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Vol. I. JUNE, 1906 No. 4
MOTHER EARTH
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
PAGE
Mrs. Grundy VIROQUA DANIELS 1
A Greeting ALEXANDER BERKMAN 3
Henrik Ibsen M. B. 6
Observations and Comments 8
A Letter EMMA GOLDMAN 13
Libertarian Instruction EMILE JANVION 14
The Antichrist FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE 15
Brain Work and Manual Work PETER KROPOTKIN 21
Motherhood and Marriage HENRIETTE FUERTH 30
Object Lesson for Advocates of Governmental
Control ARTHUR G. EVERETT, N--M. 33
The Genius of War JOHN FRANCIS VALTER 36
Dignity Speaks 36
Paternalistic Government (CONTINUATION)
THEODORE SCHROEDER 38
Aim and Tactics of the Trade-Union Movement
MAX BAGINSKI 44
Refined Cruelty ANNA MERCY 50
"The Jungle" VERITAS 53
The Game is Up SADAKICHI HARTMANN 57
10c. A COPY $1 A YEAR
MOTHER EARTH
Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature
Published Every 15th of the Month
EMMA GOLDMAN, Publisher, P. O. Box 217, Madison Square Station,
New York, N. Y.
Entered as second-class matter April 9, 1906, at the post office
at New York, N. Y., under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
Vol. I JUNE, 1906 No. 4
MRS. GRUNDY.
By VIROQUA DANIELS.
_Her will is law. She holds despotic sway.
Her wont has been to show the narrow way
Wherein must tread the world, the bright, the brave,
From infancy to dotard's gloomy grave._
_"Obey! Obey!" with sternness she commands
The high, the low, in great or little lands.
She folds us all within her ample gown.
A forward act is met with angry frown._
_The lisping babes are taught her local speech;
Her gait to walk; her blessings to beseech.
They laugh or cry, as Mistress says they may,--
In everything the little tots obey._
_The youth know naught save Mrs. Grundy's whims.
They play her games. They sing her holy hymns.
They question not; accept both truth and fiction,_
_(The_ OLD _is right, within her jurisdiction!)._
_Maid, matron, man unto her meekly bow.
She with contempt or ridicule may cow.
They dare not speak, or dress, or love, or hate,
At variance with the program on her slate._
_Her subtle smile, e'en men to thinkers grown,
Are loath to lose; before its charm they're prone.
With great ado, they publicly conform--
Vain, cowards, vain; revolt_ MUST _raise a storm!_
_The "indiscreet," when hidden from her sight,
Attempt to live as they consider "right."
Lo! Walls have ears! The loyal everywhere
The searchlight turn, and loudly shout, "Beware!"_
_In tyranny the Mistress is supreme.
"Obedience," that is her endless theme.
Al countries o'er, in city, town and glen,
Her aid is sought by bosses over men._
_Of Greed, her brain is cunningly devised.
From Ignorance, her bulky body's sized.
When at her ease, she acts as judge and jury.
But she's the Mob when 'roused to fighting fury._
_Dame Grundy is, by far, the fiercest foe
To ev'ry kind of progress, that we know.
So Freedom is, to her, a poison thing.
Who heralds it, he must her death knell ring._
[Illustration]
A GREETING.
By ALEXANDER BERKMAN.
Dear Friends:--
I am happy, inexpressibly happy to be in your midst again, after an
absence of fourteen long years, passed amid the horrors and darkness of
my Pennsylvania nightmare. * * * Methinks the days of miracles are not
past. They say that nineteen hundred years ago a man was raised from the
dead after having been buried for three days. They call it a great
miracle. But I think the resurrection from the peaceful slumber of a
three days' grave is not nearly so miraculous as the actual coming back
to life from a living death of fourteen years duration;--'tis the
twentieth century resurrection, not based on ignorant credulity, nor
assisted by any Oriental jugglery. No travelers ever return, the poets
say, from the Land of Shades beyond the river Styx--and may be it is a
good thing for them that they don't--but you can see that there is an
occasional exception even to that rule, for I have just returned from a
hell, the like of which, for human brutality and fiendish barbarity, is
not to be found even in the fire-and-brimstone creeds of our loving
Christians.
It was a moment of supreme joy when I felt the heavy chains, that had
bound me so long, give way with the final clang of the iron doors behind
me and I suddenly found myself transported, as it were, from the dreary
night of my prison-existence into the warm sunshine of the living day;
and then, as I breathed the free air of the beautiful May morning--my
first breath of freedom in fourteen years--it seemed to me as if a
beautiful nature had waved her magic wand and marshalled her most
alluring charms to welcome me into the world again; the sun, bathed in a
sea of sapphire, seemed to shed his golden-winged caresses upon me;
beautiful birds were intoning a sweet paean of joyful welcome;
green-clad trees on the banks of the Allegheny were stretching out to me
a hundred emerald arms, and every little blade of grass seemed to lift
its head and nod to me, and all Nature whispered sweetly "Welcome Home!"
