Under the designation of anarchist, one can group a large quantity of individuals completely in accord on all points of a like doctrine.
Open a dictionary and you will generally find:
ANARCHY: state without chief, disorder;
ANARCHIST: partisan of anarchy, fomenter of disorder.
Question anarchists, they will answer: "The word must be taken in its strictly etymological sense:
A (privative) NOT and ARCHE: GOVERNMENT AUTHORITY.
Anarchists are individuals who do not accept authority. It follows from this that Anarchists will not accomplish action because ordered, but because they will have weighed the motives.
Partisans of legality will say: "We submit to positive laws because they are positive laws".
Anarchists will say: "We do not accept positive laws because we will, at every moment, judge if it is reasonable or not to act in a certain way or another. Positive laws are imposed by force, not by reason".
To say that individuals do not accept authority does not imply in any way the desire of disorder (from lat.; Dis, negative; and Ordo, methodical, systematical arrangement) or one must admit that order and authority are synonymous, which is incorrect. It is by excess of words that Anarchists are defined as partisans of disorder.
To say that individuals do not accept authority, implies on the contrary, that these individuals reserve to themselves to weigh, at every moment, the motives which determine their actions; and will not leave that work to others.
Individuals are, after us, reasonable when they do not admit any other motives of action than those which they CAN FREELY DEMONSTRATE to themselves, the necessity, given their nature.
ANARCHISTS are then in consequence of our definition, REASONABLE INDIVIDUALS, because they do not admit of any other motive of action than that which they can demonstrate the necessity of to themselves given their nature.
It is important to remark that the word "REASONABLE" is employed by the major part of we humans in an opposite sense of our definition. After us, REASONABLE INDIVIDUALS do not accept any "a priori" ideas, while in the practice of the actual society, individuals are considered as reasonable when they act in conformity with the ideas admitted "a priori" by their contemporaries.
We mean by FREE DEMONSTRATION the one made without the help of any "a priori" ideas.
The A PRIORI IDEAS (PREJUDICED IDEAS, PREJUDICES) are those which are adopted without previous discussion. The A POSTERIORI IDEAS are those which are adopted after free examination.
Example: Individuals having decided "a posterior)" that is to say after free examination to do away with theologian practices; their relatives will say to them: you are not reasonable. If you were reasonable, you would worship; which for us means: you have not the prejudice of Deity. If you had it, you will worship.
Now, having a prejudice, that is having an opinion a priori, before judgement, before reasoning, When in the circumstances cited the relatives said: you are not reasonable, it must be understood: you are reasonable because you will not have our a priori ideas, you discuss them and will not act without reasoning.
The habitual argument in such a case: One must act as every one else simply signify: THE REASONABLE PEOPLE, WHO DO NOT ACT IN CONFORMITY TO THE PREJUDICES OF THE UNREASONABLE, ARE CONSIDERED AS UNREASONABLE BY THE UNREASONABLE PEOPLE.
ANARCHY for all anarchists, implies ABSENCE OF AUTHORITY, AND NOT ABSENCE OF ORDER. Authority and order, as we have remarked, are not synonymous.
Reasonable individuals are not those who act, as their contemporaries, in conformity to prejudices, but are those who reserve to themselves the faculty of weighing on all occasions the motives which will determine their actions.
It is quite clear that to reason a posterior) is not sufficient for acting logically. It is necessary yet that the reasoning a posterior) be logical, that is to say conform to certain principles which can be established because they result of the nature of things which are consecrated by experience and which constitute a special science. We will add that one can act logically without knowing these principles. In such a case one practices a theory of which one is ignorant.
In view to show how the humans who are supposed to reason correctly are habitually unreasonable, we will take as example those which it is agreed to call "SAVANTS" (scientists), and we will have no difficulty in showing that outside of their speciality--and even often in their speciality--they act without discernment. In scientific matter, scientists do not generally recognise the right to anyone of imposing their will upon them. They comport themselves as anarchists, as individuals decided not to submit to any authority, reserving to themselves the right of controlling and examining everything.
For instance, why do they accept that at a certain temperature and pressure water transforms into ice? Because they can demonstrate this truth to themselves and not because others have decided so. If positive laws happened to declare that at this temperature and pressure water does not transform into ice: "NEVER MIND POSITIVE LAWS, THEY WILL SAY; the legislators can impose, under sanction of fine, prison or death that at the temperature and pressure indicated, water transforms into an archbishop or a politician, we will none the less have ascertained that it transforms into ice, because we have acquired this notion A POSTERIORI and no one will force us to accept A PRIORI anything else.
What is necessary to shock their a posterior) acceptation? Not orders, not authority imposed by others but simply a posterior) arguments unknown to them until now. For example, in this case, the relation of precise experiments from which will result that they had observed incorrectly.
In a word, Scientists consider that in scientific matter it is important not to have such and such opinions but to have opinions after free examination, a posterior).
They will only recognise as true what their reason has demonstrated to them as such. They consider TRUTH as the expression of verifiable ratios (our definition), or as a plausible hypothesis, logical consequence of non-contradictory hypothesis (definition of Mr Laurent). In scientific matter they will be anarchists.
Now, these same scientists, who are content to practice the scientific method, who are anarchists in their special domain, who are content to determine verifiable ratios without wishing to impose them upon others, refusing to accept a priori those determined by others and acting in consequence of the ratios verified by them, may be complete ABRUTIS in other domains.
The one who cannot reason is a BRUTE.
The one whom it has been interdicted to reason, to whom it has been suggested to renounce reasoning or who interdicts to oneself the use of reason, is an ,ABRUTI.
