Page:Peter Alexeivitch Kropotkin - Modern Science and Anarchism (1912).pdf/76



Such being the leading ideas of Anarchism, let us take now a few concrete illustrations, to show the place that our ideas occupy in the scientific and social movement of our own times.

When we are told that we must respect Law (written with a capital letter), because "Law is Truth expressed in an objective form," or because "the leading steps in the evolution of Law are the same as those of the evolution of Mind," or again, because "Law and Morality are identical, and only differ from each other in form"—we listen to such high-flown assertions with as little reverence as Mephistopheles did in Goethe's "Faust." We know, of course, that those who wrote them spent much effort of mind before they thus worded their thoughts, imagining them to be extremely deep; but we know also that these were nothing but unconscious attempts at broad generalisations, founded, however, on an altogether insufficient basis, and obscured by words so chosen as to hypnotise men by their high-style obscurity.

In fact, in ancient times men endeavoured to give a divine origin to Law; later on, they strove to give it a metaphysical basis; but to-day we are able to study the origin of the conceptions of Law, and their anthropological development, just as we are able to study the evolution of weaving or of the ways of honey-making by the bees. Having now at our disposal the work of the anthropological school, we study the appearance of social customs and conceptions of Law amongst the most primitive savages, and we follow their gradual development through the codes of different historical periods, down to our own times.

In so doing, we come to the conclusion, already mentioned on one of the preceding pages:—All laws have a double origin, and it is precisely this double origin which distinguishes them from customs established by usage and representing the principles of morality existing in a particular society at a particular epoch. Law confirms these customs: it crystallises them; but at the same time it takes advantage of these generally approved customs, in order to introduce in disguise, under their sanction, some new institution which is entirely to the advantage of the