Consistency.

Let no man hurl anathemas at me because I am inconsistent. As blind revolt is the ultimate right of a nation, so blind inconsistency is the ultimate right of the individual. I admit, intellectually, that two pieces of mince pie are too much. Nevertheless I eat two,—nay, if I can get them, I eat three pieces and suffer the consequences. Shall any man charge that my intellectual admission was insincere, merely because my conviction was not strong enough to counteract my gluttony? Or, if I admit the correctness of Anarchy theoretically, am I a dog because the old Archical Adam clings to me in my practice! Advocating violence, am I utterly condemnable if I commit none; or, advocating non-resistance, shall there be no forgiveness for me if I forget my principles and break somebody’s head?

Away with consistency! It is a delusion. What I really think and what I really do is of import, even though my thoughts be contradictory among themselves and be negatived again by my acts. But what I think I ought to think and what I do because I think I ought to is of no importance, no value, no consideration.

Wonderful will be the results when physiology shall have succeeded in deciphering the play of the atoms of the brain; when the first dawn of a new idea shall be discerned in the displacement of its corresponding nerve tissue; when its advance and coordination with other tissue-registered ideas shall be noted; when in time it predominates so far as to influence action; when it becomes a moving force, a religion, permeating every fibre, influencing every breath.

Until then the virtues of inconsistency will be unappreciated.

Finally, as I recognize that almost all the evil of the past and present is done by men in deference to some outside principle, against their nature, for the sake of an alleged consistency, I deem it for myself the highest duty to be inconsistent: I should be inconsistent with my principles were I not inconsistent with them.

John Beverley Robinson.

[As I know no way of answering Mr. Robinson except by showing the inconsistency of his argument either with itself or with some truth which I suppose him to admit in common with the rest of mankind, and as success in showing such inconsistency would, by Mr. Robinson’s own statement, only make him more enamored of his position, I shall not make the attempt. He will not complain of this neglect, inasmuch as, in saying that he deems it his duty to be inconsistent and that what he does because he thinks he ought to is of no importance, he admits that his attitude is not worth consideration. For myself, however, I wish to add that I always judge deliberate inconsistency by the end in view and the adequacy of such a method of attaining it. From this standpoint inconsistency between belief and conduct may sometimes be defensible. Inconsistency between beliefs held by one person at the same time can never be deliberate. Such inconsistency always springs from ignorance or inadvertence, and it can be only a kindness to point it out.—Editor Liberty.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “Consistency,” Liberty 4 no. 25 (July 13, 1887): 8.

A Villain Unmasks.

B. R. Tucker:

It is with fear and trembling that I have resolved to confess myself an Egoist.

I trust that my moralist friends will not forthwith cut my acquaintance, but I am afraid that they will. How have they deceived themselves in their opinion of me! They have even thought, in their ignorance, that I was a moral man, like themselves. They knew not that I was a deep-dyed scoundrel, that they were warming a viper in the light of their esteem.

Yet—I blush to confess it—I am an Egoist, and capable of all the villainies which that implies. Nothing deters me from rushing into the streets, revolver in hand, and picking off a dozen or so of the population, save the fact that I should take no pleasure in doing so.

Were it not that it would afford me no satisfaction, I should forthwith provide myself with torch and petroleum, and nightly devote myself to the work of incendiarism.

Ah, what joy! To spend the day, and every day, and all day long, in gambling-hells and cockpits, at dog-fights and “mills,” and through the brief nights to drink to utter drunkenness what time occupied not the houris such as Mahoniet never dreamed of.

Is not that joy, my moralist friend?

For you, I am sure, long for such delights; yet you have my deep sympathy, for you are deterred from seeking them by a dark and terrible vow, a secret—I know not what; but for myself,—I am free! Nothing binds me; I fear nothing. Yet, strange as it will seem to you, somehow I seem not to care for all these delightsome things. It may be melancholia, or hypochondria, or perhaps it is the liver, but for things which delight you I have no taste. Queer, isn’t it?

And, on the other hand, for the things which you dislike I have a leaning as unaccountable as is my distaste for what you would enjoy if you only could. It gives me no pain to tell the truth; on the contrary (can you imagine it?), I really prefer to. I always tell the truth from preference; except upon the rare occasions when, to avoid giving pain,—another of the things for which I have an unaccountable dislike,—I shade it a little. Sometimes, too, in a business way I am compelled to deny myself the pleasure of strict truth-telling.

Another of my strange fancies is to stand by agreements that I make. It is hard, I grant, for any one to understand how this can give pleasure; I cannot pretend to explain it myself; yet so it is. To a moralist it is doubtless totally inexplicable; yet not so inexplicable as it is to me why anybody who wants to break his agreements should refrain from doing so: in fact, I don’t believe that anybody does. I am more inclined to think that they have their reasons for wishing to do as they do. I don’t believe a man can do voluntarily what he does not want to do.

But the strangest thing of all is that, with our totally varying tastes, as it would seem, my moral friends and I lead very much the same kind of lives. I grieve that it should distress them so much to live as I live with a good deal of ease and pleasure, but I honor them for their efforts to imitate what I do solely as a matter of self-indulgence. Perhaps some day they will learn to like it too.

John Beverley Robinson.

New York, September 27, 1887.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “A Villain Unmasks,” Liberty 5 no. 5 (October 8, 1887): 6.

A Plea for Non-Resistance.

To the Editor of Liberty:

I must take exception to the teaching that the infliction of injury upon aggressors is compatible with the principle of equal liberty to all.

First, with an argument which is no argument, yet which has its force to those who have observed the growth of new ideas in their own minds; how there comes first a revulsion against what is, then strong sentiment in favor of the opposite, and last only, and often not then until long after, perhaps never, comes the possibility of rational justification of the sentiment.

Now, it is a matter of observation that liberty interpreted to include non-resistance meets with quick welcome in many minds that are looking for better things, while liberty interpreted to mean our own liberty to compel others is to the same minds an unintelligible formula.

And the reason of it would seem to be this,—that while the right to defence, and, if you will, to offence too, is equal to the power and the desire to defend or to offend, it has no more to do with the actions proper to man in a social state than the right of cannibalism, which undoubtedly also exists, when, having no other food, a man must feed on his companion or die himself. Saving that in this case, with the exercise of this right to eat him, a social condition with him no longer exists; it is a revulsion to a state of warfare.

Who is to judge of where the right to equal liberty is infringed? If each one is judge, why may not the pick-pocket say, “You have right to imprison me for picking your pocket, I claim that as my natural liberty and I willingly grant you the liberty of picking mine in return,—if you can. The right to pick pockets is co-extensive with the power to pick pockets, and you are committing an aggression in imprisoning me, rather than I in picking your pocket.”

There is a difference between resistance and retaliation, and between resistance and anticipatory violence. Resistance may consist in barring a door, or raising a wall against an armed attack, or on behalf of others we may resist by interposing our own person to receive the attack.

But when the attack is done and past, when the violence is over, when the murder perhaps is committed, by what right of resistance do we assume to retaliate in cold blood?

Do we assume that a man who has killed once will kill again? Such an assumption is wholly unjustifiable.

Or, if it be admitted that such an one is more likely to kill a second time, do we kill him on a possibility that lies wholly in the future?

Shall we say that he places himself outside of society, declares war upon it, and society in return makes warfare upon him and exterminate: him? Who then is to judge of all the rest of us whether we are sufficiently socialized to be permitted to exist? If each is to retaliate where he conceives himself attacked, we remain in our present state of warfare.

Furthermore, if I see one coming in a threatening attitude, with drawn revolver, shall I shoot first and kill him if I can?

Doubtless I may, and take the chances of his killing me; but, in doing so, I cease to admit that he is an associate; I join battle with him; I accept the fortune of war.

Briefly, the argument may be expressed thus: In a social state no individual can be regarded as outside the pale of society for any cause. Society must embrace all.

He that takes pleasure in aggression is either undeveloped or a reversion to a former type, or his apparent aggression is really an attempt to resist what he conceives to be an injury to himself.

In any of these cases, counter-violence is wrong, — namely, it does not accomplish its purpose.

If the aggressor thinks he is injured, the reasonable course is to explain and apologize, even though no injury was meant.

If the aggression be prompted by the mere pleasure of aggression, the delight in violence of a past type, the reasonable course is to regard the aggressor as a diseased man, on a par with a lunatic, or delirium tremens patient. Confine him, but as medical treatment. Bind him, with no personal hatred of him in the ascendant. And, in confinement, so far from torturing him, treat him as are treated, or as ought to be treated, all sick and infirm, with the best food, with the best lodging, with kindness, with care, with love.

This, I say, is rational treatment.

It seems to me that the theory you advocate can produce nothing but what we see now.

The people at large, for that purpose, if for no other, a voluntary association, hanged the Chicago men. The people believed with undoubted sincerity that they were in danger from violence on the part of the victims. They investigated the justice of their belief by means which they thought adequate. They resisted by retaliatory violence.

How can you by your principles blame them?

It seems to me, too, that the simple proposition is that to compel by violence is to govern, and that Anarchists, who protest against government, should begin by saying: We will govern nobody. We will do no violence.

If you care to print this, I ask one thing: Make no verbal criticisms. I am not a Christian, nor a teleologist, nor a moralist, and any slips of language must not be construed to mean that I am. Another thing I ask, subject to your approval. Do not refute me in the same issue. Perhaps I am wrong. If so, I wish to change my opinion. You, I assume, are as ready to change yours.

But it will take a little time for either of us.

John Beverley Robinson.

