4


rm
o0 -











T. H. BELL
The author at the time of this publication is finishing a
hook on "OSCAR WILDE, FRANK HARRIS, ALFRED
DOUGLAS and myself." He knew them well and will present a "Wilde" entirely different to the wretched, spinelevs
creature presented by Harris.
Later, A Libertarian Interpretation of History.





LCu~t<lr Cwe X ZED WARD CARPENTER
The English Tolstoi
A-  By
T. H. BELL


Ntblis.d by
THE LIBERTARIAN GROUP
304 North Soto Street
Low Angeles, CrA.
1932





PUBLISHERS' INTRODUCTION
In furtherance of the advocacy of Freedom for All Mankind the Libertarian
Group of Los Angeles publish this as the first of a series of studies of Great
Libertarians.
It is issued as a Testimonial Edition in honor of Thomas H. Bell's fifty
years of social activity, all but the first three or four devoted to the Libertarian
Movement. At a Testimonial Dinner held for him under the auspices of all the
local Libertarian organizations February 27, 1932, it was decided to publish
this output of his trenchant pen.
The best evidence of what this movement stands for is contained in the
teaching of its leading advocates. The story of their lives is often equally
significant and illuminating because the outstanding advocates of liberty are
greatly influenced in their life careers by the principles they propound.
Men act as they think.
They think as they are taught.
The printed word is a most effective teacher, always ready, never tiring.
Short biographical studies and expositions of the main teachings of the
world's leading Libertarians in this condensed, inexpensive but permanent form
will broadcast knowledge and create an increasing desire to know more.
Love of life and self-preservation are said to be the first law of nature, but
love of liberty and preservation of freedom are surely the second. All sentient
organisms struggle to free themselves from restraint as soon as-or even before-they succeed in securing suffcient nourishment for the preservation of life.
Desire determines what we do, but our desires are determined by our
ideals. If this were not true, all education would be useless. The born slave
is unconscious of his chains; he is not galled by them. All are born ignorant,
whether slave or free. Education and freedom create the differences. The need
for freedom is the most powerful motive force in the world-except to the
slave-minded or those whose minds are centered on economic needs alone.
The free-minded man desires liberty for himself and extends it to his
fellows. That is why, invariably, he is a propagandist. He would persuade,
not force.
This pamphlet is submitted for your keenest consideration. If it appeals
to you, send $1.00 for a dozen to H. Yaffe, 504 N. Soto St., Los Angeles, and
pass a good thing along. Indicate also if you would subscribe to further
numbers and state what biographical studies would most appeal to you. I
name only a few: William Godwin, John Stuart Mill, Benjamin R. Tucker,
Voltairine De Cleyre, Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Ricardo Flores
Magon, Michael Bekunin, Leo Tolstoi, Peter Kropotkin, Pierre J. Proudhon,
Loutse Michel, Elisde Relus, Errico Malatesta.
CASSIUS V. COOK.
For the LIBERTARIAN GROUP of LOS ANGELES.





EDWARD CARPENTER
The English Tolstoi
Edward Carpenter died June, 1929, a great Englishman and
the greatest of modemrn British Anarchists. (I take care to say
"modem" because of Godwin and Shelley.) At 85 he had lived
so long that his name was perhaps less known than when he was
still in full activity-when his ideas were arousing most strenuous
opposition among his fellow radicals. All along, anyhow, his
influence was rather upon the intellectuals than upon the people
direct. He was a poor speaker and his ideas were always away
ahead of the time. Even in the case of the intellectuals, their
attitude toward him was quite often one of surprise and incredulity that such an able man could seriously put forward such
"outrageous" views. Only in the last few years have I read
criticism of "science" such as he was making forty years agoto a radical movement puzzled and indignant.
I have called him the English Tolstoi.
Like Tolstoi, he was born an aristocrat. His father was a
naval officer; his grandfather was an admiral, and one of his
nephews is an admiral now; the family was "well connected"
among the aristocracy; two of his sisters acquired the title of
"Lady."
Like Tolstoi, after beginning a career he had his mind opened
to the evils of present-day society and abandoned his foolish, artificial, useless life for a reasonable, natural and useful one.
Like Tolstoi, in his work he showed an extraordinary originality. He scoffed at many of the doctrines most firmly held by the
other radicals of his day. As I have already indicated, he was
as skeptical about many of the claims of "science" as Tolstoi himself-and with a better knowledge of them.
Like Tolstoi, he appealed first of all to his own class. And,
like Tolstoi, he presented that appeal in a style that made it
literature.
Like Tolstoi, he dealt largely with the sex question-with
equal courage, with more common sense and with much better
success.
Like Tolstoi, he was a good deal of a mystic. His mysticism,
like Tolstoi's, was free from superstition; but unlike Tolstoi's, it
was also free from reference to authority and reverence therefor.
Some part of his temperament came evidently from that
father, who, as a naval officer, found himself horrorstricken when
he had to fire on a boatload of "enemy" human beings and felt
3





an immense relief, when he missed, to find his duty done and
nobody any the worse for it. It is significant of the world's
progress that this intelligent, serious and studious father did not
even finally arrive at anything nearer rationalism than "Broad
Church" (the comparatively tolerant and enlightened section of
the state Church of England).
THE SCHOLAR
At Cambridge University, after devoting the first year or
two almost entirely to rowing, as a young man active and vigorous, Carpenter set himself to study, at first merely to pass his
examinations but soon with real interest and before long with
remarkable success. At twenty-seven he found himself a recognized scholar. He was given the hint that he would be made a
"Fellow" of his college if he took "orders" (became an ordained
clergyman of the Church of England). Well, that seemed all
right, he had no objection, he had no recognized rationalistic
views; it was not until he was being examined on his faith in the
Articles of the Church that he realized having gone a step further
than his father's "Broad Churchism." But he was accepted despite his hesitation, and was even appointed a curate under the
then famous Rev. F. D. Maurice, a man who could talk very
beautifully about religion without any clear doctrine at all. It
was about this time that he was invited by Queen Alexandria to
become the tutor of her two sons, one of them the present King
George.
Here he was then, a highly successful and promising young
man on his way to being a Bishop, at least. And then, alas, the
disaster came. A fellow student with a book he could make
nothing out of, passed it over to Carpenter-and the whole career
went smash, for the book was one of Walt Whitman's.
Carpenter soon saw that his whole life had to be placed upon
a different basis. He insisted first on being "defrocked" (being
unmade a "priest"), obstinately disregarding the advice of his
friends about such Quixotic conduct.
He tried at first for some years to make an honest living by
lecturing on science and on music for the University Extension.
But gradually he saw his way to a better course. Finally he
bought a little piece of land and started in as a market gardener.
He learned to use the pick and shovel, the spade and the hoe. He
raised his own stuff and sold it in the Sheffield market himself.
DOES IT PAY?
His friends were not so sure about it being a better course.
Here is the beginning of an article of his, "Does It Pay?":
"Having lately embarked in an agricultural enterprise on a small
scale, I confess I was somewhat disconcerted, if not actually
annoyed, by the persistency with which-from the very outset
and when I had been only two or three months at work-I was
4





