ive, organising spirit, in order to reconstruct the whole of life in the factory, on the railroad, in the village, in tho stores, in taking supplies, in production, in distribution. All relations between individuals and between human agglomerations must begin to be remodelled on the very day, at the very moment we begin to reform any part of the present commercial or administrative organisation.…
And they expect this immense work, demanding the full and free exercise of popular genius, to be carried out within the frame-work of the State, within the pyramidal scale of organisation that constitutes the essence of each State! They want the State, whose very reason for existence lies in the crushing of the individual, in the destruction of all free grouping and free creation, in the hatred of initiative and in the triumph of one idea (which must necessarily be that of the mediocrity), to become the lever to accomplish this immense transformation!… They want to govern a newborn society by decrees and electoral majorities!… What childishness!
Throughout the whole history of our civilisation, two traditions, two opposed tendencies, have been in conflict: the Roman tradition and the popular tradition; the imperial tradition and the federalist tradition; the authoritarian one and the libertarian one.
And again, on the eve of the great Social Revolution these two traditions stand face to face.
Between these two currents, always full of life, always battling in humanity,—the current of the people and the current of the minorities which thirst for political and religious domination,—our choice is made.
We again take up the current which led men, in the twelfth century, to organise themselves on the basis of a free understanding, of free initiative of the individual, of free federation of those interested. And we leave the others to cling to the Roman, Canonic, and Imperial tradition.
History has not been an uninterrupted evolution. At different intervals evolution has been broken in a certain region, to begin again elsewhere. Egypt, Asia, the banks of the Mediterranean, Central Europe have in turn been the scene of historical development. But in every case, the first phase of the evolution has been the primitive tribe, passing on into a village commune, then into that of the free city, and finally dying out when it reached the phase of the State.
In Egypt, civilization began by the primitive tribe. It reached the village community phasis, and later on the period of free cities; still
