Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/459

Rh materialist. During his second period of European life he was confirmed in his materialism by the influence of Marx (for Bakunin contrasts here with Herzen), and by that of Darwinism, which by Bakunin as by so many others was taken as proof of materialism. He was fond of referring to the descent of men from monkeys, of speaking of the gorilla as man's ancestor. At this time, too, Bakunin was influenced by the ideas of Schopenhauer.

We see, then, that Bakunin's philosophical development and training closely resembled Herzen's. This is all the more comprehensible seeing that Bakunin remained in correspondence, and in part upon terms of personal intercourse, with his radical friends, and above all with Herzen. For a long time Herzen continued to agree even with the later radical ideas of Bakunin. It may be said that the thoughts to which Herzen gave expression in From the Other Shore remained those of Bakunin throughout life. The two friends sought the same goal, but differed as regards tactics.

We have already heard of Herzen's Letters to an Old Comrade, written in 1869. During this year Nečaev began his agitation among the Moscow students, and Herzen therefore felt it necessary to settle accounts in the theoretical field with Bakunin and the younger revolutionaries. In point of tactics the difference between the two friends arose out of the Herzenian "hesitation." Bakunin never hesitated for a moment; as if by reflex action, we may say, he responded with a blow of his revolutionary fist to all the stimuli of the objective world, of the real world of society. He took delight in the thought of shattering the world to bits. He sought this delight in all directions, and when it was unobtainable in the form of concrete revolutionary activities, he would find it in passionate criticism and negation of the existing social order.

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