Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/478

452 Russia and the mužik. These atheists have not yet become man-gods, they have not yet become aristocratic supermen to whom everything is permissible. They carry on their war like formal belligerents, and are permeated with the conviction that their sacrifice is an act of duty. Environed by an atmosphere of death, these revolutionists regard themselves as victims of the sacrifice, feeling themselves in truth to be already dead. Such a man leaves his young wife without hesitation, but it is to go to his death, for his relationship to women in general and to his wife in particular is very different from that of Ropšin's George. George is a polygamist, a decadent polygamist, but Stepniak's revolutionist is a strict monogamist. We feel that in many cases the relationship between man and wife may have been in conformity with the ideal propounded by Tolstoi in the Kreutzer Sonata. Ropšin's George debilitates his nerves in accordance with all the rules of sexual pathology. Characteristic is the manner in which, simply from boredom, he visits the public places where women offer themselves for sale. (Does it not seem likely that Ropšin was familiar with Alphonse Daudet's Une petite paroisse, which contains an analysis of a decadent anarchist soul?)

In a word, the revolutionist of earlier days was quite objectively devoted to his party and to the cause of the people; free from subjectivism, devoid of scepticism, his faith rose to the pitch of fanaticism. The latter-day revolutionist is subjectivist, infidel, individualist to the uttermost limit of social isolation, a sceptic through and through. The man of the earlier type was a follower of John Stuart Mill, of the writer who, despite his utilitarianism, demanded the sacrifice of l felife [sic]; in offering up his life to an ideal, such a revolutionary felt himself to be a consecrated victim. The modern revolutionist does not believe in any ideal; he has carried out the thoughts of Feuerbach and Stirner to their logical conclusion; the desecration of all that is holy has culminated in cynicism. He will kill, but his act is a personal one; he feels personally injured by his opponent, the deed must shake him out of his own apathy, and the adversary's death acts on him as a stimulant. The earlier revolutionist had no thought of suicide, but would kill himself unhesitatingly to avoid falling into the hands of the police, or to spite the prison administration. For Ropšin's George, on the other hand, suicide is desirable in