The San Francisco call. [volume] (San Francisco [Calif.]) 1895-1913, 1895-03-17

Just outside my study window an an
archist has taken up his abode. He has
builded him house and is at this present
moment engaged in securing his midday
meal.
Ordinarily I should wheel around on my
swivel chair and with poke of my pen
handle should interfere with this dinner
getting process, for l have small sympathy
with anarchists and would willingly aid in
selecting this particular variety from off
the earth Just now, however, desire to
study this fellow, so / shall not interpose
to play Providence to the giddy stupid fly
that has entangled itself in the spiders web
and will soon pay the penalty of its folly.
For nv anarchist is none other than
huge, sprawling, pot-bellied, black spider
as unpleasant to contemplate as any Herr
Most among them.
There the creature sits, squat, dusky, re-
pelant, an ugly object to look upon, but
interesting to me, just now, because of the
train of ideas he has started.
The spider is the very spirit and essence
of anarchism. In his manner of life and
his habits he is the concentration of that
Individualism which anarchy seeks to es-
tablish. He is so thoroughly an lndivid-
ual that even the naturalist never talks of
spiders. 1t is always the spider. Even
the species to which the creature belongs
stands alone in the scale of being. 1t is
customary to speak of the spider as an
insect. but he is not true insect. Neither
does he belong to any one of the higher
animal orders. He is a little below them,
lust as he is a little above the insects. He
undergoes no metamorphosis as do the in
sects He is not a vertebrate. He has his
skeleton on the outside like all of the crea-
lures whom we call articulates, and vet he
has a nervous organism more sensitive
than the most eXquisitely endowed of the
vertebrates.
In the earlier days when the world was
young, the spider was like most creatures,
gregarious. Even now, in very richly
fruitful tropical countries, there are still
some slightly gregarious spiders. These
will even, in moments of peril, join forces
for mutual protection, but 1t must be some
great danger that drives them to do this.
They have never learned the first prin-
ciples of cooperation. Indeed, so essen
TALLY individualistic have they become that
there is enmity even between the sexes.
Even in their love-making they are on
guard against each other and milady is
more apt than not to bring the honeymoon
to an untimely end by turning upon her
liege and devouring him, bodily. This is
the reason why she has become the larger
of the two. Not that she has increased in
size at his expense, but only those male
spiders have survived who have been
small enough to avoid and so escape the
onslaughts of the female.
Each spider lives solitary and alone, and
by virtue of its habits it has become emf
nently specialized for solitary existence.
1t has purchased its specialization, how
ever at an enormous cost. 1t has perfect
individual freedom to perish, unless it can
secure itself against the 1epredations OF its
foes and the attacks of it's own kind and at
the same time obtain food supply.
OF all creatures its life is the most pre-
carious and uncertain. 1t does not go
abroad and hunt for food, as do other
creatures. 1t has too many foes to permit
of this. 1t spreads a net and lies in wait
for victims. This net is woven out of its
own body, and should anything happen to
it the fate of the hunter is sad indeed, for
without the web it cannot catch its food,
and without food it cannot store up
material for further weaving. Thus it is
constantly lowering on the brink Of dis
aster. A puff of wind destroys its web. 1t
may spin one, two, several more, but its
supply of material destroyed at last before
any food is caught, and the spinner is
helpless prey to every vicissitude. No
wonder it is a literal bundle of nerves and