the method of natural sciences, we are enabled to prove that the so-called "laws" of bourgeois social science, including present political economy, are not at all laws, but simple suppositions or affirmations that nobody has ever attempted to verify. In fact, some of their most essential would-be laws crumbled to pieces as soon as they were submitted to the test of numeric data, taken from a study of real life.
One word more. Scientific research is only fruitful on condition that it has a definite aim—that it was undertaken with the intention of finding an answer to a plain question well put. And every inquiry is the more fruitful the clearer we see the relation existing between the question and the fundamental lines of our general conception of the Universe. The better it fits in with this general conception, the easier is its solution.
Well then. The question put by Anarchism might be expressed in the following way: "Which social forms best guarantee in such and, such societies, and in humanity at large, the greatest sum of happiness, and therefore the greatest sum of vitality?" "Which forms of society are most likely to allow this sum of happiness to increase and develop in quantity and quality—that is to say, will enable this happiness to become more complete and more varied?" (which, by the way, gives us the formula of progress).
The desire to help evolution in this direction determines the social, scientific, and artistic activity of the Anarchist. And this activity, in its turn, precisely on account of its falling in with the development of society in this direction, becomes a source of increased vitality, vigour, sense of oneness with mankind and its best vital forces.
It therefore becomes a source of increased vitality and happiness for the individual.
