ANARCHY is a word which comes from the Greek, and signifies,strictly speaking, without government: the state of a peoplewithout any constituted authority, that is, without government.
Before such an organization had begun to be considered possibleand desirable by a whole class of thinkers, so as to be takenas the aim of a party (which party has now become one of themost important factors in modern social warfare), the word Anarchywas taken universally in the sense of disorder and confusion;and it is still adopted in that sense by the ignorant and byadversaries interested in distorting the truth.
We shall not enter into philological discussions; for the questionis not philological but historical. The common meaning of the worddoes not misconceive its true etymological signification, but isderived from this meaning, owing to the prejudice that governmentmust be a necessity of the organization of social life; and thatconsequently a society without government must be given up todisorder, and oscillate between the unbridled dominion of some andthe blind vengeance of others.
The existence of this prejudice, and its influence on the meaningwhich the public has given the word, is easily explained.
Man, like all living beings, adapts and habituates himself tothe conditions in which he lives, and transmits by inheritancehis acquired habits. Thus being born and having lived in bondage,being the descendant of a long line of slaves, man, when he began tothink, believed that slavery was an essential condition of life; andliberty seemed to him an impossible thing. In like manner, theworkman, forced for centuries, and thus habituated, to depend uponthe good will of his employer for work, that is, for bread, andaccustomed to see his own life at the disposal of those who possessthe land and the capital, has ended in believing that it is hismaster who gives him to eat, and demands ingenuously how it would bepossible to live, if there were no master over him?
In the same way, a man who had had his limbs bound from his birth,but had nevertheless found out how to hobble about, might attributeto the very hands that bound him his ability to move, while, on thecontrary, they would be diminishing and paralyzing the muscularenergy of his limbs.
If, then, we add to the natural effect of habit the educationgiven him by his masters, the parson, teacher, etc., who are allinterested in teaching that the employer and the government arenecessary; if also we add the judge and the bailiff to force thosewho think differently--and might try to propagate their opinions--to keep silence, we shall understand how the prejudice as tothe utility and necessity of masters and governments has becomeestablished. Suppose a doctor brings forward a complete theory,with a thousand ably invented illustrations, to persuade that manwith the bound limb whom we were describing, that, if his limb werefreed, he could not walk, could not even live. The man would defendhis bands furiously, and consider any one his enemy who tried totear them off.
Thus, since it is believed that government is necessary, andthat without government there must be disorder and confusion,it is natural and logical to suppose that Anarchy, which signifieswithout government, must also mean absence of order.
Nor is this fact without parallel in the history of words. Inthose epochs and countries where people have considered governmentby one man (monarchy) necessary, the word republic (that is, thegovernment of many) has been used precisely like Anarchy, to implydisorder and confusion. Traces of this signification of the word arestill to be found in the popula