Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/238

212 the nineteenth century the principle of nationality ripened to become a great political force.

HE development and strengthening of the historic sense, enhanced understanding of the evolutionary process in human society and in the universe, made reﬂective persons fully aware of the antithesis between the individual and the whole of which he forms a part. It is to-day regarded as an obvious fact that the modern age is individualistic in comparison with earlier days. For us this signifies that the modern human being, through his critique of cognition and of his own mental processes in general, has become critically aware of the antithesis between the individual and the collectivity, that collectivity wherein the individual is himself comprehended.

Kant conceived individualism also as subjectivism, for in opposition to epistemological objectivism (realism) he made the assumption that the object adapts itself to our faculty of cognition instead of conversely. From this assumption, which Kant compared with the bold speculation of Copernicus, Fichte and Stirner advanced to solipsism.

Kant's critical rationalism, inasmuch as it was subjectivist, was thoroughly activistic. Cognition seemed to him to be an active process of the understanding. He extolled the autoprocreation of our reason, valued reason for its spontaneity as contrasted with receptivity. Voluntarism, in fact, began with Kant.

Epistemologically and metaphysically, however, even Kant failed to carry his subjectivism to its logical conclusion, and for this reason Fichte spoke of him as a "three-quartershead." Holding that consistent subjectivism, solipsism, was an absurdity. Kant assumed the existence of an objective thing-by-itself. But even Fichte, despite his verdict upon Kant's half measures, evaded solipsism. If we examine the Fichtean ego closely, its "logical fanaticism" (Jacobi) vanishes. Fichte helped himself out with the expedient oi diversified egos (the absolute ego, the ego of intellectual contemplation, the ego as idea, the individual ego), and took refuge in history and the philosophy of history, discovering there nationality as the objective to which he subordinated the ego. Fichte, too, and Fichte above all, applied subjectivism to the cultivation of morality.