If anything is clearly demonstrated as true, it is that both “government” and “the state” have been evolved out of our own necessities; neither was imposed from without, but both have been evolved from within; both are forms of co-operation.  For the time being the “state” and “government,” as well as the “church” and all human institutions, may be modified or seemingly abolished, but they come back to serve essentially the same purpose.  The French Revolution was an organized attempt to overturn the foundations of society and hasten progress by moving the hands of the clock forward a few centuries,—­the net result was a despotism the like of which the world has not known since the days of Rome.

Anarchy as a system is a bubble, the iridescent hues of which attract, but which vanish into thin air on the slightest contact with reality; it is the perpetual motion of sociology; the fourth dimension of economies; the squaring of the political circle.

The apostles of anarchy are a queer lot,—­Godwin in England, Proudhon, Grave, and Saurin in France, Schmidt ("Stirner"), Faucher, Hess, and Marr in Germany, Bakunin and Krapotkin in Russia, Reclus in Belgium, with Most and Tucker in America, sum up the principal lights,—­with the exception of the geographer Reclus, not a sound and sane man among them; in fact, scarcely any two agree upon a single proposition save the broad generalization that government is an evil which must be eliminated.  Until they do agree upon some one measure or proposition of practical importance, the world has little to fear from their discussions and there is no reason why any attempt should be made to suppress the debate.  If government is an evil, as so many men who are not anarchists keep repeating, then the sooner we know it and find the remedy the better; but if government is simply one of many human institutions developed logically and inevitably to meet conditions created by individual shortcomings, then government will tend to diminish as we correct our own failings, but that it will entirely disappear is hardly likely, since it is inconceivable that men on this earth should ever attain such a condition of perfection that possibility of disagreement is absolutely and forever removed.

Anarchism as a doctrine, as a theory, involves no act of violence any more than communism or socialism.

Between the assassination of a ruler and the doctrine of anarchy there is no necessary connection.  The philosophic anarchist simply believes anarchy is to be the final result of progress and evolution, just as the communist believes that communism will be the outcome; neither theorist would see the slightest advantage in trying to hasten the slow but sure progress of events by deeds of violence; in fact, both theorists would regret such deeds as certain to prove reactionary and retard the march of events.

The world has nothing to fear from anarchism as a theory, and up to thirty or forty years ago it was nothing but a theory.