Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/240

 in its love to our "searching love," and which cannot be conceived by mere rational and empirical knowledge; this love must be realized by men in their actions.

These metaphysical conceptions could not satisfy the Russian philosophers and sociologists who, though they allotted an important rôle to will and feeling, yet were inclined to consider this problem in a positive way: the representatives of the "subjective" school of Russian sociology—Lavrov, Mihailovsky, Karyeev and others—supposed, as was stated above, that the knowledge of social facts is permanently accompanied by an appreciation of them, and tried to combine the objective spirit of investigation into social facts with the "subjective" valuation of them; in his conception of a growing wholeness of the individual, Mihailovsky implied the notion of a being, who possesses, besides reason, other elements of consciousness, i.e., will and feeling, and from this point of view he estimated social progress. Karyeev shared this view and conceived historical progress as a gradual ascent of human beings from coarse reality to ideals, produced by their yearning after Truth and Good, "inherent in our soul," by their desire to be happy without encroaching on the happiness of others.

It may be stated, by the way, that a similar conception became very prominent in modern Russian aesthetics; art was and still is, to some extent, considered in Russia not only as intimately connected with emotion, but as aiming at "ideals" or at moral ends.