Man, in order to procure as speedily as possible the most thorough satisfaction of his wants, seeks RULE.In the beginning, this rule is to him living, visible, and tangible.It is his father, his master, his king.The more ignorant man is, the more obedient he is, and the more absolute is his confidence in his guide.But, it being a law of man's nature to conform to rule,--that is, to discover it by his powers of reflection and reason,--man reasons upon the commands of his chiefs.Now, such reasoning as that is a protest against authority,--a beginning of disobedience.At the moment that man inquires into the motives which govern the will of his sovereign,--at that moment man revolts.If he obeys no longer because the king commands, but because the king demonstrates the wisdom of his commands, it may be said that henceforth he will recognize no authority, and that he has become his own king.Unhappy he who shall dare to command him, and shall offer, as his authority, only the vote of the majority; for, sooner or later, the minority will become the majority, and this imprudent despot will be overthrown, and all his laws annihilated.
In proportion as society becomes enlightened, royal authority diminishes.That is a fact to which all history bears witness.
At the birth of nations, men reflect and reason in vain.Without methods, without principles, not knowing how to use their reason, they cannot judge of the justice of their conclusions.Then the authority of kings is immense, no knowledge having been acquired with which to contradict it.But, little by little, experience produces habits, which develop into customs; then the customs are formulated in maxims, laid down as principles,--in short, transformed into laws, to which the king, the living law, has to bow.There comes a time when customs and laws are so numerous that the will of the prince is, so to speak, entwined by the public will; and that, on taking the crown, he is obliged to swear that he will govern in conformity with established customs and usages; and that he is but the executive power of a society whose laws are made independently of him.
Up to this point, all is done instinctively, and, as it were, unconsciously; but see where this movement must end.
By means of self-instruction and the acquisition of ideas, man finally acquires the idea of SCIENCE,--that is, of a system of knowledge in harmony with the reality of things, and inferred from observation.He searches for the science, or the system, of inanimate bodies,--the system of organic bodies, the system of the human mind, and the system of the universe: why should he not also search for the system of society? But, having reached this height, he comprehends that political truth, or the science of politics, exists quite independently of the will of sovereigns, the opinion of majorities, and popular beliefs,--that kings, ministers, magistrates, and nations, as wills, have no connection with the science, and are worthy of no consideration.He comprehends, at the same time, that, if man is born a sociable being, the authority of his father over him ceases on the day when, his mind being formed and his education finished, he becomes the associate of his father; that his true chief and his king is the demonstrated truth; that politics is a science, not a stratagem; and that the function of the legislator is reduced, in the last analysis, to the methodical search for truth.
Thus, in a given society, the authority of man over man is inversely proportional to the stage of intellectual development which that society has reached; and the probable duration of that authority can be calculated from the more or less general desire for a true government,--that is, for a scientific government.
And just as the right of force and the right of artifice retreat before the steady advance of justice, and must finally be extinguished in equality, so the sovereignty of the will yields to the sovereignty of the reason, and must at last be lost in scientific socialism.Property and royalty have been crumbling to pieces ever since the world began.As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy.
ANARCHY,--the absence of a master, of a sovereign,--such is the form of government to which we are every day approximating, and which our accustomed habit of taking man for our rule, and his will for law, leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of chaos.The story is told, that a citizen of Paris in the seventeenth century having heard it said that in Venice there was no king, the good man could not recover from his astonishment, and nearly died from laughter at the mere mention of so ridiculous a thing.So strong is our prejudice.As long as we live, we want a chief or chiefs; and at this very moment Ihold in my hand a brochure, whose author--a zealous communist--dreams, like a second Marat, of the dictatorship.The most advanced among us are those who wish the greatest possible number of sovereigns,--their most ardent wish is for the royalty of the National Guard.Soon, undoubtedly, some one, jealous of the citizen militia, will say, "Everybody is king." But, when he has spoken, I will say, in my turn, "Nobody is king; we are, whether we will or no, associated." Every question of domestic politics must be decided by departmental statistics;every question of foreign politics is an affair of international statistics.The science of government rightly belongs to one of the sections of the Academy of Sciences, whose permanent secretary is necessarily prime minister; and, since every citizen may address a memoir to the Academy, every citizen is a legislator.But, as the opinion of no one is of any value until its truth has been proven, no one can substitute his will for reason,--nobody is king.
