# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 2/Chapter 24

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
DEMOCRACY VERSUS THEOCRACY
I
§ 199.
DURING the great revolution the essence of democracy was accurately defined in the watchwords, liberty, equality, and fraternity, the contrast between democracy and aristocracy being thus expressed. The aristocratic organisation of society rests upon relationships of supraordination and subordination as between individuals and groups within the community, whereas the aim of democracy is that all should rank alike. Aristocracy involves the acceptance of utterly divergent estimates of human values; social inequality is regarded as natural and as historically necessary; men are divided into a minority of rulers and a majority of subjects. Aristocracy is social organisation based upon power; democratic equality implies fraternal and voluntary cooperation.
Aristocracy is not confined to the political, military, economic, and social spheres; in the realms of morals and religion there is likewise inequality; the priest, with his reputedly higher ascetic ethic, is contrasted with the layman; there is also a class contrast between the educated and the uneducated. In addition, aristocracy sometimes manifests itself in the use of a different language by the superior caste (Latin or French, for instance), and is occasionally based upon national distinctions.
Every aristocracy is rendered possible by the existence of a corresponding slavery; on the one hand are the dominant priests and rulers, on the other hand the ruled; the very nature of theocracy is found in an intimate association between rulers and priests. Emperor and pope, tsar and patriarch, do not ​stand alone; the organisation of a spiritual and secular aristocracy is necessarily and invariably hierarchical.
Medieval Christianity, the Catholic church, is essentially aristocratic. Not merely does there exist a temporal juxtaposition of political and ecclesiastical aristocracy; the union between the two forms is intimate and organic. Divine right, whether political or priestly, is vested in but few hands; physical and spiritual authority has in the past inevitably taken an aristocratic and hierarchical form, culminating in absolute monarchy dlike in state and church. ("Legitimists need a master to enable themselves to have servants," wrote Anzengruber.) Thomas Aquinas found arguments, not only in favour of inflicting the death penalty upon heretics, but also in proof that slavery was a natural institution, the Catholic Christian being in this matter perfectly at one with the pagan Aristotle.
The political and social aim of democracy is to abolish a relationship of subjection and rule. The derivative meaning of the term democracy is "people's rule." Modern democracy does not aim at rule at all, but at administration, at the administration of the people, by the people, for the people. How this new conception, this new estimate, of state organisation and social organisation can be carried out in practice, is no mere question of power; it is a difficult problem of administrative technique. Since the days of Rousseau, philosophers and statesmen have been concerned with the problem of direct and indirect government and administration. ​Rousseau recognised that owing to the great increase in population, owing to the greater intricacy of social relationships, and owing to the inequality of social conditions, direct popular government in the true sense of the term was impossible, and he declared that true democracy was a constitution for the gods. In practice, such equality as has hitherto been attained is but that measure of inequality which is found to be just endurable. As, in actual working, aristocratic monarchy was always an oligarchy, so also is democracy in actual working an oligarchy. The problem that has to be solved is, how to prevent democratic oligarchy from degenerating into aristocratic hierarchical rule. The democratic organisation of society must in essence be a mutualist federation of social organisations (§ 172), and of the individuals who combine to form these organisations.
Anarchism as a system gives expression, in an extreme and largely distorted form, to the democratic aspiration towards liberty; socialism (social democracy) gives expression to the democratic aspiration towards equality. Anarchism and socialism originated simultaneously as soon as the philosophic and political revolution had uprooted theocratic absolutism.
Aristocracy is the rule of the non-workers over the workers. Democracy therefore demands that all should work, and refuses to admit that it is right for the product of labour to be assigned to the non-workers. The aristocrat rules, the democrat works.
Manual labour is for the most part work of a petty kind. The aristocrat, as born ruler and leader, will do nothing but work of a grand order, great deeds; he is the hero, the man who does only as he thinks fit. The theocratic aristocrat takes an indeterminist view of the universe and of mankind. Just as God is free so also is his representative an absolutely free agent. What is done or left undone is not controlled and regulated by any determinist foreknowledge; at most it is possible that the prophet and magician can at times foresee the future.
The theocratic aristocrat believes in magic; his religion is faith in miracle; and therefore he despises work, lives upon the enforced labour of slaves, lives upon the sweat of their brows. It need hardly be said that the slave, too, is averse to hard work; that is why he is coerced as a slave. Alike ​morally and politically, aristocracy and slavery condition one another mutually (§ 26).
Democracy demands that all shall work; it allots and organises labour. Democracy aims, not merely at work, but at the spirit of industry. The disinclination that everyone has to labour, and especially to labour not of his own choosing, must be overcome by the sentiment of duty. The spirit of industry develops concomitantly with the abandonment of belief in a fantastic universe of mythical spirits and sorcerers, and concomitantly with the growth of a deterministic insight into nature and social life as subject to the reign of law. Men become habituated to regularity and constancy; they learn to observe more closely, to grasp the relationships of cause and effect, and to attain their ends by the deliberate choice of means. Modern science arises and is applied to the purposes of practical life; modern manufacturing industry originates, and therewith come into existence new means of communication, modern commerce, the modern economic system, and its associated mentality.
