Egoism Vol. I. No. 8.

Pointers.

J. Wm. Lloyd has “known EGOISM,” and bears again and again. May he multiply and replenish the earth with Egoistic song. Some enthusiastic compliments for his poetry reach us.

Owing to the exactions of more imperative work, Tak Kak has been unable to contribute his usual article. He hopes, however, to continue them soon. That they are the backbone of this paper need scarcely be mentioned when it appears without one.

Julia Huff, one of EGOISM’s Kansas subscribers, sat with a leg on each side of her race horse and rode it to victory at a fair in that state recently. To thus face the conventional tyrant would not have been slow even though the horse had been last in the race.

“My Uncle Benjamin,” by Claude Tillier, is Benj. R. Tucker’s latest translation from the French. It is a novel of humor, realism, satire, philosophy, which was brought to Mr.Tucker’s notice by George Schumm. We have not seen it, but Mr. Tucker strongly recommends it to his readers in “Liberty,” which is a sufficient guarantee for every radical to order one. It contains over 800 pages, and sells for 351.00 bound in cloth or 50 cents in paper cover. We will have it by the time this reaches our readers, and will furnish it at the above price.

As has been heretofore remarked, the person of W. S. Boll sometimes displaces some of the atmosphere of this large office, and from him we learn that “Fair Play” is to appear by January 1. Of this we are heartily glad. We had feared that those veterans were weary of getting out a first-class radical paper almost at their own expense, only to draw the denunciation of slush swilling gushers. But we are glad to have more good company in the attempt to pound sand into the world’s rat hole of blind emotion. May support hover there and—here!

A friend who is in a position to know more of Hugo Bilgram’s ideas than was gathered by EGOISM from his article on the “Fallacy of Anarchism,” in the “Twentieth Century” of Oct. 2, says we were a little unjust to Mr. Bilgram in our criticism of him in the November number of this paper. For this the critic is sorry because it places him in a disadvantageous position in the eyes of other people as well as Mr. Bilgram, when the injustice is known. The writer solicits Mr. Bilgram’s sympathy by congratulating him on & forthcoming position that it is said will be sound.

We again call our readers’ attention to “Free Political Institutions,” advertised on the last page of this paper. So far a solitary order is the result of our advertising. If Anarchism succeeds it will be through its principles being embraced by all the intelligent men and women of the country. These can be reached more effectively by this pamphlet than by many times its cost in any literature that we have read. We desire to see the pamphlet circulated, and do not seek orders for their commercial value; if it is more convenient, order it from the publisher, Benj. R. Tucker, Box 3366 Boston, Mass. It may also be had from Fair Play Publishing Company, Lock Box 353 Sioux City, Iowa. Whoever is interested in spreading the light will be glad their attention was called to it if they read it.

A subscriber has kindly sent us a quotation from the address of President E. Benjamin Andrews, of Brown University, delivered before the Unitarian Ministers’ Institute in Salem, Mass, Oct. 14, in which he says: “A thoroughly enlightened Egoism in ethics would not necessarily be a fatal basis for a social philosophy.” When such an elite scholar and we horse-logic wage slaves agree on a principle so fundamental, there is hope for a better social adjustment even though there be no probability of mutual admiration. Benj. R. Tucker delivered a masterly address on the “Relation of the State to the Individual,” before the same audience. It is not improbable that Mr. Andrews was stimulated to his declaration by Mr. Tucker’s address, as the latter assumed the Egoistic basis of ethics. Mr. Tucker’s address should be printed in leaflet form for distribution, but there is a limit to gratuitous labor even in radical propaganda.

In a two-sentence paragraph in the “Twentieth Century” of Dec. 4:, Hugh O. Pentecost says: “It has been said that if Cleopatra’s nose had been an inch longer, Antony would not have lost the Roman empire. In view of the situation in Ireland it is a pity that Mrs. O’Shea’s nose is of the normal size.” In view of the opportunities that Mr. Pentecost has had to learn better, if his sexual superstition had not been of an abnormal size, he would not have blamed Mrs. O’Shea for Ireland’s making a fool of itself by poking its Grundy nose into her private affairs. Neither would he have in his address of Nov. 23, questioned the need of the church and State, but not of their creature, the wife; nor have assumed that there could be a “higher” or more desirable plane of social existence than the law of equal freedom is susceptible of. “A mutual waiving of rights” in association is an absurdity, and its attempt communistic slavery. It is justified on the “higher” hypothesis only by those so religiously indiscriminating as to regard their own invasions as generously-granted opportunities for others to gratefully sacrifice to them.

A Bon Voyage.

A Sonnet

IN a letter to the editors of this paper, G. A. F. de Lespinasse, says: “I never read anything with more pleasure than ‘Mutual Banking,’ by Greene. It convinced me that if it could be realized, a death-blow would be given the State. Take away the money monopoly and the direct and indirect profits therefrom arising, and it would put an end to the raison d’etre of politicians. Authority without power to enforce it is not a desirable position, and it is a generally accepted axiom that the one who rubs the purse rubs the people. And the money monopolists and their spawn, the politicians, understood that as well as we therefore they passed an obstruction law levying ten per cent or more on all private issue banks, thereby making competition impossible. They understand that free money means free people. I think the Mutual Bank Propaganda should make it a special aim to expose the true inwardness of that law, and the reasons why it was passed at the time.” This gives us an opportunity to call our readers’ attention to the fact that we still have on hand a large number of “Citizens’ Money,” a lecture by Alfred B. Westrup, advertised on the eighth page of this paper. Some one or some number of people will have to be at the expense of distributing this kind of literature by tens of thousands before there will be a movement toward freedom inaugurated. We have our work and the cost of material fastened up in the edition, and are offering it at less than cost, by the dozen. We cannot afford to do more than this until publishing becomes immensely more profitable than it now is, or until we are convinced that free money would be vastly more beneficial to us than to our comrades.

