wished me well, but doubted the success of my work,
for (he said) _on ne comprend rien que ce qu'on aime_. Of this remark
I have always had a keen recollection. If that great savant and gentle
being, the St. John of the Anarchists, thinks thus, what shall I have
to expect from his passionate fellow-disciples, or from the
terror-blinded opponents of Anarchism? "We cannot understand what we
do not love," and unfortunately we do not love unvarnished truth.
Anarchists will, therefore, simply deny my capacity to write about
their cause, and call my book terribly reactionary; Socialists will
think me too much of a "Manchester Economist"; Liberals will think me
far too tolerant towards the Socialistic disturbers of their peace;
and Reactionaries will roundly denounce me as an Anarchist in
disguise. But this will not dissuade me from my course, and I shall be
amply compensated for these criticisms which I have foreseen by the
knowledge of having advanced real and serious discussion on this
subject. For only when we have ceased to thrust aside the theory of
Anarchism as madness from the first, only when we have perceived that
one can and must understand many things that we certainly cannot like,
only then will Anarchists also place themselves on a closer human
footing with us, and learn to love us as men even though they often
perhaps cannot understand us, and of their own accord abandon their
worst argument, the bomb.

E. V. ZENKER.

CONTENTS.

PART I.--EARLY ANARCHISM.

PAGE
PREFACE v

CHAP.
I. PRECURSORS AND EARLY HISTORY 3

Forerunners and Early History -- Definitions -- Is Anarchism
a Pathological Phenomenon? -- Anarchism Considered
Sociologically --Anarchist Movements in the Middle Ages --
The Theory of the Social Contract with Reference to Anarchism
-- Anarchist Movements during the French Revolution -- The
Philosophic Premises of the Anarchist Theory -- The Political
and Economic Assumptions of Anarchism.

II. PIERRE JOSEPH PROUDHON 32

Biography -- His Philosophic Standpoint -- His Early Writings
-- The "Contradictions of Political Economy" -- Proudhon's
Federat