\npolitical and economical existence of the bourgeois class, or, again,\nto the abolition of the State. Beneficial means for the masses, but\ndetrimental to bourgeois interests; hence it is useless to talk about\nthem.\n\nThe only way, on the contrary, harmful only to the people, precious in\nits salvation of bourgeois privileges, is no other than religion. That\nis the eternal _mirage_ which leads away the masses in a search for\ndivine treasures, while, much more reserved, the governing class\ncontents itself with dividing among all its members--very unequally,\nmoreover, and always giving most to him who possesses most--the\nmiserable goods of earth and the plunder taken from the people,\nincluding their political and social liberty.\n\nThere is not, there cannot be, a State without religion. Take the\nfreest States in the world--the United States of America or the Swiss\nConfederation, for instance--and see what an important part is played\nin all official discourses by divine Providence, that supreme sanction\nof all States.\n\nBut whenever a chief of State speaks of God, be he William I., the\nKnouto-Germanic emperor, or Grant, the president of the great republic,\nbe sure that he is getting ready to shear once more his people-flock.\n\nThe French liberal and Voltairean bourgeoisie, driven by temperament to\na positivism (not to say a materialism) singularly narrow and brutal,\nhaving become the governing class of the State by its triumph of 1830,\nhad to give itself an official religion. It was not an easy thing.\nThe bourgeoisie could not abruptly go back under the yoke of Roman\nCatholicism. Between it and the Church of Rome was an abyss of blood\nand hatred, and, however practical and wise one becomes, it is never\npossible to repress a passion developed by history. Moreover, the French\nbourgeoisie would have covered itself with ridicule if it had gone back\nto the Church to take part in the pious ceremonies of its worship, an\nessential condition of a meretorious and sincere conversion. Several\nattempted it, it is true, but their heroism was rewarded by no other\nresult than a fruitless scandal. Finally, a return to Catholicism was\nimpossible on account of the insolvable contradiction which separates\nthe invariable politics of Rome from the development of the economical\nand political interests of the middle class.\n\nIn this respect Protestantism is much more advantageous. It is the\nbourgeois religion _par excellence_. It accords just as much liberty as\nis necessary to the bourgeois, and finds a way of reconciling celestial\naspirations with the respect which terrestrial conditions demand.\nConsequently it is especially in Protestant countries that commerce\nand industry have been developed. But it was impossible for the\nFrench bourgeoisie to become Protestant. To pass from one religion to\nanother--unless it be done deliberately, as sometimes in the case of the\nJews of Russia and Poland, who get baptised three or four times in order\nto receive each time the remuneration allowed them--to seriously change\none's religion, a little faith is necessary. Now, in the exclusive\npositive heart of the French bourgeois, there is no room for faith. He\nprofesses the most profound indifference for all questions which touch\nneither his pocket first nor his social vanity afterwards. He is as\nindifferent to Protestantism as to Catholicism. On the other hand, the\nFrench bourgeois could not go over to Protestantism without putting\nhimself in conflict with the Catholic routine of the majority of the\nFrench people, which would have been great imprudence on the part of a\nclass pretending to govern the nation.\n\nThere was still one way left--to return to the humanitarian and\nrevolutionary religion of the eighteenth century. But that would have\nled too far. So the bourgeoisie was obliged, in order to sanction its\nnew State, to create a new religion which might be boldly proclaimed,\nwithout too much ridicule and scandal, by the whole bourgeois class.\n\nThus was born _doctrinaire_ Deism.\n\nOthers have told, much better than I could tell it, the story of the\nbirth and development of this school, which had so decisive and--we may\nwell add--so fatal an influence on the political, intellectual, and\nmoral education of the bourgeois youth of France. It dates from Benjamin\nConstant and Madame de Stael; its real founder was Royer-Collard; its\napostles, Guizot, Cousin, Villemain, and many others. Its boldly avowed\nobject was the reconciliation of Revolution with Reaction, or, to use\nthe language of the school, of the principle of liberty with that of\nauthority, and naturally to the advantage of the latter.\n\nThis reconciliation signified: in politics, the taking away of popular\nliberty for the benefit of bourgeois rule, represented by the\nmonarchical and constitutional State; in philosophy, the deliberate\nsubmission of free reason to the eternal principles of faith. We have\nonly to deal here with the latter.