The first stumbling-block is the word "nihilism." In Tikomirov's work on Russia seven or eight pages are devoted to the severe condemnation of the use of the expressions "nihilism" and "nihilist," Nevertheless, at the risk of offending my friend the author, I must make use of them, since, as he himself allows, they are employed universally, and all the world understands what is meant by them in an approximate and relative way. I do not reject the term proposed by Tikomirov, who would call nihilism "the militant intelligence;" but this is much too long and obscure, and before accepting it, it behooves one to understand what is meant by _Russian intelligence_. The nihilists call themselves by a variety of names,--democrats, socialists, propagandists, _new men_, or sometimes by the title of some organ of their clandestine press. This war of names seems puerile, and I prefer to face the fury of Tikomirov against those who not only use the objectionable term but dedicate a chapter to what it represents, and study nihilism as a doctrine or tendency distinct among all that have arisen until now. I cannot agree to the idea that nihilism is merely a Russian intellectual movement, nor do I think that all Europe is mistaken in judging that the nihilist explosions are characteristic of the great Sclav empire. On the contrary, I believe that if Russia were to-morrow blotted from the map, and her history and every trace of her national individuality obliterated, only a few pages of her romances and a few fragments of her revolutionary literature being left to us, a philosopher or a critic could reconstruct, without other data, the spirit of the race in all its integrity and completeness. Now, to begin, how did this much-discussed word originate? It was a novelist who first baptized the party who called themselves at that time _new men_. It was Ivan Turguenief, who by the mouth of one of the characters in his celebrated novel, "Fathers and Sons," gave the young generation the name of nihilists. But it was not of his coinage; Royer-Collard first stamped it; Victor Hugo had already said that the negation of the infinite led directly to nihilism, and Joseph Lemaistre had spoken of the nihilism, more or less sincere, of the contemporary generations; but it was reserved for the author of "Virgin Soil" to bring to light and make famous this word, which after making a great stir in his own country attracted the attention of the whole world.