nment. And who does not love those innumerable Russian
youths and maidens, driven to acts of defiance--hopeless, futile, yet
necessary--if for no other reason than to fulfill their duty to humanity
and thus perhaps quiet a quivering conscience? There is something truly
Promethean in the struggle of the Russian youth against their
overpowering antagonist. They know that the price of one single act of
protest is their lives. Yet, to the eternal credit of humanity,
thousands of them have thrown themselves naked on the spears of their
enemy, to become an example of sacrificial revolt. And can any of us
wonder that when even this tragic seeding of the martyrs proved
unfruitful, many of the Russian youth, brooding over the irremediable
wrongs of their people, were driven to insanity and suicide? And, if all
that was possible, would it be surprising if it also happened that at
least one flaming rebel should have developed a philosophy of warfare no
less terrible than that of the Russian bureaucracy itself? I do not
know, nor would I allow myself to suggest, that Michael Bakounin, who
brought into Western Europe and planted there the seeds of terrorism,
came to be like what he contemplated, or that his philosophy and tactics
of action were altogether a reflection of those he opposed. Yet, if that
were the case, one could better understand that bitter and bewildering
character.

That there is some justification for speculation on these grounds is
indicated by the heroes of Bakounin. He always meant to write the story
of Prometheus, and he never spoke of Satan without an admiration that
approached adoration. They were the two unconquerable enemies of
absolutism. He was "the eternal rebel," Bakounin once said of Satan,
"the first free-thinker and emancipator of the worlds."[2] In another
place he speaks of Proudhon as having the instinct of a revolutionist,
because "he adored Satan and proclaimed anarchy."[3] In still another
place he refers to the proletariat of Paris as "the modern Satan, the
great rebel, vanquished, but not pacified."[4] In the statutes of his
secret organization, of which I shall speak again later, he insists that
"principles, programs, and rules are not nearly as important as that the
persons who put them into execution shall have the devil in them."[5]
Although an avowed and militant atheist, Bakounin could not subdue his
worship of the king of devils, and, had anyone during his life said that
Bakounin was n