If I could see that my silence for a fortnight could help either Mr. Robinson or myself to a change of opinion, I would certainly grant his last request. But it seems to me that, if either of us is open to conviction, such would be the very course to delay the change. I change my opinion when an argument is opposed to it which I perceive to be valid and controlling. If it does not seem to me valid at first, it rarely seems otherwise after mere waiting. But if I try to answer it, I either destroy it because of its weakness or cause its strength to be made more palpable by provoking its restatement in another and clearer form. I should think the same must hold in Mr. Robinson’s case, if he is writing his mature thought; if he is not, I should advise him to let it mature first and print it afterwards. There is, no doubt, something to be said in favor of allowing intervals between statements of opposing views, but solely from the reader’s standpoint, not from that of the disputants. Such a plan encourages thought and compels the reader to frame some sort of answer for himself pending the rejoinder of the other side. But in the conduct of a journal this consideration, important as it is, is not the only one to be thought of. There are others, and they all tell in favor of the method of immediate reply. First, there is the consideration of space, one-third of which can generally be saved by avoiding the necessity of restating the opponent’s position. Second, there is the consideration of interest, which wanes when a discussion is prolonged by frequent delays. Third, there is the consideration arising out of the fact that every issue of a paper is seen by hundreds of people who never see another. It is better that such should read both sides than but one.

Mr. Robinson’s other request—that I make no verbal criticism—is also hard to comply with. How am I to avoid a verbal criticism when he makes against Anarchists a charge of inconsistency (by the way, has he changed his mind about inconsistency?) which can only be sustained by a definition of government which Anarchists reject? He says that the essence of government is compulsion by violence. If it is, then of course Anarchists, always opposing government, must always oppose violence. But Anarchists do not so define government. To them the essence of government is invasion. From the standpoint of this definition, why should Anarchists, protesting against invasion and determined not to be invaded, not use violence against it, provided at any time violence shall seem the most effective method of putting a stop to it?

But it is not the most effective method, insists Mr. Robinson in another part of his article; “it does not accomplish its purpose.” Ah! here we are on quite another ground. The claim no longer is that it is necessarily un-Anarchistic to use violence, but that other influences than violence are more potent to overcome invasion. Exactly; that is the gospel which Liberty has always preached. I have never said anything to the contrary, and Mr. Robinson’s criticism, so far as it lies in this direction, seems to me mal à propos. His article is prompted by my answers to Mr. Blodgett in No. 115. Mr. Blodgett’s questions were not as to what Anarchists would find it best to do, but as to what their Anarchistic doctrine logically binds them to do and avoid doing. I confined my attention strictly to the matter in hand, omitting extraneous matters. Mr. Robinson is not justified in drawing inferences from my omissions, especially inferences that are antagonistic to my definite assertions at other times.

Perhaps he will answer me, however, that there are certain circumstances under which I think violence advisable. Granted; but, according to his article, so does he. These circumstances, however, he distinguishes from the social state as a state of warfare. But so do I. The question comes upon what you are to do when a man makes war upon you. Ward him off, says Mr. Robinson, but do not attack him in turn to prevent a repetition of his attack. As a general policy, I agree; as a rule without exceptions, I dissent. Suppose a man tries to knock me down. I will parry his blows for a while, meanwhile trying to dissuade him from his purpose. But suppose he does not desist, and I have to take a train to reach the bedside of my dying child. I straightway knock him down and take the train. And if afterwards he repeats his attack again and again, and thereby continually takes my time away from the business of my life, I put him out of my way, in the most decent manner possible, but summarily and forever. In other words, it is folly for people who desire to live in society to put up with the invasions of the incorrigible. Which does not alter the fact that with the corrigible it is not only good policy, but in accordance with the sentiments of highly-developed human beings, to be as gentle and kind as possible.

To describe such dealing with the incorrigible as the exercise of “our liberty to compel others” denotes an utter misconception. It is simply the exercise of our liberty to keep others from compelling us.

But who is to judge where invasion begins? asks Mr. Robinson. Each for himself, and those to combine who agree, I answer. It will be perpetual war, then? Not at all; a war of short duration, at the worst. I am well aware that there is a border-land between legitimate and invasive conduct over which there must be for a time more or less trouble. But it is an ever-decreasing margin. It has been narrowing ever since the idea of equal liberty first dawned upon the mind of man, and in proportion as this idea becomes clearer and the new social conditions which it involves become real will it contract towards the geometrical conception of a line. And then the world will be at peace. Meanwhile, if the pickpocket continues his objectionable business, it will not be because of any such reasoning as Mr. Robinson puts into his mouth. He may so reason, but as a matter of fact he never does. Or, if he does, he is an exceptional pickpocket. The normal pickpocket has no idea of equal liberty. Whenever the idea dawns upon him, he will begin to feel a desire for its realization and to acquire a knowledge of what equal liberty is. Then he will see that it is exclusive of pocket-picking. And so with the people who hanged the Chicago martyrs. I have never blamed them in the usual sense of the word blame. I charge them with committing gross outrage upon the principle of equal liberty, but not with knowing what they did. When they become Anarchists, they will realize what they did, and will do so no more. To this end my comrades and I are trying to enlighten them concerning the principle of equal liberty. But we shall fail if we obscure the principle by denying or concealing the lengths to which, in case of need, it allows us to go lest people of tender sensibilities may infer that we are in favor of always going to such lengths, regardless of circumstances.

T. [Benj. R. Tucker]

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “A Plea for Non-Resistance,” Liberty 5 no. 14 (February 11, 1888): 5.

Liberty and Aggression.

My dear Mr. Tucker:

Liberty has done me a great service in carrying me from the metaphysical speculations in which I was formerly interested into a vein of practical thought which is more than a mere overflow of humanitarianism; which is as closely logical and strictly scientific as any other practical investigation. In spite of certain small criticisms which it would be petty to dwell upon, it is the most advanced and most intellectual paper that I have seen. I esteem it most highly.

The particular matter upon which we have exchanged letters—the question of non-resistance—is still in my mind, but it is hard for me to find time to write anything for publication. Perhaps it is even premature.

Of course I see very clearly that economically Anarchism is complete without including any question as to force or no-force at all: but the importance of preaching one or the other as a means of obtaining or perpetuating Anarchy has not diminished in my mind.

People invariably feel, if they do not ask: “How are you going to accomplish it?” And I think the question is valid.

In every definition of liberty, or of aggression, there is a reference to a certain limit beyond which liberty becomes aggression. How this limit is certainly determinable I have never seen any one attempt to show. As a matter of fact, the history of liberty has been a record of the continual widening of this limit. Once there was a time when religious heterodoxy was regarded as an aggression, not vainly I think you will admit when you remember how much our actions are influenced by our predisposing theories. When it was commonly thought, even by transgressors themselves, that nothing but the acceptance of certain dogmas prevented all men from becoming transgressors, it was not unreasonable to “resist the beginnings.” So now when multitudes of good people regard the maintenance of the State as essential to the preservation of security, it is no wonder that they should easily be inflamed against those who openly antagonize the State. Formerly to think heterodoxy was regarded as an aggression. Afterwards thought was freed, but speech was limited. To speak of the forbidden thing was then an aggression, and still is to some extent.

What is the line? Where is the limit? Thought and speech can both be absolutely free. Thinking or talking cannot really hurt anybody.

But when we come to actions, where are we to stop?

That this line which separates liberty from aggression should be drawn, seems to me essential to the working of the Anarchistic principle in actual practice. As an illustration, you and Egoist in the last issue of Liberty consider each the other an aggressor in a certain case.

Is not government really a bungling attempt, but perhaps the best we could do up to this time, to settle the question, roughly and arbitrarily, between parties who each regarded themselves as within their right and the other as the aggressor.

So it would appear to me. Even the land laws and other laws which seem primary are, I think, only secondary. I am not profoundly versed in the history of law, but I am inclined to think that statutes and the generalizations of common law have sprung from the collocation of many individual decisions, each decision being the best that could he arrived at under the circumstances of the time.

If this is at all a fair description of what is,—that is, if law is a rough attempt to draw the line between liberty and aggression, and not a conscious deliberate fraud committed by the privileged upon the oppressed (and I think the notion of the State being “a conspiracy” is as empty as the parallel notion of some of our secularist friends that the Church is a conspiracy of priests),—if the State is the result of attempts to determine the limit of liberty, no theory that dispenses with the State is complete unless it otherwise defines that limit.

The essence of aggression, the reason that it is forbidden, is that it causes pain. Pain, even when caused by, or a concomitant of, properly limited liberty, is in itself a wrong,—an antagonist of personal or social progress. If aggression were uniformly pleasant, it would be regarded as commendable.

So that if in the exercise of my liberty I give pain to anybody, in so far as I give pain I am committing an aggression. If I bathe naked before one who is shocked by such exhibition, doubtless his prudery is unjustifiable: that, however, does not alter the fact that I have deliberately injured him,—I have committed an aggression.

In trying to logically define this limit, I have cast about in various directions. At one time it seemed that individual liberty included a right to all non-action. That is, that people have a right to say to any one: “You are injuring us by your proceedings; you must stop”; but that they have no right to say: “It is essential to our happiness that you should do this or that.”

I am not sure that this is not a correct idea, but the statement lacks precision, and I have not so far been able to attenuate it.

The best thought that I have yet had is that what is called “non-resistance” is the true guide. A better word would be “non-retaliation,” yet even that is not quite right.

At the bottom there is a feeling that no one attacks another nowadays for fun. If a man attacks me, I immediately conclude that I have injured him, or that he thinks that I have injured him. If I could “paralyze him by a glance” or otherwise “resist” him without injuring him, I should hardly call it resistance. Usually, however, there are but two courses open. One a timely apology: the other a counter attack. If I adopt the latter and disable him or kill him, the question of who first aggressed is undetermined. I have assumed an aristocratic attitude of impeccability; sociality does not exist.

