The liberation of science from the Church's yoke-and consequently also of ethical teachings,-came about in France approximately at the same time as in England. The French thinker, Erné Descartes, took the same lead in this movement as did Francis Bacon in England, and their principal works appeared almost simultaneously.1 But due to various causes, the French movement took a somewhat different turn from the English; and in France, libertarian ideas penetrated to much wider circles and exercised a much deeper influence throughout Europe than the movement originated by Bacon, which created a revolution in science and in scientific speculation. The liberating movement in France began at the end of the sixteenth century, but it followed a path different from that in England where it took the form of the Protestant movement and of the peasant and townsfolk revolution. In France the Revolution broke out only at th...
God and the State by Michael Bakunin WITH A PREFACE BY CARLO CAFIERO AND ELISÉE RECLUS First American Edition Price 50 Cents MOTHER EARTH PUBLISHING ASSOCIATION 10 East 125th Street New York City Preface to the First French Edition One of us is soon to tell in all its details the story of the life of Michael Bakunin, but its general features are already sufficiently familiar. Friends and enemies know that this man was great in thought, will, persistent energy; they know also with what lofty contempt he looked down upon wealth, rank, glory, all the wretched ambitions which most human beings are base enough to entertain. A Russian gentleman related by marriage to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one of the first to enter that... (From : Anarchy Archives (The text is from Michael Bakunin....)
Anarchism, like Socialism in general, and like every other social movement, has not, of course, developed out of science or out of some philosophical school. The social sciences are still very far removed from the time when they shall be as exact as are physics and chemistry. Even in meteorology we cannot yet predict the weather a month, or even one week, in advance. It would be unreasonable, therefore, to expect of the young social sciences, which are concerned with phenomena much more complex than winds and rain, that they should foretell social events with any approach to certainty. Besides, it must not be forgotten that men of science, too, are but human, and that most of them either belong by descent to the possessing classes, and are steeped in the prejudices of their class, or else are in the actual service of the government. Not out of the universities, therefore, does Anarchism come. As Socialism in general, Anarchism was born among the peo...