There is No Free Society

THERE IS NO "FREE SOCIETY":
INDIVIDUALIST ESSAYS

GEORGES PALANTE

EDITED AND TRANSLATED BY KIRK WATSON

Contents
INT RODUCT ION
SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM
SOCIAL DOGMAT ISMS AND T HE LIBERAT ION OF T HE INDIVIDUAL
ANARCHISM AND INDIVIDUALISM
T HE MORAL CONT RADICT ION BET WEEN T HE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIET Y

INTRODUCTION
Georges Palante (1862-1925) was a French philosopher, sociologist, and school-teacher. He has
been ranked among the left-wing disciples of Friedrich Nietzsche, joining such luminaries as Albert
Camus, Emma Goldman, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault; and most recently by philosopher
Michel Onfray, who wrote a 1989 study of Palante.

But we must be cautious in applying any label which implies that Palante held to a particular
ideology. Inspired by the 19 th century thinker Max Stirner, Palante was wary of every idea, ideology,
morality, tradition, or faith that can be imposed upon the consciousness of the individual to serve
the interests of a ruling group or class. In every belief system lie the germs of authoritarianism and
the suppression of individual particularity, Nietzscheanism no less than the rest. He consistently
supported Individualism, but as a “ tendency” rather than as dogma.

In several places in this collection Palante calls himself a socialist. He makes socialism into a form
of individualism and defined it as “ an economic technique, a system of progressive economic
experiments” whose only goal must be opening up space for the development of individuals.
Although he wrote that “ society does not exist: there are only individuals” 83 years prior to
Margaret T hatcher's infamous speech, Palante's individualism is vastly different from the Ayn Randstyle “ virtue of selfishness,” which has little regard for any unfortunate economic side-effects for
other individuals. He writes in an essay that this approach is “ a contradictory individualism; it only
claims for certain privileged people the integral blossoming of their self, while it becomes an
oppressive doctrine for others.”

Palante has also been called an anarchist. It will be shown in these essays that anarchism would be an
inadequate label for what he has in mind. He sees anarchism as naive in its preaching that after the
State has been abolished, individuals will dwell in free societies. In his eyes, society will always be as
much a hindrance to individual flourishing as the State ever was; thus anarchism is for him too
shallow a critique of existing institutions.

T his (socially pessimistic) perspective is incapable of envisioning any truly happy ending for the
individual, and thus the most rewarding part of Palante's writings is in his exploration of the realistic
options for individual emancipation within this world-view.

T his collection is a sort of taster platter for Palante's published works, since it contains an essay or
chapter from several of his books, none of which has yet been translated into English as of 2012. I

hope it will awaken some interest in Palante's thought.

SOCIALISM AND INDIVIDUALISM
From Précis de sociologie (1903)

We can now take on the dominant issue of all of Sociology: that is, the relationship between the
individual and society. Here we see the two doctrines of socialism and individualism at war.

In a general sense, the word “ socialism” indicates every social doctrine that subordinates the
individual to the collective. T his is the meaning of “ Platonic socialism.” In a more precise and
modern sense, socialism is a doctrine which, by an economic reform of the property system, claims
to secure increased material and moral independence to the individual.

Individualism is a doctrine which, instead of subordinating the individual to the collectivity, takes as
its starting point the idea the individual is an end in himself; that, in both law and in fact, he
possesses a particular value and an autonomous existence, and that the social ideal is the most
complete liberation of the individual. T hus understood, individualism is the same thing as what is
still called the libertarian social philosophy.

In a more restricted sense, we understand by “ Individualism” the economic theory of Laissez-faire
(the Manchester School). When I speak here of Individualism, I refer to individualism understood as
a libertarian philosophy.

What are the relations between Socialism and Individualism?

T here are many points of contact between Socialism and Individualism. Socialism is inspired to a
great extent by Individualism, and in many respects it tries to fulfill Individualism's ideals. It
promises the economic emancipation of the individual and aspires to break him free from the
embrace of capitalism. Additionally, it would destroy not only capitalism as an economic regime, but
also the social institutions and foundations which are the consequences of this regime: the
capitalistic and bourgeois laws that rule over us, the morality of the owners and bourgeois, formed by
class interests and oppressive to the individual. A German sociologist has said on this subject:
"Without liberalism, socialism is absolutely inconceivable: socialism is essentially liberal; it is
inspired by ideals of enfranchisement and emancipation that are at present the surest condition and

the guarantee of his existence. What it tries to obtain is nothing less than the enfranchisement of
the laborers vis-à-vis the omnipotence of Capital" (Ziegler, La Question sociale est une question
morale, Paris, F. Alcan, p.11).

T his is not all. Today socialism is yet in its militant phase. It is still a party of opposition and
struggle. T hus it defends liberty in the political, social, and moral realms, whenever it finds occasion.
It favors every law, motion, and measure which lead to the material, intellectual and moral
emancipation of the individual. It gladly tries to break with the social and moral cadres of the past.
It is thus that, in morality, many socialists support free unions. T hus, lately in Germany, the entire
Socialist Party voted against the vexatious and ridiculous Heintze law. T hus, it is incontestable that
today Socialism represents Individualism and is its most powerful social incarnation. M. Jaurès has
very well shed light on this truth in his article “ Socialisme et Liberté” (Revue de Paris, 1 Dec.
1898).

But will it always be this way? When it comes to power, when it holds political sway, will socialism
remain liberal and individualistic?

T hat is the real question, because it is then when the germs of anti-individualism that exist in
socialism will develop to maturity.

What are these germs?

T here are some which are obvious and on which Socialism's adversaries have long insisted. Let us
cite for example the likely mania for administration and regimentation beyond all measure; the
claim of society of a right to control the activity of individuals, the expanding omnipotence of
opinion that will become, in the socialist regime, the principal form of moral sanction. Yet, we
know how often opinion is blind and tyrannical, lending itself to every kind of prejudice; finally,
how often it is anti-individualistic.

Another point where Socialism appears to be in tension with Individualism is that unitary
dogmatism, or the social and moral monism toward which it always seems to tend. We know in
effect that many socialists believe in a final monism, that is, an economic and moral uniformization
of humanity. Jaurès himself seems to accept this point of view. He speaks of the "great socialist
peace," of “ the harmony which will break out from the clash of forces and instincts.” What fine
dreams. But we know also that every social dogmatism and conformism, every unitary social
doctrine, is perilous for individual diversity, for the liberty and independence of the Individual; for
they more or less directly require the sacrifice of the Individual to the community. I think that the
contradiction between the individualist point of departure of Jaurès and his goal, namely the final
social monism. Departing from libertarian premisses, he ends in a kind of social mysticism.

Proudhon, whom he called a poet and a sophist, was right in his reasoning against him, when he
proclaimed the eternity and indestructibility of the basic reality of diversity and struggle in society.
At bottom, Jaurès is a Platonist, despite his initial individualist inspiration. With him, Socialism
reverts to its original form: the subordination of the Individual to the community. As for myself, I
am the resolute adversary of every dogmatism, of every social monism, because I consider them as a
menace for the independence of the individual and for individual energy. For me dogmatism and
monism are synonymous with absolutism, coercion and constraint. All social and moral dogmatisms
have a tendency to become tyrannical. And this is why Nietzsche was right to protest against them
in the names of the “ instinct for beauty” and the “ instinct to greatness.” T hese dogmatisms
authorize authoritarian control of individual conscience by the social conscience, in the name of
pretended infallible rules and the social quarantining of any who contravene its rules. We do not say
that all these consequences are contained in the socialist conception of Jaurès, but less liberal minds
than his may deduce these things, and in all cases they are, in the bosom of Socialism, a peril for
Individualism.

It is important here to say something about the arguments that the partisans of social dogmatism
invoke, understanding thereby the doctrine of those who pose the society as being prior and superior
to the Individual.

Two kinds of arguments have been invoked in favor of this dogmatism, some a priori, others a
posteriori. And we may thus distinguish two sorts of social dogmatisms: social dogmatisms a priori
and social dogmatisms a posteriori.

T he social dogmatism a priori has as its principal and original representative Plato, remains the
eternal archetype of the unitary social philosophy. Plato, as is known, invokes the rational idea of
unity, and he believed that this idea glides above all Individuals, that it is anterior and superior to
them. Consequently, the city is superior to the citizens. T he city is all; the individual is nothing.
Aristotle has refuted this argument very well. Refuting Plato, he shows that a logical deduction of
the idea of unity will lead us to divinize the individual rather than the city. "In effect," he said,
"Socrates saw absolute unity as the end goal of the city. But what is a city? It is a multitude made up
of diverse elements; give it more unity, and your city becomes a family; centralize further, and your
family will be concentrated in the individual: for there is more unity in the family than in the city
and more still in the individual than in the family." (Aristotle, Politics, Book II). T hus, there is no
unity more real or complete than the Individual. T hus, it is the individual who, according to Plato's
own principles, will best incarnate the idea of Unity. T his is also by the way a priori that certain
Kantians and Neo-Kantians come to a posteriori social dogmatism and believe they can affirm the
necessary and legitimate subordination of the individual to society. But their arguments have no
more value than the Platonic argument that we find more or less in all the others.

T he social dogmatisms a posteriori claim to base this subordination on a fact of generalized
experience taken as a natural need. T his is the method of those who subordinate the Individual to
society in the name of the law of adaptation to the environment or the law of symbiosis (M.

Izoulet) or even of the law of solidarity, etc.

T he theories of these philosophers could be designated under the general title of “ historicism” (to
use Nietzsche's word). For they regard the Individual as merely an outcome and a reflection of his
historical environment.

It is against this historicism that Nietzsche protested. It is he who, with more vigor than any other
thinker, sought to shake this net that they tried to cast over his head and whose meshes are called:
“ environment,” “ heredity,” “ tradition,” “ good morals.”

Nietzsche has a point. T hese philosophers set up a dogma of the absolute passivity and nothingness
of the Individual. T hey forget that the individual is himself a force, an important factor of his
environment and that he can transform it just as much as he can adapt himself to it in a docile
fashion. "It is true," said Mr. Scipio Sighele, "that men of genius are more than actors, that they are
the authors of the human drama" (Psychologie des Sectes, p. 224). But this can be applied, keeping
all proportions in check, to every human individual. Recall the distinction that we set up between
the “ static” and “ dynamic” points of view from which to envision society. If from the static point
of view, that is to say, in a given moment of evolution, the environment imposes an inevitable limit
on the activities of the Individual, then from the dynamic point of view, that is to say, from the
point of view of social evolution and ascension, the Individual claims back his rights. For he is, from
this point of view, the fountain of initiative, the agent of progress, the mover of history.

We reject all forms of social dogmatism, as well as dogmatism a posteriori and dogmatism a priori,
and we set up Individualism as the true social philosophy.

We can now see clearly, what truths and what falsehoods exist within socialism.

Socialism is legitimate and true insofar as it struggles for the ideas of liberty and individual
emancipation. As such, it is only a stage in the development of individualism. And it is legitimate to
the degree that it is an affirmation of Individualism.

But socialism is wrong when it believes it can remain static with a frozen dogma, a unitary
conception, a fixed ideal, and if it becomes yet another social dogmatism. For then it takes on the
character of every dogmatism, that of being for the Individual coercion and constraint. Many
socialists have foreseen this danger and properly refused to enclose socialism in any definitive
dogmatic formulation. In an article (Sozialistische Monatshefte, Oct 1900) written a propos of the
death of Nietzsche, Mr. E. Gystrow fought against socialism as an immobile and static conception,

and did not allow any legitimacy except to a dynamic socialism, in evolution and always overcoming
itself. He said further:

T he old revolutionary, Engels himself made a blank slate of the obligatory revolution.
T he movement of socialism toward its final goal (Endziel) should be accomplished by
legal means. T hen came Bernstein, who cut out the dogma of the final goal...Every
movement has a direction; but the ultimate aim is something else entirely.

A historic movement is not a defined line, a parabola or an Archimedean spiral, but a
curve which the more clever analytical geometricians will vainly try to determine. T here
are no final goals in history which, in the very moment when it finds attainment, will be
transcended. No final goal can ever indicate more than a provisional point in the
direction of the movement. In its progress toward the final goal, the historical movement
incessantly displaces it. What we call the ideal of a movement is not in its final term;
rather, it accompanies it in every instant and is displaced along with it: it goes along with
it like the pillar of fire with the camp of Israel. So long as a historical movement sets
itself a “ final goal” in the proper sense of the term, it is immature; it persists in childish
dreaming. Doubtless, this phase is necessary. But just as the child will grow up, the day will
come when the historical movement must laugh at childish hopes. If a movement lasts
this long, this it is itself the touchstone of its right to existence. Socialism has cast its
final goal overboard; instead it possesses an ideal which, instead of being in front of it, is
inside it and makes its imprint on it.

As for me, I likewise repudiate any socialism that comes in a dogmatic and immobile form. But we
allow the possibility of a dynamic socialism, of a socialism in eternal becoming, of a socialism both
carried and created by individual wills instead of imposing itself upon them; in a word, a socialism
identical with Individualism.

But as I mentioned, this socialism must escape the dangerous illusion of social monism. It must also
transcend the illusion of absolute equality.

T here is an illegality that can be suppressed, namely that of classes; but there is one that cannot be
done away with, namely that of individuals.
We may be able to suppress the conventional social hierarchies, but not the personal ascendancy of
minds. As Mr. Henri Mazel said, "there will always be active and passive people, the energetic and
the energumenes" (Mazel, La Synergie sociale, p. 348).

We see in that that the paradox sustained by Mr. E. Gystrow—the reconciliation of Nietzscheanism

and socialism—is not as indefensible as it seems at first glance.

Indeed, in spite of Nietzsche's attraction to aristocracy, he is not so far from socialism as we may
expect. First, he demanded the right of all to aristocratization. T he Nietzschean maxim: “ Not only
onward shalt thou propagate thyself, but upward!” may become that of socialism and of democracy
together. For Nietzsche proclaimed the true principle of every true socialism and of all democracy:
the infinite value and price of the person. He courageously repudiated the illusion of the final
monism, of universal conformism and peace in the bosom of a dogma brought to fruition. T hat type
of peace would be stagnation and torpor.

Today, many socialists, following the remark of Mr. Gystrow, are similar in this respect.

Links exist between Nietzsche and socialism: the loathing for sentimentality, for the
odious whiff of the peace-pipe. And both hold their nose at the odor drifting in from the
kitchens where the common soups are on the boil, waiting to be consumed in common, as
the gruel of harmony... It is only through struggle that personality can be enlarged. A
single strike by laborers wakes up more individualities than a volume full of bombast about
"self-improvement" etc.

T he possession of the power to pay dear—power makes you stupid—but the struggle for
power is the vital principle of all the great movements, and it is so much so that in it and
by it individuality stand more numerous and more wealthy... Formerly, socialism was a
dogma. Today it is a great movement. T he dogma falls to pieces; but the sensibility and
the individual life are more fertile and rich.

