I. Why does a spider sometimes make a close cobweb, and sit in the very middle of its nest, and at other times leave its nest and start a new spider-web? The spider makes its cobweb according to the weather, both the present and the future weather. Looking at a spider, you can tell what kind of weather it is going to be: if it sits tightly in the middle of the cobweb and does not come out, it means that it is going to rain. If it leaves the nest and makes new cobwebs, it is going to clear off. How can the spider know in advance what weather it is going to be? The spider's senses are so fine that as soon as the moisture begins to gather in the air,—though we do not yet feel it, and for us the weather is clear,—for the spider it is already raining. Just as a naked man will feel the moisture, when a man in his clothes does not, so it is already raining for a spider, while for us it is only getting ready to rain. II.
Published by Freiheit Publishing Association New York Among all mental diseases which man has systematically inoculated into his cranium, the religious pest is the most abominable. Like all things else, this disease has a history; it only regrettable that in this case nothing will be found of the development from nonsense to reason, which is generally assumed to be the course of history. Old Zeus and his double, Jupiter, were still quite decent, jolly, we might even say, somewhat enlightened fellows, if compared with the last triplet on the pedigree of gods who, on examination, can safely rival with Vitzliputzli as to brutality and cruelty. We won't argue at all with the pensioned or dethroned gods, for they no longer do any harm. But the m... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
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...
When Professor Huxley introduced, twenty-three years ago, the name and the subject of Physiography, his intentions were certainly excellent. Natural sciences were almost entirely excluded at that time from the schools. The teaching of geography stood very low: political geography, so-called, was a mere collection of names, and an entirely subordinate subject; and physical geography was a collection of information, too abstract, too incoherent, too wide, and too superficial at the same time, to be of any use in education. Under the name of Physiography natural sciences were, so to say, smuggled into the schools. And by showing how the study of Nature may be approached, and methods of scientific observation may be rendered familiar by examini... (From : Anarchy Archives.)
The time had come to think of the inauguration of the Modern School. Some time previously I had invited a number of gentlemen of great distinction and of progressive sentiments to assist me with their advice and form a kind of Committee of Consultation. My intercourse with them at Barcelona was of great value to me, and many of them remained in permanent relation with me, for which I may express my gratitude. They were of opinion that the Modern School should be opened with some display--invitation-cards, a circular to the press, a large hall, music, and oratorical addresses by distinguished Liberal politicians. It would have been easy to do this, and we would have attracted an audience of hundreds of people who would have applauded with that momentary enthusiasm which characterizes our public functions. But I was not seduced by the idea. As a Positivist and an Idealist I was convinced that a simple modesty best befitted the inauguration of a work of reform. Any other method seeme...
It was easy to foresee that the great revival of Natural Science which our generation has had the happiness to witness for thirty years, as also the new direction given to scientific literature by a phalanx of prominent men who dared to bring up the results of the most complicated scientific research in a shape accessible to the general reader, would necessarily bring about a like revival of Geography. This science, which takes up the laws discovered by its sister sciences, and shows their mutual action and consequences with regard to the surfaces of the globe, could not remain an outsider to the general scientific movement; and we see now an interest awakened in Geography which very much recalls the general interest taken in it by a procee... (From : Anarchy Archives.)