Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/258

232 with a view to securing an official post. Čaadaev then wrote that for Russians there was no other way of progress than by remaining faithful subjects, by subordinating their own feelings to the feelings of the tsar, and by an attitude of absolute humility towards the autocrat. It must be remembered that Čaadaev had strongly condemned the revolution of July 1830, and indeed the French of that date.

It will be seen that Čaadaev was not notably courageous. In his Apology he calumniated Herzen in a most distasteful manner. When taxed with this by a friend, his excuse was: "Mon cher, on tient à sa peau."

In the Apology Čaadaev speaks of Peter, Lomonosov, and Puškin as Russian sages and as the teachers of mankind. Their existence is a proof that Russia, at any rate the Russia of Peter the Great, progresses. But in prepetrine Russia, too, he discovers a valuable and significant civilising factor, the Russian church, and the Christian humility which it has stamped upon the Russian people. Čaadaev was an opponent of serfdom, as we learn from his letters and from the reports of his friends. N. Turgenev, whom we know to have been a strong opponent of serfdom, endorsed Čaadaev's views. Further, Čaadaev deplored the subjugation of church to state, this implying censure of cæsaropapism But should he not have asked himself whether these phenomena had any connection with the way in which the Russian church had inculcated prayer and humility upon Russians?

In these matters Čaadaev's position was embarrassing. His condemnation of Gogol's Correspondence with Friends in the year 1847 suffices to show that even after 1836 he had no great love for the Russian church and its humility. Still later, he spoke of the Crimean war in a way which was ill calculated to promote a spirit of humility towards the autocrat of all the Russias.

N his philosophy of history Čaadaev vacillates above all in respect of the fundamental idea of progress. On the one hand he is inclined, with Pascal, to assume that progress is continuous. On the other hand he regards the Christianisation of the world as a miracle, as the outcome of supernatural intervention; on a single day there perished, to be reborn,