Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/39

 usages and customs created by mankind for the sake of mutual aid, mutual defence, and peace in general, were precisely elaborated by the "nameless multitude." And it was these customs that enabled man to survive in his struggle for existence in the midst of extremely hard natural conditions. Science demonstrates to us that the so-called leaders, heroes, and legislators of humanity have added nothing to history beyond what had already been worked out by the Customary Law. The best of them have only put into words and sanctioned the institutions that already existed by habit and custom; while the great number of these would-be benefactors only strove to destroy the unwritten customary law whenever it hindered the establishment of their personal authority, or else they remodelled the popular institutions to their own advantage and to that of their caste.

As long ago as those remote ages which are lost in the dark night of the Glacial period, men lived in societies. And in these societies a whole series of institutions were worked out and rigidly observed, in order to make possible the life in common. And later on, through the whole course of human evolution, the same creative power of the nameless multitude always worked out new forms of social life, of mutual aid, of guarantees of peace, as soon as new conditions arose.

On the other hand, modern science clearly demonstrates that law, whatever its origin—whether represented as derived from a divinity or from the wisdom of a lawgiver—has never done more than to widen the sphere of application, to fix, or rather to crystallise in a permanent form, such customs as already were in existence. All the codes of antiquity were nothing else but collections of customs and habits, put in writing in order to preserve them for the coming generations. But in doing so, the lawmakers always added to these customs some new rules—rules of inequality and servile submission of the masses, in the interest of the armed rich and the warlike minorities.

"Thou shalt not kill," the law of Moses said; "thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not bear false witness." But to these excellent moral rules, generally recognised at that time, it added: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his slave, nor his ass," by which for a long time it legalised slavery, and put woman on a level with slaves and beasts of burden.

"Love your neighbour," said Christianity later on; but it hastened to add by the mouth of the Apostle Paul: "Slaves obey your masters," and "No authority but from God's will"—thus legitimising and deifying the division between masters and slaves,