Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/253

Rh spiritual passivity, and above all his demand for the annihilation of the ego, may be mystically interpreted. Čaadaev speaks of his contempt for the world, rejecting on this ground all participation in the political improvement of the world; he even contends that the world is our work and can therefore be annihilated by us at our own will: these and similar sayings may be mystically interpreted. There is a mystical ring about his presentation of eternity as the life of the righteous, and about his claim to have eliminated the concept of time ("thou opinest that the shovel of the gravedigger stands between thee and heaven"—1837); and a similarly mystical interpretation may be attached to his conception of immortality in the sense of the Platonic pre-existence; but these utterances may also be interpreted unmystically. His Philosophic Writing is not mystical. At the outset of the essay Čaadaev commends to his correspondent the practice of all the ceremonies of the church. This is the very reverse of mysticism; it is perhaps | a romanticist prescription à la Chateaubriand, but does not remind us of Tauler Similarly, Čaadaev's religious philosophy is devoid of mysticism. He lays great stress upon the church and upon its political power. For him religion and the church are identical concepts. He lays especial stress upon the objective aspect of religion as contrasted with the subjective, explicitly rejecting the Protestant doctrine of the invisible church. In so far, too, as he analyses the nature of religion, his outlook is unmystical. He stresses the truth of religion, valuing before everything the struggle of religion towards truth and towards the ideal. Love of one's neighbour has for him a logical basis; in the search for truth a man is defeated by his own ego, because this ego hides the truth from him; he must therefore overcome his ego if he is to find truth.

Finally, Čaadaev's leanings towards Catholicism and his fondness for the papacy are evidence against the view that he was a mystic. In these respects he was conquered by de Maistre the politician, and not by mysticism.

I devote considerable space to this question, because of late much emphasis has been laid upon the mystical aspects of Čaadaev's work, and because it seems to me expedient to elucidate the religious foundations of this writer's philosophy of history.