Page:The Russian Review Volume 1.djvu/238

210 Attempts were made to create a body of religious doctrine, to single out the essential values in human life and declare all others subordinate to them. And the intellectuals of the day did not have to go far afield for the discovery of the absolute values in life. They found them already expressed in the writings of the "thirties" and "forties": the happiness of the people, a morality of heroism and self-denial, the ideal of the "beautiful" life, in the sense of general peace, fraternity, and equality. But the rationalistic ideas of the Nihilists of the "sixties" could not be disregarded in the philosophic speculations of the men of the next decade, and thus we find several new combinations of thought in which some of the theories of the two periods are wedded. As an instance, we may take the manner in which the idealism of the "seventies" is combined with the utilitarian ethics of the preceding decade. The idea of the "beautiful" life is synthesized with the idea of the useful, and the outcome is the morality of "heroism." The new morality is utilitarian because it strives for the well being of the people. It is beautiful, because in it is expressed the power of the people and their greatness of spirit. Everything is thought of in terms of the whole people. And in the new heroism of self-sacrifice, individuality is surrendered and lost in mass-consciousness. One need hardly be reminded of how this philosophy drives Tolstoy to give up family and friends and to seek the extinction of his individuality in the communal life of the peasant-sects.

In the whole of our rapid survey of the chief aspects of nineteenth century Russian literature, we have sought to determine the underlying ideas, to set forth the basic principles as found in social, political, ethical, and even religious theories. We have not attempted a treatment of the literature per se. It is manifestly impossible to enter here upon an extended review of the great writers of Russia in order to note the influence upon them of the theories and doctrines we have summarized. But a few words on several of the most important writers may not be out of place. And first, Turgeniev. This great novelist has depicted for us a large number of Russian intellectuals, and has presented their ideas with an artistic insight and a fullness of philosophic and humanitarian understanding not easily surpassed. His studies of the Russian character, especially the will-less Hamlet type, "sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought," are masterful portrayals. Turgeniev was an ardent Westernizer, a great, free spirit who had rid himself utterly of