Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/407

Rh between two historical epochs, the healthy, positive epoch based on faith and imagination, and the retrograde, negative epoch of decadence based on thought and reason. It is true that Grigor'ev opposed romanticism, but his own philosophy was romanticist through and through. He gave emotion the preference over reason; in the name of mysticism he condemned rationalism; in common with the romanticists he conceived the ideal of humanity in a nationalist sense. To him, as to l the romanticists, art was the leading instrument in the movement of nationality, for unawares he identified art with religion and religious ardour. Grigor'ev's political outlook and his Carlylean hero-worship were likewise romanticist. Since great geniuses are the leaders of mankind, there is no justification for parliamentary democracy or for the revolutionary struggle to secure progress. It was logical that Grigor'ev, holding these views, should oppose the westernisers, and especially that he should oppose the commencing political propaganda.

This organic criticism is, properly speaking, conceived by Grigor'ev as a philosophy of history, or as philosophy in general. He employs it to counteract the "historical" criticism of Bělinskii, whilst he is still more strongly opposed to "theoretical" criticism, using this term to denote the political and utilitarian trend of Černyševskii's school. Grigor'ev ranks Pisarev above Černyševskii and Dobroljubov, but he censures Pisarev for one-sidedness and undue devotion to abstract logic, whereby, says Grigor'ev, Pisarev was led into the error of describing art, nationality, history, science, thought itself, as nonentities.

Despite these differences there are points of contact and agreement. His subsequent analysis of Ostrovskii reminds us in many respects of Dobroljubov, whilst Grigor'ev is at one with Pisarev in his anti-historical outlook. Grigor'ev rejects Hegelianism, historism, and relativism. The human spirit has eternal energies attaching to it as an organism. These energies manifest themselves in thought, science, art, nationality, and history (the omission of religion from the enumeration is characteristic); they are not ephemeral results and stages of development; once more, they are everlasting.

It need hardly be said that Grigor'ev will have nothing to do with the æstheticists and their cult of art for art's sake.

Grigor'ev was obviously right in his insistence upon the point that the thoughtful Russian's great task must be, not