“As long as individuals stagnate in servitude, waiting for providential men or events to put an end to their abjectness, as long as they shall be contented to hope without acting, so long the ideal that is the most beautiful, the ideal that is the simplest, will rest, necessarily, in a state of pure reverie, of vague Utopia.
“Where, except in the fable, has Fortune been seen to descend to the threshold of the sleeper, and wait patiently till it pleases his indolence to take her?
“When individuals shall have reconquered their self-esteem, when they shall be convinced of their own force, when, tired of bending the back, they shall have found once more their dignity, and shall know how to make it respected, then they will have learned that the will can accomplish everything when it is at the service of a trained intellect.
“They have only to _will_ to be free, to _be_ free.”
_“Woe is me if I preach not the gospel!”_—SAINT PAUL.
_“The orthodox believers went to hear Him, but understood nothing.”_
_“For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.”_
_“The_ chanson, _like the bayonet, is a French weapon.”_—JULES CLARETIE.
_“We must arm the camarades, we must never rest from arming the camarades, with stronger and stronger arguments. We must enrich their memories and imaginations with fresh facts which prove more clearly the necessity of the social revolution.”_—PIERRE LAVROFF.
Anarchist propaganda is of four sorts, viz.: I. Oral. II. Written. III. By example (_propagande par l’exemple_). IV. By the overt act of violence (_propagande par le fait_).
With the anarchistic as with other creeds the simplest, most natural form of oral propaganda is, of course, that which consists in telling one’s faith to one’s neighbour.
The proselyting zeal that prompts a man to take his gospel with him wherever he goes,—to his workshop, to his café, to his restaurant, to the street corner, to “the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker,”—and to couple with exhortation the
“_Little, nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love_”
that make up neighbourly service, is a force not the less real and potent because its operations are unseen and the measure of them cannot be taken. It is a factor to be reckoned with, the