Peter Kropotkin
1889
I
The history of human thought recalls the swinging of a pendulum which takes centuries to swing. After a long period of slumber comes a moment of awakening. Then thought frees itself from the chains with which those interested – rulers, lawyers, clerics – have carefully entangled it. It shatters the chains. It subjects to severe criticism all that has been taught it and lays bare the emptiness of the religious, political, legal, and social prejudices within which it has vegetated. It launches research into unknown paths, enriches our knowledge with unexpected discoveries; it creates new sciences.
But the inveterate enemies of thought – the ruler, the lawyer, the cleric – soon recover from their defeat. They little by little gather their scattered forces; they modernise their faith and their codes by adapting them to some of the new needs. And benefiting from the servility of character and thought that they had cultivated so well, benefiting from the momentary disorganisation of society, exploiting the laziness of some, the greed of others, the misled hopes of still more – especially the misled hopes – they softly creep back to their work by first taking possession of childhood through education.
The spirit of a child is weak, it is so easy to subjugate it by fear; this they do. They make it timid, and then they tell it about the torments of hell, they dangle before it the sufferings of the condemned souls, the vengeance of an implacable god. The next moment, they will speak of the horrors of the Revolution, exploiting some excess of the revolutionaries to make the child “a friend of order.” The cleric will accustom it to the idea of law to better make it obey what he calls the divine law, and the lawyer will talk to it of divine law to better make it obey the laws of the civil code. And the thought of the next generation will acquire this religious habit, this habit of submission that we know only too well in our contemporaries, this simultaneously authoritarian and servile habit – for authority and servility always go hand in hand.
During these periods of slumber, questions of morality are rarely discussed. Religious practices and judicial hypocrisy take their place. We do not criticise, we let ourselves be led by habit, by indifference. There is no passionate debate for or against the established morality. We do what we can to make our actions appear to accord with what we claim to profess. And the moral level of society falls more and more. We reach the morality of decadent [ancient] Romans, of the old regime [of pre-Revolution France], of the end of the bourgeois regime.
All that was good, great, generous, independent in man is dulled little by little, rusting like a disused knife. A lie becomes a virtue, a platitude a duty. To get rich, to live for the moment, to exhaust your intelligence, your zeal, your energy, no matter how, becomes the watchwords of the wealthy classes, as well as of the multitude of poor people whose ideal is to appear bourgeois. Then the depravity of the rulers – of the judge, the clergy and the more or less affluent classes – becomes so revolting that the pendulum begins to swing the other way.
Little by little, youth frees itself, it throws prejudices overboard, criticism returns. Thought awakens, at first amongst the few; but imperceptibly the awakening reaches the majority. The push is made, the revolution erupts.
And each time the question of morality comes up again. “Why should I follow the principles of this hypocritical morality?” asks the mind that has been freed from religious terrors. “Why should any morality be obligatory?”
They then try to account for the moral sentiment that they meet at every turn, without yet having explained it, and which they will never explain as long as they believe it a privilege of human nature, so long as they do not go down to the animals, the plants, the rocks to understand it. We will try, however, to explain it according to today’s science.
And – should we say it? – the more we undermine the foundations of the established morality, or rather of the hypocrisy that takes its place – the more the moral level of society is raised. It is especially at such times, precisely when it is criticised and denied, that the moral sentiment makes the most progress; it is then that it grows, raises itself, refines itself.
We saw it in the eighteenth century. As early as 1723, Mandeville, the anonymous author who scandalised England by his “Fable of the Bees” and the comments that he added to it, attacked head on the social hypocrisy known by the name of morality.[1] He shows how the so-called morals are only a hypocritical mask; how the passions which we believe to be mastered by the current code of morality on the contrary take an even worse direction, because of the very restrictions of this code. As Fourier did later, he asked for a free space for the passions without which they degenerate into so many vices; and paying the price for the lack of zoological knowledge of his time, that is to say, forgetting the morality of animals, he explained the origin of the moral ideas of humanity by the interested flattery of parents and ruling classes.
We know the vigorous criticism of moral ideas later made by the Scottish philosophers and the Encyclopaedists. We know the anarchists of 1793, and we know in whom we find the highest development of moral sentiment: amongst the jurists, the patriots, the Jacobins who crowed about moral obligation and sanction by the Supreme Being, or amongst the Hébertist atheists who denied this, as Guyau did recently, and the obligation and sanction of morality…
“Why should I be moral?” This, then, is the question posed by the rationalists of the twelfth century, the philosophers of the sixteenth century, the philosophers and revolutionaries of the eighteenth century. Later, this question returned anew with the English Utilitarians (Bentham and Mill), with the German materialists such as Büchner, with the Russian nihilists of the years 1860-70, with that young founder of anarchist ethics (the science of the morality of societies) – Guyau – who unfortunately died too early; now, finally, the question is posed at this moment by young French anarchists.
Why, indeed?
Thirty years ago the youth of Russia were passionately agitated by this same question. “I will be immoral” a young nihilist would say to his friend, translating into plain action the thoughts that tormented him. “I will be immoral, and why should I not?”
“Because the Bible wills it? But the Bible is only a collection of Babylonian and Jewish traditions – traditions gathered together like the poems of Homer or as we still do with Basque songs or Mongolian legends! Must I then go back to the state of mind of the half-barbarous peoples of the East?
“Must I be, because Kant speaks to me of a categorical imperative, of a mysterious command which comes to me from the depths of my own being and orders me be moral? But why should this ‘categorical imperative’ have more authority over my actions than that other imperative which, from time to time, commands me to get drunk. A word, nothing but a word, just like those of Providence or Destiny, invented to conceal our ignorance!
“Or will I be moral to please Bentham who wants me to believe that I will be happier if I drown to save a passer-by who has fallen into the river than if I watch him drown?
“Or again, because such has been my education? Because my mother taught me morality? But then, shall I also kneel before the painting of a Christ or a Madonna, respect the King or the Emperor, bow before the judge that I know to be a scoundrel, simply because my very good but very ignorant mother – all our mothers – taught us a lot of nonsense?
“Like everyone else I am prejudiced, I will work to rid myself of it. Even if it disgusts me, I will force myself to be immoral, as when I was younger I forced myself not to be afraid of the dark, the cemetery, ghosts and the dead, all of which they told me to fear. I will do it to break a weapon utilised by religions; I will do it, lastly, if only to protest against the hypocrisy they claim to impose on us in the name of a word, which they called morality.”
This was the way the youth of Russia reasoned when they broke with the prejudices of the “old world” and unfurled this banner of nihilist or rather of anarchist philosophy: “Bow before no authority whatsoever, no matter how respected it may be; accept no principle as long as it is not established by reason.”
Need we add that after having thrown into the waste-paper basket the moral teachings of their fathers and burned all systems of morality, the nihilist youth developed in their midst a nucleus of moral customs, infinitely superior to anything that their fathers had ever practiced under the tutelage of the “Gospel,” the “conscience,” the “categorical imperative,” or the “well understood interest” of the Utilitarians.
But before answering the question, “Why should I be moral?” let us first see if the question is well put; let us analyse the motives of human actions.
II
When our ancestors wished to account for what led men to act in one way or another, they did so in a very simple manner. We can still see the Catholic images that represent this explanation. A man walks across the fields and, without being in the least aware of it, carries a devil on his left shoulder and an angel on his right. The devil urges him to do evil, the angel tries to hold him back. And if the angel comes out on top, and the man remains virtuous, three other angels catch him up and carry him to heaven. Everything is thus explained wonderfully.
Our old nannies, well-informed on such matters, will tell you that you should never put a child into bed without unbuttoning the collar of its shirt. A warm spot at the bottom of the neck should be left bare, where the guardian angel can nestle. Without that, the devil will torment the child even in its sleep.
These naïve conceptions are passing away. But though the old words disappear, the essence remains the same.
The educated person no longer believes in the devil, but as their ideas are no more rational than those of our nannies, they disguise the devil and the angel under pedantic waffle, honoured with the name of philosophy. Instead of the “devil,” they talk today of “the flesh,” “the passions.” The “angel” is replaced by the words “conscience” or “soul,” “reflection of the thought of a divine creator” or the “Great Architect,” as the Free-Masons say. But the actions of man are still represented as the result of a struggle between two hostile elements. And a man is always considered the more virtuous as one of these two elements – the soul or conscience – achieves more victories over the other – the flesh or passions.
It is easy to understand the astonishment of our grandfathers when the English philosophers, and later the Encyclopaedists, began to affirm contrary to these primitive notions that the devil and the angel have nothing to do with human actions, but that all acts of man, good or bad, useful or harmful, derive from a single motive: the pursuit of pleasure.
