Such silly paradoxes provoked, of course, merely a smile of compassion; what alarmed the sensible, respectable “Philistine” was the method of cleansing the Augean stable recommended by these enthusiasts.  Having discovered in the course of their desultory reading that most of the ills that flesh is heir to proceed directly or indirectly from uncontrolled sexual passion and the lust of gain, they proposed to seal hermetically these two great sources of crime and misery by abolishing the old-fashioned institutions of marriage and private property.  When society, they argued, should be so organised that all the healthy instincts of human nature could find complete and untrammelled satisfaction, there would be no motive or inducement for committing crimes or misdemeanours.  For thousands of years humanity had been sailing on a wrong tack.  The great law-givers of the world, religious and civil, in their ignorance of physical science and positivist methods, had created institutions, commonly known as law and morality, which were utterly unfitted to human nature, and then the magistrate and the moralist had endeavoured to compel or persuade men and women to conform to them, but their efforts had failed most signally.  In vain the police had threatened and punished and the priests had preached and admonished.  Human nature had systematically and obstinately rebelled, and still rebels, against the unnatural constraint.  It is time, therefore, to try a new system.  Instead of continuing, as has been done for thousands of years, to force men and women, as it were, into badly fitting, unelastic clothes which cause intense discomfort and prevent all healthy muscular action, why not adapt the costume to the anatomy and physiology of the human frame?  Then the clothes will no longer be rent, and those who wear them will be contented and happy.

Unfortunately for the progress of humanity there are serious obstacles in the way of this radical change of system.  The absurd, antiquated and pernicious institutions and customs are supported by abstruse metaphysical reasons and enshrined in mystical romantic sentiment, and in this way they may still be preserved for generations unless the axe be laid to the root of the tree.  Now is the critical moment.  Russia must be made to rise at once from the metaphysical to the positivist stage of intellectual development; metaphysical reasoning and romantic sentiment must be rigorously discarded; and everything must be brought to the touchstone of naked practical utility.

One might naturally suppose that men holding such opinions must be materialists of the grossest type—­and, indeed, many of them gloried in the name of materialist and atheist—­but such an inference would be erroneous.  While denouncing metaphysics, they were themselves metaphysicians in so far as they were constantly juggling with abstract conceptions, and letting themselves be guided in their walk and conversation by a priori deductions; while ridiculing romanticism,