pt also failed, he stayed sometimes in
Russia and sometimes in Italy, devoting himself to Socialist
agitation, and being always on every favourable opportunity active
either as an apostle of Anarchist doctrine or as an agitator in the
preparations and _mise-en-scene_ of a revolution. We shall speak of
this later. The last years of his life were spent alternately in
Geneva, Locarno, and Bern, where he died on July 1, 1878, at the
hospital, after refusing all nourishment, and thus hastening his end.

The Anarchist epoch of his life is included mainly in the last ten
years of his career, so fertile in mistakes and changes of opinion.
Anarchism owes its renascence to his active agitation, regardless of
all consequences; and even in his writings the thinker lags far behind
the agitator. Bakunin at best could only be called the theorist of
action; his activity as an author was limited to scattered articles in
journals and a few (mostly fragmentary) pamphlets. He was right in his
answer to those critics who reproached him with this: "My life itself
is but a fragment." Where could he have found in his life-long
wanderings the peaceful leisure in which to develop his thoughts
quietly or to express them in a work such as Proudhon's _Justice_ or
Stirner's _Einziger_? Besides, he lacked the gift of mental depth and
firmly grounded knowledge. His style possesses something of his
fluency as a demagogue, but his procedure in science reminds of the
soaring dialectics of the revolutionary orator, full of repetitions,
and attractive rather than convincing. In his case a pose always takes
the place of an argument.

It is said that during the period of his association with the
"International" Bakunin had had the intention of setting forth his
ideas in two large works, one of which would have been a criticism of
the existing arrangements of the State, property, and religion, while
the other would have treated of the problems of the European nations,
especially the Slavs, and have shown their solution by social
revolution and anarchy. But, of course, these two works were never
written, and there remain to us only some remnants of numerous
fragmentary and formless manuscripts, originating in the period of
1863-73. Among these is a _Catechism of Modern Freemasonry_, the
_Revolutionary Catechisms_, not to be compared with the later
catechism of Netschajew, which was wrongly ascribed to Bakunin; also
the wordy essay on _Federation, Socialism,