Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/297

Rh In this opposition to Hegel, Homjakov takes the side of most of the romanticists and above all that of Schelling and of the advocates of the historical doctrine of law. Since the days of Herder, German philosophy had discovered in the nation and in the folk-spirit the source of all social manifestations and organisations. Poetry, art and literature, language, morals, in the last resort law (and therefore also the state) and religion, were regarded as such manifestations of the "folk-spirit." They were, it is true, unconscious manifestations. It is impossible here to enter into details and to analyse this view. In different thinkers differences in formulation and in groundwork will naturally be discoverable. It must suffice to refer to the basic conception of romanticism and to its preference for the so-called folk-spirit as the creator of all social activity. We may add that the nation or the folk (the terminology and the concept were then and still are vague) were imagined to be an organic portion or an organ of mankind; the idea of nationality and the humanitarian doctrine were brought into intimate association, nationality being based upon the humanitarian ideal extensively and intensively, politically and morally, socially and historically.

The humanitarian ideal of the eighteenth century led up to the ideal of nationality. Herder (vida supra, ) was unquestionably one of the first to regard the nation as a natural organ of mankind, and it was in this sense that he wrote his history of philosophy. Herder likewise opposed the state, as an artificial product, to the natural products of folk-life.

Hegel protested against this romanticist view, and the Hegelian left and Young Germany joined energetically in the protest. It is true that Hegel recognised the significance of the folk-spirit, and even emphasised its importance, but he considered that the folk, the nation, became a unity through the instrumentality of the state. Hegel regarded the government as "the simple soul or the self of the folk-spirit," and he looked upon the state as a self-conscious and willing divinity, as the divine will. In a further logical development Hegel came to consider that only the monarchical state and the monarch were genuine manifestations of the divine will; he looked forward to a general organisation of mankind, which was not to result from a fusion of the nations, but from a fusion of the states to form a world state. For a time he regarded Napoleon as the world soul and as the future rightful lord of