, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the
system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system
of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of
society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political
truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of
the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular
beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills,
have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration.
He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being,
the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind
being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his
father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that
politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the
legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search
for truth.

Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely
proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that
society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can
be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true
government,--that is, for a scientific government. And just as the right
of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance
of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the
sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and
must at last be lost in scientific socialism. Property and royalty
have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began. As man seeks
justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.

ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign, [30]--such is the
form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which
our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law,
leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of
chaos. The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth
century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the
good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from
laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing. So strong is our
prejudice. As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this
very moment I hold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous
communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship. The most
ad