ion the "certain new
travellers" in whose books he has read those descriptions of the happy
state of primitive peoples produced by Anarchy. As far as we know,
Anarchy in the proper sense can only be stated of a very small number
of races like the Tierra del Fuegans, the Eskimos, etc.; but the life
of these people is, to their disadvantage, exceedingly different from
the fancied paradise of Kropotkin. If we read the unanimous
descriptions given by Fitzroy, Darwin, Topinard, and others about the
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego, we shall very quickly abjure our
belief--if we ever held it--that they lead such an Eden-like existence
as Kropotkin's Anarchist savages. We find, rather, misery and hunger
as permanent conditions, that appear here as consequences of Anarchy,
and the blame cannot be laid entirely upon the lack of fertility of
the soil. Narborough[8] says of the Tierra del Fuegans: "If any desire
for civilisation arose, the forests that cover the country would not
be an obstacle thereto, for in many parts there appear open, grassy
spots, which are frequently regarded by seamen as the remnants of
attempts at agriculture by the Spaniards." But in general the
statements of all travellers and ethnographers agree in showing that
the existence of these so-called "savages" is a continual and bitter
struggle against nature and against each other for the barest
necessaries of life, and that if hunger is not a constant guest, their
mode of living is a very irregular alternation between surfeit and
prolonged fast. How difficult it is to rear children among these
primitive people and even among others more advanced in civilisation
is proved by the terrible custom, common to all parts of the globe, of
infanticide, which has no other object than artificial selection for
breeding in view of the harsh conditions of existence. Persons who are
regarded by the community only as mouths to feed and not as actual
workers, the old and weak, are simply killed off by many races--even
by those who, in other respects, do not stand upon a low level; and
the murder of the parents and the aged appears to be as widespread
among primitive races as infanticide. But these are facts which not
only contradict the Anarchist assumption of a golden age of Anarchy,
but still more contradict that of an innate feeling of solidarity in
the human race.

[8] Quoted in Ratzel's _F. Voelkerkunde_, vol. ii., p. 668.
Leipsic and Vienna, 1890.

A further