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Rh more orthodox than Kirěevskii, was no mystic. In his theological polemic we perceive the scholastic rather than the mystic.

Homjakov entirely rejects German philosophy, though he endeavours to turn this philosophy to his own account. Kirěevskii recognises German philosophy, and in especial the philosophy of Schelling, as an instrument and even as a guide. Homjakov, in contradistinction to Kirěevskii, rejects even the last phase of Schelling. He concedes with Kirěevskii that Hegel in his Phenomenology rendered imperishable services; but in this very book "the last titan of the understanding" condemned rationalism. Rationalism must be absolutely abandoned; Hegel, rationalism incarnate, is himself forced to recognise and to admit this. In Stirner, Homjakov discovers a terrible but instructive proof of the aberrant tendencies of German Protestant rationalism. Rationalist individualism and subjectivism, terminate in the evangel of the crassest egoism. The history of the age, writes Homjakov (Concerning Humboldt, 1849), is a living commentary upon Max Stirner.

OMJAKOV speaks of his system as "true conservatism," espousing the cause of the tories against the whigs, but what he preaches and extols is in reality theocratic absolutism.

He recognises that the state must necessarily exist side by side with the church, but does so with one great reservation. Christ is a citizen of the two distinct social orders, the perfect and heavenly order, the church, and the imperfect earthly order, the state. Life in the state, and in concreto the state law and administration, must conform wholly to the prescriptions of divine law, of religious doctrine.

In especial, Homjakov gives his approval to the Old Russian state, as he supposes it to have existed, assuming it to have originated by organic growth as a joint organisation of the communes and without the use of coercion. Wholly established upon an ethical and religious basis, this state is nothing other than the body of the church. The Russian state, contends Homjakov, organised the church and received its power from the hands of the people. In the west, on the other hand, the state is coercive in character, having originated by conquest.