256 ADMINISTRATIVE NIHILISM vi 



masses, whenever they are united enough to wield 

 their power can doubt that every man of high 

 natural ability, who is both ignorant and miser- 

 able, is as great a danger to society as a rocket 

 without a stick is to the people who fire it ? 

 Misery is a match that never goes out ; genius, as t 

 an explosive power, beats gunpowder hollow ; and 

 if knowledge, which should give that power guid- 

 ance, is wanting, the chances are not small that 

 the rocket will simply run a-muck among friends 

 and foes. What gives force to the socialistic 

 movement which is now stirring European society 

 to its depths, bat a determination on the part of 

 the naturally able men among the proletariat, to 

 put an end, somehow or other, to the misery and 

 degradation in which a large proportion of their 

 fellows are steeped ? The question, whether the 

 means by which they purpose to achieve this end 

 are adequate or not, is at this moment the must 

 important of all political questions and i' 

 beside my present purpose to discuss it. All I 

 desire to point out is, that if the chance of the , 

 controversy being decided calmly and rationally, 

 and not by passion and force, looks miserably 

 small to an impartial bystander, the reason is that, 

 ftiot one in ten thousand of those who constr 

 /the ultimate court of appeal, by which questions 

 of the utmost difficulty, as well as of the n 

 momentous gravity, will have to be decided, 

 is prepared by education to comprehend the 



