Property, the family, authority, have developed along parallel lines; of this there is no doubt. Granting that men united their efforts under the pressure of a common need, of some obstacle to be overcome against which individual efforts had exhausted themselves in vain, it follows that the benefits resulting from this cooperation of forces were shared in common. These associations being temporary, confined to the immediate result to be obtained, there is likewise no doubt that the first human association must have been, as it still is among certain mammiferous animals⁠—some of the anthropoid apes⁠—the nucleus of the family; that is to say, a group of one or a number of females and their young around the strongest male, who, in order to preserve his authority, expelled from the horde all the young males that had become old enough to give him umbrage. But as to whether this authority of the male was complete and assumed sway over every group from the start, it would be rash to decide; for though we find, among savages, examples in which the association having increased in numbers, by the grouping together of several family centers the authority of the male is preponderant, yet by a number of very convincing examples, by a number of customs such as that of couvade it would seem that the mother-right of primogeniture was the first recognized.1 Certain peoples exist in which the children belong to the tribe of the mother; others in which the authority of the male is already recognized, but in which his sister’s children inherit his possessions to the exclusion of his own. This would go to establish a transition from maternal to paternal authority. Another transitional characteristic is this custom of couvade, by which, when the woman is in confinement, it is the man who goes to bed, swallows drugs, and receives congratulations upon his delivery. In this one feels that the man, in order to affirm his authority over his progeny, needs facts to prove his paternity. He would not need them if it were not contested by anterior customs, which have perhaps disappeared, but the memory of which is perpetuated by the practice of retroactive customs that the former gave rise to.

As to the union of men and women, how many times has its form not been changed? At the outset, the very beginnings of humanity, there is no form of marriage; the most complete promiscuity reigns between the sexes; the male cohabits with the first female that comes in his way, who on the other hand accepts or submits to the caresses of all the males that take her. As men develop and become a little less brutal, though a great amount of promiscuity still reigns, they commence to distinguish a primitive sort of relationship. They have not yet learned to distinguish the terms father, mother, brother, sister, very definitely, but unions between tribes having the same totem, or the same common origin, are forbidden; the women, however, continue to belong to all the men, and the latter to all the women, of the tribe. Later on, the male having been acknowledged, the latter begins to recognize certain degrees of consanguinity and affiliation; but marriages continue to take place between brothers and sisters, the son inherits any member of his father’s harem without scruple. A still further step in evolution must be taken before the mother of the heir ceases to be included in the inheritance.

Observe also that if there be peoples among whom a single male may possess several females, on the other hand there exist some among whom the females possess several males. But these progressive steps, these changes of custom, do not follow logically, one after the other, mutually eliminating each other, as a more complex one appears. Rather these customs are founded one upon the other, fused and confused in such a manner that they can no longer be recognized. Their combinations are so multiplied, customs are so superimposed upon each other, eliminating one here, another there, that it is only by studying the observations of former travelers and still existing tribes that we are enabled to form an approximate idea of human evolution.

From all this, then, it follows that property has rested upon other bases than those upon which it is today supported, has had another method of division, and owes its present destiny only to force, cunning and robbery; for it is quite clear that the family having begun in common association, individual property could not then exist, and, consequently, that what originally belonged to all could not become the property of individuals without some sort of spoliation. In like manner the family has been quite different from what it now is. And the bourgeoisie, which claims that these two institutions rest upon unassailable and immovable bases do not know what they are talking about, since there is no reason why that which has evolved at all should not evolve further. Their affirmation would prove only one thing, which is that if these two institutions were not to progress any more, they must be very near their decadence. For it is a law of life that that which no longer advances, perishes and disintegrates, in order to give birth to other organisms having a period of evolution to run through. And the truth of this axiom is so apparent that the bourgeoisie have been forced to recognize it by admitting divorce as a corrective to marriage, which they would have preferred to maintain indissoluble. True, divorce is applicable only in special cases, can be obtained only by means of a lawsuit, of proceedings without number, and requires the expenditure of a great deal of money, but it is none the less an argument against the stability of the family, since, after having so long repudiated it, they have at length recognized it as necessary, and since it has so powerfully shaken the family by breaking up marriage, which sanctions the family. What more candid confession in favor of free unions could be asked? Does it not become plainly evident that it is useless to seal with a ceremony what another ceremony may unseal? Why have an old woman in pants with a belt around his waist to consecrate a union which three other old women in gowns and caps can declare null and void?

The Anarchists, therefore, reject the institution of marriage. They say that two beings who love each other have no need of the permission of a third in order to go to bed together. From the moment that their wishes so incline them, society has no reason to spy upon them and still less to intervene in the matter. Further the Anarchists say this: “By the mere fact that they have given themselves to each other, the union of a man and a woman is not therefore indissoluble; they are not condemned to finish their days together if they become antipathetic to each other. What they have made of their own free will they can unmake of their own free will. Under the empire of passion, the pressure of desire, they saw each other’s good qualities only; they shut their eyes to each other’s defects; they became united; and behold, their life in common effaces the good qualities, brings out the defects, sharpens the angles which they cannot round off. Is it necessary that these two beings, because in a moment of passionate effervescence they deceived themselves with illusions, should pay a whole lifetime of suffering for the error of a moment, which made them take for a profound and eternal passion what was but the result of an over-excitation of the senses? Nonsense! It is time to return to more healthy notions!”

