Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/347

Rh and (as the calculations recently quoted show) before so very long she will dispose of 500,000,000 men, destined in due course to become 1,000,000,000.

E are now sufficiently prepared to form a definitive judgment concerning the nature and development of slavophilism, and in doing so it will be possible to adduce certain details in amplification of our view.

Slavophilism is a school, and something more than a school, namely a tendency, represented by a group of thinkers, who differ, however, upon numerous points of considerable importance.

The strongest of the slavophil thinkers is Kirěevskii; his is the most philosophical mind, although it must be admitted that in respect of the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of history the characteristic teaching of the slavophils was somewhat fragmentary.

As expounded by Kirěevskii, slavophilism is a system of the philosophy of religion and philosophy of history deriving "wholly from the postrevolutionary mood of the restoration, and its leading thought is that theocracy must overcome and replace the threatening revolution. In this matter Kirěevskii agrees with Čaadaev, the slavophil with the westerniser, both being here intimately associated with the thought of the European world, and Kirěevskii being in this respect just as much a westerniser as Čaadaev.

I. Aksakov considered that the central idea of the tendency was to be found in nationality, and this view was reiterated by V. Solov'ev, who said that the "national element" was the most important item of slavophils thought, an element to which everything else, including religion, was subordinate. But it is necessary to point out that true Russism, the principal element of the Russian national idea, was constituted according to the slavophils by the one and only genuine Orthodoxy.

It is further of importance (and this is what Aksakov really wished to say), that the slavophils have not only to explain Russian civilisation, but to justify and defend it; the slavophils are russophils, Russian patriots. It may be conceded that this Rh|1em}}}}