Scientific, Against Religious Methods.

R. Henderson, of Trenton, Ontario, puts to me the following question:

By economy and self—denial I have saved $1,000. A young and industrious farmer in my neighborhood has been offered a farm at a price which will enable him to make money if he can secure 851,000 to complete the purchase, and he asks me to let him have my 351,000, for five years, at 7 per cent interest. Shall I take the risk and the interest, or say no to him, and leave him to grub along as a laborer for the rest of his days?

If you lend the one thousand dollars at seven per cent interest, at the end of five years you will have appropriated from among the young farmer’s goods three hundred and fifty dollars that you will have done nothing to earn. Meantime he will have performed for you the useful service of taking care of your thousand dollars and returning it to you, for which you will pay him nothing. You run no risk and do not labor, yet he pays you three hundred and fifty dollars. He performs for you a considerable service, but you give him nothing. You ask me to tell you what you should do under the circumstances. Pardon me; you are the only person who should or can decide that question. You may lend the money and rob your neighbor of three hundred and fifty dollars ; you may refuse to lend the money; you may lend the money and pay your neighbor for taking care of it for you; or you may lend it without either charging for its use or paying for its care. Either one of these things you may do. What you should do is to pursue the course that will make you happiest. Sit down with yourself and decide whether to rob your neighbor or to help him will make you happier. When you have decided, do what gives you the most happiness. This is what you should do, and what you will do.—Hugh O. Pentecost in “Twentieth Century.”

Mr. Pentecost’s answer to Mr. Henderson is very unsatisfactory. He tries to inculcate Altruism as a means of solving the money question, while at the same time he recommends Egoism and is considerable of an Egoist himself. It is the very essence of Egoism that if the ends sought by the Altruist are ever attained they will be reached through Egoism. Liberty may culminate in the supremacy of the Golden Rule, but it will not be through Altruism, and Mr. Pentecost should have answered the question from this point of view or invited some one else to do so. As it is, it would appear that unless money lenders are willing to forego interest it cannot be abolished.

Naturally he is not, but under the present money system, the borrower is at the mercy of the lender. To state the case in as few words as possible: the reason why borrowers who obtain loans from money lenders pay more than one-half of one per cent per annum (cost) interest, is because the money-power government has prohibited competition in the supply of money. When the borrowers are wise enough, they will repudiate the text books and the learned professors of political economy and establish Mutual Banks to issue money direct on their own collateral, thus abolishing the money lender. Interest will then cease, not because lenders will become Altruists, and refuse to take interest, but because they can’t get it. The Egoism of the borrower will induce him to cease paying interest when he don’t have to.

Those who are interested should co-operate to form an association to raise funds to pay the expenses of carrying the money question into the courts, affirming the right of associations to issue paper money. Let the association organize a Mutual Bank; issue money and it would immediately get into the state and federal courts. Then the association should protest and put in a plea that the State has no right to prohibit associative effort for mutual advantage. By this means the State is called upon to explain the object of such prohibition. As there is none except to sustain interest for money lenders, it will be an eye-opener for the people. The speeches against human slavery will appear tame compared with the efforts that can be launched against usury, for it is the basis of slavery. Even land monopoly is far less an evil than money monopoly.

The Religion of Emotionalism.

Christian devotees who change the ceremonial expression of their superstition by adopting the tenets of some other denomination, believe themselves prompted by different impulses and in the pursuit of new ideals. When the Agnostic finds them worshiping the same indefinable God, twisting their tenets from the same mythological authority, and sacrificing daily pleasure to the same abstractions,their mistake is obvious and he sees in them the same religious fanatics with no variation except the independence of at temping to choose for themselves. The same is true of the average Agnostic as viewed by the Egoist. He has studied little else than expositions of Bible absurdity, and is unconsciously so imbued with the ideals and impulses of church people that there is practically not difference enough be tween him and his Christian neighbor to constitute a well defined issue. He upholds the same political authority, has the same ideas on ethical policy, the same conception of sexual relations, and has like his neighbor, never even dreamed of economies.

Whether he is a Spiritualist, Materialist, spontaneous or contract lover, his movements are generally determined by his emotions only. Though he laughs at the martyr worship of the church, he must himself have a martyr to stir him to action. It must be a new and sweet-smelling one who is only theologically disreputable. Then with the help of old and respectable poems and the writings on issues now dead, he composes in prose or verse pathetic descriptions of the noble martyr in the dark and loathsome dungeon (too true, alas, for the ineffectual effort to prevent) and personal denunciations of the particular individual then serving popular prejudice through the State, and reads them with delight even in the small type from which they are printed, while he gloats over the envy of his comrades who can not outdo him without actually appealing to God and the agonies of the cross for “soul” stirring language and comparisons in which to clothe a literary effort. This is an especially rich field for the exercise of the emotional nature which circumstances combine to make the limited gift of woman. It is better than Jesus, for he flourished a forgetable long time ago, and partaking of the God character, does not seem so realistic and familiar-like as the flesh and blood so very like our own of modern martyrs who may be geographically located and gazed upon. She can glorify her hero now and be heard not only by envious competitors but often by the appreciative hero himself, which adds personal appreciation to idealistic adoration. After the most has been made of this opportunity for emotionalism and the poor who have been wrought upon by its rhetoric have divided their means of subsistence while the rich contributed a little pin money and much advice to the holy cause, there is no important issue except church myths or the protection of American industries, until more martyr’s blood flows.