Theocratic aristocracy makes its influence felt in the domain of the new manufacturing industry, for the old feudal inequality persists; but the men of the common people, the manual workers, the proletarian masses, in conjunction with the philosophic and scientific leaders of socialism, are paving the way for the ultimate triumph of the democratic ethic of equality.
Friedrich Schlegel, who wished to safeguard Catholic romanticism epistemologically by means of a "theocratic consciousness," considered that likeness to God was to be discerned in idleness; and Nietzsche, the aristocratic camp-follower of our own day, charged the spirit of industry with being the cause of unbelief. Nietzsche had the aristocratic feeling that work was a disgrace. Aristocratic "far niente" is equally applicable in the spiritual sphere; the theocratic priest is the guardian of divine revelation; the understanding can produce nothing new, is uncreative, and its function is purely defensive—defensive "against the understanding." Scholasticism, with all its faults, incorporates the knowledge of the theocracy. The priest has adopted the highest and most fundamental truths of revelation, and has become a spiritual ruler as guardian of these truths and as mediator on their behalf. Utterly different is the intellectual work of ​modern scientific specialists and philosophers. Not merely must they elaborate the individual details of knowledge by observation and reflection, but by independent mental toil they must win their way to the highest and most fundamental of their principles.
By its very nature, democracy counterposes science and philosophy to theology and scholasticism.
The democratic character of modern science consists mainly in its use of the scientific method as contrasted with the theocratic method. We have good reason for speaking of "scientific" work and the "scientific" division of labour. Consistent and energtic observation, the search for and discovery of new and ever new scientific details and systems, is utterly different from the cherishing of ready-made and reputedly superhuman items of knowledge based upon direct revelation. Theocracy has no science, but only esotericism, mysteries, and prophesies; it has no researchers, but only augurs. Consequently the social position of these augurs is something utterly distinct from that of the modern man of science; the theocratic priestly augur consummates the great theurgic mysteries and magics on behalf of the lay slave.
Antitheological philosophy is based upon the sciences, and its relationship to these scientific foundations is not aristocratic but democratic, is a relationship of equality and equivalence. Hegel continued to speak of philosophy as queen of the sciences, but this was merely the old aristocratic view of the relationship of theology to her handmaiden philosophy. The relationship of the sciences one to another and to philosophy is purely logical and methodological, being the outcome of the nature of the individual sciences, whereas theology determines its relationship to the understanding and to science in accordance with its measuring rod of absolute revealed truth.
Science, too, aims at universal agreement (of classes, peoples, humanity), but this agreement is to be secured solely by logical and educational methods; at an early date, modern philosophy became the philosophy of the enlightenment. The popularisation of science is one of the great tasks of the contemporary enlightenment, and the claims of popular education are continually enlarged. We must doubtless take with a pinch of salt Engels' proclamation of the workers as the successors of German classical philosophy; but in actual ​fact the new age is characterised, not by the universities, but by the establishment of universal compulsory education. Modern philosophy and science must not be identified with polymathy. The democratic demand is that all should think and observe; and democratic catholicity is based upon reflection and observation.
Comenius already considered it possible to formulate a metaphysic which should be within the comprehension of children. Here we touch the difficult tasks which modern philosophy, as a scientific outlook upon the universe and upon life, has to effect amidst the enlarging spheres of scientific specialisation. The problem of the correct division of labour in scientific matters is but a part of the general social problem of the division of labour.
In contradistinction to theology, science is knowledge of men and for men—not the knowledge of God and for God. For science, man is the measure of all things, man is the true and ultimate object of all research. This deliberate anthropism is quite different from the naive anthropocentrism of the theological outlook.
Scientific anthropism naturally asserts its validity in the ethical and social domains. Modern philosophy, as Kant showed, is essentially ethical and humanitarian; it aims at the foundation of a new morality, at. the elaboration of the new democratic political and administrative system, at democratic anthropocracy. Democracy demands a new system of politics, to be established upon scientific sociology and upon all the abstract sciences concerned with the problems of social life (the sciences of politics, jurisprudence, economics, etc.). Enlightenment and education are the chief concerns of democracy. Democracy wrestles with theocracy for the control of the school, the "officina humanitatis," as Comenius termed it. Comenius was one of the first educationists to propound the most conspicuous ideal of the new schooling—equality in education.
In this connection the question arises whether there is a specially democratic philosophy as a unified outlook on the universe and on life, and if so, which system is the chosen one. Marx and his adherents have contended that materialism and positivism constitute the essential foundations of ​democracy. Other systems have been selected (empirio-criticism, for instance), and specific philosophers have been designated.
In like manner, particular sciences have been regarded as peculiarly democratic. Frequently, natural science is indicated as democratic and revolutionary. This latter statement is certainly erroneous, for there can be no question that history may exert an influence quite as inimical to theology as any that can be exerted by natural science; and this is equally true of some of the other abstract sciences—a point on which Mihailovskii rightly insisted. Theology possesses its own, distinctively "Christian" psychology, ethics, pedagogics, history, and so on; in every domain, every science may come into conflict with theological scholasticism.
