And the anarchist, whom one loves if only for the fervor of his hope and the beauty of his dream,--the anarchist falters miserably in the face of interrogation. If all laws were to be suspended to-morrow, all coercion of citizen by state, how long would it be before new laws would arise? Would the aforementioned strong cease to be strong and the weak cease to be weak? Would people be willing to forego private property? Are not belief and disbelief in private property determined less by logic and "justice" than by one's own success or failure in the acquisition of private property? Do only the weak and uncontrolled advocate absolute lack of restraint? Do most men want liberty so much that they will tolerate chaos and a devil-take-the-hind-most individualism for the sake of it? Can it be, after all, that freedom is a negative thing,--that what men want is, for some, achievement, for others, peace,--and that for these they will give even freedom? What if a great number of people dread liberty, and are not at all so sensitive to restraint and commandment as the anarchist? Perhaps only children and geniuses can be truly anarchistic? Perhaps freedom itself is a problem and not a solution? Does the mechanization, through law and custom, of certain elements in our social behavior, like the mechanization, through habit and instinct, of certain elements in individual behavior, result in greater freedom for the higher powers and functions? Again, to have freedom for all, all must be equal; but does not development make for differentiation and inequality? Consider the America of three hundred years ago; a nation of adventurous settlers, hardly any of them better off than any other,--all of a class, all on a level; and see what inequalities and castes a few generations have produced! Is there a necessary antithesis between liberty and order, freedom and control?--or are order and control the first condition of freedom? Does not law serve many splendid purposes,--could it not serve more? Is the state necessary so long as there are long-eared and long-fingered gentry?
As for your revolutions, who profits by them? The people who have suffered, or the people who have thought? Is a revolution, so far as the poor are concerned, merely the dethronement of one set of rulers or exploiters so that another set may have a turn? Do not most revolutions, like that which wished to storm heaven by a tower, end in a confusion of tongues? And after each outbreak do not the workers readapt themselves to their new slavery with that ease and torpid patience which are the despair of every leader, until they are awakened by another quarrel among their masters?