ther groups according to their free choice
and inclination out of the fragments of annihilated society, that is,
if we can manage to procure our enjoyment as well in groups as alone.
These groups will unite into larger groups if the happiness of all
demands a larger undertaking than a single group can secure, such as a
great railway, a submarine tunnel, and the like. In some cases it may
be necessary that a whole people, or even the whole of humanity, should
be in one group, but only up to a certain point, and only until this
point is reached. Naturally no individual is bound to a group, nor one
group to another; binding and loosing go on perpetually, and with the
same facility as molecules in living organisms unite and separate."

Barinskoi occupied himself particularly with the labor questions. Not
that the distress and want of the very poor, the economical insecurity,
the general misery, troubled him at all. He was cynically conscious
that he was as indifferent to the laborer as to the capitalist; the
laborer's inevitable brutalization, his hunger, his bad health, and
short term of life touched him as little as the gout of the rich
gourmand, or the nerves of fine ladies. He saw, however, in the
proletariat a powerful army against prevailing conditions. He could
trace among the discontented masses the possession of the crude vigor
which the Nihilists wanted, to crush the old edifices of the State and
society, and it was this which interested him in the movement and its
literature. He knew the last accurately, and initiated Wilhelm into it,
and so the latter learned all about socialism, its opinions of the
philosophy of production, its theories and promises. He learned also
that sects had already been formed within this new faith, which the
revelations of the socialistic prophets explained differently; and that
they furiously hated each other, and were as much at enmity as if they
were a State Church with a privileged priesthood, benefices, property
and power.

The complaints of the proletariat appeared to Wilhelm of doubtful
value. In every age there were economic fevers, which were not caused
by misery, but by discontent and wastefulness, and if he saw a workman
staggering through the streets, his legs tottering beneath him, he
guessed that his weakness was not caused by hunger, but by beer or
spirits. He understood that mankind believed in an unbroken work of
development within nature, and in their own self-cultiva