ains
and hands to the common good, and all are to enjoy in equal shares the
natural and artificial good things of this life.

So far there has never been any difference of opinion among the various
groups of Russian thorough-going revolutionists. All of them, from the
antiquated Nihilist down to the Social Democrat of the latest type, have
held these views. What has differentiated them from each other is the
greater or less degree of impatience to realise the ideal.

The most impatient were the Anarchists, who grouped themselves around
Bakunin. They wished to overthrow immediately by a frontal attack all
existing forms of government and social organisation, in the hope that
chance, or evolution, or natural instinct, or sudden inspiration or some
other mysterious force, would create something better. They themselves
declined to aid this mysterious force even by suggestions, on the ground
that, as one of them has said, "to construct is not the business of
the generation whose duty is to destroy." Notwithstanding the
strong impulsive element in the national character, the reckless,
ultra-impatient doctrinaires never became numerous, and never succeeded
in forming an organised group, probably because the young generation in
Russia were too much occupied with the actual and future condition of
their own country to embark on schemes of cosmopolitan anarchism such as
Bakunin recommended.

Next in the scale of impatience came the group of believers in Socialist
agitation among the masses, with a view to overturning the existing
Government and putting themselves in its place as soon as the masses
were sufficiently organised to play the part destined for them. Between
them and the Anarchists the essential points of difference were that
they admitted the necessity of some years of preparation, and
they intended, when the Government was overturned, not to preserve
indefinitely the state of anarchy, but to put in the place of autocracy,
limited monarchy, or the republic, a strong, despotic Government
thoroughly imbued with Socialistic principles. As soon as it had laid
firmly the foundations of the new order of things it was to call a
National Assembly, from which it was to receive, I presume, a bill of
indemnity for the benevolent tyranny which it had temporarily exercised.

Impatience a few degrees less intense produced the next group, the
partisans of pacific Socialist propaganda. They maintained that there
was no necessity f