24
potency of the idol may require patience, time, and endurance, but the issue is certain and satisfactory. All Anarchist workers devote their energies in the direction of spreading the light of true social principles, popularizing political and economic science, and illustrating the beauty and excellence of voluntaryism and general recognition of the right of individual self-government. All forces are concentrated on the work of creating a strong anti-State tendency,—a tendency that shall prepare the conditions and pave the way for the carrying out, on an extensive scale, of the Anarchists' plan of passive resistance to the State, through which the emancipation is to be principally realized and the great change introduced.
Light and rational ideas can reach the masses but to a slight degree. The Anarchists do not delude themselves with the false expectation of converting the world and reorganizing society by mere theoretical propaganda. Intellectual development and sober thinking are luxuries which the poor, degraded, half-starved victims of ages of injustice can neither enjoy nor appreciate; consequently the social transformation, which can only be hastened by being thoroughly understood, can look for little encouragement and positive help from the masses. The intelligent and influential few are the sole active factors in reform, and they are formidable, unconquerable, when, by skilful diplomacy, they succeed in eliminating the sympathies of the masses from the State and subjecting the latter to the necessity of struggling for its existence unaided by its usual numerous allies. Such a state of things the Anarchists have in their power to bring about. The masses will not be practically enlisted in the reform movement, but they will be disinclined to exterminate those who shall be in the front line on the day of the opening of the campaign against the State.
