And then he concludes:

be inoculated like small-pox". "I do not believe in the former revolutionary ways and I seek to understand human advance in the past and in the present, in order to know how to keep up with it, and not straggle nor run ahead so far that the people will not follow and cannot follow." 1

Herzen, we have learned, hoped for a special evolution of the Russian people. His aversion to specialization of any kind, on the one hand, and to mediocrity and dilettantism, on the other hand, made him seek for a synthesis of these extremes. To have succeeded he could not claim, and so he resigned himself to the fact that the historic process cannot be accelerated or changed; the wisest way is to keep step. This comparative conservatism which marks the eve of his life remained, however, unnoticed by the fervent spirits of the younger generation who seized and cherished his revolutionary ideas alone.

IV. The Anarchistic Theories of Bakunin

2

Bakunin's writings have little scientific value. They are extremely doctrinaire, being baised by the author's bitter hatred of existing social institutions, especially by his dislike of church and state. But he must be mentioned in this symposium of precursors because of his wide and con

1 Idem.

'Mikhail Alexandrovitch Bakunin (1814-1876), a dynamic personality expressing in himself the critical transitional stage through which Russia was passing with the rise of the bourgeoisie and the struggle for democracy. In 1840 Bakunin left Russia. He took part in almost all revolutions of that period which swept over Western Europe. Twice he was sentenced to death; he tasted Siberian exile. He is especially known by his opposition to Marx in the Association internationale des travailleurs, from which he was expelled in 1872. Works (Russian), Bolashev edition, two volumes, and French, “Oeuvres de Bakunine", 1895, also some in German.

tinuous influence upon the radical elements not only of Russia but also of other parts of Europe. Bakunin adheres to the organic view of society. "We must," he says, "look at human society as at any organism"; it is true that it is much more complex than a biological organism but just as natural, being subject to the same laws in addition to which it is governed by its own exclusive and characteristic laws." Each people appears as a collective being possessing physical, psychic and politico-social peculiarities, which individualize it, and separate it from all other peoples." All this is due "to an infinitely complex aggregate of an innumerable amount of very different causes, large or small, of which a part is known, while much of it remains unknown."2

66

Everything that exists, all beings, whatever be their nature in regard to quality and quantity influence each other, regardless of desire or consciousness, by means of direct or indirect actions and reactions. These endless actions and reactions combining into unified movement comprise what we call general coherence, life, causation."

"This universal life creates worlds-it continues in the human realms, creating society with all its past and all its future development.

Bakunin warns his readers not to interpret his words in the metaphysical sense when he says that "life is creativeness", and that man is a dynamic creative force within the human realm. He says:

What we call the human realm, has no other direct creator than man, who makes it, forging little by little from the outer world and from his own animality his liberty and his

1 Bakunin, Works, Bolashev ed. (Russian), vol. i, p. 89.

2 Ibid., p. 91.

Ibid., p. 91.

▲ Ibid., p. 90.

5 Ibid., p. 99.

human dignity. He conquers it by a craving force, independent of himself, unconquerable and equally a part of all human beings. This force, this universal stream of life, is the same which we term universal causation or nature, and which appears in all living beings, plant or animal. The tendency of each individuality is to ascertain for itself conditions necessary for the life of its kind, i. e. needed to satisfy its own necessities.1

2

"Within that environment which itself produces man he attains, by means of toil and thanks to his reason, his consciousness of liberty." " "Nature itself in its successive phenomenal changes strives towards liberation. . . . . A greater individual liberty appears to be an unfailing sign of perfection."

3

"Man is the most individualized of earthly beings but he also appears to be the most socialized of all beings.' Thus "Society is the natural phenomenon of existing peoples, independent of any kind of contract. It is governed by disposition and by traditional customs, but never by laws. It gradually progresses, being moved forward by impulses of individual initiative, and not by the thought and will of the legislator." "

5

By this view of society and its moving forces, Bakunin justifies his anarchistic negations of law and government. The state, accordingly, is to him:

A huge cemetery in which occur self-sacrifice, death and burial of all phenomena of individual and local life, of the interests of those parts, which in their aggregate compose society. It is an altar upon which the real liberty and welfare of the

1 Works, vol. i, p. 109.

Ibid., p. 112.

♦ Ibid., p. 132.

3

Ibid., p. 131.

5 lbid., p. 133.

people is brought as a sacrifice to political greatness; and the more this sacrificing is extended the more the state is complete.1 Hence the state is an abstraction which devours the life of the people; but for such an abstraction to be born, develop and continue its existence in the real world, a real collective body must exist whose interests are bound up with the existence of the state. Such cannot be the majority of the people, for they appear to be victims of the state. He concludes: "The state was always the possession of a privileged class: the priesthood, the nobility or the bourgeoisie "."

The rise of classes Bakunin traces back to the animal instinct of difference. He says: "Each species of animals subdivides into different groups and families which change under influences of geographic and climatic conditions." " Through these external influences small groups or varieties are formed within the species which are hostile to one another and which seek to destroy one another. The instinctive hostility of animal groups the author calls: "Natural Patriotism", and he defines it as: "instinctive, mechanical and deprived of any critical attachment of oneself to the socially accepted, hereditary, traditional mode of life, and an equally instinctive, mechanical hostility to any other mode of life." "

"Natural Patriotism" carried over into human society (as it emerged from the animal world) and, equipped with religious sanction, became finally the government. "Thus God, or rather the fiction of God, appears as the sanction, and as the intellectual and moral cause of every slavery on earth; and the liberty of man will be complete

1 Works, vol. i, p. 188.

Ibid., p. 189.

• Ibid., p. 193.

♦ Ibid., p. 194.

only when man completely annihilates the pernicious fiction of the heavenly ruler." 1

The origin of religion Bakunin explains by man's sense of dependence upon the powers of nature. Religion "like all other human institutions has its origin in animal life."

" 2

This is Bakunin's account of the rise of existing institutions. What form of society does he regard as proper and beneficent?

He believes that the organization of society should be from the bottom up. Federalism is the ideal organization,3 and the goal of evolution. According to the Hegelian trilogy, Kakunin views "the centralized states as thesis, anarchy or amorphism as antithesis, and federation of the independent groups and people as synthesis." Anarchism as the antithesis is to be attained by direct action through the propaganda of the deed "," and by teaching that the revolution (i. e., the end) sanctions the means.*

4

V. The Historism of Granovsky

As representative Westernist and precursor of later Russian sociology must be mentioned Granovsky."

1 Works, vol. i, p. 14.

• Ibid., p. 103.

3

3 Cf. Oeuvres, vol. i, “Federalisme, Socialisme, etc." Bakunin's Sozialpolitischer Briefwechsel mit Herzen und Ogarjow, Stuttgart, 1895, p. 388.

• Ibid., p. 363.

Ibid., p. 359. 'Timofy Nikolaevitch Granovsky (1813-1855) was a close friend of Herzen and a popular Professor of History in the University of Moscow. Kareyev says of him: "Granovsky thought in terms of history, and in terms of history he made propaganda." (N. I. Kareyev, Works, vol. ii, p. 40.) Granovsky, as a propagandist professor, looms traditionally as a much greater figure among the Russian intellectuals, than as an author, among those who have to content themselves with his rather meagre literary output. Works, ii volumes.