MARTIN P. CATHERWOOD 
 LIBRARY 
 
 NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL 
 
 OF 
 
 INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR 
 
 RELATIONS 
 
 CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 J. W. Northrop 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31 9240558621 1 8 
 
Price, 25 Cents 
 
 The Duties of Man 
 
 ADDRESSED TO WORKINGMEN 
 
 BY 
 
 Joseph Mazzini 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 New York .:. London 
 
The History of Social- 
 ism in the United States 
 
 By MORRIS HILLQUIT 
 
 A complete account of the origin, development, 
 and present status of socialistic movements through- 
 out the United States, indispensable to an intelligent 
 appreciation of socialism as it exists in this country, 
 
 IMPORTANT FEATURES OF THE WORK 
 
 Utopian and Communistic Colonics 
 
 Accounts of all Important ef- 
 forts toward Ideal social com- 
 munities in the United States, 
 with sketches of the founders, 
 propaganda, and records of suc- 
 cess and failure. 
 
 The Present Socialist Part/ 
 
 It gives the history of the disin- 
 tegration of the Socialist-Labor 
 Party, and the comparatively re- 
 cent establishment of the Social- 
 ist Party by union of the larger 
 part of the old organization with 
 new socialistic elements. 
 
 Platforms of tht Socialist Parties 
 
 The full platformB of the So- 
 ciiilist Party and the Socialist- 
 Labor Party are given in the 
 Appendix. 
 
 .' Career of the Socialist Party 
 
 One entire chapter Is devoted 
 to this party and the various 
 labor movements which were its 
 tributaries, Its allies, or its bitter 
 foes. The effect upon the party 
 of great strikes Is shown, and 
 the complex internal relations 
 and changing Issues of the 
 trades-union movement are 
 made clear to the reader. 
 
 Life Sketches of Utopian Leaders 
 
 Full of interesting anecdotes 
 and accounts of their interest- 
 ing accomplishments. 
 
 WTsat Socialism is and is Not 
 
 The essential principles and 
 policies of Socialism, the differ- 
 ence between it and Anarchism, 
 Its relation to Utopian move- 
 ments and leaders, its policy to- 
 ward capital and labor and all 
 other important facts about It, 
 are fully explained by an expert 
 authority. 
 
 The Relation of Great Strikes to 
 Socialism 
 
 Accounts of memorable strug- 
 gles between capital and labor In 
 the United States, Including the 
 HaymarketBlot, Pullman Strike, 
 Buffalo. Struggle, Homestead 
 Strike, Cour dT&Iene Battle, the 
 Tennessee Goal Strike, etc., etc. 
 
 Interesting Sociological Facts 
 
 Including the questions of 
 marriage and celibacy In com- 
 munistic communities, division 
 and rewards of labor, first labor 
 
 fiartles, single tax and socialism, 
 Etbor unions, aims and accom- 
 plishments of socialism, etc., etc. 
 
 M>mo, Cloth, 37 f Pagts. ff.jo, Net; by Mail, $1.6f. 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY/ Publishers 
 NEW YORK, and LONDON 
 
AN^ESSAY ON 
 
 THE DUTIES OF MAN : 
 
 ADDRESSED TO WORKINGMEN ' 
 
 WBITTEN IN 1844 AUD 1858 , 
 
 BY 
 
 JOSEPH MAZZINI 
 in 
 
 REPRINTED BY PERMISSION OP 
 
 MRS. EMILIE ASHURST VENTURI 
 
 Editor of " The Life and Writings of Joseph Mazzini " 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES 
 
 Ntto ¥orft 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY 
 
 New York and London 
 
 1892 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. , A<aB . 
 
 introduction — 1844 5-20 
 
 Chapter II. 
 God 21-32 
 
 Chapter III. 
 The Law ---- - 33-43 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 Duties Towards Humanity 44-56 
 
 Chapter V. » 
 Duties Towards your Country — 1858-- 57-63 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 Duties Towards the Family 64-71 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 Duties Towards Yourselves 7 2-83 
 
 Chapter VIII. 
 Liberty - 84-92 
 
JV CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter IX. PAGH1! . 
 
 Education 93-10 j 
 
 Chapter X. 
 
 Association. Progress 102-10. 
 
 Chapter XI. 
 
 The Economical Question.- 110-136 
 
 Chapter XII. 
 
 Conclusion 137-146 
 
AN ESSAY 
 
 ON 
 
 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO WORKINGMEN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 1844. 
 
 I intend to speak to you of your duties. I intend 
 to speak to you, according to the dictates of my heart, 
 of the holiest things we know; to speak to you of 
 God, of Humanity, of the Fatherland, and the Family. 
 
 Listen to me in love, as I shall speak to you in 
 love. My words are words of conviction, matured 
 by long years of study, of experience, and of sorrow. 
 The duties which I point out to you I have striven, 
 and shall strive while I live, to fulfill so far as I have 
 the power. I may err, but my error is not of the 
 heart. I may deceive myself, but I will not deceive 
 you. Listen to me, then, fraternally; judge freely 
 among yourselves whether I speak truth or error. 
 If it seems to you I speak error, leave me; but follow 
 me and act according to my teachings, if you believe 
 me the apostle of truth. To err is misfortune, and 
 deserving of commiseration; but to know the truth 
 and fail to regulate our actions according to its teach- 
 
6 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 ings is a crime condemned alike by Heaven and 
 earth. 
 
 Wherefore do I speak to you of your duties before 
 speaking to you of your rights ? Wherefore, in a 
 Society wherein all, voluntarily or involuntarily, tend 
 to oppress you; wherein the exercise of so many of 
 the rights that belong to man is continually denied 
 to you; wherein your portion is suffering, and all 
 that which men call happiness is for other classes — 
 do I speak to you of self-sacrifice rather than of con- 
 quest? of virtue, of moral improvement, and of edu- 
 tion, rather than of material well-being? 
 
 This is a question which I am bound to answer 
 clearly before I go any further, because this is pre- 
 cisely the point which constitutes the difference be- 
 tween the school to which I belong and many others 
 now existing in Europe; and also because this is a 
 question that naturally arises in the vexed mind of 
 the suffering workingman. 
 
 " We are the slaves of labour — poor and unhappy; speak 
 to us of material itnprovement, of liberty, of happiness. 
 Tell us if we are doomed to suffer forever ; if we are 
 never to enjoy in our turn. Preach duty to our employ- 
 ers; to the classes above us, who treat us like machines, 
 and monopolize the sources of well-being, which, in jus- 
 tice, belong to all men. Speak to us of our rights; tell 
 us how to gain them. Speak to us of our strength; let 
 us first obtain a recognized social and political existence; 
 then indeed you may talk to us of our duties." 
 
 So say too many workingmen, and they follow doc- 
 trines and join associations corresponding to such 
 thoughts and desires; forgetful, however, of one 
 thing, and that is, that these very doctrines to which 
 
INTRODUCTION. 7 
 
 they still appeal have been preached during the last 
 fifty years, without resulting in any, the slightest, 
 material improvement in the condition of the work- 
 ingman. 
 
 All that has been achieved or attempted in the cause 
 of progress and improvement in Europe during the 
 last fifty years, whether against absolute govern- 
 ments or the aristocracy of birth, has been attempted 
 in the name of the Rights of Man and of Liberty, as the 
 means of that well-being which has been regarded as 
 the end and aim of life. All the acts of the great French 
 Revolution, and of all of those revolutions which 
 succeeded and imitated it, were a consequence of the 
 "Declaration of the Rights of Man." All the works 
 of those philosophers, whose writings prepared the 
 way for that Revolution, were founded upon a theory 
 of Liberty, and of making known to every individual 
 his Rights. The doctrines of all the Revolutionary 
 schools preached that man was born for happiness; 
 that he had a right to seek happiness by every means 
 in his power; and that no one had a right to impede 
 him in that search; while he had a right to over- 
 throw whatever obstacles he met in his path to- 
 wards it. 
 
 And all those obstacles were overthrown; liberty 
 was achieved. In many countries it lasted for years - 
 in some it exists even yet. 
 
 Has the condition of the people improved ? Have 
 the millions who live by the daily labour of their 
 hands acquired any, the smallest amount, of the 
 promised and desired well-being? No; the condition 
 of the people is not improved. On the contrary, in 
 most countries it has even deteriorated; and here, 
 
8 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 especially, where I write, 1 the price of the necessaries 
 of life has continually augmented, the wages of work- 
 ingmen in many branches of industry have progres- 
 sively diminished, while the population has increased. 
 In almost all countries the condition of the working- 
 man has become more uncertain, more precarious, 
 while those crises which condemn thousands of work- 
 ingmen to a certain period of inertia have become 
 more frequent. 
 
 The annual increase of emigration from country to 
 country, and from Europe to other parts of the world, 
 and the ever-increasing number of benevolent insti- 
 tutions, of poor's rates, and other precautions against 
 mendicity, suffice to prove this. They indicate that 
 public attention is continually being attracted to the 
 sufferings of the people; but their inefficiency visibly 
 to diminish those sufferings demonstrates an equally 
 progressive augmentation of the misery of the classes 
 in whose behalf they endeavour to provide. 
 
 And nevertheless in these last fifty years the sources 
 of social wealth and the mass of material means of 
 happiness have been continually on the increase. 
 Commerce, surmounting those frequent crises which 
 are inevitable in the absolute absence of all organiza- 
 tion, has achieved an increase of power and activity, 
 and a wider sphere of operation. Communication 
 has almost everywhere been rendered rapid and 
 secure, and hence the price of produce has decreased 
 in proportion to the diminished cost of transport. 
 On the other hand, the idea that there are rights in- 
 
 1 England. It must be borne in mind that this and the chree 
 succeeding chapters were written in 1844. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 9 
 
 herent to human nature is now generally admitted 
 and accepted — hypocritically and in words at least — 
 even by those who seek to withhold those rights. 
 Why, then, has not the condition of the people im- 
 proved? Why has the consumption of produce, instead 
 of being equally distributed among all the Members of 
 European Society, become concentrated in the hands 
 of a few, of a class forming a new aristocracy? Why 
 has the fresh impulse given to industry and com- \ 
 merce resulted, not in the well-being of the many, 
 but in the luxury of a few? 
 
 The answer is clear to those who look closely into 
 things. Men are the creatures of education, and 
 their actions are but the consequence of the principle 
 of education given to them. The promoters of revo- 
 lutions and political transformations have hitherto 
 founded them all on one idea, the idea of the rights 
 pertaining to the individual. Those revolutions^, 
 achieved Liberty — individual liberty, liberty of edu- \ 
 cation, liberty of belief, liberty of commerce, liberty 
 in all things and for all men. \ 
 
 But of what use were rights when acquired by , 
 men who had not the means of exercising them? Of 
 what use was mere liberty of education to men who < 
 had neither time nor means to profit by it? Of what 
 use was mere liberty of commerce to those who pos- ; 
 sessed neither merchandise, capital, nor credit? 
 
 In all the countries wherein these principles were 
 proclaimed, Society was composed of the small num- 
 ber of individuals who were possessors of the land, 
 of capital, and of credit, and of the vast multitude 
 who possessed nothing but the labour of their hands, 
 and were compelled to sell that labour to the first 
 
IO THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 class on any terms, in order to live. For such men, 
 compelled to spend the whole day in material and 
 monotonous exertion, and condemned to a continual 
 struggle against hunger and want, what was liberty 
 but an illusion, a bitter irony? 
 
 The only way to prevent this state of things would 
 have been for the upper classes voluntarily to con 
 sent to reduce the hours of labour, while they in- 
 creased its remuneration; to bestow an uniform and 
 gratuitous education upon the multitude; to render 
 the instruments of labour accessible to all, and create 
 a credit for workmen of good capacity and of good in- 
 tentions. 
 
 Now, why should they have done this? Was not 
 well-being the end and aim of life? Was not pros- 
 perity the one thing desired by all? Why should 
 they diminish their own enjoyments in favour of others? 
 "Let those help themselves who can. When Society 
 has secured to each individual the free exercise of 
 those rights which are inherent in human nature, it 
 has done all it is bound to do. If there be any one 
 who, from some fatality of his own position, is un- 
 able to exercise any of these rights, let him resign 
 himself to his fate, and not blame others." 
 
 It was natural they should speak thus, and thus in 
 fact they spake. And this mode of regarding the 
 poor by the privileged classes soon became the mode 
 in which individuals regarded one another. Each 
 man occupied himself with his own rights and the 
 amelioration of his own position, without seeking to 
 provide for others; and when those rights clashed 
 with the rights of others, the result was a state of 
 war— a war, not of blood, but of gold and craft; less 
 
INTRODUCTION. It 
 
 manly than the other, but equally fatai; a relentless 
 ■war in which those who possessed means inexorably 
 crushed the weak and inexpert. 
 
 In this state of continual warfare, men were edu- 
 cated in selfishness and the exclusive greed of material 
 well-being. Mere liberty of belief had destroyed all 
 community of faith ; mere liberty of education gen- 
 erated moral anarchy. Mankind, without any com- 
 mon bond, without unity of religious belief or aim, 
 bent upon enjoyment and naught beyond, sought 
 each and all to tread in their own path, little heeding 
 if, in pursuing it, they trampled upon the bodies of 
 their brothers — brothers in name, but enemies in fact. 
 This is the state of things we have reached at the 
 present day, thanks to the theory of rights. 
 
 Rights no doubt exist ; but when the rights of onel 
 individual happen to clash with those of another, how / 
 can we hope to reconcile and harmonize them, if we 
 do not refer to something which is above all rights ? 
 And when the rights of an individual, or of many in- ( 
 dividuals, clash with the rights of the country, to what 
 tribunal shall we appeal ? 
 
 If the right to the greatest possible amount of hap- 
 piness exist in all human beings, how are we to solve 
 the question between the workingman and the manu- 
 facturer? If the right to existence is the first inviol- 
 able right of every man, who shall demand the 
 sacrifice of that existence for the benefit of other 
 men ? 
 
 Will you demand it in the name of the country, of 
 Society, of the multitude, your brothers ? 
 
 What is their country to those who hold the theory 
 I describe, if it be not the spot wherein their indi- 
 
12 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 vidual rights are most secure? /what is Society but 
 
 "an assemblage of men whoiiave agreed to bring the 
 
 power of the many in support of the lights of each ? 
 
 And you, who for fifty years have been preaching 
 to the individual that Society is constituted for the pur- 
 pose of securing to him the exercise of his rights, how can 
 you ask him to sacrifice them all in favour of that 
 Society, and submit, if need be, to ceaseless effort, to 
 imprisonment or exile, for the sake of improving it? 
 After having taught him by every means in your 
 power that the end and aim of life is happiness, how 
 can you expect him to sacrifice both happiness and 
 life itself to free his country from foreign oppression, 
 or to produce some amelioration in the condition of a 
 class to which he does not belong? After you have 
 preached to him for years in the name of material 
 interest, can you pretend that he shall see wealth and 
 power within his own reach and not stretch forth his 
 hand to grasp them, even though to the injury of his 
 fellow-men? 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 Who shall persuade the man, believing solely in 
 the theory of rights, that he is bound to strive for 
 the common good, and occupy himself in the develop- 
 ment of the social idea? Suppose he should rebel; 
 suppose he should feel himself strong enough to say 
 to you: " I break the social bond; my tendencies and 
 my faculties invite me elsewhere; I have a sacred, an 
 inviolable right to develop those tendencies and fac- 
 ulties, and I choose to be at war with the rest;" what 
 answer can y'Mi make him within the limits of the 
 Doctrine of Rights? What right have you, merely as 
 a majority, to compel his obedience to laws which do 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 not accord with his individual desires and aspirations?. 
 What right have you to punish him should he violate 
 those laws? 
 
 The Rights of each individual are equal; the mere 
 fact of living together in Society does not create a 
 single one. Society has greater power, not greater 
 rights, than the individual. How, then, will you 
 prove to the individual that he is bound to confound 
 his will in the will of his brothers, whether of coun- 
 try or of humanity? 
 
 By means of the prison or the executioner? 
 
 Every Society that has existed hitherto has em- 
 ployed these means. 
 
 But this is a state of war, and we need peace; this 
 is tyrannical repression, and we need Education. 
 
 EDUCATION, I have said, and my whole doctrine, 
 is included and summed up in this grand word. The 
 vital question in agitation at the present day is a 
 question of Education. We do not seek to establish 
 a new order of things through violence. Any order 
 of things established through violence, even though, 
 itself superior to the old, is still a tyranny. What wei 
 have to do is to propose, for the approval of the' 
 nation, an order of things which we believe to be 
 superior to that now existing, and to educate men by 
 every possible means to develop it and act in accord- 
 ance with it. , 
 
 The theory of Rights may suffice to arouse men, 
 to overthrow the obstacles placed in their path by 
 tyranny, but it is impotent where the object in view 
 is to create a noble and powerful harmony between 
 the various elements of which the nation is composed 
 With the theory of happiness as the primary aim of 
 
14 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 existence, we shall only produce egoists who will 
 carry the old passions and desires into the new order 
 of things, and introduce corruption into it a few 
 months after. We have, therefore, to seek a Principle 
 of Education superior to any such theory, and cap- 
 able of guiding mankind onwards toward their own 
 improvement, of teaching them constancy and self- 
 sacrifice, and of uniting them with their fellow-men, 
 without making them dependent either on the idea 
 of a single man or the. force of the majority. 
 / This principle is DUTY. We must convince men 
 f that they are all sons of one sole God, and bound to 
 1 fulfill and execute one sole law here on earth; that each 
 of them is bound to live, not for himself, but for others; 
 that the aim of existence is not to be more or less 
 happy, but to make ourselves and others more virtu- 
 ous ; that to struggle against injustice and error 
 (wherever they exist), in the name and for the benefit 
 of their brothers, is not only a right but a Duty;a 
 duty which may not be neglected without sin; the duty 
 of their whole life. 
 
 Workingmen! Brothers! Understand me well. When 
 I say that the consciousness of your rights will never 
 suffice to produce an important and durable progress, 
 I do not ask you to renounce those rights. I merely 
 say that such rights can only exist as a consequence 
 of duties fulfilled, and that we must begin with ful- 
 filling the last in order to achieve the first. And when 
 I say that in proposing happiness, well-being, or mate- 
 rial interests, as the aim of existence, we run the risk 
 , of producing egoists, I do not say that you ought 
 never to occupy yourselves with these ; but I do say 
 that the exclusive endeavour after material interests, 
 
Introduction, i 5. 
 
 Sought for, not as a means, but as an end, always leads 
 to disastrous and deplorable results. 
 
 When the ancient Romans, under the emperors, 
 contented themselves with bread and amusements, they 
 had become as abject a race as can be conceived; 
 and after submitting to the stupid and ferocious rule 
 of their emperors, they vilely succumbed to and were 
 enslaved by their barbarian invaders. In France and 
 elsewhere it has ever been the plan of the opponents 
 of social progress to spread corruption by endeavour- 
 ing to lead men's minds away from thoughts of change 
 and improvement through furthering the develop- 
 ment of mere material activity. And shall we help 
 our adversaries with our own hands ? 
 
 Material ameliorations are essential and we will strive ' 
 to obtain them; not, however, because the one thing 
 necessary to man is that he should be well housed 
 and nourished, but because you can neither acquire 
 a true consciousness of your own dignity, nor achieve 
 your own moral development, so long as you are 
 engaged, as at the present day, in a continual strug- 
 gle with poverty and want. 
 
 You labour for ten or twelve hours of the day: how 
 can you find time to educate yourselves ? The greater 
 number of you scarcely earn enough to maintain 
 yourselves and your families: how can you find means 
 to educate yourselves? The frequent interruption 
 and uncertain duration of your work causes you to 
 alternate excessive labour with periods of idleness: 
 how are you to acquire habits of order, regularity, 
 and assiduity ? The scantiness of your earnings pre- 
 vents all hope of saving a sum sufficient to be one day 
 useful to your children, or to provide for the support 
 
l6 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 of your own old age: how can you acquire habits of 
 economy ? Many among you are compelled by pov- 
 erty to withdraw your children— I will not say from 
 the instruction, for what educational instruction can 
 the poor wife of a workingman bestow upon her 
 children ? — but from the mother's watchfulness and 
 love, in order that they may gain a few pence in the 
 unwholesome and injurious labour of manufactories: 
 how can children so circumstanced be developed 
 under the softening influence of family affection ? 
 
 You have no rights of citizenship, no participation 
 either of election or vote, in those laws which are to 
 direct your actions and govern your life: how can 
 you feel the sentiment of citizenship, zeal for the 
 welfare of the State, or sincere affection for its laws ? 
 
 Your poverty frequently involves the impossibility 
 of your obtaining justice like the other classes: how 
 are you to learn to love and respect justice ? Society 
 treats you without a shadow of sympathy: how are 
 you to learn sympathy with Society ? 
 
 It is therefore needful that your material condition 
 should be improved, in order that you may morally 
 progress. It is necessary that you should labour less, 
 so that you may consecrate some hours every day to 
 your soul's improvement. It is neeeful that you 
 should receive such remuneration for your labour as 
 may enable you to accumulate a sufficient saving to 
 tranquillize your minds as to your future. And, above 
 all, it is necessary to purify your souls from all 
 reaction, from all sentiment of vengeance, from every 
 thought of injustice, even towards those who have 
 been unjust towards you. You are bound, therefore, 
 to strive for all these ameliorations in your condition 
 
INTRODUCTION. 1 7 
 
 and you will obtain them; but you must seek them 
 as a means, not as an end; seek them from a sense of 
 duty, and not merely as a right; seek them in order 
 that you may become more virtuous,' not in order 
 that you may be materially happy. 
 
 If not so, where would be the difference between 
 you and those by whom you have been oppressed ? 
 They oppressed you precisely because they only 
 sought happiness, enjoyment, and power. 
 
 Improve yourselves ! Let this be the aim of your\ 
 life. It is only by improving yourselves, by becom- j 
 ing more virtuous, that you can render your position/ 
 lastingly less unhappy. Petty tyrants would arise 
 among yourselves by thousands, so long as you should 
 merely strive to advance in the name of material 
 interests or a special social organization. A change 
 of social organization is of little moment while you 
 yourselves remain with your present passions and 
 selfishness. Social organizations are like certain 
 plants which yield either poison or medicine according 
 to the mode in which they are administered. Good 
 men can work good even out of an evil organization, 
 and evil men can work evil out of good organizations. 
 
 No doubt it is also necessary to improve the classes', 
 who now oppress you, but you will never succeed in ; 
 doing this unless you begin by improving yourselves. / 
 
 When, therefore, you hear those who preach the 
 necessity of a social transformation, declare that they 
 can accomplish it solely by invoking your rights, be 
 grateful to them for their good intentions, but be dis- 
 trustful of their success. The sufferings of the poor 
 are partially known to the wealthier classes ; known 
 but not felt. In the general indifference resulting 
 2 
 
l8 1 ; HE DllTIfeS Otf MAtJ. 
 
 from the absence of a common faith; in the selfish- 
 ness which is the inevitable result of so many years 
 spent preaching material happiness, those who do 
 not suffer themselves have, little by little, become 
 accustomed to regard the sufferings of others as a 
 sorrowful necessity of social organization, or to leave 
 the remedy to generations to come. The difficulty 
 lies, not so much in convincing them, as in rousing 
 them from their inertia, and inducing them, when 
 once convinced, to act; to associate together, and to 
 fraternize with you, in order to create such a social 
 organization as shall put an end — as far as human 
 possibilities allow — to your sufferings and their own 
 fears. 
 
 Now, to do this is the work of Faith; of faith in 
 the mission which God has given to his human creat- 
 ure here on earth; in the' responsibility which weighs 
 upon all those who fail to fulfill that mission; and in 
 the Duty imposed upon all, of continual endeavour 
 and sacrifice in the cause of truth. 
 
 Any conceivable doctrine of Right and material 
 happiness can only lead you to attempts which, so 
 long as you remain isolated and rely solely on your 
 own strength, can never succeed; and which can but 
 result in that worst of crimes, a civil war between 
 class and class. 
 
 Workingmen! Brothers! When Christ came, and 
 changed the face of the world, he spoke not of rights 
 to the rich, who needed not to achieve them; nor to 
 the poor, who would doubtless have abused them in 
 imitation of the rich; he spoke not of utility nor of 
 interest to a people whom interest and utility had 
 corrupted; he spoke of Duty, he spoke of Love, of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 19 
 
 Sacrifice, and of Faith; and he said that they should be 
 first among all who had contributed most by their labour 
 to the good of all. 
 
 And the words of Christ, breathed in the ear of a 
 society in which all true life was extinct, recalled it ) 
 to existence, conquered the millions, conquered the ( 
 world, and caused the education of the human race * 
 to ascend one degree on the scale of progress. 
 
 Workingmen! We live in an epoch similar to that 
 of Christ. We live in the midst of a society as cor- 
 rupt as that of the Roman Empire, feeling in our 
 inmost soul the need of reanimating and transform- 
 ing it, and of uniting all its various members in one 
 sole faith, beneath one sole law, in one sole aim — the 
 free and progressive development of all the faculties r 
 of which God has given the germ to h,is creatures. S. 
 We seek the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in' 
 Heaven, or rather, that earth may become a prepara- 
 tion for Heaven, and society an endeavour after the 
 progressive realization of the Divine Idea. 
 
 But Christ's every act was the visible representa-N 
 tion of the Faith he preached; and around him stood 
 apostles who incarnated in their actions the faith they 
 had accepted. Be you such, and you will conquer. 
 Preach duty to the classes above you, and fulfill, as 
 far as in you lies, your own. Preach virtue, sacrifice ^ 
 and love; and be yourselves virtuous, loving, and / 
 ready for self-sacrifice. Speak your thoughts boldly, 
 and make known your wants courageously; but with- 
 out anger, without reaction, and without threats. 
 The strongest menace, if indeed there be those for 
 whom threats are necessary, will be the firmness, not 
 the irritation, of your speech. 
 