As for those who take pleasure in aggression, it is an evanescent type. They are hospital subjects, reversions to an ancestral type, certainly not responsible individuals.

Briefly, the question of what constitutes aggression can be settled only by compact between individuals. In order to arrive at an understanding and form the compact, the opinion of the one that thinks he is encroached upon must be final if it cannot be removed by argument,—that is, by changing his convictions.

If any action is persisted in which any one conceives to be an aggression upon him, it virtually is an aggression; and the friend of liberty is compelled to recognize it as such and to recede, rather than to inflict injury in continuing his course.

I trust that you will seize my idea. I do not regard this as final, but I think some clearly logical demarcation essential.

Sincerely yours,

John Beverley Robinson.

67 Liberty Street, New York, January 26, 1880.

While I should like to see the line between liberty and aggression drawn with scientific exactness, I cannot admit that such rigor of definition is essential to the realization of Anarchism. If, in spite of the lack of such a definition, the history of liberty has been, as Mr. Robinson truly says, “a record of the continual widening of this limit,” there is no reason why this widening process should not go on until Anarchy becomes a fact. It is perfectly thinkable that, after the last inch of debatable ground shall have been adjudged to one side or the other, it may still be found impossible to scientifically formulate the rule by which this decision and its predecessors were arrived at.

The chief influence in narrowing the strip of debatable land is not so much the increasing exactness of the knowledge of what constitutes aggression as the growing conception that aggression is an evil to be avoided and that liberty is the condition of progress. The moment one abandons the idea that he was born to discover what is right and enforce it upon the rest of the world, he begins to feel an increasing disposition to let others alone and to refrain even from retaliation or resistance except in those emergencies which immediately and imperatively require it. This remains true even if aggression be defined in the extremely broad sense of the infliction of pain; for the individual who traces the connection between liberty and the general welfare will be pained by few things so much as by the consciousness that his neighbors are curtailing their liberties out of consideration for his feelings, and such a man will never say to his neighbors, “Thus far and no farther,” until they commit acts of direct and indubitable interference and trespass. The man who feels more pained at seeing his neighbor bathe naked than he would at the knowledge that he refrained from doing so in spite of his preference is invariably the man who believes in aggression and government as the basis of society and has not learned the lesson that “liberty is the mother of order.”

This lesson, then, rather than an exact definition of aggression, is the essential condition of the development of Anarchism. Liberty has steadily taught this lesson, but has never professed an ability to define aggression, except in a very general way. We must trust to experience and the conclusions therefrom for the settlement of all doubtful cases.

As for States and Churches, I think there is more foundation than Mr. Robinson sees for the claim that they are conspiracies. Not that I fail to realize as fully as he that there are many good men in both whose intent is not at all to oppress or aggress. Doubtless there are many good and earnest priests whose sole aim is to teach religious truth as they see it and elevate human life, but has not Dr. McGlynn conclusively shown that the real power of control in the Church is always vested in an unscrupulous machine? That the State originated in aggression Herbert Spencer has proved. If it now pretends to exist for purposes of defence, it is because the advance of sociology has made such a pretence necessary to its preservation. Mistaking this pretence for reality, many good men enlist in the work of the State. But the fact remains that the State exists mainly to do the will of capital and secure it all the privileges it demands, and I cannot see that the combinations of capitalists who employ lobbyists to buy legislators deserve any milder title than “conspirators,” or that the term “conspiracy” inaccurately expresses the nature of their machine, the State.

T.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “Liberty and Aggression,” Liberty 6 no. 12 (February 2, 1889): 4.

The Abolition of Marriage.

[A lecture read before the Manhattan Liberal Club.]

Not to keep you, for a moment even, in suspense, I will tell you plainly at the outset that I am about to advocate the abolition of marriage.

Bear with me a moment now while I explain myself. No doubt there are some here whose immediate impulse is to go away rather than to give even a hearing to such atrocious sentiments. I beg that all such will accept my assurances that I am as well disposed toward mankind as they are; that, if the state of affairs which I shall indicate is at all filled with the turmoil and wretchedness with which they suppose it to be filled, they have only to show that it is so and I will gladly relinquish my opinions and adopt theirs.

The topic I know is a delicate one. It is one upon which even radicals are apt to be conservative. About it there still hangs the “touch-me-not” atmosphere that originates in its theological associations. To tell the truth, the respect for marriage has its root in the remaining shreds of theology that still hang about us. It is a respect for a formula, a reverence for a ceremony.

It is based upon the idea that right and wrong are to be tested by some different criterion than the mere power to minister to human happiness. It is one of the superstitions of the ago. Like all superstitions it consists in a renunciation of our happiness from fear of a fanciful danger.

I desire to do what I may to aid in freeing ourselves from all superstitions, that the golden age may come, as many see it coming,— the golden age when we shall fear no terrors of the night; when the happiness of man shall be the only worthy object of man’s desire; deferring only to the mighty Must-Be of nature, under which limitation the search for happiness becomes the search for the everlasting Right.

Among the emancipated from the bonds of intolerance—and to these only I am now talking: the mere fact of your presence means that you will tolerate other views than your own—among these the attitude of apprehension in approaching this subject is due to two causes:

First, the general proposition, in which most of us acquiesce, that, as times change, the various institutions which, taken together, constitute the times, must themselves change —this theoretically admitted statement is not so practically realized as to give a feeling of approval in advance to every proposed change, simply because it is a change.

A priori, existence is a series of changes. Fixity means death. The old view of the stability of things is discredited. Therefore, when a change is spoken of, the only question for scientific minds is whether the particular change anticipated is in the direction of development, or whether it is retrogressive. If no definite direction of change is prophesied, to the general statement, in a particular case, that some change or other must take place, the scientific mind must give its support.

All that I say is that some change in the marriage institution is impending. What the future in the progress of humanity toward perfection shall bring in place of it, not I, not anybody, can tell. “The joys that are there mortal eye hath not seen.”

The second cause of misapprehension is the very common misunderstanding of the word “marriage.”

What is marriage?

Is it the happy association of a man and a woman, suited to each other in body and in mind, in tastes and in sentiments, by harmony or by contrast, rejoicing each in the mere presence of the other, moved each by the more sound of the voice of the other; with children, to whom they rather acknowledge themselves under obligations, for the softening and expanding influence of childhood (in babyhood, charming toys, the bringers of hope in childhood, in maturity companions) than assert harsh authority upon the ground of obligations conferred upon them,—is this marriage?

By no means. This is not marriage. This is love. marriage is necessary for such sweet involvements.

Marriage is not the happy and voluntary living together of men and women.

Marriage is a club. Now I have got you; if you try to get away, I will club you. That is what marriage is. And any one can see its endearing influence.

Marriage is the privilege conferred by law, which is in the end I force, by which one person holds the person or the property of another against their will.

Theoretically each partner by marriage is endowed with claims upon both the person and property of the other. In practice usually it is the person of the wife that the man is after, and the property of the husband that the woman is after. When they get married, the woman exchanges her right to dispose of her body as she pleases for the substantial benefit of cash, either as support or otherwise. (By otherwise I mean, for instance, alimony.)

Now let me impress upon you in the strongest possible way (I say this because I am convinced that in spite of my best efforts many will leave this hall denouncing me, under the impression that I am urging all married people at once to separate and desert their children, though I urge nothing of the sort) let me impress upon you that, when I denounce marriage, I have no objection to anybody living happily together. I only say that the possession of a club in the family is not conducive to happiness.

If my wife wants to leave me, the only possible right that I have to retain her is the right of love. I absolutely deny that I have any right to shoot her or to shoot the man that she prefers to me, or to imprison her or in any way coerce her.

More than that: I really should not care to coerce her. The companionship of one we love is worthless when it is forced. Who would think of inviting a friend to go a-fishing, and threaten him with imprisonment if he should change his mind? Would the fishing excursion be much fun if one went under compulsion?

The result of the abolition of compulsion in marriage would soon be that only happy unions could exist. If a man were cruel (and many men are cruel without throwing dishes at their wives), the woman could simply leave him without asking permission of anybody.

It is not possible, if people ever loved each other, that they would leave each other lightly. The flavor of friendship grows with age like wine. And if marriage now is not based on friendship, under liberty it could not be based upon anything else. Now a girl usually catches a man by his passion, and there could be no more uncertain and fleeting foundation for a permanent union. When a marriage is happy now-a-days it is because friendship has grown after marriage.

But if a woman had no power to compel her husband to support her, she would be very sure first that his love for her was a deep affection. The rapidly growing equality of the sexes will make intimate friendship more and more possible. In the future the marriage of hearts will come first rather than afterwards, or not at all, as now.

Already these results are partly seen. Few women will marry a man now, unless their chances have been very rare, who is notably unlikely to be a good husband. Few men care to go on with the affair, if they happen to discover that the affection of their sweetheart is chiefly affection for being taken out of their mother’s jurisdiction. And after they are married, if differences occur, the finest natures revolt from a recourse to divorce proceedings.

Already in so far as the natural law of human association controls marriages are well regulated. The natural law is that responsibility for one’s actions is the proper check and balance to freedom in action. Take away the false artificial substitute, and perfect freedom will accompany entire responsibility.

Now we virtually say to the man: “It is entirely unnecessary to treat your wife well; as long as you pay for her support you can be as much of a devil as you please.”

