If anything had been needed to make the name Nihilism forever odious, it was this deed. If anything were required to reveal the bald wickedness of the creed of Nihilism, it was supplied by this aimless sacrifice of the one sovereign who had bestowed a colossal reform upon Russia. They had killed him, and had then marched unflinchingly to the gallows--and that was all--leaving others bound by solemn oaths to bring the same fate upon his successor. The whole energy of the organization was centered in secreting dynamite, awaiting a favorable moment for its explosion, then dying like martyrs, leaving others pledged to repeat the same horror--and so _ad infinitum_. In their detestation of one crime they committed a worse one. They conspired against the life of civilization--as if it were not better to be ruled by despots than assassins, as if a bad government were not better than none! The existence of Nihilism may be explained, though not extenuated. Can anyone estimate the effect upon a single human being to have known that a father, brother, son, sister, or wife has perished under the knout? Could such a person ever again be capable of reasoning calmly or sanely upon "political reforms"? If there were any slumbering tiger-instincts in this half-Asiatic people, was not this enough to awaken them? There were many who had suffered this, and there were thousands more who at that very time had friends, lovers, relatives, those dearer to them than life, who were enduring day by day the tortures of exile, subject to the brutal punishments of irresponsible officials. It was this which had converted hundreds of the nobility into conspirators--this which had made Sophia Perovskaya, the daughter of one of the highest officials in the land, give the signal for the murder of the Emperor, and then, scorning mercy, insist that she should have the privilege of dying upon the gallows with the rest. But tiger-instincts, whatever their cause, must be extinguished. They cannot coexist with civilization. Human society as constituted to-day can recognize no excuse for them. It forbids them--and the Nihilist is the Ishmael of the nineteenth century.