CONCLUSION

1. The personal want that impelled us toward a scientific knowledge of Anarchism has met with some satisfaction.

The concepts of Anarchism and its species have been defined; the most important errors have been removed; the most prominent Anarchistic teachings of earlier and recent times have been presented in detail. We have become acquainted with Anarchism's armory. We have seen all that can be objected against the State from all possible standpoints. We have been shown the most diverse orders of life as destined to take the State's place in future. The transition from the State to these orders of life has been represented to us in the most manifold ways.

He who would know Anarchism still more intimately, investigate the less notable teachings as well as the most prominent, and assign to both these and those their place in the causal nexus of historical events, will now find at least the foundation laid for his work. He knows with what sorts of teachings, and what parts of these teachings, he must concern himself, and what questions he must put to each of them. In this investigation he must expect many surprises: the teaching of the unknown Pisacane will astonish him by its originality, and that of the much-talked-of Most will show itself to be only a coarsened form of Kropotkin's. But on the whole it is hardly likely that the investigation will be worth the trouble it takes: the special ideas that Anarchism has to offer are given with tolerable completeness in the seven teachings here presented.

2. The external want on account of which Anarchism had to be scientifically known may now also be satisfied.

One thing we must at any rate do with regard to Anarchism: examine its teachings, as to their soundness or unsoundness, with courage, composure, and impartiality. But success in this task can be expected only if we no longer wander about aimlessly in the night of jurisprudential skepticism, or try to light it up with the lantern of dogmatism, but rather keep our eye fixed upon the guiding star of criticism.

Whether, besides this, it is requisite to oppose Anarchism or at least one or another of its species by especial instrumentalities of power,—whether, in particular, crime committed for the realization of Anarchistic teachings is a more serious misdeed than any political or even ordinary crime,—as to this the legislators of each country must decide with a view to the special conditions existing therein.

INDEX

OF DETAILS, EXEMPLIFICATIONS, AND CATCHWORDS IN THE
QUOTATIONS FROM THE SEVEN WRITERS

The following index is not a translation of Eltzbacher's, and does not index his part of the work, but only the matter quoted from the seven writers. Furthermore, it does not index such parts of their work as are readily found by consulting the table of contents and Chapter X. The reader will therefore, in general, for Justice, see the sections "Basis" and "Property" in each chapter, and the whole of Chapter IV; for Self-Interest, "Basis" in each chapter and the whole of Chapters V and VIII; for Classes, "State" and "Property" in each chapter; for Organization, "State" and "Realization"; for Government, Democracy, Tyranny, "State"; for Capitalism, Poverty, Inequality, "Property"; for Communism, Chapters VII and IX, especially "Property" and "Realization", comparing Chapter VI; for Propaganda, Social Revolution, "Realization" in each chapter; and so on. So far as general points of this nature are mentioned in the index, it is in most cases only on some incidental occasion, and does not supersede this general reference: nor could this be superseded without thereby misleading the reader. "Law" has received somewhat exceptional treatment.

The reader will of course not assume, because in the index he does not find a certain author among those who are cited on a certain topic, that this author has not mentioned it. While the index shows a wider range of topics than might have been expected in such a book, the nature of Eltzbacher's compilation forbids us to expect that it should serve as a complete Cyclopedia of Anarchism.

The Adventures of

Caleb Williams

OR

Things as They Are

BY

WILLIAM GODWIN