"Anarchist Morality" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kropotkin Peter)

themselves have so effectually cultivated; profiting, too,

by the momentary disorganization of society, taking

advantage of the laziness of some, the greed of others, the

best hopes of many, they softly creep back to their work

by first of all taking possession of childhood through

education.

A child's spirit is weak. It is so easy to coerce it by

fear. This they do. They make the child timid, and then

they talk to him of the torments of hell. They conjure up

before him the sufferings of the condemned, the

vengeance of an implacable god. The next minute they

will be chattering of the horrors of revolution, and using

some excess of the revolutionists to make the child "a

friend of order." The priest accustoms the child to the

idea of law, to make it obey better what he calls the

"divine law," and the lawyer prates of divine law, that the

civil law may be the better obeyed.

And by that habit of submission, with which we are

only too familiar, the thought of the next generation

retains this religious twist, which is at once servile and

authoritative, for authority and servility walk ever hand in

hand.

During these slumbrous interludes, morals are rarely dis-

cussed. Religious practices and judicial hypocrisy take

their place. People do not criticize, they let themselves be