Knowledge, critical knowledge, is democracy; aristocracy is the offspring of the mythological outlook. The practical import of the Kantian criticism is found above all in this, that criticism cuts at the root of mythological aristocracy. If the essence of myth lie in the premature drawing of conclusions from analogy (§ 41a), the anthropomorphisation characteristic of belief in myth is, ethically considered, egoism, and, politically considered, centralism and therefore absolutism. The naively egocentric human being does not conceive of God alone as ruler, but thinks of himself as likewise occupying such a position; he creates God in his own image, discerning himself in the deity he has fashioned. In his search after miracle he has created political theurgy as well as religious theurgy; typically in Byzantium and in Spain was political ceremonial elaborated into a finished system.
Just as the mythopoeist creates God in his own image, so does he personify and anthropomorphise the state and society at large; mythical monotheism and monarchy arise by parallel development and interpenetrate one another. The attempt made by Leo XIII to reconcile the republic with Catholicism on principle, was dictated by Jesuitism and not by Catholicism.
Criticism, therefore, is a determinant, not of knowledge alone, but also of democratic equality and liberty. Without criticism and without publicity, there can be neither knowledge nor democracy. Democracy has been well described as the age of discussion.
​Art, too, artistic creation, becomes democratised. Doubtless the view still widely prevails that the artist as man of genius occupies an aristocratic position in society; free creation is not labour, and the creative activity of the artist makes him godlike; the artist's exceptional gifts are, as it were, revelation, special manifestations of God's grace.
We cannot here discuss the fundamental problems of aesthetics, or attempt to ascertain the nature of genuinely democratic art. For our purposes it will suffice to point out that art, like politics, has been modified by modern science and by modern philosophical criticism. We speak of "poet-thinkers"; we expect the artist to grasp truth and to expound reality. Poets, in fact, are the true teachers of the people, more definitely so than are philosophers. Let me again recall Goethe's phrase concerning "exact fantasy," and point out that in artistic creation modern psychology is competent to discover elements of the spirit of industry. What Goethe said about political poesy has long ere this been refuted by the fact that literature and art are intimately related to the social and political evolution of modern society, guiding this evolution as well as preparing the ground.
Obviously, art does not become democratic merely by devoting itself to the exposition of the democratic program; by composing anti-aristocratic lays; by producing representations of the revolutionary struggle, of working-class life, or of artistic and literary Bohemia. Zola, for example, cannot be considered a democratic author. The artist's attitude towards the world and society must spring from the spirit of democracy—for democracy is a special way of regarding the universe and life.
In this connection the analogous question arises, which varieties of art are peculiarly democratic. We think especially of the possibility of influencing the masses, and of influencing large numbers of persons simultaneously (music, the drama, oratory, etc.), and of artistic education (the theatre, museums, inexpensive reproductions of works of art, and so on); but what we are really concerned with is to secure an intimate understanding of the essential nature of the particular type of artistic creation, and to decide whether it be democratic or aristocratic.
These questions have hardly as yet been seriously considered. Exponents of aesthetics have merely touched the ​fringe of the matter in their accounts of the historical development of realism and naturalism vis-à-vis romanticism and classicism, and in their descriptions of the relationship of such artists as Heine to the political parties. Still, we have advanced so far at least, that democracy is understood to have an aesthetic side.
The emergence in Russian literature of the raznočinec (plebeian) beside and in opposition to the aristocrat has been acclaimed as a democratic achievement, but it is necessary to reiterate that the aristocratic and the democratic spirit respectively are not mere matters of birth.
It should be hardly necessary to point out that democracy does not become established all at once. The decline of aristocracy is gradual, and the replacement of aristocracy by the democratic program and democratic institutions is no simple matter. The English cry for "men not measures" is the fruit of a study from the life. Universal suffrage affords no guarantee that democratic sentiments will prevail; the true democrat will feel democratically and work democratically, not in parliament alone, but in municipal life, in his political party, in the circle of his friends, in family life, everywhere. Democracy is a new outlook and a new conduct of life.
It is a significant fact that the idea of progressive evolution was advocated, and secured general acceptance, simultaneously with the formulation of the demands of democracy. The connection is intimate and important. Aristocracy is absolutist, conservative, and traditionalistic; democracy is progressive and renovative because its trust is placed, not in revelation, but in experience of historic evolution. Democracy is the aspiration towards a new life.
§ 200.
TO many persons, democracy seems essentially antireligious, but it is in fact no more than antitheological and antiecclesiastical; radical materialism and atheism were political weapons against theocratic absolutism. The antecedent studies should have made this perfectly clear; the democratic struggle to promote progressive development, in religion as well as in other things, is hostile to ecclesiastical religion with its demand for faith in myth and for ethical passivism.
Democracy is not inimical to religion per se, if by religion ​we understand the new religion, and not ecclesiastical religion, not ecclesiastical Christianity.
The relationship of democracy to religion is implicit in the ethical foundation of democracy. Democratic equality is based not on revelation but on ethics; and modern philosophy, which is predominantly ethical, discusses this foundation.
The social and political aspirations of democracy issue from the democratic ethic, for in ultimate analysis the foundation of justice is necessarily ethical. But theocracy bases justice and ethics upon religion.