The whole religious brotherhood, and above all the numerous tribes of the Pharisees, shouted “immorality.” They showered the thinkers with insults, they excommunicated them. And later, during the course of our century, when the same ideas were revived by Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Chernyshevsky, and a host of others, and when these thinkers began to affirm and prove that egoism, or the pursuit of pleasure, is the true motive of all our actions, the curses redoubled. Their books were met with a conspiracy of silence, and the authors were treated as dunces.
And yet, what can be truer than this assertion?
Here is a man who snatches the last mouthful of bread from a child. Everyone agrees that he is a horrible egoist, that he is guided solely by self-love.
But here is another man, whom we all agree to recognise as virtuous. He shares his last bit of bread with the hungry, he takes off his coat to give it to someone who is cold. And the moralists, always speaking in religious jargon, hasten to say that this man takes the love of his neighbour to the point of self-sacrifice, that he obeys a quite different passion from that of the egoist.
And yet with a little reflection we soon discover that, however different the two actions are in their outcome for humanity, the motive has still been the same. It is the pursuit of pleasure.
If the man who gives away his last shirt found no pleasure in so doing, he would not do it. If he found pleasure in taking bread from a child, he would do that; but that disgusts him, he finds pleasure in giving his bread; and he gives it.
If it were not for the inconvenience caused by the confusion of giving words with an established meaning a new one, we could say that both act under the impulse of their egoism. Some have actually said this, in order to better emphasise the thought, to clarify the idea by presenting it in a form that strikes the imagination – and at the same time to destroy the myth which asserts that these two acts have two different motives – they have the same motive of seeking pleasure, or to avoid pain, which amounts to the same thing.
Take the lowest of scoundrels: a Thiers, who massacres thirty-five thousand Parisians; take the assassin who butchers a whole family in order to wallow in debauchery. They do it because at that moment the desire for glory or for money prevails over all other desires: pity, even compassion, are extinguished for that moment by this other desire, this other thirst. They act almost as automatons, to satisfy a craving of their nature.
Or else, putting aside the stronger passions, take the little man who deceives his friends, who lies at every step, either to worm the price of something from somebody, or from boastfulness, or from guile. Take the bourgeois who steals penny after penny from his workers to buy jewels for his wife or his mistress. Take any petty scoundrel: He again only obeys a fancy: he seeks the satisfaction of a craving, he seeks to avoid what would give him pain.
We are almost ashamed to compare this petty scoundrel to someone who sacrifices his whole existence for the liberation of the oppressed and mounts the scaffold like a Russian nihilist, so vastly different for humanity are the results of these two lives; so much do we feel ourselves drawn towards one and repelled by the other.
And yet, if you spoke to this martyr, to the woman they are going to hang, she would tell you, even when she goes to mount the gallows, that she would exchange neither her life as an animal hunted by the Tsar’s dogs nor her death for the life of the petty scoundrel who lives on the pennies stolen from his workers. In her life, in the struggle against powerful monsters, she finds her highest pleasures. Everything else outside this struggle, all the little joys of the bourgeois and his little misfortunes seem to her so petty, so boring, so sad! “You do not live, you vegetate,” she would reply; “me, I have lived.”
We are obviously speaking about the deliberate, conscious acts of man, reserving for later to talk about that immense series of unconscious, almost mechanical, acts which fill such an immense part of our life. Well! in his conscious or deliberate actions, man always seeks what gives him pleasure.
So-and-so gets drunk and every day lowers himself to the condition of a brute, because he seeks in wine the nervous excitement he does not find in his nervous system. Another does not get drunk; he gives up drink, even though he finds it pleasant, to keep freshness of thought and the plenitude of his powers, in order to be able to relish other pleasures which he prefers to wine. But what is he doing if not acting like the food-lover who, after looking over the menu of a grand dinner, forgoes a dish he likes to gorge himself upon another dish he prefers?
Whatever he does, man always looks for pleasure, or he avoids pain.
When a woman deprives herself of her last piece of bread to give it to a stranger, when she takes off her last rag to cover another woman who is cold while she herself shivers on the deck of a ship, she does so because she would suffer infinitely more to see a hungry man or a woman who was cold, than to shiver or suffer from hunger herself. She avoids a pain of which only those who have felt it can appreciate the intensity.
When the [indigenous] Australian, cited by Guyau,[2] wasted away at the idea that he has not yet revenged the death of his parent; when he withers away, wracked by the consciousness of his cowardice, and does not return to life until he has accomplished the deed of vengeance, he performs an act, heroic sometimes, to rid himself of a feeling which haunts him, to regain that inner peace which is the highest pleasure.
When a troop of monkeys has seen one of its own fall by a hunter’s bullet, and comes to besiege his tent to claim the body despite the threatening rifle; when, at last, the elder of the band goes right in, at first threating the hunter, then imploring him, and finally forcing him by his weeping to return the corpse to him, which the wailing troop carries into the forest, the monkeys obey a feeling of sympathy stronger than all considerations of personal safety. This feeling takes precedence over all others. Life itself loses its attractions for them, as long as they are not sure that they cannot bring their comrade back to life. This feeling becomes so oppressive that the poor animals risk everything to get rid of it.
When ants rush by the thousands into the flames of an ant-hill which that evil beast, man, has set on fire and perish by the hundreds to rescue their larvae, they again obey an urge, that of saving their offspring. They risk everything to have the pleasure of carrying away these larvae that they have raised with more care than many bourgeois bestow on their children.
Finally, when an infusoria[3] avoids a current which is too hot and seeks a warm one, or when a plant turns its flowers towards the sun or closes its leaves at the approach of night, these beings still obey the need to avoid pain and seek pleasure – just like the ant, the monkey, the Australian, the Christian martyr or the anarchist martyr.
To seek pleasure, to avoid pain, is the general fact (some would say law) of the organic world. It is the very essence of life.
Without this quest for the agreeable, life itself would be impossible. The organism would disintegrate, life would cease.
Thus, whatever a man’s action, whatever his course of conduct, he always does it to obey a need of his nature. The most repugnant act, like the indifferent or the most attractive act, are all equally dictated by a need of the individual. The individual acts in one way or another because he finds pleasure in it, because this way he avoids or thinks he avoids a pain.
Here is a well-established fact; here is essence of what has been called the theory of egoism.
Well, are we any wiser after reaching this general conclusion?
Yes, of course we are. We have conquered a truth and destroyed a prejudice which is the root of all prejudices. All materialist philosophy in its relation to man is within this conclusion. But does it follow that all the actions of the individual are indifferent, as some have hastily concluded? That is what we will see.
III
We have seen that the actions of man, deliberate or conscious – we will speak later of unconscious habits – all have the same origin. Those that are called virtuous and those that are called vicious, great devotions like small swindles, attractive acts as well as repulsive acts all spring from the same source. All are done to meet a need in the nature of the individual. All are intended for the pursuit of pleasure, the desire to avoid pain.
We have seen this in the last section, which is but a very short summary of a mass of facts that could be cited in support of it.
It is understandable that this explanation makes those still imbued with religious principles cry out. It leaves no room for the supernatural; it abandons the idea of an immortal soul. If man always only acts in obedience to the needs of his nature, if he is, so to speak, only a “conscious automaton,” what becomes of the immortal soul? What becomes of immortality – that last refuge of those who have known only a few pleasures and too many sufferings and who dream of finding compensation in the other world?
It is understandable that, having grown up in prejudice, with little confidence in science which has so often deceived them, guided by feeling rather than thought, they reject an explanation which takes from them their last hope.
But what about those revolutionaries who, since the last century until the present day, whenever they hear for the first time a natural explanation of human actions (the theory of egoism, if you will) hasten to draw the same conclusion as the young nihilist of whom we were speaking of earlier and who was quick to shout: “Down with morality!”
What about those who, after having persuaded themselves that man acts in one way or another only to answer a need of his nature, hasten to conclude that all acts are indifferent; that there is neither good nor evil; that saving a man who is drowning at the risk of your own life or drowning him to snatch his watch are two acts which are equal; that the martyr dying on the gallows for working to free humanity and the petty scoundrel stealing from his comrades are worth the same – since both seek to obtain pleasure?
If only they added that there must be neither good nor bad odour; neither the perfume of the rose nor the stench of asafoetida, for both are only the vibrations of molecules; that there is no good nor bad flavours, because the bitterness of quinine and the sweetness of guava are still only molecular vibrations; that there is no physical beauty or ugliness, neither intelligence nor stupidity, because beauty and ugliness, intelligence or stupidity are again only the results of chemical and physical vibrations occurring in the cells of the organism; if they added that, we could still say that they ramble but that at least they have the logic of a madman.
But since they do not say that – what can we conclude from this?