20 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 While you propagate amongst your brothers the idea 
 of a better future, which will secure to them educa- 
 tion, work, its fitting remuneration, and the con- 
 science and mission of Men, strive also to instruct and 
 improve yourselves, and to educate yourselves to the 
 full knowledge and practice of your duties. 
 
 At present this is a labour rendered impossible to 
 the masses in many parts of England. No plan of 
 popular education can be realized alone; a .change 
 both in the political and material condition of the 
 people is also needed; and they who imagine that an 
 educational transformation may be accomplished 
 alone, deceive themselves. 
 
 A few among you, once imbued with the true prin- 
 ciples on which the moral, social, and political educa- 
 tion of a people depend, will suffice to spread them 
 among the millions, as a guide on their way, to pro- 
 tect them from the sophistries and false doctrines by 
 which it will be sought to lead them astray. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 GOD. 
 
 The source of your duties is in God. The defini- 
 tion of your duties is found in the Law. The pro- 
 gressive discovery and application of this law is the 
 mission of Humanity. 
 
 God exists. I am not bound to prove this to you, 
 nor shall I endeavour to do so. To me the attempt 
 would seem blasphemous, as the denial appears mad- 
 ness. 
 
 God exists, because we exist. God lives in our 
 conscience, in the conscience of Humanity. Our 
 conscience invokes Him in our most solemn moments 
 of grief or joy. Humanity has been able to trans- 
 form, to disfigure, never to suppress, His holy name. 
 The Universe bears witness to Him in the order, har- 
 mony, and intelligence of its movements and its laws. 
 
 There are, I hope, no atheists among you. Were 
 there any, they would deserve pity rather than male- 
 diction. He who can deny God either in the face of 
 a starlight night, or when standing beside the tomb 
 of those dearest to him, or in the presence of mar- 
 tyrdom, is either greatly unhappy, or greatly guilty. 
 The first atheist was surely one who had concealed 
 some crime from his fellow-men, and who sought by 
 denying God to free himself from the sole witness 
 from whom concealment was impossible, and thus 
 
22 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 to stifle the remorse by which he was tormented. Or 
 perhaps the first atheist was a tyrant, who, having 
 destroyed one-half of the soul of his brethren by 
 depriving them of liberty, endeavoured to substitute 
 the worship of brute force for faith in duty and eter- 
 nal right. 
 
 After these, from age to age, there came men, here 
 and there, who taught atheism from philosophical 
 aberration ; but they were few and ashamed. After 
 these, in days not far removed from our own, came 
 many who, from reaction against a false and absurd 
 idea of God created by some tyranny or caste, denied 
 God Himself ; but it was only for an instant — so great 
 was the need they felt of Divinity that even they 
 worshipped a Goddess of Reason and Goddess of 
 Nature. 
 
 At the present day there are many men who abhor 
 all religion because they see the corruption of the 
 actual creeds, and have no conception of the purity 
 of the Religion of the Future ; but none of these ven- 
 ture to declare themselves atheists. There do indeed 
 exist priests who prostitute the name of God to the 
 calculations of a venal self-interest, and tyrants who 
 falsify His name by invoking it in support of their 
 tyranny ; but because the light of the sun is often ob- 
 scured by impure vapours, shall we deny the sun him- 
 self, and the vivifying influence of his rays throughout 
 the universe ? Because the liberty of the wicked 
 sometimes produces anarchy, shall we curse the name 
 of liberty itself ? 
 
 The undying light of faith in God pierces through 
 all the imposture and corruption wherewith men have 
 darkened His name. Imposture and corruption pass 
 
GOD. 23 
 
 away ; tyrannies pass away ; but God remains, as the 
 people, the image of God on earth, remains. Even 
 as the people passes through slavery, poverty, and 
 suffering, to achieve self-consciousness, power, and 
 emancipation, step by step, so does the holy name of 
 God arise above the ruins of corrupt creeds, to shine 
 forth surrounded by a purer, more intense, and more 
 rational form of worship. 
 
 I do not therefore speak to you of God in order to 
 demonstrate to you His existence, or to tell you that 
 you are bound to worship Him ; you do worship Him 
 whensoever you deeply/^/ your own life, and that of 
 the fellow-beings by whom you are surrounded ; but 
 in order to tell you how to worship Him, and to ad- 
 monish you of an error that predominates in the 
 classes by whom you are governed, and through their 
 example influences too many of yourselves, an error 
 as grave and fatal as atheism itself. 
 
 This error is the separation, more or less apparent, 
 of God from His work, from the earth upon which 
 you are called to fulfill one period of your existence. 
 
 On the one side there are men who tell you: "It is 
 very true that God exists, but the only thing you can do is 
 to confess His existence, and adore Him. None can com- 
 prehend or declare the relation between God and your con- 
 science. Reflect upon all this as much as you please, but 
 neither propound your own belief to your fellow-men, nor 
 seek to apply it to the affairs of this earth. 
 
 " Politics are one thing, Religion another. Do not con- 
 found them together. Leave all heavenly things to the 
 spiritual authorities, whatever they may be, reserving to 
 yourself the right of refusing them your belief if they 
 appear to you to betray their mission. Let each man 
 
24 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 believe in his own way ; the only thing about which you are 
 bound to concern yourselves in common are the things of 
 this world. Materialists, or Spiritualists, whichsoever you 
 be, do you believe in the liberty and equality of mankind 1 
 do you desire the well-being of the majority ? do you believe 
 in universal suffrage 1 Unite together to obtain these 
 things ; in order to obtain these, you will have no occasion 
 to come to a common understanding about heavenly things." 
 
 On the other side, you have men who say to you, 
 " God exists, but He is too great, too superior to all created 
 things, for you to hope to approach Him through any 
 human work. The earth is of clay. Life is but a day. 
 Withdraw yourselves from the first as far as possible and 
 do not value the other aboite its worth. What are all 
 earthly interests in co?nparison with the immortal life of 
 your soul ? Think of this ! Fix your eyes on Heaven. 
 What matters it how you live here below ? You are doomed 
 to die, and God will judge you according to the thoughts 
 you have given, not to earth, but to Him. Are you unhappy 1 
 Bless the God who has sent you sorrows. Terrestrial 
 existence is but a period of trial, the earth but a land of 
 exile, 'Despise it, and raise yourselves above it. In the 
 ^inidst of sorrows, poverty, or slavery, you can still turn to 
 God and sanctify yourselves in adoration of Him, in 
 prayer, and in faith in a ftiture that will largely recom- 
 pense you for having despised every worldly thing." 
 
 Of those who speak to you thus, the first do not 
 love God, the second do not know Him. 
 
 Say to the first that man is one. You cannot divide 
 him in half, and so contrive that he shall agree with 
 you in those principles which regulate the origin of 
 society while he differs with you as regards his own 
 origin, destiny, and law of life here below. The 
 
\ 
 
 GOD. 25 
 
 world is governed by Religions. When the Indians f 
 really believed that some of them were born from the 
 head, others from the arms, and others from the feet 
 of Brahma, their Divinity, they organized their society 
 by distributing mankind into castes; assigning to one 
 caste an inheritance of intellectual labour, to another 
 of military, and to others of servile duties; and thus 
 condemned themselves to an immobility that still 
 endures, and that will endure so long as belief in that 
 religious principle shall last. 
 
 When the Christians declared to the world that all 
 men were the sons of God, and brethren in His name, 
 all the doctrines of the legislators and philosophers 
 of antiquity, tending to establish the existence of two 
 races of men, availed not to prevent the abolition of 
 slavery, and a consequent radical reorganization of 
 Society. 
 
 For every advance in religious belief we can point 
 to a corresponding social advance in the history o 
 Humanity, while the only result you can show as 
 consequence of your doctrine of indifference in map" 
 ters of religion is anarchy. (You have been able to 
 destroy; never to build_upj Disprove this, if you can. 
 
 By dint of exaggerating one of the principles 
 of Protestantism — a principle which Protestantism it- 
 self now feels the necessity of abandoning — by dint of 
 deducing all your ideas from the sole principle of the 
 independence of the individual, you have achieved — 
 what? 
 
 In commerce, you have achieved anarchy — that is 
 to say, the oppression of the weak. In politics you 
 have achieved liberty— that is to say, the derision of 
 the weak, who have neither time, nor means, nor in- 
 
26 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 struction sufficient to enable them to exercise their 
 rights. In morals you have achieved selfishness — 
 that is to say, the isolation and ruin of the weak, who 
 cannot raise themselves alone. 
 
 But what we seek is association. 
 
 How shall we realize this securely, unless among 
 brothers, believing in the same ruling principle, united 
 in the same faith, and bearing witness by the same 
 name? 
 
 What we seek is education. 
 
 How shall we give or receive it, unless in virtue of 
 a principle that sums up and expresses our common 
 belief as to the origin, the aim, and the law of the life 
 of mankind upon earth? 
 
 We seek a common education. 
 
 How shall we give or receive it without belief in a 
 common faith and a common duty? 
 
 And whence can we deduce a common duty, if not 
 from the idea we form of God and our relation to 
 Him? 
 
 Doubtless universal suffrage is an excellent thing. 
 It is the only legal means by which a people may 
 govern itself without risk of continual violent crises. 
 Universal suffrage in a country governed by a com- 
 mon faith is the expression of the national will; but 
 in a country deprived of a common belief, what can 
 it be but the mere expression of the interests of those 
 numerically the stronger, to the oppression of all the 
 rest? 
 
 All the political reforms achieved in countries^ 
 either irreligious or indifferent to religion have lasted 
 as long as interest allowed — no longer. On this 
 point the experience of political movements in Europe 
 
GOD. *7 
 
 during the last fifty years has taught us lessons_ 
 enough. """ ~~ 
 
 To those who speak to you of heaven, and seek to 
 separate it from earth, you will say that heaven and 
 earth are one, even as the way and the goal are one. 
 Tell us not that the earth is of clay. The earth is of 
 God. God created it as the medium through which 
 we may ascend to Him. The earth is not a mere 
 sojourn of temptation or of expiation ; it is the 
 appointed dwelling-place wherein we are bound 
 to work out our own improvement and development 
 and advance towards a highex stage of existence. God 
 created us not to contemplate, but to act. He created 
 us in His own image, and He is Thought and Action, 
 or rather, in Him there is no Thought which is not 
 simultaneous Action. 
 
 You tell us to despise all worldly things, to trample 
 under foot our terrestrial life, in order to concern 
 ourselves solely with the Celestial; but what is our 
 terrestrial life save a prelude to the Celestial — a step 
 towards it? See you not that while sanctifying the 
 last step of the ladder by which we must all ascend, 
 by thus declaring the first accursed you arrest us on 
 the way? 
 
 The life of a soul is sacred in every stage of its 
 existence; as sacred in the earthly stage as in those 
 which are to follow. Each stage must be made a 
 preparation for the next; every temporary advance 
 must aid the gradual ascending progress of that im- 
 mortal life breathed into us all by God Himself, as 
 well as the progress of the great Entity — Humanity 
 — which is developed through the labour of each and 
 every individual. 
 
2S THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 God has placed you here upon this earth. He has 
 surrounded you with myriads of fellow-beings whose 
 minds receive aliment from your own, whose devel- 
 opment progresses simultaneously with your own, 
 whose life is fecundated by your own. In order to 
 preserve you from the dangers of isolation He has 
 given you desires which you are incapable of satis- 
 fying alone, and those dominating social instincts 
 which distinguish you from the brute creation, in 
 which they are dormant. He has spread around you 
 a material world, magnificent in beauty and pregnant 
 with life; a life — be it ever remembered — which, 
 though it reveal itself by divine impulse, yet every- 
 where awaits your labour, and modifies its manifes- 
 tations through you, increasing in power and vigour 
 in proportion to your increased activity. 
 
 God has given you certain sympathies which are 
 inextinguishable. Such are pity for those that mourn, 
 and joy for those that rejoice; anger against those 
 who oppress their fellow-creatures; a ceaseless yearn- 
 ing after truth; admiration for the genius that dis- 
 covers a new portion or form of truth; enthusiasm 
 for those who reduce it to beneficial action upon man- 
 kind; and religious veneration for those, who, failing 
 to achieve its triumph, yet bear witness to it with 
 their blood, and die in martyrdom: and you deny 
 and reject all the indications of your mission which 
 God has thus clustered around you, when you cry 
 anathema on the work of His hand, and call upon us 
 to concentrate all our faculties on a work of mere 
 inward purification, necessarily imperfect, nay impos- 
 sible, if sought alone. 
 
 Does not God punish those who strive to do this ? 
 
GOD. 29 
 
 Is not the slave degraded ? Is not one-half of the 
 soul of the poor day-labourer (doomed to consume 
 the light divine in a series of physical acts unrelieved 
 by a gleam of education) buried beneath its animal 
 appetites, in those blind instincts which you name 
 material ? Do you find more religious faith in the 
 poor Russian serf than in the Pole fighting the battle 
 of country and liberty? Do you find more fervent 
 love of God in the degraded subject of a pope or 
 despotic king than in 1 the Lombard republicans of 
 the twelfth, or Florentine republicans of the four- 
 teenth, century ? 
 
 " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Liberty," 
 has been declared by one of the most powerful 
 Apostles the world has known, and the religion he 
 preached decreed the abolition of slavery. Who that 
 crouches at the foot of the creature can rightly know 
 and worship the Creator ? 
 
 Yours is not a Religion. It is a sect of men who 
 have forgotten their origin, forgotten the battles which 
 their fathers fought against a corrupt society and 
 the victories they gained in transforming the world 
 which you despise, O men of contemplation ! 
 
 The first real, earnest religious Faith that shall N 
 arise upon the ruins of the old worn-out creeds will 
 transform the whole of our actual social organization^ 
 because every strong and earnest faith tends to apply\ 
 itself to every branch of human activity; because in 
 every epoch of its existenceJjiejSARTH has ever tend- 
 ed to conform itself to the Heaven in which it thefr- 
 believed; and because the whole history of Humanity 
 is but the repetition — in form and degree varying ac- 
 cording to the diversity of the times — of the words 
 
30 THE DUTIES OF MAtl. 
 
 of the Dominical Christian Prayer: Thy Kingdom 
 Come on Earth as it is in Heaven. 
 
 " Thy Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." 
 Let these words — better understood and better ap- 
 plied than in the past — be the utterance of your faith, 
 your prayer, O my brothers! Repeat them, and strive 
 to fulfill them. No matter if others seek to persuade 
 you to passive resignation and indifference to earthly 
 things, if they preach submission to every temporal 
 authority, however unjust, by quoting to you — with- 
 out comprehending them — the words, "Render unto 
 Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the 
 things that are God's." 
 
 Nothing is of Caesar unless it be such in conformity 
 to the law of God. Caesar — that is to say, the tem- 
 poral power of civil government — is but the adminis- 
 trator and executive, as far as lies in its power, of the 
 design of the Almighty. Whensoever it is false to its 
 mission and trust, it is, I do not say your right, but 
 your duty, to change it. 
 
 For what purpose are you placed here, if it be not 
 to work out the providential design in your own 
 sphere and according to your means? To what pur- 
 pose do you profess to believe in that Unity of the 
 human race which is the necessary consequence 
 of the Unity of God, if you do not strive to 
 verify it by destroying the arbitrary divisions and 
 enmities that still separate the different tribes of 
 Humanity? 
 
 What avails it to believe in human liberty — the basis 
 of human responsibility — if you do not labour to over- 
 throw all the obstacles that impede the first and 
 destroy the second? Why do we talk of fraternity, 
 
G6D. 3* 
 
 while we allow any of our brothers to be trampled 
 on, degraded, or despised ? 
 
 The earth is our workshop. We may not curse it; 
 we are bound to sanctify it. 
 
 The material forces that surround us are our instru- 
 ments of labour. We may not reject them; we are 
 bound to direct them for good. But this we cannot 
 do alone, without God. 
 
 I have spoken to you of duties; I have told you 
 that the consciousness of your rights will never suffice 
 you as a permanent guide on the path towards per- 
 fection; it will not even suffice to procure for you the 
 continuous progressive improvement in your condi- 
 tion which you seek and desire. 
 
 Now, apart from God, whence can you derive duty ? 
 Without God, whatsoever system you attempt to lean 
 upon, you will find it has no other foundation or basis 
 than Force — blind, tyrannical, brute force. 
 
 There is no escape from this. 
 
 Either the development of human things depends 
 upon a Providential Law, which we are all bound to 
 seek to discover and apply, or it is left to chance, to 
 passing circumstance, and to that man who contrives 
 best to turn things to account. 
 
 We must either obey God or serve man; whether 
 one man or many, matters little. 
 
 If there be not a governing Mind, supreme over 
 every human mind, what shall preserve us from the 
 dominion of our fellow-men whenever they are 
 stronger than ourselves ? 
 
 If there be not one inviolable Law, uncreated by 
 man, what rule have we by which to judge whether a 
 given act be just or unjust ? 
 
32 THE DtTTTES OF MAN. 
 
 In the name of whom, or of what, shall we protest 
 against inequality and oppression ? 
 
 Without God there is no other rule than that of 
 Fact, the accomplished fact, before which the mate- 
 rialist ever bows his head, whether its name be Bona- 
 parte or Revolution. 
 
 How can we expect men to sacrifice themselves, or 
 to suffer martyrdom in the name of our individual 
 opinion ? 
 
 Can we transform theory into practice, abstract 
 principle into action, on the strength of interests 
 alone ? 
 
 Be not deceived. So long as we endeavour to teach 
 sacrifice as individuals, or on whatever theory our 
 mere individual intellect may suggest, we may find 
 adherents in words, never in act. That cry only, 
 which has resounded in all great and noble revolu- 
 tions, the " God wills it, God wills it," of the Crusad- 
 ers, will have power to rouse the inert to action, to 
 give courage to the timid, the enthusiasm of sacrifice 
 to the calculating, and faith to those who distrust and 
 reject all mere human ideas. 
 
 Prove to mankind that the work of progressive devel- 
 opment to which you would call them is a part of the 
 design of God, and none will rebel. Prove to them 
 that the earthly duties to be fulfilled here below are 
 an essential portion of their immortal life, and all the 
 calculations of the present will vanish before the 
 grandeur of the future. 
 
 Without God you 'may compel, but not persuade; 
 you may become tyrants in your turn, you cannot be 
 Educators or Apostles. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE LAW. 
 
 You live. Therefore you have a law of life. There 
 is no life without its law. Whatever thing exists, 
 exists in a certain method, according to certain con- 
 ditions, and is governed by a certain law. 
 
 The mineral world is governed by a law of aggre- 
 gation; the vegetable world by a law of development; 
 the stars are ruled by a law of motion. 
 
 Your life is governed by a lav/ higher and nobler 
 than these, even as you are superior to all other 
 created earthly things. To develop yourselves, and 
 act and live according to your law, is your first, or 
 rather your sole, duty. 
 
 God gave you life; God therefore gave you the 
 law. God is the sole Law-giver to the human race. 
 His law is the sole law you are bound to obey. 
 Human laws are only good and valid in so far as they 
 conform to, explain, and apply the law of God. They 
 are evil whensoever they contrast with or oppose it, 
 and it is then not only your right but your duty to 
 disobey and abolish them. 
 
 He who shall best explain the law of God, and best 
 apply it to human things, is your legitimate ruler. 
 Love him and follow him. But you have not, and 
 cannot have, any Master save God himself. To ac- 
 cept any other is to be unfaithful and rebellious to 
 Him. 
 
34 
 
 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 The foundation of all morality, therefore, the regu- 
 lation of all your acts and duties, and the measure 
 of your responsibility, is to be found in the knowl- 
 edge of your law of life, of the law of God. It is also 
 your defence against the unjust laws which the 
 tyranny of one man, or many men, may seek to im- 
 pose upon you. 
 
 Unless you know this law, you may not pretend to 
 the name or the rights of men All rights have their 
 origin in a law, and while you are unable to invoke 
 this law, you may be tyrants or slaves — tyrants if you 
 are strong, the slaves of the stronger if you are weak 
 — but naught else. 
 
 In order to be men, you must know the law which 
 distinguishes human nature from that of the animal, 
 vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, and to it you must 
 conform your action. Now, how are you to know 
 this law? 
 
 This is the question which humanity has ever ad- 
 dressed to those who have pronounced the word 
 Duty, and the answers are various even yet. 
 
 Some have replied by pointing to a code, or book, 
 saying: " The whole law of morals is comprised in this 
 book." Others have said: " Let every man interrogate 
 his own conscience; he will find the definition of good and 
 evil there." Others again, rejecting the judgment of 
 the individual, invoke the universal judgment, and 
 declare: " Whenever humanity is agreed in a belief, thai 
 —belief is the truth" 
 
 Each and all of these are in error. And facts, un- 
 answerable in the history of the human race, have 
 proved the impotence of all these answers. 
 
 Those who declare that the whole moral law is con- 
 
THE LAW. 
 
 35 
 
 tamed in a book, or uttered by one man, forget that 
 there is no single code of morals which Humanity 
 has not abandoned, after an acceptance and belief of 
 some centuries, in order to seek after and diffuse 
 another more advanced than it; nor is there any 
 special reason for supposing that Humanity will alter 
 its course now. 
 
 It will be sufficient to remind those who declare j 
 the conscience of the individual to be an adequate 
 criterion of the just and true, that no Religion, how- 
 ever holy, has existed without heretics, dissenters 
 who dissented from conviction, and were ready to 
 endure martyrdom for their conscience sake. The\ 
 Protestant world is at the present day divided and *\ 
 subdivided into a thousand sects, all founded on the ! 
 right of individual conscience, all eager to make war J 
 on one another, and perpetuating that anarchy of 
 beliefs which is the sole true cause of the social and 
 political disturbances that torment the peoples of i 
 Europe. And on the other hand, to those who reject 
 the testimony of individual conscience, and invoke 
 the consent of Humanity in their faith, suffice it to 
 say that all the great ideas that have contributed to 
 the progress of Humanity hitherto were, at their\ 
 commencement, in opposition to the belief then ac 
 cepted by Humanity, and were preached by individ I 
 teals whom Humanity derided, persecuted, and cru- / 
 cified. 
 
 Each of these rules, then, is insufficient in order to 
 obtain a knowledge of the law of God, of Truth. 
 
 Yet, nevertheless, individual conscience is sacred, 
 and the common consent of Humanity is sacred; and 
 he who refuses to interrogate either of these deprives 
 
36 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 himself of one essential means of reaching truth. 
 The common error hitherto has been the endeavour 
 to reach truth by the help of one of these tests alone; 
 an error fatal and decisive in its consequences, be- 
 cause it is impossible to elevate individual conscience 
 as the sole judge of truth without falling into anarchy; 
 and it is impossible to appeal, at a given moment, 
 to the general consent of Humanity without crush- 
 ing human liberty, and producing tyranny. Thus — 
 and I quote these examples in order to show how, 
 far more than is generally supposed, the entire social 
 edifice is founded upon these primary bases — thus 
 some men have fallen into the error of organizing soci- 
 ety solely with respect to the rights of the individ- 
 ual, wholly forgetful of the educational mission of soci- 
 ety; while others have based their organization solely 
 on the rights of society, sacrificing the free action 
 aijd liberty of the individual. ' 
 
 France, after her great revolution, and (still more 
 markedly) England, has taught us that the first sys- 
 tem results in inequality and the oppression of the 
 many. Communism, were it ever elevated into a 
 Fact, would teach us how the second condemns soci- 
 ety to petrifaction, by destroying alike all motive and 
 all opportunity of progress. 
 
 Thus some, in consideration of the pretended 
 rights of the individual, have organized, or rather 
 disorganized, society by founding it upon the sole 
 
 1 I speak, of course, of those countries governed by a constitu- 
 tional monarchy, and in which a certain organization of society is 
 attempted. In countries despotically governed, there is no soci- 
 ety; individual and social rights being equally sacrificed. 
 
THE LAW. 37 
 
 basis of unlimited freedom of competition; while 
 others, merely regarding social unity, would give the 
 government the monopoly of all the productive 
 forces of the State. 
 
 The first of these conceptions has resulted in all 
 the evils of anarchy. The second would result in 
 immobility and all the evils of tyranny. 
 
 God has given you both the consent of your fellow- 
 men and your own conscience, even as two wings 
 wherewith to elevate yourselves towards Him. Why 
 persist in cutting off one of them ? Wherefore either 
 isolate yourselves from, or absorb yourselves in, the 
 world ? Why seek to stifle either the voice of the 
 individual, or of the human race? Both are sacred. 
 God speaks through each. Whensoever they agree, 
 whensoever the cry of your own conscience is ratified 
 by the consent of Humanity, God is there. Then 
 you are certain of having found the truth, for the one 
 is the verification of the other. 
 
 If your duties were merely negative, if they merely I 
 consisted in not doing evil, in not injuring your 
 brother-men, perhaps, even in the stage of develop- 
 ment which the least educated among you have 
 reached, the voice of conscience might suffice you for 
 a guide. You are born with a tendency towards good, 
 and every time you act directly contrary to the moral 
 law, every time you commit what mankind has 
 agreed to name sin, there is a something within you 
 that condemns you, a cry of reproval which you may 
 conceal from others, but cannot from yourselves. 
 
 But your most important duties are positive. It is 
 not enough not to do. You are bound to act. It is 
 not enough to limit yourselves to not acting against 
 
38 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 the Law : you are bound to act according to the Law. 
 It is not enough not to do harm to your brethren: 
 you are bound to do good to them. Hitherto 
 morality has too often been presented to mankind in 
 a form rather negative than affirmative. The inter- 
 preters of the law have said to us: "Thou shalt not 
 kill; thou shalt not steal." Few or none have taught 
 us the active duties of man, how he may be useful to 
 his fellow-creatures and further the design of God 
 in the creation. Yet this is the primary aim in 
 morals, and no individual can reach that aim by the 
 light of conscience alone. 
 