When the industrial problem confronts the emotionalists they call meetings and read, with proper inflections and pauses, long essays and deliver, without proper inflections and pauses short speeches describing in technically true but highly tragical language the sufferings of the poor, along with a denunciation of monopolies in general and a recommendation of governmental monopoly of telegraph lines. Gould and the Vanderbilts receive due considerations, but the privilege granting institution that makes them, never. It requires slow, plodding, patient analyzing effort to get at causes, and is unaccompanied by the flourishing of palms and splitting the air with oratorical declamation for the amusement of emotional listeners and the gratification of the performer. It has no place for spasmodic notoriety, and its victories can receive little appreciation save from the achiever alone, for others cannot appreciate without doing the act themselves. This settles the pursuit of investigation upon its utility and its pleasure upon realization instead of upon the emotion-exercising anticipation which the church fosters in its heaven ideal, and some Agnostics unconsciously symbolize in the utopia of Nationalism. The faculty is characteristic of infancy, and is illustrated by the old story in which the child, impatient at waiting for seeds to grow into flowers, plucked some and stuck them into the prepared ground so as to have a flower garden at once. It was hard to find them wilting and have to plant seeds at last, but gardens are produced in no other way, as emotionalistic Socialists will find after the enthusiasm of epoch creating novels leaves the industrial problem to be solved by scientific methods, which might have been mastered while they were religiously exercising their emotions. They may boycott the “icy philosophic” and denounce his plumb-line policy, but for their pains will take their turn at the window of industrial solution so much later if at all.

The sexual question more than any other, is the field of Agnostic emotionalism. Here it is exercised either with orthodox rigidity or verbose fervency. The Agnostic is either & legal-contract—Bible-adultery-love-one-forever monogamist er he is a sacred-sentiment—high-holy-passion varietist lover who makes loving a specialty, that is, he is always industriously engaged soliciting sentiment and sympathy to the exclusion of many things obviously more useful.

The budding monogamist finds himself alone with his sexual faculty craving sympathy, and desires intensely to be loved by some one. The object and prize being located, the impulse is to possess it absolutely, forever, just as a starving man might feel without reasoning about it, that he should eat eternally when food could be procured. He does not think of enjoying the love of a lover as he would sunshine, scenery, or humor, but blindly desires to have it by owning the object from which it emanates; and about as reasonably as he might hope to retain all the scent from a perfume bag by owning the bag. Any contemplation of love must always produce this impulse, which will be followed by such reasoning as experience suggests. Usually, there is no definite experience until such an environment of circumstances is woven as makes it practically useless with the average mind. This gives us monogamy as the expression of an emotion circling in repetition instead of connecting with the utilitarian calculations of love pleasure characteristic of varietists. While monogamy is rigid and painfully staid, it is yet based on the blindest emotional impulse, like the desire for immortality, that of possessing forever the desire of the moment. It is the brother of the emotions experienced when contemplating inexaggerable space and its contents, or soaking in the glowing warmth of the sun; emotions which in one degree of mental complexity cause their subject to worship the sun, and in another to construct cosmogonies and theological systems of blatant worship, while in still another they prompt the poet to take the magnificence of the universe into partnership and celebrate.

The varietist emotionalist is a “nature”-theologian and a sexual devotionalist. He makes a religion of sexual love, and spends all his spare moments writing clothiers’ wrapperfuls of doughy love sentiments to absent female friends, while he is a constant menace to the peace of mind of local female acquaintances both in public and private. The most pronounced feature of his written declarations is his all-absorbing, soul-swallowing longing and undying devotion to the person addressed. When in her presence, the most noticeable thing is a continual affectional exacting and caterwauling, in sharp contrast with the conduct of the complacent Egoist who withdraws a half—impressed kiss from the lips of a companion to bring her a pillow or a drink of water which he finds her condition craves more.

When the average radical faces the real basis of ethics, if there is a particle of orthodoxy in his make-up it will show. It is then that he fondly embraces one superstition, if at no other time. He despises the selfishness of others as it effects his interests, and is unquestionably sure that the duty of “duty” to others is the foundation of social intercourse, justice, and fraternity. He feels this because in shaping the policy of his conduct toward others he considers their interests, but unconsciously only so far as he deems it necessary to insure no unfavorable reflection on him, otherwise he would become a slave to whoever should seize him first. It is too much trouble to analyze his theory applied. If he were to do so he would find that if it were possible to cause the rule to be universally observed, the result would be a universal service in each instance bestowed on those whose wants we could but imperfectly know, while our reward came from an equally disadvantageous source. All this while each would know exactly what he desired and be exerting the necessary energy to produce it, but owing to the insane idea of duty to others no one would be served. If the rule be not universally applied, some will reader service without receiving any and in this degree become the slaves of others, destroying equality. We may perform service for which we do not desire anything except the gratitude of the object upon which it is bestowed, or the satisfaction of relieving our consciousness of the knowledge of suffering, which it would otherwise appropriate. But this is Egoistic projection or defense, just the opposite of the idea of absolute debt consistent with the duty of “duty” to others. If, then, universal “duty to others” results only in the misdirection and waste of energy, and that which is not universal, in a corresponding degree of slavery, and service beneficial to others which is performed spontaneously for the actor’s pleasure is the opposite of the “duty” idea, there is but one other way in which we can rationally perform service for others, and that is in exchange. But this can in no way justify “duty” service, for if we may not exchange when and with whom we can and please, or if we may not at any time refuse to exchange, such exchange is slavery and equal freedom is denied. If exchange is voluntary the advantage is mutual, and is Egoistic projection. So all rational service for others is basebd in Egoism, and our emotional Altruist has a choice between slavery and insanity as a justification of his emotionalistic creed. But he has the multitude on his side and will assure himself by its approval and vehemently denounce the selfish sinner in genuinely religious style, while he will treat the argument of the Egoist with an abused air of silent contempt. He does not realize that the difference between his selfishness and that of the Egoist consists in the former’s being so blind that he cannot tolerate the thought of selfishness in others for a moment, while the Egoist remembering his own can justify the same in others on the same grounds. The religion of emotionalism is the strongest foe to a scientific habit of thought.