Our response is simple. Mandeville who reasoned in this way in 1723 in the “Fable of the Bees,” the Russian nihilist of the years 1860-70, like a Parisian anarchist today, reason so because, without realising it, they are still mired in the prejudices of their Christian education. Whether atheists, materialists, or anarchists, they reason exactly as the fathers of the Church or the founders of Buddhism reasoned.
These good old people were saying in effect: “The act is good if it is a victory of the spirit over the flesh; it will be bad if it is the flesh which has got the better of the soul; it will be indifferent if it is neither one nor the other. There is only one way to judge whether an act is good or bad.” And our young friends repeat after the Christian and Buddhist fathers: “There is only one way to judge whether an act is good or bad.”
The fathers of the Church said: “See the beasts; they have no immoral soul: their actions are simply done to meet one of the needs of nature; that is why there can be neither good nor bad deeds amongst animals; all are indifferent; and that is why for animals there will be neither paradise nor hell – neither reward nor punishment.” And our young friends take up the refrain of Saint Augustine and Gautama Buddha and say: “Man is only an animal, his acts are done simply to answer a need of his nature; this is why there can be no good nor bad actions for man. They are all indifferent.”
It is always that damned idea of punishment and chastisement that gets in the way of reason; it is always this absurd legacy of religious education declaring an action is good if it comes from a supernatural inspiration and indifferent if it lacks that supernatural origin. It is again and always the idea of the angel on the right shoulder and the devil on the left shoulder, even amongst those who laugh at it the loudest. “Banish the devil and the angel, and I will not be able to tell you whether such an act is good or bad for I know of no other basis of judging it.”
The priest is still there, with his devil and his angel and all the materialist veneer is not enough to hide it. And, what is even worse, the judge with his flogging for some and his civic rewards for others is still there, and even the principles of anarchy are not enough to uproot the idea of punishment and reward.
Well, we want neither the priest nor the judge. And we simply say: “The asafoetida stinks, the snake bites me, the liar fools me? The plant, the reptile and the man, all three, obey a need of nature. Very well! I, too, obey a need of my nature by hating the plant that stinks, the animal that kills with its venom and the man who is even more venomous than the creature. And I will act accordingly, turning neither to a devil I am unaware of nor to the judge whom I hate more than the snake. I, and all those who share my antipathies, also obey a need of our nature. And we will see which of the two has reason and, thus, force.”
This is what we are about to see, and so we shall see that if Saint Augustine had no other basis for distinguishing between good and evil, the animal world has another much more effective one. The animal world in general, from insect to man, knows perfectly well what is good and what is evil, without consulting for that the Bible or philosophy. And if so, the cause is again in the needs of their nature: in the preservation of the race and, consequently, in the greatest possible amount of happiness for each individual.
IV
Jewish, Buddhist, Christian and Muslim theologians have resorted to divine inspiration to distinguish between good and evil. They saw that man, whether savage or civilised, ignorant or educated, wicked or kind and honest, always knows if he is doing good or doing evil, and above all knows when he is doing evil; but finding no explanation for this general fact, they saw in it a divine inspiration. Metaphysical philosophers, in their turn, spoke to us of conscience, of a mystical imperative, which in fact changed nothing but the words.
But neither one nor the other knew to note this so simple and so striking fact that animals living in societies can also distinguish between good and evil, just like man. And, what is more, their conceptions of good and evil are absolutely of the same kind as those of man. Amongst the best developed representatives of each separate class – fish, insects, birds, mammals, – they are even identical.
The thinkers of the eighteenth century had noticed it, but it was since forgotten, and it is now up to us to fully emphasise the importance of this fact.
Forel, that inimitable observer of ants, has shown by a mass of observations and facts that when an ant which has filled its crop with honey meets other ants with empty stomachs, these immediately ask it for food.[4] And amongst these little insects it is a duty for the sated ant to disgorge the honey, so that its hungry friends may satisfy themselves in turn. Ask the ants if it would be right to refuse food to other ants of the same anthill when one has had its share. They will answer you, with actions that it is impossible to not understand, that it would be very wrong. An ant that selfish would be treated more harshly than enemies of another species. If this happened during a battle between two different species, they would abandon the struggle to fall upon this egoist. This fact has been proved by experiments which leave no doubt.
Or else, ask the sparrows living in your garden if it is right not to inform all the little society that you have thrown a few crumbs into the garden, so that all can take part in the meal. Ask them if a certain sparrow has acted well in stealing from its neighbour’s nest those strands of straws it had picked up and which the plunderer does not want to bother collecting itself. And the sparrows will answer you that it is very wrong, by flying at the thief and pecking it.
Ask again the marmots if it is right [for one] to refuse access to its underground store to other marmots of the same colony, and they will answer you that it is very wrong, by quarrelling in all sorts of ways with the miser.
Finally, ask primitive man, the Chukchi for example,[5] if it is right to take food from the tent of a member of the tribe in his absence. And he will answer that if the man could himself obtain his food, it would be very wrong. But if he were weary or in need, he ought to take food where he finds it; but that in this case, he would do well to leave his cap or his knife, or even a piece of knotted string, so that the absent hunter would know on his return that it had been a visit from a friend and not a petty thief. This precaution will spare him the anxiety caused by the possible presence of a marauder near his tent.
Thousands of similar facts could be quoted; whole books could be written to show how the conceptions of good and evil are identical in humans and animals.
The ant, the bird, the marmot and the primitive Chukchi have read neither Kant nor the holy fathers, not even Moses. And yet, all have the same idea of good and evil. And if you reflect for a moment on what lies at the bottom of this idea, you will see at once that what is considered good amongst ants, marmots, and Christian or atheist moralists is that which is useful for the preservation of the race – and that which is considered evil is that which is harmful to it. Not for the individual, as Bentham and Mill said, but fair and good for the whole race.
The idea of good and evil thus has nothing to do with religion or a mystic conscience: it is a natural need of animal species. And when the founders of religions, philosophers and moralists speak to us of divine or metaphysical entities, they only rehash what each ant, each sparrow practices in its little society.
Is it useful to society? Then it is good. Is this harmful? Then it is bad.
This idea may be very restricted amongst the lower animals, or it may be expanded amongst the more advanced animals, but its essence always remains the same.
Amongst ants, it does not go beyond the anthill. All sociable customs, all rules of good behaviour are applicable only to individuals of the same anthill. It must regurgitate food to members of the anthill – never to others. An anthill will not consider another anthill as belonging to the same family, unless there are some exceptional circumstances such as distress common to both. Likewise, the sparrows of the Luxembourg [Gardens in Paris], while mutually supporting each other in a striking manner, will wage a fierce war with a sparrow from the Monge Square which dares to venture into the Luxembourg. And the Chukchi will consider a Chukchi of another tribe as a person to whom the customs of the tribe do not apply. It is even permitted to sell to him (to sell is always to rob the buyer more or less; in both [buying or selling], there is always a dupe) while it would be a crime to sell to the members of his tribe: to them he gives without any reckoning. And civilised man, at last understanding the close relations between himself and the lowest Papuan, though imperceptible at the first glance, will extend his principles of solidarity to the whole human race and even to animals. The idea widens, but its foundation remains the same.
Furthermore, the conception of good and evil varies according to the degree of intelligence or of knowledge acquired. There is nothing unchangeable about it.
Primitive man may have thought it very good, that is, useful to the race, to eat his aged parents when they became a burden ([a] very heavy [burden] in fact) to the community. He could also find it good – that is always useful for the community – to kill his new-born children and only keep two or three in each family so that the mother could nurse them until they were three years old and lavish her tenderness upon them.
Today, ideas have changed: but the means of subsistence are no longer what they were in the Stone Age. Civilised man is not in the position of the savage family who had to choose between two evils: either to eat the aged parents or else feed everyone insufficiently and soon be reduced to being unable to feed either the aged parents or the young family. We must transport ourselves into those ages, which we can scarcely evoke in our mind, to understand that, in the circumstances of the time, half-savage man may have reasoned rightly enough.
The reasoning can change. The appreciation of what is useful or harmful to the race changes, but the foundation remains the same. And if we wanted to sum up all this philosophy of the animal kingdom in a single phrase, we would see that ants, birds, marmots and men agree on one point.
The Christians said: “Do not do to others that which you do not want done to you.” And they added: “Otherwise, you will be sent to hell!”
The morality which emerges from the observation of the entire animal kingdom, which is much superior to the preceding one, can be summed up in the words: “Do to others what you would like them to do to you in the same circumstances.”
And it adds:
“Note well that this is only advice; but this advice is the fruit of a long experience of the life of animals in society and amongst the immense mass of animals living in societies, including man, to act according to this principle has passed to the state of a habit. Without this, moreover, no society could exist, no species could have overcome the natural obstacles against which it has to struggle.”
