Page:An Appeal to the Young by Kropotkin.djvu/10

 spirit of life itself are on the side of those who fight for light, for humanity, for justice!

You stop me at last!

"What the devil!" you say. "But if abstract science is a luxury and practice of medicine mere chicane; if law spells injustice, and mechanical invention is but a means of robbery; if the school, at variance with the wisdom of the "practical man", is sure to be overcome, and art without the revolutionary idea can only degenerate, what remains for me to do?"

A vast and most enthralling task; a work in which your actions will be in complete harmony with your conscience, an undertaking capable of rousing the noblest and most vigorous natures.

What work?—I will now tell you.

Two courses are open to you: you can either tamper for ever with your conscience and finish one day by saying "Humanity can go to the devil as long as I am enjoying every pleasure to the full and so long as the people are foolish enough to let me do so." Or else you will join the ranks of the socialists and work with them for the complete transformation of society. Such is the necessary result of the analysis we have made; such is the logical conclusion at which every intelligent being must arrive provided he judge impartially the things he sees around him, and disregard the sophisms suggested to him by his middle-class education and the interested views of his friends.

Having once reached this conclusion the question which arises is "what is to be done?"

The answer is easy.

Quit the environment in which you are placed and in which it is customary to speak of the workers as a lot of brutes, go amongst the people, and the question will solve itself.

You will find that everywhere, in England as in Germany, in Italy as in the United States, wherever there are privileged classes and oppressed, a tremendous movement is a-foot amongst the working classes, the aim of which is to destroy once and for ever the slavery imposed by the capitalist feudality, and to lay the foundations of a new society, based on the principles of justice and equality. It no longer suffices for the people to voice their misery in those songs whose melody breaks one's heart, and which the serfs of the eighteenth century sung, and which the Slavonic peasant still sings to-day; he works to-day, fully conscious of what he has done, in spite of every obstacle for his enfranchisement. His thoughts are continually occupied in considering what to do so that life instead of being a mere curse to three-fourths of the human race may be a blessing to all. He attacks the most difficult problems of sociology, and strives to solve them with his sound commonsense, his observation, and his sad experience. To come to a common understanding with his fellows in misfortune, he tries to form groups and to organise. He forms societies, sustained with difficulty by slender contributions; he tries to make terms with his fellows beyond the frontier; and he does more than all the loud mouthed philanthropists to hasten in the advent of the day when wars between nations will become impossible. To know what his brothers are doing, to improve his acquaintance with them, to elaborate and propagate his ideas, he sustains, at the cost of what continuous efforts! his working press.