Nietzsche has been such for us. He has not been the philosopher of the romanticism of
medieval corporations, and he broke with Wagner who was, in art, the representative of
this romanticism. He was no more the philosopher of capitalism... He believed in the
great men of the past and—this is what is admirable and divine in this genius—in the
“ great humanity” of the future. He prophesied what should be the beginning of our task:
that the value of humanity resides in the man himself, and that every true ascension of
humanity will have an aristocratic tendency... (Gystrow, “ Etwas uber Nietzsche und uns
Sozialististen,” in Socialistische Monatshefte)

Yes, there is no true democracy without an aristocratization of the mob. One of my friends once
proposed to read and comment on the passage on the “ Dancer on the cord,” from Thus Spake
Zarathustra, in front of a crowd. He was discouraged from performing this reading as undemocratic
and full of a loathing for the mob. Nevertheless my friend was in the right. T he mob must be
ennobled, and dislodged from its mob-mentality, and it reeks of the horror of the abominable

gregarious spirit that Nietzsche so admirably explained: "Get out of this town, O Zarathustra; they
are too many who hate you. T he good and the just hate you, and they call you their enemy and
despiser; the devout hate you, and they call you a danger to the mob. It was your good fortune to be
mocked; for truly you spoke as a buffoon. It was your pleasure to associate with the dead dog: by
abasing yourself like that you have been preserved to this day. But go out of this town—or
tomorrow, I will leap over you..." (Thus Spake Zarathustra, §8)

We are now in some degree able to understand the true relations of the collectivity and the
individual. No doubt, a part of truth is contained in these verses of Goethe:

Wie viel bist du von andern unterschieden?
Erkenne dich, leb' mit der Welt in Frieden.

[How different are you from others?
Know yourself, and live at peace with the world.]

But neither should we misunderstand the real inequality and diversity of individuals. We must not
underestimate the need for struggle in order to create the ideal, to sculpt the personality.

At base, there is no contradiction between aristocratic individualism and democratic individualism.
To glorify the great and free individualities, is to prepare ourselves to glorify all human
personalities, inasmuch as they are susceptible of liberty and greatness. One of Gabriel Tarde's laws
(the “ Law of passage from the unilateral to the reciprocal”) could help us here to explain this
passage from aristocratic individualism to democratic individualism. Carlyle said: "I see the most
blessed of results prepared: not the abolition of hero-worship, but rather what I would call an entire
world of heroes. If hero means a sincere man, why should each of us not be a hero?"

T he enemy and the true threat to our democracy, is not the individualist theory of the great men,
but every theory which, in the name of a principle such as it is, in the name of any dogma whatever,
would subordinate individual initiative and action to the gregarious spirit.

T his gregarious spirit must vanish. We must be liberated from this need for spineless and lazy
sociability, the scourge of the modern age. A man must know himself to be himself, to live in
himself and by himself only.

Consider this statement of Pascal's: "Let us contemplate our salvation": our terrestrial salvation,
which is nothing but in independence and self-mastery. T his is selfishness, perhaps. But, if there is
egoism in it, this simple and frank egoism is worth more than that complicated and farcical egoism
of social hypocrisy which certain people advocate under the name of solidarity, symbiosis, etc.

And above all no dogmas, no protections, no social tutelage of the individual. T he gods are dead, the
religions are dead. T he conventional moral and social dogmas are on the way out. T he human
individual can and should count on nothing but himself. Now we look to free action and free
thought, "the arrow of desire toward the far shore" (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, §8).

Nietzsche has admirably rendered this feeling in terms that recall some magnificent lines in JeanMarie Guyau's Sketch of a Morality without Sanction or Obligation. On both sides, it is the same
haughty, Stoic, prophetic accent; it is the same breath of the future that passes in the air:

We other philosophers and free spirits, at the news that the old God is dead, we feel
ourselves illuminated by a new dawn; our hearts overflow with recognition, astonishment,
apprehension and waiting—finally, the horizon seems freed again, even while admitting
that it remains unclear—finally our vessels can again set sail, drifting into danger; once
again, all the perils for those who seek knowledge are allowed; the sea, our full sea opens
again before us, and maybe there was never such a full sea (Nietzsche, The Joyful Wisdom).

He who engages in this immense domain, almost new, of dangerous knowledge, will suffer
from such a direction of his judgment as from seasickness. And, in fact, there are a
hundred good reasons for everyone to keep away when they can! On the other hand,
when he has wrecked his bark, well then, onward! Grit our teeth! Open our eyes! Firm
hand to the helm! We will go beyond morality, we will understand, we may crush our own
reserves of morality, going as we do, venturing as we will in this direction—but what does
that matter! Never was a more profound world ever revealed in to the eyes of intrepid
voyagers and adventurers... (Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, §23).

SOCIAL DOGMATISMS AND THE
LIBERATION OF THE INDIVIDUAL
From Combat pour l'individu (1904)

T here are two possible conceptions of the relations between the individual and society. T he
partisans of the social dogmatisms think that the individual, considered either in his origins or his
nature, or in his ends, is only an element and almost an epiphenomenon of society. T he supporters
of individualism see, on the contrary, each individual as a small, separate world, having his own
existence and independent originality. In the first conception, society is seen as having a prior and
superior value to the individual, and any rights he might claim against society are curtailed. In the
second conception, the individual has his own value, along with rights which can under no
circumstances be sacrificed for social ends.

I will highlight the inanity of all the social dogmatisms. T his task seems to be the indispensable
propedeutic to the liberation of the individual.

But before starting this discussion, allow me to clarify a few things. T he problem is not, between the
individual and the State, but between the individual and society. Herbert Spencer wrote his book The
Individual against the State in hopes of liberating the individual from the tyranny of the State. I
would entitle my own book The Individual against Society, to liberate the individual from social
tyrannies. Spencer's individualism is a false individualism. It is true that he would free the individual
from the yoke of the State, but he leaves him as burdened as ever under the yoke of social
constraint, against which he can only envision man to have a certain ability to adapt to the
situation. Spencer gives man, at bottom, only a basic receptiveness without his own initiative.

T he State's constraints are very different from those of society. Statist constraints are summed up in
a word: the law that is promulgated and the public power that sanctions it. T hat is simple and clear.
T he social restraints are more complicated. Also more hypocritical. T hey fetter the individual with
a thousand little invisible links: the self-interest and the passions of the group, the class, the clan,
the corporation, etc.; they ply him with a thousand small customs, a thousand petty received ideas,
praise and reproach, all aiming to transform him into a good herdling.

Here the brutal frankness of the legal Imperative is replaced by a group hypocrisy, a sheep-like
discipline on all sides, a universal subjugative tactic of concerted and of mutual spying that has found
its most repulsive and formidable expression in the Monita secreta charter from an Illustrious
Company (T ranslator note: this document purported to be a set of secret instructions for the Jesuits
aimed at increasing their power by any means), but which is created by a sort of spontaneous
generation and arises, self-generated, in every human herd. And from this perspective we may say
that the morality of the Monita secreta is only a mirror suited to enlarge the traits of all gregarious
morality, as the latter functions in a class, a clan, or a group.

T he individual is often an unwitting accomplice of the plot against his liberty. He fashions for
himself, prima facie, an illusion about the benefits he draws from his affiliation with the group. It
seems to him that his individual will-to-life, that his vital drives are exalted; that his personal willto-power is extraordinarily intensified by the fact of fusing with the egotism of the group. He fails
to see that by being absorbed into the collective will-to-life, he betrays his own ego. He is taken in
by this gregarious illusion to the extent that his own ego is intellectually and morally weakened.
Schopenhauer make a fine remark that many men, in the absence of personal merits that encourage
self-esteem, find pride in the grouping they belong to. "T his cheap pride betrays the person who
attains it in the absence of individual qualities; for without it he would not have recourse to what he
shares with so many individuals” (Schopenhauer, Wisdom in Life). To the degree that an individual
lacks self esteem, he is easily absorbed into a group. With such a man, the personal preferences,
ideas, passions, and watchwords, reign in the group. Here the collective will-to-life hovers above the
individual wills in the same way that the genius of the species is not only an addition to individual
wills; it has its own laws, its own goals. To assure its triumph, the individual wills are themselves
annihilated with the same naive unwitting as the good young man described in the Monita Secreta,
who will be induced little by little into the preferred paths and who will be taken gradually into the
net, where he will remain forever entangled.

T he individualist's protest against the State does not get to the bottom of the matter. T he
individualist's real fight is against the anti-individualist influences par excellence, those hypocritical
and deaf influences that act in the dark domain of self-interest and group passions.

T he promulgated law is not the abstract expression, hoary and intellectualized, of the collective
influences. By becoming intellectualized, these influences have lost something of their primitive
gregarious ferocity; they have dressed up in an appearance of impassable serenity, of impersonal
indifference. T his is what the word “ Justice” translates, which carries a sense of absolute
impartiality. But, as Remy de Gourmont established, at bottom, Justice never exists in a pure and
abstract state. In real-world application, it depends on diverse interpretations which various social
groups give regarding their own ideas of good and evil.

T he law reflects the existing morality. It is oppressive to the degree to which a society's morals are

barbaric, with the reservation already given, that the law always contains a degree of collective
ferocity. T he gregarious virus is attenuated by the enlargement of its sphere of influence. T he law,
impersonal and abstract, worn by long usage, is to morals—constrained, passionate and hateful—
what the concept, is to the sensible image before it is effaced, that is, the concrete image, colorful
and vivid. T hus the individual is the the dupe of an illusion when he hopes to find in the State and in
Justice any assistance against the blind decree of groups. In fact, there is a pre-established harmony
between the two series of constraints. Statist authority generally betrays or at least abandons the
individual pursued by the gregarious hatreds. Its decisions confirm and sanction, in larger scale, the
volitions of this omnipotent power: the selfishness of the group.

We have thus posed the problem of the contradiction of the individual and society in all its
generality. I entirely resolve this contradiction in favor of the individual. I will show how and why.

To begin we must distinguish between two kinds of social dogmatisms: the dogmatisms a priori and
the dogmatisms a posteriori.
Among the dogmatic philosophers, in effect, some have proceeded a priori and and have claimed to
establish, via mere logical deduction, the self-existence, and the superior value, of society. A great
number of thinkers have followed this method, from Plato to Hegel. Others have attempted to
justify a posteriori the superior rights of society by the examination of the vital conditions to which
men are subject by reason of their physiological and psychological makeup. T hey have developed
the aphorism of Aristotle: “ Man is the political animal,” and have shown that the factual conditions
in which human life is developed, make society into a superior and necessary law, against which no
individual either can or should try to struggle. T he representatives of the social dogmatisms, a
posteriori or naturalist, are equally numerous in the history of thought, from Aristotle to the
modern theorists of the society-as-organism, to the theorists of cooperation or solidarity, and the
defenders of the gregarious social philosophy.

T he social dogmatisms, under these two forms, seem to respond to one of the demands of the social
will-to-life. In effect, every organized social group appears to feel an instinctive need to legitimize
itself in the eyes of the individuals who constitute it. T hey are not content to impose social
discipline by force; they prefer to have the legitimacy of their discipline accepted, to have it seen as
just and rational. To begin with, the consecration of social discipline is sought from religion; later
this is asked of the philosophers, who rarely lack for suitable formulas to rationalize violence. T hey
are found generally to agree with Hegel, for whom "the real is rational." We note that in the social
dogmatism a priori, the State is what they seek to justify, which is represented as the incarnation of
a rational idea. "T he State is an expression, the fancied reality of a people” (Lazarus and Steinthal,
Jahrschrift für Völkerpsychologie, p. 10).

In the social dogmatism a posteriori, the idea is to justify the social mechanism in its entirety, that
is to say, in the complexity of the social discipline it imposes upon the individual.

Let us examine first of all the social dogmatism a priori.

While taking up this line of thought, we find that it carries a distinction: we can distinguish between
a “ transcendental” rationale which places in the metaphysical heavens of the Immutable, the
principle which confers reality upon societies, and a rationale of “ Immanence,” which places it in
the world of the change and progress. In addition, in both cases we proceed a priori; either way we
are subordinating facts to Ideas, the real world to Logic.

T he oldest form of the transcendental social dogmatism is found in Plato. For this philosopher, the
State has an absolute right over individuals. T he unity of the City should be seen as a symbol of the
ideal or divine unity. Individuals are only amorphous material, upon which the City confers the
dignity of particular forms. As such, the State only has rights, the individual only has duties.

Another form of the transcendental social dogmatism is what we find among certain Kantians, as
well as with Kant himself. We know that there are, in the Kantian social morality, two tendencies
that are hard to reconcile. On one hand, Kant sets up the human person as an end in himself and
thereby seems to incline to individualism. On the other hand, by his conception of an absolute and
rational moral law, he ends up with a moral universalism, which poses the rule as prior to and
superior to individuals. T he role of individuals is only to serve as instruments for the law. T his latter
plane, which is transcendental, hovers above individual consciences, or rather is personified in the
State and its administrators. T he City, the State become the symbol of the transcendent moral law,
and as such, are like the moral law itself, invested with superior rights.

T he individualism of Kant is converted into a moral-metaphysical doctrine that sets up the State as
an end in itself. Mr. Auguste Burdeau, one of the interpreters of this later Kantian philosophy, has
written: "We do not have the right to withdraw from the service of the State any fraction of our
fortune, any effort of our arms, any thought from our intelligence, any drop of our blood, any
beating of our hearts" (cited by Barrès, Les Déracinés, p. 21).

T he same conclusion is found with Mr. Johann Fichte, with whom the theory of the absolute Self
leads to a unitary theory of the State. It is likewise found with Mr. Dorner, a modern philosopher
and professor in the University of Koenigsberg. He sees the State as a symbol of the Absolute Spirit;
according to him, the individual is linked to corporations; by them to the State and by the state to
the Absolute Spirit.

T he Platonic and Kantian social Dogmatism will rightly feel outdated to many people. May we in
good faith attribute to the State, to Society, some supra-sensible value, as Plato does? T he modern

conscience, no friend to transcendentalism, will doubtless find such things harder and harder to
imagine.

T he State, said Plato, is a symbol of Divine Unity. Aristotle left us a nice phrase, which did justice
to this wretched idea: "Socrates praised the idea of an absolute unity of the City. But what is a City?
It is a multitude composed of diverse elements; give it more unity, and your City becomes a family;
centralize it further, your family is concentrated in the individual: for there is more unity in the
family than in the city, and more still in the individual than in the family" (Aristotle, Politics, Book
2). T hus, there is no unity more real or complete than what we find in the individual. T hen it is the
individual who, according to the very principles of Plato, best embodies the idea of unity.

But the unity of the State is a myth. "What is the State?" Asks Max Nordau. “ T heoretically
speaking this should be: You and Me. But in practice it is a dominant class, a small number of
personalities, often a single person. To place the stamp of the State on everything, is to want to
please a single class exclusively, certain people only, even a single person” (Paradoxes
sociologiques, p. 125). Count Gobineau said likewise:

"T he experience of all ages has shown that there is no worse tyranny than that which is
exercised for the benefit of fictions, beings that are by nature insensible, pitiless and
infinitely shameless in their pretensions. Why? Because these fictions, themselves
incapable of looking out for their own interests, delegate their powers to deputies. T he
latter, not being expected to act from selfishness, acquire the right to commit the greatest
of enormities. T hey are always innocent when they strike in the name of the idol whose
priests they claim to be" (Gobineau, De l'Inégalite des races humaines, Volume II. p. 31).

To begin with, the State is less a plastic principle relative to social relations in general than a result
and an epiphenomenon of the latter. To the degree that the social conscience is informed the State,
it will cease to display features of simplicity, logic and sincerity. If this is obvious for us, it is because
the social conscience of an era, a tissue of unseen contradictions and dissimulated lies, is inferior in
this regard to even a mediocre individual conscience, because this latter can, at least sometimes, try
to be self-consistent and true to its own nature. And with the mechanism set in motion, claiming its
actions are inspired by the drive to bring the Idea to victory, only adds new insincerities to those
which already existed.