 Individual conscience speaks in proportion to the 
 education, tendencies, habits, and passions of the 
 individual. The conscience of the Iroquois speaks a 
 different language to that of the enlightened Euro- 
 pean of the nineteenth century. The conscience of 
 the freeman suggests duties which the conscience of 
 the slave does not even imagine. Ask the poor Lom- 
 bard or Neapolitan peasant, whose only teacher of 
 morality has been a bad priest, or to whom — even if 
 he know how to read — the Austrian catechism is the 
 sole book allowed, he will perhaps tell you that his 
 sole duties are to work hard for any remuneration he 
 can obtain in order to maintain his family, to sub- 
 mit without examination to the laws of the State, 
 whatsoever they may be, and to do no wrong to 
 others. Should you say to him: " But you injure your 
 brother-men by accepting a remuneration below the value 
 of your labor, and you sin against God and your own soul 
 by obeying laws which are unjust," he will answer you 
 with the fixed gaze of one who understands you not. 
 
 Interrogate the Italian workman, to whom more 
 
THE LAW. 39 
 
 fortunate circumstances and contact with men of 
 greater intellectual enlightenment have made known 
 a portion of the truth, he will tell you that his 
 country is enslaved, that his brothers are unjustly 
 condemned to pass their days in moral and material 
 .ant, and that he feels it his duty to protest as far 
 .s he can against the injustice. 
 
 Whence this great difference between the dictates 
 of the conscience of two individuals at the same 
 epoch in the same country ? Wherefore, among ten 
 individuals, belonging substantially to the same 
 religious belief — that which decrees the development 
 and progress of the human race — do we find ten dif- 
 ferent opinions as to the mode of reducing that 
 belief to action — that is to say, as to their duties ? 
 Evidently, the voice of individual conscience does 
 not suffice at all times, without any other guide, to 
 make known to us the law. Conscience alone may 
 teach us that a law exists ; it cannot teach us the 
 duties thence derived. Thus it is that martyrdom 
 has never been extinguished amongst mankind, how- 
 / ever great the predominance of selfishness ; but how 
 ( many martyrs have sacrificed their existence for 
 I imaginary duties, or for errors patent to all of us at 
 \the present day ! 
 
 Conscience, therefore, has need of a guide, of a 
 torch to illumine the darkness by which it is sur- 
 rounded, of a rule by which to direct and verify its 
 instincts. 
 
 This rule is the Intellect of Humanity. 
 
 God has given intellect to each of you in order that 
 you may educate it to know His Law. At the present 
 day you are deprived by poverty, and the inveterate 
 
40 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 error of ages, of the possibility of full education, and, 
 therefore, the obstacles to education are the first you 
 have to overcome. But even were all these obstacles 
 removed, the intellect of the individual man would 
 still be insufficient to acquire a knowledge of the law 
 of God, unless aided and supported by the intellect 
 of Humanity. Your life is brief, your individual fac- 
 ulties weak and uncertain; they need alike verification 
 and support. Now God has placed beside you a Be- 
 ing whose life is continuous, whose faculties are the 
 results and sum of all the individual faculties that 
 have existed for perhaps four hundred ages; a Being 
 who, in the midst of the errors and crimes of individ- 
 uals, yet ever advances in wisdom and morality; a 
 Being in whose development and progress God has 
 inscribed, and frpm epoch to epoch does stiH inscribe, 
 a line of His law. 
 
 This Being is Humanity. 
 
 / A thinker of the past century has described Human- 
 
 /ity as A man who- lives and learns forever. Individuals 
 
 / die, but the amount of truth they have thought, and 
 
 / the sum of good they have done, dies not with them. 
 
 \ The men who pass over their graves reap the benefit 
 
 \thereof, and Humanity garners it up. 
 
 Each of us is born to-day in an atmosphere of ideas 
 and beliefs which has been elaborated by all anterior 
 Humanity, and each of us brings with him (even if 
 unconsciously) an element, more or less important, of 
 the life of Humanity to come. The education of 
 Humanity is built up like those Eastern pyramids to 
 which every passing traveller adds a stone. We pass 
 along, the voyagers of the day, destined to complete 
 our individual education elsewhere, but the education 
 
THE LAW. 41 
 
 of Humanity, which is seen by glimpses in each of us, 
 is slowly, progressively, and continuously evolved 
 through Humanity. 
 
 Humanity is the Word, living in God. The Spirit 
 of God fecundates it, and manifests itself through it 
 in greater purity and activity from epoch to epoch, 
 now through the instrumentality of an individual, 
 now through that of a people. From labour to 
 labour, from belief to belief, Humanity gradually 
 acquires a clearer perception of its own life, of its 
 own mission, of its God, and of His law. 
 
 Humanity is the successive incarnation of God. The 
 law of God is one, as God Himself is one ; but we 
 only discover it article by article, line byline, accord- 
 ing to the accumulated experience of the generations 
 that have preceded us, and according to the exten- 
 sion and increased intensity of association among 
 races, peoples, and individuals. No man, no people, 
 and no age may pretend to have discovered the whole 
 of the Law. The Moral Law, Humanity's Law of 
 Life, can only be discovered, in its entirety, by all 
 Humanity, united in holy association, when all the 
 forces and all the faculties that constitute our human 
 nature shall be developed and in action. But mean- 
 while that portion of Humanity most advanced in 
 education does, in its progress and development, 
 reveal to us a portion of the Law we seek to know. 
 Its history teaches us the design of God; its wants 
 teach us our duties; because our first duty is to 
 endeavor to aid the ascent of Humanity upon that 
 stage of education and improvement towards which 
 it has been prepared and matured by time and the 
 Divinity. 
 
42 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 In order, therefore, to know the Law of God, you 
 must interrogate not only your own conscience, but 
 also the conscience and consent of Humanity. In 
 order to know your own duties you must interrogate 
 the present wants of Humanity. Morality is pro 
 gressive, as is your education and that of the human 
 race, The morality of Christianity was different from 
 that of Paganism; the morality of our own age dif- 
 fers from the morality of eighteen hundred years 
 ago. 
 
 Be assured that without education you cannot 
 know your duties, and that whenever society pre- 
 vents you from obtaining education, the responsibil- 
 ity of your error rests upon society, not upon you; 
 your responsibility begins on the day in which a path 
 to instruction is opened to you, and you neglect to 
 pursue it; on the day in which the means are offered 
 to you by which to transform the society which has 
 too long condemned you to ignorance, and you neg- 
 lect to seize them. You are not guilty because you 
 are ignorant, but you are guilty when you resign 
 yourselves to ignorance. You are guilty whenever — 
 although your conscience whispers that God did not 
 give you faculties without imposing upon you the 
 duty of developing them — you allow the faculty of 
 reflection to lie dormant within you; whenever — al- 
 though you know that God would not have given you 
 a love of truth without giving you the means by 
 which to attain it— you yet despairingly renounce 
 every effort to discover it, and accept as truth, with- 
 out examination, the assertions either of the temporal 
 powers or of the priest who has sold himself to 
 them. 
 
THE LAW. 43 
 
 God, the Father and Educator of Humanity, reveals 
 his Law to Humanity through time and space. Inter- 
 rogate the tradition of Humanity — which is the Coun- 
 cil of your brother-men — not in the restricted circle 
 of an age or sect, but in all ages, and in the majority 
 of mankind past and present. Whensoever the con- 
 sent of Humanity corresponds with the teachings of your 
 own conscience, you are certain of the Truth — certain, that 
 is, of having read one line of the law of God. 
 
 I believe in Humanity, sole interpreter of the Law of 
 God on earth, and from the consent of Humanity, in 
 harmony with my individual conscience, I deduce 
 what 1 am now about to tell you with regard to your 
 duties. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DUTIES TOWARDS HUMANITY. 
 
 Your first duties — first, not as to time, but as to 
 importance, because, unless you understand these, 
 you can only imperfectly fulfill the rest — your first 
 duties are towards Humanity. You have duties as 
 citizens, as sons, as husbands, and as fathers; duties 
 sacred and inviolable, and of which I shall shortly 
 speak to you in derail; but that which constitutes the 
 sacredness and inviolability of these duties is the 
 mission, the duty, springing from your Hitman nature. 
 
 You are fathers in order that you may educate men 
 in the worship and fulfillment of the Law of God. 
 You are citizens, you have a country, in order that in 
 a given and limited sphere of action, the concourse 
 and assistance of a certain number of men, already 
 related to you by language, tendencies, and customs, 
 may enable you to labour more effectually for the 
 good of all men present and to come: a task in which 
 your solitary effort would be lost, falling powerless 
 and unheeded amid the immense multitude of your 
 fellow-beings. 
 
 They who pretend to teach you morality while 
 limiting your duties to those you owe to your family 
 and to your country, do but teach you a more or less 
 enlarged selfishness, tending to the injury of others 
 and to yourself. The Family and the Fatherland are 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS HUMANITY. 45 
 
 like two circles, drawn within a larger circle which 
 contains both; they are two steps of the ladder you 
 have to climb; without them your ascent is impossi- 
 ble, but upon them it is forbidden to rest. 
 
 You are men : that is to say, creatures capable of 
 rational, social, and intellectual progress, solely through 
 the medium of association : a progress to which none 
 may assign a limit. 
 
 This is all we as yet know with regard to the law 
 of the life of Humanity. These characteristics con- 
 stitute human nature; these characteristics distinguish 
 you from the different creatures that surround you, 
 and are given to each of you as the germ you are 
 bound to fructify. Your whole life should tend to 
 the organized development and exercise of these 
 faculties of your nature. Whensoever you suppress, 
 or allow to be suppressed, one of these faculties, 
 whether completely or partially, you descend from 
 the rank of men to that of the inferior animals, and 
 violate your law of life, the Law of God. You de- 
 scend to the level of the brute whenever you sup- 
 press, or allow to be suppressed, any of the faculties 
 that constitute human nature either in yourselves or 
 others. God wills that you shall fulfill His law not as 
 individuals alone. Had He intended this, He would 
 have created you solitary. He wills that the Law 
 be fulfilled over the whole earth, among all the 
 creatures He created after His own image. He wills 
 that the Divine Idea of perfectibility and love which 
 He has incarnated in the world, shall be revealed in 
 ever-increasing brightness, and worshipped through 
 its gradual realization by His creatures. 
 
 In your terrestrial existence, limited both in educa- 
 
46 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 tion and capacity, the realization of this Divine Idea 
 can only be most imperfect and momentary. Hu- 
 manity only — continuous in existence through the 
 passing generations, continuous in intellect through 
 the contributions of all its members — is capable of 
 gradually evolving, applying, and glorifying the 
 Divine Idea. 
 
 Life, therefore, was given to you by God in order 
 that you might employ that life for the benefit of 
 Humanity ; that you might direct your individual 
 faculties to aid the development of the faculties of 
 your brother-men, and contribute by your labour 
 another element to the collective work of Progress, 
 and the discovery of the truth, which the generations 
 are destined ,, slowly but unceasingly to promote. 
 Your duty is to educate yourselves, and to educate 
 others ; to strive to perfect yourselves and to perfect 
 others. 
 
 It is true that God lives within you, but God lives 
 in all the men by whom the earth is peopled. 
 God is in the life of all the generations that have 
 been, are, and are to be. Past generations have pro- 
 gressively improved, and coming generations will 
 continue to improve, the conception which Humanity 
 forms of Him, of His Law, and of our duties. You 
 are bound to adore Him and to glorify Him whereso- 
 ever He manifests His presence. The Universe is His 
 Temple, and the sin of every unresisted or unex- 
 piated profanation of the Temple weighs on the head 
 of each and all of the Believers. 
 
 It is of no avail to assert your own purity, even 
 were true purity possible in isolation. Whensoever 
 you see corruption by your side, and do not strive 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS HUMANITY. 47 
 
 against it, you betray your duty. It is of no avail 
 that you worship truth ; if you see your brother-men 
 ruled by error in some portion of the earth — our 
 common mother — and you do not both desire and 
 endeavour, so far as lies in your power, to overcome 
 that error, you betray your duty. 
 
 The image of God is disfigured in the immortal 
 souls of your fellow-men. God wills to be adored 
 through His Law, and His Law is violated and mis- 
 interpreted around you. Human nature is falsified 
 in the millions of men to whom, even as to you, God 
 has confided the associate fulfillment of His design. 
 And do you dare to call yourselves believers while you 
 remain inert ? 
 
 A People — Greek, Pole, Italian, Circassian — raises 
 the flag of country and independence, and combats, 
 conquers, or dies to defend it. What is it that causes 
 your hearts to beat at the news of those battles, that 
 makes them swell with joy at their victories, and sink 
 with sorrow at their defeats? A man — it may be a 
 foreigner in some remote corner of the world — arises, 
 and, amidst the universal silence, gives utterance to 
 certain ideas which he believes to be true; maintains 
 them through persecution, and in chains, or dies 
 upon the scaffold, and denies them not. Wherefo e 
 do you honor that man and call him saint and martyr? 
 Why do you respect, and teach your children to re- 
 spect, his memory? Why do you read so eagerly the 
 prodigies of patriotism registered in Grecian history, 
 and relate them to your children with a sense of 
 pride, as if they belonged to the history of your an- 
 cestors ? 
 
 These deeds of Greece are two thousand years old, 
 
48 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 and belong to an epoch of civilization which is not, 
 and never can be, yours. These men whom you still 
 call martyrs, perhaps died for a faith which is not 
 yours, and certainly their death cut short their every 
 hope of individual progress on earth. That people 
 whom you admire, in its victories or in its fall, is a 
 foreign people, almost unknown to you and speaking 
 a strange tongue. Their way of life has no influence 
 on yours. What matters it, then, to you whether 
 they be ruled by Pope or Sultan, by the King of 
 Bavaria, the Czar of Russia, or a free government 
 sprung from the consent of the nation? 
 
 It is that there is in your heart a voice that cries 
 unto you: " Those men of two thousand years ago, 
 those populations now fighting afar off, that martyr for 
 an idea for which you would not die, are your brothers; 
 brothers not only in community of origin and of 
 nature, but in community of labor and of aim. 
 Those Greeks passed away, but their deeds remained; 
 and were it not for them, you would not have reached 
 your present degree of moral and intellectual develop- 
 ment. Those populations consecrate with their blood 
 an idea of national liberty for which you too would 
 combat. That martyr proclaimed by his death that 
 man is bound to sacrifice all things, and, if need be, 
 life itself, for that which he believes to be truth. 
 What matters it that he, and all of those who thus 
 seal their faith with their blood, cut short their indi- 
 vidual progress on earth? God will provide for them 
 elsewhere. But it is of import that the coming 
 generation, taught by your struggle and your sacri- 
 fice, may arise stronger and nobler than you have 
 been, in fuller comprehension of the Law, in greater 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS HUMANITY. 49 
 
 adoration of the truth. It is of import that human 
 nature, fortified by these examples, may improve, de- 
 velop, and realize still further the Design of God on 
 earth, and wheresoever human nature shall improve 
 or develop, wheresoever a new truth be discovered, 
 wheresoever a step be taken on the path of educa- 
 tion, progress, and morality, that step taken, and that 
 truth discovered, will sooner or later benefit all Hu- 
 manity. 
 
 " You are all soldiers in one army, an army which 
 is advancing by different paths, and divided into 
 different corps, to the conquest of one sole aim. As 
 yet you only look to your immediate leaders; diver- 
 sity of uniform and of watchword, the distances 
 which separate the different bodies of troops, and the 
 mountains that conceal them one from another, fre- 
 quently cause you to forget this great truth, and con- 
 centrate your thoughts exclusively on your own im- 
 mediate goal. But there is One above you who sees 
 the whole and directs all your movements. God 
 alone has the plan of the battle, and He at length will 
 unite you in a single camp, beneath a single ban- 
 ner." 
 
 How great is the distance between this faith, which 
 thrills within our souls, and which will be the basis 
 of the morality of the coming epoch, and the faith 
 that was the basis of the morality of the generations 
 of what we term antiquity ! And how intimate is the 
 connection between the idea we form of the Divine 
 Government and that we form of our own duties ! 
 
 The first men felt God, but without comprehend- 
 ing or even seeking to comprehend Him or His law. 
 They felt Him in His power, not in His love. They 
 4 
 
JO THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 conceived a confused idea of some sort of relation 
 between Him and their own individuality, but noth- 
 ing beyond this. Able to withdraw themselves but 
 little from the sphere of visible objects, they sought 
 to incarnate Him in one of these : in the tree they 
 had seen struck by the thunderbolt, the rock beside 
 which they had raised their tent, the animal which 
 first presented itself before them. This was the wor- 
 ship which, in the history of Religions, is termed 
 Fetichism. 
 
 In those days men comprehended nothing beyond 
 the Family, the reproduction in a certain form of 
 their own individuality; all beyond the family circle 
 were strangers, or more often enemies; to aid them- 
 selves and their families was to them the sole founda- 
 tion of morality. — ~^_^s 
 
 In later days the idea of God was enlarged. From 
 visible objects men timidly raised their thoughts to 
 abstractions; they learned to generalize. God was 
 no longer regarded as the Protector of the family only, 
 but of the association of many families, of the cities, 
 of the peoples. Thus to fetichism succeeded poly- 
 theism — the worship of many gods. The sphere of 
 action of morality was also enlarged. Men recog- 
 nized the existence of more extended duties than 
 those due to the family alone; they strove for the 
 advancement of the people, of the nation. Yet, never- 
 theless, Humanity was still ignored. Each nation 
 stigmatized foreigners as barbarians, regarded them 
 as such, and endeavoured to conquer or oppress them 
 by force or fraud. Each nation also contained 
 
 i foreigners or barbarians within its own circle; mill- 
 ions of men not admitted to join in the religious 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS HUMANITY. 5 1 
 
 rites of the citizens, and believed to be of an inferior 
 nature: slaves among free men. The idea of the 
 Unity of the human race could only be conceived as 
 a consequence of the Unity of God. And the Unity 
 of God, though forefelt by a few rare thinkers of 
 antiquity, and openly declared by Moses (but with 
 the fatal defect of believing one sole people His 
 elect) was not a recognized creed until towards the 
 end of the Roman Empire, and through the teachings 
 of Christianity. 
 f Foremost and grandest amid the teachings of 
 / Christ, were these two inseparable truths — There is 
 X but one God; All men are the Sons of God; and the 
 promulgation of these two truths changed the face of 
 the world, and enlarged the moral circle to the con- 
 fines of the inhabited globe. To the duties of men 
 towards the Family and Country were added duties 
 towards Humanity. Man then learned that whereso- 
 ever there existed a human being, there existed a 
 brother; a brother with a soul as immortal as his own, 
 destined like himself to ascend towards the Creator, 
 and on whom he was bound to bestow love, a knowl- 
 edge of the faith, and help and counsel when needed. 
 Then did the Apostles utter words of sublime im- 
 port, in prevision of those great truths of which the 
 germ was contained in Christianity; truths which 
 have been misunderstood or betrayed by their suc- 
 cessors. " For as we have many members in one body, \ 
 and all members have not the same office; so we, being J 
 many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one J 
 of another." (St. Paul, Rom., xii. 4. 5.) 
 
 " And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold; \ 
 them <*iso I must bring,, and they shall hear my voice; and J 
 
52 THE DUi'liCS OF MAN. 
 
 there shall be one fold and one shepherd." (St. John, 
 x. 16.) 
 
 And at the present day, after eighteen hundred 
 years of labour, study, and experience, we have yet 
 to develop these germs, we have yet to apply these 
 truths, not only to each individual, but to all that 
 complex sum of human forces and faculties, present 
 and future, which is named Humanity. We have yet 
 to teach mankind not only that Humanity is one Sole 
 Being, and must be governed by one sole law, but 
 that the first article of the law is Progress; — progress 
 here, on this earth, where we are bound to realize, as 
 far as in us lies, the design of God, and educate our- 
 selves for higher destinies. 
 
 We have still to teach mankind that as Humanity 
 is one sole body, all we, being members of that body, 
 are bound to labour for its development, and to seek 
 to render its life more harmonious, vigourous, and 
 active. We have still to be convinced that we can 
 only elevate ourselves towards God through the souls 
 of our fellow-men, and that it is our duty to improve 
 and purify them, even though they seek not such im- 
 provement and purification. And we have still — since 
 only by entire Humanity can the design of God be fully 
 accomplished here below — we have still to substitute 
 a work of association tending to elevate the mass, for 
 the exercise of charity towards individuals, and to 
 organize both the family and the country to that 
 aim. 
 
 Other and vaster duties will be revealed to us in 
 the future, in proportion as we acquire a clearer and 
 less imperfect conception of our law of life. 
 
 Thus does God the Father, by means of a slow, but 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS HUMANITY. 53 
 
 uninterrupted, religious education, direct the advance 
 of Humanity, and our individual improvement corre- 
 sponds with that advance. 
 
 Our individual improvement corresponds with that 
 advance; nor, without the advance and improvement 
 of the whole, may you hope for any lasting improve- 
 ment in your moral and material individual condi- 
 tion. Strictly speaking, you cannot, even if you 
 would, separate your life from that of Humanity. 
 You live in it, by it, and for it. Your souls — with 
 the exception of certain men of extraordinary 
 power — cannot rid themselves of the influence of the 
 elements amongst which they move; even as your 
 bodies, however robust, cannot rid themselves of the 
 effects of the corrupt air by which they are sur- 
 rounded. How many are there among you, who, 
 knowing that they thereby expose them to persecu- 
 tion, yet strive to educate your children to absolute 
 truthfulness, in a society where ignorance or preju- 
 dice enforces silence or concealment of two-thirds of 
 their opinions ? How many of you strive to teach 
 them to despise wealth in a society wherein gold is 
 the sole power that obtains respect, influence, and 
 honor ? What mother is there among you, who, 
 although belonging to that faith which adores in 
 Christ the voluntary martyr for Humanity, yet would 
 not throw her arms round her son's neck, and seek to 
 wean him from all perilous endeavour to benefit his 
 brother-men ? 
 
 And even should you have strength to teach the 
 better lesson, would not all society, with its thousand 
 tongues and thousands of evil examples, destroy the 
 effect of your words ? Can you purify and exalt your 
 
54 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 own souls in an atmosphere of morai degradation 
 and contagion ? or — to descend to your material con- 
 dition — think you it can be duly ameliorated, unless 
 by the amelioration of all ? 
 
 Here in England, where I now write, millions of 
 pounds sterling are annually bestowed in private 
 charity for the relief of individual misery; yet that 
 misery annually increases, and private charity is 
 proved impotent to meet the evil, and the necessity 
 of collective organic remedies is ever more univers- 
 ally acknowledged. And in countries despotically 
 governed, where taxes and restrictions are imposed 
 at the sole caprice of the ruler, the cost of whose 
 armies, spies, agents, and pensioners is continually 
 increasing as the necessity of providing for the safety 
 of the despotism increases, think you that a con- 
 stant activity and development of industry and manu- 
 factures is possible? Think you that it will suffice to 
 improve the government and social condition of your 
 own country? No; it will not suffice. No nation 
 lives exclusively on its own produce at the present 
 day. You live by exchanges, by importation and ex- 
 portation. A foreign nation impoverished, and in 
 which the number of consumers is diminished, is one 
 market the less for you. A foreign commerce ruined 
 in consequence of evil administration, produces mis- 
 liief and crises in your own. Failures in America 
 and elsewhere, entail failures in England. Credit 
 now-a-days is no longer a national but a European 
 institution. 
 
 Moreover, all other governments will be hostile to 
 your national improvements, for there is an alliance 
 among the princes, who were among the first to un- 
 
DUTIES TOWAR] S HUMANITY. 55 
 
 derstand that the socia question has become a gene- 
 ral question at the present day. 
 
 The only lasting hope for you is in the general 
 amelioration, improvement, and fraternity of all the 
 peoples of Europe, and, through Europe, of Humanity. 
 
 Therefore, my brothers, in the name of your duty, 
 and for the sake of your interest, never forget that 
 your first duties — duties, without fulfilling which you 
 cannot rightly fulfill those towards your country and 
 family — are those towards Humanity. 
 
 Let your words and your actions be for all men, as 
 God is for all men in His Law and Love. In whatso- 
 ever land you live, wheresoever there arises a man 
 to combat for the right, the just, and the true, that 
 man is your brother. Wheresoever a man is, tortured 
 through error, injustice, or tyranny, that man is your 
 brother. Free men or slaves, you are all brothers. 
 You are one in origin, one in the Divine Law that gov- 
 erns you, and one in the goal you are destined to at- 
 tain. Your faith must be one, your actions one, and 
 one the banner under which you combat. Say not, 
 The language we speak is different. Acts, tears, and 
 martyrdom are a language common to all men, and 
 which all understand. Say not, Humanity is too vast, 
 and we are too weak. God does not judge the power, 
 but the intention. Love Humanity. Ask yourselve's 
 as to every act you commit within the circle of family 
 or country, "If what I now do were done by and for all 
 men, would it be beneficial or injurious to Humanity ? '" 
 And if your conscience tells you it would be injuri- 
 ous, desist; desist, even though it seem that an im- 
 mediate advantage to your country or family would 
 be the result. 
 
 \ 
 
56 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 Be you the Apostles of this faith: apostles of the 
 fraternity of nations, and of that unity of the human 
 race, which, though it be admitted in principle, is de- 
 nied in practice at the present day. Be such, where- 
 soever, and howsoever you are able. Neither God 
 nor man can require more of you than this. But I 
 tell you that by becoming such, and even — should 
 more be impossible — by becoming such to yourselves 
 alone, you will yet serve Humanity. God measures 
 the stages of education, He permits the human race 
 to ascend, by the number and the purity of the be- 
 lievers. When the pure among you are many, God, 
 who numbers you, will disclose to you the way to 
 action. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 DUTIES TOWARDS YOUR COUNTRY. 
 1858. 
 
