Chapter 2

That the suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities. What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and the dear little piggies grunt!

Well-meaning people are horrified that justice is making use of such creatures as Orchard and McParland against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone. There is nothing unusual in that. The record of the American government in its persecution against Socialists and Anarchists is by no means so clean that one need be astonished that it employs spies and perjurers as its helpmates.

The Lord has developed from a good Christian into a good banker: He destroyed more churches than vaults in San Francisco.

A LETTER.

Chicago, June 2nd, 1906.

Dear Editor:--I hope you have not been trying to relieve your feelings by using language dangerous to your soul's salvation. I can sympathize with you, though. However, it was impossible for me to send the promised article for "M. E." Who, indeed, could expect a bride of two weeks to waste time upon magazine articles?! I hope you have read the reports of my marriage, though your silence would indicate that you have either neglected to read the important news, or that your usual lack of faith in the truth and honesty of the press has not permitted you to credit the story.

It is high time, dear friend, that you get rid of your German skepticism; you know, I esteem your judgment, but when it comes to doubting anything the newspapers say, I draw the line. What reporters do not know about Anarchists, and especially about your publisher, is not worth knowing. According to their great wisdom I not only incited men to remove the crowned heads of various countries, but I have done worse--I have incited them to marry me, and when they proved unwilling to love, honor and obey the order of our secret societies to blow up all sacred institutions, I sent them about their business.

Much as I realize the importance of my articles for MOTHER EARTH, you cannot expect me to sacrifice my wifely duty to my lord and master for Earth's sake.

I have always held to the opinion that there must be absolute confidence between publisher and editor on all matters except the receipts; therefore I have to confess that my newly-wedded husband, who has just graduated from the University of the Western Penitentiary--the curriculum of which is lots of liberty, leisure and enjoyment--objects to the drudgery of an agitator and publisher. In justice to him, I dare not do more than write letters all day, address meetings every evening, and enjoy the love and kindness of the comrades till early morning hours. Where, then, shall I find time to write articles for MOTHER EARTH?

But to be in keeping with the serious and dignified tone of our valuable magazine, and especially with you dear Editor, I want to say that my meetings were very successful, and that MOTHER EARTH is being received with great favor in every city. Nearly 500 copies were sold here.

After reading the brilliant reports in the Chicago papers and seeing the handsome, refined policemen at the various meetings, I am not surprised that our magazine is being appreciated. Apropos of the Chicago police, just fancy, I have actually forced them out of their uniforms. I hope this will not conjure up the horrible picture of Chicago's finest parading the city in Adam's costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, "No officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of authority and law."

After this, I hope you will never again doubt the importance of public meetings and the great and far-reaching influence of my speaking.

I shall soon be with you, if I survive my tour, the police, and the press. I shall then try to make up for my sins, in the July number of MOTHER EARTH, provided you will let me recuperate in your editorial care and affection.

EMMA GOLDMAN.

LIBERTARIAN INSTRUCTION.

By EMILE JANVION.

AMONG the important duties of Anarchists libertarian instruction should occupy the first place. As revolutionary propaganda it is the most effective. Tolstoi in Yasnaia-Poliana, Reclus at Bruxelles, Paul Robin at Cempius, the group of the Free School at Paris have inaugurated attempts during the period of daring we have witnessed of late years.

Far from mixing education with instruction, the former should be considered as the natural consequence of the latter.

Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized, narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of the character.

Our instruction should be _integral_, _rational_, and _mixed_.

_Integral_--Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a complete, free _ensemble_, equally progressive in all knowledge, intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the earliest age.

_Rational_--Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the abolition of the fiction _God_, the eternal and absolute cause of subjection.

_Mixed_--Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant, fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to the character of their manners a special earnestness.

To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship, instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small importance.

To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the _pros_ and _cons_ of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle, that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us.

That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and firmly.

THE ANTICHRIST.

From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander Tille, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New York.

I MAKE war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is from the very beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the sight--of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things, he unites the good conscience to the _false_ mode of seeing,--he demands that no _other_ mode of perspective be any longer of value, after he has made his own sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation," and "eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is the most diffused, the most peculiarly _subterranean_ form of falsity that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, _must_ needs be false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as theologist-influence extends, the _judgment of value_ is turned right about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates, affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false."