Example: As bacteriologist, Pasteur was an ANARCHIST; rejecting all authority and reasoning a posterior); As believer, (he was a Theist) Pasteur was an ABRUTI, accepting ideas a priori.
Another example more general: the Scientists, who however, in their domain, base themselves on a posterior) ideas will, in social matters, accept positive laws and authority, that is to say will do a great number of acts, not because they consider them logical-a posterior)-, but because they are positive laws, that is to say because these actions are ordered a priori, Anarchists on the contrary transport the scientific method everywhere, refusing to accept anything a priori. They will not submit to authority in sociology any more than in any other scientific matter. For them a positive law having been imposed by force will have to be discussed. If they do not find it reasonable, if they do not find any positive laws reasonable, they will refuse to accept that positive law, all positive laws, any principles that they will recognise as unreasonable. They will not be abrutis, they will say to the scientists: YOU WILL REASON SOMETIMES, WE WILL REASON ALWAYS.
Against the fact that many scientists accept yet, in scientific matter, -a priori- ideas, all appear to be in accord to banish authority out of science and to be scientifically anarchist, the cause of this is indeed very simple.
It will not be in their power to be scientists and authoritarians at the same time.
Authority implies imposition of ideas, a priori, [without reasoning]: science implies acceptation of ideas, a posterior), [after reasoning].
What Pascal called GEOMETRICAL INTELLECT can be well considered as the scientific method and we will undertake very easily to show that science can be brought back to a vast enchainment of theorems.
What are the professors doing when teaching geometry to pupils? Are they using authority? No! they reason in front of them and there is nothing more pleasing, fraternal and equalitarian than the event to which such a teaching gives rise.
Individuals are there, saying to others: Here is what we are going to demonstrate to you. And, after the demonstration is made, they add: Here is what was to be demonstrated. This means: Now friends, have you well understood, are we all in good accord, is it your opinion that we have not made any mistake.' And this also signify: " If one amongst you find that we are wrong or if any one of you apperceive an error; warn us quickly and we will verify together because we are seeking TRUTH and desire to render the verification possible to you and not impose anything by force." To the reasoning of a child or a pauper demonstrating logically the falsity of a theorem, the most stupid, vain and foppish beings, Officials of Universities themselves---who often toady to the "privileges", but not to the "common people"---will bow.
And that is why we consider that the true characteristic of the scientific method is the establishment, a posterior) of the TRUTH, that is to say of verifiable ratios, in opposition to the AUTHORITATIVE METHOD the characteristic of which is to impose a priori the arbitrary, that is to say contestable ratios which it is interdicted to contest.
The anarchist method is nothing else but the scientific one generalised and introduced into the social domain.
In summary, we will say that the Anarchists extend the scientific method to all domains. They determine A POSTERIORI, their relations with their contemporaries. They want to act consequently of the scientific laws, that is to say in conformation to ratios always verifiable determined logically, and not consequently of the positive laws, contestable relations imposed by force, that they reserve to themselves the right to contest, even against the fact that it is formally prohibited.
Those who accept positive laws, authority, will appear to them then, as individuals accomplishing a certain number of acts without reasoning. They will consider that the near totality of humans are lunatics or in better words, abrutis (our definition) amongst whom there is a small quantity of reasonable people who are called anarchists.
The major part of individuals whom, in our time, are called anarchists, are abrutis (our definition). Only the anarchists called SCIENTIFIC, are TRUE ANARCHISTS, to know, individuals decided to be reasonable in all circumstances and able to be such.
To be anarchist (negator of authority, then partisan of reason), one must be able to reason correctly without which it is impossible to make the selection between the formulae of arbitrary and those of reason.
Now, those individuals SO-CALLED ANARCHISTS, their imitators followers and supporters do not know science (classified natural laws); are nearly all more ignorant, dirty, pathological than their other contemporaries whom they call "bourgeois", are often alcoholic tobaccoist and megalomaniac and sometimes go so far as to preconise [recommend] the uselessness of learning, also preaching with bitterness their strong antipathy against the "Learned".
They do not seek, habitually, to leave their ignorance and learn to reason correctly, the result of which is that they are unable to practice the fraternal integral comradery and to evitate [avoid] the mistakes of their contemporaries.
All this is so true that actually Anarchists are considered generally as individuals dirty, badly clothed, saying innumerable stupidities and travelling the world with their pockets full of explosives.
Some of these so-called anarchist "Groups" are composed of professional informers, jokers, sexual perverts, business vampires continually plotting and tricking even against their own comrades.
It is such degenerates which are called Anarchists. What an absurdity! What a calumny:
But, be ignorant, dirty, tobaccoist, alcoholic megalomaniac, etc; refusing to leave one's ignorance, and to learn to reason correctly, it is putting oneself in the impossibility of thinking a posterior), to make a selection between the formulae of arbitrary and those of reason.
Therefore it follows that amongst the many called anarchists, those called "Scientific" are the true ones, the only ones; that they are the only individuals decided to be reasonable in all circumstances and able to be such.
All the previous remarks, made by us, concerning the false anarchists, apply to those abrutis known as Tolstoi, Ibsen, Nietche, Max Stirner, etc., etc., etc., whom, given their ignorance did use their prejudices as a pretext to misrepresent and discredit the scientific and rational doctrine known as Anarchism which they never understood.
The humans will be reasonable;
If they are unreasonable, then unreasonable society with or without government.
If they are reasonable, then no need of government.
Translated from the OEWRES of Paraf Javal, by Dr. X.Sphynx, and issued by Friends in Integrai Comradery for the Australian Branch of the Groupes D'Etudes Scientifiques by Ralph Carterer, Sydney, 1913
