Elisee Reclus - Evolution and revolution

[l workman who does not_ know the terrible fatality of th• "iron law," which condemns him to receive nothing but a miserable pittance, just the wage, that will prevt:nt his dying of hunger during his work 1 Bitter experience has caused him to know quite enough of this inevitable law of political economy. Thus, whatevt:r be the source of information, all profit by it, and the worker not less than the rest. Whether a discovery is made by a bourgeois, a noble, or a plebeian, whether the learned man is Bernard Palissy, Lord Dacon, or Baron Humboldt, the whole world will turn his researches to account. Certainly the privileged classes would have liked to retain the benefits of science for themselves, and leave ignorance to the people, but henceforth their selfish desire cannot t,~ fulfilled. They find themselves in the case of the magician in "The Thousand and One Nights," who unsealed a vase in which a genius had been shut up asleep for ten thousand years. They would like to drive him back into his retreat, to faste1\him down under a triple seal, but they have lost the words of the charm, and the genius is free for ever. 1; 1'his freedom of the human ,vill is now asserting itself in every direction ; it is preparing no small and partial revolutions, but one universal Revolution. It is throughout society as a whole, and every branch of its activity, that changes are making ready. Conservatives are not in the least mistaken when they speak in general terms of Revolutionists as enemies of religion, the family and property. Yes; Socialists do reject the authority of dogma and the intervention of the supernatural in nature, and, m this sense, however earnest their striving for the realisation of their ideal, they are the-enemies of religio:1. Yes; they do desire the suppression of the marriage market; they desire that unions should be free, depending only on mutual affection and respect for self and for the dignity of others, and, in this sense, however loving and devoted to those whose lives are associated with theirs, they are certainly the enemies of the legal family. Yes; they do desire to put an end to the monopoly of land and capital, and to restore them to all, and, in this sense, however glad they may be to secure to every one the enjoyment of the frnits of the earth, they arc the enemi~ of property. Thus the current of evolution, the incoming tide, is bearBibi otecc:1 G no B ,nee,

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