# The Spirit of Russia/Volume 2/Chapter 26

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
HOLY RUSSIA; THE RUSSIAN MONK AND FEUERBACH
§ 208.
IF at the close of these studies and sketches I were to venture an attempt to summarise the present drift of Russian thought, my formula would run as follows: Russian Orthodoxy is being replaced by (German) Protestantism.
By the terms Orthodoxy and Protestantism are to be understood, not merely the theology, but the whole ecclesiastical culture, leadership, and organisation of the respective societies. Ecclesiasticism in its entirety is regarded in the sense in which Kant spoke of the philosophy of Protestantism, and in which the slavophils looked upon German philosophy in general as Protestant philosophy. The postkantian philosophers, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer; the materialists, Vogt, Büchner, and Moleschott; finally, Marx, Darwin, and Spencer: these were the thinkers who awakened the Russians from the slumber of Orthodoxy. The part played by individuals in promoting this awakening has been sufficiently considered, and we have learned that the influence of Feuerbach was peculiarly strong and decisive.
I would ask the reader to be good enough to recall the description of my visit to the Troicko-Sergievskaja monastery; to recall how to the eager young monk who acted as my guide I represented an embodiment of Feuerbach's philosophy of religion; how my coming and my conduct revealed to him the great secret that his faith, that the content of his religious thoughts and aspirations, were nothing more than the naive egoistic formulation of the desires which the exigencies of Russian life had impressed upon his mentality; how the ​message I brought to him was that God was nothing more than himself, the monk who stood greatly in need of help. . . .
What I moot here as a possibility, has in truth been a reality for Russia. Since the days of Peter, German culture, German science, and German philosophy have steadily been invading Russia; and, abstractions apart, we have to consider the personal influence of the German, Swedish, and Finnish Protestants who secured official appointments at court, in the bureaucracy, in the army, and in the navy. The French, at first, were the foreign teachers of Russia; but during the reigns of Alexander I and Nicholas I, and still more during subsequent decades, German influence greatly predominated.
This German influence acted without transitional stages; the Russian was quite suddenly awakened from Orthodox mysticism and myth. Russia and the Russian church represent the intellectual trends of the third century, and it will suffice to realise how the Russian, habituated to the passive acceptance of Christian revelation, was all in a moment confronted with the results of European progressive thought! Hitherto the Russian had lived quite objectivistically, believing the authority of church and state, the authority of the theocracy, to be supreme. All at once he found it necessary to depend upon himself and upon his natural intellectual forces. By Kant and Kant's successors he was referred to his own mental energies; he was assured that his own intellectual activities, and not divine revelation, had given birth to science, philosophy, and religion; it was made clear to him that man, not God, was the creator of social life in its entirety.
This crisis which Russia has experienced may be compared with the process of decomposition and solution affecting the so-called savage peoples that suddenly come into contact with European civilisation, though doubtless in the latter case, owing to the gulf between the two civilizations, the process of decomposition is more acute and more intense. Medieval Russia thus exposed to the decomposing influence of modern civilisation is far more spiritually akin to Europe than are the Australian blacks and other quite uncivilised peoples. Nevertheless the crude desecration of official sanctities effected in Russia by Feuerbach's influence, does bring about a process of decomposition; Russian Orthodox passivism and objectivism is revolutionised by European Protestant activism and subjectivism.
​The Russian philosophers of history and of religion accurately gauged the result, though not the essential nature, of this peculiar historical process. Metaphysically, epistemologically, and ethically, they rejected German philosophy as solipsism, and they were afraid that crime would be the outcome of the philosophic revolution.
But two distinct moods prevail among those who voice such judgments. Some, like Bělinskii and Herzen, when they speak of crime, think of murder and revolution; others, like Bakunin, think of suicide.
The analysis of Dostoevskii's struggle against nihilism will convince us that Bělinskii and Bakunin did in fact both succeed in accurately diagnosing the great problem of the age. Since the eighteenth century, in Europe as well as in Russia, there has been manifest a peculiar increase in the impulse to suicide, whilst. simultaneously there has occurred a growth of the revolutionary spirit.
§ 209.
SOCIOLOGISTS have not yet sufficiently analysed and elucidated the concept of historical stages. We have to ask why our own time is generally felt and proclaimed to be new. In what does its newness consist? What is the essential characteristic of the contrasted older epoch?
