Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/285

Rh and unitary cognitive energy of the mind, and he assumed, like Kirěevskii, that there is an opposition between faith and analytical understanding. Kirěevskii made no attempt at a more precise psychological study of this outlook, but Homjakov endeavoured to provide it with psychological foundations in the Kantian criticism and in the philosophy of the post-kantians. His starting-point was that reason (razum) and will were identical. He spoke of a "willing understanding," thus insisting upon the spontaneity, the creative energy, of reason. Thus Homjakov, in defiance of his fundamental view, accepted that which he had contested elsewhere, the individualism and subjectivism which secured epistemological and even metaphysical expression in the work of Kant and his successors. Homjakov, like Kirěevskii, was directly influenced by Schelling, referring to Schelling's view concerning the nature and significance of the will. Doubtless, too, Homjakov had learned from Hegel that the essence of self-determining freedom is to be found in the unity of will and thought.

I do not know whether Homjakov had any intimate knowledge of Schopenhauer's doctrine of the will. However this may be, upon a foundation of German idealism, reason and will are conceived as one, but Homjakov subdivides will into belief and understanding (razsudok). Belief is defined as that capacity of the reason which becomes aware of realities and transmits them to the understanding for analysis and cognition. Belief, we are told further, is the inner and living awareness of things; it is the immediate grasp of things as a whole; belief renders immediate and evident what is objective and what is subjective, requiring neither proof nor reasons for this. Belief is "pure thought," is rational contemplation, is intuition, of which in its completeness man is not capable on earth, but whose power he will enjoy to the full in the other world.

It is obvious that Homjakov has not advanced beyond Schelling, or beyond German idealism and subjectivism; but