And to the woman we say: “You need not exercise any care in choosing a husband, and, after you have caught him, you need not take the trouble to be pleasant. Once catch him, we will see that you keep him.”

Two objections are on the lips of every one who hears such propositions for the first time.

What would become of the children?

What would become of the family?

As to the children, in the first place, “unwelcome children” would not exist. That burden under which so many women now groan, of child-bearing at the behest of their master, under the penalty of loss of support, would be removed.

The risk, the pain, the care of children would be assumed by the woman voluntarily. No man could coerce her. The very fact that she could not demand anything from the man by force, that she would have to depend upon his honorable engagement to aid her in supporting herself and the child, that any moment by chance she might be thrown upon her own resources for her living and for her child’s living, would be the most powerful motive to restrain the bearing of children beyond the dictates of the desire for children and the power to support them. And, as all of you know who have children, where there is no difficulty about their support, the instinctive love of children comes uppermost, so that it would not be a question of who could produce children most thoughtlessly and hate the burden afterwards, as it now is; it would be prudent reproduction, loving desire, and devotion afterwards, such as is granted to what is longed for before it is obtained.

As for the family, is it anything to be cared for and cherished? Does indeed anything like what is called a family now exist?

The proper conception of a family is of the omnipotent and semi-divine man as a head, with a subordinate set of slaves called wife and children. Once indeed the man was by law the proprietor of both wife and children, and very naturally the other slaves that he owned were also a part of his “familia.”

Later, in feudal times, his proprietorship was more limited, but still asserted as Petruchio asserts it: “You are my house, my horse, my ox, my ass, my anything.”

In marriage, as in all things, governments organized and carried on necessarily by the strongest, ostensibly in protection of the weakest, have actually been used to secure the strongest in privileges which without their association in government they could not have obtained, and to subordinate the weaker, as, if they could have maintained their liberty, they would not have been subordinated.

Marriage was not instituted to maintain the rights of the wife and children, it was instituted and is still upheld to maintain the privileges of the man.

Now can it be said that the type of family based on masculine ownership still exists? Certainly, if still some semblance of it survives, it is but a semblance. Only where the equality of man and woman is practically admitted, do we find anything of the idyllic life which we regard now as the ideal family. Children afraid to speak without permission; wife suppliant with eyes downcast; man a stern terror; such is not now our ideal of family life.

Not long ago it was the ideal.

And with all our improvement of ideals is it not true that the broadening and refining influences are formed mostly not in, but outside of what family we have left? Is it not by the clash of outside minds that the intellect advances, by the stimulus of outside scenes that the heart rejoices, by the association with the outside world as an equal among equals that the broad conception of the solidarity of humanity gains power, such as it could not have gained in the narrow groove of domesticity? Away with the family. It is a delusion. All that we attribute to it of good is not inherent. It is an old rag of medievalism and supernaturalism for which we have no use. In the future quite possibly the family will be regarded as having been the hot-bed of ignorance, intolerance, pride, domination, cruelty, and of all that is hostile to sociality. Something like that Stephen Pearl Andrews somewhere remarks.

In speaking of the objections to the abolition of marriage I have incidentally implied certain advantages.

It is commonly felt that all who urge the abolition of marriage particularly wish to be free themselves to lead a reckless life sexually. In my opinion it is chiefly those who are happily married who have reason to desire the abolition of marriage. I say this because anybody who wants to lead a loose life can easily do so. They must be a little careful, cultivate their powers of deceit and hypocrisy, and loudly condemn anybody who suggests that marriage is not all it is supposed to be.

While for those who love, the fact of possessing any power of coercion continually comes up as a little drop of bitterness. She only married me to get taken care of. He only married me from passion. Such feelings at moments arise. Without marriage they could not arise. Each would know that, however love might seem to be lacking, it could but exist; doubt would be impossible; for, with the departure of love (and by love I do not mean merely sexual desire) association would not be maintained.

Love is desire for the happiness of another. Love asks nothing for itself but the sight of the happiness of the beloved one. If more is granted, if love is returned, it is the nest heaven we have to hope for.

But true love ceases not even when unrequited. They who love stick to those that they love until their love is repelled, until they are wanted to go.

So that where true love exists on either side and is only permitted by the other separation could not occur.

To use the word love to denote passion only is to limit it to a desire which is selfish chiefly. Yet even passion normally leads to a profound regard and tenderness toward its object, which has led some to regard it as the proper beginning of a deeper affection.

If I were to speak merely of the abolition of marriage as a desirable thing only, it need have little weight with anybody. What I really feel, and what I really urge, and what must have weight with everybody, is that the abolition of marriage (not the happy living together, but the ceremony, the legalization) is really inevitable. I speak of the desirability only to calm the feelings of those who quite naturally are pained by too great novelty of conceptions.

It is the necessity of things only that has real weight. It is the necessity of some new sexual arrangement that I assert.

Notice how many women are being forced to depend upon themselves for support. For each woman thus forced to support herself the wages of men are in proportion reduced.

The tendency is toward an equalization of men’s and women’s wages, making it more and more difficult for a man to support a woman, and for a woman to find a man who can support her. As a matter of fact that this last is so is notorious. When men and women shall be equal financially, is it probable that marriage will survive? With no need on the part of the woman for support, will she give any man power to control her? Will she vow lifelong obedience to any man? Would it be especially virtuous that she should vow life-long obedience to any man?

If she should under such circumstances desire a child, which of us would say that the desire is a wrong desire? The time was when the sexual relation was looked upon as intrinsically criminal; even in wedlock it was only tolerated. Stuprum conjugale, the conjugal crime, that is what the Fathers of the Church called it.

But now, if any of the women who are supporting themselves should desire to have a child, we would not look upon the desire as otherwise than pure, elevating, lovely. It will not be long before we shall all of us see the absurdity of demanding that she should place her body for life in the power of any man. We shall see the absurdity of the feeling that any ceremony can add sanctity to the holiness of nature. We shall see the absurdity of the prejudice that a pledge of temporary association and aid for mutual pleasure in begetting and rearing children is necessarily morally abominable, while a permanent pledge to the same effect is necessarily laudable.

We shall see too that one person’s taste does not constitute a rule for all men. That, if I admire monogamy, it is no reason why 1 should abhor those who prefer polygamy or polyandry. We shall see that good faith and honor and up rightness are quite as possible where men exercise no compulsion upon each other in sexual matters as where they do; that, in fact, as for the absolute slave faith and honor are impossible, so it is only for the entirely free that perfect faith and perfect honor and perfect virtue are possible.

Let no one suppose that I am telling anybody to leave his present partner. I am not. What I am trying to do is to make my best effort to cultivate an already existing sentiment that irregular sexual relations are not the terrible thing they were once thought.

That a noble and happy life under illicit sexual relations is more to be admired than the cat and dog affair that marriage often is now.

That constancy, and honor, and kindness, and good faith are just as possible and just as admirable when found between people living together without marriage as with.

That in fact only by throwing the full responsibility for the production of children upon the parents is it possible to restrain their reckless increase and insure their proper care.

I am trying to pave the way in public sentiment for a change in practice which must come. A change which is being brought about before our eyes and which will be accomplished like all progressive change, not by lobbying at Albany for new laws but by spontaneous social action in spite of law.

Of what the fulness of that time shall bring no one can tell surely.

Only we, to whom it has come that we have some foregleam of the brightness of the future, we know that it will not be unhappier than the present.

John Beverley Robinson.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “The Abolition of Marriage,” Liberty 6 no. 18 (July 20, 1889): 6–7.

Architecture Under Nationalism.

Architecture Under Nationalism. By J. Pickering Putnam. Boston. The Nationalist Educational Association. 1890.

Originally published in serial shape, by the “American Architect,” this work is now republished as above, as a pamphlet.

In it the author recites the degradation of art at the present time, and describes the characteristics of architecture, and of fine art in general, at the periods of highest development in the past; asserting that such another period, but excelling all that has gone before, would occur under the Nationalistic system.

Such a method of unsupported prophecy makes it necessary to regard this book as a rhapsody rather than as an economic treatise. It has apparently never occurred to the author to ask himself whether these delightful results could really follow the system which he seems to have in mind: it is doubtful whether he has thought of the possibility of the governmental method being even questioned.

In fact, in the very first words of his book, — in his definition of Nationalism, — he ignores methods altogether, and defines it, not as a means of reaching an end, but as the end to be reached. “Nationalism may be defined as the substitution of universal cooperation and education for industrial and social warfare.”

That the results anticipated would not result from governmental action ought to be clear to Mr. Putnam, more than to most people; for he himself is a sufferer by governmental repression, and the profession to which he belongs suffers in turn by losing the advantages which Mr. Putnam offers to them, but which government forbids them to accept.

To explain: Mr. Putnam has invented a very clever sewer-gas trap, which is free from the objectionable points of the usual trap.

Some years ago there was a wail from “sanitarians.” The system of plumbing then in vogue was questioned; its defects were pointed out clearly and intelligently, and better methods were devised. People read the sanitarians’ books, saw that they were reasonable, and forthwith began to have their plumbing overhauled. Then steps in government, through its Boards of Health in the various cities, and lays down a series of stringent rules, in conformity with the best knowledge of the time, according to which all plumbing must be done. Since then Mr. Putnam has invented his trap, which is widely used wherever boards of health are unknown, while in the larger cities architects cannot use it because the influence of powerful “master-plumbers’” associations is sufficient to cause the existing, and vastly more expensive, method to be retained, just as for many years the influence of the “bluestone men” made it illegal to use anything but bluestone for coping in New York City.

Why should Mr. Putnam suppose that government boards of the future would antagonize a strong voting interest for the sake of recommending the “best” appliances any more than it does now?

