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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

forms  in  which  that  activity  should  express  itself  may  be
widely  varied  :  poison,  poignard,  running  noose.  The  revolution ­
  sanctifies  all  means  without  distinction.”  These  means
will  appear  somewhat  superannuated  to-day,  but  ten  years  ago
petroleum  and  dynamite  did  not  yet  occupy,  in  the  revolutionary ­
  arsenal,  the  position  now  assured  to  them  by  their  proved
efficiency.  To  attain  to  “  pan-destruction,”  the  first  requisite
is  “  a  series  of  outrages  and  of  audacious  and  even  mad  enterprises, ­
  striking  terror  into  the  powerful  and  arousing  the  people,
till  they  believe  in  the  triumph  of  the  Revolution.”  Does  not
this  infernal  programme  seem  like  a  hideous  dream  ?—and  yet
the  various  attempts  at  assassination  which  take  place  almost
daily  in  Russia  and  elsewhere  prove  that  it  is  being  carried  out
to  the  letter.  It  is  incomprehensible  how  this  frightful  work  of
pan-destruction  can  inspire  persons  belonging  to  the  well-to-do
classes  with  that  savage  fanaticism  which  leads  them  to  sacrifice
their  own  lives  in  order  to  kill  those  whom  the  Vehmgericht
condemns  to  death.  In  the  West,  regicides  are  not  wanting,
and  they  act  under  the  sway  of  this  same  hatred  of  the  social
order,  but  they  have  no  accomplices,  and  the  criminal  idea
springs  from  a  sort  of  sickly  fermentation  in  disordered  brains  :
the  two  regicides  of  Berlin,  the  two  of  Madrid,  and  the  one  of
Naples  all  displayed  the  same  characteristics.  In  Russia  the
assassins  are  intelligent,  well-informed,  determined  persons,  and
they  act  in  obedience  to  a  vast  association  which  is  everywhere
present,  but  which,  nevertheless,  baffles  the  most  persistent
efforts  of  the  police.  There  must  be  a  force  of  mystical  exaltation ­
  in  the  Russian  character  which  has  disappeared  elsewhere.
To  find  a  similar  phenomenon,  we  must  go  back  to  the
partisans  of  the  “  Old  Man  of  the  Mountain,”  in  the  thirteenth
century.
The  organization  of  the  party  has  not  remained  unknown  ;
it  was  formulated  by  Bakunin  in  the  “  Revolutionary  Catechism,” ­
  written  in  cipher,  but  read  by  the  public  prosecutor  at
the  trial  of  Netchaieff,  on  the  8th  of  July,  1871.  The  following
are  extracts  from  it  :—“The  revolutionist  is  a  man  under  a  vow.
He  ought  to  have  no  personal  interests,  no  business,  no  feelings,
no  property.  He  ought  to  be  entirely  absorbed  in  one  single