Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/317

Rh as an idol. Not content with half measures, with inexorable logic his negation proceeds to the destruction of this idol as well; he casts away his soul and idolises the flesh to become slave of the flesh; the man without God becomes Nebuchadnezzar, becomes a beast.

Whilst Samarin endeavoured to verify the slavophil philosophy of history by applying it to the Catholic Poles, Aksakov extended the thesis to the entire west and to the Petrine state, declaring the revolution to be a falling away from God, from Christ, and therefore from Russian Orthodoxy, from true Christianity. Unquestionably in making this declaration Aksakov had before his eyes the analysis in which Dostoevskii deduced the reign of terror from atheism. The germs of this idea are indeed to be found in the works of the early slavophils, for Kirěevskii represented the cleavage in the souls of European and Russian men as despairing pessimism, whilst Homjakov deduced negation from materialism.

During the first days of the reaction under Alexander Ill, Aksakov moved towards the position of Katkov and Pobědonoscev, but he soon moved away from the reactionaries when he perceived that the reforms of 1861 were to be sacrificed.

VAN AKSAKOV'S explanation of the revolution finds its practical culmination in the glorification of Uvarov's absolutism, and N. Danilevskii moved forward to the stage of extolling Uvarov's nationalism. Danilevskii, like Dostoevskii, was implicated in the so-called Petraševscy conspiracy, but was punished merely by banishment from St. Petersburg. Devoting himself to the study of natural science, he had the advantage of working under von Baer for some years. As student of natural science Danilevskii acquired reputation by the books he published in opposition to Darwinism. In 1871 appeared his work on Russia and Europe, which became the handbook of slavophilism in its later phase.

In this work Danilevskii aims at demonstrating that historical development exhibits to us ten types of civilisation embodied in as many national or racial types: (1) Egyptian; (2) Chinese; (3) Assyrio-Babylonic-Phœnician, Chaldean, or