James Ferdinand Morton

“ Force government, with its manifod opportunities for robbery and oppression, its creation of class and caste divisions between man and man, its false ethics as exemplified in war and, capital punishment, its vile diplomatic intrigues, its hideous political corruption, and its unlimited supply of motives for friction, irritation, and hatred, is the worst possible stumbling-block in the pathway of the slowly evolving social consciousness. ”

“ The abolitionists of the United States, hardly a generation ago, were reviled and persecuted, even unto death; and many thousands, even of sympathizers with their ideal, were swift and persistent in declaring that slavery always had existed, and was therefore too deeply rooted to be overthrown—at least for many hundreds of years. Such prophecies are always easily and glibly pronounced. The inertia of the mass has always to be reckoned with j but it is not an insurmountable barrier to the accomplishment of great social changes. What can be conceived by man, can be effected by him. ”

“ After all, however, is this magnificent conception anything more than "the baseless fabric of a dream?" Are we merely wasting our energies in striving for the unattainable? Mere sentiment is an insecure foundation for a social structure. ”

“ Close investigation will demonstrate that Anarchists, so far from being dreamers, are the most practical of human beings. They know exactly what they want, and move directly toward it. The mass of mankind in every age can conceive of no conditions other than those to which they have become accustomed. ”

“ Flexibility, above all, is an imperative necessity in the more advanced stages of social association. With the disappearance of authority, and the setting free of natural resources, all monopoly must vanish, and with it the power of a few to hold the many in economic subjection. ”

“ Rather will free men and women, once fairly rid of the unavoidable suspicions. which inevitably mark their attitude toward one another in this age of industrial warfare, find their common interest in far more intimate social and economic association than would be possible today. This would be the unavoidable consequence, not of a radical organic change in human nature, but of the needs of human nature as it exists today, under conditions of unrestricted freedom of development. ”

“ It requires but the slightest knowledge of biology to recognize the elementary fact that social instincts are stronger in the long run than the anti-social instincts, and must survive in the, struggle for existence. ”

“ A free people, meeting on equal terms, is capable of making whatever economic arrangments best subserve the interests of the individuals concerned, and of readjusting these arrangements as often as may be required, with the least possible friction. ”

“ Yet the goal of Anarchy appears to them so lofty and distant, that, out of sheer despair of attaining it without centuries of struggle, they fall back on what they consider measures of immediate practicability. ”

“ It has become quite the fashion for the more progressive Socialists, Single Taxers, and reformers of other schools, no less than for many scholars, artists, philosophers, and men of letters, to announce themselves "ultimate Anarchists." ”

“ If life, it becomes increasingly evident that the method of living, by which alone the common aim of happiness can be attained, is through the fullest development of all the faculties. Man is a complex being, with multifarious wants and desires. ”

“ Men and women will put far more heart into their work, and will exercise their inventive faculties in an immeasurably superior manner, when no portion of the result of their labor is intercepted by employer, landlord, or tax gatherer. ”

“ For the foregoing reasons, it is clear that the logical evolutionist must, sooner or later, accept the premises of the Anarchist philosophy. Radical and idealistic as its teachings seem, they are founded on the undisputed conclusions of science. ”

“ When we talk of brotherhood, we do not appeal to a mawkish sentimeuta1ity~ We merely state a fact in, nature, on the recognition of which social ~arinotiy and the happiness of the individual alike depend. ”

“ Hence they wear out their lives in ceaseless political contests, chasing one ignis fatuus after another, only to be repeatedly led astray into the swamp. For lack of a unifying principle, each petty success proves utterly futile, as a means of securing permanent results. ”