II.
THE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.
If Anarchism, like all other revolutionary movements, originated among the people during the tumult of strife, and not in a scientist's study, it is important, nevertheless, to know the position it occupies among the various currents of scientific and philosophic thought that exist at the present time. What is its attitude in respect to these divers currents? To which of them does it turn for support? Which method of research does it make use of in order to prove its conclusions? In other words what school of Philosophy of Law does Anarchy belong With what current of modern science does it show most affinity?
In view of the infatuation for metaphysical economics which we have recently seen in Socialist circles, this question presents considerable interest. I will therefore try to reply to it as briefly and simply as possible, avoiding all difficult terms when they can be avoided.
The intellectual movement of the nineteenth century originated from the works written by Scotch and French philosophers in the middle and towards the end of the preceding century.
The awakening of thought which took place in those times human stimulated these thinkers with the desire of encompassing all human knowledge in a general system—а System of Nature. Putting aside the scholastic and metaphysical views of the Middle Ages, they had the courage to conceive all Nature—the universe of stars, our solar system, our globe, the development of plants, of animals, and of human society on its surface—as a series of facts to be studied in the same way as natural sciences are.
Making use of the true scientific method, the inductive-deductive method, they undertook the study of all facts presented to us by Nature—whether belonging to the world of stars or of animals, or to that of beliefs or human institutions—absolutely in the same way as a naturalist would study questions of physical science. They began by collecting facts, and when they ventured upon generalisations, they resorted to induction. They sometimes made hypotheses, but they attributed no more importance to these suppositions than Darwin attributed to his hypothesis concerning the origin of new species by means of natural selection in the struggle for existence, or that Mendéléeff attributes to his "periodic law." They looked upon them as suppositions affording a temporary explanation ("working hypotheses") and facilitating the grouping of facts, as well as their subsequent study; but these suppositions were not accepted before they were confirmed by applying them to a multitude of facts, and explained in a theoretical, deductive way; and they were not considered as natural "laws"—that is, proved generalisations—so long as they had not been carefully verified, and until the causes of their constant exactitude had been explained.
When the centre of the philosophic movement was transferred from Scotland and England to France, the French philosophers, with that perception of system which belongs to the French thinkers, began to construct all human sciences, both natural and historical, on a general plan and on the same principles. They attempted to construct "generalised knowledge"—that is, the philosophy of the Universe and its life—upon a strictly scientific basis. They consequently put aside all metaphysical constructions of the preceding philosophers, and explained all phenomena by the action of those same physical forces (that is to say, mechanical actions and reactions) that sufficed them to explain the origin and the evolution of the terrestrial globe.
It is said that when Napoleon I. remarked to Laplace that in his "Exposition of the System of the Universe" the name of God was nowhere to be found, Laplace answered: "I nowhere felt the need of that hypothesis." But Laplace did more. He never resorted either to the grand metaphysical words behind which lies the incomprehension or the obscure semi-comprehension of phenomena, together with the inability to consider facts in their concrete form, as measurable quantities. Laplace dispensed with Metaphysics as well as with the hypothesis of a Creator; and although his "Exposition of the System of the Universe" contains no mathematical calculations and was written in a style comprehensible to all educated readers, mathematicians could later on express each separate thought of that work in mathematical equations—that is to say, as conditions of equality between two or more given quantities. So exactly had Laplace thought out every detail of his work.
What Laplace did for the celestial mechanics, the French philosophers of the eighteenth century did also for the study of most phenomena of life, as well as for those of the human understanding and feeling (psychology). They gave up the metaphysics that prevailed in the works of their predecessors and in those of the German philosopher, Kant.
It is known, indeed, that Kant, for instance, explained man's moral feeling by saying that it represents "a categorical imperative," and that a particular principle of behaviour is obligatory "if we conceive it as a law capable of universal application." But every word in this definition represents something nebulous and incomprehensible ("imperative" and "categorical," "law," "universal"!) that has been introduced instead of moral facts, known to us all, and of which he attempted to give the explanation.
The French Encyclopaedists could not be satisfied with such "grand words" by way of "explanations." Like their Scotch and English predecessors, when they wanted to explain whence man obtained his conception of good and evil, they did not insert, as Goethe said, "a little word where the ideas were wanting." They studied man himself; and, like Hutcheson (1725), and later on Adam Smith in his best work, "The Origin of Moral Feeling," they found that the moral sentiment of man derives its origin from a feeling of pity and of sympathy which we feel towards those who suffer; that it springs from our capacity of identifying ourselves with others; so much so that we almost feel physical pain when we see a child beaten in our presence, and our nature revolts at such behaviour.
Beginning with such every-day observations as these and with well-known facts, the Encyclopaedists arrived at broad generalisations. By this method they really explained moral feeling, which is a complex fact, by showing from which simpler facts it originates. But they never put, instead of known and comprehensible facts, incomprehensible and nebulous words, which explained absolutely nothing—such words as "imperative" and "categorical," or "universal law."
The advantage of this method is obvious. Instead of looking for an "inspiration from on high," instead of seeking for a supernatural origin, placed outside of humanity, for the moral sense, they said: "Here is your human feeling of pity and sympathy, inherited by man at his very origin, which man has confirmed by his observations of his fellow creatures, and perfected little by little by his experience of social life."
We thus see that the thinkers of the eighteenth century did not change their method when they passed from the stars and physical bodies to the world of chemical reactions, or from the physical and chemical world to the life of plants and animals, to Man and to the development of economical and political forms of human society, and finally, to the evolution of the moral sense, the religions, and so on.
The method remained the same. To all branches of science they applied the inductive method. And neither in the study of religions, nor in the analysis of the moral sense and in that of thought altogether, did they find a single case in which their method failed, or in which another method was necessary. Nowhere did they find themselves compelled to have recourse to metaphysical conceptions ("immortal soul," "imperative and categorical laws" inspired by a superior being, etc.), or to any sort of purely dialectic method. And consequently they endeavoured to explain the whole of the universe and all its phenomena in the same way, as naturalists.
During those memorable years of awakening of scientific thought, the Encyclopaedists built their monumental "Encyclopaedia." Laplace published his "System of the Universe," and Holbach his "System of Nature." Lavoisier asserted the indestructibility of matter, and consequently of energy and movement. Lomonosoff, inspired by Bayle, sketched already at that time his mechanical theory of heat; Lamarck explained the origin of the infinitely varied species of plants and animals by adaptation to their divers surroundings; Diderot gave an explanation of moral feeling, of moral customs, of primitive and religious institutions, without having recourse to inspiration from above; Rousseau endeavoured to explain the birth of political institutions following upon a social contract—that is to say, by an act of human will. In short, there was not a sphere which they did not study by means of facts, by the same method of scientific induction and deduction verified by facts.
Of course, more than one error was committed in that great and bold attempt. There, where knowledge was wanting, erroneous and unconfirmed suppositions were sometimes made. But a new method had been applied to whole of human knowledge, and, thanks to this new method, the errors themselves were easily recognised and corrected later on. By this means the nineteenth century received the inheritance of a powerful instrument of research. And with this instrument, modern science was enabled to build our whole conception of the universe on a scientific basis, and to cast away the prejudices that obscured it, as well as the nebulous words which meant nothing, but, from fear of religious prosecution, were thrust in everywhere in order to get rid of difficult questions.