\n\nWe know that this philosophy was specially elaborated by M. Cousin,\nthe father of French eclecticism. A superficial and pedantic talker,\nincapable of any original conception, of any idea peculiar to himself,\nbut very strong on commonplace, which he confounded with common sense,\nthis illustrious philosopher learnedly prepared, for the use of the\nstudious youth of France, a metaphysical dish of his own making, the\nuse of which, made compulsory in all schools of the State under the\nUniversity, condemned several generations one after the other to a\ncerebral indigestion. Imagine a philosophical vinegar sauce of the\nmost opposed systems, a mixture of Fathers of the Church, scholastic\nphilosophers, Descartes and Pascal, Kant and Scotch psychologists, all\nthis a superstructure on the divine and innate ideas of Plato, and\ncovered up with a layer of Hegelian immanence, accompanied, of course,\nby an ignorance, as contemptuous as it is complete, of natural science,\nand proving, just as two times two make _five_, the existence of a\npersonal God....\n\n\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[1] I call it \"iniquitous\" because, as I believe I have proved in the\nAppendix alluded to, this mystery has been and still continues to be the\nconsecration of all the horrors which have been and are being committed\nin the world; I call it unique, because all the other theological and\nmetaphysical absurdities which debase the human mind are but its\nnecessary consequences.\n\n[2] Mr. Stuart Mill is perhaps the only one whose serious idealism\nmay be fairly doubted, and that for two reasons: first, that, if not\nabsolutely the disciple, he is a passionate admirer, an adherent of the\npositive philosophy of Auguste Comte, a philosophy which, in spite of\nits numerous reservations, is really Atheistic; second, that Mr. Stuart\nMill is English, and in England to proclaim oneself an Atheist is to\nostracise oneself, even at this late day.\n\n[3] In London I once heard M. Louis Blanc express almost the same idea.\n\"The best form of government,\" said he to me, \"would be that which would\ninvariably call _men of virtuous genius_ to the control of affairs.\"\n\n[4] One day I asked Mazzini what measures would be taken for the\nemancipation of the people, once his triumphant unitary republic had\nbeen definitely established. \"The first measure,\" he answered, \"will be\nthe foundation of schools for the people.\" \"And what will the people be\ntaught in these schools?\" \"The duties of man--sacrifice and devotion.\"\nBut where will you find a sufficient number of professors to teach these\nthings, which no one has the right or power to teach, unless he preaches\nby example? Is not the number of men who find supreme enjoyment in\nsacrifice and devotion exceedingly limited? Those who sacrifice\nthemselves in the service of a great idea obey a lofty passion, and,\n_satisfying this personal passion_, outside of which life itself loses\nall value in their eyes, they generally think of something else than\nbuilding their action into doctrine, while those who teach doctrine\nusually forget to translate it into action, for the simple reason that\ndoctrine kills the life, the living spontaneity, of action. Men like\nMazzini, in whom doctrine and action form an admirable unity, are very\nrare exceptions. In Christianity also there have been great men, holy\nmen, who have really practised, or who, at least, have passionately\ntried to practice all that they preached, and whose hearts, overflowing\nwith love, were full of contempt for the pleasures and goods of this\nworld. But the immense majority of Catholic and Protestant priests who,\nby trade, have preached and still preach the doctrines of chastity,\nabstinence, and renunciation belie their teachings by their example. It\nis not without reason, but because of several centuries' experience,\nthat among the people of all countries these phrases have become\nby-words: _As licentious as a priest; as gluttonous as a priest; as\nambitious as a priest; as greedy, selfish, and grasping as a priest._ It\nis, then, established that the professors of the Christian virtues,\nconsecrated by the Church, the priests, _in the immense majority of\ncases_, have practised quite the contrary of what they have preached.\nThis very majority, the universality of this fact, show that the fault\nis not to be attributed to them as individuals, but to the social\nposition, impossible and contradictory in itself, in which these\nindividuals are placed. The position of the Christian priest involves a\ndouble contradiction. In the first place, that between the doctrine of\nabstinence and renunciation and the positive tendencies and needs of\nhuman nature--tendencies and needs which, in some individual cases,\nalways very rare, may indeed be continually held back, suppressed, and\neven entirely annihilated by the constant influence of some potent\nintellectual and moral passion; which at certain moments of collective\nexaltation, may be forgotten and neglected for some time by a large mass\nof men at once; but which are so fundamentally inherent in our nature\nthat sooner or later they always resume their rights: so that, when they\nare not satisfied in a regular and normal way, they are always replaced\nat last by unwholesome and monstrous satisfaction. This is a natural and\nconsequently fatal and irresistible law, under the disastrous action of\nwhich inevitably fall all Christian priests and especially those of the\nRoman Catholic Church. It cannot apply to the professors, that is to the\npriests of the modern Church, unless they are also obliged to preach\nChristian abstinence and renunciation.