Let Mr. Putnam look a little further, and he will find that none of the future happiness which he depicts, and which we desire as earnestly as he, can possibly come from the paternalism that seems to him so much a matter of course.

We might go further and point out that the periods of highest development of architecture, to which Mr. Putnam alludes, — the Greek period and the twelfth-to-fourteenth-century Gothic period, — were periods not so much of “national” development as of the declaration and defence of liberty.

Liberty is the life of art, as of all other things; paternalism and slavery are its destruction.

As another scrap of evidence of the tendencies of thought, however, Mr. Putnam’s book is most interesting. The evils of the present he feels and deplores; the possibility of better things he sincerely welcomes. He may be taken as a fair type of Nationalist: indignant against present wrong, ardent for future right; ignorant of economic causes, knowing only rough and ready “State cobbling”; yet, when many are filled with the strong desire for better things, the first step is taken. Between desire and action reflection must take place, in thinking animals. The period of desire seems to have come in the hearts of many; when the reflection comes, if there be time for reflection, then will be the sudden growth of Anarchism, which we now see in Nationalism.

John Beverley Robinson.

67 Liberty Street, New York, December 24, 1890.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “Architecture under Nationalism,” Liberty 7 no. 19 (January 10, 1891): 3.

A New Argument against Copyright.

To the Editor of Liberty:

What is an idea? Is it made of wood, or iron, or stone? Possibly of paper? Is it animate or inanimate? Animal, vegetable, or mineral?

Do you see what I am trying to get at? An idea is nothing objective. It is neither produced nor discovered; neither a product of industry, nor unclaimed land, nor a fera naturæ.

Ambiguously as the word has been used, both by metaphysicians and in common talk, every shade of meaning given to it has been but a variation upon one fundamental sense; that an idea is, after some fashion, an intellectual process.

That is to say, the idea is not any part of the product; it is a part of the producer, or, if you will, a part of the labor of producing.

Ideas are not—cannot be—produced. They grow. Given heredity, education, circumstances, and the rest of the environment, and that the man’s ideas will be so and so, whether he builds, or talks, or writes, is determined.

Moreover, there is no reason why we should confine the word idea to a mental process so striking in size or quality as to seem to us out of the common. Every act springs from some corresponding idea.

The copyist expresses ideas as truly as does the author. Ideas of arrangement, ideas of appropriate text, script, or engrossing hand; all the ideas which mark the grades of excellence in copyists.

Each one, having used as much thought as the work in hand requires, be it steam-engine-construction or philosophy-writing, has also used a complementary amount of physical exertion; and as a result of his labor he possesses his engine or his manuscript.

Either one he may now destroy, or conceal, or sell.

If he sells, the value is determined for the purchaser largely by the amount of advantageous novelty contained, or, as we metaphorically call it, by the idea embodied in it. But the idea is not any more the thing sold in the case of a book than it is in the case of a horse-shoe.

In either case the man who has the best ideas produces the best work, and every labor product, in that sense, embodies the ideas of the producer, just as it embodies his physical exertion.

The idea is the intellectual exertion made in producing, and, as such, is a part of the body of the producer. The working of the mind cannot be sold; only the material of nature, transformed by labor, whether mental or physical, can be dealt in commercially.

Consequently the ideas, the mental processes, like the physical processes, of each one are his own to use as he pleases. If he uses them to labor, the product of his labor is still his.

It is vain to talk of protecting property in ideas as far as he in whom the ideas originate is concerned. He holds his ideas by the same title he holds his body, wherever chattel slavery is not admitted.

The only legitimate use of ideas is to produce something desirable and therefore exchangeable, be it song, speech, plough, or book. After the product has been exchanged, the producer has nothing more to do with it.

What is really sought by patent and copyright laws is indicated in the very word copyright. Not to protect ideas, but to confer the privilege of copying a material product.

It is not in the interest of the poor devils, the author and inventor, but in that of the capitalist and publisher, that they are enacted.

They seek to erect another species of legal property, necessarily and avowedly involving monopoly, ostensibly in the interest of the producer, really in that of the investor and exploiter.

As for the compensation of authors, why should they not be able to get as good compensation for the out-and-out sale of their labor as anybody else can? When liberty to labor exists, there is no doubt that they will be able.

Nor need the publishers fear liberty.

It is only the excessive pressure of the present slavery that makes it worth anybody’s while to shove worthless, copyrighted books, as a venture, upon an overstocked market.

When we can all of us freely satisfy our desires for books, it will be quite as much as publishers can do to keep up with the demand for new authors, without troubling themselves to run competitors out of the trade.

John Beverley Robinson.

67 Liberty St., New York, April 23, 1891.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “A New Argument against Copyright,” Liberty 8 no. 2 (May 16, 1891): 5.

The Limits of Governmental Interference

Before I can express any opinion upon the limits of governmental interference, I must explain to you my views upon what constitutes a government.

In doing so I shall place before you, to the best of my ability, what is commonly called the Anarchistic view.

It has been objected that each one who calls himself an Anarchist holds a different opinion from the next one who calls himself by the same name; and that consequently the name of Anarchism conveys no definite meanings. The assertion that there are wide differences among Anarchists is true: the inference that there is no coherent group of opinions corresponding to the name is, I think, mistaken.

At this time there are a dozen different sets of people who are thinking about the pressing questions of the day,—the Socialists, the George men, the Ethical Culturists, the Christian Socialists, the Anarchists,—and each of these there are sub-divisions. Take any branch you may, and you will scarcely find two members of it of entirely the same opinion. It is as true of any one of them as it is true of the Anarchists.

Indeed, in such a time of fervent though, when the most marked intellectual feature of the day is the almost universal anticipation impeding change, what could we expect among those who think at all but striking divergences of opinion? How could we expect that among Anarchists most of all there would not be strongly declared individual differences, being as they are undoubtedly the most advanced, whether they are the most correct in their conclusions or not?

Would not anything approaching unanimity mean fixity and death?

But it may be roughly said that, whatever their internal differences, all Anarchists think that progress and the attainment of economic comfort is possible without and relinquishment of liberty, while most other schools are of the opinion that meat is more than life and that prosperity must be purchased at the cost of some liberty.

No time need be spent upon theological questions. Theology has retired from the battle. It would be as becoming for a man to kick his grandmother as to revile theology nowadays. By sheer inertia the Churches still exist, as the train runs on with speed scarcely perceptibly slackened, after the locomotive is detached; but their warmth has cooled, the infernal fires that force them on are drawn, and all men can see that they are now but dead ashes.

What is the meaning of this retirement of theology? Few suspect the importance of its bearing upon practical affairs. It means more than the mere exchanging church going for Coney Island going on Sundays. It means more even than the final removal from man’s life of a mass of hopes and dears that have seemed to many the most important part of life. Beyond all that, it means that a new way of looking at things must arise, to influence each most trivial action, and throw a new and different glory upon life.

Those who regret the fallings of the leaves, but have not yet learned to look forward to their coming again, despair as they see the breaking-up of the old beliefs. We are left without moral standard, they explain.

How can men, left “without hope” in the world, find any rule of action by which they can regulate their conduct?

Their complaint is just. We are indeed left without a moral standard. To take its place there has developed the egoistic philosophy, the outcome of the utilitarian doctrine, and bearing much the same relation to it that Anarchism bears to Democracy.

“Do what you think is most to your interest” is the Egoistic principle.

Antagonistic as such a phrase sounds to the codes of the past, impossible as it seems that what we have been accustomed to call “lofty” or “noble” actions can spring from such a source, it will be found upon consideration that, so far from forbidding a high ideal of conduct a high ideal is possible upon no other basis.

To the Christian the notion that it can be directly profitable to be honest is a very painful nothing. His notion is that the directly profitable and pleasant course is the dishonest one; and that nobody would submit to the distasteful requirement of honest except with the reward hereafter in view in consideration of his self-denial in abstaining from dishonesty.

So with all other virtues and vices. The vices are esteemed by the ascetic code that is evanescent to be essentially pleasant; the virtues essentially painful. There is nothing for it, according to that code, but for us to bear with the discomforts attaching to a virtuous life. Lest a worse thing befall us in a hypothetical future existence.

The scientific view, on the other hand, is that virtue is virtue only because it is productive of happiness; and that vice is vice because it is productive of unhappiness. At the bottom moreover each one is unable to determine what is for the advantage or happiness of another; while each one knows, better than anybody else, what is for his own happiness. Therefor at the bottom each action must be judged by the individual, as to whether it is conductive to his own happiness, not as to whether it will make somebody else happy.

And this applies in its fullest force even to those actions commonly called altruistic, which give pleasure to the doer indirectly, although directly they may give pain to the doer and pleasure to somebody else.

A king action preformed without any sense of gratification to the doer, loses its character as a king action. If the other who is benefited even suspects that his benefactor is loath to do him the king act, his appreciation of it gives place to reluctance, or even to resentment.

Benevolence is hypocrisy, when prompted by any feeling but personal delight in benevolence.

Such, most briefly and inadequately sketched, is Egoism. Does it surprise you that I should that I should connect such wifely separated matters as the immediate economic distress, and such wide-drawn ethical formulas? That I should deserve social progress from the elimination of the hell-fire theory? Just this connection I wish to accentuate. Just so intimately, in fact, are our every-day actions based upon our underneath philosophy.

“Do what seems to your advantage,” says Egoism, “in fact, you cannot do otherwise.”

Why then exhort people to do what they cannot help doing? Simply for this reason,—that, although each always does what seems to him most to his advantage, there may be a wife variation in the accuracy of his estimate of what is most to his advantage.

