Page:Petr Kropotkin - Organised Vengeance Called 'Justice', Henry Glasse - The Superstition of Government (1902).djvu/11





An impression fixed by long habit of mind, especially where that habit has been transmitted through many generations, ends by assuming the form of instinctive knowledge, too clear to admit of discussion, still less to require demonstration. If such impression is originally based on facts accepted by reason, we call it common sense; if, on the other hand, it springs from error in matter of fact or is the result of distorted reasoning, we call it prejudice. In expounding Anarchism we are met by a certain stolid repugnance as well as a seeming inability to grasp our idea, and this we find to be owing to a prepossession in favor of Government. Let us therefore examine and see if this superstition is based on common sense, or whether it is not the result of prejudice carefully maintained and cultivated in the past by those who have put themselves forward as the guides of humanity.

Throughout the whole of authentic history this fact of Government is continually presented to us as a permanent factor of human life, as well as its most important and interesting aspect; even the legends and myths which precede history are full of the glorious or terrible deeds of rulers—giants on earth, and gods and devils innumerable throughout the universe divide between them the government of men and things. Are we therefore to conclude that government is natural to man? or that it is a requisite of man's social life? We might be tempted