In these studies I have frequently expressed my dissent from historicism. More especially I have objected to the theory of Comte and of Marx that during successive stages of development man is transformed by the influence of peculiar objective historical forces, not physically alone, but psychically as well. In my view, man evolves himself, forms hiniself; and I consider that this self-evolution begins at the very outset of historical development. Ina word, there is no epistemological warrant for the presumed coming of the superman; the modern age is distinguished solely by the fuller unfolding of forces that have previously existed in a less developed state.
As I see the matter, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries mankind grew fully conscious of this fact. This is the world-wide historical significance of Humist scepticism of the philosophy of the enlightenment, and above all of the Kantian criticism and of the great revolution. Man became fully conscious of the opposition between myth and science. ​Herein lies the essence of the Kantian criticism, and this explains why history and the philosophy of history were simultaneously constituted as a science.
When I refer in this manner to the supreme significance of the eighteenth century in universal history, it is necessary for me to remind the reader that the antecedent stage of evolution lasted many thousands of years. According to the conception which permeates this work, the entire antecedent period constituted antiquity in its various phases. The aspirations of the modern age began to become apparent as early as the twelfth century; but not until the eighteenth century did the new spirit begin to display itself to the full both quantitatively and qualitatively, and not until then did it become completely self-conscious in the philosophic sense.
Medieval Russia, the Russia of antiquity, was dragged without transition into the European evolutionary progess of the eighteenth and subsequent centuries.
§ 210.
MY exposition furnishes little support to the fashionable explanation of historical evolution as determined by nationality and race, as the outcome of national character. No one can deny that racial and national distinctions exist, but the origin of these distinctions is itself in need of explanation, and they are not of such a kind as to render them adequate explanations of historical evolution. I have discussed the problem more than once, and especially in § 59.
Further, for the reasons previously given, I find myself unable to accept the doctrine of historical materialism.
Nor can the undeniable influence of natural environment suffice to explain history, and least of all Russian history. Obviously, the influences of natural environment are peculiarly strong in Russia. The Russian, who for almost half the year is winter-bound in his miserable wooden hut, must become different from the dweller in Central Europe and from the southerner, must work in a different way. But such influences cannot fully explain the intellectual and physical life of the nations.
Were it only on account of the enormous geographical extent of Russia, great caution is needed in assigning Russian national peculiarities to the influences of nature. Very different ​is Russian life in Serbia, in Archangel or in Vologda, in Tula or in Caucasia. We must further take into consideration the differences between the Great Russians and the Little Russians; we have to think of the mingling of races; and we must not forget that, as time passes, changes invariably occur in modes of life and in national characteristics. We must carefully distinguish the important from the unimportant, the essential from the casual.
Let me reiterate that in the extant natural and social conditions man forms himself. In fact I share Bělinskii's belief that man is free in his historical environment. It is not chronology, it is not space and time, that constitute the essence of mankind; man himself is that essence. Thus again and again are we brought back to the problem of subjectivism versus objectivism. My decision is in favour of a mitigated subjectivism, and these studies have been a consistent attempt to apply such a view epistemologically and methodologically.
§ 211.
IN my attempts at philosophico-historical explanations I start from the conviction that religion constitutes the central and centralising mental force in the life of the individual and of society. The ethical ideals of mankind are formed by religion; religion gives rise to the mental trend, to the life mood of human beings.
We are speaking here of ecclesiastical religion. The church as the organisation of society, the church as the chief pillar of the state and of state organisation, the church as the very foundation of the theocracy, has been and still remains the teacher and educator of the nations.
The effective energy is supplied, not by ecclesiastical doctrine alone, but by the living example which the church furnishes through its priest or its preachers; in every village will be found one or several clerics to guide the inhabitants in the spirit of the church; the church is a grandly conceived, unitary, and centralised educational institute. If it be true, as Comenius declared, that the school is the officina humanitatis, then the church is this officina, for hitherto the church has conducted the school, and has, speaking generally, provided for the entire spiritual leadership of society.
The unbeliever, the philosopher, is subject to the influence ​of the church in that he fights against its doctrines and institutions; the peculiar relationship of theology to philosophy, and the content of philosophy down to our own day, afford the best proof of the strength of ecclesiastical influence. For practical purposes, the mass of indifferents simply comply with the demands of the church. On the supremely important occasions of birth, marriage, and death, even the indifferent is compelled to reflect upon the meaning of life, and there the church stands ready to help him.
Whilst those hostile to the church are fond of assuring us that the church to-day influences none but women and children, herein we see confirmation of the fact that the church influences adults as well. Not one of us can escape the impressions and influences emanating from the church, influences that have affected him during childhood, that have affected him as a member of society. We know that the influences operative during childhood are largely decisive for the rest of life.
