Let us speak of agitators. The conviction dawns it were high time we held a few words of prayer together. For nowadays it is counted as being not merely worthy to be an agitator: since Oscar Wilde let the mark of intelligence rest on this label, it has become the only smart thing, so much so that not to agitate and be agitated is to be guilty of immoral conduct of the worst brand: to be dowdy, to wit. It is as bad as not eating your father where the correct mode is that you should eat him: or wearing clothes where the fashion is that you shouldn't. So oppressive indeed among the advanced is the weight of authority demanding that you should be a "rebel," so provocative is the air of immutable rectitude which is now petrifying about the brows... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) “Only let us make the draft of the people’s pious resolutions, then let who will make their laws.” The time has come to rehabilitate the pious resolution which—people being what they now are—is at present held in wholly unmerited contempt. Resolutions are arrogantly despised because, forsooth, they are all “talk.” As though “talk” could be despised by any save those who act in confident self-assurance: as the “people” never act in fact. People who cannot hit out straight off their own instincts, so to speak, fight their first rounds in talk, just as a person unable to use a sword might use a club. A club, though not a sword, has its uses and any whose only weapon it is might ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) I do not remember which of Matthew Arnold’s commentators it was-though all my readers doubtless will-who made the observation that the poet in the lyric lines “Meeting,” addressed “To Marguerite,” is unconsciously confused by a mistake as to identity among his dramatis personae. Says Arnold:
“I spring to make my choice,
Again in tones of ire
I hear a God’s tremendous voice
‘Be counsell’d and retire.’”
Of course, says the critic, Arnold had confused God with Mrs. Grundy. The remark shows how completely an earnest critic may gaze with blind eye upon the most pronounced characteristics of his subject. The critic has failed to see that there is in those four lines the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) "Let us rid our mind of cant": in which sentiment witness the hustle of the popular philosopher. Why rid ourselves of cant? Who knows anything about its uses? May not cant be a necessary utility like clothing: why, then, should we allow ourselves to be hustled into casting it off merely to live up to the exigencies of dramatic oratory? Rather let us dissect: the one safe course to follow in doubling popular heroics back upon popular philosophy. To chant is to sing: to cant is to make—anything you please—into a song. The difference between the two is that each directs its emphasis towards a particular and different stage of the vocal process. To chant, i.e., to sing, is to have regard to the actual execution of the arranged harmo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The handbook of the British Association which holds its annual meeting in Manchester next week, has an article on "Manchester of To-day," which suggests that an extremely interesting; article on that subject might be written by someone who possessed the necessary details. Among the observations on its temper and tradition, Manchester is given distinction particularly as being the breeding-ground of Causes and Movements: a distinction for which the two crusades in favor of Low Diets cited—the Temperance and the Vegetarian Movements—seem only a meager basis. The writer, doubtless, has his reasons for this economy of illustration, but it is an economy which must strike anyone who has even a slender acquaintance with that city. Perh... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The offending aspect of the pretensions of "democracy" is not that in the name of what the "majority" supposedly thinks we are supposed to be pleased and happy to be "ruled" by a clique "for our good." Far from it, since, in truth, but few of us are "ruled" at all. It is merely our little foible to pretend we are. We give our "rulers" to understand they "rule" us because it pleases them so greatly to think they do: and then there is the consideration that a docile demeanor serves to divert their too too kind attention; probably the most servile-seeming member of a "state" the most bent upon fulfilling the role of step-grandmother fundamentally is untouched by "rule." The obedient attitude is a very convenient garb for the perverse to wear: ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) It will be quite clear to many persons if we point the sequence out to them, why in these democratic times an indiscretion is more discreditable to a man and more embarrassing to his party than the most staggering of "crimes." In a household where correct conduct is "not to scandalize these my little ones," the little ones being children, pious women and men with idealized minds, it would be the role of the devil himself to speak as the plain blunt person, without regard to the "doctrine." With his entrance in that household life would thereafter and for ever be different. Sin would have entered: the frank innocence would be gone: and the shifty eyes which know evil from good left behind. And this is exactly what happens in the democratic c... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Now that one may hear "freedom" applauded loudly in high places, one may speak a few words in mild reason about it and its friends—those loquacious "wee frees." The world is composed of these, plus the freedom resisters: The difference by which one may know them is that while both may shout "Freedom" on the ecstatic note, the resister will say "'Freedom'! And we are it," while the friends of freedom can merely say "Freedom! Ah, would that it were ours." Resisters keep their references to freedom for rare occasions when stirred to emotion by their own greatness, goodness and general self-satisfaction—as now. The friends of freedom, however, never cease from their crying: the wail after that freedom which is not theirs, is their m... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) ANARCHISTS are an interesting body of people whom governments take too seriously and who, unfortunately, do not take themselves seriously enough. Governments fear them as hostile, bent on mischief: whereas they are harmless, after the disconcerting harmless manner of infants. For the People indeed: for Humanity, they conceive themselves filled with an ardent passion: but towards the ways of humans — when they, as men, emerge from out the blurred composite mass of “Humanity” — they are averse in the thorough-going implacable way possible only to people who frame their dislikes on principle. Doubtless, if one were to search the world over for the bitterest-sounding opponents of the theory that we are all “born in... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) An enthusiastic chemical research student was explaining to me the other day how a School of Chemistry justifiably falls into disrepute when it shows itself willing to allow its activities to be affected by demands and problems immediately arising out of the world of commerce. To a mild question as to whether chemical inquiry so inspired might not be as fruitful in results as any arrived at along the path of "general" inquiry my enthusiast answered, "No." The two fields, though they overlapped at points, were quite distinct—their animating interest poles apart, and to identify them was to do damage to the first interests of both. The chemical discoveries by which commercial enterprise had been most effected had been byproducts of gene... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) This is the epoch of the gadding mind. The mind ‘not at home’ but given to something else, occupied with alien ‘causes’ is of the normal order, and as such must be held accountable for that contemning of the lonely occupant of the home—the Self—which is the characteristic of the common mind. With the lean kind—the antithesis of those ‘Fat’ with whom latterly we have become so familiarized—the most embarrassing notion is that of the possession of a self having wants. To be selfless is to have attained unto that condition of which leanness is the fitting outcome. Hence, the popularity of the ‘Cause’ which provides the Idol to ‘which the desired self-sacrifice can be... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The concepts with which one age will preoccupy itself, and in which it will invest its surplus emotional heat have shown themselves to be so essentially casual as to be now a matter for mirth rather than wonder with its successors. The subject of an age's Master Passion round which its interest rages will be anything accidental and contingent which will serve: stand the heat, that is, and last out until enthusiasm tires. The amount of genuine enthusiasm which Athanasius, Arius and their followers were able to cull from the numerical problems in the concept of the Trinity was—incredible though it may seem—equal to that which this age culls from the figures of the football scores. The Crusaders who were so concerned about the poss... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) On property. The mischief in all the debates which turn on property is that unconsciously the debaters are infected by the clerical habit of labeling as to quality. They are so put about to decide whether property is good or one or bad for one that they forget that their first concern is with what property is. The subject is by this means landed in the thorny region of attitudes, oughts, and duties where the controversy born of ungranted assumptions takes the place of the unrestrained tale readily told. Out of the great clamor which in modern times has raged about property two themes only can be picked out: one, that property is “bad” for a man, therefore must men be influenced to acquiesce in the placing of their property in Mo... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) By now, in these hard times, the Government might have been expected to be thoroughly alive to the difference between what some elegant person has described as "Blowing your nose and blowing it off," but they still appear to think that they can go to any lengths along the path of obliging their friends. It turns out that the coal strike was allowed to come about just to oblige an old fossil which some member of the Government keeps warm in his pocket. This person's job is theorizing on the subject of "Abstract Right," and the coal strike being the apt illustration he was in need of at the moment it was of course engineered. And the world is at war! There is, of course, nothing left for the unprivileged public to do, but deplore as usual the... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) If the skill of a doctor were bespoken to effect the cure of a madman, and he proceeded to attempt the systemizing of the insane ravings while giving no heed to the existence of the madness one would say there was little to choose from in soundness of mind between doctor and patient. Yet no one marvels when from all those who have a nostrum to offer as a cure for the disease of civilization and its complications no voice is heard drawing attention to the species of sickness which is its antecedent cause. It remains nameless and unsuspected, to be indicated only by a description of its symptoms.
It begins with the failure of the self-assertive principle of the vital power: a failure of courage. Tolerated, it acts on the power of the heart a... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) It is strange to find searchers coming here seeking thoughts, followers after truth seeking new lamps for old, right ideas for wrong. It seems fruitless to affirm that our business is to annihilate thought, to shatter the new lamps no less than the old, to dissolve ideas, the “right” as well as the “wrong”. “It is a new play of artistry, some new paradox,” they reflect, not comprehending that artistry and paradox are left as the defenses of power not yet strong enough to comprehend. If a man has the power that comprehends, what uses has he left for paradox? If he sees a thing as it is, why must he needs describe it in terms of that which is not? Paradox is the refuge of the adventurous guesser: the shield... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) Although—and as we have many times explained—morals are modes of conduct which have become customary, and the intent of the passionate rage in support of the moral is to shield these customs from anything which may cause them to vary, this exposition does not explain why these modes, primarily special and particular, adapted to serve the interests not of All but of a Few should have become customary for All: so much so in fact that the guardianship of morals is in the safest hands when it is left to the fierce partisan feelings of the "Crowd." Before going into the psychology which explains this problem, so perplexing on the surface, it is advisable to indicate a nice distinction which has come to exist between kinds of conduct ... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.) The War—still the War—has brought the wordy contest about Women’s Rights to an abrupt finish, and only a few sympathetic words remain to be spoken over the feminist corpse. Two parties were quarreling about the validity of the one party’s claims to “rights,” and without any warning preliminaries both parties, with the rest of the world, stand spectators at a demonstration in the natural history of “rights.” To “rights” in their maturity we have all been accustomed. Men as well as women had become so implicated in their matured existence that all were inclined to forget that “rights” had an era of birth and consolidation, as well as a period of maturity. The “Women... (From: TheAnarchistLibrary.org.)