Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/349

Rh (1863), in which he declares that no truly popular journal can be published in St. Petersburg, for the first prerequisite of a free national sentiment is to hate St. Petersburg wholeheartedly and in every thought. To Ivan Aksakov the northern capital and the west in its entirety were incorporations of Satan. But some of the slavophils continued to approve Petrine reforms, and some, like Lamanskii, regarded them as an organic continuation of Muscovite evolution. If we find it necessary to demur strongly to Ivan Aksakov’s nationalism, the nationalism of the later slavophils must be still more decisively condemned. In these subsequent developments the philosophy of history becomes more and more conspicuously replaced by a superficial interest in current politics; the philosophy of religion is overshadowed by official clericalism; and endeavours towards religious development are overcast by the Russifying ecclesiastical policy of the holy synod. Inasmuch as the slavophils considered that the foundations of civilisation were established upon religion and the church, the nationalist basis was not with them a matter of principle. Danilevskii diverges here from the first slavophils, for in his outlook the idea of nationality assumes far greater importance and independence. Kirěevskii and Homjakov conceive the church in a universal sense, but both of them, and especially the latter, incline to identify the Orthodox universal church with the Russian national and state church. When they speak of the importance of ritual to the Russians, some,Šiškov for example, put a mystically high value upon church Slavonic, whilst others, and above all K. Aksakov, lapse into a mystical adoration of the Russian language, speaking of it as the most beaptiful and most independent of all tongues. In like manner, in the theoretical and philosophical field, Kirěevskii's broad religious and historical program narrows into the program of Uvarov; and after 1863, subsequent to the Polish rising, the victory of Uvarov over Kirěevskii is decisive.

In their struggle for religion the founders of slavophilism turn away from the new philosophy, but even here we cannot speak of the absolute negation of western thought. The rejection of the western religions, of Catholicism and Protestantism and of the philosophy that has issued from these creeds, is made with certain reserves. It is only in so far as they are considered one-sided that Catholicism and Protestantism are condemned, and some of the systems of German philosophy