Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/277

Rh civilisation, in view of its advantages, failed to develop more fully than European civilisation. Why, he enquires, did not Russia outstrip Europe? Why did not Russia become the leader of civilisation? Why has Russia had to borrow her civilisation from Europe? We have further to ask how the uncultured Russians could possibly preserve the treasure of divine truth intact and pure for humanity? Kirěevskii, the believer, solved this historical enigma in a spirit quite opposed to that of the parable of the buried talent.

In contrast with Schelling and with the devotees of romanticist hero-worship, Kirěevskii turned for help to the mužik, to the man of the common people. For him the mužik was the ideally religious man. He insisted that the thoughts which were to save Russia must be elaborated by the totality of the faithful, and he declared genius to be superfluous if not positively harmful. Here Kirěevskii's views were in striking contrast with those of Čaadaev.

Kirěevskii's religious agrarianism had likewise a social basis. He greatly admired the mir, and extolled it as the fundamental social unit of the Russian political system.

Quite consistently, Kirěevskii believed in Russia's messianic mission. Russia's true faith would bring salvation also to the west. But Kirěevskii remained modest and tolerant, conceiving that this salvation would take the form of a synthesis of Russian and of western civilisation, and that the saviour would receive many cultural acquirements from the saved. His slavophilism was less exclusively nationalistic than that of his successors, and for him the true motive force of Russian messianism was ever to be found in the advantages and the absolutism of the orthodox creed. Since, however, a faith cannot exist without believers, Kirěevskii was obliged to consider the national peculiarities of the Russians and of the other peoples of the world, was obliged to ponder the problem why the Russians were to undertake the salvation of mankind at one specific epoch. As early as 1829, in a report on Russian literature, Kirěevskii had advocated the articulation of Russia to Europe. The European nations, he wrote, had all completed their tasks; in respect of civilisation Europe was now a unity which had swallowed up the independence of the individual nations out of which it had been composed. Hence, for the continuance of its organic life as a unity, Europe required a centre. This centre must be found in a single nation, able to