 Your first duties — first as regards importance — 
 are, as I have already told you, towards Humanity. 
 You are men before you are either citizens or fathers. 
 If you do not embrace the whole human family in 
 your affection; if you do not bear witness to your 
 belief in the Unity of that family, consequent upon 
 the Unity of God, and in that fraternity among the 
 peoples which is destined to reduce that Unity tc 
 action; if, wheresoever a fellow-creature suffers, or 
 the dignity of human nature is violated by falsehood 
 or tyranny — you are not ready, if able, to aid the 
 unhappy, and do not feel called upon to combat, 
 if able, for the redemption of the betrayed and 
 oppressed — you violate your law of life, you compre- 
 hend not that Religion which wijl be the guide and 
 blessing of the future. 
 
 But what can each of you, singly, do for the moral 
 improvement and progress of Humanity? You can 
 from time to time give sterile utterance to your 
 belief; you may, on some rare occasions, perform 
 some act of charity towards a brother-man not belong- 
 ing to your own land — no more. But charity is not 
 the watchword of the Faith of the Future. The 
 watchword of the faith of the future is Association 
 and fraternal cooperation towards a common aim; 
 
58 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 and this is far superior to all charity, as the edifice 
 which all of you should unite to raise would be supe- 
 rior to the humble hut each one of you might build 
 alone, or with the mere assistance of lending and 
 borrowing stone, mortar, and tools. 
 
 But, you tell me, you cannot attempt united action, 
 distinct and divided as you are in language, customs, 
 tendencies, and capacity. The individual is too insig- 
 nificant, and Humanity too vast. The mariner of 
 Brittany prays to God as he puts to sea; Help me, 
 my God! my boat is so small and Thy ocean so wide ! " 
 And this prayer is the true expression of the con t 
 dition of each one of you, until you find the means 
 of infinitely multiplying your forces and powers of 
 action. 
 
 This means was provided for you by God when He 
 gave you a country ; when, even as a wise overseer of 
 labour distributes the various branches o.f employment 
 according to the different capacities of the workmen, 
 he divided Humanity into distinct groups or nuclei 
 upon the face of the earth, thus creating the germ of 
 nationalities. Evil governments have disfigured the 
 Divine design. Nevertheless you may still trace it, 
 distinctly marked out — at least as far as Europe is 
 concerned — by the course of the great rivers, the di- 
 rection of the higher mountains, and other geograph- 
 ical conditions. They have disfigured it by their 
 conquests, their greed, and their jealousy even of the 
 righteous power of others; disfigured it so far that, if 
 we except England and France, there is not perhaps a 
 single country whose present boundaries correspond 
 to that design. 
 
 These governments did not, and do not, recognize 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOUR COUNTRY. 
 
 59 
 
 any country save their own families or dynasty, the 
 egoism of caste. But the Divine design will infalli- 
 bly be realized; natural divisions and the spontane- 
 ous, innate tendencies of the peoples will take the 
 place of the arbitrary divisions, sanctioned by evil 
 governments. The map of Europe will be redrawn. 
 The countries of the peoples, denned by the vote of 
 free men, will arise upon the ruins of the coun- 
 tries of kings and privileged castes, and between 
 these countries harmony and fraternity will exist. 
 And the common work of Humanity, of general ameli- 
 oration, and the gradual discovery and application of 
 its Law of life, being distributed according to local 
 and general capacities, will be wrought out in peace- 
 ful and progressive development and advance. Then 
 may each one of you, fortified by the power and 
 affection of many millions, all speaking the same 
 language, gifted with the same tendencies, and edu- 
 cated by the same historical tradition, hope even by 
 your own single efforts to be able to benefit all 
 Humanity. 
 
 O, my brothers, love your Country ! Our country 
 is our Home, a house God lias given us, placing 
 therein a numerous family that loves us, and whom 
 we love; a family with whom we sympathize more 
 readily and whom we understand more quickly than 
 we do others; and which, from its being centred 
 round a given spot, and from the homogeneous 
 nature of its elements, is adapted to a special branch 
 of activity. Our Country is our common workshop, 
 whence the products of our activity are sent forth for 
 the benefit of the whole world; wherein the tools 
 and implements of labour we can most usefully 
 
60 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 employ are gathered together; nor may we reject 
 them without disobeying the plan of the Almighty, 
 and diminishing our own strength. 
 
 In labouring for our own country on the right prin- 
 ciple, we labour for Humanity. Our country is the 
 fulcrum of the lever we have to wield for the com- 
 mon good. If we abandon the fulcrum, we run the 
 risk of rendering ourselves useless not only to 
 Humanity but to our country itself. Before men can 
 associate with the nations of which Humanity is 
 composed, they must have a national existence. 
 There is no true association except among equals. It 
 is only through our country that we can have a 
 recognized collective existence. 
 
 Humanity is a vast army advancing to the con- 
 quest of lands unknown, against enemies both pow- 
 erful and astute. The peoples are the different corps, 
 the divisions of that army. Each of them has its 
 post assigned to it, and its special operation to exe- 
 cute; and the common victory depends upon the ex- 
 actitude with which those distinct operations are ful- 
 filled. Disturb not the order of battle. Forsake not 
 the banner given to you by God. Wheresoever you 
 may be, in the centre of whatsoever people circum- 
 stances may have placed you, be ever ready to com- 
 bat for the liberty of that people, should it be neces- 
 sary, but combat in such wise that the blood you shed 
 may reflect glory, not on yourself alone, but on your 
 country. Say not /, but We. Let each man among you 
 strive to incarnate his country in himself. Let each man 
 among you regard himself as a guarantor, responsible 
 for his fellow-countrymen, and learn so to govern his 
 actions as to cause his country to be loved and re- 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOUR COUNTRY. 01 
 
 spected through him. Your country is the sign of 
 the Mission God has given you to fulfill towards 
 Humanity. The faculties and forces of all her sons 
 should be associated in the accomplishment of that 
 mission. The true country is a community of free men 
 and equals, bound together in fraternal concord to 
 labour towards a common aim. You are bound to 
 make it and to maintain it such. The country is not 
 an aggregation, but an association. There is, therefore, 
 no true country without a uniform right. There is 
 no true country where the uniformity of that right is 
 violated by the existence of caste privilege and in- 
 equality. Where the activity of a portion of the 
 powers and faculties of the individual is either can- 
 celled or dormant; where there is not a common 
 Principle, recognized, accepted, and developed by all, 
 there is no true Nation, no People; but only a mul- 
 titude, a ^fortuitous agglomeration of men whom cir- 
 cumstances have called together and whom cir- 
 cumstances may again divide. In the name of the 
 love you bear your country, you must peacefully but 
 untiringly combat the existence of privilege and in- 
 equality in the land that gave you life. 
 
 There is but one sole legitimate privilege, the privi- 
 lege of Genius when it reveals itself united with vir- 
 tue. But this is a privilege given by God, and when 
 you acknowledge it, and follow its inspiration, you do 
 so freely, exercising your own reason and your own 
 choice. Every privilege which demands submission 
 from you in virtue of power, inheritance, or any other 
 right than the Right common to all, is a usurpation 
 and a tyranny which you are bound to resist and 
 destroy. 
 
c : 
 
 62 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 Be your country your Temple: God at the sum- 
 mit; a people of equals at the base. 
 
 Accept no other formula, no other moral law, if you 
 would not dishonour alike your country and your- 
 selves. Let all secondary laws be but the gradual 
 regulation of your existence by the progressive appli- 
 cation of this Supreme law. And in order that they 
 may be such, it is necessary that all of you should 
 aid in framing them. Laws framed only by a single 
 fraction of the citizens, can never, in the very nature 
 of things, be other than the mere expression of 
 the thoughts, aspirations, and desires of that frac- 
 tion; the representation, not of the country, but of 
 a third or fourth part, of a class or zone of the 
 country. 
 
 The laws should be the expression of the universal 
 aspiration, and promote the universal good. They 
 should be a pulsation of the heart of the nation. The 
 entire nation should, either directly or indirectly, 
 legislate. 
 
 By yielding up this mission into the hands of a 
 a few, you substitute the selfishness of one class for 
 the Country, which is the union of all classes. 
 
 Country is not only a mere zone of territory. The 
 true Country is the Idea to which it gives birth; it is 
 the Thought of love, the sense of communion which 
 unites in one all the sons of that territory. 
 
 So long as a single one amongst your brothers has 
 no vote to represent him in the development of the 
 national life, so long as there is one left to vegetate 
 in ignorance where others are educated, so long as a 
 single man, able and willing to work, languishes in 
 poverty through want of work to do, you have no 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOUR COUNTRY. 63 
 
 country in the sense in which Country ought to exist 
 — the country of all and for all. 
 
 Education, labour, and the franchise, are the three 
 main pillars of the Nation; rest not until you have 
 built them thoroughly up with your own labour and 
 exertions. 
 
 Be it yours to evolve the life of your country in 
 loveliness and strength; free from all servile fears or 
 sceptical doubts; maintaining as its basis the People; 
 as its guide the principles of its Religious Faith, 
 logically and energetically applied; its strength, the 
 united strength of all; its aim, the fulfillment of the 
 mission given to it by God. 
 
 And so long as you are ready to die for Humanity, 
 the life of your country will be immortal. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 DUTIES TOWARDS THE FAMILY. 
 
 The Family is the Heart's Fatherland. There is 
 in the Family an Angel, possessed of a mysterious 
 influence of grace, sweetness, love; an Angel who 
 renders our duties less arid and our sorrows less 
 bitter. The only pure and unalloyed happiness, the 
 only joys untainted by grief granted to man on this 
 earth are — thanks be given to this Angel ! — the happi- 
 ness and joys of the family. He who, from some fatality 
 of position, has been unable to live the calm life of 
 the Family, sheltered beneath this Angel's wing, has 
 a shadow of sadness cast over his soul, and a void in 
 his heart which naught can fill, as I, who write these 
 pages for you, know. 
 
 Bless the God who created this Angel, O you who 
 share the joys and consolations of the Family ! Hold 
 them not in light esteem, because you fancy you 
 might find more ardent pleasures and more facile 
 consolations elsewhere. There is in the family an 
 element rarely found elsewhere — the element of dura- 
 bility. Family affections wind themselves round 
 your heart slowly and all unobserved; but tenacious 
 and enduring as the ivy round the tree, they cling to 
 you hour by hour, mingling with and becoming 
 a portion of your very existence. Very often you 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS THE FAMILY. 65 
 
 are unconscious of them, because they are a part 
 of yourselves; but when once you lose them, you 
 feel as if an intimate and necessary portion of 
 your life were gone. You wander restless and 
 unhappy; it may be that you again succeed in find- 
 ing some brief delights and consolations, but never 
 the supreme consolation of calm; the calm of the 
 waters of the lake, the calm of trusting sleep, a re- 
 pose like that of the child on its mother's breast. 
 
 This Angel of the family is woman. Whether as 
 mother, wife, or sister, woman is the caress of exist- 
 ence, the soft sweetness of affection diffused over its 
 fatigues, a reflection in the individual of that loving 
 Providence which watches over Humanity. She has 
 in her a treasure of gentle consolation sufficient to 
 soothe every sorrow. Moreover, she is for each of 
 us the Initiatrix of the future. The child learns its 
 first lesson of love from its mother's kiss. In the 
 first sacred kiss of the beloved one, man learns the 
 lesson of hope and faith in life, and hope and faith 
 create that yearning after progress, and that power 
 to achieve it step by step — that future, in short — whose 
 living symbol is the infant, our link with the genera- 
 tions to come. It is through woman that the 
 family — with its Divine mystery of reproduction — 
 points to Eternity. 
 
 Hold, then, the family sacred, my brothers ! Look 
 upon it as one of the indestructible conditions of life, 
 and reject every attempt made to undermine it, 
 either by men imbued with a false and brutish phil- 
 osophy, or by shallow thinkers, who, irritated at see- 
 •ngit too often made the nursery of selfishness and the 
 spirit of caste, imagine, like the savage, that the sole 
 5 
 
66 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 remedy for this evil growth, is the destruction of the 
 tree itself. 
 
 The conception of the family is not human, but 
 Divine, and no human power can extinguish it. Like 
 the Fatherland — even more than the Fatherland — 
 the family is an element of existence. 
 
 I have said, even more than the Fatherland. Dis- 
 tinctions of country — sacred now — may possibly dis- 
 appear whenever man shall bear the moral law of 
 Humanity inscribed upon his own heart, but the 
 family will endure while man himself endures. It is 
 the cradle of Humanity. Like every other element 
 of human life, it is, of course, susceptible of progress, 
 and from epoch to epoch its tendencies and aspira- 
 tions are improved, but it can never be cancelled. 
 Your mission is evermore to sanctify the family, and 
 to link it ever more closely with the country. That 
 which the country is to Humanity, the family must 
 be to the country. Even as the scope and object of 
 our love of country is, as I have told you, to educate 
 you as men, so the scope and object of the family is 
 to educate you as citizens. The family and the 
 country are the two extreme points of one and the 
 same line. And wheresoever this is not the case the 
 family degenerates into selfishness, a selfishness the 
 more odious and brutal, inasmuch as it prostitutes 
 and perverts from their true aim the most sacred 
 things that be — our affections. 
 
 Love and respect woman. See in her not merely a 
 comfort, but a force, an inspiration, the redoubling of 
 your intellectual and moral faculties. 
 
 Cancel from your minds every idea of superiority 
 over woman. You have none whatsoever. 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS THE FAMILY. 67 
 
 Long prejudice, an inferior education, and a peren- 
 nial legal inequality and injustice, have created that 
 apparent intellectual inferiority which has been con- 
 verted into an argument for continued oppression. 
 
 But does not the history of every oppression teach 
 us how the oppressor ever seeks his justification and 
 support by appealing to a fact of his own creation ? 
 The feudal castes that withheld education from the 
 sons of the people, excluded them, on the grounds of 
 that very want of education, from the rights of the citi- 
 zen, from the sanctuary wherein laws are framed, and 
 from that right to vote which is the initiation of their 
 social mission. 'The slaveholders of America declare 
 the black race radically inferior and incapable of 
 education, and yet persecute those who seek to in- 
 struct them^/ For half a century the supporters of 
 "trie reigning families in Italy have- "declared the 
 Italians unfit for freedom, and meanwhile, by their 
 laws, and by the brute force of hireling armies, they 
 close every path through which we might overcome 
 the obstacles to our improvement, where such really 
 exist, as if tyranny could ever be a means of educat- 
 ing men for liberty. 
 
 Now, we men have ever been, and still are, guilty 
 of a similar crime towards woman. Avoid even the 
 shadow or semblance of this crime; there is none 
 heavier in the sight of God, for it divides the human 
 family into two classes, and imposes or accepts the 
 subjugation of one class to the other. 
 
 In the sight of God the Father there is neither man 
 or woman. There is only the human being, that being 
 in whom, whether the form be of male or female, 
 those characteristics which distinguish Humanity 
 
68 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 from the brute creation are united, namely: the 
 social tendency, and the capacity of education and 
 progress. 
 
 Wheresoever these characteristics exist, the human 
 nature is revealed, and thence perfect equality both 
 of rights and of duties. 
 
 Like two distinct branches springing from the 
 same trunk, man and woman are varieties springing 
 from the common basis — Humanity. There is no in- 
 equality between them, but, even as is often the case 
 among men, diversity of tendency and of special 
 vocation. Are two notes of the same musical chord 
 unequal or of different nature? Man and woman are 
 the two notes without which the Human chord is im- 
 possible. 
 
 Suppose two peoples, one of which is called by 
 circumstances and by special tendencies to the mis- 
 sion of diffusing the idea of human association by 
 means of colonization, and the other to teach that 
 idea by the production of universally admired liter- 
 ature and art; are their general rights and duties 
 therefore different? Both of these people are, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, Apostles of the same Divine 
 Idea, equals and brothers in that idea. 
 
 Man and Woman, even as these two peoples, fulfill 
 different functions in Humanity, but these functions 
 are equally sacred, equally manifestations of that 
 Thought of God which He has made the soul of the 
 universe. 
 
 Consider woman, therefore, as the partner and 
 companion, not merely of your joys and sorrows, but 
 of your thoughts, your aspirations, your studies and 
 your endeavours after social amelioration. Consider 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS THE FAMILY. 69 
 
 her your equal in your civil and political life. Be ye 
 the two human wings that lift the soul towards the 
 Ideal we are destined to attain. The Mosaic Bible 
 has declared: God created man, and woman from man; 
 but your Bible, the Bible of the Future, will proclaim 
 that God created Humanity, made manifest in the woman 
 and the man. 
 
 Love the children given to you by God, but love 
 them with a true, deep, and earnest affection; not 
 with the enervated, blind, unreasonable love, which 
 is but selfishness in you, and ruin to them. In 
 the name of all that is most sacred, never forget that 
 through them you have in charge the future genera- 
 tions; that towards them, as souls confided to your 
 keeping, towards Humanity, and before God, you are 
 under the heaviest responsibility known to mankind. 
 You are bound to instruct your children, not merely 
 in the joys and desires of life, but in life itself; in its 
 duties, and in its moral law of government. Few 
 mothers, few fathers, in this irreligious age — and 
 especially in the wealthier classes — understand the 
 true gravity of their educational mission. Few 
 mothers, few fathers, remember that the numerous 
 victims, the incessant struggles, and the life-long 
 martyrdoms of our day, are in a great measure the 
 ^ fruit of the selfishness instilled thirty years back by 
 the weak mothers and heedless fathers who allowed 
 their children to accustom themselves to regard life, 
 not as a mission and a duty, but as a search after 
 happiness and a study of their own well-being. For 
 you, the sons of labour, these dangers are less; the 
 greater number of you know only too well what it is 
 to live the life of privation. But, compelled by your 
 
70 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 inferior social position to constant toil, you are also 
 less able to bestow upon your children a fitting edu- 
 cation. Nevertheless, even you can in part fulfill 
 your arduous mission, both by word and by example. 
 
 You can do it by example. 
 
 " Your children will resemble you, and become cor- 
 rupt or virtuous in proportion as you are yourself 
 corrupt or virtuous. How shall they become honest, 
 charitable, and humane, if you are without charity for 
 your brothers ? How shall they restrain their grosser 
 appetites, if they see you given up to intemperance ? 
 How shall they preserve their native innocence, if you 
 shrink not from offending their modesty by indecent 
 act or obscene word ? You are the living model by 
 which their pliant nature is fashioned. It depends, 
 then, upon you, whether your children be men or 
 brutes." (Lamennais, Words of a Believer!) 
 
 And you may educate your children by your words. 
 
 Speak to them of your country; of what she was, 
 and is, and ought to be. At evening when, beneath 
 the smile of their mother and amid the innocent 
 prattle of your children seated on your knee, you for- 
 get the day's fatigue, repeat to them the names and 
 deeds of the good men who have loved their country 
 and the people, and who have striven, amid sorrows, 
 calumny, and persecution, to elevate their destiny. 
 Instil into their young hearts the strength to resist 
 injustice and oppression. Let them learn from your 
 lips, and the calm approval of their mother, how 
 lovely is the path of virtue; how noble it is to become 
 apostles of the truth, how holy to sacrifice themselves, 
 if need be, for their fellows. Infuse in'o their tender 
 minds, not merely the energy of resistance to every 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS THE FAMILY. 71 
 
 false or unjust authority, but due reverence for the 
 sole, legitimate, and true authority— that of virtue 
 crowned by genius. See that they grow up enemies 
 alike to tyranny and anarchy, and in a Religion of a 
 conscience inspired, but not enchained, by tradition. 
 
 The Nation is bound to aid you in this work. And 
 you have a right to exact this aid in your children's 
 name. There is no true Nation without a National 
 Education. 
 
 Love and reverence your Parents. Let not the 
 family that issues from you make you unmindful of 
 that from which you sprang. Too often do the new 
 ties weaken the old, whereas they should be but 
 another link in the chain of love that should unite 
 the three generations of the family in one. Surround 
 the gray hairs of your mother and father with tender 
 affection and respectful care even to their last day. 
 Strew their path to the tomb with flowers. Let your 
 constant love shed a perfume of faith and immor- 
 tality over their weary souls. And be the affection 
 you bestow on your own parents a pledge of that you 
 shall receive from your children. 
 
 Parents, sisters, brothers, wives, and children, be 
 they all to you as branches springing from the same 
 stem. Sanctify the family by unity of love, and make 
 of it the Temple wherein you unite to bear sacrifice 
 to your country. 
 
 I know not whether you will be happy if you act 
 thus; but I do know that even in the midst of advers- 
 ity you will find that serene peace of the heart, that 
 repose of the tranquil conscience, which will give 
 you strength in every trial, and cheer your souls with- 
 a glimpse of heavenly azure even in the darkest storm. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 DUTIES TOWARDS YOURSELVES. 
 
 I have already said to you: You have life, therefore 
 you have a Law of life. To develop yourselves, to act 
 and live according to your Law of life, is your first, or 
 rather your sole, duty. 
 
 I have told you that God has given you two means 
 of arriving at a knowledge of your Law of life. He 
 has given you your own conscience, and the con- 
 science of Humanity, the common consent of your 
 fellow-men. I have told you that whenever, on inter- 
 rogating your own conscience, you find its voice in 
 harmony with the mighty voice of the human race 
 transmitted to you by history, you may be certain of 
 holding an immutable and eternal truth. 
 
 At present it is difficult for you fitly to interrogate 
 this mighty voice of Humanity transmitted by his- 
 tory. You are in want of really good popular books 
 on this subject, or you have not time to study them. 
 But the men whose intellect and virtue have rendered 
 them the best exponents of historical study and of the 
 science of Humanity, during the last half century, 
 have deduced from them some of the characteristics 
 of our Law of life. 
 
 They have discovered that our human nature is 
 essentially social and susceptible of education. They 
 
PUTIES TOWARDS YOURSELVES. 73 
 
 have discerned that, as there is and can be but one 
 sole God, so there is and can be but one sole Law, 
 governing alike individual and collective man. They 
 have discerned that the fundamental character of 
 this law is PROGRESS. 
 
 From this truth — irrefutable, because confirmed by 
 every branch of human knowledge — are deduced all 
 your duties towards yourselves, and also all your 
 rights. The last may be summed up in one, viz.: 
 the right to be in no way impeded, and to be to a certain 
 extent assisted, in the fulfillment of your duties. You 
 are, and you feel within you that you are, free agents. 
 All the sophisms of the wretched philosophy that 
 seeks to substitute the doctrine of I know not what 
 fatalism for the cry of our human conscience, avail 
 not to silence the two invincible witnesses in favour 
 of human liberty — Remorse and Martyrdom. 
 
 From Socrates to Jesus, from Jesus down to men 
 who, from time to time, still die for their country, all 
 the martyrs of Faith protest against the servile doc- 
 trine, and cry aloud unto you: "We also loved life, 
 we also loved the beings who made that life dear, 
 and who implored us to yield. Every impulse of our 
 hearts cried LIVE! But, for the salvation of the 
 generations to come, we chose to die." 
 
 From Cain down to the vulgar spy of the present 
 day, all the betrayers of their fellows, all the men 
 who have chosen the path of evil, have heard and 
 hear in the depths of their secret soul a voice of 
 blame, disquiet, and reproof, which says unto them : 
 " Wherefore did you forsake the right path ? " 
 
 You are free agents, and therefore responsible. 
 From this moral liberty results your right to political 
 
74 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 liberty, your duty to achieve it and maintain it invio- 
 late; and the duty of others not to restrain you 
 therein. 
 
 You are susceptible of education. There is in each 
 of you a certain sum of moral tendencies and intel- 
 lectual capacity to which education alone can give 
 life and movement, and which, if uneducated, remain 
 inert and sterile, or but reveal themselves by fits, 
 and without regular development. Education is the 
 bread of the soul. Even as physical organic life is 
 unable to flourish and expand without material ali- 
 ment, so does our moral and intellectual life require 
 for its expansion and manifestation the external influ- 
 ence, and the assimilation — in part at least — of the 
 affections and tendencies of others. 
 
 Individual life springs up like the flower. Each 
 variety is gifted with a special existence and a special 
 character, though growing upon the common soil 
 and nourished by the elements common to the life of 
 all. The individual is an offshoot of Humanity, and 
 aliments and renews its vital forces in the vital force 
 of Humanity. This work of alimentation and reno- 
 vation is accomplished by Education, which trans- 
 mits (directly or indirectly) to the individual the 
 results of the progress of the whole human race. 
 Education, therefore, is not merely a necessity of 
 your true life; it is also a holy communion with 
 your fellow-men, with the generations who lived (that 
 is to say, thought and acted) before you, that you are 
 bound to obtain for yourselves; itisamoral and intel- 
 lectual education, which should embrace and fecundate 
 all the faculties which God has given you, even as seed 
 to fructify, and as the means with which to constitute 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOURSELVES. 75 
 
 and maintain the link between your individual life 
 and the life of collective Humanity. 
 
 And in order that this work of education may be 
 more rapidly achieved, in order that your individual 
 life may be more intimately and surely linked with 
 the collective life of your brothers (the life of 
 Humanity), God has created you beings eminently 
 social. 
 
 Each of the inferior beings can live alone, without 
 communion save with Nature, with the elements of 
 the physical world. You cannot. You have need of 
 your brother-men at every step, and cannot satisfy 
 the simplest wants of your existence without aiding 
 yourself by their work. Superior to all other beings 
 when in association with your fellows, you are, when 
 isolated, inferior in force to many of the lower ani- 
 mals, weak, and incapable of development and of 
 fullness of life. All the noblest aspirations of your 
 heart, — such as love of country — even the least elevated 
 — such as the desire of glory and praise, — indicate 
 your innate tendency to mingle your existence with 
 the life of the millions by whom you are surrounded. 
 