It was Nature's beautiful Springtime, the reawakening of Life, and Joy,
and Hope, and the spirit of Springtime dwelt in my heart.
I had been told before I left the prison that the world had changed so
much during my long confinement that I would practically come back into
a new and different world. I hoped it were true. For at the time when I
retired from the world, or rather when I _was_ retired from the
world--that was a hundred years ago, for it happened in the nineteenth
century--at that time, I say, the footsteps of the world were faltering
under the heavy cross of oppression, injustice and misery, and I could
hear the anguish-cry of the suffering multitudes, even above the
clanking of my own heavy chains. * * * But all that is different now--I
thought as I left the prison--for have I not been told that the world
had changed, changed so much that, as they put it, "its own mother
wouldn't know it again." And that thought made me _doubly_ happy: happy
at the recovery of my own liberty, and happy in the fond hope that I
should find my own great joy mirrored in, and heightened by the
happiness of my fellow-men.
Then I began to look around, and indeed, I found the world changed; so
changed, in fact, that I am now afraid to cross the street, lest
lightning, in the shape of a horseless car, overtake me and strike me
down; I also found a new race of beings, a race of red
devils--automobiles you call them--and I have been told about the winged
children of thought flying above our heads--talking through the air, you
know, and sometimes also through the hat, perhaps--and here in New York
you can ride on the ground, overground, above ground, underground, and
without any ground at all.
These and a thousand and one other inventions and discoveries have
considerably changed the face of the world. But alas! its face _only_.
For as I looked further, past the outer trappings, down into the heart
of the world, I beheld the old, familiar, yet no less revolting sight of
Mammon, enthroned upon a dais of bleeding hearts, and I saw the ruthless
wheels of the social Juggernaut slowly crushing the beautiful form of
liberty lying prostrate on the ground. * * * I saw men, women and
children, without number, sacrificed on the altar of the capitalistic
Moloch, and I beheld a race of pitiful creatures, stricken with the
modern St. Vitus's dance at the shrine of the Golden Calf.
With an aching heart I realized what I had been told in prison about
the changed condition of the world was but a miserable myth, and my fond
hope of returning into a new, regenerated world lay shattered at my
feet....
No, the world has not changed during my absence; I can find no
improvement in the twentieth-century society over that of the
nineteenth, and in truth, it is not capable of any real improvement, for
this society is the product of a civilization so self-contradictory in
its essential qualities, so stupendously absurd in its results, that the
more we advance in this would-be civilization the less rational, the
less human we become. Your twentieth-century civilization is fitly
characterized by the fact that, paradoxical as it may seem, the more we
produce, the less we have, and the richer we get, the poorer we are.
Your pseudo-civilization is of that quality which defeats its own ends,
so that notwithstanding the prodigious mechanical aids we possess in the
production of all forms of wealth, the struggle for existence is more
savage, more ferocious to-day than it has been ever since the dawn of
our civilization.
But what is the cause of all this, what is wrong with our society and
our civilization?
Simply this:--a lie can not prosper. Our whole social fabric, our
boasted civilization rests on the foundations of a lie, a most gigantic
lie--the religious, political and economic lie, a triune lie, from whose
fertile womb has issued a world of corruption, evils, shams and
unnameable crimes. There, denuded of its tinsel trappings, your
civilization stands revealed in all the evil reality of its unadorned
shame; and 'tis a ghastly sight, a mass of corruption, an ever-spreading
cancer. Your false civilization is a disease, and capitalism is its most
malignant form; 'tis the acute stage which is breeding into the world a
race of cowards, weaklings and imbeciles; a race of mannikins, lacking
the physical courage and mental initiative to think the thought and do
the deed not inscribed in the book of practice; a race of pigmies,
slaves to tradition and superstition, lacking all force of individuality
and rushing, like wild maniacs, toward the treacherous eddies of that
social cataclysm which has swallowed the far mightier and greater
nations of the ancient world.
It is because of these things that I address myself to you, fellow-men.
Society has not changed during my absence, and yet, to be saved, it
needs to be changed. It needs, above all, real men, men and women of
originality and individuality; men and women, not afraid to brave the
scornful contempt of the conventional mob, men and women brave enough to
break from the ranks of custom and lead into new paths, men and women
strong enough to smash the fatal social lock-step and lead us into new
and happier ways.
And because society has not changed, neither will I. Though the
bloodthirsty hyena of the law has, in its wild revenge, despoiled me of
the fourteen most precious blossoms in the garden of my life, yet I
will, henceforth as heretofore, consecrate what days are left to me in
the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has
sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my
energies and whatever ability I may have to that noblest of all causes
of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my
sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in
breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and
helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind
selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road
leading toward a true civilization, to the new and brighter day of
Freedom in Brotherhood.
