Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/410

384 previously explained mutuality of the individual and of society. Kropotkin therefore condemns the morality of simple equality, condemns a life in which everything should be meted out to all by the same measure. Such a life would be grey, monotonous, devoid of strong impressions, lacking great joys and great sorrows, a vegetative life of mediocrity, life in a rotting swamp. "Be strong!" cries Kropotkin to his neighbour, and he demands that life shall be lived to the full; we must strive to give more than we receive, to produce more that is great, beautiful, and powerful. "To live means to spread one's energies abroad; to live means to strive for the attainment of perfect freedom; mere justice, mere equality would be the death of society. The anarchist must be strong and active; he must do great things; must do the greatest!"

Kropotkin, perhaps, hardly realises that he, the communist, is borrowing from Guyau's aristocratic doctrines, and even from Nietzsche's aristocratic radicalism.

Aristocratic, too, is Kropotkin's theory of revolution, at any rate in so far as revolution is the great deed he demands from the anarchist.

For Kropotkin, revolution is merely a form of natural evolution. Revolution represents the period of accelerated evolution, the period of torrential progress of the new order of society. Revolution is just as natural and necessary as is the slower manifestation of evolution.

It cannot therefore be the task of the sociologist and politician to discover how revolution is to be avoided. His aim must be to learn how revolution can be made to yield the greatest results.

Here Kropotkin takes a different line from Bakunin. Whereas Bakunin is quite unconcerned about plans for the future, and merely demands negative passion, the instinct of pandestruction, Kropotkin insists that we must have a definite plan, a distinct aim, and that we must choose the right method of revolution. Kropotkin wishes to restrict civil war to the utmost; the number of victims must be as small as possible; we must endeavour to minimise the reciprocal embitterment of the contending parties.

There is only one means to secure these practical human restrictions. The revolting and oppressed portion of society must be perfectly clear in its own mind regarding the aims and methods of the civil war, and must possess the enthusiasm