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BAKUNIN THE APOSTLE OF NIHILISM. 20] 
sent to forecast the organization of the future. “ All reasonings 
about the future are criminal, because they hinder destruction 
pure and simple, and fetter the progress of the revolution.” 
In his Paroles addressees aux Étudiants, Bakunin, like 
Rousseau, attacks science and education, and cries up “ holy 
and wholesome ignorance.” The Russian people, he says, are 
now in the same condition as in the days of the Tsar Alexis, 
father of Peter the Great, when Stenka Razine, the Cossack 
Chief of the Brigands, placed himself at the head of a formid 
able insurrection. The great mass of our young men without 
any defined position (déclassés), who already lead the life of 
the people, will form a sort of collective and, consequently, 
invincible Stenka Razine, and will bring about the final 
emancipation. But they must leave the schools and universi 
ties and live with the people, in order to promote their 
deliverance. “ Give no thought to this useless knowledge in 
the name of which men try to tie your hands.” “ The brigand 
is the true hero, the avenger of the people, the irreconcilable 
enemy of the State, the true revolutionist in action, without 
phrases or rhetoric borrowed from books.” 
It is evident that Bakunin had read Schiller and had some 
recollection of Karl von Moor. Marx, who used to laugh at 
his opponent’s bombastic rhetoric, remarked that as regards 
brigands, there were none in Russia—outside the Government 
at least—except some poor devils who carried on the trade of 
horse-stealing, to the profit of certain commercial enterprises 
which paid, moreover, very good dividends. Nevertheless, it 
is true that, when the social mechanism drives the masses'to 
despair, brigands multiply and become popular, as has been 
the case for some time in Sicily and Calabria. But in Russia 
it is the middle class, and not the people, who feel themselves 
oppressed ; and it is revolutionists, and not brigands, that the 
bourgeoisie supply. 
In another fly-sheet, printed at Geneva, in Russian and for 
Russia, entitled “The Principles of the Revolution,” Bakunin 
indicates the means to be employed for overthrowing every 
thing and establishing amorphism. “ Admitting,” he says, “ no 
other activity than that of destruction, we declare that the