is generally a tendency among Federalists, in their impatience of all central authority, to drop the element of federation out of their ideal altogether, and to advocate the form of opinion known as "anarchy"—that is, the abolition of all superior government. It was very natural that this ancient feud among the democrats should appear in the ranks of socialist democracy, and it was equally natural that the Russian Radicals, hating the autocracy of their country and idealizing its rural communes, should become the chief adherents of the federalist and even the anarchic tradition.

This is the only point of principle that separates anarchism from socialism. In other respects anarchism may be said to be but an extremer phase of socialism. It indulges in more violent methods, and in a more omnivorous spirit of destruction. Its fury takes a wider sweep; it attacks all current beliefs and all existing institutions; it puts its hopes in universal chaos. I shall endeavour in a future chapter to explain, from peculiarities of the national character and culture, why this gospel of chaos should find so much acceptance in Russia; but it is no exclusively Russian product. It was preached with singular coolness, as will be subsequently shown, by some of the young Hegelians of Germany before 1848, and it obtains among the more volatile members of most socialist organizations still. Attacks on religion, patriotism, the family, are very usual accessories of their practical agitations everywhere. As institutions and beliefs are seen to lend strength to each other, teeth set on edge against one are easily brought to gnash at all. A sharp check from the public authority generally brings out to the front this extremer element in German socialism. After the repressive legislation of 1878 the German socialists struck the restriction of proceeding "by legal methods" out of their programme, and the wilder spirits among them would be content with nothing short of a policy of general destruction, and, being expelled from the party, started an organization of their own on thoroughly anarchist lines.

Under these influences, the word socialism has come to contract a new meaning, and is now generally defined in a way that would exclude the very theories it was originally invented to denote. Its political element—its demand on the public power in behalf of the labouring class—is taken to be the pith and essence of the system. Mr. Cairnes, for example, says that the circumstance which distinguishes socialism from all other modes of social speculation is its invocation of the powers of the State, and he finds fault with Mr. Mill for describing himself in his "Autobiography" as a socialist, merely because his ideal of ultimate improvement had more in common with the ideal of socialistic reformers than with the views of those who in contradistinction would be called orthodox. The passage from the "Autobiography" runs as follows:—"While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat will be applied, not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to." ("Autobiography," pp. 231-232). On this passage Mr. Cairnes observes:—"If to look forward to such a state of things as an ideal to be striven for is socialism, I at once acknowledge myself a socialist; but it seems to me that the idea which 'socialism' conveys to most minds is not that of any particular form of society to be realized at a future time when the character of human beings and the conditions of human life are widely different from what they now are, but rather certain modes of action, more especially the employment of the powers of the State for the instant accomplishment of ideal schemes, which is the invariable attribute of all projects generally regarded as socialistic. So entirely is this the case that it is common to hear any proposal which is thought to involve an undue extension of the power of the State branded as socialistic, whatever be the object it may seek to accomplish. After all, the question is one of nomenclature merely; but people are so greatly governed by words that I cannot but regret that a philosophy of social life with which I so deeply sympathize should be prejudiced by verbal associations fitted, as it seems to me, only to mislead." ("Leading Principles of Political Economy," p. 316.)