Democracy proclaims the right of individual initiative, for this is the essence of modern individualism. How extensive is the social and political power attaching to the faculty which each one of us now possesses of publicly criticising persons and things! This power of public criticism having been acquired once for all [written in 1913], aristocracy and its occultism tend increasingly to grow feeble, to decay, and to be replaced. The referendum and the initiative demanded by the democracy already exist in substance, even though they have not yet been formally incorporated into parliamentary institutions.
Democracy consists in the unloosing of every energy, whilst the essence of aristocracy is absolutist restraint.
Democracy perforce desires to create the new; theocratic aristocracy wishes to preserve the old.
Democracy works by scientific method, and its tactics are therefore inductive, realistic, and empirical; theocratic aristocracy is deductive, unrealist, fanciful, and scholastic.
Democracy contrasts with theocratic aristocracy in respect of substance as well as in respect of form. The political and social aspirations of democracy spring from a new conception of the value of human personality. For democracy, too, the supreme moral imperative is love of one's neighbour; the socialists are continually referring to Jesus and to Christianity. It is true that theocracy likewise preached love, but it was and remained aristocratic, for it simultaneously demanded absolute faith, and its conception of love was passivist (in fact, aristocratic). Priests and rulers wished to give their believing and industrious slaves doctrine and daily bread, thereby assuring the continuance of their own dominion.
Democratic love of one's neighbour requires the legal establishment of equality, demands justice; this is the essential ​meaning of socialism as contrasted with theocratic almsgiving and philanthropy. We have already shown how natural it is that the theocrats should regard their conception of love as the matter of maximum importance, while looking upon justice as a trifle in comparison.
To sum up, it may be said that the contrast between aristocracy and democracy involves a fundamental difference in the solution of the problem of authority. Aristocratic inequality is the recognition and enforcement of the authoritative principle.
Aristocracy derives its supreme authority from ecclesiastical religion, from God, from revelation; revelation is sanctioned by tradition, is found in Holy Writ, and is safeguarded by the church; the pope is the vicegerent of God. These and similar formulas of theocratic theology culminate in the conception of the infallibility, not merely of revelation (for this is self-evident), but of the priestly intermediator and guardian of revelation. From this follow Catholicism and messianism, and the notion that the religious unification of mankind is indispensable.
Emperor, kings, the state, share this absolute authority of church and pope. The emperor, too, holds sway by right divine; he, too, is infallible as guardian and servant of the church ("the king can do no wrong").
Democracy likewise appeals to authority, appeals to the people, to humanity, to the masses, to civilisation, progress, historical development, and so on. But these objective authorities must themselves be furnished with foundations. Rousseau was one of the first to refer to the cleavage between Catholicism and the real will of the people. Universality and unity, he said, do not exclude the possibility of error; and he endeavoured to determine the characteristics of the genuine will of the people. This popular will, also, is considered infallible and absolute.
The contrast between Rousseau's teaching and theocratic doctrine is obvious. Rousseau cannot appeal to any objective revelation; he is a subjectivist; his religion is not revealed. Similar is the situation of every reflective person who abandons myth, and who, with Kant, explains all knowledge as derivable from the natural faculties of man. Now what is the critical, the scientific thinker forced to recognise as supreme? What authority is for him vested in the people, in humanity, in ​the parliamentary majority, and so on? What to him are state and emperor?
The critical thinker can recognise nothing but the so-called inner authority. Such is the significance of the fact that since the days of Kant and Hume modern philosophy has been predominantly ethical. In such departments as mathematics, mechanics, etc., no difficulties arise; we can readily agree with one another as to the authority of a mathematician or a natural philosopher. But in the ethical sphere, and consequently in the socio-political sphere as well, views are temporarily conflicting. Fichte said it was unconscientious to act upon authority, but the question is as to the meaning and content of conscience. This is the point upon which all reflection has been concentrated since the days of Kant.
Kant posited in his categorical imperative an absolute, infallible, ethical authority; but this authority is subjective and individual, even though it proclaim itself universal as well as necessary.
We cannot now discuss the reiterated attempts to understand rightly Kant's categorical imperative. All we need say here is that the democratic conception of the principle of authority is a purely ethical one. The sovereignty of the people must not be conceived in the sense of the monarchical sovereignty of absolutism; democratic catholicity does not repose solely upon the arithmetic of universal or preponderant opinion.
II
§ 201.
FOR the right understanding of the nature of democracy and of its contrast with theocracy it is necessary to examine the political aspects of religion in the existing ecclesiastical systems, and we shall first of all consider the political bearings of Protestantism and Catholicism.
Observation discloses that Protestant countries and nations are more favourable than Catholic to the development of democracy. Modern constitutionalism and parliamentarism first consolidated their forces in England and the United States. English public law was copied by the west, and the consequences of this were no less momentous than the consequences of the wide acceptance of Roman law. In addition to America, ​England, and the British colonies, the Scandinavian countries are the most advanced in democratic development. In lands where Protestantism and Catholicism are on a more or less equal footing, such as Germany, Holland, and Hungary, the Protestants are the sustainers of parliamentarism. Protestant Finland may be classed with the Scandinavian countries.
