A certain congruity of selection and arrangement will, I hope, be apparent in the contents of this volume. Kropotkin's essay deals with the origin and historic evolution of the State. The chapter from Buckle, one of the greatest of philosophic historians, records the State's notable failure as a legislative agent. The three following papers constitute the challenge of the higher Individualism, as embodied in Emerson's serene and optimistic generalities, looking to- ward a society perfected from within; in Thoreau's keen eloquence, asserting the supremacy of personal Conscience over all other authority; in Herbert Spencer's clear-cut logic arguing the right of freedom from external control as an inevitable corollary to his "first principle" of social ethics—that "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man." In the next essay Tolstoy pleads the case for Christian anarchism, or social salvation through individual self-perfection combined with passive resistance to the State. Finally, we have Oscar Wilde's glowing and trenchant statement of the manner of life that would be possible in a really free society.
If this little book did no more than make generally available, as it does, the first of these essays, I should feel that its existence were sufficiently justified. Prince Kropotkin's avowed position as an apostle of philosophic anarchism will of course repel those numerous persons who, like crows, invariably take flight with much raucous cawing from the verbal bugaboos which they are too timid or too stupid to investigate. But it need alarm no others. Despite his faith in a society based upon "willingness and spiritual kinship" rather than upon coercion, Kropotkin holds a secure place among those of our time whose work has left a permanent impress upon human thought. Every reader of his "Mutual Aid" knows how deeply and widely he has explored the origins of society,—upon what a vast range of data his conclusions are based. The essay here reprinted is a pro-
