Bakunin regards the evolutionary law of the progress of mankind from a less perfect existence to the most perfect possible existence as the law which has supreme validity for man.

"Science has no other task than the careful intellectual reproduction, in the most systematic form possible, of the natural laws of corporeal, mental, and moral life, alike in the physical and in the social world, which two worlds constitute in fact only a single natural world."[325]

Now "science—that is, true, unselfish science"[326]—teaches us the following: "Every evolution signifies the negation of its starting-point. Since according to the materialists the basis or starting-point is material, the negation must necessarily be ideal."[327] That is, "everything that lives makes the effort to perfect itself as fully as possible."[328]

Thus, "according to the conception of materialists, man's historical evolution also moves in a constantly ascending line."[329] "It is an altogether natural movement from the simple to the compound, from down to up, from the lower to the higher."[330] "History consists in the progressive negation of man's original bestiality by the evolution of his humanity."[331]

"Man is originally a wild beast, a cousin of the gorilla. But he has already come out of the deep night of bestial impulses to make his way to the light of the mind. This explains all his former missteps in the most natural way, and comforts us somewhat with regard to his present aberrations. He has turned his back on bestial slavery, and is now moving toward freedom through the realm of slavery to God, which lies between his bestial and his human existence. Behind us, therefore, lies our bestial existence, before us our human; the light of humanity, which alone can light us and warm us, deliver us and exalt us, make us free, happy, and brothers, stands never at the beginning of history, but always only at its end."[332]

This "historical negation of the past takes place now slowly, sluggishly, sleepily, but now again passionately and violently."[333] It always takes place with the inevitable certainty of natural law: "we believe in the final triumph of humanity on earth."[G] "We yearn for the coming of this triumph, and seek to hasten it with united effort";[334] "we must never look back, always forward alone; before us is our sun, before us our bliss."[335]