Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/474

448 may say what you will. Great is logic; perhaps it is the only great thing" (1868).

History, like psychology, becomes materialistic. Bakunin draws this conclusion, and is therefore forced to recognise the universality of natural determinism; but he takes all possible pains to preserve freedom for the individual. We feel that here Kant, and more especially Fichte, are at war in his mind against Hegel, Comte, and Vogt.

HE goal of history and of individual effort is the equality of all men, absolute equality, such as will render impossible the domination of one human being by another, and will therefore put an end to exploitation. Bakunin refuses to recognise any authority whatever. When God's authority is overthrown, authority of every other kind is likewise-overthrown, and above all that of the state. Even science, which is to play so great a part in freeing mankind from the yoke of authority, must not issue commands. Science, or its representativcs, must not dominate life, but must merely illuminate. The intelligentsia must bring culture to the masses, but this does not give the teacher any rights over the pupil; and besides, inequality in point of culture is but transient, and the teacher may well come to learn from the pupil.

Absolute equality will not lead to the atomisation of society, will not break up mankind into fragments. It offers, on the contrary, to mankind the possibility of a true social union. Bakunin accepts Proudhon's program of federation, federation "from below upwards," conceiving the future society as a federative organisation of communes.

Bakunin continues to cling to the Hegelian dialectical formulation, and writes: "Statehood (centralisation) is the thesis, anarchy or amorphism is the antithesis, and federation will be the synthesis."

Bakunin looks for an entire reconstruction of society, and as a preliminary, therefore existing society and its order must be destroyed root and branch. Pandestruction (when he uses this word "pan" means "wholly" as well as "all") is essential because every element of the old social order would be capable, were life left in it, of proliferating anew, and of leading to the recurrence of the old.