Editorial Vagaries.

Each individual pursues the purpose of his desire with all the tenacity of his make-up, and finds the rest of mankind good or bad in proportion to the help or resistance it offers him in the pursuit of his pleasure; that is, in so far as others are in regard to themselves as we are in regard to our‘selves, in that degree do we regard them as bad. The Egoist alone subjectively places himself in the objective and appreciates others’ conduct both with the interest of their motives and its effect on his interests, enabling him to see in the seeming evil of resistance the only hope for equality.

The extracts on the sixth and seventh pages of this paper, from “The Ruthless Sex” by Oscar Pay Adams in the “North American Review” for November, are reprinted by us because of the statement of facts contained, and not in approval of the author’s implied position that there is a difference, aside from a poor bargain, between the woman who sells her person for life, and the one who sells it on the “meals at all hours, day or night,” plan. We hold with the above author that to woman’s indifference is due any cruelty immediately connected with her actions, and that mental indolence is its cause. But we charge the temporary disability imposed upon her by childbearing as the cause of these, and find the mutual ignorance of man and woman responsible for the whole. As the world has gone, this disabled condition has imposed an inactivity upon woman which admitted of her doing such kinds of work only as could be done on the spot. It made protection by the male necessary under the circumstances, and generated a corresponding gratitude and sense of obligation on the part of the helpless female. These necessities, without an intelligent and determined resistance on the part of the disadvantaged female, easily led her to accept the routine of domestic drudgery and the resulting mental flaccidity complained of, while the increased responsibility of providing for her led the male to greater mental activity, and to a monopolizing of opportunities which tended to make independence still more difficult for woman even with physical ability and a determination to be independent.

Through time and invention came increased production, monopoly, and the resulting served and serving classes. This gave the females of the first, means and leisure, and without an industrial opportunity on which to exercise ambition, they easily adopted the “small profits and quick returns” activity of display in dress, which became a matter susceptible of sharp competition in gaining the favor of the males, upon whom they were dependent. This competition between themselves made them eager to take advantage of man’s vanity to have some one “faithful to him,” by making capital of the conduct of possible competitors who failed to pander to this exaction, and has finally led to all the ridiculous clatter about “virtuous,” and “fallen” women. Now, religious reformers appeal to the custom-fostered vanity of the former by lauding their “stooping” to raise the “fallen,” as charitable. The “raising,” presumably, would consist of employing such women as kitchen drudges at lower wages than furnish the sexually inexperienced only a semi-barbaric grade of living, beside of which even some of the later stages of prostitution seem a luxury. In addition to this the women would be expected to serve as worshipful oral monuments to their saviors’ magnanimity.

In the light of this position, industrial dependence is at the bottom of woman’s shortcomings as a responsible citizen, and the securing of the means of independence becomes the real question. Here it grows relatively large, touching as it does the whole field of economic and political freedom, but in the immediate interest of woman, some pertinent suggestions can be made in a limited space. The disability of reproduction is the first thing that places her at a disadvantage with the male of her class in the present civilization. Let her learn the lesson of intelligent Egoism, and be rid of the superstition of “duty.” Then let her see to it that her sex function shall not prevent her from competing with the male for an opportunity at every activity within her capacity. Let her shut right down on the reproductive industry until its reward shall in each case equal the expense, be it what it may. If those who would monopolize her industrial opportunity would not do an equal share, let the matter go until she could afford it as a luxury on her own account; she owes no sacrifice to the race, and can afford as well as man to let it stop. If reproduction cannot be maintained under equal conditions, let us have such conditions without it. But there is not the slightest danger of this; even men yield to resistance and make terms when it costs less to do so than otherwise. The possibilities of woman’s self-projection in every sense, under that ownership of her capacities which her resistance alone can secure for her, are yet undreamed of. Let her learn to manipulate her at least one commodity intelligently, and it will place her in a position to carve out for herself all that man enjoys of material luxury and mental prestige, instead of the slavery and lashing criticism which her present course of launching it upon the sea of blind emotion and superstition brings her. Resistance may be expensive at first, but it cannot cost more than the slavish imbecility of submission.

GOVERNMENT.

BY W. S. BELL.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; and are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

These declarations are nothing more than flattering sophistries and glittering generalities. In the first place they are not “self-evident” truths, because they are not truths at all. Men are not created equal; they are not equal intellectually, physically, or socially. They were not created equal because they were not “created.” They were not endowed by their creator, because they had no creator; they have no inalienable rights, because they have no natural rights whatever. Besides they have no rights that government does not destroy at any moment it wishes to dose; and as for government deriving its just powers from the consent of the governed, nothing could be farther from the truth.

One of our inherited delusions is that government protects us. Just how it does so, and from whom it protects us, is no particular concern of ours, as long as we have faith that it protects us. It is enough for the horny-handed sons of toil to pay their taxes and vote the straight ticket, without taxing their brains over such questions as “How does government protect?” His patriotic blood swells in his veins as the voter thinks of the never-to-be-overestimated vote he holds in bis hands. Even the president of the United States has no more than one vote! A Gould, or Vanderbilt, has but one vote. What a great honor to be thus made the peer of these millionaires! Poor dupe does not see that Gould and Vanderbilt can sway the votes of thousands by their position, and thousands by the dollars they put out. The voter quite often prays to heaven for his daily bread, and yet he is well assured that if Vanderbilt should catch him voting the opposite ticket, heaven would be powerless to send him bread. He knows too well that heaven has less to do with the bread question than Vanderbilt has, yet he continues to pray for it while keeping one eye on Vanderbilt.

