Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/373

347 The westernisers differed from the slavophils mainly in this, that the westernisers, not admitting the existence of absolute differences between Russia and Europe, recognised in Europe the same faults as in Russia. Hence the westernist messianism of a Herzen or a Bakunin was less passivist than slavophil messianism; to the westernisers it seemed that the salvation of Russia, and of Europe lay in revolutionary reconstruction. Some of them, whilst recognising that Russia had her peculiar mission, did not believe that the European nations were decadent. In this matter the westernisers were in agreement with Schelling, the slavophils' chosen philosopher, for Schelling held that every nation had its mission. Hegel, the philosopher of the westernisers, spoke of the mission of the Teutons and the mission of the Latins, but left the Slavs out of the reckoning.

BRIEF account will now be given of some of the leading westernisers.

Čaadaev is commonly referred to as one of the first westernisers. The possibility of doing this is an illustration of what has previously been said, that opposition to slavophilism was the leading characteristic of westernism. At the same time, it is manifest that Čaadaev, the advocate of romanticist Catholicisation, preached a restoration and reaction which were not westernist in nature. Čaadaev's passivism brings him nearer to the slavophils than to the progressive westernisers.

In Moscow, Stankevič, pupil of Pavlov the Schellingian, exercised great influence over his friends and associates. Pavlov was supposed to deliver lectures upon political economy and physics, but he really lectured upon Schelling's natural philosophy. His pupil Stankevič became centre of a circle of men of like aims, who eagerly discussed Schelling, Hegel, German literature (Hoffmann, Schiller, Goethe), and Shakespeare. Bělinskii, I. Kirěevskii, K. Aksakov, Bakunin, Botkin, Katkov, Granovskii, Ketčer (the translator of Shakespeare), etc., belonged to this circle. Stankevič went to Berlin to study philosophy, and here Turgenev was influenced by him.

Stankevič, at ﬁrst a Schellingian, subsequently became a Hegelian. His was one of those beautiful personalities which