To-day, however, many Catholic lands have a constitution, and not a few are familiar with parliamentary institutions; France is actually a republic. But the political development of France was peculiar. During the eighteenth century, France was influenced in political matters by England and America; and after a number of sanguinary revolutions the establishment of the democratic French republic may be regarded as now fairly secure. In like manner it was only after a revolution or a series of revolutions that a constitution was introduced into other Catholic lands. The political development of the Protestant peoples has been comparatively regular, has been less turbulent than that of Catholic countries.
Yet it must be admitted that in America, too, the republic came into being as the outcome of revolution; and in England and all the Protestant lands revolution occurred concomitantly with the reformation. But herein lies the great difference, that the Protestants effected their political revolution simultaneously with the ecclesiastical and religious revolution, whereas in Catholic countries revolutions have remained purely political, have at most in the religious sphere brought about some loosening of the bonds between church and state, so that their influence upon religion has been indirect merely.
Protestantism has furthered democratisation from within outwards.
The subjectivism and individualism manifested in the reformation brought about a weakening of Catholic objectivism and of the authority of a wholly objective revelation. Priesthood was abolished by the reformation; the subjective individual consciousness was raised to the rank of an authority; in place of the pope of Rome, every layman became his own pope. Catholic passivism and conservative stagnation were replaced by Protestant progressive activism; selfgoverning Protestant churches occupied the ground that had been held by priests, by their aristocratic hierarchy, and by ​the ecclesiastical centralisation of the papacy. The Catholic belief in miracle, the myth-haunted realm of magic and mysticism, yielded before the Protestant disillusionment; the world was disenchanted, freed from the dominion of spooks; the rise of determinism (at first in the crude form of the doctrine of predestination) led to the acceptance of a causal view of events and brought about the spread of rationalism. The abandonment of the dogma of transubstantiation was a frank relinquishment of the magical powers of the priesthood. Finally, the disappearance of asceticism strengthened the new moral outlook by the sanctification of family life, and the same development simultaneously promoted the diffusion of a spirit of industry and favoured economic development.
Thus Protestantism is more favourable than Catholicism to the development of democracy, for Catholicism is essentially aristocratic. The intimate connection between Protestantism and democracy can be followed out in detail. The Protestant layman receives his socio-political training in the work of church government; the recognition of the importance of preaching "the word" educates him as a speaker (it must be remembered that parliament means merely the speaking-place), especially since, in the lesser sects, laymen are also preachers; the sanctification of the vernacular tongue by the translation of the Bible and by the use of the vernacular for religious services, strengthened the national consciousness and overthrew the linguistic aristocracy of Latin and French.
The connection of the reformation, especially in its Calvinist form, with the political evolution of the modern age, is indubitable; and it is obvious that democracy had developed with and out of the reformation. It need hardly be said that the evolution has been gradual, and in this matter as in all others, special circumstances must be taken into account in the application of the formula to particular countries and areas. ​In modern times economic evolution has proceeded pari passu with political. Just as democracy sprang from the reformation, so in Protestant lands and among Protestant peoples was economic development more rapid and more intense than in Catholic countries. Capitalist wealth and capitalist enterprise, the modern economic order, are far more characteristic of Protestant than of Catholic countries.
Socialism, too, is in this sense and to this extent Protestant, inasmuch as German Marxism (building upon Feuerbach) and social democracy have been the philosophical, scientific, and political foundations of socialism as asystem. To a considerable extent, Marxism has replaced other socialistic systems and endeavours, and it has notably influenced these even where it has not replaced them.
Anarchism, likewise, received its philosophic foundations from the thinkers of Protestant countries. The Russian anarchists and those of the Romance lands built upon the work of Feuerbach, Stirner, and Nietzsche. Finally, modern philosophy as a whole is distinctively of Protestant origin, and Kant has quite rightly been designated the philosopher of Protestantism. The Protestant peoples in general are more highly cultured than the Catholic.
The inferiority of Catholicism may also be proved in the domains of literature and art. For modern times, the fact is admitted by Catholic investigators, notably in the case of Germany, a country where the two creeds confront one another in comparatively equal numerical strength. We may say in ​general that since Shakespeare the greatest imaginative writers and artists have been Protestants, have been that is to say far more distinctively Protestant than the great imaginative writers and artists among the Catholics have been Catholic. What I wish to convey is that such an artist as Michelangelo created rather in a secular and humanist than in a Catholic sense.
Passing now to the domain of morality, it would seem expedient that first of all this much disputed problem should be succinctly stated. I, at least, do not contend that Protestant peoples are in all respects more moral than Catholic; but I should formulate the outcome of my observations and studies by saying that the morality of Protestantism is higher than the morality of Catholicism, and this not merely in so far as a higher culture is requisite for a higher morality, but because Protestant morality and religion are per se of a loftier character. To put the matter more precisely, Protestantism is the endeavour to secure loftier religion and morality. The use of the term "endeavour" gives expression to my reserves, for the great and long-lasting epoch of transition from the middle ages is not peculiar to Catholicism. Protestantism, too, exhibits much that is inchoate and much that is defective.