Is this so simple principle really what emerges from the observation of social animals and human societies? Is it applicable? And how does this principle pass into a habit and continually develop? This is what we are now going to see.
V
The idea of good and evil exists in humanity. Man, whatever degree of intellectual development he has attained, whatever prejudices and personal interest obscure his ideas, generally considers as good what is useful to the society in which he lives, and as evil that which is harmful to it.
But where does this conception come from, very often so vague that it can scarcely be distinguished from a feeling? There are millions and millions of human beings who have never reflected about the human race. They know, for the most part, only the clan or the family, rarely the nation – and even more rarely humanity – how can they consider what is useful for the human race as good, or even reach a feeling of solidarity with their clan, in spite of all their narrowly selfish interests?
This fact has greatly occupied the thinkers of every age. It continues to occupy them, and not a year passes without books being written on this subject We will, in our turn, give our view of the matter; but let us note in passing that although the explanation of the fact may vary, the fact itself remains none the less incontestable; and even if our explanation was still not true, or it is incomplete, the fact with its consequences for man will still remain. We may not be able to fully explain the origin of the planets that revolve around the sun – [but] the planets revolve nevertheless and one carries us with it in space.
We have already spoken of the religious explanation. If man distinguishes between good and evil, say religious men, it is because God has inspired him with this idea. He does not have to discuss useful or harmful: he has merely to obey the idea of his creator. We will not stop at this explanation – fruit of the terror and ignorance of the savage. Let us move on.
Others (like Hobbes[6]) sought to explain it by law. It must have been law that developed in man the sense of just and unjust, of right and wrong. Our readers themselves will appreciate this explanation. They know that the law has merely utilised the social feelings of man to sneak in, alongside the moral precepts which he accepts, orders useful to a minority of exploiters, against which he rebels. It has perverted the feeling of justice instead of developing it. So, let us again move on.
Neither let us pause at the explanation of the Utilitarians. They want man to act morally from self-interest, and they forget his feelings of solidarity with the whole race, which exist, whatever their origin. There is some truth in their explanation. But that is not the whole truth yet. Therefore, let us go further.
It is again to the thinkers of the eighteenth century that we are indebted for having sensed, at least in part, the origin of the moral sentiment.
In a superb book [The Theory of Moral Sentiment], about which the clergy have been silent and is little known to most thinkers, even anti-religious ones, Adam Smith put his finger on the true origin of the moral sentiment. He does not seek it in religious or mystical feelings – he finds it in the simple feeling of sympathy.
You see a man beating a child. You know that the beaten child suffers. Your imagination makes you feel the harm inflicted upon it; or else its tears, its little suffering face tell you. And if you are not a coward, you fling yourself at the man who is beating the child, you grab it from the brute.
This example alone explains almost all the moral sentiments. The more powerful your imagination is, the better you will be able to imagine what a being feels that is made to suffer; and the more intense, the more sensitive will be your moral feeling. The more you are driven to put yourself in the place of that other person, the more you feel the harm inflicted upon him, the injustice he has suffered – and the more will you be driven to act to prevent the wrong, the injury, or the injustice. And the more you are accustomed, by circumstances, by those around you, or by the intensity of your own thought and your own imagination to act in the direction that your thought and your imagination push you – the more this moral sentiment will grow in you, the more it will become habit.
This is what Adam Smith develops with a wealth of examples. He was young when he wrote this book which is infinitely superior to the work of his old age, “The Political Economy” [The Wealth of Nations]. Free of all religious prejudice, he sought the explanation of morality in a physical fact of human nature, and this is why for a century the clergy with and without a cassock has been silent about this book.
Adam Smith’s only mistake was that he did not understand that this same feeling of sympathy, grown into a state of habit, exists amongst animals just as much as amongst men.
With due respect to the popularisers of Darwin, ignorant of everything that he had not borrowed from Malthus, the feeling of solidarity is the predominant trait of the lives of all animals that live in societies. The eagle devours the sparrow, the wolf devours the marmots, but the eagles and the wolves help each other to hunt, and the sparrows and the marmots unite so well against the beasts and birds of prey that only the clumsy are caught. In every animal society, solidarity is a law (a general fact) of nature, infinitely more important than that struggle for existence which the bourgeois sing the virtue of, in order to better stupefy us.
When we study the animal world and try to give an account of the struggle for existence sustained by each living being against adverse circumstances and against its enemies, we note that the more the principle of egalitarian solidarity is developed in an animal society and has grown to the state of a habit – the more likely it is to survive and emerge triumphant in the struggle against the elements and against its enemies. The more each member of a society feels solidarity with every other member of the society, the better develops in all of them these two qualities which are the principal factors of victory and all progress – courage on the one hand and, on the other, the free initiative of the individual. And, on the contrary, the more that animal society or this little group of animals loses this feeling of solidarity (which happens as a result of exceptional scarcity, or else as a result of an exceptional abundance of food), the more the two other factors of progress – courage and individual initiative – diminish; they eventually disappear, and the society, falling into decay, succumbs before its enemies. Without mutual confidence, no struggle is possible; no courage, no initiative, no solidarity – and no victory! Defeat is certain.
We will come back to this subject one day and we will be able to demonstrate with a wealth of examples how, in the animal and human worlds, the law of mutual aid is the law of progress, and how mutual aid, as well as the courage and individual initiative that flow from it, secures victory to the species which best knows how to practice it. For the moment, it will suffice to note this fact. The reader themselves will understand its importance for the issue at hand.
Now let us imagine this feeling of solidarity acting through the millions of years which have succeeded one another since the first beginnings of animal life appeared upon the globe. Let us imagine how this feeling little by little became a habit and was transmitted by inheritance, from the simplest microscopic organism to its descendants – insects, reptiles, mammals and man. And we shall understand the origin of the moral sentiment which is a necessity for the animal, just like food or the organ for digesting it.
Without going back even further (because then we would have to talk about complex animals, produced by colonies of extremely simple little beings), here is the origin of the moral sentiment. We had to be extremely brief to compress this great question into the space of a few pages, but that is enough to show that there is nothing mystical or sentimental about it. Without this solidarity of the individual with the species, the animal kingdom would never have developed nor improved. The most advanced being upon the earth would still be one of those tiny specks swimming in water and barely perceptible under a microscope. Would even that exist, for are not the earliest aggregations of cells themselves already evidence of association in the struggle?
VI
Thus we see by observing nature – not as a self-interested bourgeois, but merely as an intelligent observer – we come to the conclusion that this principle is found everywhere there is society: “Treat others as you would like them to treat you in similar circumstances.”
And when we study more closely the development or the evolution of the animal world, we discover (with the zoologist [Karl] Kessler and the economist [Nikolay] Chernyshevsky) that this principle, translated by the single word Solidarity, has [played] an infinitely larger part than all the adaptations that have resulted from a struggle between individuals to acquire personal advantages.
It is evident that the practice of solidarity is found even more in human societies. The societies of monkeys, highest in the animal scale, already provide us a most striking example of the practice of solidarity. Man is taking a further step in this direction, and this alone enables him to preserve his feeble race amidst the obstacles that nature places in his way and to develop his intelligence.
When we study those primitive societies still remaining at the level of the Stone Age we see in their small communities solidarity practised to the highest degree towards all the members of the community.
That is why this sentiment, this practice of solidarity, never ceases, not even during the worst periods of history. Even when temporary circumstances of domination, servitude, exploitation cause this principle to be disregarded, it always remains in the minds of the many, so that it causes an eruption against evil institutions, a revolution. This is understandable: otherwise society would perish.
For the vast majority of animals and men, this feeling remains, and must remain, an acquired habit, a principle always present in the mind even though it is often ignored in action.
It is the whole evolution of the animal kingdom that speaks in us. And it is long, very long: it is hundreds of millions of years old.
Even if we wanted to get rid of it, we cannot. It would be easier for a man to become accustomed to walk on four legs than to get rid of the moral sentiment. In animal evolution, it is anterior to the upright posture of man.
The moral sense is a natural faculty in us, like the sense of smell and sense of touch.
As for Law and Religion, which also have preached this principle, we know that they simply filched it to cloak their wares – their injunctions for the benefit of the conqueror, the exploiter and the clergy. Without this principle of solidarity, the validity of which is generally recognised, how could they have got a grip on minds?
They both cloaked themselves with it, like authority which also succeeded in imposing itself by posing as the protector of the weak against the strong.
By throwing Law, Religion and Authority overboard, humanity can regain possession of the moral principle which was taken from it, in order to submit it to criticism and to purge it of the adulterations with which the cleric, the judge and the ruler have poisoned and are still poisoning it.
But to deny the moral principle because the Church and the Law have exploited it would be as unreasonable as declaring that we will never wash, that we will eat pork infested with roundworms and that we do not want communal possession of the land because the Qur’an requires daily washing, because the hygienist Moses forbade the Hebrews from eating pork or because the Qira’at (a supplement of the Qur’an) wants any land that that has been left uncultivated for three years to return to the community.