met by the question at the head of this paper. Not only sisters,
cousins and aunts but relatives much more remote, and mere
acquaintances, at the very first suggestion that I was engaged in
trade, always plumped out with the query, Does it pay? And this
struck me the more because though I knew that the point was
important, I had in the innocence of my heart fancied that there
might be other considerations of at least comparable weight.
But I soon found out my mistake; for none of my well-to-do
friends asked whether the work I was doing was wanted, or
whether it would be useful to the community, or a means of
healthy life to those engaged in it, or whether it was honest and
of a kind that could be carried on without interior defilement; or
even (except one or two) whether I liked it, but always: does it
pay?"
The venture was a great success-in Carpenter's way of
looking at things. The active, creative, physical work, yielding a
plainly useful result, was to him greatly preferable to a sedentary
life spent in studying matters of very small interest to present-day
humanity, infinitely preferable to spending life in going through
what had now become to him a silly and hypocritical rigmarole.
To him, anyhow. it was a great success. He did not go as far
as Tolstoi, who wanted to live in all things like a peasant. Carpenter was not an ascetic; he lived simply but without any idea of
cutting things down to the utmost limit. By this time he had
become, of course, a vegetarian; but he did not deny himself the
little pleasures of ordinary life, enjoying life heartily all through,
I am sure. He had not till then read Thoreau's Walden, but when
he did, though he appreciated it, it made no change in his ways.
In his mode of living there was, you see, no "sacrifice." Tolstoi
went much further. But then, alas, the story goes that Tolstoi,
though he adhered to peasant fare in the daytime, sometimes could
not resist the temptation of rummaging his wife's pantry at night.
It is a very risky business going too far in sacrifice; if the Englishman, as is usual with Englishmen, did not go as far as the Russian, did not go the limit, he did live his life consistently, and
none the less consistently for its being cheerful.
SOCIALISM
He had by this time come in touch with the modem Socialist
movement, just being established in Great Britain. He was soon
using his leisure in its propaganda. I met him in it for the first
time in or about 1884. He had come to Edinburgh on a visit
to his mother's relations (she was Scotch, while his father's people
were Cornish) and we got him to give a lecture to us of the
Scottish Land and Labor League. (We had become affiliated
with the Socialist League of which William Morris was the outstanding figure.) With his hesitant style, something like that of
a college professor, hemming and hawing till he got just the correct
words for his statement, I thought him then just about the poorest
5





sp*eaker I had ever listened to, yet there was something about him
of a charmingly comradelike personality and a man strikingly
original, which made a very deep impression upon my youthful
-mind. He says, in "'My Days and Dreams," speaking of 1883:
"PFrom that time forward I worked definitely along the Socialist
line, with a drift, as was natural, towards Anarchism. I do not
know that at any time I looked upon the Socialist program as
final, and it is certain that I never anticipated a cast-iron regula,dion of industry, but I saw that the current Socialism afforded an
excellent text for an attack upon the existing competitive system,
and a good means of rousing the slumbering consciences--espe-.
cially of the rich; and in that way I have worked for it and the
Anarchist ideal consistently."t
His writings were not received with any great enthusiasm
by the leaders of the Socialist movement. Why, in "England's.Ideal" there was not a single quotation from the gospel of Saint
Marx, and surplus value was scarcely mentioned! So Carpenter.remained an outsider. He did not address himself at first to the
working men at all. Probably he had sense enough to realize that
he knew but little about their lives and their psychology;- and so
he addressed himself to the people he did know, to whom he could
really give good counsel, to his own class, people in the difficulties
from which he had extricated himself. He spoke to them of their
foolish and empty lives, unnatural, unhealthy, unhappy, wasted,
empty of everything worth having or worth striving for, circum,scribed by prejudice and by the necessity of holding prestige,
-spent in working-when they did work-at something in which
they -could take no real interest and which was of no real use,
forbidden by the custom of their caste to take any active physical
part in the honestly useful work of the world, parasites, unhappy
themselves, living upon people poor and suffering.
THE YOUNG WOMAN THEN
It is difficult for the younger generation in these days to
realize how empty indeed that life was. In the case of the woman
the change has been revolutionary in the highest degree. (The
Anarchist revolution is not one of the distant future, you know;
it is taking place now and a great part of it has already taken
place.)
Carpenter himself had six- or seven sisters and he tried to
emancipate young women like them from the stupid prejudices and
caste customs by which their lives were being wasted. Those
were still the days when a young lady was dressed in skirts that
swept the street; her waist was tightly cramped in a corset; her
mind carefully confined to what was strictly proper. Physical
outlet for her energy or her emotions there was none. The only
g.ame allowed was croquet, in which a nicely dressed-up young
lady gave a ball some gentle taps with a mallet-about as much
6





exercise as in marbles. The bicycle had not yet come and she
would not have been allowed to ride it if it had. She might live
near the beach, but she must not think of swimming any more
than of flying. If she was allowed to bathe it was from a bathing-coach on wheels, in which she was drawn by a horse into
the water as far as possible from the eyes of the young male.
Then she could play around a little, but with decorum and in a
dress that came right down to her heels. The jollity of hiking
and the sport of athletics were not for her. "Sex!" What did
you say? Why, in those days a properly brought-up young lady
did not have any sex at all!
Carpenter's first propaganda, then, was addressed to those
who needed only courage and determination to free themselves.
He wrote with understanding, with sympathy, with style and
with humor. And it is plain now that his propaganda was not
without its effect; that class of his has been reached after all.
Many individuals in it have been much influenced; even as a class
it is not what it was. Stanley Baldwin was the Tory premier, but
his son stands for Labor. No, he does not go as far as Carpenter,
but his position is just as significant. We have such aristocrats
as Bertrand Russell (Earl Russell) going all the way; and we
have had such writers as H. G. Wells pointing it out. We have
now, in Carpenter's country, a whole young generation in revolt,
throwing away the taboos of their fathers and mothers. I never
pick up a new English novel depicting the young generation in
England without being astonished once again. For all of that,
the work of Carpenter, directly or indirectly, went for something.
CIVILIZATION: ITS CAUSE AND CURE
The Socialist leaders of that day were not pleased at all that
he should bother about the parasites; the revolution seemed
then to be much too close at hand to waste time or sympathy
upon them. But Carpenter went quietly upon his own way, and
some years later published another book, "Civilization: Its Cause
and Cure." In this second one Marx was not even mentioned.
The leaders of Socialist thought had been willing to pass over
a first mistake, but this second book was really too much. They
did want a man to stick to the point, to explain to the workers
that all the trouble lay in the class control of the means of production and the simple remedy was to vote into power the able
middle.-class men who would take possession of these means and
administer them properly. Be careful above all not to bring in
free thought or free love to frighten the voter. Nothing but the
economic cause and the politica? remedy. Simple and easy,
Whereas this Carpenter fellow plunges right overhead into
the deepest water. He begins:
"We find ourselves today in the midst of a somewhat pecular
7