[Illustration]
HENRIK IBSEN.
M. B.
I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any
literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school
or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular
ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great
individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the _sole_
Truth," "the _only_ true principle." The waves of his soul would break
down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving
currents of life.
A seer has died.
He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society--he
found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social
foundations--its pillars shook: they were rotten.
The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the
hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust,
and pain. In this mood he wrote "The League of Youth," in which he
exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their
ideals.
In "The Enemy of the People" Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against
the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule.
Doctor Stockmann--that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the
pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him.
"What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!" cried the
Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in "Nora" (The
Doll's House), "Wild Duck," and in "The Ghosts"--living pictures
revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of "our sacred institutions,"
"our holy hearthstone." In "Rosmersholm" Ibsen ignored even the
inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick
conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing
them of the joy of life.
The moralists howled long and loud.
"Has Ibsen no ideals? Does the accursed Midas-touch of his mind dissolve
everything, one very Holy of Holies, into the ashes of nothing?"
Thus spoke self-sufficient arrogance.
But can one read "Brand" or "Peer Gynt" and ask such questions? No heart
so overflowed with human yearning, no soul ever breathed grander, nobler
ideals than Henrik Ibsen. True, he did not prostrate himself before the
idols of the conventional mob, nor did his sacrificial fires burn on the
altar of mediocrity and cretinism. He did not bow the proud head before
the craven images that the State and Church have created for the
subjugation of the masses. To Ibsen's free soul the morality of slaves
was a nightmare.
His ideal was Individuality, the development of character. He loved the
man that was brave enough to be himself. He immeasurably hated all that
was false; he abhorred all that was petty and small. He loved that true
naturalness which, when most real, requires no effort.
The most severe critic of Ibsen and his art was Ibsen himself. His
attitude towards himself in his last work, "When We Dead Awaken," is
that of the most unprejudiced judge.
What is the result?
We long for life; yet we are eternally chasing will-o'-the-wisps. We
sacrifice ourselves for things which rob us of our Self. The castles we
build prove houses made of cards, upon the first touch falling down.
Instead of living, we philosophize. Our life is an esthetic counterfeit.
A mind of great depth, a soul of prophetic vision has passed away; yet
not without leaving its powerful impress--for Henrik Ibsen stood upon
the heights, and from their loftiest peaks we beheld, with him, the
heavy fogs of the present, and through the rifts we saw the bright rays
of a new sun, the promise of the dawn of a freer, stronger Humanity.
[Illustration]
OBSERVATIONS AND COMMENTS.
Schopenhauer's advice to ignore fools and knaves and not to speak to
them, as the best method of keeping them at a distance, does not seem
drastic enough in these days of the modern newspaper-reporter nuisance.
One may throw them out of the house, nail all the doors and windows, and
stuff up all key-holes; still he will come; he will slide down through
the chimney, squeeze through the sewer-pipes--which, by the way, is the
real field of activity of the journalistic profession.
We Anarchists are usually poor business men, with a few "happy"
exceptions, of course; still, we shall have to form an insurance company
against the slugging system of the reporters.
Alexander Berkman barely had a chance to breathe free air, when the
newspaper scarecrows were let loose at his heels. Every
suspicious-looking man, woman and child in New York was assailed as to
Berkman's whereabouts, without avail. Finally these worthy gentlemen
hit upon 210 East Thirteenth street--there the reporters made some
miraculous discoveries. Two lonely hermits, utterly innocent of the ways
of the world and the impertinence of reporters, were marked by the
latter. They triumphed. Never before had they hit upon such simpletons,
of whom they could so easily learn all the secrets of the fraternity of
the Reds.
"Is it not the custom of your clan to delegate every three days one of
your members to take the life of some ruler?" they asked.
One of the Reds smiled, knowingly. "Only one insignificant life in three
days?! How little you know the Anarchists. I want you to understand,
sirs, it is our wont to use just five minutes for each act, which means
864 lives in three days."
This was more than the most hardened press detective could stand. They
fled in terror.
[Illustration]
Carl Schurz, politician and career hunter by profession, died May 14th.
He was met at the gate of Hell by the secretary of that institution with
the following question, "Were you not one of the enthusiasts for the
battle of freedom, in your young days?"
"Yes," said Carl.
"If the reports of my men are correct--and I am confident my men are
more reliable than the majority of the newspaper men on your planet--you
were even a Revolutionist?"
Carl Schurz nodded.
"And why have you thrown your ideals and convictions overboard?"
"There was no money in them," Carl replied, sulkily.
The Satanic Secretary nodded to one of his stokers, saying, "Add 5,000
tons of hard coal to our fires. Here we have a man that sold his soul
for money. He deserves to roast a thousand times more than the ordinary
sinner."
