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BAKUNIN  THE  APOSTLE  OF  NIHILISM.  241

bourgeoisie.  The  return  to  the  régime  of  a  bygone  age  would,
on  the  contrary,  perpetuate  the  divisions  of  the  bourgeoisie  and
their  intestine  struggles,  thus  reopening  to  our  profit  the  era  of
revolutions.”  *  Nothing  could  be  more  true.  Socialism,  when
isolated,  is  not  to  be  dreaded  ;  but  in  the  event  of  a  political
revolution  or  a  great  reverse  in  a  foreign  war,  the  anarchists  will
be  ready  once  more  to  profit  by  the  collapse  of  power.
If  the  sovereigns  of  Europe  wish  to  disarm  Socialism,  they
"'ill  not  succeed  in  doing  so  by  exceptional  laws,  as  in  Germany,
nor  by  casemates  and  Siberia,  as  in  Russia.  Let  them  put  an
pnd  to  this  detestable  antagonism  of  State  against  State,  which
is  the  curse  of  our  times  ;  let  them  reduce  their  armies  and
diminish  their  taxes,  and  then  they  may  fearlessly  give  complete
liberty  to  a  happier  people.  The  vision  of  Utopia  will  not  disiippear,
  for  it  is  older  than  Plato,  and  Society  will  continue  to
be  transformed  as  has  been  the  case  since  prehistoric  times  ;
but  the  Utopia  will  no  longer  be  a  dream  of  universal  destrucbon,
  and  the  transformations  will  take  place  peacefully.
If,  now,  we  endeavour  to  reach  the  sources  of  Nihilistic
Socialism,  we  shall  meet,  on  the  one  hand,  the  levelling  philosophers ­
  of  the  last  century—Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  Morelli,
^ably,  Rrissot,  Helvetius  j  and  the  Socialists  of  the  present
century—Owen,  St.  Simon,  Fourier,  Proudhon,  Louis  Blanc;
on  the  other  hand,  the  German  philosophers,  Hegel,
Feuerbach,  and  Schopenhauer.  Marx  and  Lassalle,  Herzen
^ud  Bakunin,  were  at  the  outset  enthusiastic  Hegelians.  In  a
'"cry  strange  book,  which  dates  from  1845,  Der  Einzige  und  sein
^Jsentlmm  (“The  Individual  and  his  Property”),  written  by  Max
^tirner,  one  may  see  Hegelianism  ending  in  the  deification  of
^-goisni,  and  absolutely  denying  everything  else.  Stirner  takes
^or  his  epigraph  the  following  verse  of  one  of  Goethe’s  songs  :
babe  meine  Sache  auf  nichts  gestellt  (“I  rest  my  hopes
nothing  ”).  His  doctrine  is  summed  up  in  the  following
lourds  of  the  preface  :  “  My  affair  is  neither  the  divine  nor  the
human,  neither  the  true,  nor  the  good,  nor  liberty,  etc.,  but  my
;  myself  and  my  interest,  nothing  more.”  In  the  case  of
I  État  à  Versailles  et  dans  P  Association  des  Travailleurs,  by  Brousse,
noon,  1873,  without  the  name  of  the  publisher.