414 GOVERNMENT IX 



ducted with all the delicate courtesies of chivalry. 

 The rules of this refined militancy are called laws, 

 and prudence dictates respect for them because, as 

 it is to the advantage of the majority that they 

 should be observed, the many have agreed to fall 

 upon any one who breaks them ; and the many are 

 stronger than the one. Thus the sole sanction of 

 law being the will of the majority, which is a mere 

 name for a draft upon physical force, certain to be 

 honoured in case of necessity ; and " absolute 

 political ethics " teaching us that force can confer 

 no rights ; it is plain that state-compulsion 

 involves the citizen in slavery, as completely as if 

 any other master were the compeller. Wherever 

 and whenever the individual man is forced to sub- 

 mit to any rules, except those which he himself 

 spontaneously recognises to be worthy of observ- 

 ance, there liberty is absent. And thus we 

 arrive at the position of the great apostle of 

 anarchy, Bakounine, according to whom the 

 liberty of man consists solely in this : that " he 

 pays obedience to natural laws, because he himself 

 admits them to be such, and not because they 

 have been imposed upon him from without by any 

 other will, whether divine or human, collective or 

 individual." ] Hence it fj^lows that the " sovereign 

 people " worshipped by the great champions of 

 liberty and equality, when it dares to impose the 

 "general will" upon the individual, even if th;it 



1 Dieu ct fEtat, 1881. 



