And then, to turn cloudward, starward, skyward, and let the dreams rush
over one--no longer awed by outside powers of any order--recognizing
nothing superior to oneself--painting, painting endless pictures,
creating unheard symphonies that sing dream sounds to you alone,
extending sympathies to the dumb brutes as equal brothers, kissing the
flowers as one did when a child, letting oneself go free, go free beyond
the bounds of what _fear_ and _custom_ call the "possible,"--this too
Anarchism may mean to you, if you dare to apply it so. And if you do
some day,--if sitting at your work-bench, you see a vision of surpassing
glory, some picture of that golden time when there shall be no prisons
on the earth, nor hunger, nor houselessness, nor accusation, nor
judgment, and hearts open as printed leaves, and candid as fearlessness,
if then you look across at your low-browed neighbor, who sweats and
smells and curses at his toil,--remember that as you do not know his
depth neither do you know his height. He too might dream if the yoke of
custom and law and dogma were broken from him. Even now you know not
what blind, bound, motionless chrysalis is working there to prepare its
winged thing.
Anarchism means freedom to the soul as to the body,--in every
aspiration, every growth.
A few words as to the methods. In times past Anarchists have excluded
each other on these grounds also; revolutionists contemptuously said
"Quaker" of peace men; "savage Communists" anathematized the Quakers in
return.
This too is passing. I say this: all methods are to the individual
capacity and decision.
There is Tolstoy,--Christian, non-resistant, artist. His method is to
paint pictures of society as it is, to show the brutality of force and
the uselessness of it; to preach the end of government through the
repudiation of all military force. Good! I accept it in its entirety. It
fits his character, it fits his ability. Let us be glad that he works
so.
There is John Most--old, work-worn, with the weight of prison years upon
him,--yet fiercer, fiercer, bitterer in his denunciations of the ruling
class than would require the energy of a dozen younger men to
utter--going down the last hills of life, rousing the consciousness of
wrong among his fellows as he goes. Good! That consciousness must be
awakened. Long may that fiery tongue yet speak.
There is Benjamin Tucker--cool, self-contained, critical,--sending his
fine hard shafts among foes and friends with icy impartiality, hitting
swift and cutting keen,--and ever ready to nail a traitor. Holding to
passive resistance as most effective, ready to change it whenever he
deems it wise. That suits him; in his field he is alone, invaluable.
And there is Peter Kropotkin appealing to the young, and looking with
sweet, warm, eager eyes into every colonizing effort, and hailing with a
child's enthusiasm the uprisings of the workers, and believing in
revolution with his whole soul. Him too we thank.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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