* * *

Let us not underestimate this: _we ourselves_, we free spirits, are already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue." The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered: the most precious discernments, however, are the _methods_. _All_ methods, _all_ presuppositions of our present-day science, have for millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men--he passed for an "enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a "possessed" person. As a scientific man, a person was a Chandala.... We have had the entire pathos of mankind against us--their concept of that which truth _ought_ to be, which the service of truth _ought_ to be: every "thou shalt" has been hitherto directed _against_ us. Our objects, our practices, our quiet, prudent, mistrustful mode--all appeared to mankind as absolutely unworthy and contemptible.--In the end one might, with some reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a _picturesque_ effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to operate strongly on their senses. Our _modesty_ was longest against the taste of mankind.... Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of God----.

* * *

The Christian concept of God--God as God of the sick, God as cobweb-spinner, God as spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to the _contradiction of life_, instead of being its transfiguration and its eternal _yea_! In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world," for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will to nothingness declared holy!

* * *

That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly and decrepit product of _decadence_. There lies a curse upon them, because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts--they have _created_ no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an _ultimatum_ and _maximum_ of the God-shaping force, of the _creator spiritus_ in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotono-theism! This hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in which all _decadence_ instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul have their sanction!

* * *

Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the commencement of the Bible--the story of God's mortal terror of _science_? It has not been understood. This priest-book _par excellence_ begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great danger.--

The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection, promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man--man is entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he forthwith created other animals besides. The _first_ mistake of God: man did not find the animals entertaining--he ruled over them, but did not even want to be an "animal"--God consequently created woman. And, in fact, there was now an end of tedium--but of other things also! Woman was the _second_ mistake of God.--"Woman is in her essence a serpent, Hera"--every priest knows that: "from woman comes _all_ the mischief in the world"--every priest knows that likewise. _Consequently_, _science_ also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the tree of knowledge.--What had happened? The old God was seized by a mortal terror. Man himself had become his _greatest_ mistake, he had created a rival, science makes _godlike_; it is at an end with priests and Gods, if man becomes scientific!--_Moral_: science is the thing forbidden in itself--it alone is forbidden. Science is the _first_ sin, the germ of all sin, _original_ sin. _This alone is morality._--"Thou shalt _not_ know:"--the rest follows therefrom.--By his mortal terror God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one _defend_ one's self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer: away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to thoughts,--all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _shall_ not think--and the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all _sickness_,--nothing but expedients in the struggle against science! Distress does not _permit_ man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful! the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the Gods,--what to do!--The old God contrives _war_, he separates the peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another (the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things, a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, the _emancipation from the priest_, augments even in spite of wars.--And a final resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become scientific,--_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_" ...

* * *

--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the _entire_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows only one great danger: that is science,--the sound concept of cause and effect. But science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,--one must have _superfluous_ time, one must have _superfluous_ intellect in order to "perceive" ... _Consequently_ man must be made unfortunate,--this has at all times been the logic of the priest.--One makes out _what_ has only thereby come into the world in accordance with this logic:--"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole "moral order of the world," have been devised _in opposition_ to science,--_in opposition_ to a severance of man from the priest.... Man is _not_ to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is _not_ to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is not to look at all, he is to _suffer_.... And he is so to suffer as to need the priest always. _A Saviour is needed._--The concepts of guilt and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation," and of "forgiveness"--_lies_ through and through, and without any psychological reality--have been contrived to destroy the _causal sense_ in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!--And _not_ an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most ignoble instincts! A _priest's_ attack! A _parasite's_ attack! A vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be brought about by the conceptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by "spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward, punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of perception has been destroyed--_the greatest crime against mankind has been committed._ Sin, repeated once more, this form of human self-violation _par excellence_, has been invented for the purpose of making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility of man; the priest _rules_ by the invention of sin.--

* * *

I _condemn_ Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To _do away with_ any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest expediency, it lived by states of distress, it _created_ states of distress in order to perpetuate _itself_ eternally.... The worm of sin for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this state of distress!-- ...."Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To breed out of _humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation, a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of Christianity!--Parasitism as the _sole_ praxis of the Church; drinking out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anaemic ideal of holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality; the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that has ever existed,--against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness, courage, intellect, _benevolence_ of soul, _against life itself_....

This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls, wherever there are walls,--I have letters for making even the blind see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, _mean_,--I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind!

BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.

By PETER KROPOTKIN.

IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical speculations. Linnaeus became a botanist while helping his father--a practical gardener--in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches--it rather favored them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to become later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.

We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science, they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say, "must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them, and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take care of the progress of science and industry."

It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class of men who belong to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the irregulars--the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few, in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry--and of science as well, as I am about to prove--that all over the world we hear complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.

What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he invented very much. Manual workers--not men of science nor trained engineers--have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?