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8 VIOLENCE AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT
the most complete hierarchy that can well be imagined.
His only tactic, that of lex talionis, also worked out a
perfect reciprocity even in those common affairs to which
this prodigy stooped in order to conquer, for he seemed
to create infallibly every institution he combated and
to use every weapon that he execrated when employed
by others. The most fertile of law-givers himself, he
could not tolerate another. Pope of Popes in his little
inner circle, he could brook no rival. Macftiavelli's
Prince was no richer in intrigue than Bakounin ; yet he
always fancied himself, with the greatest self-compassion,
as the naive victim of the endless and malicious intrigues
of others. However affectionate, generous, and
open he seemed to be with those who followed him worshipfully,
even they were not trusted with his secrets,
and, if he was always cunning and crafty toward his enemies,
he never had a friend that he did not use to his
profit. Volatile in his fitful changes toward men and
movements, rudderless as he often seemed to be in the
incoherence of his ideas and of his policies, there nevertheless
burned in his soul throughout life a great flaming,
and perhaps redeeming, hatred of tyranny. At times he
would lead his little bands into open warfare upon it,
dreaming always that the world once in motion would
follow him to the end in his great work of destruction.
At other times he would go to it
bearing gifts, in the
hope, as we must charitably think, of destroying
it
by
stealth.
In general outline, this is the father of terrorism as I
see him. How he developed his views is not entirely
clear, as very little is known of his early life, and there
are several broken threads at different periods both early
and late in his career. The little known of his youth
may be quickly told. He was born in Russia in 1814, of