But government is necessary, and just because it is necessary therefore it cannot be an evil.  Hospitals are necessary, and just because they are necessary therefore they cannot be evils.  Places for restraining the insane and criminal are necessary, and therefore not evil.

The weaknesses of humanity may occasion these necessities; but the evil, if any, is inherent in the constitution of man and not in the social organization.  It is the individual and not society that has need of government, of hospitals, of asylums, of prisons.

Anarchy does not involve, as Huxley suggests, “the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence.”  Not at all.  What it does involve is the highest conceivable grade of individual existence; in fact, of a grade so high that it is quite beyond conception,—­in short, it involves human perfectibility.  Anarchy proper involves the complete emancipation of every individual from all restraints and compulsions; it involves a social condition wherein absolutely no authority is imposed upon any individual, where no requirement of any kind is made against the will of any member—­man, woman, or child; where everything is left to individual initiation.

So far from such a “state of society” being “the highest conceivable grade of perfection of social existence,” it is not conceivable at all, and the farther the mind goes in attempting to grasp it, the more hopelessly dreary does the scheme become.

When men spontaneously do justice and love mercy, as Huxley suggests, and when each individual is mentally, physically, and morally sound, as he must be to support and govern himself, then, and not till then, will it be possible to dispense with government; but even then it is more conceivable than otherwise that these perfect individuals would—­as a mere division of labor, as a mere matter of economy—­adopt and enforce some rules and regulations for the benefit of all; it would be necessary to do so unless the individuals were not only perfect, but also absolutely of one mind on all subjects relating to their welfare.  Can the imagination picture existence more inane?

But regardless of what the mentally, physically, and morally perfect individuals might do after attaining their perfection, anarchy assumes the millennium,—­and the millennium is yet a long way off.  If the future of anarchy depends upon the physical, mental, and moral perfection of its advocates, the outlook is gloomy indeed, for a theory never had a following more imperfect in all these respects.

The patent fact that most governments, both national and local, are corruptly, extravagantly, and badly administered tends to obscure our judgment, so that we assent, without thinking, to the proposition that government is an evil, and then argue that it is a necessary evil.  But government is not evil because there are evils incidental to its administration.  Every human institution partakes of the frailties of the individual; it could not be otherwise; all social institutions are human, not superhuman.