Moribund Society and Anarchy

be recognized and is making its way in the scientific world; the modifying influence of environments upon organized beings is no longer combated save by the old fogies of official science. It is acknowledged today that the soil and climate, the obstacles or advantages in the way of living found by the organisms of a continent, have an influence upon their development as great as the other laws by which, exclusively, their adaptation or their tendencies to variability have heretofore been sought to be explained, if not indeed, greater. As to man, who has always been made a separate and distinct being, the new truth was harder to admit; the more so that he, also, is able to transform the environment by which evolved. But at length it was admitted that man, like all other animals, is subject to the same influences and evolved under the pressure of the same original causes. When it became necessary to explain his moral evolution according to the same laws, the task was still more difficult; and even some of those who deny free will, who recognize that man acts only under the pressure of external circumstances⁠—even some of those cannot accept the law in all its consequences⁠—that is to say, so far as to trace the causes of man’s criminality to the entire social organization and to demand the transformation of the latter. The boldest⁠—and they are rare⁠—admit indeed in principle, that the social organization is bad, that it needs reforms, that some of its institutions beget misdemeanors; but to them the grand culprit is still the evil nature of mankind which necessitates a bridle upon their passions, and which society, defective as it is, can alone succeed in repressing. Moreover, in order to minimize the responsibility of society as a whole, they cut up the social environment into several slices, which they likewise baptize with the name of environments, and upon which they saddle the evil effects of the influence produced. As to society, they say, it does, perhaps, leave something to be desired; but such as it is, it protects the weak against the wicked, guarantees individuals in the free exercise of their right to labor, and furnishes them a surer, more effective, and cheaper protection than as if they were forced to defend themselves. In a word, they conclude, society is a contract of mutual insurance established between individuals; if misdemeanors occur, they are much more attributable to the evil nature of man than to the social organization itself.

Certainly we are far from pretending that man is a model of perfection: indeed he is a sorry animal enough, who, when he is not crushing his fellows under his heel, licks the heels of those who crush him; but summing it all up, man does not act exclusively under the influence of bad instincts, and the beautiful sentiments of love, charity, fraternity, devotion, and solidarity, sung and exalted by poets, religionists, and moralists, prove to us that, though he sometimes act under the impulse of evil sentiments, he has a fund of idealism, a yearning after perfection; and it is this yearning which society represses and prevents from developing.

Man is not created unique, either morally or physically. Like other animals, of which he is but a superior specimen, he is the product of a concourse of circumstances, of combination and association of matter. He has struggled to develop himself, and if he has contributed in a large measure to the transformation of the environment wherein he is situated, the latter has in turn influenced the customs he has adopted, his manner of living, thinking, and acting. Under the empire of his character and passions, therefore, he established society, and continues to have a certain amount of influence upon its operations. But it must not be forgotten that he has continued to evolve since the establishment of society, while the latter, after being organized in various groups, has always remained based upon authority and property. Changes of detail have been brought about by revolutions; power and property have changed hands, passed from one caste to another; but society itself has not ceased to be based upon the antagonism of individuals, the competition of their interests; nor has it ceased to press down with all its weight upon the development of their minds. Surrounded by society they are born into the world, within the environment it offers them they acquire their first ideas, and learn a mass of prejudices and lies which they come to recognize as false only after many centuries of criticism and discussion. Hence we are bound to acknowledge that the influence of the social environment upon the individual is immense, that it weighs upon him with all the heft of its institutions, with the collective strength of its members and that acquired by the long duration of its existence, whilst the individual, in reacting upon it, is reduced solely to his unaided strength.

Society, which is a first essay at solidarity, should have for its object the betterment of individuals, teaching them to practice this solidarity in view of which they have come together, to love each other as brothers, leading them to put all things in common: joys, pleasures, gratifications, pains, sorrows, and sufferings, toil and production. Society has, on the contrary, found nothing better to do than to divide them into a number of castes, which may be resolved into two principle ones: governors and possessors on the one side, the governed and non-possessors on the other. On the side of the first contentment and plethora; on the side of the second misery, privation, and anaemia; the result of which division is to pose these two categories of individuals as enemies, between whom a ferocious war is perpetuated⁠—a war which can end only in the irretrievable enslavement of the second or the complete destruction⁠—so far as concerns class privilege at least⁠—of the first.

But the defective and ill-conceived organization of society into two distinct classes does not stop here