Chapter 17

With the living, imitation is held to be the sincerest form of flattery; the dead we cannot flatter. But we can serve our fellows, and attain to the true heights of our own being by imitating the virtues of the dead warrior. The battle which his dead spirit bids us fight is a hard and unpopular one, but it is a battle which will result in victory for the free; a battle in which freedom’s sons will endure privations, oft-times want the necessaries of life, and suffer the contempt, if not the actual persecution, of the world; a battle in which, however, the sense of helping that cause that lacks assistance, of righting the wrong that needs assistance, of raising the intellectual capacity of the human race, of showing the workers the path of direct economic emancipation, will fully recompense for the pleasures foregone and kind words which society never extended to us. We again prostrate our spirit across the gulf of time; we see again this lion-hearted Richard firmly standing to his colors; we note his detestation of hypocrisy, and the manner in which he fought the conventional morality and political corruption and despotism of his time. By defiance he defeated Governmental Terrorism; by revolt we shall accomplish the emancipation of society, and pay the tribute of individual and social emulation to his memory.

(Source: The Revolt Library, No. 2, Mother Earth Publishing Association, Bakunin Press, 1912.)