 You are, then, created for Association. 
 
 Association centuples your strength; it makes the 
 thoughts of others, and the progress of others, your 
 own, while it elevates and sanctifies your nature 
 through the affections and the growing sentiment of 
 the unity of the human family. In proportion as 
 your association with your brother-men is extended, 
 in proportion as it is intimate and comprehensive, 
 will you advance on the path of individual improve- 
 ment. The Law of Life cannot be fulfilled in its en- 
 tirety save by the united labour of all. For every 
 
76 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 step taken in progress, for every new discovery of a 
 portion of that Law, history shows a corresponding 
 extension of human association, a more extended 
 contact and communication between peoples and 
 peoples. 
 
 Before the first Christians came to declare the 
 unity of human nature, in opposition to the pagan 
 philosophy that admitted two human natures (that 
 of the master and that of the slave), the Roman 
 people had already carried their eagles across all the 
 known countries of Europe. 
 
 Before the papacy (baleful to mankind at the 
 present day, but useful during the first ages of its 
 institution) proclaimed the superiority of Spiritual to 
 Temporal Authority, the barbarian invaders had vio- 
 lently brought into contact the Latin and Germanic 
 worlds. 
 
 Before the idea of liberty — as applied not only to 
 individuals but to peoples — had produced the con- 
 ception of Nationality which now agitates and is des- 
 tined to triumph in Europe, the wars of the Revolu- 
 tion and the Empire had aroused and called into 
 action an element until then remote, the Slavonian 
 peoples. 
 
 [Finally you Are. progressive beings. 
 
 /'"This word of PROGRESS, unknown to antiquity, 
 
 / is destined henceforth to be a sacred word to Human- 
 
 , ity. In it is included an entire social, political, and 
 
 ^religious transformation. The ancients, the men of 
 
 the old Oriental and Pagan religions, believed in 
 
 fate, in chance, in a hidden, incomprehensible power, 
 
 the arbitrator of human things; a power alternately 
 
 creator and destroyer, the action of which man wa § 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOURSELVES. 77 
 
 neither able to understand, accelerate, nor promote. 
 They believed man to be incapable of founding any 
 stable or permanent work on earth. They believed 
 that nations, destined to move forever in a circle 
 similar to that described by individuals here below, 
 arose, became powerful, and sank in decay, doomed 
 infallibly to perish. 
 
 With a mental horizon thus restricted, and desti-"' 
 tute of all historical knowledge save that of their 
 own nation, or it might be of their own city, they re- 1 
 garded the human race as a mere aggregate of men, ( 
 without any general collective Life or Law, and based ' 
 their ideas solely upon the contemplation of the indi- 
 vidual. The natural consequence of such a doctrine 
 was a disposition to accept all dominant and ruling 
 facts, without hoping or endeavouring to modify ) 
 them. Where circumstances had produced a repub- | 
 lican form of government, the men of that day were t 
 republicans; where despotism existed, they were its? 
 submissive slaves, indifferent to progress. And both 
 under the republican and tyrannic governments, the 
 human family was everywhere divided, either into 
 four castes, as in the East, or into two (the free citi- 
 zens and the slaves), as in Greece. This division 
 into castes, and the doctrine of the two natures of 
 men, were accepted by all, even by the most power- 
 ful intellects of the Greek world, Plato and Aristotle. 
 The emancipation of your class would have been an 
 impossibility among such men as these. 
 
 The men who, with the word of Christ upon their 
 lips, founded a Religion superior to paganism or the 
 religions of the East, had but dimly foreseen, not 
 grasped or assimilated, the sacred idea contained in 
 
jg THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 this word Progress. They understood the idea of the 
 unity of the human race, and the unity of the Law; 
 they understood the idea of the perfectibility of -man, 
 but they did not comprehend that God has given 
 man the power of realizing it by his own efforts, nor 
 the mode by which it has to be achieved. They also 
 limited themselves to deducing the rule of life from 
 the contemplation of the individual. Humanity, as 
 a collective being, remained unknown to them. 
 
 They comprehended the idea of a Providence, and 
 substituted it for the Fatality of the ancients; but in 
 this Providence they saw only the protector of the 
 individual, not the law of Humanity^/ Finding them- 
 selves placed between the immense ideal of perfecti- 
 bility they had faintly conceived, and the poor, brief 
 life of the individual, they felt the necessity of an in- 
 termediate term or link between man and God; but, 
 not having reached the idea of collective Humanity, 
 they had recourse to that of a divine incarnation, and 
 declared faith in this dogma to be the sole source of 
 strength, of salvation, of grace to men. 
 
 Not suspecting the continuous Revelation trans- 
 mitted from God to man, through Humanity, they 
 believed in a unique, immediate Revelation, vouch- 
 safed at a particular time, and by a special favor of 
 God./ They perceived the link that unites man with 
 his Creator, but they perceived not the link that 
 unites all men, past, present, and future, in Humanity 
 on earth. I 
 
 The sequence of generations being of little moment 
 to those who comprehended nothing of the action of 
 one genenation on another, they accustomed them- 
 selves to disregard it. They endeavoured to detach 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOURSELVES. 79 
 
 man from the earth, from all that regarded Human- 
 ity at large, and ended by regarding the earth itself 
 (which they abandoned to the existing powers, and 
 deemed a mere sojourn of expiation) as in antago- 
 nism to that Heaven to which man might, by the 
 help of faith and grace, ascend, but from which all 
 wanting in faith and grace were exiled. 
 
 Believing Revelation to have been immediate and 
 unique at a given period, they thence deduced the 
 impossibility of all addition thereunto, and the conse- 
 quent infallibility of its depositaries. They forgot 
 that the Founder of their religion had come, not to 
 destroy the law, but to add to and continue it: they 
 forgot the solemn occasion when, with a sublime in-; 
 tuition of the future, Jesus declared " that He had ' 
 man} things yet to say, but men could not bear them 
 then, but after Him would come the Spirit of Truth, 
 who would speak not of himself, but whatsoever he 
 should hear, that he should speak" (St John, xvi. 
 7, 12, 13, 25, et passim), words prophetic of the idea of 
 Progress, of collective inspiration, and of the con- 
 tinuous revelation of the truth through the medium 
 of Humanity. 
 
 The whole edifice of the Faith that succeeded pa- 
 ganism is founded on the bases I have described. It 
 is clear that your earthly emancipation cannot be 
 founded upon these bases alone. 
 
 Thirteen hundred years after the above sublime 
 words of Jesus were spoken, a man, an Italian, the 
 greatest of Italians, wrote the following truths: 
 ""' " God is one. The Universe is a Thought of God; 
 the Universe, therefore, is also One. All things 
 spring from God. All things participate in the 
 
a 
 
 80 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 Divine nature, more or less, according to the end for 
 which they are created. Man is the noblest of cre- 
 ated things. God has given to man more of His own 
 nature than to the others. Everything that springs 
 from God tends towards that amount of perfecti- 
 bility of which it is susceptible. The capacity of 
 perfectibility is indefinite in man. Humanity is One. 
 God has created no useless thing. Humanity exists; 
 hence there must be a single aim for all men, a work 
 to be achieved by all. The human race must, there- 
 fore, work in unity, so that all the intellectual forces 
 diffused among men may obtain the highest possible 
 development in the sphere of thought and action. 
 There exists, therefore, one Universal Religion for 
 the human race." 
 
 The man who wrote these words was called Dante. 
 Every city of Italy, when Italy shall be free, is bound 
 to raise a monument to his memory, for these ideas 
 contain the germ of the Religion of the Future. He 
 wrote thus in Latin and L\ Italian, in two books, en- 
 titled(A? Monorchia and 77 Convt'to,Jworks difficult of 
 comprehension, and neglected at the present day 
 even by the literary men of his own country. But 
 ideas, once sown in the intellectual world, never die. 
 Others reap and gather them up, even while forget- 
 ting whence they sprang. All men admire the oak, 
 but who thinks of the acorn from which it grew? 
 The germ planted by Dante struck root, was fecun- 
 dated from time to time by some powerful intellect, 
 and the tree bore fruit towards the close of the last 
 century. The idea of Progress as the Law of Life, 
 accepted, developed, and verified by history and con- 
 firmed by science, became the banner of the future. 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOURSELVES. 8l 
 
 At the present day there is no earnest thinker with 
 whom it is not the cardinal point of his labour and 
 endeavour. 
 
 We now know that the Law of life is PROGRESS \ 
 — progress for the individual, progress for Humanity. /- 
 
 Humanity fulfills the law on earth: the individual, / 
 on earth and elsewhere. 
 
 One sole God, one sole Law. That Law has been, 
 is, and will be, gradually but inevitably fulfilled by 
 Humanity from the first moment of its existence. 
 
 Truth does not manifest itself suddenly, nor entire, 
 
 A continuous Revelation, from epoch to epoch, 
 makes manifest to man a fragment of the truth, a 
 word of the Law. 
 
 The discovery of every one of these words modifies 
 human life by a sensible advance on the path of im- 
 provement, and constitutes a belief, a Faith. 
 
 The development of the Religious Idea is, then, in- 
 definitely progressive, and successive beliefs, each 
 one developing and purifying that Idea, contribute, 
 like the columns of a temple, to build up the Pan- 
 theon of Humanity, the one grand, sole Religion of 
 our earth. 
 
 The men most blessed by God with genius and 
 virtue are its Apostles; the People — the collective 
 sense of Humanity — its Interpreter; accepting the 
 revelation of the truth, transmitting it from genera- 
 tion to generation, and reducing it to practice by 
 applying it to the different branches and manifesta- 
 tions of human life. 
 
 " Humanity is as a man who lives and learns for- 
 ever." 
 
 Therefore there is not, there cannot be, infallibility 
 6 
 
82 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 either in man or Powers; there is not, there cannot 
 be, any privileged caste of depositaries or interpreters 
 of the Law; there is not, there cannot be, need of any 
 interpreter between God and man, save Humanity. 
 
 God, by ordaining the accomplishment of a Provi- 
 dential design of progressive education for Human- 
 ity, and infusing the instinct of progress into the 
 heart of every man, granted to human naLure the 
 capacity and the power to fulfill that design. 
 
 Individual man, a free and responsible creature, is 
 able to use or abuse the faculties given to him, in 
 proportion as he follows the path of duty or yields 
 to the seductions of a blind selfishness. He may thus 
 delay or accelerate his own progress, but the Provi- 
 dential design can be cancelled by no human means. 
 The education of Humanity must be completed. 
 Thus do we see even the barbarian invasions, which 
 from time to time threaten to extinguish the existing 
 civilization, result in a new civilization, superior to 
 the former and diffused over a wider zone, and even 
 individual tyranny subsequently produce a more 
 rapid and vigourous growth of liberty. 
 
 Progress, the Law, will be fulfilled on earth even 
 as elsewhere. 
 
 There is no antagonism between earth and heaven, 
 and it is blasphemous to imagine that God's earth, 
 the Home He has given us, may be by us despised 
 and abandoned to the influence of evil, selfishness, or 
 tyranny, without sin. 
 
 The earth is no sojourn of expiation. It is the 
 home wherein we are to strive towards the realiza- 
 tion of that ideal of the true and just of which each 
 man has in his own soul the germ. It is the ladder 
 
DUTIES TOWARDS YOURSELVES. 
 
 83 
 
 towards that condition of Perfection which we can 
 only reach by glorifying God in Humanity, through 
 our own works, and by consecrating ourselves to 
 realize in action all that we may of His design. The 
 Judgment that will be held on each of us, and that 
 will either decree our ascent one step on the ladder 
 of Perfection, or doom us mournfully to pursue again 
 the stage already trod, will be founded on the amount 
 of good done to our brothers, on the degree of prog- 
 ress to which we have aided them to ascend. 
 
 Association, ever more intimate and more extended, 
 with our fellow-men, is the means by which our 
 strength will be multiplied; the field wherein we ful- 
 fill our duties and reduce the Law of Progress to 
 action. We must strive to make of Humanity one 
 single family, every member of which shall be him- 
 self a reflection of the moral law, for the benefit of the 
 others. And as the gradual perfection of Humanity 
 is accomplished from epoch to epoch, from generation 
 to generation, so the perfection of the individual is 
 wrought out from existence to existence, more or less 
 rapidly in proportion to our own labour and effort. 
 
 These are some of the truths contained in that 
 word Progress, from which the Religion of the Future 
 will spring. In its name only can your emancipation 
 be achieved. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LIBERTY. 
 
 You live. The life that is in you is not the work of 
 chance; the word chance is void of meaning, and was 
 invented to express the ignorance of mankind in cer- 
 tain things. The life which is in you comes from 
 God, and in its progressive development it reveals an 
 intelligent design. Your life, then, has necessarily a 
 scope, an aim. 
 
 f The ultimate aim for which we were created is still 
 
 •'.unknown to us; it cannot be otherwise; but this is no 
 
 reason why we should deny its existence. Does the 
 
 r infant know the aim toward which it must tend 
 through the Family, the Country, and Humanity? 
 No; but this aim exists, and we are beginning to 
 comprehend it for him. Humanity is the infant of 
 God: He knows the end and aim towards which it 
 
 \ must develop itself. 
 
 Humanity is only now beginning to understand 
 /that Progress is the Law. It is beginning vaguely to 
 
 / comprehend somewhat of the universe by which it is 
 
 J surrounded: but the majority of the individuals that 
 compose it are still incapable, through barbarism, 
 slavery, or the absolute absence of all education, of 
 studying that Law and obtaining a knowledge of that 
 
 ' universe, both of which it is necessary to compre- 
 hend before we can truly know ourselves 
 
LIBERTY. 85 
 
 Only a minority of the men who people our little 
 Europe are as yet capable of developing themselves 
 towards the right use and understanding of their , 
 own intellectual faculties. 
 
 Amongst yourselves, deprived as the greater num- 
 ber of you are of instruction, and bowed down beneath 
 the necessity of an ill-organized physical labour, 
 those faculties lie dormant, and are unable to bring 
 their tribute to raise the pyramid of science. How, 
 then, should we pretend as yet to understand that 
 which will require the associate labour of the whole ? 
 Wherefore rebel against our not having already 
 achieved that which will constitute the last stage of 
 Progress, while, few in number, and still disunited, 
 we are but learning to lisp its sacred name? 
 
 Let us resign ourselves, then, to our ignorance of 
 those things which must yet a long while remain in- 
 accessible to us, and let us not in childish anger 
 abandon the study of the truths we may discover. 
 
 C Impatience and human pride have destroyed or mis- 
 led more souls than deliberate wickedness. This is 
 the truth which the ancients sought to express when 
 f they told us how the despot who strove to scale the 
 I heavens succeeded only in building a Babel of confu- 
 sion, and how the giants who attacked Olympus 
 were cast down by thunderbolts, and buried beneath 
 our volcanic mountains. 
 
 That of which it is important to be convinced is 
 this, that whatever be the end and aim towards which 
 we are created, we can only reach it through the 
 progressive development and exercise of our intellec- 
 tual faculties. Our faculties are the instruments of 
 labour given to us by God. It is, therefore, a neces- 
 
 U 
 
86 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 sity that their development be aided and promoted, 
 and their exercise protected and free. 
 
 Without liberty you cannot fulfill any of your 
 duties. Therefore have you a right to liberty, and a 
 duty to wrest it at all risks from whatever power 
 shall seek to withhold it. 
 
 Without liberty there is no true morality, because 
 if there be not free choice between good and evil, 
 between devotion to the common progress and the 
 spirit of selfishness, there can be no responsibility 
 '" Without liberty there is no true society, because 
 association between free men and slaves is impos- 
 sible; there can only exist the rule of the one over 
 . the others. 
 
 Liberty is sacred, as the individual, of whose life it 
 is the reflex, is sacred. Where liberty is not, life is 
 reduced to a mere organic function, and when man 
 allows the violation of his liberty, he is false to his 
 own nature, and rebels against the decree of God. 
 There is no true liberty whenever a caste, a family, 
 or a man, assumes to rule over others in virtue of a 
 pretended right divine, or from any privilege of birth 
 or riches. Liberty must be for all men, and in rela- 
 tion to all other men. 
 
 God does not delegate the sovereign power to any 
 individual. That degree of sovereign power which 
 can be justly represented on this earth, has been en- 
 trusted by God to Humanity, to the Nations, to So- 
 ciety. And even that ceases, and is withdrawn from 
 those collective fractions of Humanity, whensoever 
 they cease to wield it for good, and in accordance 
 with the Providential design. The sovereign rule 
 therefore exists of right in none, the true sovereignty 
 
LIBERTY. 87 
 
 being in the aim, and in those acts which bring us 
 nearer to that. These acts, and the aim towards 
 which we are advancing, must be submitted to the 
 judgment of all. There is not, therefore, there can- 
 not be, any permanent sovereignty. 
 
 The institution which we term Government is 
 merely a Management, a mission confided to a few in 
 order more speedily to attain the national intent or 
 Aim; and should that mission be betrayed, the power/ 
 of management confided to those few must cease. 
 
 Every man called to the Government is an admin- 
 istrator of the common Thought. He should be ' 
 elected, and be subject to have his election revoked I 
 whensoever he misconceives or deliberately opposes) 
 that Thought. 
 
 Therefore, I repeat, there can exist neither family 
 nor caste possessing the governing power in its own 
 right, without a violation of your liberty. How 
 could you call yourselves free, in the presence of men 
 possessing the power to command you without your 
 consent? The Republic is, then, the only logical and 
 truly legitimate form of Government. 
 
 You have, no master save God in Heaven, and the 
 People on earth. Whensoever you discover a line of 
 the Law, of the will of God, you are bound to bless 
 and obey it. Whensoever the people, the collective 
 Unity of your brother-men, shall declare that such is 
 their belief, you are bound to bow your head, and ab- 
 stain from any act of rebellion. But there are certain 
 things constituting your own individuality, and 
 which are essential elements of human life. Over 
 these not even the People has any right. No major- 
 ity may decree tyranny, or destroy or alienate its own 
 
88 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 freedom. You cannot employ force against the People 
 that should commit this suicidal act, but there exists 
 and lives eternally in each of you a right of protest, 
 in the manner circumstances may suggest. 
 
 You must have liberty in all that is indispensable 
 to the moral and material aliment of life; personal 
 liberty, liberty of locomotion, liberty of religious 
 faith; liberty of opinion upon all subjects, liberty of 
 expressing that opinion through the Press, or by any 
 other peaceful means; liberty of association in order 
 to render that opinion fruitful by cultivation, and by 
 contact with the thoughts and opinions of others; 
 liberty of labour, and of trade and commerce with its 
 produce; all these are things which may not be taken 
 from you (save in a few exceptional cases which it is 
 unnecessary here to enumerate) without your having 
 a right to protest. 
 
 No one has any right to imprison you, or subject you 
 to personal espionage or restraint in the name of 
 society, without telling you wherefore, celling it you 
 with the least possible delay, and immediately con- 
 ducting you before the judicial power of the country. 
 No one has any right of persecution, intolerance, or 
 exclusive legislation as to your religious opinion: no 
 voice, save the grand, peaceful voice of Humanity, 
 has any right to interpose itself between God and 
 your conscience. 
 
 God has given you the faculty of thought: no one 
 has a right to suppress or restrain its expression, 
 which is the act of communion 'between your soul 
 and the souis of your brother-men, and is our one 
 sole means of progress. 
 
 The Press must be absolutely free. The rights of 
 
LIBERTY. 89 
 
 intellect are inviolable, and every preventive censor- 
 ship is tyranny. Society may, however, punish the 
 errors of the Press, or the teaching of crime or im- 
 morality, just as it may punish any other description 
 of error. This right of punishment (decreed in vir- 
 tue of a solemn public judgment) is a consequence 
 of our human responsibility; but every anterior inter- 
 vention is a negation of liberty. 
 
 The right of peaceful association is as sacred as 
 thought itself. God gave us the tendency to associa- 
 tion as a perennial means of progress, and as a pledge 
 of that Unity which the human family is destined 
 one day to attain. 
 
 No power, then, has a right to limit or impede 
 association 
 
 It is the duty of each of you to employ the life 
 given him by God; to preserve it and to develop it: 
 each of you, then, is bound to labour, as the sole 
 means of its material support. Labour is sacred. 
 No one has a right to impede it, forbid it, or render 
 it impossible by arbitrary regulations. No one has 
 any right to forbid free trade in its productions. 
 Your country is your lawful market, which no one 
 may limit or restrain. 
 
 But when all these various forms of liberty shall 
 be held sacred, when the State shall be constituted 
 according to the universal will, and in such wise that 
 each individual shall have every path towards the 
 free development of his faculties thrown open before 
 him, — forget not that high above each and every in- 
 dividual stands the intent and Aim which it is your 
 duty to achieve, your own moral perfectibility and 
 that of others, through an ever more intimate and 
 
90 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 extended communion between all the members of 
 the human family, so that the day may come when 
 all shall recognize one sole Law. 
 
 " Your task is to found the Universal Family, to 
 build up the City of God, and unremittingly to la- 
 bour towards the active, progressive fulfillment of 
 His great work in Humanity. 
 
 " When each of you, loving all men as brothers, 
 shall reciprocally act like brothers; when each of 
 you, seeking his own well-being in the well-being of 
 all, shall identify his own life with the life of all, and 
 his own interest with the interest of all; when each 
 shall be ever ready to sacrifice himself for all the 
 members of the Common Family, equally ready to 
 sacrifice themselves for him; most of the evils which 
 now weigh upon the human race will disappear, as 
 the gathering vapburs of the horizon vanish on the 
 rising of the sun; and the will of God will be ful- 
 filled, for it is His will that love shall gradually unite 
 the scattered members of Humanity and organize 
 them into a single whole, so that Humanity may be 
 one, even as He is One." ' 
 
 Let not these words, the words of a man whose 
 life and death were holy, and who loved the people 
 and their future with an immense love, ever be for- 
 gotten by you, my brothers. Liberty is but a means. 
 Woe unto you and to your future, should you ever 
 accustom yourselves to regard it as the end ! Your 
 own individuality has its rights and duties, which 
 may not be yielded up to any, but woe unto you 
 and to your future, should the respect you gwe unto 
 
 1 Lammenais, Livre du People, III. 
 
LIBERTY. 
 
 91 
 
 that which constitutes your individual life ever de- 
 generate into the fatal crime of selfishness. 
 
 Liberty is not the negation of all authority: it is 
 the negation of every authority that fails to represent 
 the Collective Aim of the nation, or that presumes to 
 impose or maintain itself upon any other basis than.i 
 that of your free consent. 
 
 In these later days the sacred idea of liberty has 
 been perverted by sophistical doctrines. Some have 
 reduced it to a narrow and immoral egoism; have 
 made self everything, and have declared the aim of 
 all social organization to be the satisfaction of its de- 
 sires. Others have declared that all government and 
 all authority are necessary evils, to be restricted and 
 restrained as far as possible; that liberty has no 
 limit, and that the aim of all society is that of indefi- 
 nitely promoting liberty, which man has the right 
 of using or abusing, provided his doing so result in 
 no direct evil to others, and that government has no 
 other mission than that of preventing one individual 
 from injuring another. 
 
 Reject these false doctrines, my brothers! The 
 first has generated the selfishness of class; the second 
 makes of society — which, well organized, would be 
 the representation of your collective life and aim — 
 naught better than the soldier or police officer com- 
 missioned to maintain an external and apparent peace. 
 
 The tendency of all such doctrines is to convert 
 liberty into anarchy; to cancel the idea of collective 
 moral improvement, and that mission of Progress, 
 which society ought to assume. If you should un- 
 derstand liberty thus, you would deserve to lose it, 
 and sooner or later you would lose it. 
 
02 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 Your liberty will be sacred so long as it is governed 
 by and evolved beneath an idea of duty, of faith in 
 the common perfectibility. 
 
 Your liberty will flourish, protected by God and 
 man, as long as you hold it — not as the right to use 
 or abuse your faculties in the direction it may please 
 you to select — but as the right of free choice, accord- 
 ing to your separate tendencies, of the means of do- 
 ing good. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 EDUCATION. 
 
 God has created you susceptible of education. 
 Therefore it is your duty to educate yourselves as far 
 as lies in your power, and it is your right that the so- 
 ciety to which you belong shall not impede your edu- 
 cation, but assist you in it, and supply you with the 
 means thereof when you have them not. 
 
 Your liberty, your rights, your emancipation from 
 every injustice in your social position, the task which 
 each of you is bound to fulfill on earth — all these de- 
 pend upon the degree of education you are able to 
 attain. 
 
 Without education you are incapable of rightly 
 choosing between good and evil; you cannot acquire 
 a true knowledge of your rights; you cannot attain 
 that participation in political life without which your 
 complete social emancipation is impossible ; you 
 cannot arrive at a correct definition and comprehen- 
 sion of your own mission. 
 
 Education is the bread of your soul. Without it 
 your faculties lie dormant and unfruitful, even as the 
 vital power lies sterile in the seed cast into untilled 
 soil and deprived of the benefits of irrigation and the 
 watchful labour of the agriculturist. 
 
 At the present day your class is either uneducated 
 
94 
 
 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 or receives its education at the hands of men or gov- 
 ernments, who, having no ruling principles to guide 
 them, necessarily mutilate or misdirect it. Present 
 directors of education imagine that they have fulfilled 
 their duties towards you when they have opened a 
 certain number of schools— distributed unequally 
 over the territory they govern — wherein your chil- 
 dren may receive a certain degree of elementary in- 
 struction, consisting principally of reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic. 
 
