chism there is no question of transitory anomalies of the public
mind, but of a well defined condition which is visibly increasing and
which is necessarily connected with all previous and accompanying
conditions; it is a question of ideas and opinions which are the
logical, even if in practice inadmissible, development of views that
have long been well known and recognised by the majority of civilised
men. A further test of every unhealthy phenomenon, namely, its local
character, is entirely lacking in Anarchism; for we meet with it
to-day extending all over the world, wherever society has developed in
a manner similar to our own; we meet it not merely in one class, but
see members of all classes, and especially members of the upper
classes, attach themselves to it. The fathers, as we may call them, of
the Anarchist theory are almost entirely men of great natural gifts,
who rank high both intellectually and morally, whose influence has
been felt for half a century, who have been born in Russia, Germany,
France, Italy, England, and America, men who are as different one from
another as are the circumstances and environment of their respective
countries, but who are all of one mind as regards the theory which we
mentioned at the beginning of this chapter.

[2] _Rupticism, Pietism, and Anti-Semitism at the Close of
the Nineteenth Century_, a study in social history. Vienna,
1894.

And that is what Anarchism undoubtedly is: a theory, an idea, with all
the failings and dangers, but also with all the advantages which a
theory always possesses, with just as much, and only as much,
validity as a theory can demand as its due, but at any rate a theory
which is as old as human civilisation, because it goes back to the
most powerful civilising factor in humanity.

* * * * *

The care for the bare necessities of life, the inexorable
struggle for existence, has aroused in mankind the desire for
fellow-strugglers, for companions. In the tribe his power of
resistance was increased, and his prospect of self-support grew in
proportion as he developed together with his fellows into a new
collective existence. But the fact that, notwithstanding this, he did
not grow up like a mere animal in a flock, but in such a way that he
always--even if often only after long and bitter experience--found his
proper development in the tribe--this has made him a man and his tribe
a society. Which is the more