Besides, this principle of treating others as you wish to be treated yourself, what is it if not the very principle of Equality, the fundamental principle of Anarchy? And how can anyone even believe themselves an anarchist without putting it into practice?
We do not want to be ruled. But, by this very fact, do we not declare that we do not want to rule anyone? We do not want to be deceived, we want always to be told nothing but the truth. But, by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves do not want to deceive anyone, that we commit ourselves to always telling the truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth? We do not want to be robbed of the fruits of our labour; but, by that very fact, do we not declare that we respect the fruits of the labour of others?
Indeed, by what right can we demand that we should be treated in a certain way, having reserved to ourselves the right to treat others in a completely different way? Are we, by chance, the “white bone” of the Kazakh who can treat others as he sees fit?[7] Our sense of equality revolts at this idea.
Equality in mutual relations and the solidarity necessarily resulting from it – that is the most powerful weapon of the animal world in the struggle for existence. And equality is equity.
By declaring ourselves anarchists, we proclaim in advance that we renounce treating others as we would not wish to be treated by them; that we will no longer tolerate the inequality that has allowed some amongst us to use their strength, or their cunning, or their skill in a way which we would not like if used against us. But equality in everything – synonymous with equity – is anarchy itself. To hell with the white bone who arrogates the right to deceive the simplicity of others! We do not want it, and we will get rid of it as required. It is not just on this abstract trinity of Law, Religion, and Authority that we declare war. By becoming anarchists, we declare war on all this flood of deceit, cunning, exploitation, depravity, vice – in a word, inequality – which they have poured into all of our hearts. We declare war on their way of acting, on their way of thinking. The governed, the deceived, the exploited, the prostituted, and so on, wound above all our sense of equality. It is in the name of Equality that we no longer want the prostituted, the exploited, the deceived, or the governed.
We may be told, perhaps, it has been said sometimes: “But if you think that we should always treat others as you would like to be treated yourself, what gives you the right to use force under any circumstances? What gives you the right to level cannons at barbarian, or civilised, invaders of your country? What gives you the right to dispossess the exploiter? What gives you the right to kill not only a tyrant but a mere viper?”
By what right? What do you mean by that weird word, borrowed from the law? Do you want to know if I will be aware of doing good by doing this? If those I esteem will think what I did was right? Is that what you are asking? In that case, our answer is simple.
Yes, certainly! Because we ask that we be killed like venomous beasts if we invaded Tonkin or the Zulus who have done us no harm. We say to our sons, or our friends: “Kill me, if I ever take part in the invasion!”
Yes, certainly! Because we ask that we be dispossessed, if one day, belying our principles, we seized an inheritance – should it fall from the sky – to use it for the exploitation of others.
Yes, certainly! Because every man with a heart asks in advance that he be slain if he ever becomes a viper; that a dagger be plunged into his heart if he ever takes the place of a dethroned tyrant.
Of a hundred men who have a wife and children there will be ninety who, feeling the approach of madness (loss of cerebral control over their actions), would try to commit suicide for fear of harming those whom they love. Whenever a man with a heart feels he is becoming dangerous to those whom he loves, he wishes to die before he becomes so.
One day, in Irkutsk, a Polish doctor and a photographer were bitten by a rabid little dog. The photographer burns his wound with a hot iron; the doctor limits himself to cauterising it. He is young, handsome, full of life. He has just come out of the prison to which the government had sentenced him for his dedication to the cause of the people. With his knowledge and above all his intelligence, he was creating wondrous cures; the sick adored him.
Six weeks later, he realises that the bitten arm is beginning to swell. A doctor himself, he could not be mistaken: it was the rage coming. He runs to a friend’s house, a doctor and exile like himself – “Quick! I beg you for strychnine. You see that arm, do you know what it is? In an hour or less, I will be in a rage, I will try to bite you and friends, do not waste time! Strychnine: I must die.”
He felt himself becoming a viper: he demanded that he be killed.
The friend hesitated; he wanted to try an anti-rabies treatment. With a brave woman, the both of them began to treat him… and two hours later, the doctor, foaming [at the mouth], threw himself at them, trying to bite them; then he came back to himself, demanded strychnine – and raged again. He died in horrid convulsions.
What similar facts, based on our experiences, could we not quote! The man with a heart prefers to die rather than become the cause of evils for others. And that is why he will be aware of doing good, and he will receive the approval of those he esteems if he kills the viper or the tyrant.
Perovskaya and her comrades killed the Russian Tsar.[8] And the whole of humanity, in spite of its repugnance at the spilling of blood, in spite of its sympathies for the one who had allowed the serfs to be liberated, recognised their right to do so. Why? Not because the act was [generally] recognised as useful; three quarters still doubt it; but because it was felt that Perovskaya and her comrades would not have consented to become tyrants in their turn for all the gold in the world. Even those who know nothing of the whole drama are certain that it was not youthful bravado, nor a palace conspiracy, nor the seeking of power: it was the hatred of tyranny to the point of self-disregard, to death.
“These there,” it was said, “had conquered the right to kill,” as it was said of Louise Michel: “She had the right to loot,”[9] or again: “They, they had the right to steal,” when speaking of those terrorists who lived on dry bread, and who stole a million or two from the Kishineff treasure while taking, at the risk of dying themselves, every possible precaution to clear the sentinels guarding the coffer, with bayonet and cannon, of any responsibility.
Humanity never refuses the right to use force to those who have conquered it – whether this right is used upon the barricades or in the shadow of a crossroads. But, for such an act to produce a deep impression upon minds, we must conquer this right. Without this, the act – useful or not – will remain merely a brutal fact of no importance in the progress of ideas. It would be seen as only a displacement of force, a simple substitution of one exploiter for another.
VII
So far, we have always spoken of the conscious, deliberate actions of man (of those that we do intentionally). But alongside our conscious life we have an unconscious life, infinitely more vast and too often ignored in the past. Yet it is sufficient to notice how we dress in the morning, trying to fasten a button that we know we lost the day before, or stretching out our hand to grasp an object that we ourselves have moved, to get an idea of this unconscious life and comprehend the immense part it plays in our existence.
Three-quarters of our relations with others are comprised of this unconscious life. Our way of speaking, of smiling or frowning, getting carried away or remaining calm during a discussion – all this we do without realising it, by mere habit, either inherited from our human or pre-human ancestors (just see the resemblance in the expression of a human and an animal when both are angry), or else consciously or unconsciously acquired.
Our manner of acting towards others thus tends to become habitual. And the man who has acquired the most moral habits will certainly be superior to this good Christian who claims to be constantly urged by the devil to do evil and can only refrain from it by evoking the suffering of hell or the joys of paradise.
To treat others as he would wish to be treated himself reaches the status of simple habit within man and amongst all social animals, so much so that a man does not generally even ask himself how he should act in such and such a circumstance. He does good or evil, without thinking. And it is only in exceptional circumstances, in the presence of a complex case or under the impulse of a burning passion, that he hesitates and a struggle takes place between the various portions of his brain (a very complex organ, the various parts of which function with a certain [degree of] independence). Then he substitutes himself in imagination for the person who is in front of him; he asks himself if he would like to be treated in the same way, and the better he has identified himself with the person whose dignity or interests he was about to injure, the more moral his decision will be. Or else, a friend will intervene and say to him: “Imagine yourself in his place; would you have tolerated being treated by him as he has just been treated by you?” And that is enough.
Thus, the appeal to the principle of equality is made only in a moment of hesitation, whereas in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred we act morally by mere habit.
It will certainly have been noticed that in everything we have said so far we have not tried to prescribe anything. We have simply presented what happens in the animal world and amongst men.
The church once threatened men with hell to moralise them, and we know how that worked out: it demoralised them. The judge threatens the shackles, the whip, the gallows, always in the name of the very principles of sociability that he has filched from Society; and he demoralises them. And authoritarians of every shade still scream about the danger to society of the idea that the judge along with the priest may disappear from the earth.
Well, we are not afraid to relinquish the judge and the sentence. We even relinquish, with Guyau, every kind of sanction, every kind of obligation of morality. We are not afraid to say: “Do what you want; act as you like” – because we are convinced that the great majority of men, as they become increasingly enlightened and rid themselves of the present shackles will and will always act in some direction useful to society, just as we are convinced in advance that a child will one day walk on two feet and not on all fours simply because it was born of parents belonging to the species Man.
All we can do is to give advice; more, while giving it we add: “This advice will have value only if you recognise yourself through experience and observation that it is worth following.”
