to her god;
men alone vascillate._

FREE-THOUGHT IN GERMANY, FRANCE AND RUSSIA, OR RUSSIAN NIHILISM.

BY FITZ CUNLIFFE OWEN. LIBRARY MAG. VOL. 3.

Rationalism and radicalism exist to a certain extent in every country of
Europe. But the Social Democrats of Germany and Austria and the
Communists of France and Spain turn with horror from Russian
revolutionists, who consider the programme of the Paris commune of 1871
condemnably weak, and Felix Pyat, Cluseret and their companions as
little better than conservatives. The Social Democrats and even the
Communists of the rest of Europe have in view aims which, no matter how
fantastic, are always of a sufficiently defined nature. They look
forward to an entirely democratic form of government, and hope for a
recognization of the social world, under which all capital and property
would be held either by the State or Commune for the equal benefit of
everybody. They are levellers, but they are not destroyers. Take the
right of property from the citizens of a government and the greatest
motive to industry and prosperity is gone.

The revolutionary party in Russia has no definite aims of either
reorganization or improvement. In its sight everything as it now exists
is rotten, and before anything new and good can be created all existing
institutions must be utterly destroyed. Religion, the state, the family,
laws, property, morality, are all equally odious, and must be rooted out
and abolished. It is because "nothing," as it exists at present, finds
favor in their eyes that they have been called "Nihilists." They
maintain that no one should be bound by laws or even moral obligations
of any kind, but that every body should be allowed to do exactly as he
pleases. They desire to break up the actual social organization into
mere individualism, with entire independence for each separate person.
Their object is anarchy in the very truest sense of the word. They are
only modest enough to decline the attempt to create a new order of
things in the place of what they propose to destroy. That they intend to
leave for a better and more enlightened generation. The following, from
a Nihilist paper, Narodnia Volya (The Will of the People), which is
published at St. Petersburg by means of secret presses, will set them
forth in their true inwardness:

"The Russian press is bent almost double by the imperial government.
Notwithstanding its disagreeable position it does its utmost to curry