The saintly Wanamaker knew full well that heaven could not assist him in getting votes. Heaven does not care a fig which party is in office. In view of the fact, St. John went out to raise $400,000, not for Christ’s sake, but for the Republican party’s sake. This episode constitutes a fine illustration of the beauty of democracy—of the value of the elective franchise, and how governments instituted among men derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Let us cast about us to see how it is that government protects us in life, liberty, and our pursuit of happiness. We are painfully conscious that it does nothing of the kind. At any time we can be pressed into military service against our will, and sent out to kill men whom we have never seen—men who have never done us any harm nor wished to do us any. We are conscripted into service and sent out to kill er be killed.—by the government which derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. When did you give your consent to be drafted by the government? When did you concede to government the right to make war? How does the arbitrary and irrepressible power of confiscation of property and the impressment of the individual harmonize with the doctrine of inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is coercing me to go to war to kill or be killed, and instance where governments derive their just powers from the “consent of the governed?” When did I consent to this arrangement?

Let us see how much protection the people have in the administration of justice in our courts. The workings of the police, the manipulation of the courts, jails, prisons, and other governmental institutions would never suggest to the meet acute observer the existence of inalienable rights, except it suggest the inalienable right of the government Officer. He certainly does not want to part with his office.

It is a well recognized principle of common law that there can be no crime without criminal intent. In all criminal cases of great importance, the motive of the accused is the thing that determines his guilt or innocence. In former times this principle was more fully recognized than it is now. The intention of the prisoner was the turning point in all criminal trials, great and small. The increasing arbitrary rulings of courts have changed this, so that now the question is not as to the intent of the actor, but only, did he violate the law.

“To accomplish this object they have in modern times held it to be unnecessary that indictments should charge, as by common law they were required to do, that an act was done ‘wickedly,’ ‘feloniously,’ ‘with malice aforethought,’ or in any other way that implied criminal intent, without which there can be no criminality; but that it is sufficient to charge simply that it was done, ‘contrary to the form of the statute in such case made and provided.’” (Lysander Spooner, “Free Political Institutions,” p. 36.)

It was too hard work for these public servants to be able to prove a malicious intent upon the part of the person arrested. The laws had become so numerous and artificial that it was impossible for judges and juries to get at the intention of the accused. Throwing a banana peel on the sidewalk is in some cities a criminal act; begging in the streets is a criminal act; having no business or no home is a criminal condition; sleeping in a stable, or in a ball-way, or in the public parks is criminal; working on Sunday is a criminal act in almost all states; allowing an automatic machine to be placed in front of your store, that will drop down a cigar after you drop in a nickle, if it works on Sunday, is & criminal act. This is almost as bad as the old Puritans who had such a holy horror of Sabbath breaking that according to Rev. Sam Peters:

But if automatic machines are a violation of the Sunday law because they take money for goods delivered, what shall we say about the organist and choir of a church, who work for pay. Also the preacher and policeman who work for pay. But I fancy someone shouting in my ear, “These are works of necessity and mercy!” And imagine myself shouting back the inquiry, “Who is it calls preaching and running boys into the station house, deeds of mercy and works of necessity but the preacher and policeman.” One stands for the state and the other the church, and these are the two legs that government stands on. They cheerfully exonerate themselves.

The preacher gives us hell and the policeman shoves us into jail, and this is what they call the “protection” of government. Some minds, however, are so obtuse as to be unable to see how these procedures guarantee us inalienable rights.

In our large cities thousands of inoffensive young people are annually run into the lockups for some very trivial affair, as shouting, firing off pistols or some such thing. The young boys are commonly locked up in cells with older criminals. There is no care taken to keep the innocent away from the company of the vilest and most depraved. The injury done a boy by thus locking him up, even for only twenty-four hours with a hardened felon, is irreparable. It is just in this way that society makes its own criminals. Here is where government shows itself to be a beast. It makes laws to prevent crime, and then in the administration of these laws it makes criminals.

A very large part of those run into the lockups over night are discharged in the morning. They are guilty of no crime. The verdict then must be that they were unjustly arrested. But does this blunder of the policeman teach him not to arrest innocent people afterwards? Do these false arrests induce the magistrates to instruct the police to cease this sort of public protection? Not at all. The old brutal method of clubbing the tipsy, or old, “or young, goes on now as it has heretofore. Suppose some man of large heart and still larger brain, and plead the case of an inexperienced person by saying, “There can be no crime without criminal intent,” the parrot answer would be that, “Ignorance of the law excuses no one.” This bald-headed fraud, has come down to us in the white livery of justice, from the blackhearted despotism of the past. “Ignorance of the law excuses no one.” Why they have just told us that government is instituted for our protection, and if the innocent are not to be protected, who then is’? “Ignorance of the law excuses no one.” The claw sticks out from the velvet paw of the beast in this infinitely damnable clap-trap sentence. Some old lawyer in a tight place gobbled the legal maxim, “Ignorance of the law excuses no one,” and since that thousands of young legal gobblers have gobbled the same infamous lie. When you see how the young, the poor, the orphan and helpless of all classes are mostly the victims of fines and punishment, is it not apparent that the great system of protective law is more like a spider’s web than it is a shield and defense? “The court of justice,” is a nice phrase, and looks harmless, nay seems beautiful to the unsophisticated mind. But so does a spider’s web. How soon all this wonderful mechanism changes when mister fly gets caught in its meshes. In the twinkling of an eye a great big—bellied spider skips over his beautiful web and weaves his toils about the poor victim. Goodbye, fly!

