Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/393

Rh Comte, and their positivist rationalism, were to scare away superstition and mysticism. Bělinskii knew Russia and knew himself.

For from the first, Bělinskii was by no means inaccessible to mysticism, of which throughout life he had a lively appreciation. As a good Russian he could only understand religion as a form of mysticism. Similarly the slavophils were zealous advocates of mysticism, whilst their most conspicuous opponents, Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and Samarin, had strong mystical leanings.

We learn from Turgenev, Dostoevskii, and others how much the religious problem interested Bělinskii, and we can see this for ourselves in his Letter to Gogol and in his whole struggle for light and knowledge. Dostoevskii is unjust to Bělinskii in that he fails to understand the latter's blasphemous antichristian utterances. Not the historic, the real Christ, but ecclesiastical Christianity, the falsified Christ, was a stumbling block to Bělinskii. "We have not yet solved the problem of the existence of God—and you say you want your dinner!" he once reproachfully exclaimed to Turgenev who had become weary of a philosophical discussion. This reproach conveys the whole Bělinskii. Neither in social nor in metaphysical questions did he show any trace of the indifferentism not uncommon in liberals.

As we learn from his correspondence, Bělinskii was troubled by the question of personal immortality as well as by that of theism. He was not satisfied with faith, as were Botkin and Stankevič. Being no longer able to believe, he wanted to know. In these questions, too, he desired light. Hence romanticist renunciation and resignation did not suffice him, and outspoken atheism and materialism seemed preferable. In the Letter to Gogol he passionately defends the thesis that by.nature the Russians are profoundly irreligious. They are superstitious, but civilisation will drive out superstition; in his inward soul the Russian is indifferent to an exemplary degree. It is true that much religious zeal was shown by the raskolniki, but these sectaries were so few in number as to be negligible.

The very passion with which these views are expressed, the passion that animates the whole Letter to Gogol, confutes Bělinskii's own contention. Gogol roused the religious sentiments of his contemporaries, but in their spiritual need these