[Illustration]
No one considers a thief the patron saint of honesty, nor is a liar
expected to champion the truth. The hangman is not elected as president
of a society for the preservation of human life; why, then, in the name
of common sense, do people continue to see in the State the seat of
justice and the patron saint of those whom it wrongs and outrages daily?
If people would only look closer into the elements of the State, they
would soon behold this trinity--the thief, the liar, and the hangman.
[Illustration]
Free love is condemned; prostitution flourishes. The moralist, who is
the best patron of the dens of prostitution, loudly proclaims the
sanctity and purity of monogamy. The free expression of life's greatest
force--love--must never be tolerated. On the other hand, it is perfectly
respectable to receive a large sum of money from a millionaire
father-in-law for marrying his daughter.
[Illustration]
Rudolph von Jhering, one of the most distinguished theoreticians of
jurisprudence in Europe, wrote, many years ago, "The way in which one
utilizes his wealth is the best criterion of his character and degree of
culture. The purpose that prompts the investment of his money is the
safest characterization of him. The accounts of expenditures speak
louder of a man's true nature than his diary." How well these words
apply to the richest of the rich and to their methods of disposing of
their capital!
Take philanthropy, for instance, with its loud and common display. How
it humiliates those that receive, and how it overestimates the
importance of those that give.
Philanthropy that steals in large quantities and returns of its bounty
in medicine drops, that snatches the last bite from the mouth of the
people and graciously gives them a few crumbs or a gnawed bone!
Again, philanthropy as a money mania--in one instance it feeds the
clergy on fat salaries, so that they might proclaim the virtue of
self-denial, sobriety and prudence; in another instance it builds Sunday
schools for young numbskulls and political aspirants who pretend to
listen to the commonplace discourse about our Father in Heaven who gives
every true Christian an opportunity to make money; rather would these
milk-sops appreciate the advice of the young nabob as to how to turn a
hundred-dollar bill into a thousand.
Philanthropy, establishing scientific societies for the investigation of
the mode of life of fleas, or philanthropy excremating libraries,
maintaining missionaries in China or fostering the research of breeding
sea horses.
Mrs. Vanderbilt has the heels of her shoes set in diamonds, while
another great philanthropist has established a pension for aged parrots.
Indeed, the stupidity and sad lack of imagination of our philanthropists
are pitiful. However, when one realizes that they are responsible for
the distress, the poverty, and despair of the great masses of humanity,
pity turns into anger and disgust with a society that will endure it
all.
[Illustration]
The Chicago papers report a blood-curdling story, which has affected the
Philistines like red affects a turkey. Knowing the keen sense of humor
of our readers, we herewith reprint the story:
"Treason and blasphemy as an outburst of Anarchism all but broke up a
meeting held last night in the Masonic Temple under the auspices of the
Spencer-Whitman Center, at which the subject of "Crime in Chicago" was
discussed by various speakers. The Rev. John Roach Straton, pastor of
the Second Baptist Church, was in the midst of the discourse detailing
his theories with reference to the subject in hand when a voice from the
doorway shouted out a blasphemous expression.
The cry was greeted by hisses, but it was only a moment later that the
same voice called:
"Down with America! Up with Anarchy!"
There was a rush for the door. A tall young man was the first to reach
the offender, who is said to have been Carl Havel, associate editor of a
German newspaper. There was a blow and the blasphemer reeled and fell
against the wall. At the same moment a man, said to be Terence Carlin, a
member of a prominent Chicago family, struck Havel's assailant. He in
turn was seized by Parker H. Sercombe, chairman of the meeting, and a
man who gave the name of Ben Bansig.
The party struggled back and forth in the doorway, and the disturbers
were forced back to an ante-room. Blows were struck in a lusty fashion
and cries of "Police!" "They're murdering them!" "Help!" rang out.
Finally the two disturbers made as if to get out, and the arrival of a
watchman in uniform quieted them and their pursuers. It was, however,
with ill grace that the disturbers of the meeting were allowed to leave,
and as they passed through a door, cursing the law, the country, and
God, a girl, still in her teens, broke through the crowd and turning to
Havel, said:
"That's all right, father."
Ben Bansig saved Chicago,--there can be no dispute about that. As to
Sercombe, the editor of _To-Morrow_, he deserves recognition. I suggest
that he be awarded a tooth brush at the expense of City Hall.
Our three friends, Terence Carlin, Havel, Mary Latter--who, as I can
authentically prove, is not the daughter of Hyppolite Havel--can console
themselves with the fact that their protest has done the names of
Whitman and Spencer more honor than the gas of the Baptist preacher.
[Illustration]
That the suspiciously-red noses of the newspaper men should have smelt
the "immoral conduct" of Maxim Gorky, was really very fortunate for the
latter. He is now relieved from the impertinence of interviewers and
prominent personages. He must feel as if he had recovered from some
loathsome disease. Immorality has after all many desirable qualities.
