God and the State (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Society, American Christian Missionary

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1330406427 ISBN 13: 9781330406427

Verlag: Forgotten Books, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

Excerpt from God and the State

One of us is soon to tell in all its details the story of the life of Michael Bakunin, but its general features arc already sufficiently familiar. Friends and enemies know that this man was great in thought, will, persistent energy; they know also with what lofty contempt he looked down upon wealth, rank, glory, all the wretched ambitions which most human beings are base enough to entertain. A (Russian gentleman related by marriage to the highest nobility of the empire, he was one of the first to enter that intrepid society of rebels who were able to release themselves from traditions, prejudices, race and class interests, and set their own comfort at naught. With them he fought the stern battle of life, aggravated by imprisonment, exile, all the dangers and all the sorrows that men of self-sacrifice have to undergo during their tormented existence.

A simple stone and a name mark the spot in the cemetery of Berne where was laid the body of Bakunin. Even that is perhaps too much to honor the memory of a worker who held vanities of that sort in such slight esteem. His friends surely will raise to him no ostentatious tombstone or statue. They know with what a huge laugh he would have received them, had they spoken to him of a commemorative structure erected to his glory; they knew, too, that the true way to honor their dead is to continue their work - with the same ardor and perseverance that they themselves brought to it In this case, indeed, a difficult task demanding all our efforts, for among the revolutionists of the present generation not one has labored more fervently in the common cause of the Revolution.

In Russia among the students, in Germany among the insurgents of Dresden, in Siberia among his brothers in exile, in America, in England, in France, in Switzerland, in Italy, among all earnest men. his direct influence has been considerable. The originality of his ideas, the imagery and vehemence of his el…

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Excerpt from God and the State

We may answer that the matter of which materialists speak, matter spontaneously and eternally mobile, active, productive, matter chemically or organically determined and manifested by the properties or forces, mechanical, physical, animal, and intelligent, which necessarily belong to it, -that this matter has nothing in common with the tile matter of the idealists. The latter, a product of their false theorizing, is indeed a stupi i, inanimate, immobile thing, incapable of giving birth to the small est pl oduct, a caput mortuum, an ugly fancy in contrast to the beautiful fancy which they call God; as the opposite of this supreme Being, matter, their matter, stripped by them of all that constitutes its real nature, necessarily represents supreme nothingness. They have taken away from matter intelligence, life, all its determining qualities, active relations or forces, motion itself, without which matter would not even have weight, leaving it nothing but impenetrability and absolute immobility in space; they have attributed all these natural forces, properties, and manifesta tions' to the imaginary being created by their abstract fancy; then, interchanging rates, they have called this product of their imagination, this phantom, this God who is nothing, supreme Being, and, as a necessary consequence, have declared that the real Being, matter, the world, is nothing. After which they gravely tell us that this matter is incapable of producing anything, not even of setting itself in motion, and consequently must have been created by their God.

Who are right, the idealists or the materialists? The question once clearly stated, hesitation becomes impossible. Undoubtedly the idealists are wrong and the materialists right. Yes, facts are before ideas; yes, the ideal, as Proudhon said, is but a flower, whose root lies in the material conditions of existence. Yes, the whole history of humanity, intellectual and moral, political and social, is but a reflection of its economic history.

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Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Forgotten Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2017
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1330406427
• ISBN 13: 9781330406427
• Einband: Tapa blanda
• Anzahl der Seiten: 98
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar