You ask me: “Is the Anarchist Ideal achievable?…”

I would respond first of all: “The characteristic of an ideal is that it is not achieved. Its purpose is to arouse our energies towards an aim, which always withdraws before human efforts. If it had achieved its goal, life would no longer have any prize. It would no longer even be. Life is in the impetus, in the struggle and effort. The goal achieved is death.”

But let us return to “anarchy”! we must agree on a solid definition of the ideal that this word represents. I take it in the sense of a free and full development of individuality. “Is this development possible;” you ask, “can man live without authority?” I specify: “without outside authority.” For it is quite obvious that to every decrease of authority from without must correspond a proportional and progressive increase of authority from within, of internal mastery. Man only exists, in fact, in a social milieu. Between the milieu and man, there is a constant interchange of actions and reactions. In order for them to harmonize, an order is required, either from within or from without. Order from within the finest, but it is infinitely more difficult to win. It supposes extremely evolved traits. And it is not even enough that a small number of men attain that superior state, since they are, for better or worse, enclosed in the human bloc. It is necessary that this bloc also arrive at a high degree of evolution. If not, the free personalities will be crushed.

So I believe that it is illusory to believe that a few individuals could achieve the anarchist ideal for themselves, without having formed the social milieu capable of letting them live and be fulfilled in their fullness. Unless he confines himself to a platonic independence of mute thought, content with his inoffensive liberty, mouth closed and arms shackled, the man who want liberty for himself must not only win it for others, but labor at the social progress that teaches the others to tolerate it: car for it is what they know the least.

Permit me now to explain to you in a few words my own point of view:

I am not anarchist. I am not socialist, nor of any particular social group. I am the grandson of my grandfather Colas des Gaules, whose experience was expressed, under the veil of ironic bonhomie, with the old French proverb: “It takes all kinds to make a world!” — On the condition, naturally, that from this all one succeeds in making a harmony. Life, the world, society, the mind, appears to me as a perpetually unstable state, a polyphony in movement, the fixing or stoppage of which would be death. It follows that the living equilibrium demands the counterbalancing of opposed forces. The present evolution of the nations towards socialism requires and kindles the vigorous vital reaction of anarchist individualism. The victory of either of the forces that clash would smash the whole edifice. Their coexistence and struggle is necessary. It is thus with all the other principles that give combat in our mind and in society, — which is always the reflection of that former: — they cooperate, without us knowing it, in holding up the vault. Each pressure necessitates an equal counter-pressure. That is why my personal ideal of peace and harmony could be expressed paradoxically by the image of two rams that clash over the abyss. — But what else is a cathedral?..

“Cathedral that rests — on the just equilibrium of enemy forces; — dazzling rose-window, — where the blood of the sun — gushes in many-colored sheaves, — that the harmonious eye of the artist has linked… » (Ara Pacis)

So, I say to you: “Gather your strength, friends, enemies! And let none of you weaken! From your energies, joined in the body-to-body, is born the supreme harmony.”

Romain Rolland