What if chickens gaggle, pharisaic goats piously turn up their eyes, and
the dear little piggies grunt!
[Illustration]
Well-meaning people are horrified that justice is making use of such
creatures as Orchard and McParland against Moyer, Haywood and Pettibone.
There is nothing unusual in that. The record of the American government
in its persecution against Socialists and Anarchists is by no means so
clean that one need be astonished that it employs spies and perjurers as
its helpmates.
[Illustration]
The Lord has developed from a good Christian into a good banker: He
destroyed more churches than vaults in San Francisco.
A LETTER.
Chicago, June 2nd, 1906.
Dear Editor:--I hope you have not been trying to relieve your feelings
by using language dangerous to your soul's salvation. I can sympathize
with you, though. However, it was impossible for me to send the promised
article for "M. E." Who, indeed, could expect a bride of two weeks to
waste time upon magazine articles?! I hope you have read the reports of
my marriage, though your silence would indicate that you have either
neglected to read the important news, or that your usual lack of faith
in the truth and honesty of the press has not permitted you to credit
the story.
It is high time, dear friend, that you get rid of your German
skepticism; you know, I esteem your judgment, but when it comes to
doubting anything the newspapers say, I draw the line. What reporters do
not know about Anarchists, and especially about your publisher, is not
worth knowing. According to their great wisdom I not only incited men to
remove the crowned heads of various countries, but I have done worse--I
have incited them to marry me, and when they proved unwilling to love,
honor and obey the order of our secret societies to blow up all sacred
institutions, I sent them about their business.
Much as I realize the importance of my articles for MOTHER EARTH, you
cannot expect me to sacrifice my wifely duty to my lord and master for
Earth's sake.
I have always held to the opinion that there must be absolute confidence
between publisher and editor on all matters except the receipts;
therefore I have to confess that my newly-wedded husband, who has just
graduated from the University of the Western Penitentiary--the
curriculum of which is lots of liberty, leisure and enjoyment--objects
to the drudgery of an agitator and publisher. In justice to him, I dare
not do more than write letters all day, address meetings every evening,
and enjoy the love and kindness of the comrades till early morning
hours. Where, then, shall I find time to write articles for MOTHER
EARTH?
But to be in keeping with the serious and dignified tone of our valuable
magazine, and especially with you dear Editor, I want to say that my
meetings were very successful, and that MOTHER EARTH is being received
with great favor in every city. Nearly 500 copies were sold here.
After reading the brilliant reports in the Chicago papers and seeing the
handsome, refined policemen at the various meetings, I am not surprised
that our magazine is being appreciated. Apropos of the Chicago police,
just fancy, I have actually forced them out of their uniforms. I hope
this will not conjure up the horrible picture of Chicago's finest
parading the city in Adam's costume. Not that! Only, Chief of Police
Collins was so outraged over my gentle criticism of his dear little boys
at one of the woodworkers' meetings, that he gave strict orders, "No
officer should again appear at a public meeting in uniform where that
awful Emma Goldman is humiliating and degrading the emblem of authority
and law."
After this, I hope you will never again doubt the importance of public
meetings and the great and far-reaching influence of my speaking.
I shall soon be with you, if I survive my tour, the police, and the
press. I shall then try to make up for my sins, in the July number of
MOTHER EARTH, provided you will let me recuperate in your editorial care
and affection.
EMMA GOLDMAN.
[Illustration]
LIBERTARIAN INSTRUCTION.
By EMILE JANVION.
AMONG the important duties of Anarchists libertarian instruction should
occupy the first place. As revolutionary propaganda it is the most
effective. Tolstoi in Yasnaia-Poliana, Reclus at Bruxelles, Paul Robin
at Cempius, the group of the Free School at Paris have inaugurated
attempts during the period of daring we have witnessed of late years.
Far from mixing education with instruction, the former should be
considered as the natural consequence of the latter.
Our ideas should never be imposed by an education too specialized,
narrow or sectarian, but by means of full and all-round instruction
which opens the mind to criticism and makes it accessible to the power
of truth which is our strength and which will complete the forming of
the character.
Our instruction should be _integral_, _rational_, and _mixed_.
_Integral_--Because it will tend to develop the whole being and make a
complete, free _ensemble_, equally progressive in all knowledge,
intellectual, physical, manual and professional, and this from the
earliest age.
_Rational_--Because it will be based on reason and in conformity with
actual science and not on faith; on the development of personal Freedom
and independence and not on that of piety and obedience; on the
abolition of the fiction _God_, the eternal and absolute cause of
subjection.
_Mixed_--Because it favors the coeducation of the sexes in a constant,
fraternal, familiar company of children, boys and girls, which gives to
the character of their manners a special earnestness.
