Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/229

 mediaeval civilization and history of Central Asia, and so on.

The evolution of Russian thought, considered in its general aspects and in its different domains, can be stated, then, in the following terms. During the 18th and 19th centuries science and learning in Russia became, in a certain sense, Russian science and learning: Russian thought began to play its own part in the historical development of science and learning, gradually embracing all the nations of the civilized world.

Thanks to the growth of Russian thought the principle of its unity, which was formerly established only from a religious and specially orthodox point of view, could now be formulated afresh. This tendency manifests itself more and more in Russian philosophy, science and learning. Some examples, relating to modern times, will clear up this growing tendency to unify our general conception of the world and our knowledge of nature and history.

Philosophy is, of course, particularly called upon to fulfil such a mission and Russian philosophers have endeavoured to achieve it: they were, indeed, deeply conscious of the capital importance of such a problem, but they solved it in different ways.

The "idealists" of the thirties and forties, and particularly the Slavophiles, criticised from this point of view the "Western" rationalism: Kiryeevsky,