If I were asked to answer the following question: WHAT IS SLAVERY? and I should answer in one word, IT IS MURDER, my meaning would be understood at once.
No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enslave a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: WHAT IS PROPERTY! may I not likewise answer, IT IS THEFT, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first?.
What a revolution in human ideas! PROPRIETOR and THIEF have been at all times expressions as contradictory as the beings whom they designate are hostile; all languages have perpetuated this opposition.
Of what consequence to you, reader, is my obscure individuality? I live, like you, in a century in which reason submits only to fact and to evidence. My name, like yours, is TRUTH- SEEKER.[1] My mission is written in these words of the law: SPEAK WITHOUT HATRED AND WITHOUT FEAR; TELL THAT WHICH THOU KNOWEST!
The work of our race is to build the temple of science, and this science includes man and Nature. Now, truth reveals itself to all; to-day to Newton and Pascal, tomorrow to the herdsman in the valley and the journeyman in the shop. Each one contributes his stone to the edifice; and, his task accomplished, disappears. Eternity precedes us, eternity follows us: between two infinites, of what account is one poor mortal that the century should inquire about him?
[1] In Greek, {GREEK e ncg } examiner; a philosopher whose business is to seek the truth.
Disregard then, reader, my title and my character, and attend only to my arguments. It is in accordance with universal consent that I undertake to correct universal error; from the OPINION of the human race I appeal to its FAITH.
user@terminal: ~$ echo "error"
error
Others offer you the spectacle of genius wresting Nature’s secrets from her, and unfolding before you her sublime messages; you will find here only a series of experiments upon JUSTICE and RIGHT… The operations shall be conducted under your very eyes; and you shall weigh the result.
Nevertheless, I build no system. I ask:
A defender of equality, I shall speak without bitterness and without anger; with the independence becoming a philosopher, with the courage and firmness of a free man.
May I, in this momentous struggle, carry into all hearts the light with which I am filled; and show, by the success of my argument, that equality failed to conquer by the sword only that it might conquer by the pen!
But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: JUSTICE, EQUITY, LIBERTY.
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That concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.