Page:Anarchism- Its Aims and Methods (Yarros, 1887).pdf/10

 causes." When placing the responsibility for most of the modern social evils at the door of the State, we do not for a moment lose sight of the indisyyputable fact that the firm hold which the State has on the minds of the people is due to some general cause for which the State, being a result, cannot be held accountable. Later we shall have occasion to touch up on the fact of the people's fond nursing of the viper; at present we are concerned with the nature of the State, its past, and its effect on human relations.

The State, as Herbert Spencer says, is begotten of aggression and by aggression. It is essentially a war-institution. Both primitive and modern history abound with convincing evidence that coercive government owes its origin, as well as its preservation and opportunities for extension, to special climatic, geographical, and other physical conditions. War was the agent of evolution and the means whereby tribes unfavorably situated secured their survival. The political State, in whatever form, represents, in its main and unvarying features, that type of social organization which is best adapted to the necessities and emergencies of warlike people. On the other hand we read [See Spencer's "Political Institutions" and Tyler's "Anthropology"] and hear very frequently of tribes and small communities living in peace and contentment in the utter absence of a coercive power, or of what we call government. They have their methods and agencies for restraining trespassers, and they find them entirely adequate. Recognizing thus that the State is not an accident in history, and conceding even that it was both necessary and serviceable to the progressive development of society, the Anarchists, however, maintain that its legitimate occupation is entirely gone, and that it is at present playing a very abnormal part in the social life of civilized