Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/458

432 ness in money matters, for the accusation is confirmed in the reminiscences of Gué, the painter, the well-known friend of Tolstoi. Gué gives a specific instance. This trait, and indeed Bakunin's whole character, must be taken into account if we wish to form a sound estimate of his socialism. One who desires to provide the world with an entirely "new morality," one who wishes to reconstruct it in all essentials, must put up with the moral standards of everyday life. It is true that Bakunin's political opponents, especially Marx, Engels, and their adherents (some of whom were Russians) vilified Bakunin, to a large extent unjustly, but Bakunin's intimates were hardly more favourable in their judgments of Bakunin the man. Herzen and Ogarev were guarded in their language, but their impression was obviously unfavourable. Herzen, in his diary of 1848, makes an allusion to Bakunin which shows that those well acquainted with the latter were already saying, "He is a man of talent, but a bad lot." It is recorded that on more than one occasion the arch-conspirator displayed the most petty inclination towards gossip and other unmanly propensities. Kropotkin gives an extremely favourable account of Bakunin's personal character. I should value this testimony highly had it been based on personal observation, but Kropotkin never met Bakunin.

Bělinskii says of Bakunin that he loved ideas, not human beings. To this man of half-thoughts and half-deeds, his fellows were never more than means to an end. Half-thoughts, I say, and half-deeds. Hardly any of Bakunin's literary works were completed, nor did he display endurance and constancy in his practical undertakings. If history, as Herzen declares, be an improvisation, there must be individual improvisers, and such was Bakunin.

Bakunin's philosophical development resembled that of Bělinskii and Herzen. His relationship with Herzen, with whom he made acquaintance in 1839, was important to Bakunin and to Herzen as well, and was of a very peculiar nature.

Like Herzen, from Kant, Fichte, and Schelling, Bakunin passed on to Hegel, and from Hegel to Feuerbach. On coming to Europe, Bakunin met various members of the Hegelian left, and his relationships with these continued down to the rising of 1848. He knew Ruge, and subsequently met Stirner. In Paris he was on friendly terms with Proudhon. Influenced by Comte and by Vogt, he became definitively positivist and