It is to the development of the intellect as a guide to conduct that Science exhorts, not as in the past to an emotion subjection to cut-and-dried moral formulas.

Test your actions, not by formulas, but test both formulas and actions continually as you test other things, by observing whether they fulfill their purpose, whether they accord with other facts, whether they are just and true.

But, when once you are sure that a give course of action will conduce to your happiness, follow it.

If you are sure that you enjoy quarrelling and tumult among those about you, by all means bull and rage and tyrannize until, no matter how much pain other may suffer you yourself have achieved happiness for far.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy a peaceful life, notice particularly that your bullying and so on directly diminishes your happiness. Perhaps you will find that you stir up a tumult, not because you like a tumult, but because you are urged by some old-fashioned talk of duty.

“It is for a man to be master in his own house.” “Little children must do as they are told” “it is proper for servants to remember their station.” These are the superstitious formulas which we sacrifice our happiness. Science intervenes and says: “In giving precedence in a formula you commit an error of judgment. Let the formula go. If you want peace and quiet, do what is directly necessary to procure peace and quiet, and do not sacrifice your happiness to a superstition.”

There are no such things as right and wrong; there are very certainly such things as good judgment and bad judgment. A man cannot be wicked, he may be foolish. “Forsake the foolish and live.” “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.”

Applying this principle to affairs political, Anarchists observe to main facts. First: That, for the procurement of happiness, freedom of action for each individual is indispensable.

So various are the tastes of men that each must be happy, if at all, in his own way. To be in a position to obtain happiness men must be independent, and men must be free.

Secondly, they observe that in all past times a large part of men’s activities have been unnecessary; having been directed, not toward gratifying their desires, but toward logically carrying out certain inaccurate inferences as to the sequences of phenomena which we commonly all superstitions.

Thus men, in all ages, have heavily taxed themselves, owing to a mistaken estimate of ability of certain men to predict, and by means of prayers and incantations to control the future. So too, men still tax themselves heavily out of deference to a superstitious reverence for a creature of the imagination called the State—sometimes called our country,—and they do things detrimental to their welfare for what they call the honor of the country, lofty patriotism, and so forth.

Often, too, men sacrifice their happiness in the interest of what they call “morality,” as all periods humane and kindly men have suffered their impulses to be quenched by an insane deference for the established bloodthirsty methods, from the Roman cross to the American gallows, justifying what they know is barbarous by the name of morality.

Seeing all this, Anarchists say: We will no longer acquiesce this. As soon as possible entirely, and now to the extent of our abilities, we will do only what gives us happiness.

We demand the fullest liberty possible to exercise our faculties, and we are willing to concede the same liberty to others. We may object if anybody enjoys his Sunday by making such a racket as to disturb us; but we object, distinctly, because we do not like to be disturbed, not because it is Sunday. On any other day the same disturbance we would object to as much.

This view of it urges that for the attainment of happiness all must have entire liberty to do anything; but that where there liberties extinguishes the other. I have the right to aggress, but, if the society of men gives me more pleasure than Ishmael’s life, I will abstain from aggression. That it is advisable that each should exercise all liberties, save such as limit the exercise of the liberties of others, is called the law of equal liberty, and is a simply formulated statement of the necessary relations of individuals in a perfect society, as derived from mechanical and biological data.

Nor need anybody stagger over the question of what constitutes aggression, although it is a frequent staggering point for the inquirer.

In the nature of things what constitutes aggression is a variable quantity. Each one must estimate whether it is not easier for him to put up with a given action on the part of another, rather than take the trouble to suppress it by force. The other must judge whether it is for his interest to abstain upon request, or to court forcible encounter. Upon the degree in which force and fighting are pleasurable occupations at any given stage of development, will depend on the solution.

Although Anarchism maintains the right of each individual to compel action upon the part of others by any means be may choose, it announces that as a matter of policy it is not advisable for anyone to compel any action from others, except in restrain of aggression up their part. This may still seem too vague, but Anarchism goes a step farther.

In suppressing attacks, it says, we will do what we can ourselves, and we will invite others to aid us; we, however, pledge ourselves not to compel anybody to help us suppress an action of which he does not desire the suppression. This would appear to us aggression on our part—and we will not indulge in it.

Here we touch bottom

The essence of government is that is permits no secession.

Men may long for the abolition of political abuses of the present; — they are compelled to support them. Men may regard war as murder; they pay each his quota to support it.

Men may regard churches as deleterious in their influence and immoral in their teachings,—by the exemption of churches from taxation we are all assessed to support them.

And so on. The intelligent, the progressive must retire until they can find a majority to agree with them.

Therefor it is that Anarchists abjure and denounce the system of compulsory taxation, which is the essence of government.

In denying compulsory taxation we deny government in any proper sense of the word.

A protective association, protection only those who wish to pay for protection, and refraining from territorial dominion, is not a government.

It its nature a government compels adhesion, forces financial support, where it is not yielded willingly, and is essentially, not a protective, but an aggressive association.

With a voluntary defensive association the Anarchists has no quarrel as for the compulsory association, he looks forward to its speedy death, from natural causes.

So that we can at last answer the question to the limits of governmental interference, by answering that when men are influenced by their reason rather than by their superstitions they will not permit and interference at all with their actions by the organized system of aggression called government.

Observer, now, how directly the abolition of the governmental monster will conduce out happiness.

In the next place the currency will be free permitting men to exchange their products to the best advantage.

These two freedoms alone mean much. They mean the end of rent and interest, the two most potent agents in the process which we see going on, the transferring of wealth from the pocket of the worker to that of the idler.

They mean the end of commercial profits and dividends of all kings, which are but other forms of rent and interest.

Further than this, Anarchism means the cessation of all taxes save such as free people judge to be for their advantage to play,—the total cessation of the present practice of bonding towns, not so much for the benefit of improvements as to afford another investment for those who are seeking more opportunities to profit without labor.

Anarchism means too, no indirect taxation, no secret filching of what the authorities far not grasp openly, no robber import-duties, no spying Comstock and Sunday laws, no suppression, repression and perpetual compression of our energies.

Inequalities, truly; but such only as are inborn. Artificial inequalities no longer.

With such freedom to associate freely, with the burdens of compulsory association removed, Anarchists thing that human society will evolve toward a more perfect and complete happiness, economics, physical, and intellectual than any Fourier or Bellamy can predict, added to the priceless joys of liberty.

⁂

John Beverly Robinson, “The Limits of Governmental Interference,” Liberty 8 no. 10 (August 15, 1891): 3-4.

A Vision of Elysium.

Once, in a far-away country, times were hard, and the people knew not what to do to make things boom as they formerly had been in the habit of booming. The people could form no idea of why times were so hard. Being destitute, most of them, of ideas upon any subject, as well as of the necessaries of life, they could not be expected to have any ideas as to the cause of the hard times.

Still less could they be expected to heed pedants who talked in learned and unintelligible words about “remota causa tollitur effectus.”

But the people observed and saw that the only way to get rich was by hard work; and that the surest thing in the way of hard work was a Government job. Let us be patriotic and statesmanlike, and, whereas all who have Government jobs are lucky, let us arrange enough Government jobs to go around. Let us vote—noble privilege—that we may free ourselves from the bonds of capital and enjoy, under liberty, each our Government job.

Now there were 36,544,788 people, and of these 13,122,362 were adults and 23,422,426 were children.

Up to that time there had been Government jobs for only 6.632,110, both men and women, as follows:

Grand Panjandrum Viziers, Envoys Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, Privy Councillors. Etc., Legislators of the General Upper House, Legislators of the General Lower House, Pages, Ushers, Gentlemen in Waiting, Etc., Civil List, Soldiers, Navy, Engineer Corps, Etc., Customs Service, Panjandrums of Twenty-One Provinces, Provincial Viziers, Etc., Provincial Legislators, both houses, Pages, Etc., Heads of Bureaus, Employees of Bureaus (inspection, supervision, administration, etc.), Provincial Customs Services, Provincial Courts, Lords of Great Cities, Employees of Great Cities (to epitomize) police, fire, courts, etc., All other towns, villages, etc., offices, TOTAL, 1 3,015 713 1,121 3,642 814,842 1,607,842 712,310 21 20,618 12,813 33,749 625 320,425 1,416,912 318,001 56 618,210 747,174 6,632,110

So it will appear that there were 6,490,252 adults who needed jobs, less some 1,226,113 ladies who needed not a job, because, being ladies, they devoted themselves to the occupations of ladies, viz., labors of superintendence chiefly, and not to servile labor.

That left 5,274,137 people who needed jobs.

Being practical people and not given over to wild and impracticable theories, they set about it with a will.

Banners waved, barrels blazed, dogs barked, and the people cheered as they voted for the creation of the following offices:

Railroad Presidents, Clerks, Conductors, Surveyors, Etc., Laborers, Superintendent of Trade, Employees Inspector of clothing on the person to prevent the wearing of dirty or infected apparel, Employees Employees, Inspectors of books, writings, etc., with power of suppressing publications to prevent the spread of immorality, Priests, Ministers, Etc., Instructors in Housekeeping, Supervisors of the Amusements of the Young, Censors in General, Secret Service, TOTAL, 536 315,218 2 1 318,012 1 614,292 792,991 719.391 410,000 317,816 699,209 996,170 5,174,139

And, being a light hearted and optimistic people, they rejoiced and danced and sang at their easy solution of their troubles; and they hoisted s checker-board flag of red and white squares; and they knelt down and prayed to it, and said: “Great is the Flag of the Land of the Wise and the Free.”

