f
society. Men in themselves are good, noble, and possess the most
brotherly sentiments; and not only that, but they are diligent and
industrious from an innate impulse; society alone has spoiled them.
These assumptions we have seen in all Anarchists; they are the
inevitable premises of their ideal of the future, an ideal of a free,
just, and brotherly form of society; but they are the necessary
consequence of the first assumption, of the idealist conception of
society itself, which is common to all Anarchists, with the single
exception of Proudhon, whose peculiarities and contradictions we have
dealt with above.

Herbert Spencer, and with him the sociological school generally,
cannot of course accept the conclusions of a premise which they do not
assume. Comparative study of the life of primitive races, scientific
anthropology, and exact psychology, all show this well-meaning
assumption to be a mere delusion. Philoneism may be nobler and more
humane, but, unfortunately, it is only misoneism that is true.
Generally speaking, every man only works in order to avoid
unpleasantness. One man is urged on by his experience that hunger
hurts him, the other by the whip of the slave-driver. What he fears is
either the punishment of circumstances, or the punishment given by
someone set over him (_cf._ Spencer, _From Freedom to Restraint_, p.
8). Work is the enemy of man; he struggles with it because he must do
so in order to live; his life is a continual struggle but not (as all
the Anarchists from Proudhon down to Grave try to persuade themselves
and others) a united struggle of man against nature, but a struggle of
men one against the other, a murderous, fratricidal conflict, from
which in the end only the most suitable and capable emerges ("the
survival of the fittest"). Short-sighted people and one-sided
doctrinaires can never be convinced of the fact that in this brutal
fact lies not only the end but also the proper beginning of unfeigned
morality. And so too in social relations. Conflict, war, and
persecution stand at the beginning of every civilisation and every
social development; but the ceaseless hostilities of man with man have
populated the earth from pole to pole with those who are most capable,
powerful, and most fitted for evolution; we owe to man's hatred and
fear of work the rich blessings of civilisation; and only from the
swamp of servitude can spring the flower of freedom.

But we must return once more to ou