ideas into action and agitation, the which were the proper domain of
his spirit. When, after restless wanderings, he came from Italy into
Switzerland, it appeared as if this wish were to be fulfilled.

In Geneva there happened to be a meeting of the Peace Congress, which
then had merely philanthropic aims, and was attended by members of the
most diverse classes of society and most different nations. Bakunin
hoped to win over to his ideas this company, consisting for the most
part of amiable enthusiasts, doctrinaires and congress haunters, and
to create in it a background for his own activity. He, therefore,
appeared at the Congress and made a speech that was highly applauded
in which he came to the conclusion that international peace was
impossible as long as the following principle, together with all its
consequences, was not accepted; namely: "Every nation, feeble or
strong, small or great, every province, every community has the
absolute right to be free and autonomous, to live according to its
interests and private needs and to rule itself; and in this right all
communities and all nations have a certain solidarity to the extent
that this principle cannot be violated for one of them without at the
same time involving all the others in danger. So long as the present
centralised States exist, universal peace is impossible; we must,
therefore, wish for their dismemberment, in order that, on the ruins
of these unities based on force and organised from above downwards by
despotism and conquest, free unities organised from below upwards may
develop as a free federation of communities with provinces, provinces
with nations, and nations with the united States of Europe." In
another speech at the same Congress he sums up the principles upon
which alone peace and justice rest, in the following:--(1) "The
abolition of everything included in the term of 'the historic and
political necessity of the State,' in the name of any larger or
smaller, weak or strong population, as well as in the name of all
individuals who are said to have full power to dispose of themselves
in complete freedom independently of the needs and claims of the
State, wherein this freedom ought only to be limited by the equal
rights of others; (2) Annulling of all the permanent contracts between
the individual and the collective unity, associations, departments or
nations; in other words, every individual must have the right to break
any contract, even if e