Japanese Buddhism: I. Its Philosophic and Doctrinal Teachings. Keijiro Nakamura 468 Labor's Rights and Wrongs... Late Cecil Rhodes, The: John Emery McLean 111, 222, 335, 447, 559, 671 Ostrich in the New World, The. Physical Basis of History, The. ..Charles Rollin Keyes, Ph.D. 585 Problem of Immigration, The: I. The Argument for Suspension... ..... 113 John Chetwood 254 .Rev. Robert C. Bryant 260 Survival of the Fittest in the Coming Age.....Rev. F. D. Bentley 246 Topics of the Times (Editorial).... B. O. Flower 87, 199, 315, 426, 533, 647 Unity of Christianity and Judaism, The..............Theodore F. Seward 359 Unreal Reality, An: A Tale of the Desert.... .Austin Lewis 157 What Shall It Profit?-A New Year's Story...Mortimer P. Stuart 76 Work of Wives, The.... .Miss M. E. Carter 518 .Flora McDonald Thompson "We do not take possession of our ideas, but are possessed by them. They master us and force us into the arena, THE face to face with the problem of anarchy. It is a problem that demands careful thought before the vigorous action for which the public and the press naturally clamor. Let us have sane and clear thinking if we are to attempt drastic legislation. There are abundant indications on every hand of a sad lack of clear thinking on this subject. The supposed educators of the people need a little education themselves. I. We must distinguish first of all where all distinctions are. too commonly confounded. On the day which announced. the President's death, one of our leading journals declared"Scratch a Socialist and you will find an Anarchist." This is as though it had said-Scratch a Democrat and you will find a Republican, or, Scratch a Catholic and you will find a Protestant. Democrats and Republicans are alike striving for the good of the nation, but by diametrically opposite methods; Catholics and Protestants are each seeking the Kingdom of God, but they are moving. intellectually, in opposite directions to seek it. The same confusion is noticeable elsewhere. Archbishop Corrigan, in his letter to the clergy, lumped together socialism and anarchism; whereupon a brave priest of Kentucky challenges His Grace to a public debate on the subject. Cardinal Gibbons appears to have done the same thing, in his sermon in the Baltimore cathedral. Both dignitaries quote from Pope Leo, who, if the reports of his late pronouncement are correct, has not merely confounded socialism with anarchism, but mixed them inextricably with Freemasonry and Judaism! What an astounding confusion for a vicegerent of God! The "spirit of a sound mind" seems wofully lacking in this ecclesiastical utterance. The faithful may well rejoice that it is not given ex cathedra, imposing thereby the obligations of infallibility. Socialism and anarchism profess indeed the same aim-the regeneration of human society. They are alike in seeking to bring to an end our competitive system of industry, the militarism which curses our modern civilization, and all forms of despotism in government. They unite in endeavoring to bring in an era when all natural sources of wealth shall be owned collectively, and all productive plants shall be also held collectively. But, one seeks this by the way of evolution-the other, in its best known form, by the way of revolution. One is a natural development of our present system-the other would break with the existing order and make a fresh start in civilization. The one would multiply the functions of government—the other would minimize the functions of government. One believes in law-the other believes in no law. The one looks to the State, the city, and the nation for collective ownership of the sources of natural wealth and the means of production and exchange-the other looks to freely formed groups of working people becoming the owners of all natural monopolies and of all means of production and exchange. The ideal society of socialism is a vast organism in which "all are but parts of one stupendous whole," vitally interactive, coördinated into a noble State. Its type is the human body. The ideal of anarchism is a mass of individual cells nucleating together in temporary forms, free to break up at any moment and recombine in other forms. Its type is the jelly-fish, or the sponge. No one but a fool should lump together socialism and anarchism. Socialism cut itself loose from anarchism, formally, many years ago, when the International Workingmen's Association disowned the anarchists. This great international organization sloughed off anarchism from its body. II. We need to distinguish again in anarchism itself. The foremost statesman of the Democratic party in New York State is reported to have contemptuously declared that "no fine-spun distinctions are to be drawn between philosophic anarchism and revolutionary anarchism." This is as though we were to refuse any fine-spun distinctions between the learned Russian savant, Prince Kropotkin, and the Nihilist who threw the bomb that killed Alexander II. It is as though we were to refuse to draw any fine-spun distinctions between the brilliant French geographer, Elise Reclus, and the Parisian petroleuse who fired the Hotel de Ville in the uprising of the Commune in 1871. It is as though we were to refuse to distinguish between Thomas Jefferson and John Most; between the Hebrew prophet Jeremiah and Emma Goldman. For no less antithetical contrasts than these exist in anarchism. All alike are anarchists; but what various sorts of anarchists! Proudhon, the earliest modern philosophic anarchist, defined Communism as the government of all by all, democracy as the government of all by each, and anarchy as the government of each by each. He concluded that anarchy is the only real form of self-government. Under anarchy people would manage their public affairs together, like partners in a business firm, and no one would be subject to the authority of another. Rulers, legislators, and judges would disappear. In the business world society would resolve itself into industrial groups, each of which would manage its affairs coöperatively. Prince Kropotkin, an encyclopedic man of science, of simple and noble character, of ardent patriotism and devoted humanitarianism, who renounced his aristocratic heritage and a brilliant court life in Russia to give himself to the service of the people, believes in anarchy as the ideal of human society, and would seek to educate men toward it. So is it with Elise Reclus. Thomas Jefferson enunciated an ideal of political society which is nothing less than anarchy, when he indicated the goal of all government and law as a social order in which no government should be needed and no laws would be written on the statute-book, because every citizen would be a self-governing unit and the moral law would be enshrined in his heart. Jeremiah indicated the characteristic of the Kingdom of God as found in the fact that in the day of Jehovah a new covenant would be made, and the God of Israel would no longer write His law upon stone tablets, as an external authority to be set up in a theocracy,-a visible government, but would write His laws in men's hearts and make them the natural, spontaneous, self-operating forces of character and conduct. Perhaps the most striking religious leader at the present time is that remarkable Russian, Tolstoi. Tolstoi is an individual anarchist. He does not believe in government and law, not because he would have chaos, but because he would have men themselves govern themselves-establish laws for themselves out of themselves. He believes that when external authority is removed freedom will bring out the internal, spiritual, ethical authority of the individual, and all will be well. As a something feasible to-day this may be wholly elusive; it may be lunar ethics, but it is the ideal toward which Tolstoi works. What is meant by philosophic anarchism, so called,-which should be called "autarchy," as Dr. Persifor Frazer observes,is in reality the ideal of political and social science. It is also the ideal of religion. It is the ideal to which Jesus Christ himself looked forward. He founded established no State, gave practically n government, set up no external authori to write the laws of God in men's h self-legislating. All forms of philosophic an are what our Catholic frier They look on to a future they now are. church, 1 no |