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78 like the prudent bourgeois that we are—but we are not individualists.

Some one at this point will raise his brows, and glimpse between the lines of my prose the dagger of a Caserio or the dynamite of a Ravachol. He need not fear. I am not a half-anarchist, like Spencer, nor a complete anarchist, like Kropotkin or Malatesta. Indeed, I am hostile to Spencer precisely because, failing to understand individualism, he slips toward anarchy.

It is high time to stop the repetition of the statement that anarchy represents the ideal of the greatest possible liberty. Liberty consists in the ability to do certain things, that is, to enjoy and possess certain properties; and since property is by its nature limited, the giving of all liberties to all men, the granting to all men of the right to perform all acts, would simply mean the restriction of the share of each—to the benefit of none and the injury of many. People ingenuously believe that liberty is a thing to be distributed, and that it would be well to give it to all men. Universal liberty, on the contrary, would result in a greater number of unimpeded actions, that is to say, in universal helplessness. The anarchistic ideal is not only impracticable; it is self-contradictory.

Now Spencer, in his dream of a future altruistic humanity, without laws and without government, has consciously or unconsciously