endeavours to promote an intellectual and political revolution in Russia, and down to our own day they have continued to ponder the ethics of revolution.
In many cases a revolution is judged by its fruits, by the application of a utilitarian standard. Should it prove successful, its leaders and initiators are commended; should it fail, an unfavourable judgment is passed. That is the way in which the world judges wars, and most other enterprises.
Of course such judgments are apt to be unsound and unjust, and their only value is that they stress the consideration that the initiators of revolutionary undertakings must have foresight and a due sense of responsibility.
The ethical judgment of revolution is concerned with motives, for this is merely to apply to revolution the ethical standard by which all activities are to be appraised. By following such a rule we can overcome the difficulties which have troubled Ropšin and other writers.
All revolutions, including revolutions in the mental sphere, must be judged by these ethical canons. The philosophical and literary critic, and every conscientious and éarnest worker, will not fail to ask himself how his words and deeds will be received. Doubtless the thinker is not responsible for the various interpretations that may be placed upon his ideas; but a conscientious man pays heed to the environment in which he has to work, and takes into account the intellectual capacity of those before whom his thoughts will be laid. Thought is social.
But the writer is responsible for the consequences of his words when he demands, incites to, or suggests action. There are numerous grades of responsibility, according to the degree to which the aim was clearly conceived. When, for example, Tailhade was sentenced for incitements to murder, his defender was right in pointing to the manner in which the antisemites and the nationalists were continually inciting to murder.
In Europe, in days that are not yet remote, difference of opinion was punishable with banishment and even death. In Russia, Nicholas I had Dostoevskii condemned to death for the public reading of Bělinskii's writing against Gogol, the capital sentence being commuted to one of many years' Siberian exile. Nicholas might have appealed to the example of Locke, who proposed that atheism as a political crime should be punishable with death. For words are also deeds.