 Such teaching is properly called instruction, and it 
 differs and is as distinct from true education as the 
 various organs of our existence differ and are dis- 
 tinct from our life. The organs of existence are not 
 our life. They are the mere instruments of our life 
 and its means of manifestation; they neither govern 
 nor direct it; they are equally the manifestation of 
 the holiest or the most corrupt life; and just so does 
 instruction provide the means of putting in practice 
 that which is taught by education, but it can never 
 take the place of education. 
 
 Education addresses itself to the moral faculties; 
 instruction to the intellectual. The first develops 
 in man the knowledge of his duties; the second gives 
 him the capacity of achieving them. Without in- 
 struction, education would be too often inefficient; 
 without education, instruction is a lever deprived of 
 its fulcrum. 
 
 You know how to read. What avails this knowl- 
 edge if you are unfit to judge between the books 
 containing error and those containing truth ? You 
 have learned to communicate your thoughts to your 
 fellow-men in writing. What avails this knowledge, 
 
EDUCATION. 
 
 95 
 
 if your thoughts are the mere reflex of your own 
 selfishness ? 
 
 Instruction, like wealth, is either a source of good 
 or of evil, according to the manner and motive of its 
 use. Consecrated to aid the progress of all, it is a 
 means of civilization and of liberty; turned to more 
 personal uses, it becomes an agent of tyranny and 
 corruption. 
 
 In Europe at the present day, instruction, unac- 
 companied by a corresponding degree of moral educa- 
 tion, is too often a serious evil; it assists in maintain- 
 ing inequality between class and class of the same 
 people, leads men to false doctrines, and produces a 
 spirit of calculation, of selfishness, and of compromise 
 between the just and the unjust. 
 
 The distinction between those who offer you more 
 or less of instruction and those who preach educa- 
 tion, is more important than you are aware of, and 
 deserves to be spoken of at some length. 
 
 The camp of the liberal party in Europe at the 
 present day is split up into two schools of doctrine. 
 
 The first of these schools proclaims the sovereignty 
 of the Individual. The second declares that sov- 
 ereignty belongs to Society alone, and makes the 
 manifest consent of the majority its law. 
 
 The first imagines that it has fulfilled its mission 
 when it has proclaimed the rights believed to be in- 
 herent in human nature, and preserved liberty. The 
 second looks almost exclusively to association, and 
 from the Social Pact that constitutes that association 
 it deduces the duties of each individual. 
 
 The first does not go beyond what I have termed 
 instruction, for instruction does in fact tend to 
 
96 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 develop the individual faculties, without direction 
 or rule. The second understands the necessity of 
 education, and regards it as the manifestation of the 
 social programme. 
 
 The first inevitably tends to moral anarchy. The 
 second, unmindful of liberty, runs the risk of uphold- 
 ing despotism — the despotism of the majority. 
 
 To the first of these schools belonged that genera- 
 tion of men known in France as Doctrinaires, who be- 
 trayed the hopes of the people after the revolution of 
 1830, and who, by proclaiming Liberty of Instruction, 
 and nothing more, perpetuated the monopoly of gov- 
 ernment in the hands of the bourgeois class, who did 
 possess the means of developing their individual 
 faculties. The second, unfortunately, is only repre- 
 sented at the present day by Powers or sects belong- 
 ing to antiquated creeds or beliefs, and hostile to the 
 dogma of the future, which is Progress. 
 
 Both of these schools are defective. The tendency 
 of both is narrow and exclusive. 
 
 The following is the truth: 
 
 All Sovereignty is in God, in the moral law, in the 
 Providential design — which rules the world, and is 
 from time to time revealed to Humanity, in different 
 epochs of its existence, by virtuous Genius — in the 
 Aim we have to reach, in the Mission we have to fulfill. 
 
 Sovereignty cannot exist in the individual, nor in 
 Society, except in so far as one or the other acts in 
 accordance with that design and law, and tends to- 
 wards that aim. 
 
 The individual ruler is either the best interpreter 
 of that Law, and governs in its name, or he is a 
 usurper to be overthrown. 
 
EDUCATION. 97 
 
 There is no legitimate sovereignty in the mere 
 Will of the majority, if it be contrary to the supreme 
 moral law or deliberately close the path of future 
 progress. 
 
 The Social Weal, Liberty, and Progress: there can 
 
 be no real sovereignty beyond these three terms. 
 
 Education teaches in what the social weal consists. 
 
 Instruction assures to the individual a free choice 
 
 of the means of securing a continuous advance in the 
 
 conception of the social weal. 
 
 That which is most important for you is that your 
 children be taught what are the ruling principles and 
 beliefs directing the life of their fellow-men during 
 the span of existence allotted to them on earth ; what 
 the moral, social, and political programme of their 
 nation ; what the spirit of the legislation by which 
 their actions will be judged ; what the degree of 
 progress already achieved by Humanity; what the 
 goal it is destined to attain. 
 
 And it is important that they should be taught in 
 their earliest years a spirit of equality and love, which 
 links them in a common aim with the millions, the 
 brothers given them by God. 
 
 The education that will afford your children such teach- 
 ing as this, can only be given them by the nation. 
 
 At present their moral teaching is a mere anarchy. 
 Left exclusively to the parents, it is null in those cases 
 where poverty and the necessity of constant material 
 labour deprive them alike of the knowledge and time 
 required to enable them to teach their children them- 
 selves and of the means of providing other instruct- 
 ors; it is evil in those cases where selfishness and cor- 
 ruption have perverted- or contaminated the family. 
 
 7 
 
98 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 Even where parents have the means of providing in- 
 struction for their children, they are too often brought 
 up in materialism, or superstition; in ideas of mere 
 liberty, or passive resignation; of aristocracy, or mere 
 reaction against it, according to the character of the 
 instructor — priestly or secular — whom the parents 
 celect. How can such education in childhood fit men 
 to work together in harmony and fraternity towards 
 a common aim, and to represent in their own persons 
 the unity of the country? 
 
 Society calls upon them to promote the develop- 
 ment of a common idea in which they have not been 
 instructed. Society punishes them for the violation 
 of laws of which they were left in ignorance, the 
 scope and spirit of which society has never taught 
 them. Society requires from them cooperation and 
 sacrifice for an aim which no teachers have explained 
 to them at the outset of their civil life. 
 
 Strange to say, the Doctri?taire School of which I 
 have already spoken recognizes the right of each 
 separate individual to rule and teach the young, and 
 does not admit the same right in the association of 
 individuals, the Nation. Their cry of liberty of in- 
 struction disinherits the Nation of all moral direction. 
 ''They proclaim the importance of unity in the mone- 
 tary system, and the system of weights and measurrs; 
 but that unity of Principle, upon which all national 
 life should be founded and developed, is nothing to 
 them. 
 
 Without a national education, the Nation has no 1 
 moral existence, for upon it alone can a national con- 
 science be formed. 
 
 Without a national education — common to all the 
 
EDUCATION. pg 
 
 citizens— all equality of rights and duties is an un- 
 meaning formula, for all knowledge of duties, and 
 all capacity for the exercise of rights, are left to the 
 chances of fortune, or the arbitrary choice of those 
 who select the teacher. 
 
 The opponents of unity of education invoke liberty 
 in their support. The liberty of whom? Of the 
 fathers, or of the children? In their system the 
 moral liberty of the children is violated by the des- 
 potism of the father; the liberty of the young gene- 
 ration is sacrificed to the old; and liberty of progress 
 is rendered an illusion. 
 
 Individual opinions and beliefs — false, it may be, 
 and adverse to progress — are alone transmitted with all 
 the authority of the father to the son, at an age when 
 their examination is impossible. As they advance in 
 life the position of the majority among you, and the 
 necessity of occupying every hour in material em- 
 ployment, will prevent the mind already stamped 
 and impressed with those opinions and beliefs, from 
 modifying them by comparison with others. 
 
 In the name of this false liberty the anarchical 
 system I have described tends to perpetuate that 
 worst of despotisms, a moral caste. 
 
 This system, in fact, produces a form of despotism, 
 not liberty. True liberty cannot exist without equal- 
 ity, and equality can only exist among those who 
 start from a common ground, a common principle, 
 and a uniform consciousness and knowledge of duty. 
 Liberty can only rightly be exercised as a conse- 
 quence of that knowledge. 
 
 I said a few pages back, that true liberty is not the 
 right to choose evil, but the right of choice between 
 
IOO THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 the various paths that lead to good. The liberty in- 
 voked by these shallow philosophers is, in fact, an 
 arbitrary right given to the father to choose the 
 wrong for his child. What! If a father should 
 threaten to mutilate or in any way injure the body of 
 his child, Society would interfere, called on and in- 
 voked by all; and shall the soul of that child be of 
 less worth than the body? Shall not Society inter- 
 fere to protect him from the mutilation of his facul- 
 ties, from ignorance, from the perversion of his moral 
 sense, from superstition? 
 
 The cry of Liberty of Instruction was of use in the 
 day when it first arose, and it is useful even now in 
 all countries where moral education is the monopoly 
 ■ of a despotic government, a retrograde caste,^ or a 
 priesthood, the nature of whose dogma renders it 
 antagonistic to progress. That cry was a cry of 
 emancipation, imperfect, but indispensable and neces- 
 sary at the time. 
 
 But I speak to you of a time in wriich Religion 
 shall inscribe the word Progress over the portal of 
 the Temple; when all your institutions shall be so 
 many repetitions of that word in various forms, and 
 when a National education shall be given to the 
 people which will conclude its teachings to its pupils 
 with these words: 
 
 "To you, as beings destined to live under a com- 
 mon Pact with ourselves, we have now declared the 
 fundamental basis of that Pact; the Principles in 
 which your Nation believes at the present day; but 
 remember that the first of these principles is Prog- 
 ress; remember that your mission, both as a man and 
 a citizen, is to improve, as far as you may, the minds 
 
EDUCATION. IOI 
 
 and hearts of your fellow-men. Go; examine and 
 compare; and if you discover a truth superior to that 
 which we believe ourselves to possess, diffuse it free- 
 ly, and the blessing of your country be with you." 
 
 Then, though not before, you may renounce the 
 cry of liberty of instruction as inferior to your need, 
 and fatal to the unity of the country; then you may 
 ask — nay, exact — the foundation of a system of 
 gratuitous National Education, obligatory upon all. 
 
 The Nation is bound to transmit its programme to 
 every citizen. Every citizen should receive in the 
 national schools a moral education, a course of nation- 
 ality — comprising a summary view of the progress of 
 Humanity and of the history of his own country; a 
 popular exposition of the principles directing the 
 legislation of that country, and the elementary in- 
 struction about which we are all agreed. Every citi- 
 zen should be taught in these, schools the lesson of 
 equality and love. 
 
 The National Programme once transmitted to all 
 the citizens, liberty resumes its rights. Not only 
 family education, but every other is sacred. Every 
 man has an unlimited right to communicate his ideas 
 to his fellow-men; every man has a right to hear 
 them. Society should encourage and promote the 
 free utterance of thought in every shape, and open 
 every path to the modification and development of 
 the National Programme. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 ASSOCIATION. PROGRESS. 
 
 God has created you social and progressive beings. 
 It is therefore your duty to associate yourselves, and 
 to progress as far as the sphere of activity in which 
 circumstances have placed you, will permit. You 
 have a right to demand that- the society to which 
 you belong shall in no way impede your work of 
 association and progress, but, on the contrary, shall 
 assist you, and furnish you with the means of asso- 
 ciation and progress of which you stand in need. 
 Liberty gives you the power of choosing between 
 good and evil; that is to say, between duty and 
 selfishness. Education will teach you to choose 
 rightly. Association will give you the means of re- 
 ducing your choice to action. Progress, the Aim by 
 which you must be guided in your choice, is, at" the 
 same time, when visibly achieved, the proof that your 
 choice was not mistaken. Whenever anyone of these 
 conditions is neglected or betrayed, the man and the 
 citizen do not exist, or exist in a state of imperfection 
 and impeded development. 
 
 You have therefore to strive to realize all these 
 conditions, and above all, the right of association; 
 without which both liberty and education are use- 
 less. 
 
ASSOCIATION. PROGRESS. 103 
 
 The right of association is as sacred as Religion 
 itself, which is the association of souls. You are all 
 the sons of God; you are therefore brothers. Who, 
 then, may without guilt set limits to association, the 
 communion among brothers ? 
 
 This word communion, which I have written advis- 
 edly, was taught us by Christianity, which the men 
 of the past declared to be an immutable religion, but 
 which is, in fact, a step in the scale of the religious 
 manifestations of Humanity. 
 
 And it is a sacred word. It taught mankind that 
 they were a single family of equals before God, and 
 united master and servant in a single thought of sal- 
 vation, of love, and of hope in Heaven. It was an 
 immense advance upon the preceding ages, when both 
 philosophers and people believed the souls of citi- 
 zens and the souls of slaves to be of different nature \ 
 and race. And this mission alone would have suf-.. 
 ficed to stamp the greatness of Christianity. The | 
 communion was the symbol of the equality and/ 
 fraternity of souls, and it rested with Humanity to 
 amplify and develop the truth hidden under that I 
 symbol. 
 
 The Church did not and could not do this. Timid 
 and uncertain in the beginning, and allied with the 
 nobles and the Temporal Powers in the sequel, im- 
 bued, from self-interest, with an aristocratic ten- 
 dency which had no existence in the mind of its 
 founder, the Church wandered out of the true path, 
 and even receded so far as to diminish the moral 
 value of the communion, by limiting it in the case of 
 the laity to a communion in bread alone, and reserv- 
 ing solely to priests the communion in both species. 
 
104 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 At that time arose a cry from all that felt within 
 their souls the right of the whole human family to 
 the symbols of unlimited communion without dis- 
 tinction between the laity and ecclesiastics: Commun- 
 ion in both species for the peoples the Cup for the people ! 
 In the fifteenth century that cry became the watch- 
 word of the aroused multitudes; it was the prelude 
 to the Religious Reformation, and was sanctified by 
 martyrdom. A holy man, named John Huss, of Bo- 
 hemia, who was the leader of that movement, per- 
 ished in the flames kindled by the Inquisition. 
 
 At the present day, most of you are ignorant of the 
 history of those struggles, or believe them to have 
 been the quarrels of fanatics about merely theologi- 
 cal questions. But when a national education shall 
 have popularized history, and taught you how every 
 religious progress carries with it a corresponding 
 progress in civil life, you will appreciate those con- 
 tests at their true worth, and honor the memory of 
 those martyrs as your benefactors. We owe it to 
 those martyrs and their predecessors that we have 
 learned that there is no privileged class of interpre- 
 ters between God and the people ; that the best 
 among us in wisdom and virtue may and ought to 
 counsel and direct us on the path of improvement, 
 but without any monopoly of power or supremacy; 
 and that the right of communion is indeed equal for 
 all men. That which is holy in Heaven is holy on earth, 
 and the communion of mankind in God carries with 
 it the association of mankind in their terrestrial life. 
 The religious association of souls carries with it the 
 association of intellect, and of action which converts 
 thought Into reality. 
 
ASSOCIATION. PROGRESS. 105 
 
 Consider association, therefore, both your duty and 
 your right. 
 
 There are those who seek to put a limit to the 
 rights of the citizen, by telling you that the true asso- 
 ciation is the State, the Nation: that you ought all to 
 be members of that association, but that every par- 
 tial association amongst yourselves, is either adverse 
 to the State, or superfluous. 
 
 But the State, the Nation, only represents the asso- 
 ciation of the citizens in those matters and in those 
 tendencies which are common to all the men who 
 compose it. There are tendencies and aims which do 
 not embrace all the citizens, but only a certain number 
 of them. And precisely as the tendencies and the 
 aims which are common to all, constitute the Nation; 
 so the tendencies and aims which are common to a 
 portion of the citizens, should constitute special asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 Moreover — and this is the fundamental basis of the 
 right of association — association is a guarantee of 
 progress. The State represents a certain number or 
 mass of principles, in which the citizens are agreed at 
 the time of its foundation. Suppose that a new and 
 true principle, a new and rational development of the 
 truths that have given vitality to the State, should be 
 discovered by a few among its citizens. How shall 
 they diffuse the knowledge of this principle, except 
 by association ? Suppose that, in consequence of 
 scientific discovery, or of new means of communica- 
 tion opened up between peoples and peoples, or from 
 any other cause, a new interest should arise among a 
 certain number of the individuals composing the 
 State, how shall they who first perceive this, make 
 
Io6 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 their way among the various interests of long stand- 
 ing, unless by uniting their efforts and their means? 
 
 Inertia, and a disposition to rest satisfied with the 
 order of things long existing and sanctioned by the 
 common consent, are habits too powerful over the 
 minds of most men to allow a single individual to 
 overcome them by his solitary work. The associa- 
 tion of a daily increasing minority can do this. Asso- 
 ciation is the method of the future. Without it the 
 State would remain motionless, enchained to the de- 
 gree of civilization already reached. 
 
 Association must be progressive in the scope it en- 
 deavours to attain, and not contrary to those truths 
 which have been conquered forever by the uni- 
 versal consent of Humanity and of the Nation. An 
 association founded for the purpose of facilitat- 
 ing theft of the property of others ; an association 
 obliging its members to polygamy; an association 
 which should preach the dissolution of the Nation or 
 the establishment of despotism, would be illegal. 
 The Nation has the right of declaring to its members: 
 "We cannot tolerate the diffusion among us of doc- 
 trines in violation of that which constitutes human 
 nature, morality, or the country. Go forth and es- 
 tablish amongst yourselves, beyond our frontiers, the 
 associations which your tendencies suggest." 
 
 Association must be peaceful. It may not use other 
 weapons than the apostolate of the spoken and written 
 word. Its object must be to persuade, not to compel. 
 Association must be public. Secret associations — 
 which are a legitimate weapon of defence where 
 there exists neither liberty nor Nation — are illegal, 
 and ought to be dissolved, wherever liberty and the 
 
ASSOCIATION. PROGRESS. 107 
 
 inviolability of thought are rights recognized and 
 protected by the country. As the scope and in- 
 tent of association is to open the paths of progress 
 it must be submitted to the examination and judg- 
 ment of all. 
 
 And, finally, association is bound to respect in others 
 those rights which spring from the essential characteris- 
 tics of human nature. An association which, like the 
 corporations of the Middle Ages, should violate the 
 rights of labour, or which should tend directly to 
 restrict liberty of conscience, ought to be repressed 
 by the government of the Nation. 
 
 With these exceptions, liberty of association among 
 the citizens is as sacred and inviolable as that prog- 
 ress of which it is the life. 
 
 Every government which attempts to restrain it 
 betrays its social mission, and it becomes the duty of 
 the people first to admonish it, and — all peaceful 
 means being exhausted — to overthrow it. 
 
 Such, my brothers, are the bases upon which your 
 duties are founded, the sources from which spring 
 your rights. An infinite number of questions will 
 arise in the course of your civil life, which it is no 
 part of the present work either to foresee, or to assist 
 you in resolving. My sole aim in this book has been 
 to present to you, even as torches to light you on 
 your way, those Principles which should guide you 
 through them all, and in the earnest application of 
 which, you will find a method of resolving them for 
 yourselves. 
 
 And this I believe I have done. 
 
 I have led you to God, as the source of duty and 
 pledge of the equality of man: to the Moral Law, as 
 
108 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 the source of all civil laws and basis of your every 
 judgment as to the conduct of those who frame those 
 laws. I have pointed out to you the People — your- 
 selves, ourselves, the mass of the citizens compos- 
 ing the Nation — as the sole interpreter of the law, and 
 the source of all political power. I have told you that 
 the fundamental characteristic of the law is Prog- 
 ress; progress indefinite and continuous from epoch 
 to epoch; progress in every branch of human activity, 
 in every manifestation of thought, from leligion 
 down to industry and to the distribution of wealth. 
 I have described to you your duties towards Human- 
 ity, your country, your family, and yourselves. And 
 I have deduced those duties from those essential 
 characteristics which constitute the human creature, 
 and which it is your task to develop. 
 
 These characteristics — inviolable in every man — 
 are: liberty, susceptibility of education, the social 
 tendency, and the capacity for, and necessity of, 
 progress. And from these characteristics — without 
 which there is neither true man nor true citizen possi- 
 ble — I have deduced, not your duties only, but your 
 rights, and the general character of the government 
 you should seek for your country. 
 
 Never forget these principles. Watch that they 
 never be violated. Incarnate them in yourselves. 
 You will be free, and you will improve. 
 
 The task I have undertaken for you would then be 
 complete, were it not for a tremendous obstacle aris- 
 ing in the bosom of Society itself (as it is how consti- 
 tuted), to the possibility of your fulfilling your duties 
 or exercising your rights. 
 
 This obstacle is the inequality of means. 
 
ASSOCIATION. PROGRESS. 109 
 
 In order to fulfill duties and exercise rights — time, 
 intellectual development, and the certainty of mate- 
 rial existence, are necessary. 
 
 Now, very many of you do not possess these first 
 elements of progress. Their life is a constant and 
 uncertain battle in order to conquer the means of 
 material existence. For them, the question is not 
 one of progress, but of life itself. 
 
 There is, then, some deep and radical vice in the 
 present organization of society. And my work would 
 be rendered useless were I not to define that vice, 
 and indicate a method of correcting it. 
 
 The economical question will therefore constitute 
 the last portion of my work. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 
 
 Many, too many, of you are poor. Life for at least 
 three-fourths of the working class, whether labourers 
 or mechanics, is a daily struggle to obtain the indis- 
 pensable material means of existence. They are occu- 
 pied in manual labour for ten, twelve, sometimes 
 fourteen, hours a day, and by this constant, monoto- 
 nous, and painful industry, they scarcely gain the 
 bare necessaries of physical existence. The attempt 
 to teach such men the duty of progress, to speak to 
 them of their intellectual and moral life, of their 
 political rights, or of education, is sheer irony in the 
 present state of things. 
 
 They have neither time nor means to improve and 
 progress. Wearied, worn-out, half-stupefied by a life 
 consumed in a round of petty and mechanical toil, all 
 they do learn is a mute, impotent, and often unjust, 
 rancour against the class of men who employ them. 
 They too often seek forgetfulness of the troubles of 
 the day and the uncertainty of the morrow in the 
 stimulus of strong drink, and sink to rest in places 
 better described as dens than rooms, to waken to a 
 repetition of the same dull exercise of their merely 
 physical powers. 
 
 It is a sad condition, and it must be altered. 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. Ill 
 
 You are men, and as such you possess faculties, not 
 merely physical, but intellectual and moral: faculties 
 which it is your duty to develop. You should be 
 citizens, and, as such, exercise for the good of all cer- 
 tain rights, which require a certain degree of educa- 
 tion and a certain portion of time. 
 
 It is clear that you ought to labour less and gain 
 more than you do now. 
 
 Sons of God, all of us, and brethren in Him and 
 amongst ourselves, we are called to constitute one 
 sole great Family. 
 
 In this family there may exist such inequality as is 
 he result of diversity of aptitude, of capacity, or of 
 disposition for labour, but it should be governed by 
 one single principle: Whosoever is willing to give — for 
 the benefit of the whole — that amount of labour of which 
 he is capable, ought to receive such amount of recompense 
 for that labour as will enable him more or less to develop 
 his individual life in each of the essential characteristics 
 by which individual life is defined. 
 
 This is the ideal which all of us ought to strive and 
 study to approach more nearly from age to age. 
 
 Every change, every revolution which fails to ad- 
 vance us one step towards this ideal, which does not 
 produce a moral and social progress corresponding 
 to the political progress achieved, which does not re- 
 sult in one degree of improvement in the material 
 condition of the poorer classes, violates the Providen- 
 tial design, and reduces itself to the rank of a mere 
 War of faction against faction, each seeking illegiti- 
 mate dominion, and each alike a falsehood and an 
 evil. 
 
 But up to what point can we realize this aim at the 
 
112 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 present day ? How, and by what means can we 
 reach this point ? 
 
 Some of the more timid amongst your well-wishers 
 have sought the remedy in the morality of the work- 
 ingman himself. They have founded savings-banks 
 and similar institutions, saying to the operative : 
 " Bring your wages here ; economize, abstain from 
 every excess, whether of drink or otherwise; emanci- 
 pate yourselves from poverty by privation." And 
 such advice is excellent, in so far as it tends to the 
 moral improvement of the workingman, without which 
 all reforms are useless. But it neither solves the 
 question of poverty itself, nor takes any account of 
 social duty. 
 
 Very few of you can economize your wages. And 
 all that those few can achieve by their slow accumu- 
 lation is the possibility of providing, to a certain ex- 
 cent, for their old age. Now, the economical ques- 
 tion has more than this in view. Its object is also to 
 provide for the years of manhood, to develop and ex- 
 pand life, as far as possible, while in its full vigour and 
 activity, while it may most efficaciously aid the prog- 
 ress of the country and humanity. 
 
 Even with regard to the mere material well-being 
 of the working class this advice falls short of the aim, 
 as it does not even hint at any method of increasing 
 wealth or production. Moreover, society, which 
 lives by the labour of the sons of the people, and de- 
 mands from them their tribute of blood in the hour 
 of danger, incurs a sacred debt towards them in 
 return. 
 
 There are other men, not enemies of the people, 
 but indifferent to the cry of suffering which bursts 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 113 
 
 from the hearts of the sons of labour, and fearful of 
 every great Innovation, who belong to the school of 
 Economists, and who have worthily and usefully 
 fought the battle of industry and labour, but without 
 reflecting that the necessity of Progress and of Asso- 
 ciation is an ineradicable element of human nature. 
 
 This school has maintained, and still — like the 
 Philanthropists of whom I have spoken — does main- 
 tain, that every one can, even in the present state of 
 things, build up his own independence on his own 
 activity, that any change in the organization of 
 labour would be either injurious or superfluous, and 
 that the formula, Each for himself and liberty for us 
 all, is sufficient to create, by degrees, an approximate 
 equilibrium of ease and comfort among the various 
 classes that constitute society. 
 