Likewise, what symbolic link is there between the ideal moral law of the Kantians and human
societies? T he defining characteristic of this law is absolute disinterestedness. T he State is only a
utilitarian organization that Schopenhauer has very well defined as "the masterpiece of collective
selfishness. T he city is only the most perfect form of the human will-to-life. It is this will-to-life,
condensed and carried to its maximum concentration. Yet the will-to-life, which it expresses in the
acts of the individual life or in those of social life, is foreign, if not mutinous, against morality. It is

amoral. From there, the city, the simple maker of human bliss, no more resembles the law of
absolute disinterestedness than the flower in your garden resemble the sun shining in the skies.
Criticizing the morality of Fichte, Schopenhauer said quite justly: "to judge everything by this moral
apparatus, nothing would be more important than society: how? T his is what nobody can discover.
All that we see, is that, if with bees there is a need of association to build cells and a hive, in men
should lie some apparent need of association, to participate in an immense stage play, strictly
moral, which embraces the whole universe, where we are marionettes and nothing more. T he sole
difference, but it is an important one, is that the hive ends by coming to some good, while the moral
stage play of the universe ends up being, in reality, very immoral indeed" (Schopenhauer, Le
fondement de la Moral, p. 87).

With these social philosophies, the abyss is unbridgable between theory and practice. We cannot see
how the social, ethical and political monism of the Platonists and Kantians will be brought down to
Earth. T he State is for them a formal unity, externally imposed upon a diverse social multiplicity,
more or less resistant against unity. Yet who will assure us that unity will finally gain the upper hand
over diversity? No society is unitary. Every society is composed of diverse societies in mutual
conflict. And far from diminishing in course of evolution, these conflicts, according to Simmel, only
become more accentuated and diversified.

We come to the conclusion that nothing is less evident than the social dogmatism of the
transcendental metaphysicians.

Let us pass on to what we have called the social dogmatism of Immanence. T he representatives of
this social philosophy come more or less directly from Hegel. For him, the ruling idea in social
evolution is no longer a divine and transcendant idea. T he principle he invokes is no longer Plato's
Reason-in-Act, but a Reason-on-the-Move, a living and moving harmony, made up of contraries,
which itself seeks realization and is gradually realized. Hegel, as is well known, derived from this an
authoritarian social dogmatism that ends up serving as a defense for the Prussian monarchy, which
he considered to be the summit of dialectical historical ascent. T his dogmatism became more liberal
with Hegel's disciples. In a general way, the social dogmatism of the philosophy of progress is less
rigid than the social dogmatism of the transcendentalists. It leaves more room for the individual.
T he conception of the identity of contraries erases every limit set between good and evil and ends
by viewing them as historical categories. T he revolutionary character of the Hegelian far-left is not
in doubt. Mr. Eugène de Roberty, who is attached to this school on some points, says that "the free
criticism of the norms that regulate human conduct or that which is commonly called disrespect,
irreverence, or even 'moral skepticism', is the necessary condition of all progress in ethical
knowledge and even in morality" (Constitution de l'Ethique, p. 90).

T he Hegelian philosophy, even with its far-left representatives, is yet a metaphysical dogmatism
and consequently a moral and social dogmatism. T he Hegelian philosophy is dogmatic by its
affirmation of the primacy of intelligence over instinct (“ Neo-logism”), an affirmation that is
translated in sociology by the tendency to place knowledge at the beginning of all social

development and at the bottom of the series of social values. T here is the point of view adopted by
Mr. de Roberty for example, as opposed to the point of view of the Marxists who would rather
place, with Julius Lippert, a “ drive to find favorable living-conditions” [Lebensfuersorge] at the root
of the social process. T he Hegelian philosophy is also dogmatic by its affirmation of an ultimate
social monism, of the fatalistic event of altruism and the final absorption of the individual psychism
into the collective one. Mr. de Roberty repudiates agnosticism and wants to "get beyond God." It is
difficult, despite his denials, not to see in these theses a new metaphysics. And as liberal as his
tendencies may be, I fear that this metaphysical dogmatism may convert into a social dogmatism
bearing as its natural fruit the subordination of the individual to society, from egoism to altruism.

Yet the Neo-logism of immanence, with its consequences (monism and ultimate altruism), is no
more scientifically true than the theses of the transcendental metaphysicians. T here is here a
displacement of the shadow. T he logical idols: Unity and T ruth, even though descended from
Heaven to Earth, remain idols nonetheless. It is always the same recurring illusion which, despite the
Kantian lesson in his Critique of Pure Reason, sets relativities up as absolutes and brings the whole
fantastic mythology of Morality back for minds that are servile.

I believe that the inanity of these social dogmatisms, resting on Logic, has been sufficiently
demonstrated. I pass to those which appeal to experience. T he latter are summed up in a single word
and ideal: namely, “ solidarity.”

Allow me to distinguish between several forms of solidarity: “ genetic” or “ organic” solidarity;
“ economic” solidarity; “ intellectual” solidarity; “ moral” and “ social” solidarity. Note that each of
these forms of solidarity have been invoked as the basis of the social dogmatisms.

“ Genetic” or “ organic” solidarity is the dependence of the individual vis-à-vis its parents, and in a
general manner vis-à-vis the species it belongs to. In the name of this solidarity, Mr. Alfred Espinas,
in a recent article of a plainly anti-individualist inspiration (“ Etre or ne pas etre, ou du postulat de la
Sociologie,” Revue Philosophique, May 1901), denies the individual as an independent and
autonomous agent. T he individual, he says, is only an abstraction: the group alone is a real being.
T he group is, at least, based on genetic linkages. "T he only societies that can be considered as beings
are those whose members are united by all the connectios of Life, including reproduction and
education, which bring union about by means of nutrition itself. A group where there are no families
would not be a society." T he family is the nucleus of the city. Familial solidarity is the fundamental
social link. And it is biology that teaches us a natural and necessary subordination of the individual
to the society or the species.

T he facts alleged by Mr. Espinas are too evident that he should need to insist on them. But I cannot
say the same for his conclusions.

It is true that the individual cannot extricate himself from the laws of generation any more than
from the laws of gravity. But this means that the individual has no other role than to be an agent of
transmission of either the species, ethnic group or family; it implies no other law than strict
compliance with the social conditions best suited to guarantee the life and preservation of the group:
either the family, the city, or the species.

Doubtless the biological issue regarding human individuality is a difficult problem. Mr. Espinas has
shown elsewhere (“ Congers de Paris,” Annales, p. 321) how difficult it is to determine at what
precise moment the individuality of the infant breaks off from that of its mother to form an
independent unity. As tight as the fusion of the two existences may be, the moment will come in
which a separation takes place. Hence the genetic and organic solidarity that unites the child to its
parents and to those who have cared for it during the dependant phase of its existence; from this
fact Mr. Espinas believes he can deduce all other relations making up the life of the individual. But
surely this is simplifing things excessively. T here can be no rules so rigid as those which reign in
animal societies. In humanity, a thousand familial formulations, either political, or social, are
possible. T hese combinations and their incessant variations are, by and large, the effect of individual
initiative, that is to say, the aspirations, desires, passions, the very revolts which traverse individual
souls. And thus for each individual, upon his entry into life, an immense domain of relativities and
contingencies is opened up, in which his personal will-to-life can begin making its own movements.
For example, historically the types of family organization (patriarchy, matriarchy, polyandry,
polygamy, monogamy, etc.) have been quite diverse; entirely different kinds of political and social
organization have both existed and prospered. All were formed and evolved under pressure from
conditions where genetic solidarity perhaps played a role, but where other important factors were
also crucial.

To subordinate the individual to a given social organization in the name of “ genetic” solidarity, is to
forget that in all social organization, artifice mingles with nature. In our social organizations the
conventional lies, the “ untruths,” to use Nietzsche's words, superimpose themselves over the simple
natural facts of human generation and lay their fantastic and tyrannical scaffolding upon the docile
herd. To set up as a dogma this social phantasmagoria, to proclaim it sacrosanct to the individual in
the name of the simple genetic linkage that binds the individual to the species, is to be too hasty.
Why not end all at once, like Hegel, with the declaration that marriage is a "sacred duty," and in the
divinization of the social forces that modern bourgeois marriage incarnates: the omnipotent and
comic "Lady" whom Schopenhauer described?

T he truth is that the organic solidarity that binds the individual to the species by no
means excludes the possibility of individual initiative, in morality and society, and thereby of action
exerted by the individual himself on the future of the species. T here is a hypothesis in which the
influence of the individual upon the species is null, from the organic, psychological, moral and social
point of view. T his is the hypothesis of Weismann on the non-transmissibility of “ inherited traits.”
Individual variations have no influence over the future of the species. T he individual is but a simple
agent for the transmission of unalterable, germinal plasma. But we know that the most authoritative
biologists, M. Le Dantec for example, tend to definitively reject this theory. "Individualization,"

said Mr. Le Dantec, allows an acquired perfection under the influence of certain environmental
conditions that fix themselves into the heredity of the species; this is the single means that is at the
disposition of nature to realize progressive evolution" (Le Dantec, “ La Definition de l'individu,”
Revue philosophique. Feb. 1901). T hen the individual is an agent, and the only agent, of progress.
From the social perspective, these are the thousands of infinitesimal actions by human
individualities over the course of time, these are the thousands of experiences tending toward an
expansion of happiness and liberty, for which individual initiative has been the point of departure,
which have constituted, at length, what we call the progress of the species. Let us give the individual
his due.

After the “ genetic” solidarity, it is “ economic” solidarity that is invoked as the principle
of social dogmatism.

What exactly should be understood by this solidarity? T he solidarists themselves feel the
need to find out the meaning of this word which they use so often: "By drawing up the catechism of
the Ligue de l'education sociale,” said Mr. Charles Gide, “ we ourselves notice that we failed to
understand in a very precise fashion exactly what this solidarity is, which we want to bring others
into" (Conference faite au cercle des etudiants liberaux de Liege, 3 May 1901). T ruly, no concept
begs for elucidation more than solidarity. T he word solidarity, in the language of economics, is
intelligible as the division of labor and as the exchange of values or services. Outside this exact and
verifiable signification in political economy, the senses that this word can take on, are quite vague.
Mr. Gide, making an effort to enlarge the concept of solidarity, comes to identify solidarity with
altruism. Speaking of the concept of solidarity among the economic liberals, he said:

What a miserable solidarity dwells in the exchange of cash! T his excludes those who have
been overlooked, having nothing to contribute. T hey are numerous, nevertheless, these
Robinsons of society, who lack even the debris from the shipwreck, waiting in vain for
the edifice that will lead them back among men... For such men, both the division of labor
and exchange are meaningless." And elsewhere: “ T rue solidarity strives to make this word
that is so often repeated, a reality: my fellow-being. What it aims at is the unity of
fragmented humanity, which must be reconstituted. T his is what speaks through Victor
Hugo, saying: "What a madman, to believe that you and I are not the same," or by
Carlyle in his parable of the poor Irish widow who said to her lifelong companions: "I am
your sister, bone of your bone; the same God made us both", or by Jesus when praying:
"Father, may they all be one in me! (Recherche d'une definition de la Solidarité, p. 15)

T hus we see solidarity identified with charity, but is charity not an economic spring? Can
it even become such?

In fact, it is selfishness that loosens all economic activities. Gide cites the cooperative

associations as an example of solidarity extended in the manner he had spoken of. But the
associations of cooperation, of mutuality, etc., are enterprises of enlightened self-interest. T he
proof if this is that as soon as the participants believe they see their interests at risk, they withdraw
from these associations. It is likely that, in spite of the efforts of the solidarists and the preaching
of the moralists, this will be the case for a long time yet. When Gide invokes charity, or rather
altruism, he leaves economics to pass on to morality. He transforms economic solidarity into moral
solidarity. Charity, fraternity, altruism: all are nice ideas. Cabet invoked them already. Proudhon
responded very well to this, saying that fraternity cannot, in economics, be a point of departure, but
only a destination. He wrote:

For anyone who has reflected on the progress of human sociability, effective fraternity,
heartfelt and rational fraternity, which alone deserves the care of the legislator and the
attention of the moralist, and of which racial fraternity is only its fleshly expression; this
fraternity, I say, is by no means, as the socialists believe, the principle of the
perfectibility of society, the rule of its evolutions: it its only its goal and fruit. T he point
is not to know how, being brothers in spirit and of heart, we can live without making war
and devouring each other: this is not an easy question; but how, since we are siblings, we
can become siblings in our feelings; how our interests, instead of dividing us, can bring us
together. Fraternity, solidarity, love, equality, etc., can only result from a reconciliation
of interests, that is to say an organization of labor and a theory of exchange. Fraternity is
the aim, not the starting point for the community, as with all forms of association and
government; and Plato, Cabet, and all those who begin with fraternity, solidarity and love,
are taking the effect to be the cause, the conclusion to be the beginning; they begin, as in
the proverb, to make their house by starting with the skylight" (System of Economical
Contradictions, Vol. II, p. 275).

T his is not all; the danger of this moral solidarity basing itself in economic solidarity, is a
certain authoritarian tendency. T he solidarists speak endlessly about social duty, solidarist,
corporatist, cooperativist duties, etc. New duties are called into existence. T hat is easy enough. But
how about creating new virtues, and new energies?

Economic solidarity has often been presented under another name: that of the “ general
interest.” But what do we understand by that? If we look closer, we see that the general interest is a
fiction. We always find some particular interest at the head of what we call the general interest. It is
true that the attempt has been made to identify personal selfishness and collective selfishness
(Bentham). But nothing is more questionable than that project. John Stuart Mill, the disciple of
Bentham, expressly recognized this. As this identity is not a fact, but a simple desideratum, Mill
declares that it should be imposed on the social consciousness as a useful lie. By means of
appropriate associations of ideas, the pedagogies and morals will factitiously establish in the minds
of the individuals an indissoluble link between the idea of personal interest and general interest. T he
success of this expedient of duping the individual, is more than doubtful; the individual will soon
notice that the teaching is full of lies. Against Mill's factitious associations he will practice the
“ dissociation of ideas” foreseen by Mr. Remy de Gourmont as an instrument of intellectual
liberation. If this procedure were applied to the concept of the general interest, the latter would be

likely to evaporate like the other abstract concepts which Mr. de Gourmont has analyzed in his fine
book, La culture des Idées.

From whatever aspect we look at it, the idea of solidarity appears as a vague concept or
rather as a psittacism. Yet in economics, we need positive bases. We cannot take as a starting point
some vague notion of solidarity or altruism. T hus, I believe that if socialism would realize its
destiny, it must courageously renounce, in economics, these vague principles of solidarity and
altruism.

Why will men become socialists? Because they feel that the legitimate aspirations of their
egoism are insulted under present economic arrangements. We all view socialism a means of
liberation and of flourishing for personal egoisms. T he root of socialism is individualism, the protest
of the individual against the existing economic tyrannies; the desire to give a more free career to
the economic self-seeking of each. Socialism is a doctrine of the expansion of life, and life is egoism
from the start. T he English School was right to show a transformation and an enlargement of
egoism in altruism.

Socialism must be, essentially, an economic technique leading to the widespread
flourishing of individual egoisms. As for altruism, and the consideration of the general interest, as
well as solidarism, they will have their day; but as a further addition, as an epiphenomenon of the
implementation of self-regarding energies. Moreover, altruism and solidarity, having their origin in
egoism, will always find their limits in it as well. T hus socialism should be neither a religion, nor a
mystique, nor an ethic. It should be and remain only an economic technique, a system of progressive
economic experiments aiming to emancipate human egoisms. If socialism forgets this truth, if it
hopes to base itself on altruism or fraternity alone (which things soon become authoritarian) it runs
a great risk of perishing because of a psychological error.

T here is another threat to watch out for. Namely, the idea that progress in intelligence
will lead to intellectual solidarity. T his notion is no less false that the other forms of solidarity that
we have examined so far.