John Beverley Robinson.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “A Vision of Elysium,” Liberty 8 no. 20 (October 24, 1891): 3–4.

Rule or Resistance, Which?

To the Editor of Liberty:

Do you think that it is accurate to say, as Liberty has said recently, that Anarchism contemplates the use of police, jails, and other forms of force? Is it not rather that Anarchism contemplates that those who wish these means of protection shall pay for them themselves; while those who prefer other means shall only pay for what they want? (1)

Indeed, the whole teaching that it is expedient to use force against the invader, which, as you know, I have always had doubts about, seems to me to fall when egoism is adopted as the basis of our thought. To describe a man as an invader seems a reminiscence of the doctrine of natural depravity. It fails to recognize that all desires stand upon a par, morally, and that it is for us to find the most convenient way of gratifying as much of everybody’s desires as possible. To say that a certain formula proposed by us to this end is “justice,” and that all who do not conform to it,—all who are “unjust,”—will be suppressed by us by violence, is precisely parallel to the course of those who say that their formula for the regulation of conduct is the measure of righteousness, and that they will suppress the “unrighteous” by violence. (2)

As I absorb the egoistic sentiment, it begins to appear that the fundamental demand is not liberty, but the cessation of violence in the obtaining of gratification for desires.

By the cessation of violence we shall obtain liberty, but liberty is the end rather than the means. (3)

“We demand liberty,” say we Anarchists. “Yes, but we see no reason why we should forego our desire to control you, by your own canons, if you are egoists,” replies the majority. “Truly,” we answer, “but we point out to you that it is for your advantage to give us liberty.” “At present we are satisfied of the contrary; we are satisfied that you wish to upset institutions that we wish to preserve,” say they. “We do, indeed,” we reply, “but we will not invade you, we will not prevent you from doing anything you wish, provided it does not tend to deter us from uninvasive activities.” “We think,” concludes the majority, “that in attempting to destroy what we wish to preserve you are invading us”; and how are we to establish the contrary except by laying down a practicable definition of invasion—one by which it can be demonstrated that using unoccupied but claimed land, for instance, is not invasive. (4)

No, it seems to me that no definition of invasion can be made; that it is a variable quantity, like liberty itself.

When you said, some time ago, that liberty was not a natural right, but a social contract, I think you covered the case. If, however, liberty is a matter of contract, is not invasion, which is the limit of liberty, also a matter of contract? (5)

What Anarchism really means is the demand for the rule of contract, rather than for the rule of violence.

“As egoists, we Anarchists point out to you, the majority, that the pleasure of mankind in fighting for the sake of fighting is rapidly declining from disuse. We point out further that from any other point of view fighting is not to the interest of anybody; that desires can be gratified and the harmonization of clashing interests attained much more pleasurably without fighting.” “That is true,” the majority replies, for, though the majority really enjoys fighting for the fun of it, it has got to a point where it will not admit that it does, and to a point where it clearly perceives the costliness of the amusement.

“We propose then,” the Anarchists continue, “not to settle differences by violence, but to reach the best agreement that we can without violence. We propose this with the more confidence that you will accept it, because you yourselves are beginning to admit that the condition of existence for men is not the former ascetic suppression, but the gratification of desires. We therefore propose that you shall at once cease to repress by violence conduct which is not against your interests and which you now suppress only on account of a surviving belief that you are called upon to suppress it for the interest of the doors. Following that, we shall make other demands for the cessation of violence.”

But, of course, in proposing contract instead of violence, it follows that we abjure violence as a principle; we become what I think it is fair to call non-resistants. That is to say that, although we do not guarantee our actions should our fellows refuse to accept our proposal of the system of contract, we do not for a moment suppose that such possible reversions to violence are a part of the new system of contract. (6)

We must hold, as Egoists, that the gratification of the desires of “criminals” is no more subject to “moral” condemnation than our own actions, though from our point of view it may be regrettable; and that by just as much as we permit ourselves to use violence to repress it, by just so much we fortify the continuation of the present reign of violence, and postpone the coming of the reign of contract. Therefore it is that I call myself a non-resistant and regard non-resistance as the necessary implication for an egoist who prefers contract to violence.

When I say non-resistance, I must explain that, so to speak, I do not mean non-resistance,—that is to say, I mean resistance by every means except counter-violence.

The editorials that have recently appeared in Liberty signed by Mr. Yarros have had to me a strongly moralistic flavor, as indeed it is inevitable they should have, from his avowed views; I think Pentecost’s views more in conformity with egoism. By the way, I should be glad if Mr. Yarros could explain the moralistic position more clearly in Liberty; or if you and he could have a discussion of the merits of the matter.

John Beverley Robinson.

67 Liberty Street, New York, December 10, 1891.

(1) I think it accurate to say that Anarchism contemplates anything and everything that does not contradict Anarchism. The writer whom Liberty criticised had virtually made it appear that police and jails do contradict Anarchism. Liberty simply denies this, and in that sense contemplates police and jails. Of course it does not contemplate the compulsory support of such institutions by non-invasive persons.

(2) When I describe a man as an invader, I cast no reflection upon him; I simply state a fact. Nor do I assert for a moment the moral inferiority of the invader’s desire. I only declare the impossibility of simultaneously gratifying the invader’s desire to invade and my desire to be let alone. That these desires are morally equal I cheerfully admit, but they cannot be equally realized. Since one must be subordinated to the other, I naturally prefer the subordination of the invader’s, and am ready to cooperate with non-invasive persons to achieve that result. I am not wedded to the term “justice,” nor have I any objection to it. If Mr. Robinson doesn’t like it, let us say “equal liberty” instead. Does he maintain that the use of force to secure equal liberty is precisely parallel to the use of force to destroy equal liberty? If so, I can only hope, for the sake of those who live in the houses which he builds, that his appreciation of an angle is keener in architecture than it is in sociology.

(3) If the invader, instead of chaining me to a post, barricades the highway, do I any the less lose my liberty of locomotion? Yet he has ceased to be violent. We obtain liberty, not by the cessation of violence, but by the recognition, either voluntary or enforced, of equality of liberty.

(4) We are to establish the contrary by persistent inculcation of the doctrine of equality of liberty, whereby finally the majority will be made to see in regard to existing forms of invasion what they have already been made to see in regard to its obsolete forms,—namely, that they are not seeking equality of liberty at all, but simply the subjection of all others to themselves. Our sense of what constitutes invasion has been acquired by experience. Additional experience is continually sharpening that sense. Though we still draw the line by rule of thumb, we are drawing it more clearly every day. It would be an advantage if we could frame a clear-cut generalization whereby to accelerate our progress. But though we have it not, we still progress.

(5) Suppose it is; what then? Must I consent to be trampled upon simply because no contract has been made?

(6) So the position of the non-resistant is that, when nobody attacks him, he wont resist. “We are all Socialists now,” said some Englishman not long ago. Clearly we are all non-resistants now, according to Mr. Robinson. I know of no one who proposes to resist when he isn’t attacked, of no one who proposes to enforce a contract which nobody desires to violate. I tell Mr. Robinson, as I have told Mr. Pentecost, that the believers in equal liberty ask nothing better than that all men should voluntarily act in accordance with the principle. But it is a melancholy fact that many men are not willing so to act. So far as our relations with such men are concerned, it is not a matter of contract, but of force. Shall we consent to be ruled, or shall we refuse to be ruled? If we consent, are we Anarchists? If we refuse, are we Archists? The whole question lies there, and Mr. Robinson fails to meet it.

T.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “Rule or Resistance, Which?” Liberty 8 no. 29 (December 26, 1891): 3.

The Advisability of Violence.

To the Editor of Liberty:

When you preach passive resistance, is it not precisely the same thing as what is commonly called non-resistance?

When William Penn (or was it Fox?) refused to take off his hat for the king it was certainly passive resistance; but as he made no attempt to punch the king’s head, it is accounted as quite compatible with the Friends’ non-resistance tenets. (1)

I do not think that any practical difference exists between passive resistance and non-resistance. Yet you urge that in emergency violence must be resorted to. Why? In what emergency? If violence is as a matter of principle advisable in certain cases why not in other cases? Why not embrace the advocacy of violence of the Communists throughout? (2)

Intelligible enough as a political measure, Anarchism halts as a system of philosophy as long as it includes violence at all. To people who think government exists to suppress robbery it is sufficient to point out that government exists by robbery; and to enlarge upon the advantages that might be expected to follow the establishment of freedom of membership in political societies. (3)

But all this involves no question as to what constitutes invasion. It is simply stated that each shall take such measures as he prefers to protect himself, and that each shall determine for himself what protection is.

If however we go farther, and lay down a formula, however defensible the formula may be; and say that we will by violence enforce that formula, whether it be the formula of equal liberty or any other formula, I must maintain that the action is precisely parallel to the course of everybody in the past and present who have compelled others to regulate their conduct in accordance with other formulas, alleged to be moral, and held to be as irrefragable as you now hold the formula of equal liberty to be. (4)

“Do not pick people’s pockets to make them pay for protection they don’t want

is good enough as far as it goes.

It may perhaps be well to go no further.

But if we have to go further and ask, What is protection? or, What is invasion? the complement of protection, the only reply you can give is that invasion is infringing upon equal liberty.

Until some method is devised by which we can tell whether a given act does infringe upon equal liberty the definition is vain. (5)

For instance, in a state of liberty Mr. Yarros prints a book. You copy it. He organizes a society for the suppression of pirates and imprisons you. Your friends organize and a battle ensues.