In the sense and scope thus defined, the intimate relationship between Protestantism and democracy can be historically and philosophically established and elucidated. But it is as well to point out in set terms that when I speak of Protestantism I am not thinking solely of the orthodox system of the confessions and the reformers. Protestantism developed from within in contrast to stationary Catholicism, and we can watch this development in its ecclesiastical schisms and in the evolution of theology to become philosophy. The philosophic ideals of humanitarianism and naturalness (natural religion, natural morals, natural law, natural reason, and state of nature in general (cf. §§ 42 and 43), developed in the sense of the reformation and were a continuance of its trend. Upon this basis were established the democratic ideals of liberty, equality, and ​fraternity; upon this, the rights of man and civil rights; and upon this, was established social legislation.
One objection has to be met despite all our methodological reserves. Was not and is not France, we shall be asked, preeminently the land of civilisation and culture; has not France become wealthy and economically progressive; was it not France that proclaimed the ideal of liberty, equality, and fraternity; is not France republican?
France, like all Catholic countries, adopted the new progressive ideas in opposition to its Catholicism and despite its Catholicism; it was on the basis of such ideas that the modern development of France was upbuilded. Even during the first revolution, under the influence of these modern ideas, France cut herself completely adrift from the church, this severance being the most decisive and revolutionary expression of opposition to ecclesiastical religion. France attempted an ecclesiastical and political restoration, but revolution recurred again and again, so that France, in contradistinction to England, has become the typical land of revolution.
France is radical and revolutionary, but not democratic; not even the French republic is democratic per se. In like manner, whilst French philosophy developed into radical positivism, in the very founder of French positivism, in Auguste Comte, we may note the manner in which anti-ecclesiastical and antitheological positivism relapsed into mythopoeic fetichism. Positivism was radical, but it lacked the spirit of criticism.
German philosophy and English philosophy, on the other hand, are more critical, and consequently more stable; they are no less anti-ecclesiastical and antitheological; but they do not encounter in their respective churches the absolute hostility which thought has to encounter in France and in other Catholic lands. We need only compare Comte with John Stuart Mill. Comte relapses into fetichism; Mill, starting from a Comtist base, advances to nihilism. There has been an analogous political development in England and in Germany. England is nominally a monarchy, but is actually subject to an aristocratic oligarchy, whereas semicatholic Germany with its Prussian junkerdom is being steadily democratised. Germany has the most progressive and the strongest social democracy in Europe; in Germany, Bismarck, the most ​efficient and most stalwart champion of monarchy, was opposed to the absolutist and theocratic pretensions of the emperor, and was in effect a rebel.
This peculiar contrast between Catholicism with its anti-ecclesiastical negation, and Protestantism with its critical superecclesiasticism, can be discerned in the two greatest French philosophers of the revolution. Voltaire, the Catholic, is the revolutionary negation of the church; Rousseau, the Calvinist, endeavours to sustain democracy by means of a civil religion.
The Catholic apologists have a clear grasp of this distinction, and they rightly regard Protestantism as the foundation of modern development. Where they are mistaken is in their appraisement alike of the development and of the foundation.
Concurrently with the reformation was initiated the new antitheocratic development of humanity, the renaissance. Science and philosophy, all the intellectual forces of man grown self-conscious, combined to overthrow aristocratic theocracy, to cast off the spiritual oppression it exercised, and to secure a consistent application of liberty and equality on behalf of the democratic organisation of society.
§ 202.
DEMOCRACY in Russia is in its inception. We know from our study of Russian history, how theocratic aristocracy developed as caesaropapism; the history of the liberation of the peasantry in 1861 is the history of an unwilling renunciation of aristocratic privileges. Not until the nineteenth century was well under way did men who were not of noble birth, the raznočincy, acquire notable positions in the administration, in the army, and in the field of literature, whilst simultaneously the industrialisation of agricultural land was creating a plutocracy. Saltykov summed up the ​transformation in the following words: "The epoch of agrarian serfdom is closed; the epoch of the serfdom of the toil-stained operative has opened." In the radical camp, the bourgeoisie soon came to be regarded as the real enemy. Stepniak's theory that the revolution is of advantage, not to the community at large, but to the bourgeoisie, is in conformity with the German-made theory of historical materialism. "The philistine" [the bourgeois], said Marx, "is the substratum of the monarchy, and the monarch is nothing but the king of the philistines."
We have rejected as unsound the contention that the Russians and the Slavs in general are by nature peculiarly democratic. This alleged democratic tendency is negative merely, not positive (§ 1. ii). Modern democracy is a conscious and purposive opposition to theocratic aristocracy. In this sense, democracy is the new outlook, is the philosophy to which Bakunin first gave expression in his program of 1842.
The Russian theocracy is founded upon the Catholic Orthodoxy that was adopted from Byzantium. What was written above concerning the cultural inferiority of western Catholicism, applies still more forcibly to the Orthodox Catholicism of the "third Rome." The very fact that eastern Catholicism lays so much stress upon religious orthodoxy, is an indication of the spiritual absolutism which presses so heavily upon the Russians. Orthodoxy signifies stagnation, as the inevitable outcome of the mythopoeic fiction of revelation, and this is why the enlightened Russian protests so vigorously against Orthodoxy.
