Anarchism. When, in the
sixties, Socialism, with its organisation of the working-class
movement, grew up side by side with the revival of political
Liberalism, then, too, by a natural law, arose the extreme form of
protest against the aggregation of human society by Communism; the
Anarchist doctrine naturally rose up from the complete oblivion in
which it had lain for ten years. But modern Anarchism celebrated its
renascence in a totally different form: times and men had changed; the
philosophic period was passed, Stirner was dead, and Proudhon near his
end; Russian godfathers stood round the cradle of modern Anarchism.
Men of lofty idealism, who, impregnated with Western culture, with
bold violence, wished to anticipate by several ages the natural
development of mankind, have given up to Anarchy, as the empire of
perfect and free personality, their whole heart and mind. But those
who gave to this doctrine--justified to some extent, like every other
one-sided view, in spite of all its extravagance, contradictions, and
inherent impossibility--the sanction of the dagger, the revolver,
petroleum, and dynamite, were neither Frenchmen nor Germans, but the
half-civilised barbarians of the East.

The older form of Anarchism is marked by that lofty idealism which was
the general mental attitude of civilised Western Europe in the first
half of this century. The modern Anarchism of Bakunin, Netschajew,
Kropotkin, and others, is branded by the semi-civilised culture of
Russia, whose only object is the destruction of every existing state
of things, and indeed under existing circumstances it cannot be
otherwise. Dislike of, and discontent with real or fancied grievances,
combined with a stiff-necked, _doctrinaire_ attitude unprepared for
any _sacrificio del intelletto_, may indeed lead the children of
Western civilisation to a logical denial of the existing order of
society. But from this to the actual overthrow of all existing
conditions is a still farther step; and the positive intention of
annihilating the infinite mental and material inheritance which is the
outcome of civilisation, and which is not even denied by Anarchists
themselves, could only be conceived by a few degenerate individuals
who could only wish to see themselves _vis-a-vis de rien_ because of
their own utter lack of moral, intellectual, or material possessions.
Against these individuals there will always be arrayed an overwhelming
majority, who are ready to ple