unite into larger groups if the happiness of all demands a larger undertaking than a single group can secure, such as a great railway, a submarine tunnel, and the like.  In some cases it may be necessary that a whole people, or even the whole of humanity, should be in one group, but only up to a certain point, and only until this point is reached.  Naturally no individual is bound to a group, nor one group to another; binding and loosing go on perpetually, and with the same facility as molecules in living organisms unite and separate.”

Barinskoi occupied himself particularly with the labor questions.  Not that the distress and want of the very poor, the economical insecurity, the general misery, troubled him at all.  He was cynically conscious that he was as indifferent to the laborer as to the capitalist; the laborer’s inevitable brutalization, his hunger, his bad health, and short term of life touched him as little as the gout of the rich gourmand, or the nerves of fine ladies.  He saw, however, in the proletariat a powerful army against prevailing conditions.  He could trace among the discontented masses the possession of the crude vigor which the Nihilists wanted, to crush the old edifices of the State and society, and it was this which interested him in the movement and its literature.  He knew the last accurately, and initiated Wilhelm into it, and so the latter learned all about socialism, its opinions of the philosophy of production, its theories and promises.  He learned also that sects had already been formed within this new faith, which the revelations of the socialistic prophets explained differently; and that they furiously hated each other, and were as much at enmity as if they were a State Church with a privileged priesthood, benefices, property and power.

The complaints of the proletariat appeared to Wilhelm of doubtful value.  In every age there were economic fevers, which were not caused by misery, but by discontent and wastefulness, and if he saw a workman staggering through the streets, his legs tottering beneath him, he guessed that his weakness was not caused by hunger, but by beer or spirits.  He understood that mankind believed in an unbroken work of development within nature, and in their own self-cultivation.  The theory of socialistic teaching, namely, the conditions of production and distribution, could be constantly remodeled just as other human institutions, i.e. the customs of governments and societies, the laws, ideas of beauty and morality, knowledge of nature, and views of society.  His sympathies went out to those who were convinced that the present economical organization had lived out its time, and were endeavoring to remove it.