Author Description

Contents. I. Two fundamental tendencies in Society: the popular and the governmental. - The Kinship of Anarchism and the Popular-creative Tendency II. The Intellectual Movement of the XVIII century; its fundamental traits: the investigation of all phenomena by the scientific method. - The Stagnation of Thought at the Beginning of the XIX century. - The Awakening of Socialism: its influence upon the development of science. - The Fifties III. Auguste Comte's Attempt to build up a Synthetic Philosophy. - The causes of his failure: the religious explanation of the moral sense in man IV. The Flowering of the Exact Sciences in 1856-62. - The Development of the Mechanical World-Conception, embracing the Development of Human Ideas and Institutions. - A Theory of Evolution V. The Possibility of a New Synthetic Philosophy. - Herbert Spencer's attempt: why it failed. - The Method not sustained. - A False Conception of "The Struggle for Existence." VI. The Causes of this Mistake. - The Teaching of the Church: "the World is steeped in Sin." - The Government's inculcation of the same view of "Man's Radical Perversity." - The Views of Modern Anthropology upon this subject. - The Development of forms of Life by the "Masses," and the Law. - Its Two-fold Character VII. The Place of Anarchism in Science. - Its Endeavor to Formulate a Synthetic Conception of the World. - Its Object VIII. Its origin. - How Its Ideal is Developed by the Natural-Scientific Method IX. A Brief Summary of the Conclusions Reached by Anarchism: Law. - Morality.-Economic Ideas - The Government X. Continuation:-Methods of Action. - The Understanding of Revolutions and their Birth.-The Creative Ingenuity of the People.-Conclusion