Note 1345 — Chapter IV · : THE ANARCHISTS

This idea finds frequent expression both with Reclus and Kropotkin. “The fact that we have instituted, regulated, codified, and encompassed with constraints and penalties, with gendarmes and jailers, the larger part of our more or less incoherent collection of political, religious, moral and social conceptions of to-day in order to enforce them upon the citizens of to-morrow is in itself sufficiently absurd, and it is bound to have contradictory results. Life, which is always improving and renewing itself, can never submit to regulations which have been drawn up in some period now past.” (Reclus, loc. cit., pp. 108-9.) “Anarchist society,” writes Kropotkin, “is one to which any pre-established, crystallised form of law will always be repugnant. It is also one which looks for harmony, which can only be temporary and fugitive perhaps, in the equilibrium between the mass of different forces and influences of every kind which pursue their course without the slightest deflection, and which because they are quite untrammelled beget reaction and arouse those activities which are favourable to them when they move in the direction of progress.” (L’Anarchie, pp. 17, 18.)