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

drawn by habit, or indifference.They do not put

themselves out for or against the established morality.

They do their best to make their actions appear to accord

with their professions.

All that was good, great, generous or independent

in man, little by little becomes moss-grown; rusts like a

disused knife. A lie becomes a virtue, a platitude a duty.

To enrich oneself, to seize one's opportunities, to exhaust

one's intelligence, zeal and energy, no matter how,

become the watchwords of the comfortable classes, as

well as of the crowd of poor folk whose ideal is to appear

bourgeois. Then the degradation of the ruler and of the

judge, of the clergy and of the more or less comfortable

classes becomes so revolting that the pendulum begins to

swing the other way.

Little by little, youth frees itself. It flings overboard

its prejudices, and it begins to criticize. Thought

reawakens, at first among the few; but insensibly the

awakening reaches the majority. The impulse is given, the

revolution follows.

And each time the question of morality comes up again.

"Why should I follow the principles of this hypocritical

morality?" asks the brain, released from religious terrors.

Why should any morality be obligatory?"

Then people try to account for the moral sentiment