Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/43

 law, by learned professors of State law, or by the political economy of metaphysicians; and it endeavours to clearly understand all questions arising in these spheres, basing itself on a mass of work done from the naturalist's point of view during the last thirty or forty years.

In the same way as the metaphysical conceptions of a Mind of the Universe, a Creative Force of Nature, a Loving Attraction of Matter, an Incarnation of the Idea, an Aim of Nature, a Reason for its Existence, the Unknowable, and so forth were gradually abandoned by the materialist (mechanical, or rather kinetic) philosophy, and the embryos of generalisations found hidden behind these words were translated in the concrete language of facts, so do we endeavour now to proceed when we approach the facts of life in societies.

When metaphysicians wish to persuade a naturalist that the intellectual and emotional life of man is unrolled "according to the inherent laws of the Spirit," the naturalist shrugs his shoulders and continues his patient study of the phenomena of life, of intelligence, and of emotions and passions, in order to prove that they may all be reduced to physical and chemical phenomena. He endeavours to discover their natural laws.

Likewise when an Anarchist is told that, according to Hegel, "every evolution represents a thesis, an antithesis, and a synthesis"; or that "the aim of Law is to establish Justice, which represents a materialisation of the Supreme Idea"; or yet again, when he is asked: "What is, then, according to you, the Aim of Life!" the Anarchist likewise shrugs his shoulders. And he asks himself: "How is it possible that with the present development of natural science there should still exist such antiquated beings who go on believing in these 'words and words'! Men speaking still the language of the primitive savage, who used to anthropomorphise Nature by representing it as something governed by beings having human forms!"

Anarchists are not to be deceived by such sonorous phrases, as they know that these phrases only serve to cover, either ignorance—that is to say, incomplete investigation—or, which is far worse, superstition—the fear before the unknown. Therefore, when they are addressed in this language, they pass on without paying attention to it, and continue their study of social conceptions and institutions, past and present, always following the method of the naturalist.

And they find that the development of the life of societies is