Were you ever taken into a court of justice as a culprit? Then you remember how everything changed as soon as you were arraigned. Not always, but usually the judge comes out from the sanctity of his secret chamber to be the spider in your case. There seems to be but one prevailing sentiment in a courtroom, and that is, “How much can be got out of the case?” If he is rich, in mine cases out of ten he can escape punishment, but he has to be quite free in the use of his money. Sometimes when courts are greedy, they postpone the trial from term to term and from year to year, and this is another of the self-evident proofs of the inestimable value of government protection. How notorious is the fact that an honest man cannot go into court and get justice. Justice (?) is not an inalienable right, but a commodity to be sold to the highest bidder. See how difficult it is to drug a rich rogue into court and have him convicted. In criminal cases where the accused is rich or has rich friends he generally goes free; or if found guilty his sentence is remarkably light, and even then he goes into the hospital, where he has but nominal duties, and the chances are that he will be pardoned by the governor, or set free on a writ of error. The law that is professedly the safeguard of our liberties has become the mailed hand of tyranny. The custodians of our peace and safety have turned themselves into robbers. The poor people are slow to discover that our great criminals are not the multitude of offenders who break laws for the most part artificial, and that our law-makers are the real criminals of society, because they use the powers entrusted to them for personal aggrandizement and political preferment. Having gained wealth and power as members of our state and United States legislatures, they have nothing before their eyes but their own emolument. (congressmen constantly squabble over the spoils. Just think of it. Our jails and our prisons are filled with the poor and our United States senate is filled with millionaires; men who fatten on the weakness, ignorance, and toil of the third estate.

(To be continued.)

Egographs.

Thoughtlessness does more harm than selfishness; the “tribute of a thoughtless yes,” is only equaled by a thoughtless No.

As the “brush of nature excels art,” so does the man of principle excel the politician.

Morality and duty, like charity (to be voluntary and spontaneous), should not only “begin,” but end “at home.”

Virtue is self-approval. What we approve of in ourselves we are anxious to see others do; so great is our anxiety in this respect that those who believe in majority rule pass laws to compel the minority to sacrifice their Individuality to “virtue,” “morality,” and “duty.”

It is a waste of energy to enforce an artificial law until the people are educated up to an intelligent understanding of the law, and then its enforcement is entirely unnecessary and superficial, as the free and full conception of a law by the people would place them above and beyond its power for either good or evil.

Self-appointed duties have the virtue of spontaneous voluntaryism; there never would have been an Ida Lewis known to the world had there been a law to compel her to the during acts of heroism—the saving of human life at the risk of her own. The lest of virtue in all our own actions is the voluntariness with which we perform the acts. It is the law alone which prevents the free exercise of self-appointed duties by stifling liberty. Not only are all our noblest acts the result of individual liberty, but also those of greatest utility. The volunteer fireman who rushes into a burning building and saves the life of woman or child, not only makes an heroic attempt but succeeds in virtue of the complete absence of a law or an obligation to compel his self-sacrifice and heroism. Had there been a law for the enforcement of such an act, the self-constituted life-preserver would have taken time for reflection, and hesitated before risking his life for others. In such an emergency “the man who hesitates is lost” with those he seeks to save, and the practical results with the hero are lost in the burning flames of authority.

Perfection causes carelessness. If a perfect government were possible, its effect would be to make people careless of their liberty, just as a perfect patent medicine to cure all diseases would tend to make people careless of their health; hence the utility of prevention in disease and the abolition and prevention of political authority in society. As prevention and abolition are insurance against diseases so is the abolition of authority a prevention of and an insurance against despotism.

What is economic liberty? A condition of society in which nobody gets something for nothing.

What is political sentimentalism? A politician delivering a Fourth of July Oration on Decoration Day, a ridiculous attempt to mix patriotism with the brotherhood of man.

What constitutes a leader? One who knows the rugged path of progress better than yourself, and none other should be followed.

What is love? An element in nature, which, like electricity, we know but little of except by its phenomena.

What is the phenomena of love? Under equal freedom in society, it is the attracting together of sympathetic and harmonious individuals. Under compulsion it is abeautiful, powerful, and pure stream of life dammed by law and abridged by authority, in which love is inverted, affection diverted, and harmony perverted.

What is hope? An attribute of the mind, which causes the “wish to be father to the thought”—thought and desire in preposession. Hope, when exercised without judgment, inclines the individual to be “carried away” by his feelings—optimism run riot and inclination rampant.

What is definition? A very precise and particular piece of business to engage in; one in which the definer or critic should never be above eriticism, for this reason I do not make myself an exception.

The Ruthless Sex.

If there is one more characteristic difference than another be ‘tween man and woman, it lies, as has often been noted,in the manner in which any adverse criticism directed against either sex is regarded by the members of the particular sex supposed to be aspersed. If it happens to be the feminine sex upon which the re marks have been made, our sisters arise as one woman to defend themselves. And why? Simply because each woman feels that she is individually attacked, that she is at fault, that the writer or Speaker is aiming directly at her. On the other hand, if it is the masculine sex which is criticism, man as a rule pays little or no attention to the matter. Generalities, he has found by experience hart no one in particular. No man’s individual vanity is wounded by what may be said in disparagement of his sex as a whole.

