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BAKUNIN  THE  APOSTLE  OF  NIHILISM.
Economists  to  State  intervention  to  an  extreme,  he  ends  by
crying  up  “anarchy,”  that  is  to  say,  the  suppression  of  the
State.  He  extols  individualism  and  liberty.  Order  will  result
he  asserts,  from  the  initiative  of  individuals  freed  from  the
shackles  of  all  kinds  which  at  present  impede  and  crush  them.
Bakunin  reproduces  these  ideas,  but  he  clothes  them  in  Russian
garb.  He  demands  the  collective  ownership  of  the  soil  and
of  the  instruments  of  production,  but  he  confers  it  upon  the
Commune  in  like  manner  as  such  ownership  exists  with  regard
to  land  in  the  villages  of  Great  Russia.  He  desires  “  anarchy,”
but  with  a  sort  of  mystic  enthusiasm  quite  foreign  to  Proudhon.
He  dreams  of  the  total  destruction  of  all  existing  institutions,
and  the  formation  of  an  “  amorphous  ”  society  ;  that  is  to  say,  â
society  without  any  form,  which  means,  in  reality,  a  return  to
the  savage  state.  To  attain  this  end,  there  is  wanted  a  revolution ­
  knowing  no  pity—a  revolution  which,  by  fire  and  sword,
will  extirpate  to  the  very  last  traces  the  old  social  order.  Thé
final  aim,  then,  is  Collectivism,  or,  better  still,  “  Amorphism,”
and  the  means  of  attaining  it  “pan-destruction.”
It  might  be  supposed  that  these  were  the  ideas  of  a  raving
lunatic,  but  they  are  not  without  precedent  in  the  history  of
human  thought.  At  certain  troublous  epochs  the  souls  of
those  who  yearn  for  the  ideal  bemoan  and  are  indignant  at  the
evils  and  iniquities  that  afflict  the  human  race.  They  catch  a
glimpse  of  a  better  order  where  justice  will  reign  supreme,  but
they  believe  that  it  can  never  be  attained  by  slow  and  successive
reforms.  They,  therefore,  look  for  the  destruction  of  the  old
order,  so  that  from  its  ruins  the  regenerated  order  may  arise
Such  was  the  idea  of  primitive  Christianity.  In  order  that  the
Kingdom  of  Heaven  might  come,  this  perverse  world  must
perish  ;  not,  it  is  true,  by  a  political  or  social  revolution  but  by
a  cosmical  catastrophe.  Everything  was  to  be  consumed  not
by  the  torch  of  the  incendiary,  as  certain  Anarchists  wish
to-day,  but  by  fire  from  heaven.
“  Dies  iræ,  dies  ilia
Solvet  sæclum  in  favilla.”  *
•  The  idea  of  palingenesis  arose  from  the  problem  of  evil.  The  just