\n\nBut there is another contradiction common to the priests of both sects.\nThis contradiction grows out of the very title and position of master. A\nmaster who commands, oppresses, and exploits is a wholly logical and\nquite natural personage. But a master who sacrifices himself to those\nwho are subordinated to him by his divine or human privilege is a\ncontradictory and quite impossible being. This is the very constitution\nof hypocrisy, so well personified by the Pope, who, while calling\nhimself _the lowest servant of the servants of God_--in token whereof,\nfollowing the example of Christ, he even washes once a year the feet of\ntwelve Roman beggars--proclaims himself at the same time vicar of God,\nabsolute and infallible master of the world. Do I need to recall that\nthe priests of all churches, far from sacrificing themselves to the\nflocks confided to their care, have always sacrificed them, exploited\nthem, and kept them in the condition of a flock, partly to satisfy their\nown personal passions and partly to serve the omnipotence of the Church?\nLike conditions, like causes, always produce like effects. It will,\nthen, be the same with the professors of the modern School divinely\ninspired and licensed by the State. They will necessarily become, some\nwithout knowing it, others with full knowledge of the cause, teachers of\nthe doctrine of popular sacrifice to the power of the State and to the\nprofit of the privileged classes.\n\nMust we, then, eliminate from society all instruction and abolish all\nschools? Far from it! Instruction must be spread among the masses\nwithout stint, transforming all the churches, all those temples\ndedicated to the glory of God and to the slavery of men, into so\nmany schools of human emancipation. But, in the first place, let us\nunderstand each other; schools, properly speaking, in a normal society\nfounded on equality and on respect for human liberty, will exist only\nfor children and not for adults; and, in order that they may become\nschools of emancipation and not of enslavement, it will be necessary to\neliminate, first of all, this fiction of God, the eternal and absolute\nenslaver. The whole education of children and their instruction must be\nfounded on the scientific development of reason, not on that of faith;\non the development of personal dignity and independence, not on that of\npiety and obedience; on the worship of truth and justice at any cost,\nand above all on respect for humanity, which must replace always and\neverywhere the worship of divinity. The principle of authority, in the\neducation of children, constitutes the natural point of departure; it is\nlegitimate, necessary, when applied to children of a tender age, whose\nintelligence has not yet openly developed itself. But as the development\nof everything, and consequently of education, implies the gradual\nnegation of the point of departure, this principle must diminish as\nfast as education and instruction advance, giving place to increasing\nliberty. All rational education is at bottom nothing but this\nprogressive immolation of authority for the benefit of liberty, the\nfinal object of education necessarily being the formation of free men\nfull of respect and love for the liberty of others. Therefore the first\nday of the pupils' life, if the school takes infants scarcely able as\nyet to stammer a few words, should be that of the greatest authority and\nan almost entire absence of liberty; but its last day should be that of\nthe greatest liberty and the absolute abolition of every vestige of the\nanimal or divine principle of authority.\n\nThe principle of authority, applied to men who have surpassed or\nattained their majority, becomes a monstrosity, a flagrant denial of\nhumanity, a source of slavery and intellectual and moral depravity.\nUnfortunately, paternal governments have left the masses to wallow in an\nignorance so profound that it will be necessary to establish schools not\nonly for the people's children, but for the people themselves. From\nthese schools will be absolutely eliminated the smallest applications or\nmanifestations of the principle of authority. They will be schools no\nlonger; they will be popular academies, in which neither pupils nor\nmasters will be known, where the people will come freely to get, if they\nneed it, free instruction, and in which, rich in their own experience,\nthey will teach in their turn many things to the professors who shall\nbring them knowledge which they lack. This, then, will be a mutual\ninstruction, an act of intellectual fraternity between the educated\nyouth and the people.