Having thus "demonstrated" "liberty," Etiévant passes on to "equality."
From the zoophytes to men, all beings are provided with more or less perfect organs destined to serve them. All these beings have therefore the right to make use of their organs according to the evident will of mother Nature. "So for our legs we have the right to all the space they can traverse; for our lungs to all the air we can breathe; for our stomach to all the food we can digest; for our brain to all we can think, or assimilate of the thoughts of others; for our faculty of elocution to all we can say; for our ears to all we can hear; and we have a right to all this because we have a right to life, and because all this constitutes life. These are the true rights of man! No need to decree them, they exist as the sun exists. They are written in no constitution, in no law, but they are inscribed in ineffaceable letters in the great book of Nature and are imprescriptible. From the cheese-mite to the elephant, from the blade of grass to the oak, from the atom to the star, everything proclaims it."
If these are not "metaphysical conceptions," and of the very worst type, a miserable caricature of the metaphysical materialism of the eighteenth century, if this is the "philosophy of evolution," then we must confess that it has nothing in common with the scientific movement of our day.
Let us hear another authority, and quote the now famous book of Jean Grave, "La Société mourante et l'Anarchie," which was recently condemned by French judges, who thought it dangerous, while it is only supremely ridiculous.
"Anarchy means the negation of authority. Now, Government claims to base the legitimacy of its existence upon the necessity of defending social institutions: the family, religion, property, etc. It has created a vast machinery in order to assure its exercise and its sanction. The chief are: the law, the magistracy, the army, the legislature, executive powers, etc. So that the Anarchist idea, forced to reply to everything, was obliged to attack all social prejudices, to become thoroughly penetrated by all human knowledge, in order to demonstrate that its conceptions were in harmony with the physiological and psychological nature of man, and in harmony with the observance of natural laws, while our actual organisation has been established in contravention of all logic and all good sense.... Thus, in combating authority, it has been necessary for the Anarchists to attack all the institutions which the Government defends, the necessity for which it tries to demonstrate in order to legitimate its own existence."[49]
You see what was "the development" of the "Anarchist Idea." This Idea "denied" authority. In order to defend itself, authority appealed to the family, religion, property. Then the "Idea" found itself forced to attack institutions, which it had not, apparently, noticed before, and at the same time the "Idea," in order to make the most of its "conceptions," penetrated to the very depths of all human knowledge (it is an ill wind that does not blow some good!) All this is only the result of chance, of the unexpected turn given by "authority" to the discussion that had arisen between itself and the "Idea."
It seems to us that however rich in human knowledge it may be now, the "Anarchist Idea" is not at all communistic; it keeps its knowledge to itself, and leaves the poor "companions" in complete ignorance. It is all very well for Kropotkine to sing the praises of the "Anarchist thinker"; he will never be able to prove that his friend Grave has been able to rise even a little above the feeblest metaphysics.
Kropotkine should read over again the Anarchist pamphlets of Elisée Reclus—a great "theorist" this—and then, quite seriously tell us if he finds anything else in them but appeals to "justice," "liberty," and other "metaphysical conceptions."
Finally, Kropotkine himself is not so emancipated from metaphysics as he fancies he is. Far from it! Here, e.g., is what he said at the general meeting of the Federation of the Jura, on the 12th October, 1879, at Chaux-de-Fonds:—
"There was a time when they denied Anarchists even the right to existence. The General Council of the International treated us as factious, the press as dreamers; almost all treated us as fools; this time is past. The Anarchist party has proved its vitality; it has surmounted the obstacles of every kind that impeded its development; to-day it is accepted." [By whom?] "To attain to this, it has been necessary, above all else, for the party to hold its own in the domain of theory, to establish its ideal of the society of the future, to prove that this ideal is the best; to do more than this—to prove that this ideal is not the product of the dreams of the study, but flows directly from the popular aspirations, that it is in accord with the historical progress of culture and ideas. This work has been done," etc....
