other words: if society is nothing but the
summary idea of certain institutions, such as the family, property,
religion, law, and so on, then society stands or falls with their
sanctity, expediency and utility; and to deny these institutions is to
deny society itself. On the other hand, if society is the aggregate of
individuals forming it, then the institutions just mentioned are only
functions of this collective body, and the denial or abolition of them
means certainly a disturbance, though not an annihilation of society.
Society then can no more be got rid of, as long as there are
individuals, than matter or force. We can destroy or upset an
aggregation, but can never hinder the individuals composing it from
again uniting to form another aggregation.

From these two divergent points of view follows the endless series of
irreconcilable divergencies between Realists and Idealists. For the
former, evolution is a process that is accomplished quite
unconsciously, and is determined exclusively by the condition at any
time of the elements forming the aggregate, and their varying
relations. The Idealist also likes to talk of an evolution of
society, but since this is only the evolution of an idea, there can be
no contradiction, and it is only right and fair for him to demand that
this evolution should be accomplished in the direction of other and
(as he thinks) higher ideas, the realisation of which is the object of
society. So he comes to demand that society should realise the ideas
of Freedom, Equality, and the like. A society which does not wish, or
is unfitted to do this, can and must be overthrown and annihilated.

When we hear these destructive opinions, which are continually
spreading, characterised as a lack of idealism, we cannot restrain a
smile at the confusion of thought thus betrayed. As a matter of fact,
the social revolutionaries of the present day, and especially the
Anarchists, are idealists of the first rank, and that too not merely
because of their nominalist way of regarding society, but they are
idealists also in a practical sense. The society of the present is in
their eyes utterly bad and incapable of improvement, because it does
not correspond to the ideas of freedom and equality. But the fault of
this does not lie in men as such, or in their natural attributes and
defects, but in society, that is (since it is merely an idea), in the
faulty conceptions and prejudices which men have as to the value o