state of society,, which we call civilization, but which even to the
most optimistic among us does not seem altogether desirable.
Some of us, indeed, are inclined to think that it is a kind of disease
which the various races of mankind have to pass through-as
children pass through measles or whooping-cough;- but if it is a
disease then there is this serious consideration to be made:, that
while history tells of many nations that have been attacked by it,
of many that have succumbed to it, and of some that are still in
the throes of it, we know of no single case in which a nation has
fully recovered from it and passed through it to a more normal
and healthy condition. In other words, the development of human
society has never yet (that we know of) passed beyond a certain
definite and apparently final stage in the process we call civiliza'tion; at that stage it has always succumbed or been arrested."i
(This was written a long time before Spengler wrote his
famous book, "'The Decline of the West,"i about civilization being
the final stage of a people's development, after which comes
decline.)
Carpenter explains:, "But the word Disease is applicable to
our social as well as to our physical condition. For, as in the
body, Disease arises from the loss of the physical unity which
constitutes health and so takes the form of warfare or discord
between the various parts, or of the abnormal development of
individual organs., or the consumption of the system by predatory
germs and growths., so in our modern life we find the unity gone
which constitutes true society,, and in its place warfare of classes
and individuals, abnormal development of some to the detriment
of others, and consumption of the organism by masses of social
parasites."'
You see,, he does not use the word Civilization "'in a kind
of ideal -sense, as to indicate a state of future culture towards
which we are tending-the implied assumption that a sufficiently
long course of top hats and telephones will in the end bring us to
the ideal condition, while any little drawbacks in the processare explained as being merely accidental and temporary." He
prefers to limit its use to a definite historic. stage, in which we
actually find ourselves at present.
"'In all this the influence of Property is apparent enough. It
is evident that the growth of Property through the increase of
man'ts power of production reacts upon the man in three ways:,
to draw him away namely, (1) from Nature, (2) from his true
self, (3) from his fellows. With the advent of a Civilization
then founded upon Property the unity of the old tribal society is
broken up--at last society itself becomes an organization by
which the rich fatten upon the vitals of the poor,, the strong upon
the murder of the weak. And then arises the institution of Gov-.
8





ernment. * * * force has to be used by the possessors in order
to maintain the law barriers against the non-possessors... and
finally the formal Government arises mainly as the expression of
such force."
His remedy then is not a mere affair of voting into power
the proper party. It is nothing less than a return to nature and
to community of human life-"towards a complex human Communism and towards individual freedom." It is, in fact, though he
does not mention the word Anarchism, an Anarchist-Communism
-presented not quite as it is usually presented, but presented by
a man of letters, a man of bold originality, a man intensely a
humanitarian, and a poet.
Here is an extract from his "Towards Industrial Freedom":
"I have sketched rather roughly the evils which arise from
the industrial arrangements. In the later chapters I endeavor to
infer what further transformations we may expect in the future,
These transformations will, I take it, be largely of a psychological
character-that is, they will depend upon a changed mental attitude towards life, on a changed estimate of values, even more
than on a change of institutions. When people come to value
beauty in their daily life more than they do now, when they long
intensely for that kind of industrial freedom which causes man's
handiwork to become an art and a joy, when they perceive that
the glory and the sweetness of the blue sky and a clean air are
assets which we cannot neglect without peril to our souls and
bodies, when they understand that cooperation is not only valuable because it increases the industrial freedom of men, but much
more valuable when it liberates their dormant instinct of mutual
helpfulness and love-when they see that all these inner things
and many others are of more importance for human happiness
than the mere increase of external riches-then indeed the Shopkeeping Age will have passed away.
"It becomes increasingly evident, I think, that over and beyond any formula of reform what is needed is a new spirit of
social and industrial life. Without that even the best institutions
will be of little avail.... only on the condition of spiritual and
creative freedom can a society be really human and healthy."
No radical publication of that time was so fiercely assailed as
"Civilization: Its Cause and Cure."  Even the Anarchists of
that day failed to recognize their own idea in such different dress.
We could not, of course, present it today quite in that fashion;
most of us see now that Carpenter's presentation of property
breaking up the unity of the old tribal society is not true historically; exploitation and slavery arose not through gradual differentiation between the rich and the poor, but suddenly out of war
and conquest. His emphasis on property was just the emphasis
of that day, accepted then even by most Anarchists.
9





MODERN SCIENCE
The objection to his "Civilization" blew over after a while.
After all, they said, the man is a poet. Yes, but confound it,
they had forgotten that he was also a scientist. The next thing
with which he startled the radical world was "Moder ScienceA Criticism." Was it possible? Had the lunatic turned religionist, or what? To criticize Science! The one thing sacred, to
attack which was blasphemyl
Yes, it really did seem blasphemy in those days when the
fight was still on in regard to evolution, and when, morevoer, we
were so close to a solution of everything-how much nearer, alas,
than we are nowl
I need hardly tell you that Carpenter was not attacking
Science in the good work it had done. Of course not. What he
was doing was to scoff at the pretensions of many of its adepts
and the certainty they attributed to the hyphotheses of the dayuseful enough for practical purposes, no doubt, nay, even valuable,
if not indispensable, but final-ah, no!
"The various theories and views of nature which we hold
are merely the fugitive envelopes of the successive stages of
human growth-each set of theories and views belonging organically to the moral and emotional stage which has been reached
and being in some sort the expression of it; so that the attempt at
any given time to set up an explanation of phenomena which shall
be valid in itself and without reference to the mental condition
of those who set it up, necessarily ends in failure-the notion has
so far gained ground that the 'laws" of science are immutable
facts and eternal statements of verity-that it may be worth
while to treat the subject a little more in detail."
Time has proven him a prophet; the criticism which brought
forth such indignation then has been so justified by the progress
of science herself that it is now almost commonplace.
It is surprising how little Anarchists know of the brilliant
work of their comrade. It is due partly to the fact that it is so
much easier for the non-learned reader to appreciate such work
as Kropotkin's Mutual Aid than to estimate the -value of Carpenter's criticism of the ultimates of science, which, anyhow, was
justified by degrees so slow that it never at any time caught the
attention.
He was moved to his criticism in part, perhaps, by his
mysticism:
"Science has failed because she has attempted to carry out
the investigation of nature from the intellectual side aloneneglecting the other constituents necessarily involved in the problem. She has failed because she attempted an impossible task;
for the discovery of a permanently valid and purely intellectual
representation of the universe is simply impossible. Such a thing
does not exist."
10





