Rousseau's Disciples.

Rousseau, however, is rather the grandfather than the father of modern Anarchism, for it is his children who are more immediately connected with the present movement. Joseph Pierre Proudhon is its acknowledged parent. He was born at Besançon on January 15, 1809, and died there on January 19, 1865. The child of parents sunk in hopeless poverty, he felt in his early years all the bitterness of the old world struggle for existence. The vicissitudes of his childhood doubtless engendered that hostility to society that found in later years vehement expression in his writings and made his nature the natural soil for the seed of the Genevese theorist. His youthful talent gained for him the assistance of some friends, and by their aid he got a moderate education, to which he added in after years by self-instruction, becoming in time both a linguist and a scholar. In 1840 appeared his famous work, bearing on the title page the question: "(Qu'est ce que la propriete?" to which the first page of the treatise replies "C'est le vol" [it is robbery]—a doctrine borrowed immediately from the maxim (I have quoted) of Brissot, one of the leaders of the party of Girondists who figure so prominently in the French Revolution. Proudhon's main arguments are that labor is the sole just ground of individual possession, and that all labor ought to be rewarded equally. In 1841 and 1842 he published further treatises more vigorously advocating these views, and so vehemently bitter and revolutionary became his tone that he was prosecuted for his writings, but acquitted. The rest of his life was sedulously devoted to the spread of anarchical propaganda, and a stream of revolutionary theses flowed from his pen. He violently attacks almost every social and legal institution in existence, and, while he shows an utter absence of scientific judgment, he displays that fatal literary gift with which Nature seems to have endowed so many of his countrymen as a compensation for want of sense. The writings of Proudhon were widely circulated in his own lifetime throughout much of Western Europe, and stimulated and fed in many minds the flame of social discontent and revolution. Greatly, however, as Proudhon promoted the modern movement of Anarchism, its spreads and its vitality are more largely due to Michael Bakunin than to any other writer or agitator of this century. He was a Russian, born in 1814 at Torschok, and the descendant of an illustrious aristocratic family. After serving in the page 6 Russian Army for a time be visited Western Europe, and in France met Proudhon, by whose writings be was deeply influenced. This was in 1847. Two years later he was sent to Siberia for his connection with certain disturbances in his own country, but succeeded in effecting his escape. Thenceforth he lived in exile, chiefly in that early home of continental revolutionists, Switzerland, and set himself with a zeal and a determination, bora, perhaps, of an implacable revenge, to diffuse the damnable doctrines of his creed. In 1869 he formed the social Democratic Alliance, which died in the year of its birth. After leading a rising at The Hague in 1870, and actively promoting in every direction his wild anti-social theories, we find him expelled from the 'International' in 1872 by Marx and his party in that great struggle between Socialist and Anarchist, which cost the 'International' its existence. I have not space to trace more fully the features of this strange career. By tongue and pen he unceasingly diffused the principles of his doctrines in Spain, Italy, and France, and gave it a vitality and intensity which to-day produces Santo and his brethren. His system is simplicity itself. In a word it aims at annihilation of all external authority, and is avowedly a declaration of war against every social institution. The race has tried all forms of Government from monarchical to democratic, and the unceasing cry of human misery has proclaimed them each a failure. The tyranny of many is no better than the tyranny of one, and man's enslavement is as bitter in republic as under an autocracy. Perish all your artificial systems which have erected a pernicious power to keep a man a slave. It matters not whether external authority emanate from God or man, from an absolute sovereign or from universal suffrage, it is the true root and source of all our wretchedness and woe, and must at any cost be utterly destroyed. In his 'Dieu et l'etat' he declares:—"Man's true liberty consists solely in this: that he obey the laws of Nature and obey them because he has himself recognised them as such, and not because they have been imposed upon him externally by any foreign will whatever, be it human or divine, collective or individual." In a word, man's true and only governor is the voice of reason within him, and all assumption of external power is but the usurpation of tyranny. This is the Stoic's view run mad—an apotheosis not so much of Rousseau's state of nature as of his natural law. It was the teaching of Zeno that men should strive to rise above the fever, the frets, and the pettiness which belong to the world of passion, prejudice, and ignorance, and reach the serene air of that intellectual life whose ideal is perfect harmony with Nature. The Greeks fully recognise that this high aim was far beyond the full attainment of the mass of men, that it was but an ideal which they could at most by self-control hope to get nearer to, just as we deem the perfect life of Christ a divine example which we can but feebly follow. "The perfect man who springs hereafter up from Nature" may be able to listen to the voice of reason, and, hearing it, obey, but the day of his era is still tar off. It is the fundamental blunder of Proudhon and Bakinun and their disciples that they treat that distant day as already come, and suppose and declare that human nature here and now would, in the absence of all external law and authority, be found almost Christ-like in its love of order and in its justice, morality, and truth. I hope and trust that as the "great world spins for ever down the ringing grooves of change," we are slowly nearing that millennium, but no one but a dreamer or a fool can believe that if every external restraint disappeared man's many imperfections would vanish, and each of us be a perfect law unto himself. Yet this is but a plain statement of the main doctrine of Anarchism—"ascertain Nature's laws, obey them, and obey no others," is the proclamation. To further the recognition of these laws let scientific knowledge be diffused among the people. "No provision for their enforcement is requisite, for once a man realises what a law of Nature dictates he must obey it, since that very law is part of his own nature." Thus no need exists for political organisations or social institutions. As Proudhon puts it, "the government of man by man in every form is oppression, and the highest perfection of society is the union of order and Anarchy."