T he tendency to denigrate the individual is revealed on the intellectual plane as elsewhere.
Solitary thought—invention—has been depreciated in favor of collective thought—imitation—
extolled under the eternal substantive of Solidarity. It is a characteristic of the Latin races, according
to the remark of Mr. Remy de Gourmont, to spurn all new experiments, all intellectual and aesthetic
originality. Regimented thought is preferred, along with conformist and decent meditation. A
German writer, Madame Laura Marholm, has neatly analyzed this contemporary tendency:

Intellectual cowardice is a universal trait. People do not dare to sever themselves from

their surrounding culture. Nobody allows themselves any longer to think original
thoughts. Original thought no longer dares to present itself except when supported by
some group. It must have gathered many adherents already, before daring show its face. It
requires many voices before it dares to speak. We have in this an index of universal
democratization and a democratization that is yet in its infancy and which is
characterized as a reaction against international Capital, which has thus far had at its
disposition all the means of military and legislative defense. Nobody dares to lean on
himself, alone. A thought which contravenes popular ideas almost never comes to light.
T he propagation of unpleasant ideas is circumvented and shackled by a thousand
anonymous censures among which the official censure of the State has no longer but an
effaced role.

T he first move that a man who feels favored by a novel idea, by a new thought, makes is
to seek a social support, to form a group, a society, an association. T hat may be useful for
the inventor of an idea, but it is harmful to the idea itself. For this reason, most of the
ideas in these days are as flat and shapeless as old coins. Every place in which the
intervention of the individual is creative and fertile, we see produced instead, the action
of social circles, of chatterers, of smooth-talkers..." (Zur Psychologie der Frau, p.219).

T he result of this tendency is that people no longer dare to be “ selves” and to think by
themselves. T hey think responsively and in the form of mottos.

Many seem to pose as an ideal the perfect uniformization of humanity. Mr. Gide says:
"Man should tend to the unity of the human race." I regard the gradual uniformization of the
economic conditions of humanity as both possible, desirable and likely. But an intellectual and
aesthetic uniformization of humanity would be the death of culture. Instead, I appeal to that future
state which Mr. Tarde called “ the final stage of individualism.” To an external uniformization of
humanity, there will be a corresponding growth of the diversity in internal consciousness, thanks to
the greater complication and accrued liberty of social relations. T hen diversity will spread out, as
the flower of the intellectual and aesthetic life.

Moral and social solidarity has also been set up by some writers as a desirable ideal. T his
solidarity must be understood a moral uniformization, the moral dependence of the individual
conscience vis-à-vis the collective conscience. Mr. de Gourmont has shed plenty of light on the
conflict that breaks out here between the individual and the social conscience, a conflict which is
only one of the forms of the fundamental conflict of the personal egoism and that of the group. He
wrote:

Certainly man cannot escape from immorality itself, from rebellion against the canonized
prejudices, a great personal benefit, a great advantage for his integral development, but a

collectivity of too-strong individuals, too independent on both sides, only constitutes a
mediocre people. We then see the social instinct enter into antagonism with the
individual instinct and of societies professing a morality that each of its intelligent
members, followed by a large section of the herd, judges to be vain, outdated or
tyrannical" (Remy de Gourmont, La Culture des Idées, p. 83).

It is above all from the moral point of view that the flattening of personal egoism by the
egoism of the group is intolerable. It is well known how much the meanness of the Esprit de corps,
the gregarious coalitions above all, will rage against superior individualities, solidarity by
irresponsibility, and all these forms of diminished humanity. It is this solidarity that engenders all
the coteries, camaraderies, schools of thought, societies for mutual admiration, etc. Before these
excesses of shameful egoism, before the pretensions of so many people to control others in the
name of I know not what interest of the larger group, the best moral and social precept is always:
"Be egoists. Be attentive to your own destiny. T hat is hard enough for you. And be a little less
worried about the fates of other people."

Solidarity favors those who scheme and plot, who flatter the powerful. It hates the independent
ones and the umbrageous. T he time will come when the preference will be for the latter. For it is in
the soul of the latter that all our remaining liberal power dwells.

Let us conclude from this review of several forms of solidarity, that it is impossible to set
up collective egoism as a dogma. I fail to see why egoisms will become sacro-sanct by the simple
fact of agglomerating themselves. May I add that these collective egoisms remain armed against
each other and that the law of the struggle for life, despite any optimistic affirmations to the
contrary, implacably has its usual effects here as elsewhere.

It is the same with “ perfect solidarity” as with “ absolute justice,” “ absolute altruism,” and
“ absolute monism.” T hey are all abstract concepts, and impossible to translate into real terms.
Every man has his own idiosyncratic notion of solidarity and justice, and his own way of judging
right from wrong, in pursuit of the interests of his coterie, class, etc. Mr. Remy de Gourmont said:

After an idea has been dissociated, if it is then placed into circulation naked, during its
voyage through the world it will pick up all sorts of parasitical passengers. Everywhere
the first organism will disappear, entirely devoured by the egoistic colonies that develop
on its back. A very amusing example of such deviations of ideas was recently given by the
corporation of painters at the ceremony called of the "T riumph of the Republic." T he
workers carried a banner where their claims to social justice were condensed into this cry:
"Down with the ripolin!" Now, note that the ripolin is a paper already painted, ready for
the first-comer to spread over a wood paneling; we will understand then all the sincerity
of this avowal and its ingenuity. T he ripolin here stands for injustice and oppression; it is

the enemy, it is the devil. We all have our own ripolins and we color them as suits us with
the abstract ideas that, without them, would be have personal usefulness." (La Culture des
Idées, p.98).

T he ideal is sullied by contact with reality: “ ''Twas a pearl before the fall, now it's only mud.”

It is then illusory to hope to realize these ideals of eternal flight, of dogmatizing about unattainable
things. Absolute monism, absolute altruism, absolute justice, all of these are conceptual idols sitting
enthroned in a metaphysical heaven, like the theses of the Kantian antinomies, of which they are
only an aspect. T hey resemble those “ mothers” in the second Faust "which are enthroned in
infinity, eternally alone, head encircled by images of life: active, but lifeless." According to Mr Jules
de Gaultier:

In matters of happiness as in all other orders of thought, the metaphysical pretention of
making things out of the Absolute runs against the laws of our Understanding, whose
indefinite forms only bring about relative objects. T he secret sensibility of humanity
rejects the insipidness of this perfect felicity. In harmony with the curiosity of the
Intellect that all satisfaction attracts by a more anxious seeking, it recognizes itself to be
insatiable. Goethe's Faust knew this law; he speculated on this form of human sensibility,
duping Mephistopheles when he concluded the pact on this condition, wherein he insists:
“ If you can seduce me to the point where I start pleading for myself, if you can let me
sleep in the bosom of enjoyments, may this be my last day! I offer you the bargain... If at
that moment I say: “ Slow down, you are so beautiful! then you can set the chains on me
straight away” (Jules de Gaultier, De Kant a Nietzsche, p. 215).

Before the bankruptcy of all the social dogmatisms a priori or a posteriori, one single party remains
logical: anomie, the autarky of the individual; it is individualism posed, not as a dogma (for this
would be to raise up a new Absolute) but as a tendency, a form of thought and action adapted to the
fundamental law of our intellectual nature, which forces us to exist in a world of relativities.

T here are, additionally, various means in which to understand Individualism. Each individual has his
own way of affirming his own self. As Nietzsche wrote:

Everyone, thinks himself freest where his feeling of life is the strongest; therefore, as
much in passion as in duty, or rather in scientific research, or in fantasies. What
strengthens the individual, what gives him a feeling of animation for life, all of that he
will involuntarily believe to always essential to his liberty: he combines dependency and
torpor, independence and the feeling of living as inseparable couples...T he strong man is
also the free man; the lively feeling of joy and suffering, the height of hopes, the

hardiness of desires, the power of hatred are the prerogative of the sovereign and
independent person, while the subject, the slave, lives oppressed and stupid" (Nietzsche,
“ T he T raveler and His Shadow” §9).

Each human type has its own individualism. In his fine study on “ the forms of character,” Mr. Ribot
has established that the source of Being is the will-to-life, not intelligence, the principle of a
division of human characteristics should be taken from the consideration of the diverse modes of
reacting to the will-to-life (T héodule Ribot, La Psychologie des Sentiments). From this point of
view, he distinguishes the “ sensitives” from the “ actives.” It is clear that the individualism of the
sensitives will not be the same as that of the actives. T he former will be an individualism of
abstention and contemplation, the latter an individualism in a combative form. T he former will
almost be an ascetisicm; the latter will be an assault, a conquest of life.

From the perspective of extending the sphere of social action, individualism could be equally
conceived in a wider manner, as well as more narrowly. We can thus distinguish an economic
individualism, a political individualism, and other individualisms: intellectual, aesthetic, religious,
moral, social. Here a remark arises on the subject of economic individualism as it has been professed
by the liberal school. T his economic philosophy contains nothing of individualism but the name; for
it ends in a veritable social dogmatism. With Spencer, for example, it is in the name of a dogmatic
idol: T he Progress of the Species, that the crushing of the economically weak is justified as
necessary and providential.

From the perspective of political organization, individualism can make room for two opposed
forms: aristocratic individualism and democratic individualism. In my way of thinking, aristocratic
individualism is a contradictory individualism. For it only claims for certain privileged people the
integral blossoming of their self and it becomes an oppressive doctrine for others.

In the end, there is a final point on which individualism can make space for two opposite forms. It
is the question of the intrinsic value of the probable destiny of human societies. Here two opposed
conceptions face off: social optimism and social pessimism. We may thus distinguish between two
forms of individualism: optimist individualism and pessimist individualism.

Resolving the issue of social optimism and pessimism is a metaphysical problem, beyond the scope
of our present work. Equally, to resolve this problem would imply a return to these social
dogmatisms that we have already set aside.

T he issue that we pose at present is a little different.

It consists in asking oneself, if we set the social dogmatisms aside, what should be the attitude of the
individual to the problem of “ action”? We only want to envisage the possible link between thought
and action in the diverse hypotheses that suggest themselves to the individual liberated from the
social dogmatisms.

T he instinct of knowledge, having dissolved all the social dogmatisms, passing by and having
proclaimed the inanity of all the future dogmatisms, will the individual not renounce action? Will
not the instinct of knowledge, the critical instinct, destroy the consciousness of the vital instinct?

Gaultier (De Kant a Nietzsche, chapter 1) has admirably explained the role of the instinct for
knowledge in face of the vital instinct. On one hand, the instinct for knowledge tends to deny life
by successively revering the dogmatisms which the vital instinct of societies sets up for its use. On
the other hand, with these dogmatisms overturned, the vital instinct evokes others, which are more
refined, by whose aid it can again subjugate the instinct for knowledge, until the latter revolts again
and ends in fresh negations. T his struggle of the instinct for life with the instinct for knowledge fills
the history books. It is this antagonism of the vital instinct with the instinct for knowledge which
may be the source of the contradiction between the individual and society. Society symbolizes the
instinct for life. It seems to be a forced egoism, a creator of useful myths, an illusionist beyond all
measure, a maker of ruses to dupe the individual. Individual knowledge is the refuge—precarious and
fragile—of the eternal enemy of the vital instinct: the instinct for knowledge. It is in the human
“ self” where the instinct for knowledge is incarnated. T here it takes consciousness of the
omnipotence of its tyrant: the will-to-life. It is there, in the conscience of the individual, where the
small liberating flame of intelligence is lit. It is from this small luminous point, lost in the night of
Being, where the instinct for knowledge contemplates life and poses the question: What is it all
worth?

We are led back to the issue we posed previously. From these two antagonistic instincts, the instincts
of knowledge and of life, the former denying, the latter affirming life and action, which will the
individual, liberated from the dogmatisms, choose to follow?

With all the dogmatisms set aside, two hypotheses offer themselves to the individual: either
agnosticism or the belief in absolute illusion.

Agnosticism refuses to cut off the question of the value of social life in any sense. Between social
optimism and social pessimism, it leaves the question open. Does the agnostic hypothesis, against
such excessive dogmatists as Mr. de Roberty, absolutely forbid action to the individual? Does it
necessarily discourage action? I don't believe so. In the absence of certainty, an act of faith will be
enough to inspire the individual to action. T he individual will take for his motto these words of
Edmond T hiaudière: "To think like a skeptic, and act like a believer" (La décevance du vrai).

For it to come from inaction or neutrality, these will be decisive: life pressures and the love of risk,
which Jean-Marie Guyau wrote about.

But let us take up another hypothesis: that of absolute illusion, of an absolute lie regarding life, in
which existence is nothing and human intelligence is a mere tool for filtering illusions, more and
more refined and delicate. It appears that the solution is simple and unilateral, that is, to retire from
all action and impassibly observe the illusions. T his chimera is all the more supreme and aesthetic:
art becomes the individual's refuge. T his is the attitude of thought so well described by Jules de
Gaultier. "By the production of the work of art, intelligence announces that it has retired from the
scene where it acted under the rule of illusion, and that it sits as a spectator on the banks of the
future, on the shore of the river where the barks, full of masks and values invented by the folly of
Maya, continue to flow downstream amid all the noises of life" (J. de Gaultier, De Kant a Nietzsche).

T his attitude seems to the only logical one. But let us not forget that humanity comes in two
classes, the passive and the active. Passive natures, enlightened by the instinct of knowledge, end
with Hinduism as we have already said. But it is not the same with active natures. With these, the
voice of life and activity, will always be stronger than the voice of disillusionment.

In them, despite everything, the will-to-life will triumph, as a brutal and eternal victor. For these
natures, action is their fate. It is from them that the word of Faust is made to ring true: "In the
beginning was action." And action is also at the end. It is in them the final élan, the final cry of life.

T hus, the active man will act, even if he feels or knows that he lives within eternal illusion. He will
get drunk from the spectacle of life; he will be enthused by shadows, he will leap against illusions and
mirages. T he active man, before the moving décor of life, will be like those attending a play who
become enchanted by the illusion to the extent of trying to intervene in the scenes, as is told of
that spectator who cried out to Othello as he was killing Desdemona: "Stop! she's innocent!"

T hose in whom the will-to-life and the will-to-power triumphs will eternally project onto the world
the mirage of energy that brims over in them. At the contact of their powerful will, pale Maya will
seem to animate the statue of Galatea, as formerly. Having felt Maya shudder under their embrace,
for these energetic ones the most intoxicating sensation remains, which makes them shiver with joy
during their travels through all the phenomena of Life.

ANARCHISM AND INDIVIDUALISM
From La Sensibilité Individualiste, 1909

T he terms "anarchism" and "individualism" are frequently used interchangeably. Many thinkers,
although vastly different from each other, are called, more or less at random, either anarchists or
individualists. T hus we speak carelessly of anarchism or Stirnerite Individualism, of Nietzschean
anarchism or individualism, of Barrèsian anarchism or individualism, etc. In other cases, however, it
has come to be seen as impossible to merge these two terms. People refer to Proudhonian
anarchism, Marxist anarchism, Syndicalist anarchism; but never to Proudhonian individualism,
Marxist or syndicalist individualism. We can refer to Christian or Tolstoyan anarchism, but not to
Christian or Tolstoyan individualism.

