We have hitherto been speaking of the conscious,

deliberate  actions of man, those performed intentionally.

But side by  side with our conscious life we have an

unconscious life which  is very much wider. Yet we have

only to notice how we  dress in the morning, trying to

fasten a button that we know  we lost last night, or

stretching out our hand to take something that we

ourselves have moved away, to obtain an idea  of this

unconscious life and realize the enormous part it plays  in

our existence.

	 It makes up three-fourths of our relations with

others.  Our ways of speaking, smiling, frowning, getting

heated  or keeping cool in a discussion, are unintentional,

the result  of habits, inherited from our human or pre-

human ancestors  (only notice the likeness in expression

between an angry man  and an angry beast), or else

consciously or unconsciously  acquired.

	 Our manner of acting towards others thus tends to

become habitual. To treat others as he would wish to be 

treated himself becomes with man and all sociable

animals,  simply a habit. So much so that a person does

not generally  even ask himself how he must act under

such and such  circumstances. It is only when the

circumstances are exceptional, in some complex case or

under the impulse of strong  passion that he hesitates, and

a struggle takes place between the various portions of his

brain --for the brain is a very complex organ, the various

portions of which act to a certain  degree independently.

When this happens, the man substitutes himself in

imagination for the person opposed to him;  he asks

himself if he would like to be treated in such a way,  and

the better he has identified himself with the person whose

dignity or interests he has been on the point of injuring,

the more moral will his decision be. Or maybe a friend

steps in and says to him: "Fancy yourself in his place;

should you have suffered from being treated by him as he

has been treated by you? And this is enough.	

	Thus we only appeal to the principle of equality in

moments of hesitation, and in ninety-nine cases out of a

hundred  act morally from habit.

 It must have been obvious that in all we have hitherto

said,  we have not attempted to enjoin anything,we have

only set forth the manner in which things happen in the

animal  world and amongst mankind.

	Formerly the church threatened men with hell to

moralize them, and she succeeded in demoralizing them

instead. The  judge threatens with imprisonment, flogging,

the gallows, in  the name of those social principles he has

filched from society;  and he demoralizes them. And yet

the very idea that the  judge may disappear from the earth

at the same time as the  priest causes authoritarians of

every shade to cry out about peril to society.

	But we are not afraid to forego judges and their

sentences. We forego sanctions of all kinds, even

obligations to morality.  We are not afraid to say: "Do what

you will; act as you  will"; because we are persuaded that

the great majority of  mankind, in proportion to their

degree of enlightenment and the completeness with which

they free themselves from existing fetters will behave and

act always in a direction useful  to society just as we are

persuaded beforehand that a child  will one day walk on

its two feet and not on all fours simply because it is born

of parents belonging to the genus  Homo.

	 All we can do is to give advice. And again while

giving it we add: "This advice will be valueless if your

own experience and observation do not lead you to

recognize that it is  worth following."

 When we see a youth stooping and so contracting his

chest  and lungs we advise him to straighten 	himself, hold

up his  head and open his chest. We advise him to fill his

lungs and take long breaths, because this will be his best

safeguard against consumption.  But at the same time we

teach him physiology that he may understand the

functions of his lungs, and himself choose the posture he

knows to be the best.

 	And this is all we  can do in the case of morals. And

this is all we can do in the case of morals. We have  only a

right to give advice, to which we add: "Follow it if it

seems good to you."

	 But while leaving to each the right to act as he

thinks  best; while utterly denying the right of society to

punish  one in any way for any anti-social act he may have

committed, we do not forego our own capacity to love

what  seems to us good and to hate what seems to us bad.

Love and  hate; for only those who know how to hate

know how to  love. We keep this capacity; and as this

alone serves to  maintain and develop the moral

sentiments in every animal  society, so much the more will

it be enough for the human  race.

	 We only ask one thing, to eliminate all that

impedes the  free development of these two feelings in the

present society,  all that perverts our judgment:  --the

State, the church,  exploitation; judges, priests,

governments, exploiters.

	 Today when we see a Jack the Ripper murder one

after  another some of the poorest and most miserable of

women,  our first feeling is one of hatred.

	 If we had met him the day when he murdered that

woman  who asked him to pay her for her slum lodging,

we should  have put a bullet through his head, without

reflecting that the bullet might have been better bestowed

in the brain of the owner of that wretched den.

	 But when we recall to mind all the infamies which

have  brought him to this; when we think of the darkness

in which  he prowls haunted by images drawn from

indecent books  or thoughts suggested by stupid books,

our feeling is divided.  And if some day we hear that Jack

is in the hands of some  judge who has slain in cold blood

a far greater number of  men, women and children than all

the Jacks together; if we  see him in the hands of one of

those deliberate maniacs then  all our hatred of Jack the

Ripper will vanish. It will be  transformed into hatred of a

cowardly and hypocritical society and its recognized

representatives. All the infamies  of a Ripper disappear

before that long series of infamies  committed in the name

of law. It is these we hate.

	 At the present day our feelings are continually thus

divided.  We feel that all of us are more or less,

voluntarily or involuntarily, abettors of this society. We

do not dare to hate.  Do we even dare to love? In a society

based on exploitation  and servitude human nature is

degraded.

	 But as servitude disappears we shall regain our

rights. We  shall feel within ourselves strength to hate and

to love, even  in such complicated cases as that we have

just cited.

	 In our daily life we do already give free scope to

our feelings of sympathy or antipathy; we are doing so

every moment. We all love moral strength we all despise

moral  weakness and cowardice. Every moment our

words, looks,  smiles express our joy in seeing actions

useful to the human  race, those which we think good.

Every moment our looks  and words show the repugnance

we feel towards cowardice,  deceit, intrigue, want of

moral courage. We betray our  disgust, even when under

the influence of a worldly education we try to hide our

contempt beneath those lying appearances which will

vanish as equal relations are established  among us.

	 This alone is enough to keep the conception of

good and  ill at a certain level and to communicate it one

to another.

	 It will be still more efficient when there is no longer

judge or  priest in society, when moral principles have

lost their obligatory character and are considered merely

as relations between  equals.

	 Moreover, in proportion to the establishment of

these relations, a loftier moral conception will arise in

society. It is  this conception which we are about to

analyze.