As early as the third century, the church was a finished structure, and thenceforward exercised its educative and formative influence on society in virtue of the recognition accorded to it as supreme authority. For Russia in particular we have to remember that the Byzantine church was taken over as a ready-made theocratic organisation, and that as such it exercised its influence upon the Russian state and upon Russian society.
§ 212.
"THE profoundest theme, nay, the one theme of the history of the universe and of mankind, the theme to which all others are subordinated, is the conflict between faith and unfaith." Goethe's saying has been confirmed anew by our own philosophico-historical analysis. The content of history is the peculiar struggle of the critical understanding with myth, the struggle between critical and scientific thought on the one hand and mythology on the other.
During the eighteenth century this struggle reached a turning-point in the thought of Hume and Kant, but it still continues, and the crowning task of the present is to create the religion and the religious organisation of society that will be in conformity with the demands of the critical understanding. To ​create, I say. We are not looking for a reconciliation between science and ecclesiastical religion; our aim is the creation of a new religious and spiritual content for life. Comte's idea, the view of those liberals, socialists, and anarchists who are hostile to religion, that the modern epoch constitutes a higher non-religious stage of development, is erroneous. I have already insisted that evolutionism itself demands the further development, not only of science, but also of religion and of all the forces of the mind. The Russian philosophers of history and philosophers of religion confused myth, confused uncritical credulity and mysticism, with the religious spirit; they confused theocratic ecclesiastical religion with religion itself.
§ 213.
FROM this outlook, too, I consider the problem of the independence and the originality of the Russians. It is the general view that Russians differ from Europeans; but we have to remember that the French and the Italians differ from the English; and we have to ask what precisely are the genuine and true characteristics of the Russians and of the Europeans respectively, and how much independence and originality is possessed by the other peoples.
We have examined with critical care the available explanations and estimates of Russian distinctiveness, and we have considered the ways in which Russians and Europeans have been contrasted. In many cases the judgments are extremely sketchy. Sociology and history have still much to do in this domain. It can hardly be said, for example, that Roman and Greek cultural influences affecting the Gauls, the Teutons, the southern Slavs, and so on, have as yet been precisely and critically determined. What, again, was original in the Greeks and the Romans? Has the originality of the French, the English, the Germans, etc., been objectively established?
To solve this problem it would be necessary to effect a philosophico-historical revision of history.
The influence of Europe upon Russia has incontestably been great, yet while this influence has been at work Russia has undergone a development no less independent than that of the various western nations, and we must not forget this spontaneity. Regarding the Russia of the earliest times, we ​cannot to-day determine with accuracy to what degree, in cultural and political matters, the Russians shared the ideas, customs, and institutions common to the other Indo-European stocks; nor do we know how these ideas, institutions, and customs originated. The spread of Christianity subsequently laid the same or similar foundations throughout the western world, ahd upon these foundations a superstructure of ideas and institutions could be erected in Russia, analogous to those which were erected in Byzantium and in the west. Similar considerations apply to the recent Europeanisation of Russia and to the working of western influences in that country.
In the historical sketch, and during the description of the specific western influences, I have distinguished as precisely as possible between the effects of adoption from abroad on the one hand, and of spontaneous parallel development on the other. To give a concrete example, I referred to the parallelism between Pisarev and Stirner, for in this instance similar superstructures were erected upon an identical foundation (Feuerbach) in Russia and in Europe respectively. In great measure the development of Marxism in Russia, based upon the acceptance of Feuerbach, Comte, and materialism, may be regarded as parallel to the development of Marxism in Europe. In the case of the slavophils we were able to demonstrate that western influences were at work, and we were able to point to the independent elaboration of German ideas. The like parallel evolutionary series can be discovered in the case of Russia and of Europe in respect of feudalism, capitalism, constitutionalism, the revolution, and so on. Side by side with adoption from abroad and the direct influence of such adoption, we can always note a comparatively independent further development of what has been adopted.
Adoption from foreign sources may vary greatly both quantitatively and qualitatively. There may occur a purely mechanical seizure (such as in literature is termed gross plagiary), and imitation; or there may occur a more or less deliberate selection (such as was effected by Čaadaev), and elaboration by a congenial spirit.
This deliberate elaboration may develop into a creative synthesis wherein the entire personality experiences the labour pains attendant on the birth of the ideal of the future. Such a synthesis is attempted by Kirěevskii, and indeed by many of the best Russian thinkers.