On other occasions, we have combined both terms into a single epithet: "Anarchist Individualism."
Victor Basch uses this rubric to designate a social philosophy which he distinguishes from anarchism
properly speaking, and whose great representatives are, according to him, Goethe, Byron, Von
Humboldt, Schleiermacher, Carlyle, Emerson, Kierkegaard, Renan, Ibsen, Stirner, Nietzsche (Basch,
L'individualisme anarchiste, Max Stirner, p. 276). T his philosophy can be summarized as the
worship of great men and the apotheosis of genius. As a label suited to that doctrine, the expression
"anarchist individualism" seems dubious to me. T he label of anarchist, taken in an etymological
sense, seems hardly applicable to thinkers in the lineage of Goethe, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, whose
philosophy appears on the contrary to be dominated by ideas of both hierarchical organization and
the harmonious stratification of values. On the other hand, the epithet "individualist" is perhaps not
applied with equal propriety to all those who were named above. If it seems to suit Stirner's egoist,
nihilist, and anti-idealist revolt, it is hard to see how it would apply to the Hegelian, optimistic, and
Idealist philosophy of someone like Carlyle, who clearly subordinates the individual to the Idea.

So there is a bit of confusion on the use of the two terms, as much as there is regarding the ideas and
feelings that these terms indicate. In this essay I will attempt to clarify the notion of individualism
and determine what its psychological and sociological content are, by distinguishing it from
anarchism.

Let us start with a clear distinction: that is, between a social system and a simple intellectual or
sentimental attitude. I believe that the initial difference between anarchism and individualism is
there. Anarchism, in whatever formulation, is essentially a social system, an economic, political and
social doctrine, which seeks to realize a certain ideal. Even the a-morphism of Bakunin, which is
defined by the absence of every definite social form, after everything else, is still a particular social
system. On the other hand, individualism seems to be a mental state, a feeling of life, a certain

intellectual and sentimental attitude of the individual vis-à-vis his society.

I am not ignorant of the fact that in the sociological terminology exists a certain individualism
which we call “ legal individualism.” T his individualism proclaims the functional identity of human
individualities and consequently of their equality before the law. T here is, in this, a well-defined
juridical and political doctrine and not a simple mental attitude. In effect, it insists exclusively on
what all humans share; by design it neglects that which is diverse, singular, and properly individual in
them; rather, it sees in these a source of disorder and evil. We see that this doctrine is more a form
of humanism or socialism than a true individualism.

What then is individualism? Understood in the subjective and psychological sense, which I will
explain further, individualism is a spirit of anti-social revolt. T his, for the individual, is the feeling
of a pressure, more or less painful, emanating from life in society; at the same time, it is a wish to
rebel against the ambient social determinism and to detach one's personality from it.

T here is a struggle between the individual and his social milieu; this cannot be denied. An axiom of
sociology is that society is something more than a sum of unities. By the fact of the reconciliation
of these unities, the common and similar parts tend to mutually reinforce each other, and to crush
the parts that are not held in common. A certain notion of an external social order, superior to
individuals, takes shape and imposes itself on them. It is incarnated in the rules, customs, disciplines
and laws, in the totality of a social organization, which works incessantly upon the individual. On
the other hand, in every individual (of course to varying degrees according to the individual in
question) various sensibilities, intelligence and willpower emerge, and resist the leveling that is a
normal part of social life and consequently, certain instincts of independence, enjoyment and power
also emerge, that want to blossom, seeing social norms as so many obstacles. Even though the
sociologists and moralists who are speak up for Society's interests have described these tendencies as
"vagabond," inconsequential, irrational, and dangerous; but at any rate they have an equal right to
exist. It is vain for society to hope to brutally and hypocritically suppress them; it is vain for
Society to multiply against the independent man and the rebel, all attempts to intimidate, vex and
eliminate them; it is vain to try to convince the individual of his own weakness and nothingness, by
means of its moralists; the feeling of the self—the self, hated by society—remains indestructible in
certain souls and invincibly stokes an individualist revolt.

Two phases can be distinguished in the evolution of the individualist sentiment. First, the individual
is aware of the social determinism that weighs him down. But, at the same time, he has a feeling that
he himself constitutes a force in the middle of all this determinism. A very weak force, if you wish,
but essentially one that is capable, despite everything, of struggling, and perhaps of victory. In any
case, he does not wish to give in without trying his strength against society, and he takes up the
struggle against it, counting on his energy, his suppleness and if pressed, his lack of scruples. Such is
the history of the great ambitious men, the merciless power-seekers. In Stendhal's novel The Red
and the Black, the character Julian Sorel represents this type in literature. Cardinal de Retz,
Napoleon, and Benjamin Constant represent it in the real world, in varying degrees of energy,

absence of scruples and successful outcomes.

No matter which qualities are deployed by the strong individuality in his struggle for independence
and power, it is rare for him to remain victorious in this unequal fight. Society is too strong; it
envelops us with too solid a network of predetermined occurrences for us to vanquish it for long.
T he romantic theme of the epic combat between the strong individuality and society is never
without a leitmotiv of discouragement and despair; it invariably ends with an admission of failure. As
Vigny said, "God placed Earth amid the air, and man amid destiny. Destiny envelops him and carries
him towards the hidden goal. T he common man is carried along; the great characters are those who
struggle against it. T here are few who have fought it all their lives; when they let themselves be
carried by the current, these swimmers are drowned. T hus Bonaparte was weakened in Russia, and he
became ill and struggled no further: destiny swallowed him up. Cato was his own master to the end”
(Vigny, Journal d’un poète). A feeling of impotent revolt against the social conditions that fate had
cast him into, full of the romantic imprecations of Mr. de Couaen. T he last will of Camors breathes
out the final lassitude of a defeated man. T he sons of the king in Gobineau’s novel Les Pléiades
declare war on society; but give in to the feeling that they are dealing with too strong an enemy and
fear that the imbecile mob will crush them. Again, here is Vigny: "T he desert, alas! It is you,
egalitarian democracy, it is you, who buried and made everything fade under your heaps of tiny
grains of sand. Your ponderous level has buried and razed everything. Eternally the valleys and hills
are displaced, and we only see a courageous man from time to time; he rises like a waterspout, taking
ten steps toward the sun, then falling is pulverized, and we do not see further than the sinister level
of the sand” (Vigny, Journal d’un poète, p. 262). Benjamin Constant recognized the tyrannical
omnipotence of Society over the individual, in feelings as much as in behavior. "T he most
passionate feeling cannot struggle against the order of things. Society is too powerful, it is
reproduced under various forms, it mixes in too much bitterness with all unsanctioned love
(Benjamin Constant, Adolphe, p. 202)..."

T he feeling which the strong individualities run up against is that of an irremediable disproportion
between their aspirations and their destiny. T rapped between opposing fates, they writhe in
weakness and exasperation. Desires of this kind abound in Vigny. "To tell the truth, there are only
two kinds of men: those who have and those who earn... As for me, born in the first of these classes,
I have had to live like the second, and the feeling of the destiny I miss out on, disgusts me” (Vigny,
Journal d’un poète, p. 236). Heine presents the same spectacle of painful non-adaptation, this
nomadism and rootlessness of a superior individuality torn between the existing social influences,
between antagonistic ideals and parties, not wanting to get nailed down anywhere. "Whatever the
world pursues and hopes for nowadays," wrote Heine in 1848, “ has become completely foreign to
my heart; I bow before destiny, being too weak to resist it."

Aside from these grand revolts, there are others on a smaller scale. T hese are the everyday
malcontents who, being incapable on their own of taking on a society deemed oppressive, combine
their forces against those of other individuals who feel equally outraged. T hese malcontents create a
small society, at odds with the one that surrounds it. It is the same with all revolutionary sects. Small
in their beginnings, they tend to enlarge and to transform society in their own image. Understood
like this, the spirit of revolt is very much a social solvent; but it is at the same time a seed for a new

society. It plays an important historical role, where it represents the spirit of change and progress.

But here again, the efforts made by individuals to shake off the existing servitudes suffer from a
deception. One defeated tyranny is replaced by another. T he victorious minority transforms itself
into a tyrannical majority. T his is the vicious circle that all of politics is engaged in. Progress, as the
enfranchisement of the individual, is never more than an illusion. In reality, there has never been
anything but a displacement of influences and of servitudes. Under the pressure of a revolutionary
minority, collective ideals and feelings attach to other objects, and are realized in a new ideal. But, as
collectives and shared by a great mass of men, these ideals and feelings immediately tend to become
imperatives. Crystallized into dogmas and norms, they become new authorities who refuse to allow
the same contradictions that destroyed their predecessors. T he logical conclusion of this vicious
circle of history would seem to be what Vigny pointed to: namely, political indifference: "How little
it matters to us which troop marches onto the stage of Power” (FN: Vigny, Journal d’un poète).

T hus we come to the second stage of individualism. T he first was the courageous and confident
revolt of the individual who flattered himself that he was able to dominate society and refashion it
according to whim. T he second is the feeling of the uselessness of making an effort. T his is a
stubborn resignation in the face of the social constraints and inevitabilities, in spite of all blended
with an irreducible hostility. Individuality is always defeated, but is never conquered. It is the spirit of
revolt, so admirably symbolized by Leconte de Lisle in his Caïn.

From the start, Cain throws his cry of revolt in God's face:

Why should we roam forever in the sacred shadow,
Panting like a timber wolf until morning comes?
To the clarity of distant Paradise;
Why do you always offer your parched lips?
Bow your head, slave, and suffer your destiny, your fate.

Go back to nothingness, earthworm!
What matters your useless revolt to He who can do anything?
T he fire laughs at the water that murmurs and boils;
T he wind does not hearken to the protest of the dry leaf.
Pray and prostrate yourself. — I shall remain standing!

May the coward crawl under the conqueror's feet.
Glorify shame, worship torment,
And pay for your repose with degradation;
Jehovah can bless their filth and shame;
T he flattering fear and the hatred that tells lies.

I shall remain standing!
And from evening till dawn;
And from dawn to the night,
I will never keep mute;
T he tireless cry of a desperate heart!
T he thirst for justice, O Cherub, devours me.
Crush me down, or I will never bow!

In the devil's Sadness, the poet expresses the discouragement of the struggling man:

T he monotonous days, like a horrible rain;
Pile up, without being filled, in my eternity;
Power, pride, despair, everything is only vanity;
And the fury weighs on me and the struggle wears me down.

As with love, hatred has lied to me!
I drank all the sea of infertile tears.
Fall, crush me, thunder, heaps of worlds;
May I be engulfed in the sacred sun!

And the happy cowards, and the suffering races;
By bright space which has neither bottom nor end;
Will hear a voice saying: Satan is dead!
And that will be your end,
You who took six days to create!

Let's come back down to Earth from all that symbolic talk. In Earthly terms, individualism is the
feeling of a profound, irreducible contradiction between the individual and society. T he individualist
is he who is predisposed to feel, in a particularly lively manner, the ineluctable disharmonies between
his intimate being and his social milieu. At the same time this man has been given occasion to take
note of this disharmony. Either by a sudden realization or after a succession of experiences, he
comes to regard society as a perpetual engine of constraint, humiliation and misery, a kind of
continual re-creation of human suffering. In the name of his own experience and his personal
sensation of life, the individualist thinks he has a right to relegate every future social ideal to the
status of utopias, in which a desired harmony would be established between the individual and society.
Far from reducing evil, the development of civilization only intensifies it by making the individual's
life more complicated, more laborious and harder amid the thousand wheels of a social mechanism
that becomes more and more tyrannical. Science itself, by intensifying the individual's consciousness
of his socially-imposed life-conditions, ends by darkening his intellectual and moral horizons. Qui
auget scientiam auget et dolorem (He who increases his knowledge increases his sorrows. -Seneca).

We see that individualism is essentially a social pessimism. In its more moderate form, it allows that,
if life in society is not absolutely evil and completely destructive to individuality, it is at minimum a
restrictive and oppressive condition for the individual, a compulsory move, a necessary and lesser
evil.

T he individualists who respond to this signal make up a small, morose group whose language is
rebellious, resigned and desperate, in stark contrast to the fanfares of the future coming from the
optimistic sociologists. Such as Vigny: "T he social order is always bad. Once in a while it becomes
tolerable, but no more than that. Between the bad and the tolerable, the dispute is not worth one
drop of blood” (Vigny, Journal d’un poète). Or Schopenhauer, reflecting on social life as the
supreme efflorescence of human wickedness and suffering. Or Stirner, with his intellectual and moral
solipsism, perpetually on guard against the tricks of social idealism and against the intellectual and
moral crystallization which all organized society brings to bear against the individual. Or, sometimes,
Amiel with his painful Stoicism which sees society as a limitation and an encumbrance for his free
spiritual nature. Or Henry David T horeau, that extravagant Emersonian, the "bachelor of nature,"
scrupulously avoiding all normal paths of human activity and becoming a "stroller," enamored with
independence and dreams, "whose every instant will always be filled with truer work than what
normally employed men can experience during their whole life." Or Challemel-Lacour with his
pessimistic conception of society and progress. Or, perhaps at certain times also, Gabriel Tarde,

purveyor of an individualism colored by misanthropy, which he expresses in one of his books: "It is
possible that the river of imitation has its banks and that, by the very effect of its excessive
deployment, the need for sociability diminishes or rather is altered and transformed into a kind of
generalized misanthropy, which, in addition, is quite compatible with a modest commercial
circulation and a certain degree of industrial exchange, activities reduced to the strictly necessary,
but above all very well suited to reinforce in each of us the distinctive traits of our interior
individuality.

Even with those who, like Maurice Barrès, are disgusted, either due to dilettantism and artistic
obligations, or the accents of bitter rebellion or discouraged pessimism, with such men individualism
remains a feeling of "the impossibility of reconciling the 'particular ego' and the 'general ego'" (M.
Barrès, Un Homme libre). T his is a will to liberate the first 'ego,' to cultivate that which is most
special, most driven and sought after, in detail and depth. "T he individualist," said Barrès, "is he
who, through the pride of his true ego, which he fails to liberate, then ceaselessly murders, disfigures
and denies everything he has in common with ordinary men...T he dignity of the men of our race is
exclusively attached to certain stirrings, which the world neither knows nor perceives, which we
must cultivate in ourselves.”

With everyone, individualism is an attitude of sensibility that goes from the hostility and the
defiance and indifference and disdain vis-à-vis organized society where we are constrained to live,
regarding its uniformizing rules, its monotonous repetitions and its subjugating constraints. T his is a
desire of his to escape and to retreat into himself, “ phuguê monou pros monon” (the passing from
the solitary to the solitary). It is over all the profound feeling of the "unicity of the self," of what
the self keeps of itself, incompressible and impervious to all social influences. It is, as Tarde says,
the feeling of the "profound and fugitive singularity of persons, of their way of being, of thinking,
feeling, which only happens once and only for an instant” (Tarde, Les Lois de l’imitation, sub fine).
Is there any need to show how much this attitude differs from anarchism?

Doubtless, in one sense, anarchism emanates from individualism (Nietzsche said in this sense:
"Anarchism is only a means of individualist agitation" (Will to Power, §337)). It is, in effect, the
antisocial revolt of a minority who feels they are oppressed or disadvantaged by the current order of
things. But anarchism only represents the first stage of individualism: the stage of faith and hope, of
courageous and confident action in success. Individualism in its second phase is converted, as we
have seen, into social pessimism.

T he passage from confidence to despair, from optimism to pessimism is here, in great part, an affair
of psychological temperament. It comes to those delicate souls quickly withered by contact with
social realities and consequently quick to be disillusioned, Vigny or Heine for example. We may say
that these souls belong to the psychological type called "sensitives." In them the feeling of social
determinism, all that is restrictive to the individual, become particularly haunting and crushing. But
there are other souls who resist these multiplied failures, who even misunderstand the hardest lessons
of experience and yet remain unshakeable in their faith. T hese souls belong to the “ active” type.

T hese are the anarchist apostles: Bakunin, Kropotkin, Reclus. Perhaps their imperturbable
confidence in their ideal tends to a lesser intellectual and emotional acuity. T he reasons for doubt
and discouragement do not strike them so vividly as to tarnish the abstract ideal that they have
fashioned or to lead them to the final and logical stage of individualism: namely, social pessimism.

