conditions that now exist. They wish the positive and the negative to continue to exist separate, one-sided, and unrelated; to preserve for themselves in addition the enjoyment of the totality—a totality lacking life. For this reason the compromisers, since they are not truly permeated by the spirit of the present, are immoral, seeing that morality is impossible beyond the limits of the only saving church, the church of free men. Bakunin cites against them the words of the writer of the Apocalypse: "I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked."
To history also, Bakunin applies this Hegelian doctrine of contrast. The principle of freedom was active from the first in the old Catholic world, manifesting itself in the numerous heresies which kept Catholicism alive and vigorous, but did so only whilst they existed within Catholicism, only whilst the oppositions were combined into a totality. In Protestantism, whose spirit had at first developed within Catholicism, the principle of freedom became independent, and the contrast became manifest in its purity.
The compromisers maintain that the contrasts of the present day are less acute and less dangerous. Tranquillity, they contend, is universal; everywhere movement has subsided; no one thinks of war, for material interests, which have now become the leading concerns of politics and universal civilisation, cannot be furthered without peace. Bakunin, however, points out to the compromisers the great signs of the time. He shows them the mysterious and terrible words, liberty, equality and fraternity, graven upon the temple of liberty upbuilded by the revolution. He points to Napoleon, who did not tame democracy, but, as son of the revolution, disseminated the democratic levelling principle throughout Europe. He refers to Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, showing that philosophy established in the intellectual world the identical levelling and revolutionary principle, and the principle of the autonomy of the spirit, which conflicts absolutely with all positive religions and churches. The revolution has not been overcome. It is merely gathering strength for a fresh onslaught. Strauss,