When we see a young man bend his back and thus constrict his chest and lungs, we advise him to straighten up and hold his head high and his chest wide open. We advise him to take deep breaths, to fill his lungs, because this will be his best safeguard against consumption. But, at the same time, we teach him physiology so that he is aware of the functions of the lungs and chooses himself the posture he knows will be the best.
This is all we can do by way of morality. We have only the right to give advice, to which we again add: “Follow it if you find it good.”
But by leaving to each the right to act as he sees best; by absolutely denying society the right to punish anyone, in any way, for any anti-social act that he has committed – we do not renounce our capacity to love what seems good to us, and to hate what seems bad to us. To love – and to hate; for only those who know how to hate know how to love. We retain this for ourselves, and since this alone is sufficient to maintain and develop the moral sentiments in every animal society, that will suffice all the more for the human race.
We ask only one thing, to eliminate all that impedes the free development of these two feelings in the present society, all that distorts our judgment: the State, the Church, Exploitation; the judge, the cleric, the ruler, the exploiter.
Today when we see a Jack the Ripper butcher ten of the poorest, the most miserable – and morally superior to three-quarters of the wealthy bourgeoisie – women, our first feeling is that of hatred. If we had met him the day he had slaughtered the woman who wanted to be paid by him the pennies for [the rent of] her slum, we would have put a bullet in his head, without reflecting that the bullet would have been better placed in the skull of the owner of the slum.
But when we recall all the infamies that brought him to these murders; when we think of the darkness in which he prowls, haunted by images drawn from sordid books or thoughts suggested by stupid books – our feeling is divided. And the day we know that Jack is in the hands of a judge who has slain in cold blood ten times more human lives – men, women and children – than all the Jacks; when we know he is in the hands of those callous maniacs, or [in the hands] of those people who send a Borràs to prison to demonstrate to the bourgeois that they stand guard around them[10] – then all our hatred of Jack the Ripper will disappear. It will go elsewhere. It will be transformed into hatred against a cowardly and hypocritical society, against its recognised representatives. All the infamies of a Ripper disappear before this age-old series of infamies committed in the name of the Law. That is who we hate.
Today, our feelings are continually divided. We feel that all of us are more or less voluntarily or involuntarily accomplices of this society. We do not dare to hate anymore. Do we even dare to love? In a society based on exploitation and servitude human nature is degraded.
But, as servitude disappears, we shall regain our rights. We shall feel the strength to hate and to love, even in cases as complicated as the one we just mentioned.
As for our daily life, we do already give free reign to our feelings of sympathy or antipathy; we already do so at every moment. We all love moral strength and we all despise moral weakness, cowardice. Every moment our words, our looks, our smiles express our joy at the sight of actions useful to the human race, at those we consider good. Every moment our looks and words show the repugnance which cowardice, deceit, intrigue, lack of moral courage inspire in us. We betray our disgust, even though under the influence of an education in “etiquette,” that is to say of hypocrisy, we still try to hide this disgust beneath lying appearances which will disappear as relations of equality are established between us.
Well, that alone is already enough to maintain the conception of good and evil at a certain level and to permeate each other with it; that will be all the more sufficient when there is no longer judge nor priest in society – all the more so when moral principles will have lost all characteristics of obligation, and will be considered simply as natural relations between equals.
However, as these relations are established, an even higher moral conception emerges in society and it is this conception which we will [now] analyse.
VIII
In all our analysis so far, we have only presented the simple principles of equality. We have rebelled, and invited others to rebel, against those who arrogate themselves the right to treat others as they would not want to be treated themselves; against those who wish to be neither deceived, nor exploited, nor abused, nor prostituted, but who behave thus to others. Lying, abusing, and so on are repugnant, we have said, not because they are condemned by codes of morality – we ignore these codes – they are repugnant because lying, abusing, etc. revolts the sense of equality in everyone to whom equality is not an empty word; they especially revolt he who is truly anarchist in his way of thinking and acting.
But just this so simple, so natural and so obvious principle – if it were generally applied in life – already constitutes a very lofty morality, including all that moralists have claimed to teach.
The egalitarian principle summarises the teachings of the moralists. But it also contains something more. And that something is respect for the individual. By proclaiming our egalitarian and anarchist morality, we refuse to arrogate to ourselves the right which moralists have always claimed to exercise – that of mutilating the individual in the name of a certain ideal which they believed to be good. We do not recognise anyone as having this right; we do not want it for ourselves.
We recognise the full and complete freedom of the individual; we want for him the plenitude of existence, the free development of all faculties. We do not wish to impose anything upon him, and so we return to the principle which Fourier opposed to the morality of religions when he said: Leave men absolutely free; do not mutilate them – religions have done enough. Do not even fear their passions: in a free society, they will offer no danger.
Provided that you yourself do not abdicate your freedom; provided that you do not allow yourself to be enslaved by others; and provided that to the violent and anti-social passions of this or that person you oppose your equally vigorous social passions. Then you will have nothing to fear from liberty.[11]
We renounce mutilating the individual in the name of any ideal; all we reserve is to frankly express our sympathies and our antipathies for that which we find good or bad. Does so-and-so deceive his friends? It is his will, his character? Alright! Well, it is our character, it is our will to despise the liar! And since that is our character, let us be honest. Do not rush towards him to press him to our bosom and cordially shake his hands, as is done today! Let us vigorously oppose our active passion to his.
This is all we have the right and the duty to do to maintain the principle of equality in society. It is even the principle of equality, put into practice.[12]
All this, of course, cannot be completely applied until the great causes of moral depravity – capitalism, religion, [Statist] justice, government – have ceased to exist. But a large part of this can already be done today. It is already being applied.
And yet, if societies know only this principle of equality; if everyone, holding to a principle of shopkeeper equality, at every moment taking care not to give others anything more than he received from them – that would be the death of society. The very principle of equality would disappear from our relations, for to sustain it something more grand, more beautiful, more vigorous than mere equity must constantly occur in life.
And this thing happens.
Until now, humanity has never lacked those great hearts overflowing with tenderness, spirit or will, and who used their feeling, their intellect or their force of action in the service of the human race, without asking anything in return.
This fecundity of spirit, feeling or will takes all possible forms. It is the passionate seeker after truth who, renouncing all other pleasures of life, devotes himself passionately to the search for what he believes true and just, contrary to the assertions of the ignoramuses who surround him. It is the inventor who lives from day to day, forgetting even his food and scarcely touches the bread that a women devoted to him feeds him like a child, while he pursues his invention destined, he thinks, to change the face of the world. It is the ardent revolutionary, to whom the joys of art, of science, even of family, seem bitter as long as they are not shared by all, and who works to regenerate the world despite poverty and persecution. It is the young boy who, hearing of the atrocities of an invasion, taking literally the legends of patriotism whispered in his ear, goes to join a volunteer group, marches through snow, suffers from hunger and finally falls beneath bullets.
It is the Paris street-urchin who, more inspired and endowed with a more fertile intelligence, choosing better his aversions and his sympathies, ran to the ramparts with his little brother, remaining as shells rained down and died murmuring: “Long live the Commune!” It is the man who rebels at the sight of an injustice, without wondering what the outcome will be and, while everyone else grovels, unmasks the injustice, strikes the exploiter, [whether] the petty tyrant of the factory or the great tyrant of an empire. Finally it is all those numberless acts of devotion, less sensational and for that unknown, almost always overlooked, which can be continually seen, especially amongst women, provided we want to take the trouble to open our eyes and notice what makes the substance of humanity, which still allows it to manage as best it can, despite the exploitation and oppression it undergoes.
These are forging, some in obscurity, some on a larger arena, the real progress of humanity. And humanity knows it. That is why it surrounds their lives with respect, with legends. It even embellishes them and makes them the heroes of its tales, its songs, its novels. It cherishes in them the courage, the goodness, the love and the devotion which are lacking in most of us. It passes on their memory to the young. It remembers even those who acted only in the narrow circle of family and friends, by venerating their memory in family traditions.
These make true morality – the only one, moreover, worthy of the name – the rest were merely simple relations of equality. Without this courage and devotion, humanity would have stupefied itself in the mire of petty calculations. These, finally, prepare the morality of the future, that which will come when our children, ceasing to calculate, will have grown up with the idea that the best use for all things, for all energy, for all courage, for all love, is where the need for this force is felt most strongly.
This courage, this devotion has always existed. We encounter it amongst all animals. We encounter it in man, even during times of the greatest stupefaction.
And, at all times, religions have sought to appropriate it, to make money out of it for their own benefit. And if religions are still alive, it is because – apart from ignorance – they have always appealed precisely to this devotion, to this courage. It is again to this that revolutionaries appeal – especially socialist revolutionaries.
