Spencer's Views on the Organisation of Society -- Society Conceived from the Nominalist and Realist Standpoint -- The Idealism of Anarchists -- Spencer's Work: _From Freedom to Restraint_. When Vaillant was before his judges he mentioned Herbert Spencer, among others, as one of those from whom he had derived his Anarchist convictions. Anarchists refer not seldom to the gray-headed Master of Sociology as one of themselves; and still more often do the Socialists allude to him as an Anarchist. People like Laveleye, Lafarque, and (lately) Professor Enrico Ferri,[1] have allowed themselves to speak of Spencer's Anarchist and Individualist views in his book, _The Individual versus the State_. If Vaillant, the bomb-thrower, rejoiced in such ignorance of persons and things as to quote Spencer, without thinking, as a fellow-thinker, we need hardly say much about it; but when men who are regarded as authorities in so-called scientific Socialism, do the same, we can only perceive the small amount either of conscientiousness or science with which whole tendencies of the social movement are judged, and judged too by a party which, before all others, is interested in procuring correct and precise judgments on this matter. For those who number Herbert Spencer among the Anarchists, either do not understand the essence of Anarchism, or else do not understand Spencer's views; or both are to them a _terra incognita_. [1] _Socialismus und Moderne Wissenschaft_, p. 129. Leipsic, 1895. As far as concerns the book, _The Individual versus the State_ (London, 1885), this is really only a closely printed pamphlet of some thirty pages, in which Spencer certainly attacks Socialism severely as an endeavour to strengthen an organisation of society, based on compulsion, at the expense of individual freedom and of voluntary organisations already secured; but not a single Anarchist thought is to be found in his pages, unless any form of opposition to forcing human life into a social organisation of regimental severity is to be called Anarchism. We may remark _en passant_ that here we have a splendid example of freedom of thought as understood by the Socialists; in their (so-called) free people's State the elements of Anarchism would assume a much more repulsive form than under the present _bourgeois_ conditions. And that is just what Spencer prophesies in his little book.