Graham R (Ed.) - Anarchism - A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume One - From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939)

Origins Of The Anarchist Movement /91
reproduction ... Life is wholly fugitive and temporary, but also wholly palpitating with
reality and individuality, sensibility, sufferings, joys, aspirations, needs, and passions.
It alone spontaneously creates real things and beings. Science creates nothing;
it establishes and recognizes only the creations of life ...
Science cannot go outside of the sphere of abstractions. In this respect it is infinitely
inferior to art, which, in its turn, is peculiarly concerned also with general
types and general situations, but which incarnates them by an artifice of its own in
fo rms which, if they are not living in the sense of real life none the less excite in our
imagination the memory and sentiment of life; art in a certain sense individualizes
the types and situations which it conceives; by means of the individualities without
flesh and bone, and consequently permanent and immortal, which it has the power
to create, it recalls to our minds the living, real individualities which appear and disappear
under our eyes. Art, then, is as it were the return of abstraction to life; science,
on the contrary, is the perpetual immolation of life , fugitive, temporary, but
real, on the altar of eternal abstractions.
Science is as incapable of grasping the individuality of a man as that of a rabbit,
being equally indifferent to both. Not that it is ignorant of the principle of individuality:
it conceives it perfectly as a principle, but not as a fact. It knows very well that all
the animal species, including the human species, have no real existence outside of an
indefinite number of individuals, born and dying to make room for new individuals
equally fugitive. It knows that in rising from the animal species to the superior species
the principle of individuality becomes more pronounced; the individuals appear
freer and more complete. It knows that man, the last and most perfect animal of
earth, presents the most complete and most remarkable individuality, because of his
power to conceive, concrete, personifY, as it were, in his social and private existence,
the universal law. It knows, finally, when it is not vitiated by theological or metaphysical,
political or judicial doctrinairisme, or even by a narrow scientific pride, when it is
not deafto the instincts and spontaneous aspirations oflife-it knows (and this is its
last word) that respect fo r man is the supreme law of Humanity, and that the great,
the real object of history, its only legitimate object is the humanization and emancipation,
the real liberty, the prosperity and happiness of each individual living in society
...
Science knows all these things, but it does not and cannot go beyond them. Abstraction
being its very nature, it can well enough conceive the principle of real and
living individuality, but it can have no dealings with real and living individuals; it concerns
itself with individuals in general, but not with Peter or James, not with such or
such a one, who, so fa r as it is concerned, does not, cannot, have any exis-