But there is nothing mystical about such a paragraph as this:
"This therefore is the dilemma of Science and indeed of all
human knowledge, that in carrying out the process which is
peculiar to it, it necessarily leaves the dry ground of reality for
the watery regions of abstractions, which abstractions become
ever more tenuous and ungraspable the farther it goes, and ultimately fade into mere ghosts. Nevertheless the process is a
quite necessary one, for only by it can the mind deal with things."
He criticizes keenly some of the most pompous declarations
of the "laws of nature" put forth in his day. Some of them are
still being repeated, but not by people who are up-to-date. The
complacent attitude of so many scientists of that day, as if we were
going very soon to find out all about everything is no longer that
taken in well-informed circles; the man of science stands no longer
complacent; just now, in fact, he appears almost bewildered.
Think of how the discovery of radium a little while ago played
the deuce with "immutable law." And think how Einstein pushed
over the very basis of the sacred Newtonian system-the system
which more than anything else in science represented authority
itselfl Carpenter has been justified indeed.
SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM-PEDANTIC MARXISM
In one of his criticisms, Carpenter is directly interesting to
Libertarians. The leaders of Marxist thought in those days (just
like those of the Marxists in Russia today), the writers, the
economists, were as pompous, pedantic and pretentious about
their dogmas as the big-bugs in any other line. Some of my
older readers will remember how arrogantly they divided themselves from their ignorant predecessors, "mere Utopians"; what
they were teaching was now "Scientific" Socialism based upon the
irrefutable laws of economics-upon Lassalle's Iron Law of
Wages, upon Marx' exposition of the Theory of Value. A lot
of useless scholasticism, as valuable as the Chinese Classics, is
still being doped out to young workers who naively imagine they
are learning modern science when they attend classes in which
the text-book used was written seventy years ago, intellectually
as dead as its writer. The teachers themselves do not follow
their own teaching. Why humbug the workers by urging them
to strike if it be true, as Lassalle taught, that workers, no matter
what they do, must, so long as they are wageworkers, come down
to the subsistence point-that Iron Law of Wages? Or what
good our struggling for a new society if the whole thing depends
upon the economic progress, upon advance in technique? Since the
matter does not depend on us but upon the technicians, why not
just sit down on our posteriors and wait for the good time coming
in due course?
Lassalle's Iron Law has been so overwhelmingly discredited
by the events that he is not often mentioned in these days, as he
11





used to be when Carpenter was writing. The co-operative movement at which Lassalle scoffed and which he assailed so furiously
in his famous attack on Schultze-Delitsch is now put forward
as a movement to be captured and dominated by the brilliant
people who are still supposed to be his followers.
As for the famous Theory of Value, one of the most timely
and most effective pieces of work done by Carpenter was done
when he wrote his article on "The Value of the Value Theory"
in the Fabian magazine, To-Day. The Fabians, in Great Britain,
with all their faults and their middle-class assurance of themselves as the only people to direct the workers, nevertheless did
good service in their day. As intellectuals they were ultimately
dethroned by the Guild Socialists (saying very much the same
thing that some of us Anarchists had said long years before.)
but in their youth they were supreme in their common-sense
refusal to be tied up by mere verbalisms or by statements strong
only because they had been so long unchallenged. As regards
The Value Theory, at the start they were orthodox. I remember
how George Bernard Shaw, backed up by Hyndman, readily
undertook to demolish a fellow named Wicksteed who actually
had the nerve to attack the irrefutable theory, as explained by
Marx. The debate, Shaw, with his ready wit, won easily-at
least, in the opinion of the still orthodox. Imagine the astonishment then of those who had backed him up so enthusiastically
when a week or two later Shaw announced that no matter who
had won he had been convinced! This was the beginning of a
serious examination by British Socialists of Jevons' theory of
final utility (marginal utility it is called in the United States),
which ultimately led to the general abandonment of the Marxian
theory (properly speaking the Ricardian) on that matter. In
the midst of the row Carpenter sent in his article on The Value
of the Value Theory. He pointed out that the Marxian definition,
speaking of "socially necessary labor" implies "socially useful
labor" and thus gives its case away, since it brings in that element
of utility upon which the Jevonian theory is based, and that it
was just as easy to reduce different kinds of utility to abstract
utility as to reduce different kinds of labor to abstract labor.
Why trouble so much anyhow about any theory of value? Let
the economists fight it out if they wanted to, but why bore the
working man with this abstract theorizing merely to convince him
that he was being robbed, when the facts of everyday life proved
it so overwhelmingly?  Drop this pedantic stuff, he urged,
abandon your "scientific" jargon; if you want to reach the
workers talk to them in a language they understand on matters
which to them seem of real importance.
Those of my readers who interest themselves in that kind
of thing are aware that quite apart from "'labor" and "utility"
theories of value the development of psychology has compelled us
12





all to regard economic problems in a different light altogether.
Even in the old days the intelligent economist knew well
enough that the abstraction necessary to his science, "economic
man", was something very different to the real human. To-day
when psychology shows us the real human moved by his emotions
so much more than by his reason, moved so constantly by his
traditions, his habits, his pipe-dreams, his prejudices, so little
really by his economic interest, the abstraction is seen to be so far
away from reality that the science founded on it has lost its former
high place: the modern economist no longer dogmatically lays
down iron laws as immutable as those of mathematics, he tells
us merely of certain tendencies, and in regard to value he now
defers to the psychologist very respectfully.
Carpenter's article "In Defense of Criminals", an examination of law, respectability, the virtues and vices and the moral
codes, is very fine. I think it a wretched business that even
Anarchists, like all the other radicals, will insist on republishing
old stuff, revered antiquities, instead of new, fresh, up-to-date
matter suitable for present-day purposes; but I admit that though
as I have said (and as Carpenter himself said), much of Carpenter's work long ago lost its timeliness, his Defense of Criminals as a piece of propaganda is as good as ever.
EVOLUTIONARY THEORIES
His "Exfoliation," beautifully written, also I thought very
fine. Biological science at the present time is not supporting his
views, his Neo-Lamarckism. You know the two evolutionary
theories over which the battle raged in those days-the "Darwinian", in which progress was made through the struggle for
existence and the survival of the fittest, and the other, the "Lamarckian", in which function, will, desire, and the heredity of
acquired characteristics play their part. In the Darwinian theory,
the giraffe, for instance, has a long neck because those giraffes
with long necks were able to reach the food high up in a dry
season, while the short-necks died. In the Lamarckian theory
the giraffe grew his long neck because he was so often stretching
it to the utmost after food. The cause of progress in the Darwinian theory is a change of external conditions allowing the survival
only of those whose chance variation makes them best fitted;
in the other it would be a change internally, an inward growth,
expressing itself first in the form of an intense desire and developing the body accordingly. Neither of these theories in its entirety
is generally accepted today. Yet I think the Lamarckian theory,
in so far as it is tenable, ought not to be forgotten by the Anarchists. If we leave biological evolution to consider the evolution of
society it is evident that the Marxians who talk of nothing but
external change are in that matter Darwinians, while we who, like
Carpenter, while accepting that, put stress also upon the power of
ideas and ideals are in accord so far with the Lamarckians.
13





