y of the
Nineteenth Century_ (Camb. 1902).]

At that time, too, a band of writers, of whom the novelist Turgenieff
is the best known, were extolling the triumphs of scientific research
and the benefits of Western democracy. He it was who adapted to
scientific or ethical use the word "Nihilism" (already in use in France
to designate Prudhon's theories), so as to represent the revolt of the
individual against the religious creed and patriarchal customs of old
Russia. "The fundamental principle of Nihilism," says "Stepniak," "was
absolute individualism. It was the negation, in the name of individual
liberty, of all the obligations imposed upon the individual by society,
by family life, and by religion[226]."

[Footnote 226: _Underground Russia_, by "Stepniak," Introduction, p. 4.
Or, as Turgenieff phrased it in one of his novels: "a Nihilist is a man
who submits to no authority, who accepts not a single principle upon
faith merely, however high such a principle may stand in the eyes of
men." In short, a Nihilist was an extreme individualist and
rationalist.]

For a time these disciples of Darwin and Herbert Spencer were satisfied
with academic protests against autocracy; but the uselessness of such
methods soon became manifest; the influence of professors and
philosophic Epicureans could never permeate the masses of Russia and
stir them to their dull depths. What "the intellectuals" needed was a
creed which would appeal to the many.

This they gained mainly from Bakunin. He had pointed the way to what
seemed a practical policy, the ownership of the soil of Russia by the
Mirs, the communes of her myriad villages. As to methods, he advocated a
propaganda of violence. "Go among the people," he said, and convert them
to your aims. The example of the Paris Communists in 1871 enforced his
pleas; and in the subsequent years thousands of students, many of them
of the highest families, quietly left their homes, donned the peasants'
garb, smirched their faces, tarred their hands, and went into the
villages or the factories in the hope of stirring up the thick
sedimentary deposit of the Russian system[227]. In many cases their
utmost efforts ended in failure, the tragi-comedy of which is finely
set forth in Turgenieff's _Virgin Soil_. Still more frequently their
goal proved to be--Siberia. But these young men and women did not toil
for nought. Their efforts hastened the absorption of philosophic
Nihilism in the creed of Prudhon