 Liberty of internal traffic, liberty of commerce 1 ; 
 among nations, a progressive reduction of custom 
 duties (especially upon raw materials), a general 
 encouragement offered to great industrial enter- 
 prises, to the multiplication of means of communica- 
 tion and of all machinery tending to increase activity 
 of production; these, according to the Economists, are 
 all that society can offer for the amelioration of the 
 position of your class, and any further intervention 
 on its part would, in their opinion, be a source of 
 evil. 
 
 If this were indeed true, the evil of poverty would 
 be incurable; but God forbid, my brothers ! that I 
 should ever give your sufferings and your aspirations 
 an answer so despairing, atheistic, and immoral. 
 God has ordained for you a better future than that 
 offered by the remedies of the Economists. 
 8 
 
( 
 
 114 THE DUTIES OP MAN. 
 
 Their remedies, in fact, merely point to the possi- 
 ble and temporary increase of the production of 
 wealth; they do not tend to its more equitable distri- 
 bution. While the Philanthropists, regarding indi- 
 vidual man alone, content themselves with the 
 endeavour to make him more moral, without seeking 
 to increase the common prosperity so as to give him 
 an opportunity of progress ; the Economists think 
 only of increasing the sources of production, without 
 occupying themselves with the condition of the indi- 
 vidual man. Under the exclusive regime of liberty 
 which they preach, and which has more or less regu 
 lated the economical world in these later days, the 
 most irrefutable documentary evidence has shown an 
 increase of productive activity and of capital, but 
 not of universally diffused prosperity. 
 
 The misery of the working class is unchanged. 
 Liberty of competition for him who possesses nothing 
 
 for him who, unable to save his daily earnings, can- 
 not even initiate a competition — is a lie; even as po- 
 litical liberty is a lie for those who, from want of edu. 
 cation, instruction, time and material means, are 
 unable to exercise their rights. Increased facilities 
 for the exchange and conveyance of the products of 
 labour would by degrees emancipate labour from the 
 tyranny of tradeand commerce, and from the exist- 
 ing classes of intermediates between the producer 
 and the consu,mer H hujt, they cannot emancipate 
 it from the tyranny of capital ; they cannot 
 give the means of labour to him who has them 
 lot. 
 
 And from the want of an equal distribution of 
 wealth, and of a just division of products, combined 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION 115 
 
 with the progressive increase of the number of con- 
 sumers, capital itself is turned aside from its true 
 economic aim, and becomes in part stationary in the 
 hands of a few, instead of spreading and circulating; 
 or it is directed towards the production of objects of 
 superfluity, luxury, and fictitious wants, instead of 
 being concentrated on the production of objects 
 of primary necessity to life, and is risked in perilous, 
 and, too often, immoral speculations. 
 
 At the present day — and this is the curse of our 
 actual social economy — capital is the tyrant of labour. 
 Society is at present composed — economically speak- 
 ing — of three classes: that is to say, of capitalists, be- 
 ing the possessors of the means and implements of 
 labour, of land, of factories, ready money, and raw 
 material; of middlemen, chiefs and organizers of labour, 
 and dealers, who are, or ought to be, the representa- 
 tives of the intellectual side; and of operatives, who 
 represent the material side of labour. 
 
 The first of these three classes is sole master of the 
 field, and is in a position to promote, accelerate, de- 
 lay, or direct labour towards certain special aims at 
 will. And the share of this class of the results of 
 labour and the value of production is comparatively 
 settled and defined; the location of the instruments 
 of labour is variable only within certain known and 
 definite limits; and even time itself may be said to be, 
 to some extent, in their power, as they are removed 
 from the pressure of immediate want. 
 
 The share of the second class is uncertain. It de- 
 pends upon their intellect, their activity, and, above 
 all, on circumstances, such as the greater or less 
 development of competition and the flux and reflux 
 
Il6 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 of capital, which is regulated by events not within 
 the reach of their calculations. 
 
 The workman's share consists simply of his wages, 
 determined previously to the execution of the work, 
 and without regard to the greater or less profits of 
 the undertaking; and the limits within which those 
 wages vary are determined by the relation that ex- 
 ists between the supply and demand, or, in othei 
 words, between the population of operatives and 
 capital. 
 
 Now, as the first constantly tends to increase, and 
 to an increase generally superior (however slightly) 
 to the increase of the second, the tendency of wages, 
 where no other causes intervene, is, of course, to 
 decrease. 
 
 Time, also, is altogether beyond the power of the 
 workingman. Financial and political crises, the sud- 
 den application of new machinery to the different 
 branches of industrial activity, the irregularities of 
 production, and its frequent excess and accumulation 
 in a given direction (an evil inseparable from partially 
 enlightened competition), the unequal distribution of 
 the working classes upon certain points, or in certain 
 branches of activity, and a hundred other causes 
 tending to the interruption of labour, take from the 
 operative all free choice as to his own condition. On 
 the one side he sees absolute starvation, on the other 
 the necessity of accepting whatever terms are offered 
 to him. 
 
 Such a state of things, I repeat, indicates the germ 
 of a moral evil which must be cured. 
 
 The remedies proposed both by the Philanthropists 
 and Economists are unequal to this task. 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 1 17 
 
 And, nevertheless, there is progress in the class to 
 which you belong; a progress historical and continu- 
 ous, and which has overcome still greater difficul- 
 ties. 
 
 You were first slaves, then serfs; now you are 
 hirelings. You have emancipated yourselves from 
 slavery and from serfdom. Why should you not 
 emancipate yourselves from the yoke of hire, and 
 become free producers, and masters of the totality of 
 production which you create ? 
 
 Wherefore should you not accomplish, through 
 your own peaceful endeavours and the assistance of a 
 society having sacred duties towards each of its mem- 
 bers, the most beautiful Revolution that can be con- 
 ceived — a revolution which, accepting labour as the 
 commercial basis of human intercourse, and the 
 fruits of labour as the basis of property, should grad- 
 ually abolish the class distinctions, the tyrannical 
 dominion of one element of labour over another, and 
 by proclaiming one sole law of just equilibrium 
 between production and consumption, harmonize 
 and unite all the children of the Country, the com- 
 mon mother ? 
 
 Owing principally to the teachings of the republi- 
 can party, the sense of a social duty towards the sons 
 of labour — the earnest of a better future for the peo- 
 ple — had gradually been awakened in Europe dur- 
 ing the last thirty years, when certain schools arose 
 (in France especially), composed for the most part of 
 well-meaning and sincere friends of the people, but 
 led astray by an overweaning love of system-making, 
 and by individual vanity. 
 
 These schools introduced certain exclusive and ex- 
 
Il8 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 aggerated doctrines under the name of Socialism — doc- 
 trines frequently antagonistic to the wealth already 
 acquired by other classes, as well as economically im- 
 possible. By terrifying the multitude of smaller shop- 
 keepers, and creating a sense of distrust between the 
 different classes of citizens, they caused the social 
 question to recede, and split up the republican party 
 into two separate camps. 
 
 I cannot now pause to examine these different 
 schools one by one. They were called Saint Simon- 
 ianism, Fourierism, Communism, etc., etc. Nearly 
 all of them were based upon ideas good in them- 
 selves, and long accepted by all who belonged to the 
 creed of Progress, but they spoiled or nullified these 
 ideas by the erroneous and tyrannical methods by 
 which they proposed to apply and reduce them to 
 practice. And it is necessary that I should briefly 
 point out to you wherein their errors consisted, be- 
 cause the promises held out to the people by these 
 systems are so magnificent as to be likely to seduce 
 your approval, and you would run the risk, by accept- 
 ing them, of retarding your emancipation, which is 
 inevitable in a not far distant future. 
 
 It is true — and this fact alone should awaken a 
 strong sense of doubt in your minds — that when cir- 
 cumstances had placed some of the authors of these 
 systems in power, they never attempted to realize 
 their own doctrines in practice. Giants on paper, 
 they dwindled and shrank before the difficulties of 
 the practical reality. 
 
 If, at some future day, you examine these various 
 systems with attention — bearing in mind the funda- 
 mental ideas I have hitherto pointed out to you, and. 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 1 19 
 
 the indestructible characteristics of human nature, 
 you will find that they all of them violate some of 
 these characteristics, as well as the law of progress, 
 and the method of its accomplishment through Hu- 
 manity. 
 
 Progress is accomplished through laws which no 
 human power can break. It is accomplished step by 
 step, by the perpetual development and modification of 
 the elements which manifest the activity of life. 
 
 In certain epochs, in certain countries, and under 
 the influence of certain errors or prejudices, men 
 have frequently given the name of essential elements 
 and characteristics of social life to things which have 
 no root in nature, but only in the conventional cus- 
 toms of an erring society — customs which disap- 
 peared at the expiration of those epochs, or beyond 
 the limits of those countries. 
 
 But you may discern what are the true elements 
 inseparable from our human nature, first, by in- 
 terrogating — as I suggested elsewhere — the instincts 
 of your own souls, and then by testing and verifying 
 these by the tradition of all the ages, and of every 
 country, in order to judge whether those instincts are 
 such as have always been the instincts of Humanity. 
 And those things which the innate voice within your- 
 selves and the grand voice of Humanity alike de- 
 clare to be essential elements, constitutive of life 
 itself, have to be modified and developed from epoch 
 to epoch, but can never be abolished. 
 
 Among the essential elements of human life — such 
 as Religion, Association, Liberty, and others to which 
 I have alluded in the course of this work— Property 
 is one, 
 
120 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 The first principle and origin of property is in hu- 
 man nature itself. It represents the necessities of 
 the material life of the individual, which it is his 
 duty to maintain. Even as the individual is bound 
 to transform the moral and intellectual world, 
 through the medium of religion, science, and liberty, 
 so he is bound to transform, ameliorate, and govern 
 the physical world, through the medium of material 
 labour. And property is the sign and representative 
 of the fulfillment of that task, of the amount of la- 
 bour by which the individual has transformed, devel- 
 oped, and increased, the productive forces of nature. 
 
 The Principle of property is therefore eternal, and 
 you will find it recognized and protected throughout 
 the whole existence of Humanity. But the modes by 
 which it is governed are mutable, and destined — like 
 every other manifestation of life — to undergo the law 
 of Progress. They who, finding property once con- 
 stituted and established in a certain manner, declare 
 that manner to be inviolable, and struggle against 
 every effort to transform it, thus deny progress 
 itself. 
 
 It is enough to take up two volumes of history, 
 treating of two different epochs, to find an alteration 
 in the constitution of property. And they who, be- 
 cause at a given epoch they happen to find property 
 ill-constituted, declare that it must be abolished and 
 seek to cancel it from Society, deny one of the ele- 
 ments of human nature, and would — were it possible 
 they should succeed — retard progress by mutilating 
 life. Property, however, would inevitably reappear 
 shortly after, and probably in the identical shape it 
 wore at the period of its abolition. 
 
/ 
 
 THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 
 
 Property is ill-constituted at the present day, be- \ 
 cause the source and origin of its actual division was, 
 generally speaking, in conquest; in the violence by 
 which, at a period remote from our own day, certain 
 invading peoples or classes took possession either of 
 land or of the fruits of labour not their own. Prop- 
 erty is ill-constituted at the present day, because the 
 bases of the partition of the fruits of a labour 
 achieved by both proprietor and workman are not 
 laid down in a just "and equal proportion to the 
 labour done. Property is ill-constituted, because, 
 while it confers on its possessor political aud legisla- 
 tive rights which are denied to the non-possessor, it 
 tends to become the monopoly of the few, inaccessi- 
 ble to the many. Property is ill-constituted, because 
 the system of taxation is ill-constituted, and tends to 
 maintain the privilege of wealth in the hands of the 
 proprietor, while it oppresses the poorer classes, and 
 renders saving impossible to them. 
 
 But if, instead of correcting the errors, and slowly 
 modifying the constitution of property, you should 
 seek to abolish it, you would suppress a source of 
 wealth, of emulation, and of activity, and would 
 resemble the savage who cuts down the tree in order 
 to gather its fruit. s 
 
 We must not seek to abolish property because at 
 present it is the possession of the few: we must open 
 up the paths by which the many may acquire it. We 
 must go back to the principle which is its legitimiza- 
 tion, and endeavour that it shall in future be the result 
 of labour alone. We must lead Society towards es- 
 tablishing a more equitable basis of remuneration be- 
 tween the proprietor or capitalist and the workman. 
 
122 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 We must transform the system of taxation so as to 
 exempt the first necessaries of life therefrom, and thus 
 render that economy, which gradually produces prop- 
 erty, possible to workingmen. And in order that 
 these things may be, we must suppress the political 
 privilege now conceded to property, and allow to all 
 a share in the work of legislation. 
 
 Now, all these things are both just and possible. By 
 educating yourselves, and organizing yourselves earn- 
 estly to demand them and determine to have them, 
 you may obtain them; whereas, by seeking the aboli- 
 tion of property, you would seek an impossibility, do 
 an injustice to those who have already acquired it 
 through their own labour, and diminish instead of 
 increasing production. 
 
 Nevertheless, the abolition of individual property 
 is the remedy proposed by many of the Socialist 
 systems of which I have spoken to you, and above all 
 by Communism. 
 
 Others have gone even further, and observing that 
 the Religious idea, the idea of Government, and the 
 idea of Country, are disfigured and falsified by relig- 
 ious error, by class privilege, and dynastic selfishness, 
 they demand the abolition of all religion, of all gov- 
 ernment, and even of Nationality. This is the con- 
 duct of children or barbarians. Might they not with 
 as much reason declare that, disease being frequently 
 generated by the corruption of the atmosphere, they 
 demand the suppression of every respiratory gas ? 
 
 But the teachings of these men, who seek to found 
 anarchy in the name of liberty, and to destroy society 
 for the sake of the rights of the individual, require no 
 further confutation from me to you. The whole of 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 123 
 
 my work is directed against this guilty dream, which 
 is the negation of progress, of duty, of human fra- 
 ternity, of the solidarity of nations, and of all those 
 things which you and I hold in veneration. 
 
 Those who, confining themselves within the limits 
 of the economic question, demand the abolition of in- 
 dividual property, and the organization of commun- 
 ism, fall into another extreme — the negation of the 
 individual and of liberty — which would close the path 
 to progress, and (so to speak) petrify Society. 
 
 The following is the general formula of Commun- 
 ism: 
 
 The property of every element of production, such 
 as land, capital (movable or immovable), instruments 
 of labour, etc., to be concentrated in the State. The 
 State to assign to each man his portion of labour 
 and his portion of compensation, some say with abso- 
 lute equality, others say according to his wants. 
 
 Such a mode of existence, were it possible, would 
 be the existence of the beaver, not the life of a man. 
 
 Liberty, dignity, and individual conscience would 
 all disappear before this organization of productive 
 machines. The satisfaction of the wants of physical 
 life may be possible by such means, but intellectual 
 and moral life would be entirely destroyed, and with 
 it all emulation, all free choice of labour, all liberty 
 of association, all the joys of property, and, in short, 
 all that stimulates and urges man to production. The 
 human family, under such a system, becomes a mere 
 human flock or herd, and all that is necessary for it is 
 a wide pasture-ground. 
 
 Which of you could reconcile himself to such a pro- 
 gramme ? Equality is thus realized, say they. What 
 
THE DUTIES OP MAN. 
 
 Equality? Equality in the distribution of labour? 
 That is impossible. Labour is in its nature various, 
 and cannot be fairly calculated either by its duration 
 or by the amount achieved in a given time; but rather 
 by its difficulty, or by the more or less agreeable 
 nature of the work done, the amount of human vital 
 ity it consumes, and its utility to Society. 
 
 How can the equality or difference between an 
 hour's labour passed in a mine, or in purifying the 
 stagnant waters of a marsh, and an hour's labour 
 spent in a spinning-factory, be estimated? The im- 
 possibility of making such calculations fairly has, in 
 fact, suggested to some of the founders of these sys- 
 tems the idea of compelling every man to perform 
 in his turn a certain amount of labour in every 
 branch of useful activity; an absurd remedy, which 
 would render perfection of production impossible, 
 while it would be impotent to equalize the weak with 
 the strong, the intellectually clever with the slow, 
 the man with nervous temperament with the man of 
 lymphatic tendency, etc. The labour which is easy 
 and welcome to the one becomes irksome and diffi- 
 cult to the other. 
 
 Would it produce equality in the division of the 
 products of labour ? 
 
 This also is impossible. Either the equality must 
 be absolute (and this would result in great injustice, 
 as there would be no distinction remaining between 
 the different wants arising from organization, or be- 
 tween the power and capacity created by a sense of 
 duty and the power and capacity given, without 
 merit or desert, by nature) or the equality must be 
 relative, and calculated according to diversity of 
 
The economical question. 125 
 
 wants, and then, by taking no account of individual 
 production, it would violate those rights of property 
 which ought to be the reward of the workman's 
 labour. 
 
 Moreover, who should be the Arbitrator and decide 
 the just wants of each individual ? Should this Arbi- 
 trator be the State ? 
 
 Workingmen! brothers! are you disposed to accept 
 a hierarchy of head-masters of the common property? 
 — masters of the mind through the superiority given 
 by an exclusive education, masters of the body from 
 their power of determining the work you have to do, 
 your capacity to do it, and your wants when it is 
 done? Is not this a return to bygone slavery? Would 
 not these masters, beguiled by that theory of interests 
 of which they were the representatives, and seduced 
 by the immense power concentrated in their hands, 
 become again the founders of the hereditary dictator- 
 ship of bygone castes? 
 
 No; Communism would not realize equality among 
 the sons of labour; it would not tend to increase pro- 
 duction 1 — which is the great need at the present day 
 — because it is in the nature of most men, when once 
 the means of existence are secured to them, to rest 
 satisfied; and the amount of incentive remaining to 
 increase production, diffused over all the members of 
 society, would be so small as not to have the power 
 of rousing and exciting men's faculties. The quality 
 
 1 It has been calculated that, if one workman among a hundred 
 thousand should produce the value of a hundred francs over the 
 mean production of the community, he would gain as his own 
 share the thousandth part of a franc, or three cents every thirty 
 years. Can this be regarded as a stimulus to production ?- 
 
126 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 of production would not be improved, as no encour- 
 agement would be offered to progress in invention, 
 which could never be wisely furthered by an uncer- 
 tain and unintelligent collective direction and organi- 
 zation. 
 
 The only remedy Communism has to offer for all 
 the thousand ills that afflict the sons of the people, is 
 security against hunger. 
 / Now, are there no other means of achieving this? 
 
 Cannot the workman's right to life and labour be se- 
 ? cured without overturning the whole social organism, 
 without rendering production sterile, and without im- 
 peding progress by destroying individual liberty to 
 enchain it thus in a tyrannical, military organization? 
 
 The remedy for your sufferings cannot be found in 
 any arbitary general organization, built up in a day 
 by any one individual mind, opposed to the univer- 
 sally received bases of civilization, and suddenly im- 
 posed by decree. We are not here to create Human- 
 ity, but to continue it. We may, we ought to, modify 
 the organization of its constituent elements, but we 
 cannot suppress or destroy them. Humanity rebels, 
 and ever will rebel, against the attempt. The time 
 spent in an endeavour to realize these illusions would 
 therefore be time lost. 
 
 The remedy is not to be found in any increase of 
 wages imposed by governmental authority, and, unac- 
 companied by other changes, tending to increase cap- 
 ital. An increased rate of wages — that is to say, an 
 increase of the cost of production — would carry with 
 it an increase in the price of production, a consequent 
 diminution of consumption, and hence of work for the 
 producers. 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 127 
 
 The remedy is not to be found in any theory tend- 
 ing to destroy individual liberty, which is the conse- 
 cration of, and stimulus to, labour, nor in anything 
 tending to diminish capital, which is the source and 
 the instrument of labour and production. \ 
 
 The remedy is to be found in the union of labour and) 
 capital in the same hands. 
 
 When society shall recognize no other distinction 
 save the distinction between producers and consumers; 
 or rather when every man shall be alike producer and 
 consumer; when the profits of labour, instead of being 
 parcelled out among that series of intermediates — 
 which (beginning with the capitalists and ending with 
 the retailer) frequently increases the price of produc- 
 tion fifty per cent. — shall belong entirely to those who 
 perform the labour, all the permanent causes of your 
 poverty will be removed. 
 
 Your future depends upon your emancipation from 
 the exactions of capital, which is at present the arbi- 
 trary ruler of a production in which it has no share. 
 
 Your material and moral future. Look around you. 
 Wherever you find capital and labour in the same 
 hands — wherever the profits of labour are divided 
 among the workmen in proportion to the increase of 
 those profits and to the amount of aid given by the 
 workmen to the collective work — you will find both a " 
 decrease of poverty and an increase of morality. 
 
 In the canton of Zurig, in the Engadine, and in 
 many other parts of Switzerland, where the peasant 
 is a proprietor, and land, capital, and labour are united 
 in the hands of a single individual; in Norway, Flan- 
 ders, and Eastern Friesland; in Holstein, in the Ger- 
 man Palatinate, in Belgium, and in the Island of 
 
f 
 
 128 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 Guernsey, on the English coast, there is visible a pros' 
 perity comparatively superior to all the other parts of 
 Europe, where the cultivators are not the proprietors 
 of the soil. 
 
 These countries are peopled by a race of agricul- 
 turists remarkable for their honesty, dignity, inde- 
 pendence, and frank and open bearing. 
 
 The mining population of Cornwall in England, and 
 those American navigators who trade as whalers be- 
 tween China and America, amongst whom this partici- 
 pation in the profits of their labour obtains, are rec- 
 ognized and admitted by official documents to be su- 
 perior to the workmen who are remunerated by a pre- 
 determined rate of wages. 
 
 Association of labour, and the division of the fruits of 
 labottr, or rather of the profits of the sale of its produc- 
 tions, between the producers, in proportion to the atnount and 
 value of the work done by each — this is the social future. 
 
 You were once slaves, then serfs, then hirelings. 
 You have but to will it, in order shortly to be- 
 come free producers and brothers, through Asso- 
 ciation. 
 
 Association — but free, voluntary, and organized on 
 certain bases, by yourselves, among men who know, 
 esteem, and love each other; not imposed by the force 
 of governmental authority, without respect to indi- 
 vidual ties and affections, upon men regarded rather 
 as ciphers and machines of production than as beings 
 moved by spontaneous impulse and free will. 
 
 Association — but to be administered with a truly re- 
 publican fraternity by your own delegates, and from 
 which you should be free to withdraw at your own 
 discretion; not subject to the despotism of the State 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. I29 
 
 or of an arbitarily constituted hierarchy, ignorant of 
 your individual wants and position. 
 
 An Association of nuclei — groups — to be formed 
 according to your own tendencies, and not (as the 
 authors of the systems of which I have spoken teach) 
 of all the members of a given branch of industrial or 
 agricultural activity. 
 
 The concentration of all the members of the State, 
 or even of all the citizens. of a single city, following a 
 given trade, into one sole productive society, would lead 
 us back to the bygone tyrannical monopoly of the cor- 
 porations. It would make of the producer the arbitrary 
 judge of prices to the injury of the consumer; legal- 
 ize the oppression of the minority; shut out the work- 
 man who might be unsatisfied or discontented with 
 its regulations from all possibility of finding work; 
 and suppress the necessity of progress, by extinguish- 
 ing all rivalry in work, and all stimulus to invention. 
 
 Within the last twenty years Association has oc- 
 casionally been timidly attempted in France, in Bel- 
 gium, and in England, and it has been crowned with 
 success wherever it was commenced with energy, 
 resolution, and a spirit of self-sacrifice. 1 
 
 In Association is the germ of an entire social 
 transformation, a transformation which, by emanci- 
 pating you from the servitude of wages, will gradually 
 further and increase production and improve the eco- 
 nomical position Of the country. 
 
 1 See, on this subject, Self-kelp by tke People, and The History of 
 Cooperation in Halifax, written by G. J. Holyoake (London Book 
 Store, 282 Strand) valuable and encouraging little books which 
 should be in the hands of working people. — Translator's Note. 
 
I30 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 The tendency of the present system is to make the 
 capitalist seek to increase his gains in order to with- 
 draw from the arena: while the tendency of associa- 
 tion would be to secure the continuance of labour — . 
 that is to say, of production. 
 
 At present the master, the director of the work 
 done, who generally owes his position to no special 
 aptitude but to mere possession of capital, is liable to 
 be improvident, rashly speculative, or incompetent; 
 an association, directed by chosen delegates, and 
 watched over by all its members, would not run the 
 risk of suffering from such errors or defects. 
 
 Under the present system labour is too often di- 
 rected to the production of superfluities rather than 
 necessaries, and owing to a capricious and unjust in- 
 equality of pay, work-men in one branch of activity 
 abound, while they are wanting in another branch. 
 The workman, limited to a determinate recompense, 
 has no motive to spend all the zeal and energy of 
 which he is capable upon h|s work, in order to multi- 
 ply and improve its produce. 
 
 Evidently Association would offer a remedy to this 
 and many other causes both of interruption and in- 
 feriority of production. 
 
 Liberty of withdrawal for individual members, 
 without injury to the Association — equality of all the 
 members in the choice of an elective administration, 
 with powers either renewable at a given period, or, 
 better, subject to revocation— freedom of admission 
 posterior to the foundation of the Association, with- 
 out the obligation of introducing new capital, but 
 with permission to supply its place by an annual con- 
 tribution to the treasury of the Association, to be d§- 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 131 
 
 ducted from the profits of the first years of union — 
 indivisbility and perpetuity of the collective capital—such 
 an amount of compensation as secures the necessities 
 of life equally to all — free distribution of the tools or 
 instruments of labour to all, according to the quantity 
 and quality of the work done ; such are the general 
 bases upon which you must found your associations, if 
 you are willing to achieve a work of present self-sacri- 
 fice for the benefit of the class to which you belong. 
 
