Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/464

438 they err; the negative is nothing by itself, and in isolation would in actual fact be absolutely nothing. Its whole being, its content, are, however, found in its opposition to the positive, and its vital energy consists in the destruction of the positive.

The reactionary party is considered by Bakunin to exhibit two trends, for there are, he says, the pure or logical reactionaries, and the compromising or illogical reactionaries. The logical reactionaries are well aware that their positive can only be secured through the suppression of the negative, but they do not see that their positive is positive only in so far as it is opposed by the negative, and that if it were to secure complete victory over the negative, it would, in the absence of its opponent, no longer be the positive, but rather the completion of the negative. Blindness, however, is the leading characteristic of all positivists and insight is vouchsafed to negativists alone. These pure positivists desire to be honest and complete human beings; they detest half-measures just as much as do the democrats, for they know that only a complete human being can be good, and that half-measures are the tainted source of all that is evil.

Bakunin proceeds to show how the reactionaries hate the democrats, and how they would like to use any means, to use the inquisition were it still possible, in order to annihilate the democrats. The democrats, on the other hand, even though they may often be guilty of unjust and partisan actions, derive from the sublime principle of democracy energy enabling them to carry on their struggle religiously as well as politically, making a religion of freedom, whose only true expression is justice and love. Even in the heat of the struggle the democrat continues to obey the greatest of Christ's commandments, and to realise the essence of Christianity, which is love.

Bakunin next explains how and why the reactionaries take refuge in the past as it existed before the appearance of the opposition between negative and positive. They are to this extent right inasmuch as this past was a living totality and was consequently richer than the disintegrated present; but they fail to understand that to-day this totality can manifest itself to them in no other form than as a self-created, dissolving, and disintegrating contrast; they fail to understand that the totality, as a positive, involves also the negative, and is nothing but the soulless corpse of its old self given up to the mechanical and chemical process of reflection. Not understanding these,