Has not the love of man and woman always been stronger than all laws, all prudery, all the reprobation, which men have sought to attach to the performance of the sexual act? In spite of the blame cast upon the woman who deceives her husband⁠—we do not here speak of the man, who has always known how to take the biggest half in matters of morals⁠—in spite of the role of Pariah which our modest society reserves for the unmarried mother, has it ever, for a single moment, prevented women from making cuckolds of their husbands, or girls from giving themselves to whoever pleases them, or knows how to profit by a moment when the senses speak louder than reason? History and literature talk of nothing else than men and women cuckolded and girls seduced! The creative impulse is the prime motor of man; we hide it, but we yield to its pressure. For the few passionate souls who, weak and timorous, commit suicide together with the beloved being, (sometimes not daring to break with prejudices or not having the moral force to struggle against the obstacles put in their way by custom and the idiocy of imbecile parents), there are countless numbers who mock at prejudices⁠—in secret. All these prejudices have only helped to make us frauds and hypocrites; that is all.

Why be stubborn in seeking to regulate what has escaped long centuries of oppression? Rather let us recognize, once for all, that the feelings of mankind elude all regulations, and that entire liberty is necessary in order that they may unfold completely and normally. Let us be less puritanic and we shall be more candid, more moral.

The man who owns property, wishing to transmit the fruit of his rapine to his descendants, (the woman having been considered up till now as inferior, and rather as property than as an associate) it is evident that man has fashioned the family with a view to insuring his supremacy over woman; and to be able to transmit his possessions to his descendants at his death, he had to make the family indissoluble. Based upon interests, and not upon affection, it is plain that some force and sanction were necessary to prevent separations under the shocks occasioned by the antagonism of interests. Now, the Anarchists, who have been accused of wanting to destroy the family, want only to destroy this antagonism; to base the family upon affection in order to render it more permanent. We have never set it up as a principle that a man and woman who desire to finish their days together shall not do so, for the reason that we want unions to be free. We have never said that the father and mother should not bring up their children, because we demand that the liberty of the latter shall be respected, and that they shall no longer be considered as things⁠—property⁠—by their progenitors. Certainly we do want to abolish the legal family; we want men and women to be free to give themselves and take themselves back whenever they please. We want no more of a stupid and uniform law, regulating relations in regard to feelings so complex and varied as those which result from love. If a human being’s feelings be inclined to inconstancy, if his love cannot fix itself upon one object, as those who want to regulate sexual relations pretend, what does it matter to us? What can we do about it? Since up to the present hour repression has succeeded in preventing nothing and has only given us new vices, let us leave human nature free; let it evolve in whatever direction its tendencies and aspirations incline it. It is intelligent enough today to find out what is useful or harmful to it, to discover by experience its proper line of evolution. The law of evolution acting freely, we are certain that it will be the fittest, the best endowed, who will have the chance to survive and reproduce themselves. If, on the other hand, the human tendency be, as we think, inclined to monogamy, the permanent union of two beings who, having met each other, having learned to know and esteem each other, end by becoming one, their union growing intimate and complete, their wills, thoughts, and desires being identical, such will have still less need of laws to constrain them to live together. Will not their own desires be the surest guarantee of the indissolubility of their union?

When men and women no longer feel themselves riveted to each other, if they truly love each other, this love will result in leading them reciprocally to seek to merit the love of the being they have chosen. Feeling that the beloved companion may fly away from the nest the day that he or she no longer finds in it the satisfaction once dreamed of, each will try all means to attach the other completely to him or herself. As with those species of birds, in which, during the mating season, the male arrays himself in new and splendid plumage, in order to appear seductive to the female whose favors he wishes to attract, human creatures will cultivate those moral qualities which will make them beloved and render their society agreeable. Based upon such sentiments, unions will become more indissoluble than the most severe laws or the most violent repression could make them.

We have not attempted a criticism of existing marriage, which is equivalent to the most shameless prostitution:⁠—Business marriages in which affectionate sentiments play no part; marriages of accommodation, arranged, especially among bourgeois families, by the parents, without consulting those who are to be united; unequal marriages in which we see aged semi-paralytics, thanks to their money, uniting their old, decaying carcasses with the freshness and beauty of very young girls, or old hags purchasing with a pile of dollars the complaisance of young pimps, who pay with their skins and a little shame for their thirst of getting rich. Such criticism has been made again and again; what is the use of reverting to it? It suffices to have demonstrated that sexual union has not always been arrayed in the same formalities, and that it cannot attain its greatest dignity save by ridding itself of all fetters. What is the use of seeking for anything else?2