I myself had, not long ago, a discussion with one of our
ablest comrades, who thought otherwise. He had started to write
a book on Anarchism. To make sure that he was not passing
up anything he went back as far as the Desiccation of Central
Asia. It was this desiccation (drying-up), he said, which, in the
first place, as the trees were dying off, made the apes come down
to the ground. They had not come down, he insisted, until they
just had to. I wanted to argue with him that some of them probably. came down a little earlier-to try it out, to enjoy the
adventure. He would not have that. I finally compromised by
admitting that the ancestors of the mass of humanity did not
come down till they just had to; but I stuck to it that the
Anarchists were descended from those who did not wait but
came down a little earlier and set an example.
LOVE'S COMING OP AGE
Much of Carpenter's work, written for the times, has been
pretty well forgotten, so complete has been the triumph of common-sense. But his work on the sex question is so well-known
to everybody who reads at all-even to the Anarchists who
know so little of his other stuff-that it is not necessary for me
to give an account of it. "Love's Coming of Age" has been read
by many thousands who never heard anything of his other ideas.
It has been translated into all the European languages and sold
abroad up to the hundred thousand. It was, for the last generation, the book to be placed in the hands of youth; some other
good books on the subject had caused shock and alarm when first
looked into; this one was written with tact, with delicacy and
with sentiment. Ellen Key's work did have a similar success, but
she came in later than Carpenter. The success to which they
both cohtributed-with many others-may be judged by the
following extract from his book, "My Days and Dreams," written when he was seventy, in 1915: "It is curious to think that
that was not twenty years ago-and what a landslide has occurred since thenl In 1896 no "respectable" publisher would
touch the volume, and yet today (1915) the tide of such literature
has flowed so full and fast that my book has already become
quite a little old-fashioned and demurel"
On one point in particular he was a pioneer. Homo-sexuality is now being freely discussed-in the literature of psychoanalysis, for instance. When Carpenter first dealt with it, it had
always been strictly taboo. His pamphlet, "A Peculiar People,"
called attention to the fact that there existed in the body of
society quite a number of individuals whom the sex feeling
attracted not to the opposite sex but to their own; and he asked
the public to re-examine its judgment that these people were
necessarily disgusting criminals who must be punished to the
utmost limit, assuring the public that as a matter of fact such a
14





temperament might be associated with refinement and intellect
and he found in people of obvious social value.
There is no doubt that very often-generally, probablyhomo-sexuality is environmental. Armies, navies, prisons, the
separation of the sexes, are its usual origin, and temperament in
such cases has probably but little to do with it. But that it is in
many cases temperamental, constitutional, congenital, is, I believe, fully established. The judgment of the educated public
has been softened and Carpenter was the first to plead for that.
Though Carpenter never in so many words, so far as I know,
said that he himself was of that temperament it was pretty well
understood that he was.
This work of his, this plea for a milder judgment of the
homo-sexualists, pleased few of his friends. I remember Ernest
Crosby, when I came to New York, asking me about Carpenter.
I said I had not seen him for a long time but that I had heard
that he was working on a new book dealing with friendship
between two people of the same sex, that in fact I had mentioned
it to Kropotkin when he had asked me the same question and
Peter had rather turned up his nose at it. "Ah, no," said Crosby,
very decidedly, "not even Peter Kropotkin has the right to turn up
his nose at anything written by Edward Carpenter."
His MYSTICISM
As I have said, Carpenter was a good deal of a mystic.
Myself I will have no compromise with authoritarian
religion, whether it be that of the Roman Catholic Church, of the
Jewish Law, of the Hindu Vedas, or of the Book of Mormon. We
Libertarians are not against state authority only; we are not less
against that authority from which at one time state authority
claimed its origin and its sanction. If the job of exposing it
were not being attended to so well by others we should have to
tackle it seriously ourselves. But it seems to me that mysticism
is another affair. It may be right or wrong; it may be useful or
at least interesting or it may be merely misleading. But as a
movement we are not called upon to deal with it, whatever we
may think of it as individuals. I am not a mystic myself. But
it seems to me that a man like Carpenter, who has freed his mind
from the superstitions, who rejects all authority but his own
reason, may be a mystic without departing from Libertarianism,
just as he may believe that Mars is inhabited regardless of what
the most of us think.
Of course, there are mysticisms dominated by the old superstitions and some presented in the old language--as Tolstoi's
was to a great extent; but Carpenter's was not. And there are
some mysticisms even more childish and silly than the old superstitions themselves. But Carpenter's mysticism was to me the
most reasonably presented one and the most poetic I had come
15





across. For his theory about Cosmic Consciousness he argued
ably and wrote most beautifully. He pointed out that as humans
we had already developed a stage beyond the simple consciousness of the animals; we had developed self-consciousness, in
which we were conscious not only of the sensation but of the
being who felt it. He thought that some individuals among us
had become conscious of their unity with all nature, of being
at one with the universe, and that in time more and more of us
would become so conscious, cosmic-conscious. He wrote books
about it (see "The Art of Creation," if you are interested).
Sometimes he put forward arguments which few of us could
accept and made statements which I think showed him to be too
credulous. But I have a notion that what he wrote on the matter
will be read a long time after this and that more will be written
on it.
SOCIAL THEORIES
As a prophet, Carpenter was not always right; no matter
how keen a prophet's insight some prophecies are bound to go
wrong badly; all sorts of things unthought of at the time of the
prophecy develop afterwards. For instance, when Carpenter
wrote his "Non-Governmental Society" he felt sure that we must
be close to the introduction of a society in which these would be
the beginning of an approach to the communal ideal. He argued
that the question of the unemployed in Britain was becoming too
serious (even then), so serious morally as well as economically
that something would have to be done, and that the solution
when found would be the beginning of a time when the actual
needs of life would be available in some measure for everybody,
and that the industrial arrangements assuring them would inevitably tend towards some measure of communism. The unemployed
situation in Britain has indeed had to be dealt with, as he said
it would; but who the dickens would have dreamt then that even
the powers that be could be so stupid as to deal with it on a
mere dole basis, with no effort made at all to use the men's productive capacity, none whateverl
I do not mean that his program dealt only with the unemployed; he dealt with them in that article because at that time the
solution of the problem was a burning question. He thought also
that municipal socialism (public ownership as it is called in the
United States) then being so rapidly introduced, would help to
provide and to stabilize employment and to develop a sense of
common interests. But his own particular faith was placed in
the possibilities of the Co-operative Movement, which in Britain
is very strong, and steadily, though not rapidly, progressive.
Before ever the modern Socialist movement was really started
in Britain, Carpenter had written a pamphlet dealing with cooperation at the Leclaire works in France. To most of the early
Socialists, the Co-operative Movement was-as it still is, I am
16





afraid, to many of our own Libertarian comrades-a delusion if
not a snare. To some it is even anathema. Carpenter then got
no hearing at all.
THE CO-OPERATIVE MOVEMENT
When, years later, I was engaged in a campaign to bring
into better understanding and closer connection the Anarchists
and the old co-operators (the stout old anti-statists who controlled
it before the Socialists finally took it up), Carpenter sent me,
through a friend, his heartiest good wishes; and when I met
him still later I found him completely in accord with me-that
if the Anarchists were to join the Co-operators and give their
movement real and serious study (not simply join to blow off
at business meetings a lot of sentimental poppycock about communism) backing up the old co-operators with a more definite
anti-statist theory, encouraging the development of production
by producers' organizations and not merely by the consumers
wholesales, and explaining the possibility of the organization of
exchange without gold currency, by something like what the
Individualist--Anarchists call Mutual Banking, the nucleus of
the new society could be created and shown-not merely explained, but shown-in action-an object lesson of the greatest
importance.
No, he was not an authority on co-operation. He did not
know much about its practical questions; they were not in his
line, you know; but he could see in it clearly enough a great and
most successful effort made by the workers; he recognized it as
Libertarian in its methods; and he was sure that the path to
emancipation lay through it somehow. What he had was not a
program but a vision.
It proved impossible, however, to interest the Anarchists at
that time. Kropotkin had an entirely mistaken conception of the
British co-operative movement and would not listen. And though
many of the others did give it a little polite attention and even a
little tepid approval all of them had the same thing to say about
it-that it seemed hardly much use pottering about the co-operative movement when the Revolution was evidently just around
the corner and would be upon us before we could get properly
started.
In vain we elaborated on Kropotkin's own teaching about the
Paris Commune, how it had failed largely because the people had
just elected a government and then waited for it to organize the
new society, whereas in the next revolution the people must not
wait but proceed themselves to the organization which takes so
much more time than the revolt. We argued that if that teaching
was right it would be still better if as much as possible of the
organization was done before the revolt, if the experiment had
been worked out, if a nucleus had been established, and a reserve
17





obtained of men who as co-operative directors had had some real
practical experience in administration. We talked in vain. Ulti,mately the Socialists woke up, trimmed their dogmas a bit, went
in and captured a large influence in the Co-operative Movement
for themselves. Under the leadership of Sidney Webb they pooh,poohed the old idea of productive workshops organized by the
producers themselves, to be linked with the distributive stores
organized by the consumers, and they strengthened the officials
of the consumers wholesale societies in their struggle to keep
all production within their own hands, thus making any organization of exchange unnecessary. They made the movement,
in short, as far as possible, a little model of the Socialist State
and even in time brought the co-operators a little bit into politics.
The Anarchists had lost their opportunity. Not till the rise of the
Guild Socialists, many years afterwards, were any of these issues
revived.
A BLOODY REVOLUTION
Carpenter, be it remembered, though I have spoken of his
strong, communistic sentiment never accepted Anarchist-.Com,munism in the form presented by Kropotkin. He' was a very
typical Englishman, who, however high his vision, wants to keep
his feet on the ground and who when he decides to go forward
goes with deliberation, step by step. To Carpenter, moreover,
intensely a humanitarian, the idea of a bloody revolution full of
bitter class hatred, introducing a new society of brotherhood was
unthinkable. I feel sure that to his countrymen this Anarchism of
his,, which did not advocate "non-resistance" yet sought for non-w
violent means, would have made a great appeal if he had had a
more practical acquaintance with industrial questions. On these
matters he did not dare to say much; and his countrymen do not
ask a propagandist, as the French people do, or the Jewish:
What iis your theory? but rather, What is your proposal? Not,
What do you think about it? but, What are you going to do
about it?'
No. he was not a non-resistant. I had myself In 1889 put
out a little manifesto in which, while attacking militarism and,governmental violence I deprecated among Anarchists the preach-o
Ing of hatred, violence and revenge as a gospel (this was in France
just before the epidemic of bomb-throwing). So far as was humanly
possible in the struggle, I urged, we should try to retain goodwill
in our minds even to our opponents. That did not mean that we
should allow ruffians to terrorize everybody, but merely that in
whatever measures we found it necessary to take we should as
intelligent people keep in mind the fact that philosophically the
ruffians- were but creatures of circumstances and that acts- of
savagery or ferocity on our part also had an evil social effect.
Hate might indeed be a more powerful motive than love, but
intelligence would. say that in the case. of people who aimed at a
18





better society hate should be directed against institutions and not
against individuals. Well, Carpenter mentioned to me once that
he had read the manifesto and was entirely with me. But he
would not have any dogma about it. He told me that he himself
not long before had resorted to strong measures and administered
a good thrashing to a friend of his. The friend had been indulging
in long drinking bouts at the expense of his wife and children.
Carpenter had sometimes before got him sobered up by talking
to him, but the fellow was drinking more than ever. So Carpenter, in cold blood, as an experiment, thrashed him. He was so
startled by a thrashing from a man so gentle in nature as Carpenter that he kept sober-no, no, not permanently, but for a
much longer time than before.
Carpenter was not silly and could not tell the workers that
when they were being beaten it would be a crime for them to put
in a blow in return. He knew well enough that in the struggle
of the workers against the exploitative system there would be hot
blood and hard blows on both sides in plenty, no matter what was
preached. But cruelty in cold blood, the ill-treatment of human
beings continued after the excitement and danger had gone by, he
could not tolerate. And he knew well, too, that the workers
were at their best as workers, not as fighters, that they were
strongest in the workshop and not on the battlefield and that they
should seek therefore for economic methods and not turn to violence wilfully when other courses were open.
His RANGE
He certainly dealt with a great range of subjects, a quite
extraordinary range. One of his books would deal with the influence of art upon religion, another with the "Drama of the
Future," the next tell in detail how in his own neighborhood the
common lands were stolen from the people and who got them.
He wrote upon "Empire and Imperialism" and upon "SmokePreventing Appliances." The song "England Arise," his own
words and music, is now in the British radical movements second
to Jim Connell's Red Flag only. It is significant that the two
British writers who have dealt with China most ably before she
came into her modern prominence were both of them our comrades, Bertrand Russell and Edward Carpenter. His little drama,
"The Promised Land," (Moses), is just the thing for a Jewish
comrade interested in his race's story to place in the hands of
his son.
With all this there was not the slightest trace of the pedant,
no pose, no affectation. No man made so many friends; if he
took a walk anywhere he was sure before he got back to have
encountered some poor fellow in trouble who had relieved himself by giving Carpenter his whole life history and receiving in
return a little of that sympathy and comradeship in which Carpenter was so rich.
19





He was not merely sympathetic, he was always cheerful and
he could be very jolly and gay. His humor helped him greatly,
and a bit of fun seemed always welcome. I met him once when
he was taking a vacation, as he was passing through Monte Carlo
-of all the places in the world for two Anarchists to meetl He
had been with his friend George (I forget his name) to the
Casino, wanting to see the gambling with his own eyes; but
admission had been denied them. They were dressed in their
loose shirts, knickers and sandals, handsome fellows; and the
Casino men evidently recognized them as personages. But, good
gracious, they could not go into the Casino dressed like that!
They must wear black coats, and put on trousers and collars.
So they came to me. I had a position in which I had occasionally
to appear in respectable togs, so I fixed them up as well as I could.
The trouble was that I was four or five inches taller than Carpenter. I have forgotten what we did about the trouserstucked them up and stitched them, I suppose-but I remember
that my long frock coat when Carpenter put it on was not like a
frock coat at all but an overcoat. Carpenter in his own costume
looked every inch what he was-the scholar and the poet; but in
my togs he looked like nothing so much as an old-clothes man!
We shouted with laughter, Carpenter as loudly as the others; he
added to the grotesquerie by refusing to wear my collar and
buying a paper one. I am sure that alone he could never have
got by the horror-stricken guardians at the door; but fortunately
George was more my height and in my clothes he saved the day.
While Carpenter wore a full beard, George had a military-looking
moustache and he was very straight in the back and broad in the
shoulders; nobody could take him for anything less than a lieutenant-colonel. So George went first, with dignity enough for a
duke (though he had really been born in the slums), and Carpenter sneaked modestly in behind him.
There is a fine poem about the gambling in his "Towards
Democracy." But, of course, no trace of the fun; there was no
humor in his poetry.
His POETRY
I have left his poetry to the last, partly because I am not
quite a competent critic in that matter. An Anarchist, to be
consistent, ought to be ready in his welcome to the new forms of
literature and poetry, typical of emancipation from long-accepted
conventions. But alas, a man cannot be just what he likes, and I
have to confess that the older forms still appeal to me more
strongly. His "Toward Democracy" (he was using the word
Democracy in the sense of a society of equals, not thinking of
democratic government) is a collection of beautiful thoughts and
aspirations presented in the form familiarized to us by Walt
Whitman-without rhyme and without definite metre-rhetorical
20





