t slowly pursued its objects, would
perhaps have conquered the world in one, two, or three centuries, and
now the unforeseen intrudes! The unforeseen is that which was not
foreseen by the wise and prudent. But those who know history and can
lay claim to any well-ordered reasoning power, however small, know
quite well that a theoretical propaganda of revolution must
necessarily be translated into action long before theorists have
decided that the time for it has come. None the less the theorists are
enraged with the 'fools' and excommunicate and ban them. But the fools
find sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their boldness,
and they find imitators. In proportion as the first of them fill the
prisons, others come forward to continue their work. The acts of
illegal protest, of revolt, of revenge, increase. Indifference becomes
impossible. Those who at first only asked what on earth the fools
meant, are compelled to take them seriously, to discuss their ideas,
and to take sides for or against. By acts which are done under the
notice of the people, the new idea communicates itself to men's minds
and finds adherents. One such act makes in a few days more proselytes
than thousands of books."

This is precisely the view of the followers of Bakunin, only obscured
and founded on a psychological basis.

Kropotkin forms the centre of a large number of Anarchist authors, who
are working at the development or the popularising of Anarchist theory
on the same lines as he is doing. From the mass of unimportant writers
two rise up prominently, both essentially differing one from the
other, Elisee Reclus, the savant, and Jean Grave, editor of the
_Revolte_.

Jean Jacques Elisee Reclus[9] was born on March 15, 1830, at Ste. Foy
la Grande, in the Gironde, the son of a Protestant minister. He was
the eldest but one of twelve children, and early became acquainted
with want and distress, a circumstance which, in conjunction with his
warm and affectionate heart, sufficiently explains his later social
views. Educated in Rhenish Prussia, he attended the Protestant Faculty
at Montauban, in Southern France, and then the University of Berlin,
where he studied geography under Ritter. At present Reclus is regarded
as one of the best geographers, and is the author of the famous and
much admired _Nouvelle Geographie Universelle_, in nineteen volumes,
and of the great popular physical geography _La Terre_, which has also
been translate