Passing from the sex to the individual, we find a different state of affairs. If in the intercourse of social life some woman is harshly criticised, do her sisters at once rally to her defense? Very seldom, it must be confessed. Instead, the word of disparagement is echoed, very faintly by a few women, Very distinctly by many more, and with a delicate ingenuity in the prolongation of the note of dispraise worthy of admiration from a purer artistic point of view. Let a man be disparaged or harshly spoken against, do we find as a rule his brother-men, those who know him well, uniting to swell the chorus of adverse speech? I think not. I think it is a well-established fact that men in their intercourse with one another display a chivalrous regard for their follows to a degree almost unknown among women. The loyalty to individuals which flourishes so vigorously amongst men seldom finds its counterpart among their sisters...... There are men who delight in stoning him who is down, as, on the other hand, there are women whose spirit of charity at such times is little short of angelic; but the sexes in the order named are not largely made up of such members. In spite, then, of some exceptions either way, the broad, distinctive fact remains that as a rule men are loyal to their fellows, however careless they may view any attack upon their sex, while women are disloyal to their sisters individually considered, but quickly resentful of any slight, real or supposed, which may be placed upon their sex.

One result of the persistency with which women make personal application of general assertions is a perpetual air of being on the defensive, which manifests itself often in the adoption of a pitiless code of judgment passed mentally or otherwise upon those about them. This of itself would not establish the truth of the assertion that women are more cruel than men, but it certainly has some force as an argument upon that side of the question.

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Indifference, according to Ruskin, is the sin of which woman is most guilty—an indifference which arises from that narrow habit of mind which is exclusively occupied with the present moment, which refuses or is unwilling to grasp any other than the purer personal aspect of it. Her sympathies are quickly aroused to what is immediately before her eyes, to what no mental effort is required to perceive,—as, for instance, a horse savagely beaten by its driver,—but it goes no further.

Suppose that we are riding upon a street-car and the horses are straining every nerve to pull the heavily-loaded car up some sharp rise of ground. A street corner is reached and a woman standing there signals the driver to stop his car for her convenience. Unless he has received positive orders not to stop going up bill, he obeys her (with considerable inward grumbling), and the horses, which have stood their ground with considerable difficulty during the delay, are forced to redouble their exertions in order to overcome the inertia resulting from the stopping of the car. That she could have signaled the car from the foot of the bill or from the top never occurs to the woman, who, desiring to get on at that especial point, has no thought of anything further, the pain and even suffering which she has occasioned the horses being a matter of no moment to her. Or supposing the car is not ascending an up-grade, but is moving along upon a level stretch of road when signaled to stop at a street corner. A few steps further on a woman stands waiting for the car to come exactly opposite to her. It does not seem worth her while for her to walk those few paces and get on the car at the point where it has stopped for the convenience of others, and thus save the horses which draw it the strain and discomfort of an extra stoppage. Here is an instance of her indifference resulting in cruelty. Such occurrences as these cited are not exceptional, as any person who has occasion to travel on street cars knows, but are happening hourly on every horse-railway line. And the average woman never perceives that anything is wrong in her practice in this regard until some one else, usually a man, has told her of it. She acknowledges that she has never thought of it before, and forgets all about it by the next time she gets on a car.

I might instance other examples of cruelty resulting from woman’s indifference, but those already named show the general character of those I have in mind. I pass on now to speak of a more flagrant kind of cruelty, springing from another cause. Miss Helen Gray Gene, in her poem, “The Tender Heart,” describes a young man, who is devoted to hunting, so wrought upon by the pathetic pleading of a girl, who quotes at length from the poets against the sin of killing the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field, that

It is not very long ago since the cry went up that certain species of birds were in danger of speedy extinction from Wholesale warfare made upon them in the interest of the milliners and their customers. A few women, be it said, had always by voice and example protested against a fashion which demanded such a sacrifice of animal life for its gratification; but it, was not until men had almost unanimously declared against it that any reform was accomplished. I fear there is very little reason to believe that, if fashion should again demand a sacrifice of birds, it {would not be offered by a large majority of women till_vigorous remonstrance on the part of the other sex induced the reform. But why should not women in general perceive the cruelty of such a fashion as quickly as men, and, not waiting to learn gentleness‚and mercy, from the so-called rougher sex, exclaim against it immediately? Is it because vanity supplemented indifference, in this case, with cruelty of the most unnecessary, indefensible kind as its consequence?

The cruelty of man—for I am not asserting that man is not cruel—springs from a motive which in itself is not to be altogether contemned. Ambition to a certain extent is desirable...... It is the excess of ambition in its many forms which provokes man’s cruelty.

Feminine cruelty is the outcome of less noble promptings, and, so it Would seem, arises from indifference, vanity, or jealousy, according to its degree,—sometimes from a fusing of all three,—and it is seldom held in check by reason.

I wish that I might end here, for if this were all there were to urge, and I bring forward net-hing that is new in this connection, the title of this paper°might With some reason be termed unjust and its implied assumption declared too sweeping to be true; but, O you women who cry out upon the cruelty.and selfishness of men; you who are defended from the storms of this world by the care of those rough men, and you who proudly defend yourselves without such aid; you who dwell as the daughters of Rings, and you who fare as those to whom toil is no stranger; O you women who are virtuous and honest, how are your hearts steeled against those sisters of years who stumbled en ways that seemed smooth enough to you, who fell where you have walked upright?

Have you defended that sister of yours whose good name has been assailed as earnestly as you have rushed to the defense of your sex when you fancied it was slandered? Have you refused to believe evil of her against whom some stone has been cast? Have you refused to record your sentence against one accused until her guilt was absolutely sure? Have you, when this last was proved, declared that guilt unpardonable and thrust the offender out from your life and from your thought forever? Have you stopped to help one of those who was weak where you were strong, who was tempted where you were not, er who fell because the way to her was rougher than you ever dreamed? Have you done all these things?