To the scientific instruction must be added manual apprenticeship,
instruction with which it is in a constant connection of balance and
reciprocity, and also esthetic instruction (music, art, etc.), which in
point of view of an integral development has certainly not a small
importance.
To turn our attention towards the child, to encourage the development of
its initiative, to impress it with a sentiment of its dignity, to
preserve it from cowardice and falsehood, to make it observe the _pros_
and _cons_ of all social conceptions, to educate it for the struggle,
that is the great work, scarcely yet begun, which awaits us.
That will be the task of the nearest future if we will act logically and
firmly.
[Illustration]
THE ANTICHRIST.
From "The Antichrist," by Friedrich Nietzsche. Edited by Alexander
Tille, translated by Thomas Common. Publishers: Macmillan & Co. New
York.
I MAKE war against this theological instinct: I have found traces of it
everywhere. Whoever has theological blood in his veins is from the very
beginning ambiguous and disloyal with respect to everything. The pathos
which develops therefrom calls itself belief: the closing of the eye
once for all with respect to one's self, so as not to suffer from the
sight--of incurable falsity. A person makes for himself a morality, a
virtue, a sanctity out of this erroneous perspective towards all things,
he unites the good conscience to the _false_ mode of seeing,--he demands
that no _other_ mode of perspective be any longer of value, after he has
made his own sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation," and
"eternity." I have digged out the theologist-instinct everywhere; it is
the most diffused, the most peculiarly _subterranean_ form of falsity
that exists on earth. What a theologian feels as true, _must_ needs be
false: one has therein almost a criterion of truth. It is his most
fundamental self-preservative instinct which forbids reality to be held
in honor, or even to find expression on any point. As far as
theologist-influence extends, the _judgment of value_ is turned right
about, the concepts of "true" and "false" are necessarily reversed: what
is most injurious to life is here called "true," what raises, elevates,
affirms, justifies, and makes it triumph is called "false."
* * *
Let us not underestimate this: _we ourselves_, we free spirits, are
already a "Transvaluation of all Values," an incarnate declaration of
war against and triumph over all old concepts of "true" and "untrue."
The most precious discernments into things are the latest discovered:
the most precious discernments, however, are the _methods_. _All_
methods, _all_ presuppositions of our present-day science, have for
millenniums been held in the most profound contempt: by reason of them a
person was excluded from intercourse with "honest" men--he passed for an
"enemy of God," a despiser of truth, a "possessed" person. As a
scientific man, a person was a Chandala.... We have had the entire
pathos of mankind against us--their concept of that which truth _ought_
to be, which the service of truth _ought_ to be: every "thou shalt" has
been hitherto directed _against_ us. Our objects, our practices, our
quiet, prudent, mistrustful mode--all appeared to mankind as absolutely
unworthy and contemptible.--In the end one might, with some
reasonableness, ask one's self if it was not really an esthetic taste
which kept mankind in such long blindness: they wanted a _picturesque_
effect from truth, they wanted in like manner the knowing ones to
operate strongly on their senses. Our _modesty_ was longest against the
taste of mankind.... Oh how they made that out, these turkey-cocks of
God----.
* * *
The Christian concept of God--God as God of the sick, God as
cobweb-spinner, God as spirit--is one of the most corrupt concepts of
God ever arrived at on earth; it represents perhaps the gauge of low
water in the descending development of the God-type. God degenerated to
the _contradiction of life_, instead of being its transfiguration and
its eternal _yea_! In God, hostility announced to life, to nature, to
the will to life! God as the formula for every calumny of "this world,"
for every lie of "another world!" In God nothingness deified, the will
to nothingness declared holy!
* * *
That the strong races of Northern Europe have not thrust from themselves
the Christian God, is verily no honor to their religious talent, not to
speak of their taste. They ought to have got the better of such a sickly
and decrepit product of _décadence_. There lies a curse upon them,
because they have not got the better of it: they have incorporated
sickness, old age and contradiction into all their instincts--they have
_created_ no God since! Two millenniums almost, and not a single new
God! But still continuing, and as if persisting by right, as an
_ultimatum_ and _maximum_ of the God-shaping force, of the _creator
spiritus_ in man, this pitiable God of Christian monotono-theism! This
hybrid image of ruin, derived from nullity, concept and contradiction in
which all _décadence_ instincts, all cowardices and lassitudes of soul
have their sanction!
