io principii_, this
"assumption" of the very thing that has to be proved. Companion Grave,
the "profound thinker," is particularly rich in assumptions. As soon as
any difficult problem presents itself, he "assumes" that it is already
solved, and then everything is for the best in the best of ideals.

The "profound" Grave is less circumspect than the "learned" Kropotkine.
And so it is only he who succeeds in reducing the "ideal" to "absolute"
absurdity.

He asks himself what will be done if in "the society of the day after
the revolution" there should be a papa who should refuse his child _all
education_. The papa is an individual with unlimited rights. He follows
the Anarchist rule, "Do as thou wouldst." No one has any right,
therefore, to bring him to his senses. On the other hand, the child also
may do as he likes, and he wants to learn. How to get out of this
conflict, how resolve the dilemma without offending the holy laws of
Anarchy? By an "assumption." "Relations" (between citizens) "being much
wider and more imbued with fraternity than in our present society, based
as it is upon the antagonism of interests, it follows that the child by
means of what he will see passing before his eyes, by what he will daily
hear, will escape from the influence of the parent, and will find every
facility necessary for acquiring the knowledge his parents refuse to
give him. Nay more, if he finds himself too unhappy under the authority
they try to force upon him, he would abandon them in order to place
himself under the protection of individuals with whom he was in greater
sympathy. The parents could not send the gendarmes after him to bring
back to their authority the slave whom the law to-day gives up to
them."[61]

It is not the child who is running away from his parents, but the
Utopian who is running away from an insurmountable logical difficulty.
And yet this judgment of Solomon has seemed so profound to the
companions that, it has been literally quoted by Emil Darnaud in his
book "La Societe Future" (Foix. 1890, p. 26)--a book especially
intended to popularise the lucubrations of Grave.

"Anarchy, the No-government system of Socialism, has a double origin. It
is an outgrowth of the two great movements of thought in the economical
and the political fields which characterise our century, and especially
its second part. In common with all Socialists, the Anarchists hold that
the private ownership of land, capital, and machin