Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 2.djvu/810

This page needs to be proofread.

794 THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY

tendencies. On the one hand he urges that with private property the "joy of life" begins ; on the other hand he recommends the abolition of hereditary rights. The state should be the sole heir of all decedents. Only what one has himself earned he should be allowed to retain for life.

The only possible form of government in his social-aristo- cratic state is thought by the author to be a republic, for under such a government the most deserving will always be placed at the head of affairs by their grateful fellows. He reduces his social-aristocratic ethics to the following code : i) Thou shalt labor. 2) No work, no pay! 3) No duty, no right! 4) The sexual command Thou shalt not sell thy person ! We see that the decalogue is here compressed into four articles, of which 2) and 3) are identical, and are not commands but perceived facts Thus the new ethic has but two commandments and these were in principle familiar to every philistine in the eighteenth century.

Still briefer is the ethic of the anarchist Bruno Wille, 1 for he has none at all. Wille is a communistic anarchist, yet he cannot free himself from Nietzsche. He cannot keep from glorifying the individual, although he has society for the most part in mind. In his essential ideas, however, he is dependent upon Eugene Diihring, although he confesses with touching modesty that he has not quite clearly comprehended this thinker's philosophy. We need only to recall a few of Duhring's sentences to show the dependence. For example : " Free socialization can never end in lordship of one over others." 2 " Force as such is an evil even when it serves righteousness " (p. 270). "If natural political socialization had anywhere been able to develop itself without serious interference from the rob- ber system, the great powers with their weak supports would never have existed" (p. 279).

Bruno Wille starts with an abstract free "man of reason" ( VernunftmenscK) . This assumed being, without hindrance from

1 Philosophic der Befreiung durch das reine Mittel. Beitrage zur Padagogik des Menschengeschlechts. Berlin, 1894.

2 Cursus der Philosophic, p. 265.