Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/572

546 traitors, those diplomatists of the revolution who, like Lassalle's Franz von Sickingen, wish to avail themselves of the "cunning of ideas," those who hope to bring about the great reform without shock and without arousing resistance. The attempt is vain, for the awakeners must have sufficient courage to knock loudly at the door of the theocratic bed-chamber.

Not everything is permissible in and for the revolution. Our refusal to admit that the end can always justify the means, applies to the revolution as well as to other things. Ropšin need not have allowed Dostoevskii's Ivan to influence him so powerfully. The formula "all things are permissible" originates because official absolutism sticks at nothing. Dostoevskii's Ivan wishes to give this formula a religious significance. Ivan, however, is not a revolutionist defending the people, but a self-willed man, an absolute egotist.

Many revolutionaries appraise the revolution by a purely utilitarian standard. Pestel deduced the utility of the revolution from the consideration that the Bourbon restoration had accepted the majority of the essential institutions of the revolution, and this writer declared that the recognition of the fact had marked an epoch in his political convictions and in his trend of thought. Pestel was speaking of a mass revolution, but it is another affair when we have to appraise the utility of terrorism. If we think of the great number of victims sacrificed in the cause of terrorism, and of the masses of men who have languished in Siberia or as refugees, if we throw into the scales the losses and gains, we find that even from the utilitarian standpoint which the nihilists have adopted in ethics, it is far from easy to come to a conclusion.

My own belief is that terrorism may have a revolutionary effect, but that the effect is not usually proportionate to the deed. Systematised terrorism I consider an erroneous method. The dangers of systematised terrorism have been recognised by those anarchists who have declared individual outrage useless, and on a level with ordinary crime.

OR the complete understanding of Russia revolutionism we must return to what has already been said regarding democracy in Catholic and in Protestant nations; we must return to the consideration that in political matters Catholic