\n\nThe real school for the people and for all grown men is life. The only\ngrand and omnipotent authority, at once natural and rational, the only\none which we may respect, will be that of the collective and public\nspirit of a society founded on equality and solidarity and the mutual\nhuman respect of all its members. Yes, this is an authority which is not\nat all divine, wholly human, but before which we shall bow willingly,\ncertain that, far from enslaving them, it will emancipate men. It will\nbe a thousand times more powerful, be sure of it, than all your divine,\ntheological, metaphysical, political, and judicial authorities,\nestablished by the Church and by the State; more powerful than your\ncriminal codes, your jailers, and your executioners.\n\nThe power of collective sentiment or public spirit is even now a very\nserious matter. The men most ready to commit crimes rarely dare to defy\nit, to openly affront it. They will seek to deceive it, but will take\ncare not to be rude with it unless they feel the support of a minority\nlarger or smaller. No man, however powerful he believes himself, will\never have the strength to bear the unanimous contempt of society; no one\ncan live without feeling himself sustained by the approval and esteem of\nat least some portion of society. A man must be urged on by an immense\nand very sincere conviction in order to find courage to speak and act\nagainst the opinion of all, and never will a selfish, depraved, and\ncowardly man have such courage.\n\nNothing proves more clearly than this fact the natural and inevitable\nsolidarity--this law of sociability--which binds all men together, as\neach of us can verify daily, both on himself and on all the men whom\nhe knows. But, if this social power exists, why has it not sufficed\nhitherto to moralize, to humanize men? Simply because hitherto this\npower has not been humanized itself; it has not been humanized because\nthe social life of which it is ever the faithful expression is based,\nas we know, on the worship of divinity, not on respect for humanity;\non authority, not on liberty; on privilege, not on equality; on the\nexploitation, not on the brotherhood of men; on iniquity and falsehood,\nnot on justice and truth. Consequently its real action, always in\ncontradiction of the humanitarian theories which it professes, has\nconstantly exercised a disastrous and depraving influence. It does not\nrepress vices and crimes; it creates them. Its authority is consequently\na divine, anti-human authority; its influence is mischievous and\nbaleful. Do you wish to render its authority and influence beneficent\nand human? Achieve the social revolution. Make all needs really\nsolidary, and cause the material and social interests of each to conform\nto the human duties of each. And to this end there is but one means:\nDestroy all the institutions of Inequality; establish the economic and\nsocial equality of all, and on this basis will arise the liberty, the\nmorality, the solidary humanity of all.\n\nI shall return to this, the most important question of Socialism.\n\n[5] Here three pages of Bakunin's manuscript are missing.\n\n[6] The lost part of this sentence perhaps said: \"If men of science, in\ntheir researches and experiments are not treating men actually as they\ntreat animals, the reason is that\" they are not exclusively men of\nscience, but are also more or less men of life.\n\n[7] Science, in becoming the patrimony of everybody, will wed itself in\na certain sense to the immediate and real life of each. It will gain in\nutility and grace what it loses in pride, ambition, and _doctrinaire_\npedantry. This, however, will not prevent men of genius, better\norganized for scientific speculation than the majority of their fellows,\nfrom devoting themselves exclusively to the cultivation of the sciences,\nand rendering great services to humanity. Only, they will be ambitious\nfor no other social influence than the natural influence exercised upon\nits surroundings by every superior intelligence, and for no other\nreward than the high delight which a noble mind always finds in the\nsatisfaction of a noble passion.\n\n[8] Universal _experience_, on which all science rests, must be clearly\ndistinguished from universal _faith_, on which the idealists wish to\nsupport their beliefs: the first is a real authentication of facts; the\nsecond is only a supposition of facts which nobody has seen, and which\nconsequently are at variance with the experience of everybody.\n\n[9] The idealists, all those who believe in the immateriality and\nimmortality of the human soul, must be excessively embarrassed by\nthe difference in intelligence existing between races, peoples, and\nindividuals. Unless we suppose that the various divine particles have\nbeen irregularly distributed, how is this difference to be explained?