Élisée Reclus
“L’Anarchiste”, Almanach anarchiste pour 1902
By definition, the anarchist is the free man, one who has no master. The ideas that he professes are indeed his own through reasoning; his will, born of the understanding of things, is focused on a clearly defined goal; his acts are the direct realisation of his individual intent. Alongside all those who devoutly repeat the words of others or traditional sayings, who bend their being to the whim of a powerful individual, or, what is even more grave, to the oscillations of the crowd, he alone is a man, he alone is conscious of his value in the face of all these spineless and inconsistent things that do not dare to live their own lives.
But this anarchist who has morally freed himself from the domination of others and who never accustomed himself to any of the material oppressions that usurpers impose on him, this man is not yet his own master as long as he has not emancipated himself from his irrational passions. He must know himself, free himself from his own whim, from his violent impulses, from all his prehistoric animal survivals, not to kill his instincts, but to bring them into harmony with the whole of his conduct. Freed from other men, he must also be freed from himself to see clearly where the truth he seeks is to be found, and how he will move towards it without making a movement that does not bring him closer to it, without saying a word that does not proclaim it.
If the anarchist comes to know himself, by that very fact he will know his environment, men and things. Observation and experience will have shown him that by themselves all his firm understanding of life, all his proud will remains powerless if he does not associate them with other understandings, with other wills. Alone, he would be easily crushed, but, having become strong, he groups himself with other forces, constituting a society of perfect union, since all are linked by the communion of ideas, sympathy and goodwill. In this new social body, all comrades are so many equals, giving each other the same respect and the same expressions of solidarity. From now on they are brothers and the thousand revolts of the isolated are transformed into a collective demand, which sooner or later will give us the new society, Harmony.