prose to many of us. He stands below Whitman to most people,
if only because he comes later and was obviously much influenced
by the older man; but in one way his stuff is superior to Whitman's. Even those of us who get great inspiration from Walt
must admit that often in the midst of beautiful and inspiring
thought we come across a word or a phrase so incongruous that
one feels like laughing. Whitman's stuff is that of a man of the
people, whose taste has not been highly cultivated, who just had
the poetry in him; Carpenter's is, of course, that of a highly educated man, familiar with poetry from the Greeks down, whose
taste is always flawless. Walt's is sometimes indeed a "barbaric
yawp," as he says himself, though loud and strong, while Carpenter's is always sweet, gentle, thoughtful and musical. He
has many followers who insist on placing him first. The two
are different anyway, in origin, in tradition, and in temperament.
Judge for yourself, here is a bit of his in rhyme:
All down the ages comes a cry of anguish,
Where workers toil and sweat without release,
That others may grow rich the while they languish
In poverty and pain till life shall cease.
Always a cry of men in desperation,
Of women, ay, and children, stung beneath
The slaver's whip-the chain, the scanty ration,
The goad of hunger, and the fear of death.
Always the Land, the one means of existence,
Snatched from the peasant-folk by guile and force;
Always brave hearts of manhood and resistance
Crushed by machine-like Law without remorse;
Always the seamstress in her attic dreary,
The miner in his murky tomb immersed,
The factory hand, the clerk-ill, worn and weary--
By those for whom they toil, unknown, ignored.
Ah yes! and always through the strife and tangle,
Through all the cries and counsels of despair,
A music heard that silences the jangle,
A rising chord of Hope that fills the air.
Always the song-despite the world's derision
Of suffering hearts that welded into one,
In dream prophetic, self-fulfilling vision,
Of days to be-the City of the Sun.
Always of things unseen one surest tokenTheir deep foundation in the human breast;
The words, now dark within, that shall be spokenFreedom and Comradeship from East to West.
21





Always from weakness a new strength emerging,
From sorrow shared a greater ecstasy;
Always the common soul and purpose urging
To Life and Love and Power and Victory.
THE ADDRESS
Here is a Congratulatory Address presented to him on his
seventieth birthday by a large body of admirers, among them
many with names known all the world over:
".... Your books with no aid but your own originality and
power have found their way among all classes of people in our
own and other lands, and they have everywhere brought with
them a message of fellowship and gladness. At a time when
society is confused and overburdened by its own restlessness and
artificiality, your writings have called us back to the vital facts
of Nature, to the need of simplicity and calmness, of just dealing
between man and man, of free and equal citizenship, of love,
beauty and humanity in our daily life.
"We thank you for the genius with which you have interpreted great spiritual truths, for the deep convictions underlying
all your teaching that wisdom must be sought not only in the
study of external nature but also in a wider knowledge of the
human heart, for your insistence upon the truth that there can be
no real wealth of happiness for the individual apart from the welfare of his fellows, for your fidelity and countless services to the
cause of the poor and friendless, for the light you have thrown
on so many social problems, and for the equal courage, delicacy
and directness with which you have discussed various questions
of sex, the study of which is essential to a right understanding of
human nature.
We have spoken of your many readers and friends, but in
your case to a degree seldom attained by writers your readers
are your friends, for your books have that rare quality which
reveals 'the man behind the book,' and that personal attraction
which results only from the widest sympathy and fellow-feeling.
For this, most of all, we thank you-the spirit of comradeship
which has endeared your name to all who know you and to many
who to yourself are unknown."
His FUNERAL
For some years before his death he had not been able to
reply to inquiries. He had gone, or been taken, from his old home
near Sheffield to a place in the South of England-I presume for
the sake of the milder climate. I cannot make out how it was
that when he died the Church was able to get possession of his
body for a religious burial service. The idea of Carpenter, of
all men, being buried in such fashion! I always carry Carpenter
in my mind with two other men, personal friends of his, poets
22





both, men of much the same views and character, with J. William
Lloyd and with Ernest Crosby. Lloyd is still thinking and writing, much loved by a circle of friends, at Freedom Hill, Roscoe,
in California. Crosby died twenty years ago. He had had an
experience much like Carpenter's: When an international judge
in Egypt he had come across a book of Tolstoi's and he too had
to change his life entirely. A while after his death, Michael
Monahan, in the name of his friends, wondering what had become
of the book we knew he had been writing, went to see his widow
and was told that the book had been burned. And the Church,
you see, captured Carpenter's body; though after its ceremonies
were over the friends who had been unable to stop them came
forward and bade him, in their own fashion, a last farewell. The
principal speaker was H. W. Nevinson, whose books, including
the two volumes of his reminiscences and his anthology of liberty,
have been so widely read by intellectual people. I met him last,
forty years ago in London, at a meeting of the Freedom Group.
WERE His EFFORTS WASTED?
A few days ago I received a letter from another old comrade who had seen about Carpenter's death and been deeply
affected by it. He writes me: "Another link with the past gone.
It saddens me doubly. Carpenter, Morris, Kropotkin and others
like them once meant so much to me. Their writings, their preaching and teaching seemed as if they would mould the world into
a better shape, kindle a more human fire in men's minds. But,
alas, it seems to me now that their efforts were largely wasted.
What effect they had was only in the few more or less of the same
type as themselves. Henry Ford introducing cheap reliable autos
has made inore change in men's minds and lives than all the
preachers, educators and poets."
Why, my dear old comrade, you are too deeply depressed
just now. It was part of Carpenter's own teaching that this very
progress in science and invention, though it gave us greater
opportunity, brought danger with it and called for greater responsibility. More than ever, in face of such material progress do we
need the voice of a Carpenter. As H. G. Wells put it some time
ago, "In social affairs we are witnessing a race between education
and catastrophe." It may be, though I myself do not feel so
despondent, that our own society is not going to get beyond that
stage of "civilization" of which Carpenter wrote, and that we
shall fall back like the old societies or stay stagnant as China
did so long. But some day, some society will get beyond it, I am
sure. And I am also sure that.the struggle now is entirely worth
while, even if we of our generation do not achieve success. Why
be so blue about Carpenter? I know of no man whose life was
more reasonable, more consistent, more inspiring, more successful.
Better ivH. Heayy Ford made a gtd1 odanical ob at gjbt
23