\nUnfortunately there is a considerable number of men wholly stupid,\nfoolish even to idiocy. Could they have received in the distribution a\nparticle at once divine and stupid? To escape this embarrassment the\nidealists must necessarily suppose that all human souls are equal, but\nthat the prisons in which they find themselves necessarily confined,\nhuman bodies, are unequal, some more capable than others of serving as\nan organ for the pure intellectuality of soul. According to this, such\na one might have very fine organs at his disposition, such another\nvery gross organs. But these are distinctions which idealism has not\nthe power to use without falling into inconsistency and the grossest\nmaterialism; for in the presence of absolute immateriality of soul\nall bodily differences disappear, all that is corporeal, material,\nnecessarily appearing indifferent, equally and absolutely gross. The\nabyss which separates soul from body, absolute immateriality from\nabsolute materiality, is infinite. Consequently all differences, by the\nway inexplicable and logically impossible, which may exist on the other\nside of the abyss, in matter, should be to the soul null and void, and\nneither can nor should exercise any influence over it. In a word, the\nabsolutely immaterial cannot be constrained, imprisoned, and much less\nexpressed in any degree whatsoever by the absolutely material. Of all\nthe gross and materialistic (using the word in the sense attached to it\nby the idealists) imaginations which were engendered by the primitive\nignorance and stupidity of men, that of an immaterial soul imprisoned in\na material body is certainly the grossest, the most stupid, and nothing\nbetter proves the omnipotence exercised by ancient prejudices even over\nthe best minds than the deplorable sight of men endowed with lofty\nintelligence still talking of it in our days.\n\n[10] I am well aware that in the theological and metaphysical systems of\nthe Orient, and especially in those of India, including Buddhism, we\nfind the principle of the annihilation of the real world in favor of the\nideal and of absolute abstraction. But it has not the added character of\nvoluntary and deliberate negation which distinguishes Christianity; when\nthose systems were conceived, the world of human thought, of will and of\nliberty, had not reached that stage of development which was afterwards\nseen in the Greek and Roman civilization.\n\n[11] It seems to me useful to recall at this point an anecdote--one, by\nthe way, well known and thoroughly authentic--which sheds a very clear\nlight on the personal value of this warmer-over of the Catholic beliefs\nand on the religious sincerity of that period. Chateaubriand submitted\nto a publisher a work attacking faith. The publisher called his\nattention to the fact that atheism had gone out of fashion, that the\nreading public cared no more for it, and that the demand, on the\ncontrary, was for religious works. Chateaubriand withdrew, but a few\nmonths later came back with his _Genius of Christianity_.\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n\n\n                   THE ONLY ANARCHIST MONTHLY\n                           IN AMERICA\n\n                             MOTHER\n                             EARTH\n\n\n[Paragraph sign] A revolutionary literary magazine devoted to\nAnarchist thought in sociology, economics, education, and life.\n\n[Paragraph sign] Articles by leading Anarchists and radical\nthinkers.--International Notes giving a summary of the revolutionary\nactivities in various countries.--Reviews of modern books and the\ndrama.\n\n\n                        TEN CENTS A COPY\n                        ONE DOLLAR A YEAR\n\n\n          EMMA GOLDMAN,\n                                      Editor and Publisher\n\n\n                      20 East 125th Street\n                            NEW YORK\n\n\n        Bound Volumes 1906-1915, Two Dollars per Volume\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                            ANARCHISM\n\nThe philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by\nman-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence,\nand are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.\n\n                          FREE COMMUNISM\n\nVoluntary economic cooperation; a social arrangement based on the\nprinciple: To each according to his needs; from each according to his\nability.\n\n               HEADQUARTERS FOR ANARCHIST LITERATURE\n\n                             LIBRARY\n                               OF\n                            ANARCHISM\n\nThe literature of Anarchism is very extensive. Numerous books and\npamphlets have been written, treating of the various phases of Anarchist\nthought, and many publications, both here and abroad, are devoted to\nthis philosophy of life. No well-informed man or woman can afford to\nignore this vital subject. Your library is not complete unless it\nincludes works on Anarchism.\n\n                Mother Earth Publishing Association\n                  20 East 125th Street, New York\n                            NEW YORK\n\n\nOrders for literature should be accompanied by check or money order.\nSpecial discount on large quantities.\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                            ANARCHISM\n\n                        _And Other Essays_\n\n                         By EMMA GOLDMAN\n\n[Paragraph sign] Including a biographic SKETCH of the author's\ninteresting career, a splendid PORTRAIT, and twelve of her most\nimportant lectures, some of which have been suppressed by the police\nauthorities of various cities. This book expresses the most advanced\nideas on social questions--economics, politics, education and sex.\n\n                     _Second Revised Edition_\n\nEmma Goldman--the notorious, insistent, rebellious, enigmatical Emma\nGoldman--has published her first book, \"Anarchism and Other Essays.