place of the fact, that as amongst people, the coercion of some by others has always been, it is proved that such violence must continue indefinitely. In this, i. e. that mankind should not live according to reason and conscience, but in obedience to that which has for a long time been taking place amongst them, — in this is embodied what «Science» terms the «historical law». The second «scientific» justification is, that as amongst plants and animals a struggle or existence goes on which always culminates in the survival of the fittest, the same struggle should go on amongst men (notwithstanding that men are beings endowed with the attributes of reason and love, faculties which are absent from beings submitting to the law of struggle and selection). In this consists the second «scientific» justification of violence.
The third scientific justification of violence the most prominent, and unfortunately the most widespread, is in reality the oldest religious justification only a little altered which is the theory that the use of violence in social life against some, for the welfare of others is inevitable, and, however desirable love amongst people might be, coercion is indispensable. The difference between the justification of violence by pseudo science and that of pseudo religion is in the fact that to the question, «Why such and such people, and not others, have the right to decide as to whom violence may and must be used against», — science does not give the same reply as that which religion had formulated: that these decisions are just because they are pronounced by personages who possess a divine power, but that these decisions represent the will of the majority, which, under a constitutional form of government is supposed to express itself in all the decisions and actions of the party who at any given time is in power.
Such are the scientific vindications of coercion. These vindications, although quite groundless, are so necessary to people occupying privileged positions that they as implicitly beliefe in them, and as confidently propagate them, as they formerly did the doctrine of the immaculate conception.
Meantime the unhappy majority weighed down by toil, is so dazzled by the display which accompanies the propagation of these «scientific truths», that, under this new influence it accepts them as readily as it formerly accepted the pseudo religious justifications and continues to submit slavishly to new potentates who are just as cruel as the former one, but who have some what increased in number.
