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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  formidable ­
  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  universities ­
  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  everything ­
  and  establishing  amorphism.  “  Admitting,”  he  says,  “  no
other  activity  than  that  of  destruction,  we  declare  that  the