\" In\nit she records \"the mental and soul struggles of twenty-one years,\" and\nrecites all the articles of that strange and subversive creed in behalf\nof which she has suffered imprisonment, contumely and every kind of\npersecution. The book is a vivid revelation of a unique personality.\nIt appears at a time when Anarchistic ideas are undoubtedly in the\nascendant throughout the world.--_Current Literature._\n\nEmma Goldman's book on \"Anarchism and Other Essays\" ought to be read\nby all so-called respectable women, and adopted as a text-book by\nwomen's clubs throughout the country.... For courage, persistency,\nself-effacement, self-sacrifice in the pursuit of her object, she has\nhitherto been unsurpassed among the world's women.... Repudiating as she\ndoes practically every tenet of what the modern State holds good, she\nstands for some of the noblest traits in human nature.--_Life._\n\nEvery thoughtful person ought to read this volume of papers by the\nforemost American Anarchist. In whatever way the book may modify\nor strengthen the opinion already held by its readers, there is no\ndoubt that a careful reading of it will tend to bring about greater\nsocial sympathy. It will help the public to understand a group of\nserious-minded and morally strenuous individuals, and also to feel\nthe spirit that underlies the most radical tendencies of the great\nlabor movement of our day.--Hutchins Hapgood in _The Bookman_.\n\n                   Price $1.00      By Mail $1.10\n\n            _ORDER THROUGH YOUR BOOK DEALER OR SEND TO_\n\n               Mother Earth Publishing Association\n                  20 EAST 125th STREET, NEW YORK\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                         The Modern Drama\n\n            _Its Social and Revolutionary Significance_\n\n                               By\n\n                          EMMA GOLDMAN\n\nThis volume contains a critical analysis of the Modern Drama, in its\nrelation to the social and revolutionary tendencies of the age. It\nembraces fifty plays of twenty-four of the foremost dramatists of six\ndifferent countries, dealing with them not from the technical point of\nview, but from the standpoint of their universal and dynamic appeal to\nthe human race.\n\n                            CONTENTS\n\nPREFACE\n\nTHE SCANDINAVIAN DRAMA: Ibsen, Strindberg, Bjornson\n\nTHE GERMAN DRAMA: Hauptmann, Sudermann, Wedekind\n\nTHE ENGLISH DRAMA: Shaw, Pinero, Galsworthy, Kennedy, Sowerby\n\nTHE IRISH DRAMA: Yeats, Lady Gregory, Robinson\n\nTHE RUSSIAN DRAMA: Tolstoy, Tchekhov, Gorki, Tchirikov, Andreyev\n\nINDEX\n\n\n           Price $1.00 net.            By mail $1.15\n\n               Mother Earth Publishing Association\n                        20 E. 125th Street\n                            NEW YORK\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                       The Selected Works\n                              of\n                      Voltairine de Cleyre\n\nThis volume of America's foremost literary rebel and Anarchist\npropagandist contains a choice selection of her poems, essays,\nsociological discourses, sketches and stories, which have proved a\nsource of great inspiration to the revolutionary movement during the\nlast twenty years.\n\n\n                   Edited by Alexander Berkman\n              Biographical Sketch of Hippolyte Havel\n\n\n        Over 500 pp., cloth, with portrait of the author.\n                  Tastefully printed and bound.\n\n\n                 $1.00 Net.      By Mail, $1.15\n\n\n            With one subscription Mother Earth $1.50\n              MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION\n                     20 East 125th Street\n                           New York\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                  _An Important Human Document_\n\n                         PRISON MEMOIRS\n                               OF\n                          AN ANARCHIST\n\n                               BY\n                        ALEXANDER BERKMAN\n\nAn earnest portrayal of the revolutionary psychology of the author,\nas manifested by his _Attentat_ during the great labor struggle of\nHomestead, in 1892.\n\nThe whole truth about prisons has never before been told as this book\ntells it. The MEMOIRS deal frankly and intimately with prison life in\nits various phases.\n\n\n                     $1.50, postage 15 cents\n\n\n                          MOTHER EARTH\n                      20 East 125th Street\n                            New York\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                      Ideals and Realities\n                      In Russian Literature\n\n                              BY\n\n                        PETER KROPOTKIN\n\n\nA book indispensable to every student and lover of Russian literature.\nKropotkin not only makes us acquainted with the works and personalities\nof the authors, we also learn much about the deep-rooted sympathetic\nconnections between the writers and the people, more pronounced in\nRussia than in any other country.\n\n\n                   $1.50.    