 Each of these bases, and above all that concerning 
 the perpetuity of the collective capital, which is the 
 pledge of your own emancipation and your link with 
 future generations; would require a chapter to itself. 
 But a special study of the question of workingmen's 
 associations does not enter into the plan of my pres- 
 ent work. Perhaps, should God grant me some few 
 more years of life, I may make of this study a separ- 
 ate labour of love for you. In the meantime, rest as- 
 sured that the rules I have just sketched for you are 
 the result of deep reflection and earnest study, and 
 deserve your attentive consideration. 
 
 But the capital? The capital by which association 
 is to be initiated in the first instance; whence to ob- 
 tain this ? 
 
 It is a grave question, and I cannot treat it at such 
 length as I would wish. But I may briefly point out 
 your own duty and that of others. 
 
 The first source of that capital is in yourselves, in 
 your own economy, your own spirit of self-sacrifice. 
 I know the position of too many of you, but there 
 are some of you who — either owing to a continuance; 
 of work or its better compensation — are in a position 
 to economise for this aim. Some eighteen or twenty 
 
132 , THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 of these might thus collect the trifling sum necessary 
 to enable you to commence work on your own 
 account. And the consciousness of fulfilling a sol- 
 emn duty, and thus deserving your, emancipation, 
 ought to give you strength to do this. 
 
 I might quote for you many industrial associations, 
 now well established and flourishing, which were be- 
 gun by a few- workmen with their savings of a penny, 
 a day. I might relate to you many stories of sacri- 
 fices heriocally endured in France 1 and elsewhere, 
 by the first few workmen who commenced such en- 
 terprises, and are now in possession of considerable 
 capital. There is, indeed, scarcely any difficulty 
 which may not be overcome by strong will, when 
 
 1 In 1848, the delegates of some hundreds of workmen who had 
 united together with the idea of establishing a pianoforte manufac- 
 tory upon the Associative principles, finding that a large capital 
 was necessary for their undertaking, applied to the Government 
 for a loan of 300,000 francs. The application was refused. The 
 association was dissolved, but fourteen workmen determined to 
 overcome every obstacle and reconstitute it out of their own re- 
 sources. They had neither money nor credit : they had faith. 
 
 They initiated their society with a capital consisting of tools and 
 instruments of labour of the value of about 2,000 francs. But a 
 floating capital was indispensable. 
 
 Each of these workmen contrived, not without great difficulty, 
 to contribute 10 francs, and other workmen, not belonging to their 
 society, added some little offerings to swell their capital. On the 
 10th of March, 1849, having collected the sum of 229 francs 50 
 centimes, the Association was declared to be founded. 
 
 But their little social fund was insufficient for the cost of start- 
 ing and the small daily incidental expenses of their establishment. 
 Nothing remained for wages, and two months passed without the 
 members of the Association receiving a single cent in remunera- 
 
the Economical question. 133 
 
 sustained by the consciousness of doing good. Al- 
 most all of you may contribute some trifling aid to 
 the primary little fund, either in money, raw mate-' 
 rial, or implements of labour. 
 
 By a consistent course of conduct and habits of 
 life, calculated to win the esteem of your companions 
 or relations, you may induce them to advance small 
 loans. v in consideration of which they might become 
 shareholders, and receive the interest of their money 
 from the profits of the enterprise. 
 
 In many branches of industry in which the price 
 of tools or of raw material is trifling, the capital re- 
 quired for commencing work on your own account is 
 small, and you may collect or save it among your- 
 
 tion for their labour. How did they subsist during this time of 
 crisis ? As workingmen do subsist in periods when they are with- 
 out work, through help given by their comrades, or by selling or 
 pawning their goods. 
 
 Some orders, however, had been executed, and these were paid. 
 for on the 4th of May, 1849. That day was to the Association 
 what the first victory is in war, and they determined to celebrate it.. 
 Having paid all urgent debts, each associate received a sum of 6 
 francs 61 centimes. It was agreed that each should keep 5 francs, 
 and that the remainder should be spent in a fraternal banquet. The 
 fourteen members, most of whom had not tasted wine for more 
 than a year, sat down to a common dinner with tlieir families. 
 The cost was 32 sous a family. For another month their wages 
 only reached 5 francs a week. In June, however, a baker, either" 
 a lover of music or a speculator, proposed to buy a pianoforte. 
 from them, and pay for it in bread. The offer was accepted, and- 
 the price agreed upon was 480 francs. This was a piece of good- 
 fortune for the Association, which was thus sure of the first nec- 
 essary of life. The price of the bread was not considered in the 
 wages of the members. Each man received the amount necessary 
 
134 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 selves if you resolutely determine to do so. And it 
 will be in every respect better for you that the capi- 
 tal be all your own, acquired by the sweat of your 
 own brows, and of the credit you have gained by con- 
 scientious work. 
 
 Even as those nations which have achieved their lib- 
 
 for his own consumption, and the married men enough for their 
 families. 
 
 By degrees, the Association, the members of which were very 
 clever workmen, surmounted the obstacles and privations of the 
 first period of its existence. Their books gave excellent testi- 
 mony to their progress. In the month of August the weekly earn- 
 ings of each member rose from 10 to 15 and 20 francs: nor did 
 this represent the whole of their profits, for each member paid into 
 the common fund a weekly contribution larger than the sum he 
 withdrew as wages for his own use. 
 
 On the 30th of December, 1850, the books of the Association re- 
 vealed the following encouraging facts: 
 
 The members at that date amounted to thirty-two. 
 
 The establishment was paying 2,000 francs per annum for rent, 
 and their premises were already too small for their business. 
 
 The value of the tools, etc., belonging to the Society was 5,922 
 francs, 66 centimes. 
 
 The value of their goods and raw material amounted to 22,972 
 francs 28 centimes. 
 
 The cash-box of the Society contained bills for 3,540 francs. 
 Open credits, almost all good, amounted to 5,861 francs 99 cen- 
 times. 
 
 Their stock, therefore, amounted to 38,296 francs 93 centimes. 
 
 The Society only owed 4,737 francs 80 centimes of ordinary busi- 
 ness debts, and 1,65 francs to eighty well-wishers to the Associa- 
 tion among workingmen in the same trade, for small loans ad- 
 vanced to the Association at its commencement. 
 
 The net balance in favour of the Society was therefore, 31,- 
 909.13 francs. 
 
 Since then the Association has never ceased to flourish. 
 
THE ECONOMICAL QUESTION. 135 
 
 erty by shedding their own blood, are those which best 
 know how to preserve it, so your associations will de- 
 rive a better and more durable profit from the capital 
 acquired through your own labour, watchfulness, and 
 economy, than from that obtained from any other 
 source. This is the nature of things. The Working- 
 men's Associations which were founded with govern- 
 mental aid in Paris in 1848 prospered far less than 
 those whose first capital was the fruit of the men's 
 own sacrifices. 
 
 But, although I — loving you too earnestly for servile 
 adulation — thus admonish you of the points of weak- 
 ness which either exist or may arise among you, and 
 exhort you to self-sacrifice, this in no way diminishes 
 the duties of others towards you. 
 
 Those to whom circumstances have granted wealth 
 ought to understand this. They ought to understand 
 that the emancipation of your class is a part of the 
 Providential design, and that it will be accomplished 
 whether with them or against them. Many of them 
 do understand it, and amongst these, if you give them 
 proofs of an earnest and determined will, and of an 
 honest intelligence, you will find help in your under- 
 takings. They can — and if they are once convinced 
 that your endeavour after Association is not the de- 
 sire of a day, but the faith of a majority among you 
 — chey will smooth your path towards obtaining 
 credit, either by advances of money, by establishing 
 banks giving credit to collective bodies of workmen 
 for work to be done, or possibly, by admitting you to a 
 share in the profits-of their establishments, as an inter- 
 mediate step between the past and future, which 
 might probably enable you to put together the small 
 
136 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 amount of capital necessary for the foriration of an 
 independent Association. 
 
 In Belgium, banks, called Banks of Anticipation, or 
 Banks of the People, already exist, offering such facili- 
 ties as I have described. In Scotland, also, I believe, 
 there are many banks willing to give credit to any 
 man of known probity, ready to pledge his own hon- 
 our, and able to offer the security of one other indi- 
 vidual of equally good character. And the plan of 
 admitting ,the workmen to a participation in the 
 profits of the business has already been adopted by 
 several employers with remarkable success. 1 
 
 1 In Paris, for instance, the house-painting establishment of M. 
 Leclaire is founded upon this principle, and is well-known fox its 
 prosperous condition. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 But the State, the Government — an institution only 
 legitimate when based upon a mission of education 
 and progress not yet understood— the State has a sol- 
 emn duty towards you, a duty which will be easy of 
 fulfillment when we have a really National Govern- 
 ment, the Government of a free and united people. . 
 
 A vast series of means of help might be bestowed 
 by the Government upon the people, by which the 
 social problem might be solved without spoliation, 
 violent measures or interference with the wealth pre- 
 viously acquired by any of its citizens, and without 
 exciting that immoral and unjust antagonism between 
 class and class, fatal to the national welfare, which- 
 visibly retards the progress of France at the present 
 day. 
 
 The following would be important and powerful 
 modes of assistance : 
 
 The exercise of a moral influence in favour of the- 
 association of workingmen by the publicly manifested 
 approval of the Government agents, by a frequent dis- 
 cussion of their fundamentary principles in the House- 
 of Representatives, and by legalizing all the volun- 
 tary associations constituted on the basis indicated 
 above. 
 
-I38 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 Improved methods of communication, and the aboli- 
 tion of the obstacles now impeding the free convey- 
 ance of produce. 
 
 The establishment of public magazines and dep6ts 
 in which the approximate value of the goods or mer- 
 chandise consigned having been ascertained, the As- 
 sociations should receive a document or receipt nego- 
 tiable in the manner of a bank-bill, by which means 
 the Associations would be enabled to carry on their 
 affairs without the ruinous necessity of an immediate 
 sale without regard to prices. 
 
 The concession of the execution of necessary pub- 
 lic works to Workingmen's Associations upon equal 
 terms to those granted to individual contractors. 
 
 The simplification of judicial forms, justice being at 
 present ruinously costly, and too often inaccessible to 
 the poor. 
 
 Legal facilities given for the sale and transfer of 
 landed property. 
 
 A radical transformation of the system of taxation, 
 by the substitution of one sole tax upon income for 
 the present complex and expensive system of direct 
 and indirect taxation. This would give public and 
 practical sanction to the principle of the sacredness of 
 human life, for as neither labour, progress, nor the 
 fulfillment of duty are possible without life, a given 
 amount of money, the amount judged necessary to the 
 maintenance of life, should be exempt from all taxa- 
 tion. 
 
 But there are further means : 
 
 The secularization or appropriation of ecclesiastical 
 property by the State — a thing not at present to be 
 thought of, yet, nevertheless, inevitable in the future, 
 
CONCLUSION. 139 
 
 When the State shall assume its true educational mis- 
 sion — will place a vast sum of wealth in the hands of 
 the nation. To this may be added the value of hith- 
 erto unreclaimed land, and the profits of railways 
 and other public enterprises, the administration of 
 which should be in the hands of the State; the value 
 of the landed property belonging to the communes,' 
 the value of property now descending by collateral 
 succession beyond the fourth degree, and which 
 should revert to the State, and many other sources of 
 wealth which it is unnecessary here to enumerate. 
 
 Suppose all this mass of wealth and resources 
 accumulated in the formation of a National Fund, to 
 be consecrated to the intellectual and economic prog- 
 ress of the whole country. Why should not a con- 
 siderable portion of such a fund be employed (proper 
 provision being made to guard against its wasteful 
 use or dissipation) as a Fund of Credit, bearing inter- 
 est at one and a half or two per cent., to be distrib- 
 uted to the Voluntary Workingmen's Associations, 
 constituted according to the bases indicated above, and, 
 giving evidence of morality and capacity? This sum 
 of capital to be held sacred, not merely to the promo- 
 tion of labour in the present generation, but in futur- 
 ity ; its operation being upon so vast a scale as to 
 ensure compensation for the occasional inevitable 
 losses it would have to sustain. 
 
 1 This property belongs legally to the communes, morally to the 
 poor of the communes. I do not mean that such property should 
 be taken from the communes, but that it should be consecrated to 
 the poor of each commune, and thus constituted, under the super- 
 vision of elective communal councils, the inalienable Capital of 
 Agricultural Associations. 
 
140 THE DUTIES OP MAN. 
 
 The distribution of the Fund of Credit otigj^t not 
 to be in the hands either of the Governments/Or of a 
 National Central Bank, but of local Banks^tdminis- 
 tered by elective Municipal Councils, under tlj 
 supervision of the Central Government. ~ K f.' : -' 
 
 Without subtracting, anything from? tine a.ciiia.1' 
 wealth of any existing class, and without/ enriching 
 any single class through the medium of that Sanation; 
 which, being contributed by all citizens, shofi|d' be, 
 employed for the advantage and benefit qf r ali ; '/such 
 a series of measures as are here suggested," by diffus- 
 ing credit, increasing and improving t production, 
 compelling a diminution of the rate of interest, 
 and intrusting the progress and continuity of (rabour 
 to the zeal and interest of the producer's, wdulef' re- 
 place the limited and ill-directed sum#of weajftlt at 
 present concentrated in a few hands, ./by a wealthy 
 nation, directress of its own production ; aftd ,cori- T 
 sumption. 
 
 Such, Workingmen, is your future. You mayiasteri 
 this future. Conquer for yourselves . your" coun- 
 try, and a truly popular Government, the representa- 
 tive of your collective life and mission. Organize 
 yourselves in a vast league of the people, so that your 
 voice shall be the voice of the million, not merely of a 
 few individuals. Truth and justice will be on your 
 side, and the Nation will listen to you. 
 
 But, be warned! and believe the words of a man 
 who has been earnestly studying the course of events, 
 in Europe during the last thirty years, and whp has 
 seen the holiest enterprises fail in the hour of prom-: 
 ised success through the errors or immorality of their 
 supporters. You will never succeed unless^through 
 
CONCLUSION. 141 
 
 your own improvement. You can only obtain the exercise 
 of your rights by deserving them through your own 
 activity and your own spirit of love and sacrifice. 
 If you seek your rights in the name of duties fulfilled 
 or to fulfill, you will obtain them. If you seek them 
 in the name of selfishness, or any theory of happiness 
 and well-being propounded by the teachers of mate- 
 rialism, you will never achieve other than a momen- 
 tary triumph, to be followed by utter delusion. 
 
 They who appeal to you in the name of well-being 
 and happiness, will deceive and betray you. They 
 seek only their owri well-being and happiness, and 
 merely desire to unite with you as an element of 
 strength wherewith to overcome the obstacles in their 
 own path. When once they have obtained their own 
 rights through your help, they will abandon the 
 effort to obtain yours in order to enjoy their own. 
 
 Such is the history of the last half-century, and the 
 name of this last half-century is, Materialism. 
 
 Sad story of blood and sorrow! I have seen them 
 in my own land — these men who denied God, relig- 
 ion, virtue, and sacrifice, and spoke only in the name 
 of the right to happiness and enjoyment — I have seen 
 them advance boldly to the struggle with the words 
 People and Liberty on their lips, and unite with us 
 men of a better faith, who imprudently admitted 
 them in our ranks. As soon as a first victory, or the 
 opportunity of some cowardly compromise, opened 
 the path of enjoyment to them, they forsook the 
 cause of the people, and became our bitterest enemies 
 the day after. A few years of danger and persecu- 
 tion were sufficient to weary and discourage them. 
 
 And wherefore should they, men without any con- 
 
I42 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 scientious belief in a Law of Duty, without faith in 
 a mission imposed upon man by a Supreme Power, 
 have persisted in sacrifice even to the last years of 
 Hfe? 
 
 And I have seen, with deep sadness, the sons of 
 the people, educated in materialism by those men, 
 turn false to their mission and their future, false to 
 their country and themselves, betrayed by some fool- 
 ish, immoral hope of obtaining material happiness, 
 through furthering the caprice or interest of a des- 
 potism. 
 
 I have seen the workingmen of France stand by, 
 indifferent spectators of the coupd'itat of the second of 
 December, because all the great social questions had 
 dwindled in their minds into a question of material 
 prosperity; and they foolishly believed that the 
 promises, artfully made to them by him who had 
 destroyed the liberty of their country, would be kept. 
 
 Now they mourn over their lost liberty, without 
 having acquired even the promised material well- 
 being. 
 
 No; without God, without the sense of a moral law, 
 without morality, without a spirit of sacrifice, and 
 by merely following after men who have neither 
 faith, nor reverence for truth, nor holiness of life, 
 nor aught to guide them but the vanity of their own 
 systems — I repeat it with deep conviction — you will 
 never succeed. You may achieve tmeutes, but you 
 will never realize the true Great Revolution you and 
 I alike desire — a revolution, not the offspring and 
 illusion of irritated selfishness, but of religious con- 
 viction. 
 
 Your own improvement and that of others j this must 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 143 
 
 be the supreme hope and aim of every social trans- 
 formation. 
 
 You cannot change the fate of man by merely em- 
 bellishing his material dwelling. You will never in- 
 duce the society to which you belong to substitute a 
 system of Association for a system of salary and 
 wages, unless you convince them that your associa- 
 tion will result in improved production and collec- 
 tive prosperity. And you can only prove this by 
 showing yourselves capable of founding and main- 
 taining associations through your own honesty, 
 mutual good-will, love of labour, and capacity of 
 self-sacrifice. 
 
 In order to progress, you must show yourselves 
 capable of progress. 
 
 Tradition, Progress, Association. These three 
 things are sacred. Twenty years ago I wrote : 
 
 " I believe in the grand voice of God which the 
 Ages transmit to us through the universal tradition 
 of Humanity, and it teaches me that the Family, the 
 Nation, and Humanity, are the three spheres in 
 which the human individual is destined to labour for 
 the common good towards the moral perfection of 
 himself and others. 
 
 " It teaches me that property is destined to be tne 
 manifestation of the material activity of the individ- 
 ual, of his share in the transformation of the physical 
 world; as the franchise is the manifestation of his 
 share in the administration of the political world. 
 
 " It teaches me that the merit or demerit of the 
 individual, before God and man, depends upon his 
 use of these rights; and it teaches me that all these 
 things, being elements of human nature, are peren- 
 
144 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 nially modified and transformed as they gradually 
 approach more closely to that ideal of which our 
 souls have prevision— but that they can never be can- 
 celled nor destroyed. 
 
 " It teaches me that the dreams of Communism, of 
 the annihilation or absorption of the individual in the 
 social whole, have never been more than fleeting inci- 
 dents in the life of the human race, reappearing 
 momentarily in every intellectual and moral crisis, 
 but incapable of realization except upon a trifling 
 scale, as in the Christian Monasteries and Convents. 
 
 " I believe in the eternal progressive life of God's 
 creature; in the progress of Thought and Action, not 
 only in the man of the past, but in the man of the 
 future. I believe that it is of little comparative im- 
 port to determine the form and method of the future 
 progress, but that it is of great import to open up all 
 the paths of progress by bestowing upon mankind a 
 truly religious education which will enable them 
 to complete it. 
 
 " I believe that we can never make man worthier, 
 more loving, nobler, or more divine — which is in fact 
 our end and aim on earth — by merely heaping upon 
 him the means of enjoyment, and setting before him 
 as the aim of life that irony which is named happi- 
 ness. 
 
 " I believe in Association as the sole means we pos- 
 sess of realizing progress, not merely because it mul- 
 tiplies the action of the productive forces, but because 
 it tends to unite all the various manifestations of .he 
 human mind, and to bring the life of the individual 
 into communion with the collective life of the whole, 
 and I know that Association will never be fruitful of 
 
CONCLUSION. 145 
 
 good except among free men and free peoples, con- 
 scious and capable of their mission. 
 
 " I believe that man should be able to eat and live 
 without having every hour of his existence absorbed 
 by material labour, so that he may be able to culti- 
 vate the superior faculties of his nature; but I listen 
 with dread to those who tell you that enjoyment is 
 your right, and material well-being your aim, because I 
 know that such teachings can only produce egoists, 
 and that these doctrines have been in France, and 
 threaten to be in Italy, the destruction of every noble 
 idea, of every sacrifice, and of every pledge of future 
 greatness. 
 
 " The life-destroying evil of Humanity at the present ■; 
 day is the want of a common faith, a common 
 thought, accepted and admitted by all men, and ^ 
 which shall relink earth to Heaven, the Universe 
 with God. Deprived of this common faith, man has 
 bowed down before lifeless matter and become a 
 worshipper of the idol Self-interest. And the first 
 priests of that fatal worship were Kings, Princes, 
 and evil Governments. They invented the horrible 
 formula of each for himself, for they knew that it 
 would increase selfishness, and that there is but one 
 step between the egoist and the slave." 
 
 Workingmen, brothers ! avoid that step ! Your 
 future depends upon this. 
 
 Yours is the solemn mission to prove that we are 
 all the sons of God, and brethren in Him. You can 
 only prove this by improving yourselves, and fulfill- 
 ing your duty. 
 
 I have pointed out to you, to the best of my power, 
 what your duties are, the most important being those 
 
 
146 THE DUTIES OF MAN. 
 
 owed to your country. The amelioration of your 
 present condition can only result from your partici- 
 pation in the political life of the Nation. Until you 
 can obtain the franchise, your wants and aspirations 
 will never be truly represented. 
 
 On the day in which you should follow the ex- 
 ample of too many French Socialists, and separate 
 the social from the political question, saying : " We 
 will work out our own emancipation, whatever be the 
 form of Institution by which our country is governed " 
 — that day you would have yourselves decreed the 
 perpetuity of your own social servitude. 
 
 And in bidding you farewell, I will remind you of 
 another duty not less solemn than that which binds 
 you to achieve and preserve the freedom and unity of 
 your Country. 
 
 Your complete emancipation can only be founded 
 and secured upon the triumph of a Principle — the 
 principle of the Unity of the Human Family. 
 
 At the present day one half of the Human Family 
 — that half from which we seek both inspiration and 
 consolation, that half to which the first education of 
 childhood is entrusted — is, by a singular contradic- 
 tion, declared civilly, politically, and socially unequal 
 and excluded from the great Unity. 
 
 To you who are seeking your own enfranchisement 
 and emancipation in the name of a Religious Truth, 
 to you it belongs to protest on every occasion and by 
 every means against this negation of Unity. 
 
 The Emancipation of Woman, then, must be re- 
 garded by you as necessarily linked with the emanci- 
 pation of the workingman. This will give to your 
 endeavours the consecration of a Universal Truth. 
 
A CLEAR AND HOPEFUL EXPOSITION 
 OF TOLSTOT'S TEACHINGS 
 
 " Students of the master will find this little book indispen- 
 sable." — San Francisco News-Litter. 
 
 TOLSTOY AND 
 HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Essays by AYLMER MAUDE 
 
 Each essay in this volume expresses, in one form 
 or other, Tolstoy's views of life; arid the main object 
 of the book is- not to praise his views but to explain 
 them. Being the only Englishman who, in recent 
 years, has had the advantage of intimate personal 
 intercourse, continued over a period of some years, 
 with Tolstoy, Mr. Maude is well qualified for his 
 present work. 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Introduction to " T^ie Slavery 
 
 of Our Times ' ' 
 The Tsar's Coronation 
 Right and Wrong 
 War and Patriotism 
 Talks With Tolstoy 
 
 " Any one who takes up this delightful series of essays will 
 not willingly lay it down without at least the determination to 
 finish it.'.* — British Friend, 
 
 " Mr. Maude's long and intimate acquaintance with Tolstoy 
 enables him to speak with knowledge probably not possessed by 
 any other Englishman." — Morning Post. 
 
 I2mo, Cloth, 220 pages. Price, $1.00 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Publishers 
 NEW YORK, and LONDON' 
 
 Biography of Tolstoy 
 
 Tolstoy's Teachings 
 
 An Introduction to " What 
 
 Is Art?" 
 How "Resurrection" Was 
 
 Written 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 "A Great Book of a Great Epoch" 
 
 EDWfN MARKHAM says : "It has style, insight, high seri- 
 ousness, spiritual passion. Itiso\ great booh of a great epoch." 
 
 JULIAN HAWTHOBNE sayp: "Be is a voice spooling unfa- 
 miliar things, wit/i good emphasis and discretion." 
 
 CHARLES H.PARKHZTRST, D.D., says; "An interesting, 
 stimulating, startling, and, all in all, vMnderfiilibook," 
 
 THE RELIGION 
 OF DEMOCRACY 
 
 A Memorandum of Modern Principles 
 
 Bev. Philip Moxom, D.D.: " It ie great in that it clearly 
 belongs, as do few books in a century, to the prophetic literature. 
 of the world." 
 
 George Hodges, D.D., Dean Episcopal Theol. School* Cam- 
 bridge, j&Iass.: " It differs from the current sociology as Carlyle's 
 French Revolution differs from the history of the schools. . . . 
 The reader never fails to be (stimulated and_ strengthened." 
 
 Ella Wheeler fVUetxe: " It is a clarion call to a higher civili- 
 zation." 
 
 Boston Transcript: "Probes as deep as Carlyle, and smites 
 with the strength of Raskin. . . ." 
 
 The Sun, Baltimore: "There is strength in this book— the 
 strength of a crusade, who strikes boldly arid goes straight to, 
 the point." 
 
 T. T. Munger, I>.D.: ."A brilliant, searching book, that 
 ■ reminds one of ; Sartor Resartus.' "' 
 
 lBmo, Cloth. Price, $1.00. Pout-paid 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY, Pub'rs 
 
 44-60 East 33d Street, New York, 
 
CORNELL UNIVER ITY LIBRARY 
 
BJ 
 
 ^7