Waldo R. Browne

“ Political freedom is of value only as it leads to moral freedom, and there can be no public justice that does not find its ultimate sanction in private conscience. The State, if it is to endure at all, must devote itself henceforth to the organization of altruism rather than egotism; it must slough off completely its old predatory and repressive character, and embrace the ideals of brotherhood and association. Above all, it must respect and preserve inviolate at whatever cost the principle of individual freedom. ”

“ The great underlying principle of English law, according to Dickens, is to make business for itself. The great underlying principle of the State, it might be said with equal truth, is to make power for itself. ”

“ The old illusory France has collapsed; and as soon as the new, real Prussia does the same, we shall be with one bound in a new age. How ideas will then come tumbling about our ears! And it is high time they did. Up till now we have been living on nothing but the crumbs from the revolutionary table of last century, a food out of which all nutriment has long been chewed. ”

“ But for all its crimes against humanity, the time is not yet when we can abolish the State entirely, as Ibsen urged, and "make willingness and spiritual kinship the only essentials in the case of a union." Eventually, unless moral progress is an illusion, that ideal will be realized. Mankind, however, has yet to serve a long and rigorous novitiate before it can be worthy of such a consummation. Philosophic anarchism is a creed that postulates too much nobility, too much self-restraint and self-abnegation, in common human nature to be immediately practicable. ”

“ But my plan has been to include only complete, or fairly complete, essays; and unfortunately, Ibsen's appearances in what he calls "my capacity as state-satirist" are in the way of brief and scattered glimpses rather than in any sustained exposition. Yet no one else, save possibly Thoreau, pierces so directly to the heart of the matter,—as witness this final quotation:
"The State is the curse of the individual. With what is the strength of Prussia as a State bought? With the merging of the individual in the political and geographical concept. The waiter makes the best soldier. ”

“ In considering the problem of the State the great thing, as Ibsen has pointed out, is not to allow one's self to be frightened by the venerableness of the institution. For those inclined to be thus frightened, as well as for a good many others, I have thought that a useful purpose might be served by bringing together a group of essays, written by some of the foremost thinkers of our time, which at least make plain that in neither its history nor its workings is the State a sacrosanct affair ”

“ But it should never be forgotten that the problem of the State is essentially a spiritual one. Political forms and institutions, legal systems, legislative enactments, all the charters and codes and statutes in Christendom, are valid and stable only as they tend to assure freedom and justice to individuals. ”

“ Because it had no State to burden it. Had the Jewish nation remained in Palestine, it would long since have been ruined in the process of construction, like all the other nations.... The State has its roots in Time: it will have its culmination in Time. Greater things than it will fall; all religion will fall. Neither the conceptions of morality nor those of art are eternal. ”

“ Their ideal is pre-war Prussia, though they will not often admit it. But of Prussia as a working model of State-theory we might say, as Talleyrand said of the English public school system, "It is the best we have ever seen; and it is abominable." The earnest seeker for light will turn with far more of hope and interest to storm-swept Russia. Out of the Soviet experiment, and out of the ideas of the Guild Socialists in England, is evolving what may well prove to be the State-norm of the immediate future—or something very like it. ”

“ So preoccupied with this task has it been that it long ago forgot, if indeed it ever knew, that such a thing as the human soul exists. But now at last, aroused to rebellion by almost intolerable afflictions, the human soul begins to assert its supremacy. ”

“ Prince Kropotkin's avowed position as an apostle of philosophic anarchism will of course repel those numerous persons who, like crows, invariably take flight with much raucous cawing from the verbal bugaboos which they are too timid or too stupid to investigate. ”

“ Despite his faith in a society based upon "willingness and spiritual kinship" rather than upon coercion, Kropotkin holds a secure place among those of our time whose work has left a permanent impress upon human thought. ”