​It is this which gives Russian philosophy its peculiar stamp; this is why that philosophy is preeminently philosophy of history and philosophy of religion. The questions continually agitating the Russian mind are two: Whither? and What is to be done?
I do not believe that the critical Russian thinker will be content to-day with the answers that have been suggested by Russian philosophers of history. For example, when Homjakov, speaking of railways and of many other things, says that all the Russians need do is to harvest the ripe fruits of the labour of other lands, whilst the rule may be good enough from a purely technological outlook, it is none the less a dangerous one to follow. The thought and the energy of those who depend much on others are apt to become enfeebled. The danger is exemplified when Homjakov takes satisfaction to himself because the Russian has not had to squander his forces in experimental work, and has not exhausted his imaginative faculties through arduous toil. We must challenge the suggestions made by Čaadaev and others that the backwardness of Russia has been her salvation.
Bělinskii sometimes declared that Russia often found it necessary to do in five years what the west had taken fifty years to accomplish. The truth of the assertion is questionable; and in so far as it is true, it merely indicates a lack of steadfastness and diligence. Too often and too urgently did the slavophils call attention to the lukewarmness of westernism and liberalism, to the lukewarmness of what Ivan Aksakov spoke of as "pothouse civilisation." It is precisely in Russia that we note a disastrous lukewarmness, a tendency to excessive reliance upon the mental work done in Europe. Detailed analysis would display the existence of several varieties of this trouble. In his biography of Granovskii, the orientalist V. V. Grigor'ev characterised one of these varieties by saying that it was a tendency "to grasp at the summits." (About this work by Grigor'ev there was much ado in its day. Kavelin took up the cudgels on behalf of Granovskii.)
Nor will it do to follow Herzen and others in the belief that it is possible for Russia to skip certain stages of historical development, to pass without transition from a low stage to a much higher one. Against the original sin of passivity it is continually necessary to guard by the encouragement of activity, steadfastness and diligence.
​The task for the critical Russian thinker is, starting from what actually exists, to promote the attainment of the desirable aims by a process of organic development. These aims may in part be determined by the example of other nations, for in many respects the future of Russia is foreshadowed in the present and the past of the west. But at the same time the Russian, applying his knowledge of his own people and its history, must never fail to aspire towards an active and independent development, and must never cease from the endeavour to create the ideals for such a development.
I believe we may deduce from an analysis of Russian philosophy of history the lesson that criticism alike of Russia and of Europe may be renovated on the basis of a profounder knowledge of these two objects of comparison. Such criticism must deal with the inner life as well as with externals, must deal with moral, religious, and mental life in its entirety. Then only can the great synthesis be effected; then only can the reformative revolution prove successful.
This philosophical criticism we expect from the Russians will have to return to Hume and to Kant; it will have to discard nihilism and the negation of all that is old; it will have to discard uncritical revolutionism; and it will have to discard an easy-going imitativeness.
§ 214.
THIS critical revisionism will have to be based upon a sociological and philosophico-historical appraisement of European as well as of Russian civilisation. The question is not merely, "what elements of Old Russia are valuable, worthy of preservation and of further development?" We have likewise to ask, "what elements of Old Europe are valuable?"
In § 14 I showed that as long ago as the reign of Catherine II Boltin attempted to prove that the defects which the Europeans discovered among the Russians, existed also in Europe. In my own study of Russia I have had my attention directed to more than one instance of European happenings which, though they may not excuse what has been done in Russia, must none the less make us chary about comparisons derogatory to Russia. One who reads the reports concerning the Austrian censorship prior to the year 1848, will be little inclined to express surprise at the cruelties of the censorship under Nicholas I. Again, ​when we read that the empress Josephine spent during six years no less than five and twenty million francs upon dress, the extravagance of the "Semiramis of the North" becomes more comprehensible.
These, of course, are mere details. European philosophers of history have ere this effected a thorough criticism of the development and of the present condition of the various western peoples, and have endeavoured to fashion new ideals. Nietzsche was not first in the field with his demand for the revaluation of values.
Herzen and many of his successors had little love for Europe, esteeming Europe far less highly than their predecessors and the westernisers had done; but such judgments must be accepted with caution, since they are those of refugees who never struck firm root in European soil. In some cases, and this is especially true of Herzen, these writers' vision was obscured by Russian prejudice. One becomes used in time even to hanging—the proverb applies to Russians as well as to Europeans. Our judgments concerning Europe and Russia must have a sociological, a philosophico-historical foundation.
In Europe there still exist medieval Catholicism and the papacy, whose philosophic foundations have long since been undermined; in Europe we find that ecclesiastical Protestantism still persists, though it too is philosophically outworn; Europe remains familiar with absolute monarchy, which proved competent after the revolution to convert constitutionalism and parliamentarism into its own instruments (tsarism, too, will in due course achieve the like success!); Europe knows monarchical militarism, and Europe knows capitalism—in Europe, in a word, democracy is not yet secure, and the political strength of theocracy is still considerable. It is true that in point of principle the European theocracy no longer possesses any philosophic basis, whilst politically the theocracy has been so greatly weakened that it is compelled to compromise with democracy. Speaking generally, Europe is the land of compromise, of half-measures; but they are the half-measures of transition. The philosopher of history can already regard democracy as an attainable ideal, and as the predestined heir of theocracy.
The danger in Russia is that many Russians do not feel this conviction as far as their own country is concerned.
Europe has to face the problem of the suicidal impulse, the ​great problem for men and for humanity; in Europe much attention is being paid to the problem of decadence and degeneration; the peculiar theme of French decadence and degeneration is a standing item on the agenda, and not in France alone. Universal in Europe is a lively aspiration towards rebirth. I consider that the Russian philosopher of history has every reason to urge upon his nation that the situation is serious, the task difficult; but he has no occasion to doubt or to despair of the future.
§ 215.
EUROPE feels a lively interest in Russia and in the destiny of that country, as we can learn, not only from the daily press, but also from the numerous books written about Russia and from the attention paid to Russian literature.
For the nonce political interest predominates. European theocracy looks upon Russia as a natural ally. The holy alliance was the issue of this conception. The conception was shared even by such a man as Bismarck, for as champion of the Prussian monarchy he found tsarism congenial. Metternich had the same feeling where Austria was concerned. Precisely for this reason, European liberals and democrats have fought tsarism as their hereditary foe, and the social democrats adopt the same attitude towards official Russia. We owe to Feuerbach, the philosophic teacher of the Russians, the saying: "We have but two hereditary enemies, spiritually the papacy, and temporally Russdom."
A philosophic interest in Russia and Russian development is however displayed in the extensive European literature concerning Russia. This interest has become so marked that it is now possible to speak of the Russification of Europe as well as of the Europeanisation of Russia. Not merely has the political influence of Russia upon Europe continually increased since the eighteenth century, but Europe has eagerly accepted Russian literature and has thus learned to participate in Russia's internal problems. We have seen how Voltaire and Herder admired Russia; to-day we can enumerate Nietzsche Maeterlinck, and many others among those who have accepted Russian ideas and ideals.
The sociologist and the philosopher of history can learn much from Russia.
​From the methodological point of view, much advantage can be derived from a comparison of Europe with Russia. Europeans will find that a study of Russian analogies makes their own problems more fully alive.
But in respect of matters of detail Russia and Russian development are likewise most instructive. The enormous extent of the country suffices to make it a world in miniature. The study of the Europeanisation of Russia, expanding as it does into a study of reciprocal cultural influences, suggests numerous and extremely interesting problems. The study of Russia will give the sociologist a clearer insight into the problem of cultural mutuality and cultural unification, a problem that is of such profound importance to human evolution.
The philosopher of history who undertakes the study of Russia must perforce acquire a clearer understanding of the outlook of the middle ages and of earlier days, and he is thereby constrained to undertake a more accurate analysis of the essential nature of the modern epoch.
As far as I myself am concerned, I have no hesitation in saying, not merely that the study of Russia and Russian literature helped me to form more accurate estimates of the philosophies of Feuerbach and of Hegel, but further that it was through Russian philosophy and literature that I came to realise the world-historical importance of Hume and of Kant.
How instructive is the study of the Russian revolution. The interest of Europe in the Russian revolution was very great, and the Russian revolution had a favourable repercussion upon Europe. In Austria, for example, manhood suffrage was introduced as an outcome of the pressure exercised by the Russian revolution. It is true that the victory of the reaction in Russia was acclaimed by the European reaction, but it cannot be said that the delight in Europe was by any means intense.
The interest in the Russian revolution does not. attach solely to the political aspect of the question. The philosopher of history sees in the revolution the great religious and ethical problem of the age. This is a matter upon which we may learn something from the Russians.
The present studies will, I may hope, have made this point clear, and that is why I conclude by appealing to the reader's interest on behalf of the sequel, which will deal with Dostoevskii, the great analyst of the Russian revolution.