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THE FATHER OF TERRORISM 5
he never spoke of Satan without an admiration that approached
adoration. They were the two unconquerable
enemies of absolutism. He was "the eternal rebel,"
Bakounin once said of Satan, "the first free-thinker and
emancipator of the worlds." (2) In another place he
speaks of Proudhon as having
the instinct of a revolutionist,
because "he adored Satan and proclaimed anarchy."
(3) In still another place he refers to the proletariat
of Paris as "the modern Satan, the great rebel,
vanquished, but not pacified." (4) In the statutes of
his secret organization, of which I shall speak again later,
he insists that "principles, programs, and rules are not
nearly as important as that the persons who put them
into execution shall have the devil in them." (5) Although
an avowed and militant atheist, Bakounin could
not subdue his worship of the king of devils, and, had
anyone during his life said that Bakounin was not only
a modern Satan incarnate, but the eight other devils as
him more. And no
well, nothing could have delighted
doubt he was inspired to this demon worship by his im-
—
placable hatred of absolutism whether it be in religion,
which he considered as tyranny over the mind, or in government,
which he considered as tyranny over the body.
To Bakounin the two eternal enemies of man were the
Government and the Church, and no weapon was unworthy
of use which promised in any measure to assist
in their entire and complete obliteration.
Absolutism was to
Bakounin a universal destroyer of
the best and the noblest qualities in man. And, as it
stands as an effective barrier to the only social order that
can lift man above the beast— that of perfect liberty
— so
must the sincere warrior against absolutism become the
universal destroyer of any and everything associated
with tyranny. How far such a crusade leads one may