The leading principles of anarchism are marked by great clearness and simplicity, and may be summed up as the rejection of all external authority and of all private appropriation of land and capital. All human relations will depend on the free action and assent of the individuals concerned. Free associations will be formed for industrial and other purposes, and these associations will with a like freedom enter into federal and other relations with each other. The process of social reconstruction is, in short, the free federation of free associations. Considered as an historic socialist movement, anarchism may therefore be set forth under these three heads: (1) Economically it is collectivism; (2) it is a theory of revolutionary action, which is certainly its characteristic feature; (3) it is a theory of the relation of the individual to law or government. As regards the first point, its collectivism is common to it with the prevalent socialism, and therefore need not detain us here. Nor need much be said in the way of criticism of the details of the ultra-revolutionary programme of the anarchists. In our chapter on Marx we have already indicated that the materialism which is common to both schools cannot now be regarded as a tenable or admissible theory of the world. The materialism of both schools sprang from the Hegelian left. It should now be considered as dead, and should in all fairness be set aside in discussion for or against socialism. With regard to religion and marriage, it is hardly necessary to state that progress lies not in the abolition, but in the purification and elevation of those great factors of human life. Bakunin’s criticism of religion is simply a tissue of confusion and misconception. Marriage is a fundamental institution, on the purity and soundness of which social health and social progress must above all things depend: in this matter, more than almost any other, society must and should insist on the maintenance of due safeguards and regulations. Free love is a specious and delusive theory, which would tend to bring back social chaos. It would certainly establish a new slavery of women, whose needs and rights would be sacrificed in the name of a hollow and disastrous freedom.