Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/296

270 capital" side by side with the actual political capital where the ruler dwells, and so on.

His utopianism contains a large tincture of anarchism. We have seen that Aksakov declared the Slavic nations and above all the Russians to be pro-eminently a people "without a state."

This anarchism is derived by Aksakov from his false view concerning the nature of the church and of religion; religious mysticism leads him to flee from the state and from the world. He turns history to the service of his orthodox mysticism. In good earnest he ascribed a mystical element to science, in so far as he assigned to science a part in the foundation of life, itself a mystery. In sum, to him life was and remained mysterious. Restricted within the narrow limits of his slavophil circle, he projected his own moral relationship to his friends into the history of Russia.

O the state Homjakov opposed not only the church but also the nation. In his system the nation occupied intermediate sphere of activity between that of private persons and that of the state. Nation and society were here identical concepts; all qualities of soil and people had their place in social activity, and this social activity filled the "chasm" between the activities of private persons and those of the state. To Homjakov the state was no more than the outward expression of the living national activity, and indeed he regarded the state as nothing more than an instrument of coercion, which must be called upon in case of need to protect the community at large against the evil passions of individuals—for society, that is to say the community at large, is founded exclusively upon points-of-view, peace, and voluntary agreement

Spiritual energies, he wrote on one occasion (1839), originate in the people and in the church; "the function of government (a narrower concept than the concept of the state) is solely to awaken or to modify the play of these energies by a more or less harsh use of its authoritative powers." To Homjakov, K. Aksakov, and the slavophils in general, the state is nothing more than a variant of the well-known liberal nightwatchman. Homjakov is opposed to the westernisers and to their leader Hegel, decisively repudiating the idolisation of the state and the rationalist doctrine of the folk-spirit.