ELISEE RECLUS AND HIS OPINIONS. 407 



a profound study of the laws of history. The chessboard is "be- 

 fore us we have but to win the game." In eloquent pages he then 

 sets forth the objects of the great general revolution he longs for. 

 Religion, war, and marriage are denounced in fervent terms ; even 

 universities and engineers come in for the general denunciation. 

 Some one must suffer in such a general disturbance let it be the 

 rich, say some agitators ; not so, says Reclus, there must be no 

 suffering class. There will come a day when wisdom shall be 

 stronger than power, but to this end all bonds must disappear, and 

 patriotism among the rest. He points out in one passage how the 

 present French revolution has but assumed the arms and the 

 ways of the Government it succeeded, and is a despotism in all 

 but in name. Anarchy, the human ideal, can never come from 

 the republic, which is a form of government. Science itself has 

 become the ally of power : witness anthropometry, which he holds 

 is turning the whole of France into a prison. Hereupon follows 

 a tirade in praise of the International, with allusions to the 

 eight-hour movement and the 1st of May. "So the great days 

 approach ; evolution is finished, revolution will not lag far be- 

 hind. Is it not accomplished from day to day before our eyes ? 

 The time will come when evolution and revolution will succeed 

 each other, when we shall pass from desire to action, from the 

 idea to the realization; it is thus that life works in a healthy 

 organization, be it man or the world." 



Thus far the thinker Reclus leads us, leaving us at last with 

 this oracular prediction. The frank, outspoken sentences of 

 Prince Kropotkine have a less melodious but more powerful 

 and awakening ring : " Why should I be moral ? " he asks. 

 " Why is one line of conduct good and another bad ? All the 

 motives which were placed before us in the past have gone 

 away." He is as iconoclastic as his companion nay, more so. 

 None of the old rules have any force for him, yet even for him 

 there exists a right and a wrong the right and wrong of the 

 hive and of the anthill, in which he sees the only fundamental rule 

 of right and wrong ; in this not differing at all from Christian 

 thinkers, who also hold that that which is good for the human 

 race, which in effect produces or permits the human creature to 

 obtain the largest amount of pleasure and to submit to the small- 

 est amount of pain, is good, while its reverse is bad. Very para- 

 doxical is this Russian prince. Thus, he maintains that in some 

 forms of society even cannibalism is a virtue, especially the de- 

 vouring of the aged and infirm. He is decidedly unjust to 

 Christianity, which enjoins the doing to others as we would they 

 should do unto us, crediting that system only with an order to 

 abstain from doing to others that which we do not desire should 

 be done to us. It seems as if he really anticipated with desire 



