... “On the other hand, the study of nature, of industry (by its practice in workshops), of the sciences (in laboratories and observatories), gives to the brain a harmonious development, makes it well balanced, and imparts a great justness of judgment. Theoretical study in books should only come after the excitation given by real practice, to supplement and co-ordinate the elements which the practice has furnished. From this concordance in the knowledge and appreciation of real facts results inevitably a tendency to concord upon all other matters; that is to say, veritable social peace....
“It should not be forgotten that the éducation intégrale, physique, and intellectuelle, must combine knowledge and art, the knowing and the doing.
“A genuine intégral is at once theorician and practician. He unites the two qualities systematically separated by the official routine, which maintains, on the one side, primary and professional instruction, and, on the other, secondary and higher instruction. His is the brain that directs and the hand that executes. He is at one and the same time artisan and savant.
“There is no need of detailing at length a programme of moral education. Morality, like reason, is a resultant: it depends on the ensemble. The part of teaching in it is slight. The child assimilates in the measure of his intellectual development ideas of social reciprocity and of goodness; but moral education is especially a work of influence, the consequence of a normal existence in a normal environment. The physiological régime and the general direction given to the thoughts by the teaching as a whole are its principal elements.
“Great care should be taken to exclude false, demoralising ideas, narrowing prejudices, dismaying impressions, everything that can throw the imagination out of the true into trouble and disorder, morbid suggestions and excitation to vanity; to suppress occasions of rivalry and jealousy; to assure the continual view of calm, ordered, and natural things; to organise a simple, occupied, animated, varied life, divided between play and work. The progressive usage of liberty and of responsibility should be developed, preaching should be done mainly by example, and, above all, an effort should be put forth to make happiness prevail....
“As to the inferior, backward, degenerate children,—sad consequences of a succession of hereditary blights, aggravated by deplorable, haphazard births and a heels-over-head education,—these are moral invalids, for whom it is necessary to care with compassion and of whom almost nothing should be demanded. It is necessary, doubtless, to take, with all possible humanity, precautions to prevent their injuring or contaminating the others; but one must guard one’s self well against believing that he has the right to punish them because of a nature for which they are not responsible.”
Apart from this one notable experiment, little or nothing has as yet been done in Paris or elsewhere in France towards the systematic application of l’éducation intégrale. The anarchist school, rather pretentiously called a college (le Collège Libertaire), opened in 1901 on the edge of the university quarter of Paris, has only succeeded so far in establishing a few evening courses for adults, the lack of funds that handicaps every anarchistic enterprise being supplemented in this case by the difficulty of securing proper teachers, because of the danger, amounting almost to a certainty, of loss of position, if regularly employed teachers lend themselves to a revolutionary enterprise. The recent foundation by the anarchists of a child’s paper, Jean-Pierre, is an interesting experiment along this educational line.
While waiting for the éducation intégrale to win its way, the more intellectual anarchists are making a strong effort to increase the study of the masters and of the forerunners and disciples of the masters. To this end the principal anarchist organs, especially the Temps Nouveaux, keep on sale and persistently recommend the reading of the works of the principal dead and living authors, native and foreign, who have expounded anarchy or who tend—or are claimed to tend—towards anarchy: Proudhon, Stirner, and Bakounine; Darwin, Büchner, Herzen, Godwin, and Herbert Spencer; Ibsen, Björnson, Tolstoy, Leopardi, and Nietzsche; Louise Michel, Elisée Reclus, Jean Grave, and Kropotkine; the anti-militarists Richet, Dubois-Dessaule, Vallier, and Urbain Gohier; the sociologists Charles-Albert and Jules Huret; the philosophers Guy and Letourneau; Lefèvre, the student of comparative religions; Guyau, the moralist; the novelists and dramatists Marsolleau, Darien, Descaves, Chèze, Raganasse, Lami, Lumet, and Ajalbert; the Italian Malato, the German Eltzbacher, the Hollander Nieuwenhuis, the American Tucker, and the Spaniard Tarrida del Marmol.
Furthermore, selected portions from nearly all these writers and from Hamon, Saurin, Malatesta, Tcherkesoff, Janvion, Chaughi, Darnaud, Sébastien Faure, Lavroff, Paul Delasalle, and Cafiero, are published, as brochures in editions running as high as sixty thousand and at prices ranging from one sou to fifteen sous (usually two sous) each, so that for a total outlay of two or three francs those who have not the means to buy or the application to read the fr. 3.50 volumes may familiarise themselves with anarchist thought in all its most important bearings. The real nature of the contents of some of the brochures is disguised by the use of innocuous titles. Thus a certain appeal to desertion from the army bears on its cover this inscription: “Pour la Défense des Intérêts Typographiques.”
Unlike the placards, posters, and hand-bills, most of the brochures are restrained in tone. Now and then, however, an anonymous brochure is issued from nobody knows what printing establishment that startles the public and puts the policy on its mettle. The most famous of these (worth its weight in gold now to bibliophiles for its rarity) is the Indicateur Anarchiste: Manuel du Parfait Dynamiteur (40 pages, published 1887).