Whatever it may be, the optimism of the anarchist philosophy is not full of doubts. T his optimism
spreads, often simplistic and naively, in these volumes with a cow’s-blood cover which make up the
family reading of the propagandists by the deed! T he shadow of Rousseau's optimism lays across all
this literature. T he anarchist optimism consists in believing that the social disharmonies, that the
contradictions in the current state of things between the individual and society are not essential, but
accidental and provisional, that they will one day be resolved and will give way to an era of
harmony.

Anarchism rests on two principles which seem complimentary, but which at base are contradictory.
One is the properly idealist or libertarian principle formulated by Wilhelm von Humboldt and
chosen by John Stuart Mill as an epigraph for his Essay on Liberty: "T he great principle is the
essential and absolute importance of human development in its richest diversity." T he other is the
humanist or altruist principle which is translated on the economic plane by anarcho-communism.
T hat the individualist principle and the humanist principle negate one another, this is proven by
both logic and facts. Either the individualist principle signifies nothing, or it is a defense of all the
diversity and inequality of the individuals concerned, in favor of traits which differentiate them,
separate them and when necessary, set them against each other. Humanism on the contrary,
envisions the assimilation of the human species. Its ideal is, according to the principle of Gide, to
make the expression, "our fellows" a reality. In fact, we see nowadays the antagonism of these two
principles being affirmed in the writings of the more penetrating anarchist theoreticians; this
necessary logical antagonism will of necessity lead to the disintegration of anarchism as a political
and social doctrine.

Whatever it is, and certain difficulties that he will run up against who would seek to reconcile the
individualist principle and the humanist principle, these two rival and inimical principles find at least
on this point that they are both clearly optimistic. Optimistic, the principle of Humboldt is, in that
it implicitly affirms the original goodness of human nature and the legitimacy of his free flourishing.
It is opposed to the Christian condemnation of our natural instincts, and we conceive the
reservations that Dupont-White, has, the translator of the "Essay on Liberty," thought he should
make of the spiritualist and Christian point of view (condemnation of the flesh) as concerning this
principle.

No less optimistic is the humanist principle. Humanism, in effect, is nothing other than the
divinization of man in his general qualities, of the human species and consequently of human
society. We see that anarchism, optimistic with regard to the individual, is even more so with
respect to society. Anarchism presupposes that individual liberties, freed unto themselves, will be
harmonized naturally and will spontaneously realize the anarchist ideal of the free society.

What is the attitude of individualism about these two opposite points of view: namely, the Christian
and the anarchist? Individualism a realist philosophy, of lived life and immediate sensation, equally
repugnant to both of these metaphysics: the former, the Christian metaphysics, which affirms a
priori an original perversity; the other, the rationalistic or Rousseavian metaphysics, which affirms
no less a priori the original and essential goodness of our nature. Individualism faces the facts. Yet
those who show the human being to be composed of a bundle of instincts at war with one another,
and in human society a grouping of individuals necessarily also in struggle one against another. By
the fact of his conditions of existence, the human being is subject to the law of struggle: an internal
struggle between his own instincts, an external struggle with his fellows. If the recognition of the
permanent and universal characteristic of egoism and struggle in human existence, is pessimism,
then we concede that individualism is pessimistic. But we must quickly add that the pessimism of
individualism, the pessimism of facts, in a sense, the experimental pessimism, being an a posteriori
pessimism, is totally different from the theological pessimism which pronounces a priori, in the
name of the Dogma, the damnation of human nature.

On the other hand, individualism is no less neatly distinguishable from anarchism. If, like anarchism,
it allows the principle of von Humboldt as an expression of the normal tendency of our nature in its
full bloom, it recognizes at the same time that this tendency is condemned never to be satisfied,
because of the internal and external disharmonies of our nature. In other words, it considers the
harmonious development of the individual and society as utopian. Pessimistic with regard to the
individual, individualism is even more so where society is concerned: Man is by nature a
disharmonious being, a reason at war internally with his instincts. But this disharmony only piles up
in the state of society which, by a painful paradox, comprehends our instincts whie exasperating
them. In effect, the rapprochement of the individual wills-to-life makes itself into a collective willto-life which becomes immediately oppressive for the individual will-to-life and sets itself with all its
might against their flourishing. T he state of society thus pushes the disharmonies of our nature to
their limits; it exasperates them and sets them in the most desolate light. Society thus truly
represents, as Schopenhauer thought, the human will-to-life to its maximum of desire, struggle,
insatiability, and suffering.

From this first opposition between anarchism and individualism, others flow as well.

Anarchism believes in Progress. Individualism is a mental attitude that can be called ahistorical. It
denies the future and progress. It see the human will-to-life in an eternal present. Like
Schopenhauer, with whom he offers several analogies, Stirner is an ahistorical spirit. He likewise
believed that the anticipation of some new and marvelous thing to come, is illusory. Every social
form, when concretized, crushes the individual. For Stirner, there is no utopian tomorrow, no
"Paradise at the End of our Days"; there is only the egoistic today.

Stirner's attitude toward society is the same as Schopenhauer's, the negation of life remains totally

metaphysical and, as it were, totally spiritual (recall that Schopenhauer condemns suicide, which
would be its material and tangible negation). Similarly the rebellion of Stirner against society is a
completely mental one, entirely interior, all intention and intimate will. It is not, as with Bakunin, a
call to pandestruction. It is, with regard to society, a simple act of defiance and passive hostility, a
mélange of indifference and spiteful resignation. It is not for the individual to struggle against
society; for society will always be the stronger party. It must be obeyed, calling for doggish
obedience. But Stirner, while going about obediently, yet holds, in guise of consolation for himself,
an immense intellectual loathing for it. It is almost the attitude of Vigny vis-à-vis nature and
society. "A peaceable despair, with neither convulsions of anger nor reproaches to heaven, is wisdom
itself (Vigny, Journal d’un poète)." And again: "silence is the best critique of life."

Anarchism is an exasperated and crazed idealism. Individualism is summarized in a trait common
both to Schopenhauer and Stirner: merciless realism. It ends in what a German writer calls a
functional "dis-idealization" of life and society." An ideal is only a peg," said Stirner. From this
point of view, Stirner is the most authentic representative of individualism. His icy words seize on
souls with a completely different shudder than the flaming and radiant words of Nietzsche. Nietzsche
remains an impenitent idealist, imperious, violent. He idealizes superior humanity. Stirner represents
the most complete dis-idealization of nature and life, the most radical philosophy of disillusionment
since the book of Ecclesiastes.

Pessimistic beyond measure and reserve, individualism is absolutely antisocial, as opposed to
anarchism, which is only relatively so (that is, relative to contemporary society).

Anarchism happily recognizes a contradiction between the individual and the State, which it would
resolve by suppressing the State; but it sees no functional, irreducible contradiction between the
individual and society. Anarchism, while cursing the State, yet absolves and almost divinizes society.
Society represents for it a spontaneous growth (Spencer), while the State is an artificial and
authoritarian organization. However, to the individualist, society is just as tyrannical, if not more
so, than the State. Society, in effect, is nothing but the ensemble of the social linkages of every kind
(opinion, morals, customs, conveniences, mutual surveillance, more or less discreet spying on the
conduct of each other, moral approbation and reproof, etc). T hus understood, society constitutes a
tight tissue of tyrannies large and small, demanding, inevitable, incessant, harassing and pitiless,
penetrating to the minutiae of individual lives much more profoundly and more continually than
any statist constraint could ever do. Moreover, examined more closely, we see that the statist
tyranny and the tyranny of morals grow up from the same root: the collective interest of a caste or
a class who desire to establish or keep its domination and prestige. Opinion and morals are in part
the residue of the old caste disciplines on the way out, in part the germ of new social disciplines
which bring with it the new directing class on the path to formation. T his is why, between the
constraint of the State and that of opinion and morals, there is only a difference of degree. T hey
have at bottom the same goal: the maintenance of a certain moral conformity useful to the group,
and same proceedings: the vexation and elimination of the independent and rebellious spirits. T he
only difference is that the diffuse sanctions (opinion and morals) are more hypocritical than the
others.

Proudhon was right to say that the State is only the mirror of society. It is only tyrannical when
society is tyrannical. T he government, following the remark of Tolstoy, is a gathering of people
who exploit others and which favor above all the wicked and cheats. If such is the practice of the
government, such is that of society also. T here is a suitability between these two terms: State and
society. T he former is worth as much as the latter. T he gregarious spirit or the spirit of society is no
less oppressive for the individual than the statist spirit or the priestly spirit, which are only
maintained thanks to it and by it. How strange! Stirner himself seems to share, on the relations of
society and the State, the error of a Spencer and a Bakunin. He protests against the State
intervention in the acts of the individual, but not against that of society. "Before the individual, the
State is surrounded by an aura of sanctity; for example it makes a law about duels. Two men who
agree to risk their lives in order to resolve an affair (whatever it be) cannot carry out their
agreement because the State would forbid it; they will be exposed to judicial pursuits and to some
punishment. What of their liberty and free will? It is completely there where, as in North America,
society decides to make the duelists suffer certain disagreeable consequences of their act and
withdraw from them, for example, the credit they previously enjoyed. To refuse credit is the affair
of each person, and if it pleases a society to retract it from some reason or another, he who suffers
this cannot plead this attack on their liberty: society has only made use of its own. Society of which
we speak leaves the individual perfectly free to be exposed to the fatal or disagreeable consequences
that will drag them to their way of acting and leaving full and entire, their liberty of will. T he State
does precisely the contrary: it denies all legitimacy to the will of the individual and does not
recognize as legitimate any will but its own, the law of the State (Stirner, The Ego and His Own)."
What a strange reasoning. T he law does not strike me. How then am I more free if society boycotts
me? Such reasoning would legitimate all the attacks of a public opinion infected by moral bigotry
against the individual. It is on such reasoning that the legend of individual liberty in the AngloSaxon countries is built. Stirner himself senses the weakness of this reasoning very strongly, and he
goes a bit further to his famous distinction between “ society” and “ association.” In the former, the
individual is taken as a means; in the latter, he takes himself as an end and treats the association as a
means of personal power and enjoyment: "You bring to association all your power, all your wealth,
and make yourself of worth. In society, you and your activity were utilized. In the former, you live
as an egoist; in the second, you live as a man, that is to say, religiously: you work there at the Vine
of the Lord. You owe to society all that you have, you are obliged and you are haunted by social
duties; but in association, you owe it nothing; it serves you, and you leave it without scruple when
you cease to draw any advantage from it..." "If society is more than yourself, you will make it pass
before you, you will make it your servant; association is your tool, your arm, it sharpens and
multiplies your natural forces. Association only exists because of you, and by you, while society on
the contrary claims you as its goods and it can exist without you. In brief, society is sacred and
association is your property, society makes you its servant, while you make association yours” (Max
Stirner, The Ego and His Own).

A vain distinction, if there ever was one! Where is the line between a “ society” and an
“ association”? Does association not quickly tend, in the ideas of Stirner, to crystallize into society?

In whatever wat it is taken, anarchism is in the impossible situation of having to reconcile two
irreconcilable terms: society and individual liberty. T he free society it yearns for is a contradiction

in terms. It is from wooden iron, so to speak, a baton without an end. Speaking of anarchists,
Nietzsche wrote: "We may already read on all the walls and all the tables the word of the future: free
society. Free society! Indeed! But I think that you know, sirs, what you will build it with? Wooden
iron?” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science §356)... Individualism is more clear and more plain than
anarchism. It puts State, society, and association on the same plane; it sets them back to back and
throws them overboard as far as possible. "Every association has the same failings as a monastery,"
says Vigny.

Antisocial as it is, individualism is happy enough to be immoral as well. But that is not absolutely
true. With Vigny, pessimistic individualism is reconciled with an elevated moral Stoicism, severe and
pure. Always, even with Vigny, an immoralist element remains: a tendency to dis-idealize society, to
disjoin and to oppose both terms: society and morality, and to see society as a fatal and lazy mother
of stupidity and hypocrisy. “ My books Cinq-Mars, Stello, Servitude et Grandeur militaires are songs
from a kind of epic poem on disillusion; but only social and false things will I lose and that I will
trample underfoot as the illusions; I will set upon these debris, on this powder, the holy beauty of
enthusiasm, of love, of honor”... (Vigny, Journal d’un poète, p. 17) It goes without saying that with
Stirner and Stendhal, individualism is immoralist with neither scruple nor reserve. Anarchism is
imbued with such a vulgar moralism. Anarchist morality, being without obligation nor sanction, is
nonetheless a morality. It is at bottom the Christian morality, an abstraction from the pessimistic
element that encloses the latter. T he anarchist assumes that the virtues necessary for social
harmony will flourish of their own accord. An enemy of coercion, the doctrine harmonizes even the
ability of the lazy to dip into the general stores. But the anarchist is persuaded that, in the city of
the future, the lazy will be quite rare or even there will not be any.

Optimistic and idealistic, imbued with humanism and moralism, anarchism is a social dogmatism. It
is a "cause," in the sense that Stirner assigns to this word. Something else is a "cause," something
else is a simple attitude of the individual soul. A cause implies a common adherence to an idea, a
shared belief and a devotion to this belief. T his, individualism is not. Individualism is anti-dogmatic
and little inclined to proselytism. It will happily take for a motto the words of Stirner: "I have set
my cause on nothing." T he veritable individualist does not seek to communicate its own sensation
of life and of society. What good would it do? Omne individuum ineffabile. Persuaded of the
diversity of temperaments and the uselessness of a single rule, happily harmonized with Henry
David T horeau: "I would not trade the whole world to have anyone adopt my way of life: for,
without counting that before he should well have learned it, I may well have discovered another one,
I would that there be in the world as many different persons as possible; but I would that each should
take care to follow his own path and not that of his father, his mother or his neighbor." T he
individualist knows that there are temperaments which find individualism repulsive, and that it would
be ridiculous to wish to convince them. In the eyes of a thinker enamored of solitude and
independence, a deep thinker, like Vigny a pure adept of the interior life, the social life and its
agitations appear like something factitious, rigged, deprived of any sincere or strongly held feelings.
And conversely those who by temperament feel an imperious need for social life and activity, those
who leap into the melee, those who have political and social enthusiasms, those who believe in the
virtue of certain leagues and groupings, those who ceaselessly repeat these words: the Idea, the
Cause, those who believe that tomorrow will bring something new and great, those who
misunderstand and necessarily disdain the deep thinker, who abase themselves before “ the harrow-

mob” which Vigny speaks of. T he internal life and social action are mutually exclusive, and not
given to mutual comprehension. As an antithesis may we read on one hand Schopenhauer's book
Wisdom in Life, this bible of reserved, defiant and sad individualism, or the Amiel’s Journal, or
Vigny’s Journal of a Poet; on the other hand, read Benoît Malon, Elisée Reclus or Peter Kropotkin,
and you will see what an abyss lies between these types.

