Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/482

456 great deeds and its contempt for the petty details of work—its shyness of work in general.

Bakunin with his social democracy reaches, in fact, the same result as was reached by Renan, the declared aristocrat, with his ingenious machine. The machine can break the world into fragments, but the elite of the intellectuals, those who alone understand the working of the secret mechanism, are enabled to impose fear and order upon the masses. Bakunin has not discovered an all-destroying machine, but he has discovered the all-destroying revolution, to be directed by the elite of his secret society under his personal leadership.

Bakunin's individualism culminates in the negation of individuality, culminates in absolutism. Crime and murder were dreaded by Bělinskii and Herzen as inevitable consequences of German philosophical subjectivism and individualism. With dauntless inconsistency Bakunin elevated them into a system and proclaimed the right to kill. In early days he had objected to German subjectivism and individualism on the ground that the doctrine led to suicide, but discarding this train of thought Bakunin himself came to advocate assassination.

Bakunin desires anarchy (he expressly revives the etymological significance of the term as the destruction of all authority). He preaches a war of annihilation after the manner of the robber chieftains of popular saga. In 1869 he declares that brigandage is one of the most honourable forms of Russian political life.

"We need something very different from a constitution; we need storm and life, a world that is lawless and consequently free," he had exclaimed in 1848. Similarly in the secret rules of 1869 we read that the international brethren must combine "revolutionary fervour" with intelligence, energy, faithfulness, and discretion—must have a spice of the devil in them.

In Bakunin's own composition there was this spice of devilry, and he nourished his devil with the feelings of revenge that he cherished throughout life. We can understand that the regime of Nicholas I could not fail to inspire sentiments of hatred and a desire for revenge, but hatred and revenge make people blind, and those animated by such passions cannot hope to strike victorious blows.

ln Gué's reminiscences (see ) we are told that the painter's wife once asked Bakunin what were his aims and what were his beliefs. The answer was: "I believe in nothing.