4.

"Of course matters will not be settled quite peacefully at first," he
says; "there will be battles; public order, the sacred _arche_ of the
bourgeois, will be disturbed, and the first facts that will emerge
from such a state of affairs can only end in what people like to call
a civil war. For the rest, do not be afraid that the peasants will
mutually devour each other; even if they attempt to do so at first, it
will not be long before they are convinced of the obvious
impossibility of continuing in this way, and then we may be certain
that they will attempt to unite among themselves, to agree and to
organise. The need of food and of feeding their families, and (as a
consequence of this) of protecting their houses, family, and their own
life against unforeseen attacks--all this will compel them to enter
upon the path of mutual adjustment. Nor need we believe, either, that
in this adjustment, that has been come to without any public
guardianship of the State, the strongest and richest will exert a
preponderating influence by the mere force of circumstances. The
wealth of the rich will cease to be a power as soon as it is no longer
secured by legal arrangements. As to the strongest and most cunning,
they will be rendered harmless by the collective power of the
multitude of small and very small peasants: so, too, in the case of
the rural proletariat, who are to-day merely a multitude given over to
dumb misery, but who will be provided by the revolutionary movement
with an irresistible power. I do not assert that the rural districts
that will thus have to reorganise themselves from top to bottom will
create all at once an ideal organisation which will in all respects
correspond to our dreams. But of this I am convinced, that it will be
a living organisation, and, as such, a thousand times superior to
that which now exists. Besides, this new organisation, since it is
always open to the propaganda of the towns, and can no longer be
fettered and so to speak petrified by the legal sanctions of the
State, will advance freely and develop and improve itself, in ways
that are uncertain, yet always with life and freedom, and never merely
by decrees and laws, till it reaches a standpoint that is as rational
as we could possibly hope at the present day."

Bakunin has expressly excepted secret societies and plots from the
means of bringing about this revolution. But this did not hinder him
from becoming himself, as occasion suited