With regard to explaining this, religious, Utilitarian and other moralists have fallen into the errors we have already pointed out. But it belongs to that young philosopher – that thinker, an anarchist without knowing it – Guyau to have indicated the true origin of this courage and devotion, outwith all mystical force, outwith all the mercantile calculations bizarrely imagined by the Utilitarians of the English school. Where Kantian, positivist and evolutionist philosophy have failed, anarchist philosophy has found the true path.
Their origin, said Guyau, is the feeling of its own strength. It is a life which overflows, which seeks to spread. “To feel inwardly the greatest that one is capable of doing is really the first consciousness of what it is one’s duty to do.”[13]
The moral sentiment of duty, which every man has felt in his life and which they have sought to explain by every mysticism. “Duty is nothing more than a superabundance of life which demands to exercise, to impart itself; it is at the same time the sentiment of a power.”[14]
Any accumulating force creates a pressure upon the obstacles in front of it. Power to act is duty to act. And all this moral “obligation” of which so much has been said or written, stripped of all mysticism, is thus reduced to this true conception: life can be maintained only on the condition that it is spread.
“The plant cannot prevent itself from flowering. Sometimes to flower means for it to die. No matter, the sap still rises,” concludes the young anarchist philosopher.[15]
It is the same for the human being when he is full of force and energy. Force accumulates in him. He promulgates his life. He gives without calculation – otherwise he could not live. And if he must perish, like the flower when it blooms – no mater! The sap rises, if sap there is.
Be strong! Overflow with passionate and intellectual energy – and you will promulgate your intelligence, your love, your strength of action amongst others! This is what all moral teaching is reduced to, shorn of the hypocrisies of oriental asceticism.
IX
What humanity admires in the truly moral man is his energy, the exuberance of life which drives him to give his intelligence, his feelings, his actions, asking nothing in return.
The man with a powerful intellect, the man overflowing with intellectual life, naturally seeks to promulgate himself. There would be no appeal in thinking without communicating his thoughts to others. It is only the man poor in ideas who, after having found one with difficulty, carefully hides it so that he can later label it with his own name. The man with a powerful intellect overflows with ideas: he sows them with both hands. He suffers if he cannot share them, cannot scatter them to the four winds: this is his life.
It is the same for feeling. “Of ourselves, we are not sufficient for our ourselves. We have more tears than are wanted for our own sufferings, more joys than our own happiness would justify,” said Guyau, thus summarising the whole question of morality in a few so true lines, taken from nature.[16] The solitary being suffers, he is gripped by a certain anxiety, because he cannot share his thoughts, his feelings with others. When we feel a great pleasure, we want to let others know that we exist, we feel, we love, we live, we struggle, we fight.
At the same time, we feel the need to exercise our will, our force of action. To act, to work has become a need for the vast majority of men; so much so that when absurd conditions drive a man or woman from useful work, they invent tasks, futile and senseless obligations to open some field for their force of action. They invent anything – a theory, a religion, a “social duty” – to persuade themselves that they are doing something useful. When they dance, it is for a charity; when they ruin themselves with their [expensive] outfits, it is to match the aristocracy; when they do nothing at all, it is on principle.
“We want to help others, to give a lift to the coach which toilsomely draws humanity along; in any case, we buzz round it,” said Guyau.[17] This need to lend a hand is so great that it is found in all sociable animals, however lowly they may be. And what is all this enormous activity spent so uselessly in politics every day if not the need to give a lift to the coach or to buzz around it?
Undoubtedly, this “fecundity of will,”[18] this thirst for action when it is accompanied only by a poor sensibility and an intellect incapable of creating, will only produce a Napoleon I or a Bismarck – fools who wanted to make the world go the wrong way. On the other hand, a fertile mind devoid of a well-developed sensibility will produce barren fruits, savants who only stop the progress of science. And finally sensibility unguided by a sufficiently large intelligence will produce those women ready to sacrifice everything to some brute upon whom they pour all their love.
To be really fruitful, life must be with intelligence, feeling and will at the same time. But then, this fecundity in all directions is life: the only thing that deserves this name. For one moment of this life, those who have glimpsed it give years of vegetative existence. Without this overflowing life, a man is old before his time, an impotent being, a plant that withers before it has ever flowered.
“Let us leave to decadent corruption [pourritures fin de siècle] this life that is no life,” cries the youth, the true youth full of sap who wants to live and sow life around it. And every time a society falls into decay, a push coming from this youth shatters the old economic, political, moral forms to germinate a new life. What does it matter if someone or another falls in the struggle! The sap still rises. For it, to live is to bloom, whatever the consequences! It does not regret them.
But without speaking of the heroic periods of humanity, and taking everyday existence – is it life to live at odds with one’s ideal?
These days, it is often said that we mock the ideal. This is understandable. The ideal has been so often confused with Buddhist or Christian mutilation, the word has been so often used to deceive the naïve, that a reaction is necessary and healthy. We too would like to replace the word “ideal,” covered by so many taints, by a new word more consistent with the new ideas.
But whatever the word, the fact remains; every human being has their ideal. Bismarck has his, bizarre as it is: government by blood and iron. Every bourgeois has theirs – be it the silver bath of Gambetta, the cook Trompette, and many slaves to pay for Trompette and the bath without too much need to drag them by the ears.[19]
But besides these, there is the human being who has conceived a higher ideal. The life of a brute cannot satisfy him. Servility, deceit, lack of good faith, intrigue, inequality in human relations revolt him. How can he in his turn become servile, untruthful, scheming, domineering? He glimpses how beautiful life would be if better relations existed between everyone; he feels in himself the strength to succeed in establishing these better relations with those whom he may meet on his way. He conceives what is called an ideal.
Where does this ideal come from? How is it shaped, by heredity on one side and the impressions of life on the other? We hardly know. At most we could tell the story of it more or less truthfully in our biographies. But it is there – variable, progressive, open to outside influences, but always alive. What would give the greatest amount of vitality, pleasure of being, is an unconscious feeling in part.
Well, life is vigorous, fertile, rich in sensations only on condition of responding to this feeling of the ideal. Act against this feeling and you sense your life is divided; it is no longer one, it loses its vigour. Be untrue often to your ideal, and you end by paralysing your will, your force of action. Soon you will not find the vigour, the spontaneity of decision you once knew. You are broken.
There is nothing mysterious in this, once you envision man as a compound of nervous and cerebral centres acting independently. Waver between the various feelings that struggle within you, and you will soon manage to break the harmony of the organism; you will be a sick person without will. The intensity of life will drop and you will in vain seek for compromises: you will no longer be the complete, strong, vigorous being that you were when your actions were in accordance with the ideal conceptions of your brain.
X
And now, before finishing, let us say a word about these two terms, altruism and egoism, coming from the English School, which continually offend our ears.
Until now we have not even spoken about it in this study. That is because we do not even see the distinction that the English moralists have sought to introduce.
When we say: “Treat others as we want to be treated ourselves” – is it egoism or altruism that we recommend? When we rise higher and we say: “The happiness of each is intimately linked to the happiness of all those around him. By chance you can have a few years of relative happiness in a society based on the misfortune of others; but this happiness is built on sand. It cannot last, the least of things is enough to break it; and it is miserably small in comparison with the happiness possible in a society of equals. Also, every time you aspire to the good of all, you will do well”; when we say that, is it altruism or egoism that we preach? We simply note a fact.
And when we add, paraphrasing a remark by Guyau: “Be strong, be great in all your acts; develop your life in all directions; be as rich as possible in energy, and for that reason be the most social and sociable being – if you want to enjoy a full, whole and fruitful life. Guided always by a richly developed intelligence, struggle, risk – risk has its immense pleasures – dispose of your forces without counting them, as long as you have them, in all that you feel to be beautiful and great – and then you will have enjoyed the greatest amount of happiness. Be one with the masses, and then, whatever happens to you in life, you will feel with you the beat of precisely those hearts you esteem, and against you the beat of those you despise!” When we say this, is it altruism or egoism that we teach?
To fight, to face danger; to jump into the water to save, not only a man, but a simple cat; to eat dry bread to put an end to the injustices that revolt you; to feel in accord with those who deserve to be loved, to feel loved by them – for a crippled philosopher, all this may be a sacrifice, but for a man and a woman full of energy, strength, vigour, youth, it is the joy of feeling alive.
Is it egoism? Is it altruism?
In general, the moralists who built their systems on an alleged opposition between egoist sentiments and altruist sentiments have taken the wrong path. If this opposition existed in reality, if the good of the individual was really opposed to that of society, the human race would not exist; no animal species would have reached its present development. If ants did not find an intense pleasure in working together, for the well-being of the anthill, the anthill would not exist, and the ant would not be what it is today; the most developed creature amongst insects, an insect whose brain, barely perceptible under the magnifying glass, is almost as powerful as the average brain of man. If birds did not find an intense pleasure in their migrations, in the care they take in raising their offspring, in joint action for the defence of their societies against birds of prey, the bird would not have attained the development it has achieved. The typical bird would have regressed, instead of progressing.