Count Uvarov proclaimed autocracy no less than Orthodoxy to be a typically national Russian development, and the slavophils endeavoured to provide a philosophico-historical foundation for Uvarov's theocratic practice. In actual fact, however, a critical analysis of ideas and historical data necessarily leads us to the recognition that the Russian autocracy was a caesaropapism. It cannot be justly regarded as peculiarly national, for autocracy was established upon a similar basis in Byzantium and inthe west. The church provided a religious sanction for monarchical absolutism. All attempts to discover national qualities as the foundation of autocracy, and all the conceptual idealisations of the brute facts (idealisations which official philosophy and jurisprudence is ever ready to furnish), are pure illusion. Just as the slavophils endeavoured ​to explain autocracy as the outcome of Russian or Slavic traits, so, in the west, noted jurists attempted to deduce monarchy, as contrasted with democracy, from certain reputedly Teutonic juridical characteristics. The theocratic sanction of autocracy is a deduction from the ecclesiastico-religious sanction. As far as Russia is concerned, Count Uvarov impressed this upon the tsar (§ 24); and before Uvarov, Karazin had energetically defended the divine right of the great landed proprietors (§ 15).
Emperor William is more realist than his crown jurists when he insists that his absolutism is a revealed divine right, and when in his well-known letter on religion he defends revelation against liberal theology. In these matters the views of Emperor William coincide with those of Tsar Nicholas II; Metternich, voicing the sentiments of Emperor Francis of Austria, spoke in almost identical terms (§ 36); and the founders of the holy alliance all felt themselves and declared themselves to be instruments in the hands of providence (§ 15). Such differences as exist between Prussian monarchy and Russian monarchy can be accounted for by the differences between Prussia and Russia in respect of ecclesiastical and religious institutions.
Wherever it has existed, theocratic absolutism has endeavoured by coercive means to maintain the conditions whereby subjects were shut out from political activities. Isolation from human contact led to the moral and biological degeneration of aristocracies and dynasties, the universal result being revolution. But aristocracy and absolutism are not based solely upon coercion, for they are maintained in addition, as Herzen rightly insisted, by general recognition, by the opinions in the minds of men.
Since the days of Peter, philosophy, and above all European philosophy, has revolutionised thought. Peter was himself a revolutionary. The regime of Nicholas I made the philosophical revolution radical; it was from political even more than from philosophical need that atheism and materialism were counterposed to Uvarov's theocratic principles. Materialism in its radical negation was always a political weapon.
In opposition to theocracy and to its mythopoeic and ​mystical theology, realism and nihilism were preached a positivist disillusionment; this is the significance of Herzen's positivism, of Bakunin's antitheologism, and of Černiševskii's materialism. Feuerbach's philosophy was utilised above all as a solvent of ecclesiastical religion and of religion in general.
Russian positivism with its atheism and materialism has proved inadequate. Russian philosophical and therefore Russian political thought fails through the lack of criticism. Russian philosophy has not succeeded in uprooting myth.
In practice this defect manifests itself in the failure of the Russians to adopt the ethic of perseverance wholeheartedly and consistently. Kirěevskii pointed this out long ago, but consoled himself in aristocratic fashion by saying that the Russian could atone for his lack of perseverance by splendid bursts of labour. Here speaks the typical aristocrat, the man who despises application and the petty details of everyday work.
Since Pestel and Herzen, the Russian revolutionaries have expressed themselves as opposed to constitutionalism and parliamentarism. Herein we have a sample of the widely discussed Russian anarchism. Owing to the prolonged dominance of theocratic absolutism, Russians have been laymen in political no less than in religious matters, and they therefore incline to regard the constitutionalist beginnings of democracy as of trifling importance. Herzen, feeling as an aristocrat, declared constitutionalism, the republic, and even universal suffrage, to be nullities. Herzen, however, was thoroughgoing enough to regard the acquirements of the bourgeois revolution as manifestations of Protestantism; and against Protestantism he directed his most emphatic protests. The Russian atheist could not share in the religious disillusionment of Protestantism; also, as a matter of theory, he demanded this disillusionment in conjunction with Feuerbach the positivist and materialist.
In like manner the revolutionaries since Herzen have ​aimed rather at liberty than at democratic equality. Even to Kropotkin, equality seems nothing more than a means to secure uniformity and justice. Kropotkin, despite his anarchism, is an aristocrat, and his attitude towards justice closely resembles that of the pope's secretary. Mihailovskii is here more progressive and democratic, though less revolutionary.
This lack of the democratic spirit characterises the apostates of Signposts (§§ 182 and 183). Berdjaev, one of their spokesmen, aspires towards a mystical form of aristocracy. Aristocracy is ever mythopoeic and mystical.
Nor has Russian liberalism as yet had courage to free itself completely from the theocracy. Only the social democrats and the social revolutionaries demand the severance of state from church. The liberals content themselves with the program of freedom of conscience. In this matter, as previously explained, the progressive theologians, few in number, are further advanced, for they demand disestablishment in the interest of religion itself.
The presupposition of democracy is the new ethic of equality, not solely the Herzenian brain equality. The defenders of theocracy are perfectly aware of this. Leont'ev tells us that the state can exist without morals but not without religion. Pobědonoscev denounces unbelief as the direct negation of the state. Tihomirov tells us that if independent thought in the sphere of religion be but rendered impossible, an able police service will be competent to take care of all other essentials.
