Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/377

Rh more accurate and completer editions have appeared, furnished with introductions and notes. His extensive correspondence is unfortunately known in part only, through the efforts of Pypin and recently through those of Ivanov-Razumnik, the historian of literature. In the days of Alexander I, and still more in those of Nicholas I, literary criticism became the philosophical forum for the discussion of questions of the day, and therefore became also a political forum. The autocracy was able to harass literature and literary criticism, but could not completely suppress these activities.

Bělinskii's personal development was characteristic of the progressive endeavours of the thirties and the forties. While still no more than a schoolboy, he was devoted to literature, the theatre being an education to him; when he was a student at the university, German philosophy and literature played their part; when he became an author, he was influenced by French socialism. At the outset Bělinskii trod in the footsteps of Schelling, then Fichte attracted him greatly, but he soon turned to Hegel. It was in Stankevič's circle that he ﬁrst became acquainted with the ideas of Schelling. To Bakunin he owed his knowledge of those of Fichte. In the same circle Bakunin was the promulgator of Hegelianism; by Bakunin, too, Belinskii was initiated, like Proudhon in Paris at a later date, into the philosophy of the Prussian philosophers of court and state.

Ripening experience and the philosophy of Feuerbach, to which he was introduced by Herzen, turned him during his fourth decade towards democracy and socialism in the form these had taken in France after the July revolution. In the metaphysical field, Bělinskii, .like many other Russian progressives, passed on from German idealism and romanticism to positivism, materialism, and atheism.

It is by no means easy to give a more precise account of this development. It was Bělinskii's way to take up new foreign ideas with great enthusiasm, but this enthusiasm was soon succeeded by a phase of sober criticism. During the stage of transition he was apt in his literary compositions to continue to expound his older views, whilst in letters and conversations the new faith was already fermenting. Letters and criticisms must therefore be weighed one against the other, for whereas in the letters things are cooked over a hot fire, in the criticisms they are served comparatively cold. Hence