XV.
CONCLUSION.
What has been said in the preceding chapters will probably be sufficient to give a general idea of Anarchism, and to show the place it occupies in modern thought and its relations to modern science.
It represents an attempt to apply the generalisations obtained by the inductive-deductive method of natural sciences to the appreciation of human institutions; as also to foretell, on the basis of these appreciations, the probable aspects of the further march of mankind towards liberty, equality, and fraternity, guided by the desire to obtain the greatest possible sum of happiness for each unit in every human society.
Anarchism is the inevitable result of the intellectual movement in natural sciences which began towards the end of the eighteenth century, and, after having been retarded by the triumph of reaction in Europe after the defeat of the French Revolution, flourished anew in all its might sixty years later. Having its origin in the natural philosophy of the eighteenth century, it had not its basis completely established till after the revival of science which took place in the middle of the nineteenth century, giving new life to the study of institutions and human societies on a natural science basis.
The so-called "scientific laws," which seemed to satisfy the German metaphysicians during the first thirty years of the nineteenth century, find no room in Anarchist conceptions. Anarchism recognises no method of research but the scientific one; and it applies this method to all sciences usually described as the humanitarian sciences.
This is the scientific aspect of Anarchism.
Taking advantage of the scientific method of the exact sciences, as well as of the researches made of late under the impulse of this method, Anarchism endeavours to reconstruct all sciences concerning man, and re-examines the generally received conceptions of Law, Justice, etc. Basing itself on the new data obtained by anthropological research, and extending the work of its eighteenth-century predecessors, Anarchism has sided with the individual against the State, and with society against the
