ABSTRACT
To call anarchism a fallacy after having stated that savages have no government, which is certainly a condition of anarchy, must sound like flat inconsistency, unless it is borne in mind that the mode of the conversion of energy must correspond to the mode of association. Anarchy is practicable only to savagery. It has been attempted with an agricultural economy, which is more advanced, and the result is highly instructive. The religious sect of Dukhobors have made the trial, exhaustively. Within its limits, their reasoning was completely consistent. They were resolved to have no government whatever, not even self-government as the term is understood in describing a formal organization. A reporter * making a factual study of a Dukhobor colony in Canada asked a Dukhobor if he would promise not to burn some manuscript notes if they were left about. This would have been the easiest kind of promise to fulfill, being mere abstention from an act which no conceivable circumstances subsequently arising could make necessary in the given instance. The Dukhobor answered that he “would not want to burn those notes.” The reporter conceded that undoubtedly the Dukhobor at the moment thought he would not, but supposing he felt otherwise later? In that case, the Dukhobor said, “if the Spirit truly moved me to do it, then I would have to burn them.”
