Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/476

450 to Marxism and to historical materialism. Like Herzen, he conceives individual mental energy as a primary historic force, but in his postsiberian period his thought tended to become more economic, and was at times almost Marxist. His contest with Marx in the International compelled Bakunin to gain a clearer understanding of his opponent's theories, and despite all differences of opinion between himself and Marx he began a translation of the first volume of Capital.

AKUNIN attempted on more than one occasion to formulate the philosophic principles of revolution. In his leading work, the motive force of individual action and of history is discerned in three principles, animality, thought, and revolt; man has an inborn need for revolt, a revolutionary instinct. This ranking of revolt beside thought and animality is manifestly a transference of the Bakuninist revolutionary nervous impulse into the domain of psychology; but it is plain that revolt as a primary psychical element is atrophied in many human beings, or at least that it is "inborn" only in certain periods.

In his program for the Alliance Internationale de la Démocratie Socialiste, which was published in 1873, Bakunin formulated an ethical theory of revolution which was no less typical of his thought than the instinct theory.