If we now ask what are the salient traits of anarchist dogmatism, we may respond that the first and
most important of these traits is intellectualism or scientism. Whatever the differences between
orthodox Marxism and traditional anarchism, we may consider them, following the fine remark of
Edouard Berth, as "two divergent but complementary aspects of one and the same social
psychology, of that very intellectualist and very rationalist social psychology which has reigned
since the second half of the last century (Berth, “ Anarchisme individualiste, marxisme orthodoxe,
syndicalisme révolutionnaire” (Mouvement socialiste, 1 May 1905). What characterizes anarchism
is its faith in science. T he anarchists are in general the great readers, fervent for science. It is also
the faith in the efficacy of science to found a rational society: "No-one," said Mr. Berth, "is more
fervently devoted to Science, and no-one believes more in the virtue of science with more ardent
faith than the individualist anarchists. T hey have always opposed Science to Religion and conceived
Free-thought as a kind of anti-Church...there is more to say about this religion of Science so
eminently developed with the individualist anarchists. T here are two parties in Science: the one
formal, abstract, systematic, dogmatic, on a sort of metaphysical cosmology, very distant from the
real world and yet claiming to enclose this diverse and prodigiously complex real world in the unity
of its abstract and simple formulas; it is Science full stop, with a capital S; Science alone, which
claims to fight against Religion, to set solution against solution and give to the world and its origin a
rational explanation, and there are the sciences, diverse, concrete, each having its own
methodology, adapted to its particular object, sciences that cleave as close as possible to the real
world and become little more than rational techniques. In this, the proclaimed unity of the sciences
is broken up. It is self-evident that the formal and metaphysical part is that which the anarchists
have cultivated. It gives its devotees an intellectual inebriation, leading to a strong illusion of power.
It replaces religion, it fills the void left in the soul by their faith. T hey inherit the Earth; it is held in
certain simple and clear formulas: what an empire! and what a vengeance for an isolated, solitary,
savage one! He escapes the weakness and misery inherent in his solitude, and thereby you see him
become master of the Universe” (Berth, loc. cit., p. 14)! From this scientistic intellectualism flows
the anarchist's authoritarianism. "Anarchist intellectualism—it does not escape the law of every
intellectualism—ends thus at the most perfect authoritarianism. T his is fatal for it. T here is no
room for liberty in any kind of intellectualist system. Liberty is invention, the right and the power
to find something new, to add something new to the universe: but when there is only one universal
truth, which is revealed to us by religion or science, outside of which there is neither any individual
happiness, nor any social order, liberty has no raison d’être, it only exists as a negative; science
claims its liberty against religion, and when science is dominant, religion claims liberty against
science, but as two single and universal truths cannot both exist, one must exterminate its rival; for,
if there is a truth, it is in the name of this one truth that social unity, moral unity, national,
international, human unity must be realized." T his scientistic intellectualism has set its imprint on
every plan for social reorganization according to the anarchistic formulas. T he first theoreticians of
anarchy call on certain cosmological, physical, biological considerations, as pretentious as they are
cloudy. Biology is notably invoked for every topic to the support of the anarchistic utopias. Biology
shows us with living beings the spectacle of "autonomy in harmony" and invites us to realize this
ideal in human societies. It is she who suggests to us the egalitarian idea of the equivalence of the

functions of the organs in biological organisms and, by analogy, in the social organism. T he vague
ideal of evolution intervenes like a deus ex machina to resolve the difficulties. It is also from the
progress of science that we wait on the future welfare of humanity. Scientific and technological
progress will engender such an overflowing of wealth that for people to grab at will from the general
stocks will be an adequate means of redistribution.

Of course, individualism does not hold to any of these pseudo-scientific fantasies. For the
individualist, Science does not exist; only sciences exist, that is to say, methods of investigation that
are more or less prudent and secure. Nothing is more contrary to the true scientific spirit as the
unitary scientism which has been discussed above. Additionally, the individualist is a wary friend to
intellectualism, in which he rightly perceives the threat of authoritarianism. Along with Bayle,
Stendhal, and Fourier, he happily denies the power of ideas over our conduct; he limits the field of
foresight, and calls on liberty and chance. Foresight forges manacles for us; it makes us prudent,
fearful, and calculating. T he individualist is happy to join with Stirner in the happy song of the
liberty of the moment; he defies the generalizations of sociology which, for being an inexact
science, are no less despotic; he rebels against the oligarchy of savants dreamed of by Berthelot with
as much vanity as the ancient Popes dreamed of a universal theocracy. T he individualist is not fond
of the various plans for social reorganization; his attitude in the face of these problems is this,
entirely negative, defined by the l’Ennemi des lois by Barrès: "What will you put in its place, you
ask me? I do not know, however I am quite curious about it. Led to the destruction of everything
existing, I can't think of anything in particular to replace it with. It is the situation of a man who
suffers from boots that are too tight: he is only worried about getting them off... In all sincerity, I
believe myself to be of a race which values only understanding and disorganizing things
(Schopenhauer, Wisdom in Life)."

T he theoretical differences between anarchism and individualism point to further ones in the
practical realm.

T he behavior recommended by individualism vis-à-vis established society differs notably from what
anarchism prescribes.

For the individualist, the problem is the following: How can one live in a society which is viewed as,
at best, a necessary evil?

It would seem that the radical solutions suggested by social pessimism are either to kill oneself or to
retreat into the woods. But if, for better or worse, the individualist resists these extremes, a third
solution comes to him, one that is not more radical, but only near and relative, and based on
accommodation to the necessities of practical life. — T he problem here is like what Schopenhauer
posed at the beginning of his book Wisdom in Life. For him the issue is to establish an art of making
life as agreeable and happy as possible, or, in his words, a "eudaemonology." However, the idea of

such a eudaemonology stands in direct opposition with Schopenhauer's general conception of life.
T he eudaemonology he offers is given as an explicitly inferior philosophy, an “ exoteric” one, suited
to a mistaken perspective, a concession to human weakness and the necessities of practical life. "To
be able to deal with this issue," said Schopenhauer, I have had to distance myself entirely from the
elevated, metaphysical and moral point of view, to which my true philosophy leads. All the
developments that follow are therefore founded, to a certain degree, on an accommodation, in the
sense that they suit the habitual, empirical point of view, and preserve error." In exactly the same
way, it is licit for the individualist, from the social point of view, to ask himself what he can do to
maximize his relative independence, compatible with a social state necessarily oppressive and
tyrannical. T here is a practical problem that consists in relaxing, as far as possible, the social chains,
maximally restricting the encumbrances that society inflicts on the individual, in establishing a kind
of interaction and tolerable modus vivendi for the individual condemned to live within society.

T he approach of the individualist against society is infinitely more complex, more delicate, more
rich, more nuanced and varied than the vulgar and brutal maxims of anarchism. Everyone shall set
his own life trajectory, write his own collection of practical rules by which to guide his conduct in
society, to escape it as far as possible, in order to get past the net which surrounds him, or rather, to
glide between the social pitfalls, leaving as little as possible of ourselves on the thorns in the path.

T his tactic can work in two ways: first, towards the external liberation of the individual vis-à-vis the
social relations and influences where he finds himself engaged (social circles and the authorities
which he depends on); and secondly, as a method of internal liberation or intellectual and moral
hygiene for self-empowerment by feelings of independence and individuality.

On the first point, perhaps, making use of the observations and the precepts of individualist
moralists, set up a small program which would consist of the following articles:

A. To minimize as far as possible the relations and external subjections. For that, to simplify their
lives; not to engage with any relation, nor affiliate with any group (leagues, parties, groupings of
every kind), capable of curtailing our liberty at all (a precept from Descartes). To courageously
brave the solitary life.

B. If the lack of economic independence or necessity to protect ourselves against more powerful
and threatening influences constrains us from engaging in these relations, not to tie ourselves except
in an absolutely conditional and revocable way and only to the degree ordained by our egoistic
interest;

C. To practice against the influences and powers the defensive tactic which may be formulated like
this: Divide ut liber sis (Divide the enemy and you will be free). To set at odds the influences and

rival powers; to carefully maintain their rivalries and prevent their collusion, always dangerous for
the individual. To lean as quickly on the one as on the other, in such a way as to weaken and
neutralize the one by the other. Amiel recognized the happy effects of this tactic. "All political
parties," he said, "aim equally at absolutism, to dictatorial omnipotence. Happily they are plural and
we can set them against one another (Amiel, Journal intime II)";

D. By virtue of this see-saw tactic, when a power acquires too great a preponderance, it becomes,
and rightly so, the enemy. From this point of view, individualism can certainly allow the existence
of the State, but only a weak State, whose existence so precarious and under threat to the degree
that it must appeal to individuals;

E. To accommodate themselves, in outward appearance, to the laws and customs which are
unavoidable. Not to overtly deny the social pact; to deal with it only when the individual is the
weaker party. T he individualist, according to Mr. Remy de Gourmont, is he who denies, that is to
say, destroys as far as possible, the principle of authority. He it is who, every time he can do so
without harm, will escape every law and social obligation with a clear conscience. He denies and
destroys authority where he is personally concerned; he becomes free as far as a man can be, in our
complex societies (R. de Gourmont, Épilogues, II)". T he precepts relative to the political attitude
deserve a special mention. In principle, individualism is indifferent to all political regimes in that it
is hostile to all of them. T he ruling idea of Stello is that all political regimes: monarchy (See his
“ History of an Enraged Flea”), bourgeois republic (his “ History of Chatterton”), Jacobin republics
(his “ History of the Terror”), all equally persecute the poets, in other words, the superior, genial and
independent individualities. Stello says: "notice this perpetual ostracism, three forms of possible
power: the first fears us, the second disdains us as useless, the third hates us and would try to take us
down like haughty aristocrats. Are we to be the eternal social Helots? T horeau refused to vote and
called politics "something unreal, incredible and insignificant." It is always true that the individual
can usefully engage in politics. T his can be a means of fighting and neutralizing other social
influences which it suffers from. On the other hand, by the very fact that, in principle, it is equally
defiant of all regimes, individualism can, in practice, accommodate itself to all of them and find
reconciliation with all opinions. Among individualists, there are some who are particularly down on
democracy. Others are inspired by Bergeret, who rallies to it as the least dogmatic regime and the
least unitary one: "democracy," said Bergeret, "is still the regime and I prefer. All the ties are
relaxed, which weakens the State, but shelters persons and procures a certain facility of living and a
liberty that the tyrannies closer to home unhappily destroy."

Beside the external tactics that have been explained, a method of intellectual and moral hygiene is
derivable, which aims as maintaining our internal independence. It may also be subsumed in these
few precepts:

A. Cultivate in themselves social skepticism, social dilettantism and all the mental attitudes that
pertain to individualism;

B. To be fully conscious of the precarious, fictive, and, at bottom, permissive character of the social
pact and of the necessity for the individual of correcting what is too overbearing in this pact, by
every means in the toolbox of the most tolerant and expansive individualism;

C. To meditate and observe this precept of Descartes ,writing about his time in Holland: "I walk
among men as if they were trees." To isolate oneself, to retire into oneself, to see the surrounding
people as but trees in a forest; there you see a true individualist attitude;

D. To meditate upon, and to follow this precept of Vigny: “ To separate the poetic life from the
political life”: thus dividing the true life, the life of thought and sentiment, from the external and
social life;

E. To practice this double rule of Fourier: absolute skepticism (with respect to civilization), and
absolute isolation from the traditional and well-constructed paths;

F. To meditate and observe this precept of Emerson: "Never let oneself be chained by the past,
either in deed or in thought";
G. For this, to miss no opportunity to evade habitual social influences and to flee social
crystallization. T he most ordinary experience attests to the necessity of this precept. When we
have lived for some time in a narrow milieu which circumvents and harasses us by its meanness, its
petty criticisms, its miniscule dangers and petty hatreds, nothing is better at setting our feelings and
our true selves in relief than a short vacation, a brief voyage. We then feel how much we were,
unconsciously, as it were yoked and domesticated by society. We return with our eyes opened, our
head refreshed and cleansed of all the petty social stupidity that had infected it. At other times, if
we cannot travel, we can at least escape into great art. I recall a friend that, being sick and isolated
in small horrible town, surrounded by petty hatreds and imbecilic gossips, took an infinite sensation
of joy and liberty by re-reading the “ Reisebilder.” He escapes with Heine into an enchanted dreamworld, and the real world ceases to exist for him.

T hese individualist precepts are only examples. We will find a great number of analogous ones in
Schopenhauer's Wisdom in Life and also in Vigny and Stirner. It is enough for my purposes here to
have revealed the psychology of the individualist and to have distinguished it from that of the
anarchist.

Let us say a word to finish, about the probable destiny of anarchism and individualism.

At the present hour, anarchism seems to have entered, either as a doctrine, or as a party, into a
period of disintegration and dissolution. Laurent Tailhade, it is true, a turncoat from the party, once
noticed this dissolution with a mixture of melancholy and irony. T he reason for this disintegration is
probably to be found in the intimate contradiction that we have noted above. T his is the
contradiction that subsists between the two principles that anarchism claims to reconcile: the
individualist or libertarian principle and the humanist or solidarist principle, which is translated on
the economic plane as communism. By the very evolution of the doctrine, these two elements
gradually tend to disassociate from each other. With a certain number of anarchists (above all the
intellectuals), we can see anarchism transforming more or less neatly into individualism pure and
simple, that is to say, into a mental attitude very different from anarchism properly speaking, and
compatible, as needed, with the acceptance of political and social institutions far removed from the
traditional anarchist ideal. Others, in greater numbers, above all those who place greatest weight on
matters of material life and economic organization, cheapen individualism and gleefully denounce it
as the fancy of aristocrats and an unsufferable selfishness. T heir anarchism runs to an extreme
socialism, to a kind of humanitarian and egalitarian communism and which leaves no room for
individualism. T hus, in anarchism an antagonism of principles and tendencies is revealed, which
constitutes a fatal germ of disintegration for it. Individualism as we have defined it—the feeling of
revolt against social constraint, the sentiment of the "unicity" of the self, the feeling of the
contradictions that inevitably arise in every social state between the individual and the society, the
social pessimism—individualism, we say, does not seem close to disappearing from contemporary
souls. It found in modern times more than one sincere and impassioned interpreter, whose voice will
for a long time yet echo in souls enamored of independence. Individualism has not the passing and
artificial character of a political and social doctrine, as anarchism does. T he reasons for its perennial
relevance are psychological rather than social. In spite of the predictions of the optimistic
sociologists, who, like Draghicesco (l’Individu dans le Déterminisme social), are persuaded that the
path of social evolution and the mechanical functioning of certain simple laws, like the law of social
integration, will have the virtue, in a more or less distant future, of fully rationalizing and socializing
the human instincts, of assimilating, equalizing, and domesticating all souls, of drowning the
individual into the collective, of effacing in him every sentiment of individuality, every longing for
independence and resistance to the so-called law of reason and morality, in the end leading to the
advent of this race of "happy cowards" which Leconte de Lisle speaks of, we can believe that
individualism will remain a permanent and indestructible form of the humane sensibility and it will
be with us as long as societies last.

THE MORAL CONTRADICTION BETWEEN
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
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From Les antinomies entre l'individu et la societé (1913)

Morality is the idealized expression of the social instinct. T he moral contradiction between the
individual and society recapitulates and crowns all other such contradictions.

Morality is the great enemy of individuality. It tries, either by imperious directives or by persuasion,
to get the individual deny himself. It would prefer to abolish every feeling of individuality because
they always have, virtually at least, something antisocial in them; because they are a starting-point
for diversity and quarrelling, a beginning of resistance and of disobedience. Without doubt, since man
is a complex being, and since there are two inimical souls in him—the social and the individual souls,
morality must take special account of this duality and make certain concessions to feelings of
individuality. We find here and there in the moral doctrines, particularly in the Stoic and Kantian
moralities, an appeal to the ideal of personality, to the ideals of individual liberty and individual
autonomy. But if we look more closely, we quickly realize that the personality glorified by moralists
is always, at base, “ the ideal essence of humanity,” or “ impersonal reason,” or “ the unitary aspect,
identical in all individuals.” At bottom, we do not evoke the idea of personality except in particular
Forms—the homages we render it are Platonic in character. It fails to find a place in the ethical
theories except as if they were statues of Buddha in Chinese temples: we burn them a stick of
incense, but would rather not soil our trousers by kneeling in the dust.

All the moralities then would repeat this mantra to the individual: "You have no importance.
Recognize your smallness and your insignificance. Sacrifice yourself to society, which is infinitely
greater, more lasting, more fertile, more powerful and more beautiful than you are. If you find
modern society imperfect and unworthy of your sacrifice, at least give yourself to an ideal society
that will one day materialize, and for which your sacrifice will have paved the way." Every morality
is part of the system of social illusions that I have described elsewhere; or rather it is the
centerpiece. T he moralities bring the individual along, as though persuaded to the guillotine. T here
is no end to the forms of the moralists' cunning. T he spiritualist illusion consists in exploiting the
survival instinct of individuals. Religions and morality suggest to a conditional immortality to the
individual. T hey tell him: “ Survive; yes: you will survive... but only if you obey.” T he Messianic
illusion that we find in the secular and humanitarian morality does not differ at all from the original
illusion. “ Sacrifice yourself, the individual is told; do not rebel against unjust society; justice will

reign one day.” As if this promise were not derisive and insulting to the very idea of justice that it
invokes. For if justice is ever realized, it will not have a retroactive effect; the future will not
redeem the past and the contrast between the perfection of the future state and the existing
imperfection will only make the past and its irreparable injustices more sensible. Spiritualism and
Messianism are two “ stages of illusion,” as de Hartmann wrote. T he other moral ideologies: namely,
the ideology of the “ General Interest,” the “ General Will,” or the “ General Happiness” are based on
the same illusory principles, and from the perspective of a final harmony which enchants souls and
plies them with the social law. At base of all these ideologies we find the same sophism, the same
circular reasoning. We presuppose that which is in question, by establishing that the “ true interests,”
that the “ true happiness” of an individual consists in doing what is useful to society; and that by
departing from this, we declare that every individual who acts differently is only looking for a “ false
happiness,” and that they must be prevented from thus harming themselves and others. T he
“ General Will,” the “ General Interest,” “ Solidarity,” all of these are so many ideological phantoms
which haunt and dominate the individual with their fearful shadows, like the “ specter of Religion”
which Lucretius speaks of.

T he theory of singular and absolute Duty is another ethical lie, which is presupposed by and
appealed to by the preceding ones. In fact, however, we do not find ourselves presented with any
such singular and absolute duty; but rather with multiple and relative duties, often divergent or even
contradictory. We would not be able to fulfill any particular duty except by violating many others.
T he duty of serving my family and friends contravenes my duty to be just to all. My duty to respect
authority often prevents my duty to the truth. T he striking worker is caught between duty to his
family and duty to his trade union. T hese conflicts come largely from one fact, that the individual
belongs to a multiplicity of groups whose interests do not always harmonize.

Moralists cannot deny these conflicts; but they do not like to use up their forces on this matter.
T hey generally have little taste for that casuistry which unfortunately insists on the imperfections
of social solidarity, on contradictions and uncertainties in ethics; of thereby inviting the individual
to examine his duty more closely, to reason and deal with it. T he study of individual cases of
conscience leads people to individualize morality, to recognize that there are as many moralities as
there are individuals; it is not only that duty varies along with the situation. T his is why the
moralists prefer not to reflect too much about duty, but that it should be accepted and fulfilled
without discussion or examination. When the moralists deign to examine these difficulties, their
solution consists in arbitrarily selecting a single duty of the individual, considering it in isolation and
holding it to be absolutely sacred. T he other duties will become what they can. But above all, once
more, let them not be disputed. Discussion about morality is taken for a pretext under which the
selfish instinct is surreptitiously resisting the social instinct and subverting the rules.

A triple influence has contributed to the skepticism which today strikes at this casuistry: university
thought, political thought, and worker-thought, which in our days represents the final phase of
democratic thought.

University thought, imbued with Kantian rigor, is naturally an enemy of casuistry. What is more, the
university moralists, working as they do in the ideal and the abstract, moreover not being burdened
professionally with overseeing and directing ethical practices, do not feel themselves obliged, as our
“ directors of conscience” once did, to make their morality practicable, to adapt it to the diversity
of circumstances and the demands of human weakness. It is natural that people who remain within
the safety of pure theory will teach an austere, elevated, difficult and beautiful morality.

T he spirit of politics, which permeates everything nowadays, thus has something to do with disbelief
in this casuistry. Politicians in a democracy are voluntarily simplistic by nature, as well as
absolutistic and dogmatic. It would be scandalous for such minds to dispute about their duty and
thereby cast doubt on the infallibility of conscience and the certainty of the law. In their view, we
must obey the law without discussion and without examination; the moral law as well as the civil law.
Moral rigorism also finds support, outside the University and the politicos, in the working classes. If
socialism is, on some points, of a certain sensualist and materialist inspiration, it inclines
nonetheless towards a rigid, violent and authoritarian moralism. T he worker imbued with class
consciousness makes his duty into an absolute and intransigent conception. Georges Sorel has
demonstrated the existence of a moral "sublime" in a latent state in the soul of the laborer; of an
aptitude for sacrifice in the merciless struggle which the working class supports against the
possessing classes which it identifies with immortality. T he anti-clerical working-class man wilfully
confuses this casuistry with Jesuitism; what is more, he is intolerant of all unseemly conduct and
opinion, and he has no respect for individual liberty at all.

Furthermore, the latter reason is what all other reasons are based on. T he casuistry is seen by its
enemies as sophistry in the service of the instinct of liberty and moral lawlessness; as a pretext
which too easily invokes the egotistic instinct, always disposed to evade the authority of the rules.
T he great grievance held for casuistry is less of having often brought answerable solutions, than of
having posed disquieting problems and of having given honor to moral discussion. For anyone to get
into disputes about duty, is already to be neglecting their duties; it is already a beginning of moral
lawlessness and immoralism.

T he anti-individualist tendency of every ethical system is maximally and most clearly expressed in
the final venue of moral theories, ethics—the science of morals, or the scientific morality, or the
sociological morality which may also be called the “ sociocratic” morality.

It is true that this morality renounces the idea of a single and universal duty; it allows for a certain
moral diversity and relativity by reason of the diversity of "social types." But within the limits of a
given "social type," rules of morality impose upon the individual objective constraints. For Émile
Durkheim, moral rules express a sovereign and omnipotent power before which the individual can
only bow down. T he will of Jehovah is replaced by the will of the group.

Lucien Lévy-Brühl says that that the “ moral art” deduced from sociology will not be imperative like
the religions and moral metaphysics. It will not intimate any orders; it will proceed by slow pressure
on public opinion, by propaganda, by exhortation and counsel. T his amounts to saying that moral
art will be a persuasive, and not an imperative morality. Be that as it may, but as Faguet remarks,
moral art, basing itself on scientific observation, on statistics, etc., will eventually be declared
scientific; it will nominate itself “ moral-scientific-art” and will assume a somewhat insolent
authority which takes on everything that is scientific or which believes itself to be such. "Moral art
would not give imperatives; but, as off-putting as this may be, I wager that it must become so." (E.
Faguet. La demission de la morale)

From another angle, Albert Bayet manifests a tendency to restrict the field of action of moralscientific-art and to keep a significant part of the individual life outside its purview. T here is,
according to this morality, an entire part of our being, the intimate part, the interior life, the life of
thought and feeling before which the moral-scientific-art must halt.

Moral art will only reach the social parts of man. T he truly individual part, the heart of hearts, is
beyond its reach. Bayet leaves to each the faculty of cultivating, at his own risk and peril, his
"secret garden." "Social art," he says, "will abstain from intervening in the sorrowful hours of the
interior life. It will leave to each their sufferings great or small, humble or tragic, intolerable or
light, long-lasting or fleeting; for none of the interests which he is looking out for is incompatible
with the forms an individual's pain can assume" (Albert Bayet, La morale scientifique).

T his reservation in favor of the individual's heart of hearts testifies to the liberal spirit of Bayet, but
it does not seem to fit with the general trajectory of the “ sociocratic morality.” It is consistent with
this morality to attempt to penetrate, willy-nilly, to the most intimate parts of minds and hearts. In
effect, I know the common position of the moralists on the strict solidarity which unites the
interior life of the individual to his external and social conduct. I would even declare that there is
not a single one of our thoughts or feelings which has no more or less direct repercussions on our
conduct and thereby on our environment. From there, how can the moral art take an interest in the
interior life, in the "secret garden" of the individual? For it is in this secret garden where the seeds
open, which later blossom in the great public garden of social life. Will social art recognize thoughts
plainly antisocial, or judged to be such, the right to self-expression (for example, a-social or antisocial pessimism, or immoralism)? I doubt it. Here the convenient principle of the "normal
direction" of the collective conscience comes in, and we declared such internal dispositions little
suited to the so-called "normal direction." T hat will be easy; for the principle of the normal
direction implies, at base, an obligation to think like everyone else.

Also, the concession made by Bayet to individual autonomy is precarious and always subject to
revocation. In effect, Bayet declares that in principle, in every case where there is a conflict
between the interests of the group and the individual, the former can be preferred, being the interest
of all, even in certain respects of those whom it harms. Once this principle is allowed, the interior
life itself, as far as it has consequences for the social life, carries a strong risk of falling entirely into

the grasp of social regimentation; and in addition, from the moment when the external conduct of
the individual is subject to this regimentation, is this not a completely Platonic concession, than
that which consists in leaving them to the liberty of their heart of hearts? It is simply, at bottom, to
leave people's eyes in, only so they can weep.

T he sociological morality, while claiming to be scientific and objective, is faithful in its own logic
when it claims to eliminate the personal factor from morality, along with personal judgment,
reflection and individual decisions. But it is this essential point which is precisely most open to
doubt. T he partisans of the sociological morality forget that the moral problem is a problem of
values and that such a problem cannot be solved through purely objective considerations. Values
imply a subjective element: judgments brought by the individual, judgments which are added onto the
facts; a personal preference, placing judgments on them. In all this there is an "arbitrary addition,"
an "internal movement."

T he moral solutions are no less aleatory in character, in the scientific morality as in other
moralities. Solidarity or liberty, equality or inequality, resignation or revolt, moralism or
immoralism; or, to pass on to more particular problems, indissoluble marriage or facilitated divorce,
condemnation or legitimation of suicide, here you have as many problems as ambiguous solutions,
which hack at base the individual's judgment along with the very temperament of the individual.

Even the supporters of the scientific morality do not agree among themselves on many issues.
Durkheim, for example, is against making divorce easier; Bayet is for divorce by the consent of a
single party. Durkheim reproaches suicide as at attempt against society and humanity: Bayet allows
it as an obvious right of the individual.

With moral facts there is too much contingency in play for anyone to rule out the personal factor
in morality. It is the individual evaluation which, in the final analysis, judges beetween good and evil.

In sum, the sociocratic morality, whose partisans are at war with the ancient meta-moralities, is
itself a meta-morality. It presupposes, along with the ancient meta-moralities, a metaphysical
postulate, that is to say a subjective one, which leads the collective will to tread on the individual
will, and to the annihilation of the latter for the benefit of the former. On the heels of the ancient
theological precept: "obey the will of God," succeeds the sociocratic precept, no less metaphysical
than its predecessor: "obey the will of the group."

Against the sociocratic goals of these moralities, the protest of the individual who wants to be
himself, who wants to draw his own feelings and his own reasons to act and not to seek them in
religious beliefs or from social imperatives; this protest of individuality may take two forms. T here
is a negative individualism which is pure and simple immoralism, the negation of every moral idea

considered as a prejudice destined to subjugate the individual. T he brutal and cynical immoralism of
Stirner and the refined and mocking immoralism of the social dilettante are the two forms of this
individualism. T here is also an aristocratic individualism which is not, prima facie, as clearly
antisocial as the first, but which necessarily becomes such, at the end of the day. T his individualism
negates the currently dominant social morality, and maybe even social morality as a whole; it denies
it as a morality of the weak, the mediocre, the cowardly, deceitful, hypocrites and traitors;
deception and treason being a form of weakness (recall the treason of women. Many men are,
moreover, women on this point); it denies all of that as a morality of the envious, of people who
are jealous of all strength and superiority, a morality of conformists at once servile and intolerant.
For all those people, life in the herd is necessary because it is the field where the virtues prosper as
they can, and because they cannot despise a strong spirit, feeling its power and grandeur. But beyond
this miserable morality, jealous of every strength, greatness, and individualized beauty, and affirming
itself as independent from the herd, the aristocrat conceives a morality made for him and a few
other men, his equals; a morality of the superman, a morality which every superman will, moreover,
conceive in his own way, in his own image, and under the inspiration of his own ideal. T his morality
does not fail to present, with its diverse representatives, several common traits; it is, with all of
them, individualistic. I understand thereby that it glorifies individual forces; it rises against the
gregarious coalitions which try to oppress by the sheer force of numbers. With almost all of its
representatives, it glorifies sincerity, the noble frankness, the companion of force; the courage that
loves and seeks individual responsibility, which does not shelter behind others.

T he cowardly animals go in a troop
T he lion stalks alone in the desert
T hat the poet always walks thus.
(Vigny, Journal d'un poète)

Vigny insists above all on the qualities of moral openness and independence. T he Comte de
Gobineau, the qualities of independence and intelligent energy; Nietzsche glorifies savage and
untamed power, the will-to-power of the masters, both destructive and creative, which renovates the
world, often at the price of terrible convulsions and bloody sacrifices. Henrik Ibsen glorifies the
courageous intelligence that breaks the old civilizational frameworks, which tramples on the
outdated prejudices and which sets up on their ruins a fresh and new truth, which is nevertheless also
destined to grow old and die. Beyond these differences in ideals, one value remains constant: that of
the noble personality, the strongly individualized personality, which is opposed to the mediocre and
servile mob.

In all truthfulness, this morality does not exclude in any absolute way the idea of society and of
sociability. It even seems quite often to aspire to a superior sociability, exempt from hypocrisy,
enamored of intelligence and science (Vigny, La bouteille a la mer; Le pur Esprit); empowered by
knowledge and enlarged solidarity (Ibsen, Enemy of the People). But to tell the truth, these
daydreams of sociability, these hopes for sociability or these concessions to sociability are rare and

precarious; quickly vanquished by the individualist and antisocial sentiment which is at the base of
the aristocratic morality.

T he virtues recommended or glorified by the great aristocrats are not the properly moral virtues,
the Christian virtues or even Stoic ones (except sometimes with Vigny); they are the virtues of
force: conquering, amoral virtues. Aristocratic individualism does not represent the superiority of
the individual as any kind of moral superiority (a Christian or Stoic point of view, virtues of
devotion, of sacrifice, of renouncing); it represents rather a superiority of force, of intelligence, of
independent energy, of all the faculties not properly moral (the point of view of Gobineau, Ibsen,
and Nietzsche). T he attitude of the aristocrat is thus naturally oriented toward an amoral and
antisocial individualism. For the aristocrat, in his conflict with society, will not fail to prefer himself
to society; to prefer his own ideal, that is to say the reflection of his personality, to the social ideal
which he judges mediocre, false and base. Yet this conflict is inevitable. T he herd naturally detests
aristocrats and the gregarious morality resists aristocracy. T he latter faces resistance, from deaf and
hypocritical hostilities or even a force of inertia, from a stupid indifference which discourages the
innovator.

T he creator of thoughts perceives that they fall on an ungrateful ground and that, by falling they
lose their best part. T he aristocrat eventually loses faith. if not in his own thoughts, at least in their
social effectiveness; there is no more refuge except in the pessimistic individualism of which Vigny
and Gobineau remain the perfect prototypes, in the ivory tower of the misanthropic thinker, where
wounded minds find a final, haughty and silent refuge.