Postage, 15 Cents\n\n\n                         MOTHER EARTH\n                 20 East 125th Street, New York\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                 The Works of Friedrich Nietzsche\n\n  Beyond Good and Evil                                               $1.25\n\n  The Birth of Tragedy                                                1.00\n\n  Case of Wagner; We Philologists, etc.; Nietzsche contra Wagner      1.25\n\n  The Dawn of Day                                                     1.75\n\n  Early Greek Philosophy and Other Essays                             1.25\n\n  Ecce Homo (Nietzsche's Autobiography)                               2.00\n\n  Genealogy of Morals. Poems                                          1.25\n\n  The Joyful Wisdom                                                   1.60\n\n  Human, All Too Human. Part I                                        1.60\n\n  Human, All Too Human. Part II                                       1.75\n\n  On the Future of Our Educational Institutions; and Homer and\n    Classical Philology                                               1.00\n\n  Thoughts Out of Season. Part I                                      1.00\n\n  Thoughts Out of Season. Part II                                     1.00\n\n  The Twilight of the Idols: The Antichrist                           1.75\n\n  Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book of All and None                      2.00\n\n  The Will to Power. Books I and II                                   1.60\n\n  The Will to Power. Vol. II                                          1.60\n\n  Various Essays and Fragments. Biography and Criticism               2.00\n\n  The Gospel of Superman                                              1.60\n\n                      Postage, 15c per volume\n\nAs a Special Offer, we will send the above works of Nietzsche, complete\nin 19 volumes, postpaid, for $26\n\n           Mother Earth, 20 East 125th Street, New York\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n               The Best Literature on Birth Control:\n\n                    (None give actual methods)\n\n  \"MOTHER EARTH,\" (April, 1916 issue) price, 10c, postage 1 cent.\n\n  \"The Limitation of Offspring,\"\n      By Dr. William J. Robinson                   1.00  10c\n\n  \"The Small Family System,\"\n      By Dr. C. V. Drysdale                        1.00  10c\n\n  \"The Right To Be Well Born,\"\n      By Moses Harman                               .25   5c\n\n  \"What Every Mother Should Know,\"\n      By Margaret Sanger                            .25   5c\n\n  \"What Every Girl Should Know,\"\n      By Margaret Sanger                            .25   5c\n\n  \"The Awakening of Spring,\"\n      By Frank Wedekind (paper)                     .50   5c\n\n\n                          MOTHER EARTH\n                 20 East 125th Street, New York\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                       The Ego and His Own\n\n                         By Max Stirner\n\nThe book contains the most revolutionary philosophy ever written, its\npurpose being to destroy the idea of duty and assert the supremacy of\nthe will, and from this standpoint to effect a \"transvaluation of all\nvalues\" and displace the state by a union of conscious egoists.\n\n                 Price 75 cents, postage 10 cents\n\n    For sale by MOTHER EARTH Pub. Co., 20 E. 125th St., N. Y.\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\nTo be had through MOTHER EARTH, 20 E. 125th St., New York\n\n                     Famous Speeches of the\n                       CHICAGO ANARCHISTS\n\nDelivered in court in reply to why sentence\nof death should not be passed upon them              30c postpaid\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\nDo you believe in the Social Revolution? Do you know what took place in\nthe great Social Revolution of 1789-1793? Read\n\n                   THE GREAT FRENCH REVOLUTION\n\n                       By Peter Kropotkin\n\nThe best way to prepare for the New Revolution is to be familiar with\nthe old.\n\n                 Now reduced to $1.50, postage 20c.\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                     Gov. Altgeld's Reasons\n\n            for pardoning Fielden, Neebe and Schwab\n\n                         35c postpaid\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n                            The Bomb\n\n                        By Frank Harris\n\nA powerful novel, while not giving the facts of the Haymarket Tragedy,\nyet gives a vivid and sympathetic portrayal of the event and\npersonalities involved.                         Cloth, 75c postpaid\n\n\n\n\n                    *     *     *     *     *\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber's note:\n\nThe following corrections were made to the text:\n\n  Page       | original word | correction\n  -----------+---------------+-------------\n  7          | viwes         | views\n  31         | infalliby     | infallibly\n  57         | judcial       | judicial\n  59         | up to-day     | up to to-day\n  83         | burgeoisie    | bourgeoisie\n  83         | singuarly     | singularly\n  Footnote 2 | onself        | oneself\n\n\n\n<pre id=\"pg-footer\">","title":"God and the State","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":30409}