And when [Herbert] Spencer foresees a time when the good of the individual will merge with the good of the species, he forgets one thing: it is that if the two had not always been identical, the very evolution of the animal kingdom could not have been achieved.[20]
It is because there was at all times, it is that there is always found, in the animal world as in the human race, a large number of individuals who did not understand that the good of the individual and that of the species are, at bottom, identical. They did not understand that to live an intense life is the purpose of every individual, he finds the greatest intensity of life in the greatest sociability, in the most perfect identification of himself with all those around him.
But this was only a lack of intelligence, a lack of understanding. At all times there have been narrow-minded men; at all times there have been idiots. But never, at any time in [human] history, nor even in geological history, has the good of the individual been opposed to that of society. At all times they remained the same, and those who understood it best have always enjoyed the most complete life.
The distinction between egoism and altruism is therefore absurd to us. That is why we have said nothing, either, about these compromises that man, according to the Utilitarians, would always make between his egoist sentiments and his altruist sentiments. These compromises do not exist for the convinced man.
What really exists is that, in the current conditions, even as we seek to live according to our egalitarian principles, we feel them offended at every step. As modest as our meal and bed are, we are still Rothschilds in comparison with those who sleep under bridges and who are so often lacking dry bread. As little as we give to intellectual and artistic pleasures, we are still Rothschilds in comparison to the millions who return in the evening stupefied by monotonous and onerous manual labour, who cannot enjoy art and science and will die without ever having known these lofty pleasures.
We feel that we have not pushed the egalitarian principle to the end. But we do not want to compromise with these conditions. We rebel against them. They burden us. They make us revolutionary. We do not adapt ourselves to what revolts us. We repudiate every compromise, every truce, and we promise to fight all-out against these conditions.
This is not a compromise; and the convinced man does not wish to let himself rest easy while waiting for it to change by itself.
We are finally at the end of our study.
There are periods, as we have said, when the moral conception changes completely. We realise that what we had considered as moral is the deepest immorality. Here, it was a custom, a venerated tradition, but immoral at bottom. There, we find only a morality made for the advantage of a single class. We throw them overboard, and it is written: “Down with morality!” It becomes a duty to do immoral acts.
Let us welcome these periods. These are periods of criticism. They are the surest sign that there is a great deal of thought in society. It is the elaboration of a higher morality.
We have sought to formulate what this morality will be by basing ourselves on the study of man and animals. And we have seen the morality that is already taking shape in the ideas of the masses and thinkers.
This morality will not command anything. It will absolutely refuse to mould the individual according to an abstract idea, as it will refuse to mutilate it by religion, law and government. It will leave to the individual full and complete liberty. It will become a simple statement of facts, a science.
And this science will say to man: if you do not sense strength within you, if the forces are just what it takes to maintain a greyish, monotonous life, without strong impressions, without deep pleasures, but also without great sorrow, well, keep to the simple principles of egalitarian equity. In equalitarian relations you will find, all in all, the greatest amount of happiness possible, given your mediocre forces.
But if you sense in yourself the strength of youth, if you want to live, if you want to enjoy a whole, full, overflowing life – that is to say, to know the greatest pleasure that a living being can desire – be strong, be great, be energetic in everything you do.
Sow life around you. Notice that to deceive, lie, scheme, trick, is to degrade yourself, belittle yourself, to acknowledge your weakness in advance, to act like the slave of a harem who feels inferior to his master. Do this if you like, but then know in advance that humanity will consider you small, mean, weak, and treat you accordingly. Not seeing your strength, it will treat you as a being who deserves pity – pity only. Do not blame humanity, if you yourself thus paralyse your force of action.
On the contrary, be strong. And once you have seen an injustice and you have understood it – an iniquity in life, a lie in science, or a suffering inflicted by another – rebel against the inequity, the lie and the injustice. Struggle! Struggle is life all the more intense as the struggle becomes sharper. And then you will have lived; and you will not give a few hours of this life for years spent vegetating in the decay of the swamp.
Struggle so that all may live this rich and overflowing life, and be sure that in this struggle you will find joys greater than you could find in any other activity. This is all that the science of morality can tell you. The choice is yours.
[1] Bernard Mandeville (1670–1733), was an Anglo-Dutch philosopher, political economist and satirist who became famous for The Fable of The Bees: or, Private Vices, Public Benefits. This consisted of the poem The Grumbling Hive: or, Knaves turn’d Honest, along with prose discussion of the poem. He describes a bee community thriving until the bees are suddenly made honest and virtuous. Without their desire for personal gain their economy collapses and the remaining bees go to live simple lives in a hollow tree, thus implying that without private vices there exists no public benefit. (Translator)
[2] Jean-Marie Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (London: Watts, 1898), 46-7. (Translator)
[3] This is a collective term for minute aquatic creatures such as unicellular algae and protozoa. (Translator)
[4] Auguste-Henri Forel (1848–1931) was a Swiss myrmecologist, neuroanatomist and psychiatrist, famous for both his investigations into ants and the structure of the human brain. (Translator)
[5] The Chukchi are an indigenous people inhabiting the Chukchi Peninsula, the eastern-most peninsula of Asia. Part of the Russian Empire when Kropotkin was writing, they are now part of the Russian Federation. (Translator)
[6] Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) was an English philosopher best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which established the social contract theory that has served as the foundation for much of later Western political philosophy. Written during the English Civil War, it argues for the necessity of a strong central authority to which all individuals in society cede their rights for the sake of protection and to avoid discord and civil war. (Translator)
[7] A reference to the pre-modern Kazakhstan (the Kazakh khanate) in which the Kazakh aristocracy (called the white bone – ak suiuk) traced their descent from Genghis Khan and had special rights and privileges. The general population of Kazakh was known as black bone (kara suiuk). (Translator)
[8] Sophia Lvovna Perovskaya (1853-1881) was a Russian revolutionary and a member of the socialist revolutionary organisation Narodnaya Volya (People’s Will). She was executed after helping to orchestrate the successful assassination of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. (Translator)
[9] Louise Michel (1830–1905) was a French anarchist, school teacher and participant in the Paris Commune. On 9 March 1883, she led a demonstration of around 500 across Paris against unemployment, carrying a black flag and shouting “Bread, work, or lead!” The crowd pillaged three baker’s shops and she was arrested and sentenced to six years solitary confinement. Public pressure soon forced the granting of an amnesty in 1886. This act helped associate the black flag with anarchism, with Michel stating that it was “the flag of strikes and the flag of those who are hungry.” (Translator)
[10] Martí Borràs i Jover (1845-1894) was a Spanish anarchist shoemaker and the first director of the anarchist paper Tierra y Libertad (Land and Liberty). In 1889 he was arrested as one of the organisers of a demonstration in Plaça de Catalunya in Barcelona (which did not take place because of repression). (Translator)
[11] Of all modern authors, the Norwegian [Henrik] Ibsen, who will be soon read in France with the passion he is already read in England, has best expressed these ideas in his dramas. He is even an anarchist without knowing it.
[12] We already hear it being said: “And the murderer? And those who molest children?” – To that our response is short. The murderer who kills simply because of a thirst for blood is extremely rare. He is a sick man to be cured or avoided. As for the molester, let us first see to it that society does not pervert feelings of our children, then we shall have nothing to fear from these gentlemen.
[13] Jean-Marie Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (London: Watts, 1898), 91. (Translator)
[14] Kropotkin’s summary and paraphrase of Jean-Marie Guyau: “Duty, from the point of view of facts – metaphysical notions being left on one side – is a superabundance of life which demands to exercise, to impart itself. Duty has been too much interpreted until now as the sentiment of a necessity or compulsion. It is, above all, the sentiment of a power.” (A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction [London: Watts, 1898], 91). (Translator)
[15] Jean-Marie Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (London: Watts, 1898), 92. (Translator)
[16] Jean-Marie Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (London: Watts, 1898), 84. (Translator)
[17] Kropotkin’s emphasis, Jean-Marie Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (London: Watts, 1898), 86. (Translator)
[18] Jean-Marie Guyau, A Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction (London: Watts, 1898), 85. (Translator)
[19] Léon Gambetta (1838–1882) was a French statesman, prominent during and after the Franco-Prussian War, whose enemies circulated rumours about his palatial apartment and its silver bath. Trompette was his personal chef. (Translator)
[20] Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was a prominent English classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era, best known for coining the term “survival of the fittest.” He developed an all-embracing conception of evolution as progressive development in biology and society (Synthetic Philosophy), writing on ethics, religion, anthropology, economics, political theory, philosophy, biology, sociology, and psychology. (Translator)