Chapter 7 - Page 2

of individuals, individuals will
voluntarily sacrifice their own interests for the interests of the
group. And so it has been, and still is, in fact, in certain
groups, the distinction being that they are the most primitive
forms of association in the family or tribe or race, or even in
the patriarchal state. Through tradition handed down by education
and supported by religious sentiment, individuals without
compulsion merged their interests in the interest of the group and
sacrificed their own good for the general welfare.

But the more complex and the larger societies become, and
especially the more often conquest becomes the cause of the
amalgamation of people into a state, the more often individuals
strive to attain their own aims at the public expense, and the
more often it becomes necessary to restrain these insubordinate
individuals by recourse to authority, that is, to violence. The
champions of the social conception of life usually try to connect
the idea of authority, that is, of violence, with the idea of
moral influence, but this connection is quite impossible.

The effect of moral influence on a man is to change his desires
and to bend them in the direction of the duty required of him.
The man who is controlled by moral influence acts in accordance
with his own desires. Authority, in the sense in which the word
is ordinarily understood, is a means of forcing a man to act in
opposition to his desires. The man who submits to authority does
not do as he chooses but as he is obliged by authority. Nothing
can oblige a man to do what he does not choose except physical
force, or the threat of it, that is--deprivation of freedom,
blows, imprisonment, or threats--easily carried out--of such
punishments. This is what authority consists of and always has
consisted of.

In spite of the unceasing efforts of those who happen to be in
authority to conceal this and attribute some other significance to
it, authority has always meant for man the cord, the chain with
which he is bound and fettered, or the knout with which he is to
be flogged, or the ax with which he is to have hands, ears, nose,
or head cut off, or at the very least, the threat of these
terrors. So it was under Nero and Ghenghis Khan, and so it is
to-day, even under the most liberal government in the Republics of
the United States or of France. If men submit to authority, it is
only because they are liable to these punishments in case of non-
submission. All state obligations, payment of taxes, fulfillment
of state duties, and submission to punishments, exile, fines,
etc., to which people appear to submit voluntarily, are always
based on bodily violence or the threat of it.

The basis of authority is bodily