his reward for it, including the millions. Carpenter had no desire
to be a Ford; what he hoped was that his teaching and his life
would lead others like you and me, to think and act as he did
and so affect others in their turn. If there is any nobler or more
useful way to spend one's life I do not know of it. We cannot be
absolutely sure that we are right even in the main; we know that
in some part we must be wrong; we cannot be certain at all of
success, nor of our personal happiness; but if we are to make the
best we can of our lives that surely is the sensible way to use them.
You say further that, ""if those men of genius who taught and
preached have had so little effect, if they do not agree, and if
we are not sure even now which one of them was right, it ill behooves one of the mediocre majority like myself to put forth
opinions."'
It is evident, old comrade, that you have forgotten the main
lesson of Carpenter's life, of that Carpenter whom you so admired. Carpenter, as I sized him up, was not a man of giant
intellect-and I am sure did not so consider himself-but a man
like you and me'. The endowment that made him great was not
a superhuman brain capacity-though what capacity he had he
certainly used very actively-it was his intense sincerity, his
intellectual honesty, his splendid mental courage. When awakened by Whitman he did not halt to consider that intellectual
g iants like Adam Smith and Karl Marx, Auguste Comte and
Hrber Spencer had gone over the ground before he, a mere
mediocrity, arrived at it. No, he went forward modestly but
boldly, and reported to us what he saw himself, using-here is the
secret of his "genius", as you call it-not the eyes of those who
had gone before, though they had been good ones, still less the
excellent spectacles one or two of them had left behind, but his
own eyes, his own eyes. such as they were. He looked at things
for himself and told us what he saw. Now and again, no doubt,
he did not see the whole thing, once in a while his eyes deceived
him and he saw things which were not there. What of it? We
have to keep our own eyes open. Is it any argument why you
should not in your turn use yours and then speak out your mind
boldly as he did, not as that of an oracle conveying to the world
the dictates of a deity, merely as that of a man who sees and
thinks for hiself.- The man who does that, my dear fellow,
ceases to be a mediocrity. No matter how deficient he may be in
a scholastic education, or lackig in other advantages, no matter
how obscure he has been and how obscure he remains, he has
nevertheless,, In that noble comradeship of which Edward Carptnter sang, eichleved full membership.
T. H. BELL.


24





LIBERTARIAN LITERATURE
Vanguard Press Series: (mostly 75 cents.)
Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread.
(The earliest and fullest exposition of his Anarchist-Communism:
now very old, remember, but a great book.)
Revolutionary Pamphlets.
The Great French Revolution. (2 vols.)
Love's Coming of Age. Edward Carpenter.
War-Patriotism-Peace. Leo Tolstoi.
The State. Franz Oppenheimer.
(A study of its origins by Germany's greatest sociologist.)
Individual Liberty. Benjamin R. Tucker.
(Selections from the brilliant American's famous "Instead of a Book.")
What is Mutualism? C. L. Swartz.
(An excellent exposition of Anarchist-Mutualism, as developed in
America.)
Proudhon's Solution of the Social Problem.
(Valuable for the historical student.)
The Remedy for Over-Production and Unemployment. Hugo Bilgram.
(For the student of the money question.)
What Is Co-operation? J. P. Warbasse.
(An up-to-date presentation of the Consumers' Co-operative Movement.)
Other Publishers:
KROPOTKIN'S ANARCHIST-COMMUNISM
Mutual Aid. (The work that made his reputation as a scientist.)
Ethics; Origin and Development.
Fields, Factories and Workshops. (Apart from its theories, full of the most
valuable information on this subject.)
In Russian and French Prisons.
Modern Science and Anarchism.
Memoirs of a Revolutionist. (Intensely interesting.)
The Terror in Russia.
Pamphlets:
Anarchism, Its Philosophy and Ideal.
Anarchist-Communism.
Anarchist Morality.
An Appeal to the Young.
The Commune of Paris.
Expropriation.
Law and Authority.
The Place of Anarchism in Socialist Evolution.
Revolutionary Governments.
Revolutionary Studies.
The State: Its Historic Role.
The Wage System.
War.
War and Capitalism.
(Yes, he was too optimistic, undoubtedly. If you are too hard-headed and
hard-boiled for Kropotkin's Communist-Anarchism, try Tucker's IndividualistAnarchism. And if that is too cold for you-or if you like them both and
cannot decide between them-just take your Anarchism without any chaserAnarchism straight.)





THE LIBERTARIAN CLASSICS
Areopagitica. John Milton.
Reflections on Political Justice. William Godwin.
What is Property? Pierre J. Proudhon.
God and the State. Michael Bakunin.
Essay on Liberty. John Stuart Mill.
Duty of Civil Disobedience. Henry David Thoreau.
Social Statics, and The Coming Slavery. Herbert Spencer.
The Ego and His Own. Max Stirner.
The Kingdom of God is Within You. Leo Tolstoi.
MODERN LIBERTARIANS
Emma Goldman:
Anarchism and Other Essays.
My Disillusionment in Russia.
My Further Disillusionment in Russia.
Living My Life. (The great autobiography of a great woman. No
greater autobiography ever penned.)
Alexander Berkman:
Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist.
(Stands besides Kropotkin's Memoirs.)
The Bolshevik Myth.
(Don't forget to get "The Anti-Climax" supplement.)
Now and After.
Charles T. Sprading:
Liberty and the Great Libertarians.
Freedom and Its Fundamentals.
Mutual Service and Co-operation.
An Open Conspiracy. H. G. Wells.
Anarchism. Eltzbacher. (A German professor compares the teachings of
seven great Anarchists.)
An Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry. Marcus Graham.
(A treasury never exhausted.)
PAMPHLETS
Anarchy. Errico Malatesta.
Evolution and Revolution. Elisee Reclus.
The Anarchist Revolution. George Barrett.
Anarchism and Democracy. Benjamin R. Tucker.
Anarchism and Outrage.
Anarchism and American Tradition. Voltairine de Cleyre.
The Two Communisms. M. Corn.
Will You Make War Again? E. D. Morel.
The Kronstad Rebellion. Alexander Berkman.
Read the poets-Burns, Shelley, Byron, Swinburne, Morris, Wildehosts of othem. And the novelists and dramatists-Morris' News from Nowhere, Ibsen's Enemy of the People, France's Revolt of the Angelsswarms of them. Libertarianism is flowing full and free in all modern
literature.
Write for literature or information to
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JOHN TURNER, 17 Woburn Square, London, W. C. 1, England
THOMAS H. KEELL, Whiteway, nr. Stroud, England.
or to
H. Yaffe, Secretary Publication Committee
THE LIBERTARIAN GROUP
504 North Soto St., Los Angeles, Calif.