You will doubtless say that you would not advocate violence under such circumstances to either side. I again ask, Why not? (6)

Investigate your own principles and you will find that the recognition of equal liberty rests upon the recognition of contract as supplanting violence. Although we may think it wise among cannibals to become cannibals ourselves; although when forced to it we may degrade ourselves to use violence; let us at least recognize that the state of affairs when every one shall do as he pleases can only occur when all lay aside violence and appeal only to reason. Let us at least recognize that it is for us to totally abjure violence as a principle of action; and if we at any time deem ourselves compelled to do violence let us admit that we do it under protest and not from principle. (7)

John Beverley Robinson.

(1) The chief difference between passive resistance and non-resistance is this: passive resistance is regarded by its champions as a mere policy, while non-resistance is viewed by those who favor it as a principle or universal rule. Believers in passive resistance consider it as generally more effective than active resistance, but think that there are certain cases in which the opposite is true; believers in non-resistance consider either that it is immoral to actively resist or else that it is always unwise to do so.

(2) Because violence, like every other policy, is advisable when it will accomplish the desired end and inadvisable when it will not.

(3) Anarchism is philosophical, but it is not a system of philosophy. It is simply the fundamental principle in the science of political and social life. The believers in government are not as easily to be satisfied as Mr. Robinson thinks; and it is well that they are not. The considerations upon which he relies may convince them that government does not exist to suppress robbery, but will not convince them that abolition of the State will obviate the necessity of dealing violently with the other and more ordinary kinds of government, of which common robbery is one. For, even though they be led to admit that the disappearance of the robber State must eventually induce the disappearance of all other robbers, they will remember that effects, however certain, are not always immediate, and that, pending the consummation, there are often serious difficulties that must be confronted.

(4) If Mr. Robinson still maintains that doing violence to those who let us alone is precisely parallel to doing violence to those who assault us, I can only modestly hint once more that I have a better eye for an angle than he has. (6)

Not so, by any means. As long as nearly all people are agreed in their identification of the great majority of actions as harmonious with or counter to equal liberty, and as long as an increasing number of people are extending this agreement in identification over a still larger field of conduct, the definition of invasion as the infringement of equal liberty, far from being vain, will remain an important factor in political progress.

(6) Because we see no imperative and overwhelming necessity for an immediate settlement of the question of copyright, and because we think that the verdict of reason is preferable to the verdict of violence in all doubtful cases where we can afford to wait.

(7) It seems that there are cases in which, according to Mr. Robinson, we may resort to violence. It is now my turn to ask, Why? If he favors violence in one case, why not in all? I can see why, but not from his standpoint. For my part, I don’t care a straw whether, when Mr. Robinson sees fit to use violence, he acts under protest or from principle. The main question is: Does he think it wise under some circumstances to use violence, or is he so much of a practical Archist that he would not save his child from otherwise inevitable murder by splitting open the murderer’s head?

T.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “The Advisability of Violence,” Liberty 8 no. 32 (January 16, 1892): 2–3.

Socialistic Neighbor-Love.

To the Editor of Liberty:

Does it not seem as if, after all, the demands of egoistic Anarchists might be more altruistic than those of Socialists who condemn Anarchism as unaltruistic? For instance, it is by the growth of altruistic feeling that it is repugnant to many people to rob by violence; to some it is repugnant to rob, even by business methods,

Now, if I go still further, and refrain, through repugnance to such deeds, from compelling my neighbor to pay for what he does not want, am I not really more altruistic than my very altruistic friend who knows what his neighbor wants better than his neighbor himself knows, and who will make his neighbor pay, will-he, nill-he, for what he doesn’t want?

Can anything be more unaltruistic than compulsory taxation?

Unless, like the dear God, who damns people because he loves them so, they rob people because they love them so.

John Beverley Robinson.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “Socialistic Neighbor-Love,” Liberty 8 no. 37 (April 30, 1892): 1.

Solitude.

A traveller in the wild places in Africa found himself left alone in the midst of a people who spared his life only because they were amused by what were to them his peculiarities; and because, being many against one, they had no fear of him.

They were a savage tribe indeed. It was the custom, he found, among them for the head men to every day traverse the country, taking from each of the common people whatever to the head men seemed desirable.

From one a basket of plantains would be demanded; from another his domesticated buffalo; from a third might be required his hut and all that he had. Strange to say, those who were thus robbed did not regard themselves as treated unjustly.

They resigned whatever was demanded with every sign of acquiescence and deference for the head man who carried it off.

Even when the sacrifice was great and inward reluctance was felt, external complaisance was inculcated by the medicine men and was regarded as very praiseworthy. Those who were robbed of all afterwards wandered about destitute, despised, strange to say, rather than pitied by their former comrades; and deeming themselves most fortunate if they were not thrown into the cave of snakes to perish.

In other respects, too, the gross savagery of the people was shown. In order to stir them up to one of their marauding excursions it was only necessary to go among them and announce that the totem of their tribe had been insulted. This totem was a rough pole with a bunch of red and white rags at the top and was regarded by the people as sacred. Each one kept a miniature model of the totem in his hut, alongside of the model of the divinity and sharing religious honors with it.

To touch roughly or even to look askance at the totem meant instant death.

At the slightest pretence even that a neighboring tribe had insulted this totem, the people would rush forth like an angry nest of hornets and massacre indiscriminately with the deadly weapons which they spent much of their time in trying to improve. To destroy and give pain to others seemed to be to them a pleasure.

The traveller, distressed by so much misery where there might be happiness, talked to the most intelligent among them persuasively. “Why should you devote every seventh day to cutting and burning yourselves and your children? Surely you might find some pleasanter mode of worship, if you must worship.”

And the man replied: “The loving father Bobo, and the great son Luni, and the immaculate mother Gummi, have commanded us to do so, and we are afraid not to. Moreover, beware how you talk so blasphemously; if I were not a very liberal man, you would certainly have your tongue cut out.”

“At least,” answered the traveller, “would you not be happier if you should stop killing your neighbors so much If you would devote the energy and thought which you now devote to destroying, to improving your houses, increasing your crops, and enlarging your herds, I should think you would be better off. What is this totem that you are forever fighting about a bunch of rags!”

“Take care,” said the savage, “though I am liberal, you must not insult the totem even to me. I pardon you this time, but be warned and keep your mouth shut about our glorious totem. Not fight for the totem? What miserable pusillanimity! What lack of patriotism! Not fight? How can you ask such nonsensical questions? Fighting will always be. You must change men’s natures if you want fighting to stop. And men’s natures cannot be changed.”

With that he brought two or three more liberal savages like himself to hear what further paradoxes this queer creature would emit.

Striving to find a topic that would arouse neither their religious nor their patriotic emotions, the traveller continued:

“Permit me to suggest at least that for the head men to take from the others the greater part of their possessions is unfair to the others, and, after all, unprofitable to the head men, for they have enough already, and only waste what they have thus stolen in luxuries which they would be far happier without.”

Thereupon there was a howl from all. “This is a dangerous fellow,” said the old savage, who knew the sacred books by heart, and settled all disputes by reference to them, “he attacks the rights of property.”

“Such things cannot be changed without a bloody revolution,” said the medicine man; “surely you, who object to blood, would not counsel violence.”

“I do not see the necessity for it,” said the traveller; “they are few, the people are many; all the people need do is to refuse to give their property to the robbers.”

“Revolutionary! cut-throat! atheist!” they all screamed. “You would take people’s little savings from them, would you? You want to burn our huts and kill our cattle and bring desolation upon us, do you?”

“That is not exactly what I meant to suggest,” the traveller replied, “but, if you cannot understand what seems to me a simple enough proposition, I rather think I shall do well not to press it, until your powers of comprehension develop. There is one thing, though, that I would call your attention to that can hardly jar upon any of your superstitions; I refer to the treatment of your wives. You would find them much more efficient workers and agreeable companions, they would be less likely too to have deformed and helpless children, if you would club them more mercifully, let us say so as not to maim them. It would really require no self-denial; it might even give you pleasure to stop short of breaking their arms and gashing their flesh.”

The medicine man stepped solemnly forward. “You are attacking the holiest of our institutions,” he said. “Our society is built upon the right of a man to club his wife and children. It is an arrangement which has the divine sanction of the holy Luni. The family with us is sacred. You are alone, therefore we spare your life. You may walk among us, but you must not talk in this way, for, if such ideas grow, they must be suppressed. Hereafter be silent at your peril.”

The traveller perceived that they were savages, that it was no use appealing to thought where there was no thought. He perceived that they lived by a set of inwrought traditions and customs, and had no power to even try to improve things.

So he lived alone, though surrounded by savages. He grieved because he was alone. At last one day he ate a poisonous root and died, that he might escape from an intolerable life among savages.

Who will give me of hemlock on mandragora by which I may remove myself from the savages among whom I dwell?

John Beverley Robinson.

⁂

John Beverley Robinson, “Solitude,” Liberty 8 no. 42 (June 14, 1892): 2.

Report of the Secretary of the Society for the Mitigation of the Acerbity of Impecuniosity, for the year ending May 31, 1892.

During the past year it has been the effort of the Society to extend its usefulness into hitherto untried fields.

Going beyond the sale of old clothes at low, but not unremunerative, prices, the Society has undertaken to educate to some extent the tastes of our less fortunate brothers and sisters.

Two principles the Society has laid down for its guidance: — the first, that nothing, however trifling, is to be given gratis. Free gifts are demoralizing to the recipient, and have but one result, the destruction of individual energy, enterprise, and independence, and the erection of a class of habitual paupers. The second principle is that it is the taste of the common people that is to be educated.

Even upon a small income, — and that of our dear, but unfortunate, friends ranges down to as low as three doll