Chapter IV.
“Love, and do what thou wilt.”
The next day another great meeting was convened.
Their deliverance and the manner of it had wrought a great change in many, especially in the less educated of the community, who experienced at that time a conversion—that reversal of the natural selfish state which makes self come last instead of first in the thoughts of a man, and which leads him also to realize a Presence in the Unseen. I mention this because it very much changed the nature of their deliberations. I do not say that these conversions would have had a lasting effect but for certain events which followed.
All desired a settled order in the Island. Those who were not truly in principle Anarchists, but rather Democrats, proposed some form of social contract by which they might “confer all their power and strength upon one man, or upon one assembly of men, that might reduce all their wills, by plurality of voices, unto one will; which is as much as to say, to appoint one man, or assembly of men, to bear their Person: and every one to owne, and acknowledge himself to be Author of whatsoever he that so beareth their person shall Act, or cause to be acted in those things which concerne the common Peace and Safetie; and therein to submit their Wills, every one to his Will, and their Judgments to his Judgment. This is more than consent or concord; it is a real Unitie of them all, in one and the same Person, made by covenant of every man with every man, in such manner, as if every man should say to every man, ‘I authorize and give up my right of governing myself to this Man or to this assembly of men, on this condition, that thou give up thy right to him and authorize all his actions in like manner.’”
These words are originally those of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, and these, or something like these, were spoken on this occasion by a young Englishman of gentle birth and manners, but of very ungentle notions when first he came to the Island. He was not one of those who came of their own free will, but as a branded man, having continued, after many warnings, to gather large companies of men in the London squares, and to exhort them to Revolution.
He was now, notwithstanding, as we have seen, rather old-fashioned in his ideas, and his proposal was met by not a little opposition. Who, it was asked, should be the governing body? How chosen? Who should make, and who enforce, the laws? All the old well-worn, yet not worn-out difficulty about elections, and minorities, and oligarchies, seemed to appear in forecast on the Island, which at least had never known these evils; and the young man, as the argument proceeded, felt himself to have been in the wrong.
But the voice which on this day made itself heard with the most clearness and decision was that of a Russian Prince, who was persuaded as firmly as he had ever been that in Anarchy—absence of all government—lay the only true order of society. He had always acknowledged that to this end certain principles of morality recognized by the whole community, were necessary. He had believed, on first coming to the Island, that the mere absence of outward law would develop in men that natural morality from which, under the blight of government, they had fallen away; and he had opposed the work of the Priests of the West on the ground that the artificial restraints of religion are as fatal as civil enactments to the free growth of this natural virtue. But he had seen what sort of fruit was borne by common human nature when first left in a wild garden. His soul had been awakened to find that the morality of which he had dreamed, kindled and made living could be no other than the life of the Cross.