Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/388

362 became the new Jerusalem; her policy and her revolution were the determinative example of the self-sacrificing idea of humanity; monarchy was anti-human. The French always exercised much influence over Bělinskii even though German ideas constituted his program. He tells us that he could not speak German well. We know that he studied Hegel in Russian translation, and it is improbable that he had much knowledge of the original writings of any of the German phiIosophers.

After this estrangement from reality and especially from Russian reality he came again to a more friendly view of the French recognising that in their revolution French blood had been poured out for the sacred rights of humanity. He knew well enough that there were many phrasemakers and chatterers in France; but Germany, too, had her Hofrats, philistines, and other rabble. He came to admire Robespierre. The millennium would be constructed on earth, not by the sugary and stilted phrases of the idealist and fastidious Gironde, but by the terrorists and by the two-edged sword of word and deed wielded by Ropespierre and Saint-Just. Bělinskii thus passed from the "inner" to the "outer" truth.

In 1841 Bělinskii went over to the French socialists. George Sand was rehabilitated, for the woman's question had always seemed of great importance to him. He desired for women equality of position with men and an identical education; marriage was to be free from conventional contracts, and was to secure its moral value as a true union of love. Saint-Simon and Fourier, Pierre Leroux, Cabet, Proudhon, and Ledru-Rollin, instilled into him the conviction that socialism was "the idea of ideas, the being of beings, the question of questions, the alpha and omega of belief and knowledge"; for him socialism now embraced history and religion and philosophy. Louis Blanc, in his Histoire de dix ans, had made clear for him the nature of the bourgeoise, and had enabled him to understand the proletarianisation of the masses which the bourgeoisie had brought about. But we must not suppose that Bělinskii owed his interest in social problems solely to these theorists