Page:Four and Twenty Minds.djvu/95

Rh the anarchistic ideal, has displayed an individualism which is anti-personal, like that of all anarchists. For anarchists have failed as yet to understand that since the liberty of all is a contradiction in terms the only liberty which can be established is the liberty of a limited number—that is to say the power of a limited number, the government of a class. Those who are free exercise power, that is, they possess the greater part of all properties, including the labor of other men. And it is clear that any society in which a few are free must necessarily contain many who are slaves.

Despotism is the only practical ideal of anarchy. Alexander the Great, for instance, was far more free than any citizen of modern Europe, precisely because he stood alone, or almost alone, in the power to command and to possess. True individualism consists, then, in counseling subjection, not rebellion; in making slaves, not revolutionists; instruments, not critics. Individualism, the affirmation of full personal power, is in the nature of things reserved for the few, and it is well that the rest of mankind should not get the idea of liberty into their heads. Anarchy, in short, turns out to be in reality an apology for czarism, comes down from an impossible universalism to an easily realized aristocracy, from the theoretical liberty of all to the practical power of the few.