The judgments which man passes upon his fellows are tolerant where woman’s are narrow, because, instead of the one aspect of the question which she perceives, he sees many; they are merciful where hers are cruel, because he recognizes more fully the stress‘ of temptation and the complexity of motive which lead to transgression. There have been a few women who have helped their weaker Sisters to rise when they had fallen, but they are indeed few. The majority of women have done what they could to keep those who are down still in that position. They have refused to believe in the possibility of reform; they have withdrawn from all contact with those who have once found temptation greater than they could hear; they have, by their inflexible attitude, made a return to virtue nearly impossible on the part of those who have once turned from it. Who should be tenderer toward a woman’s sin than a virtuous woman, and who is harder? O you queens, who have with your virtuous hands thrust your weaker sisters still further in the mire; who have shown aversion where you might have shown mercy; who have hardened your hearts, that should have been soft with pity; who have turned coldly aside from those, your sisters, whom you might have saved, and gone your ways as though they were net; O you who have lifted from your heads the crown of gentleness and mercy that all your sex should wear, are you net “ruthless” indeed?—Oscar Fay Adams in the “North American Review” for December.

EGOISM’S PRINCIPLES AND PURPOSE.

EGOISM’s purpose is the improvement of social existence through intelligent self-interest. It finds that whatever we have of equal conditions and mutual advantage is due to a prevalence of this principle corresponding with the degree and universality of individual resistance to encroachment.

Reflection will satisfy all who are desirous of being guided in their conclusions by fact, that as organization itself is a process of absorbing every material useful to its purpose, with no limit save that of outside resistance, so must the very fact of its being a separately organized entity make it impossible for it to act with ultimate reference to anything but itself. Observation will show that this holds good throughout the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and that whatever of equality exists among members of a species or between different species has its source and degree in the resisting capacity, of whatever kind, which such member or species can exert against the encroachment of other members or species. The human animal is no exception to this rule. True, its greater complexity has developed the expedient of sometimes performing acts with beneficial results to others, but this is at last analysis only resistance, because it is the only means of resisting the withholding by others from such actor’s welfare that which is more desirable than that with which he parts. If, then, (he self-projecting faculty of mankind is such that it will in addition to the direct resistance common to the less complex animals, diplomatically exercise present sacrifice to further extend self, and it being a fact that equality depends upon equal resistance, diplomatic or otherwise, what are its chances in an absence of enlightenment in which the individuals of the majority so far from intelligently using this resisting power in their own behalf, do not even believe that they should do so? The result of a general conception so chaotic, would naturally be what we find: the generalization from the practical expediency of certain consideration for others, crystallized through the impulse of blind selfishness into a mysterious and oppressive obligation, credit for the observance of which gratifies the self-projecting faculty of the simple, while the more shrewd evade its exactions, and at every step from the manipulation of the general delusions of religious and political authority to the association of sexes and children at play, project themselves by exchanging this mythical credit for the real comforts and luxuries of the occasion, which the others produce. Thus in addition to the natural disadvantage of unequal capacity, the weaker are deprived through a superstition, of the use of such capacity as they have, as may be seen in their groping blindness all about us.

To secure and maintain equal conditions then, requires a rational understanding of the real object of life as indicated by the facts of its expression. It is plain that the world of humanity is made up of individuals absolutely separate; that life is to this humanity nothing save as it is something to one of these; that one of these can be nothing to another except as he detracts from or adds to his happiness; that on this is based the idea of social expediency; that the resistance of each of these individuals would determine what is socially expedient; that approximately equal resistance makes it equality, and on such continued and a universal resistance depends equality. This can leave no room for any sane action toward others but that of the policy promoting most the happiness of the acting Ego. Therefore EGOISM insists that the attainment of equal freedom depends upon a course of conduct-replacing the idea of “duty to others” with expediency toward others; upon a recognition of the fact that self-pleasure must be the final motive of any act; thus developing a principle for a basis of action about which there can be no misunderstanding, and which will place every person squarely on the merit of his or her probable interests, divested of the opportunity to deceive through pretension, as under the dominance of altruistic idealism. It will maintain that what is generally recognized as morality is nothing other than the expediency deduced from conflicting interests under competition; that it is a policy which, through the hereditary influence of ancestral experience, confirmed by personal experience, is found to pay better than any other known policy; that the belief that it is something other than a policy—a fixed and eternal obligation, outside of and superior to man’s recognized interests, and may not be changed as utility indicates, makes it a superstition in effect like any other superstition which causes its adherent-s to crystallize the expediency adopted by one period into positive regulations for another in which it has no utility, but becomes tyrannical laws and customs in the name of which persecution is justified, as in the fanaticism of any fixed idea.

Another part of its purpose is to help dispel the “Political Authority” superstition and develop a public sentiment which would replace State interference with the protection for person and property which the competition of protecting associations would afford. Then the State’s fanatical tyranny and industry crushing privilege would torture the nerves of poverty-stricken old age or pinch tender youth no more. The most disastrous interference of this monster superstition is its prohibition of the issuing of exchange medium on the ample security of all kinds of property, which at once would abolish speculative interest and practically set all idle hands at productive labor at wages ever nearing the whole product until it should be reached. The next interference is by paper titles to vacant land instead of the just and reasonable one of occupancy and use, which with the employment that free money would give, would furnish all with comfortable homes in a short time, and thereafter even with luxuries from like exertion. Following this is its patent privilege, customs robbery, protective tariff, barbarous decrees in social and sexual affairs; its brutal policy of revenge, instead of restitution, in criminal offenses, and finally its supreme power to violate the individual, and its total irresponsibility.