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the plea of ignorance or honest motive do not save from being regarded as particeps criminis. But they realize that it would be suicidal for them to assume the offensive and make direct attack upon the State; for, being few in number, they would speedily be conquered and annihilated. While those blind slaves, the masses of the people, in their ignorance of true social principles, are worshipping the power which grinds them to powder, and stand ready to defend it with their last drop of blood, crucifying its antagonists and their own best well-wishers as fiends and enemies of society, to fight the State amounts to rendering it a great service and strengthening its evil power. Wisdom teaches that it is in the interest of the Anarchistic cause to accept methods which, though doing their work slowly and even imperceptibly, compensate for this drawback, if such it be, by the virtue of leading surely and safely to the final triumph. Premature change, or desperate attempts to make the world move onward in disregard of the laws of social growth, result in violent reaction. The practical abolition of the State would be a very easy matter, if the State idea were once abolished in the minds of a considerable number of people. But despotism may rest in peaceful slumber so long as dense ignorance keeps watch over it and guards it against assault. It is the policy of the Anarchists to win the confidence and respect of the people and array them against the State, if not to the extent of fraternizing with the former in their battle against the latter, then, at least, to the extent of maintaining a neutral and indifferent position. This policy precludes the use of all but constructive and educational methods. To smash the idol is to excite the rage and hatred of the worshipper; to gently and gradually dissipate the fog of superstition and expose the worthlessness and im-