* * *
Has the celebrated story been really understood which stands at the
commencement of the Bible--the story of God's mortal terror of
_science_? It has not been understood. This priest-book _par excellence_
begins appropriately with the great inner difficulty of the priest: he
has only one great danger, consequently "God" has only one great
danger.--
The old God, entire "spirit," entire high priest, entire perfection,
promenades in his garden: he only wants pastime. Against tedium even
Gods struggle in vain. What does he do? He contrives man--man is
entertaining.... But behold, man also wants pastime. The pity of God for
the only distress which belongs to all paradises has no bounds: he
forthwith created other animals besides. The _first_ mistake of God: man
did not find the animals entertaining--he ruled over them, but did not
even want to be an "animal"--God consequently created woman. And, in
fact, there was now an end of tedium--but of other things also! Woman
was the _second_ mistake of God.--"Woman is in her essence a serpent,
Hera"--every priest knows that: "from woman comes _all_ the mischief in
the world"--every priest knows that likewise. _Consequently_, _science_
also comes from her.... Only through woman did man learn to taste of the
tree of knowledge.--What had happened? The old God was seized by a
mortal terror. Man himself had become his _greatest_ mistake, he had
created a rival, science makes _godlike_; it is at an end with priests
and Gods, if man becomes scientific!--_Moral_: science is the thing
forbidden in itself--it alone is forbidden. Science is the _first_ sin,
the germ of all sin, _original_ sin. _This alone is morality._--"Thou
shalt _not_ know:"--the rest follows therefrom.--By his mortal terror
God was not prevented from being shrewd. How does one _defend_ one's
self against science? That was for a long time his main problem. Answer:
away with man, out of paradise! Happiness and leisure lead to
thoughts,--all thoughts are bad thoughts.... Man _shall_ not think--and
the "priest in himself" contrives distress, death, the danger of life in
pregnancy, every kind of misery, old age, weariness, and above all
_sickness_,--nothing but expedients in the struggle against science!
Distress does not _permit_ man to think.... And nevertheless! frightful!
the edifice of knowledge towers aloft, heaven-storming, dawning on the
Gods,--what to do!--The old God contrives _war_, he separates the
peoples, he brings it about that men mutually annihilate one another
(the priests have always had need of war ...). War, among other things,
a great disturber of science!--Incredible! Knowledge, the _emancipation
from the priest_, augments even in spite of wars.--And a final
resolution is arrived at by the old God: "man has become
scientific,--_there is no help for it, he must be drowned!_" ...
* * *
--I have been understood. The beginning of the Bible contains the
_entire_ psychology of the priest.--The priest knows only one great
danger: that is science,--the sound concept of cause and effect. But
science flourishes on the whole only under favorable circumstances,--one
must have _superfluous_ time, one must have _superfluous_ intellect in
order to "perceive" ... _Consequently_ man must be made
unfortunate,--this has at all times been the logic of the priest.--One
makes out _what_ has only thereby come into the world in accordance with
this logic:--"sin".... The concepts of guilt and punishment, the whole
"moral order of the world," have been devised _in opposition_ to
science,--_in opposition_ to a severance of man from the priest.... Man
is _not_ to look outwards, he is to look inwards into himself, he is
_not_ to look prudently and cautiously into things like a learner, he is
not to look at all, he is to _suffer_.... And he is so to suffer as to
need the priest always. _A Saviour is needed._--The concepts of guilt
and punishment, inclusive of the doctrines of "grace," of "salvation,"
and of "forgiveness"--_lies_ through and through, and without any
psychological reality--have been contrived to destroy the _causal sense_
in man, they are an attack on the concepts of cause and effect!--And
_not_ an attack with the fists, with the knife, with honesty in hate and
love! But springing from the most cowardly, most deceitful, and most
ignoble instincts! A _priest's_ attack! A _parasite's_ attack! A
vampirism of pale, subterranean blood-suckers! When the natural
consequences of a deed are no longer "natural," but are supposed to be
brought about by the conceptual spectres of superstition, by "God," by
"spirits," by "souls," as mere "moral" consequences, as reward,
punishment, suggestion, or means of education, the pre-requisite of
perception has been destroyed--_the greatest crime against mankind has
been committed._ Sin, repeated once more, this form of human
self-violation _par excellence_, has been invented for the purpose of
making impossible science, culture, every kind of elevation and nobility
of man; the priest _rules_ by the invention of sin.--
* * *
I _condemn_ Christianity, I bring against the Christian Church the most
terrible of all accusations that ever an accuser has taken into his
mouth. It is to me the greatest of all imaginable corruptions, it has
had the will to the ultimate corruption that is at all possible. The
Christian Church has left nothing untouched with its depravity, it has
made a worthlessness out of every value, a lie out of every truth, a
baseness of soul out of every straight-forwardness. Let a person still
dare to speak to me of its "humanitarian" blessings! To _do away with_
any state of distress whatsoever was counter to its profoundest
expediency, it lived by states of distress, it _created_ states of
distress in order to perpetuate _itself_ eternally.... The worm of sin
for example; it is only the Church that has enriched mankind with this
state of distress!-- ...."Humanitarian" blessings of Christianity! To
breed out of _humanitas_ a self-contradiction, an art of self-violation,
a will to the lie at any price, a repugnance, a contempt for all good
and straight-forward instincts! Those are for me blessing of
Christianity!--Parasitism as the _sole_ praxis of the Church; drinking
out all blood, all love, all hope for life, with its anæmic ideal of
holiness; the other world as the will to the negation of every reality;
the cross as the rallying sign for the most subterranean conspiracy that
has ever existed,--against healthiness, beauty, well-constitutedness,
courage, intellect, _benevolence_ of soul, _against life itself_....
