[10] This is seen, _inter alia_, by the number of persons wandering about seeking food--"a vagabond proletariat." In 1886 no less than 4,951,000 were wandering more than thirty versts from their dwellings. Even the women have to leave the villages to seek support elsewhere, and the number of women and children who thus are compelled to seek work at a distance is increasing every year. Thus, _e. g._, in the district of the Government of Wjatka, in 1874, 2.68 per cent.; in 1883, 6.46 per cent.; in 1885, 7.22 per cent. of the women capable of work did this. Often whole families wander about, and women with children at the breast are no uncommon sight among the troops of wandering workmen. (Westlaender, A., _Russland vor einem Regime-Wechsel_, Stuttgart, 1894, p. 28.) It might seem surprising that a savant of Reclus's calibre does not himself perceive a refutation that is so obvious. But Reclus is a type: who does not know the figure--even here not seldom seen--of the earnest savant, full of the purest love and devotion for mankind, who dabbles in politics in his leisure hours? It is as if in this time of leisure his spirit seeks to free itself from the severe discipline of his professional life. The man who, in his capacity as a doctor, a geographer, or physicist, would never allow subjective influences to trouble his method, deals with politics quite apart, as if there were not also a science of politics that, like any other science, regards freedom from the subjective standpoint, or from love and hatred as the first condition of the validity of its propositions. Reclus, the celebrated geographer, goes so far, as a politician, as to deny the value of political economy and to assert that every workman knows more, and is better acquainted with social laws, than the learned economist. On the other hand, it is just this circumstance that gives this aged savant an importance in Anarchist theory, to which the originality and the teaching of his Anarchist writings could give him no claim. The pamphlet _Evolution and Revolution_ is nothing but a _rechauffe_ of the well-known commonplaces of Anarchism; but the noble personality of Reclus that stands out before us at every sentence, the honourable intention, the high moral desire, the inspired hope which make even the errors of opponents so touching, give the little book the same importance for his followers as the _Contrat Social_ once possessed, and makes his decoction the quintessence of Anarchist thought, in its noblest, purest, and also--as a consequence--its most nebulous form. * * * * *