, the head of a secret
society, formed according to all the rules of the conspirator's art.

Fundamentally opposed as our minds must be to men like Proudhon and
Stirner, we yet readily recognise in them their undoubted personal
talents, both of mind, spirit, and character, and, above all, have
never questioned their good faith. But we cannot speak thus of
Bakunin. In all the changes and chances of a life that was singularly
rich in change, there were far too many dark points, to which evil
report had ample opportunity to attach itself. We do not see in
Bakunin that proletarian in wooden sabots and blouse, with the eager
thirst for knowledge and keen desire to raise himself, who dreams as
he works before the compositor's frame of a juster order of things in
this world, yet more for others than for himself, and would like to
arrange society itself laboriously in a well-ordered compositor's
case; nor do we see in Bakunin that plain German schoolmaster who
would people society with mere sons of Prometheus, while he himself
totters starving to the grave; who dedicates his gospel of a doctrine
that would overthrow the world from pole to pole "to his Darling,
Marie Donhardt," as though it were a tender love-song. Bakunin remains
to us for ever as the commercial traveller of eternal revolution in a
magnificent pose, and from the red cloak so picturesquely cast around
him peeps out unpleasantly the dagger of Caserio.

* * * * *

We cannot leave Bakunin without a passing mention of his favourite
pupil Sergei Netschajew,[7] although he was still less of a pure
Anarchist than Bakunin, and can still less easily be separated from
Russian Nihilism.

[7] For Netschajew, cf. the article "Anarchism" in Wurm's
_Volks-lexicon_, vol. i., and in the _Handwoerterbuch der
Staatswissenschaften_, Jena, 1890, vol. i.; also E. von
Laveleye, _Socialism of the Present_ (German ed. by Ch.
Jasper, Halle, A.D. S., 1895). All these, however, are based
almost exclusively on the information in the memoir,
_L'Alliance de la Democratie Socialiste et l'Association
Internationale des Travailleurs_: Report and documents
published by order of the International Congress at The Hague
(London and Hamburg, 1873)--a very one-sided party brochure
of the Marxists against the Bakuninists, which has been
proved wrong on more points than one. We regret all the more
that we are limite