This eternal accusation of Christianity I shall write on all walls,
wherever there are walls,--I have letters for making even the blind
see.... I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic
depravity, the one great instinct of revenge for which no expedient is
sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, _mean_,--I call it the one
immortal blemish of mankind!
BRAIN WORK AND MANUAL WORK.
By PETER KROPOTKIN.
IN olden times men of science, and especially those who have done most
to forward the growth of natural philosophy, did not despise manual work
and handicraft. Galileo made his telescopes with his own hands. Newton
learned in his boyhood the art of managing tools; he exercised his young
mind in contriving most ingenious machines, and when he began his
researches in optics he was able himself to grind the lenses for his
instruments, and himself to make the well-known telescope, which, for
its time, was a fine piece of workmanship. Leibnitz was fond of
inventing machines: windmills and carriages to be moved without horses
preoccupied his mind as much as mathematical and philosophical
speculations. Linnæus became a botanist while helping his father--a
practical gardener--in his daily work. In short, with our great geniuses
handicraft was no obstacle to abstract researches--it rather favored
them. On the other hand, if the workers of old found but few
opportunities for mastering science, many of them had, at least, their
intelligences stimulated by the very variety of work which was performed
in the then unspecialized workshops; and some of them had the benefit of
familiar intercourse with men of science. Watt and Rennie were friends
with Professor Robinson; Brindley, the road-maker, despite his
fourteen-pence-a-day wages, enjoyed intercourse with educated men, and
thus developed his remarkable engineering faculties; the son of a
well-to-do family could "idle" at a wheelwright's shop, so as to become
later on a Smeaton or a Stephenson.
We have changed all that. Under the pretext of division of labor, we
have sharply separated the brain worker from the manual worker. The
masses of the workmen do not receive more scientific education than
their grandfathers did; but they have been deprived of the education of
even the small workshop, while their boys and girls are driven into a
mine or a factory from the age of thirteen, and there they soon forget
the little they may have learned at school. As to the men of science,
they despise manual labor. How few of them would be able to make a
telescope, or even a plainer instrument? Most of them are not capable
of even designing a scientific instrument, and when they have given a
vague suggestion to the instrument-maker they leave it with him to
invent the apparatus they need. Nay, they have raised the contempt of
manual labor to the height of a theory. "The man of science," they say,
"must discover the laws of nature, the civil engineer must apply them,
and the worker must execute in steel or wood, in iron or stone, the
patterns devised by the engineer. He must work with machines invented
for him, not by him. No matter if he does not understand them and cannot
improve them: the scientific man and the scientific engineer will take
care of the progress of science and industry."
It may be objected that nevertheless there is a class of men who belong
to none of the above three divisions. When young they have been manual
workers, and some of them continue to be; but, owing to some happy
circumstances, they have succeeded in acquiring some scientific
knowledge, and thus they have combined science with handicraft. Surely
there are such men; happily enough there is a nucleus of men who have
escaped the so-much-advocated specialization of labor, and it is
precisely to them that industry owes its chief recent inventions. But in
old Europe at least, they are the exceptions; they are the
irregulars--the Cossacks who have broken the ranks and pierced the
screens so carefully erected between the classes. And they are so few,
in comparison with the ever-growing requirements of industry--and of
science as well, as I am about to prove--that all over the world we hear
complaint about the scarcity of precisely such men.
What is the meaning, in fact, of the outcry for technical education
which has been raised at one and the same time in England, in France, in
Germany, in the States, and in Russia, if it does not express a general
dissatisfaction with the present division into scientists, scientific
engineers, and workers? Listen to those who know industry, and you will
see that the substance of their complaint is this: "The worker whose
task has been specialized by the permanent division of labor has lost
the intellectual interest in his labor, and it is especially so in the
great industries: he has lost his inventive powers. Formerly, he
invented very much. Manual workers--not men of science nor trained
engineers--have invented, or brought to perfection, the prime motors and
all that mass of machinery which has revolutionized industry for the
last hundred years. But since the great factory has been enthroned, the
worker, depressed by the monotony of his work, invents no more. What can
a weaver invent who merely supervises four looms, without knowing
anything either about their complicated movements or how the machines
grew to be what they are? What can a man invent who is condemned for
life to bind together the ends of two threads with the greatest
celerity, and knows nothing beyond making a knot?