The Russians are extremely revolutionary, but not very democratic.
* ↑ De Maistre, the exponent of postrevolutionary theocracy, writing to Count J. Potocki in 1810, formulated as follows the intimate relationship between Political aristocracy and ecclesiastico-religious aristocracy: "Le patricien est un prêtre laïque; la religion nationale est sa première propriété et la plus sacrée, puisqu'elle conserve son privilège qui tombe toujours avec elle. Il n'y a pas de plus grand crime pour un noble que d'attaquer les dogmes." Compare what James I said at the Hampton Court conference (I quote from S. R. Gardiner's History of England): "At the word Presbyters James fired up. He told the Puritans that they were aiming at 'a Scottish Presbytery, which,' he said, 'agreeth as well with a monarchy as God and the devil. . . . Then Jack and Tom, and Will and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleasure censure me and my council and all our proceedings. Then Will shall stand up, and say, "it must be thus"; then Dick shall reply, and say, "Nay, marry, but we will have it thus."' . . . More and more the maxim, 'No Bishop, no King,' became the rule of his conduct." Compare, again, with this utterance Napoleon's concordat with the pope, which contains (§§ 6 and 7) the following oath for the bishops: "{{lang|fr|Si dans mon diocèse ou ailleurs, j'apprends qu'il se trouve quelque chose au préjudice de l'Etat, je le ferai savoir au gouvernement."
* ↑ This problem has been considered in fuller detail in § 157, in connection with our study of the relationship of syndicalism to democracy.
* ↑ If the name be not liable to misinterpretation, we might speak of "demology," as related to democracy, just as theology is related to theocracy.
* ↑ Concerning the development of democracy with and from the reformation, consult Borgeaud's studies ({{lang|fr|Annales de l'Ecole libre des Sciences Politiques, 1890 and 1891); the copy at my disposal is the English translation by Mrs. Hill with a preface by Firth, The Rise of Modern Democracy in Old and New England. Stimulated by Borgeaud, Ellinek has dealt with this topic, but his treatment lacks clarity. In his study, Exposition of the Rights of Man and Civil Rights, 1895, political and individual fundamental rights are considered to have a religious origin and to be based upon the reformation. In his Political Science, second edition 1905, the general drift is closely akin to that of the sketch given in our text, but Ellineck has failed to understand the nature of medieval theocracy and of the political process of disestablishment characteristic of modern times. In these respects Laveleye has shown keener insight.
* ↑ In addition to Laveleye, we may refer here to M. Weber, and to his explanation of the capitalist spirit as an outcome of the reformation, and in particular of the Calvinist reformation. (It seems expedient that I should declare that I differ from Weber in that I regard the problem as more comprehensive, and in the stress that I lay upon other moral and social forces.)
* ↑ Of late, much attention has been paid to this question of the cultural inferiority of Catholics. It is well known that the modernists, F. X. Kraus, Schell, and others, have admitted the inferiority of Catholicism in this respect, Von Hertling has conceded the point as far as science is concerned. In the polemic discussions upon the subject the issues have been cleared. Certain regions of Germany have been methodically compared, and statistical proof of Catholic inferiority has been furnished. I may refer to the work by Rost, The Catholics in the Cultural and the Economic Life of To-day, 1908. Rost is a Catholic, and there is therefore no reason to be suspicious of his apologetic disquisitions and admissions, though suspicion may be felt regarding Yves Guyot's Le Bilan sociale et politique de l'Eglise, 1901, and similar books.
* ↑ Cf. C. Muth (Veremundus), Is Catholic Belletristics abreast of the Time? (1898), and The Literary Tasks of German Catholics (1899).
* ↑ I do not touch upon problems of detail, such as the population question, the sexual question, and so on. But I advance the general opinion after due consideration, and after a careful examination of the relevant literature.
* ↑ Emperor William in all seriousness proclaimed his grandfather to be a divine revelation, and declared himself to be God's chosen instrument.
* ↑ In the much discussed encyclical, Diuturnum illud (1881), Leo XIII derived from Protestantism, not merely modern philosophy, but modern law, the liberal aspirations of democracy, communism, socialism, and even nihilism. In a subsequent encyclical, Militantis ecclesiae (1897), the same pope condemned the reformation as a Lutheran rebellion. All that Leo XIII did in these encyclicals was to formulate an effective summary of the doctrines of the Syllabus, and to express the common opinion of Catholic ecclesiastical polemists.
* ↑ The soldier must not have a will of his own. You must all have but one will, and that is my will; there is but one law, and that is my law!"—Speech to recruits about to take the military oath, November 16, 1893.
* ↑ I reiterate Feuerbach's dictum: "I would not give a rush for political liberty if I were to remain a slave of religious fancies and prejudices. True freedom can be found there only where man is free also from the tyranny of religion." Such is the view of the contemplative philosopher. But let me quote Fouillé in addition: "There is only one way of putting an end to practical despotism, and this is to put an end to metaphysical despotism and to dogmatism in all its forms, to materialist despotism no less than to the spiritualist despotism which claims a knowledge of absolute salvation."