oes not know what to do against them. In the domain of
theory they are absolutely impotent with regard to the Anarchists, who
are their own _enfants terribles_. The bourgeoisie was the first to
propagate the theory of _laissez faire_, of dishevelled individualism.
Their most eminent philosopher of to-day, Herbert Spencer, is nothing
but a conservative Anarchist. The "companions" are active and zealous
persons, who carry the bourgeois reasoning to its logical conclusion.

The magistrates of the French bourgeois Republic have condemned Grave
to prison, and his book, "La Societe Mourante et l'Anarchie" to
destruction. The bourgeois men of letters declare this puerile book a
profound work, and its author a man of rare intellect.

And not only has the bourgeoisie[80] no theoretical weapons with which
to combat the Anarchists; they see their young folk enamoured of the
Anarchist doctrine. In this society, satiated and rotten to the marrow
of its bones, where all faiths are long since dead, where all sincere
opinions appear ridiculous, in this _monde ou l'on s'ennui_, where after
having exhausted all forms of enjoyment they no longer know in what new
fancy, in what fresh excess to seek novel sensations, there are people
who lend a willing ear to the song of the Anarchist siren. Amongst the
Paris "companions" there are already not a few men quite _comme il
faut_, men about town who, as the French writer, Raoul Allier, says,
wear nothing less than patent leather shoes, and put a green carnation
in their button-holes before they go to meetings. Decadent writers and
artists are converted to Anarchism and propagate its theories in reviews
like the _Mercure de France_, _La Plume_, etc. And this is
comprehensible enough. One might wonder indeed if Anarchism, an
essentially bourgeois doctrine, had not found adepts among the French
bourgeoisie, the most _blasee_ of all bourgeoisies.

By taking possession of the Anarchist doctrine, the decadent,
_fin-de-siecle_ writers restore to it its true character of bourgeois
individualism. If Kropotkine and Reclus speak in the name of the worker,
oppressed by the capitalist, _La Plume_ and the _Mercure de France_
speak in the name of the _individual_ who is seeking to shake off all
the trammels of society in order that he may at last do freely what he
"wants" to. Thus Anarchism comes back to its starting-point. Stirner
said: "Nothing for me goes beyond myself." Laurent Tailhade says: "What
matte