Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/416

390 live destruction! Vive la mort! Make way for the future. We are the executioners of the past!"

Again: "Our historic mission, our peculiar task, is that through our disillusionment and our sufferings we attain to repose and humility in face of the truth, and are enabled to preserve future generations from like sorrows. Through our work mankind will be sobered; we are the crapulence, we are the birth pangs of humanity. Should the end of the birthpangs be fortunate, all will be well; but we must not forget that in the process child or mother may succumb; perhaps both may perish—and history with its Mormonism will begin a new pregnancy E sempre bene!" In a word, the meaning of life and history is that life and history have no meaning.

The French revolution and German science are the Pillars of Hercules of Europe. The French revolution proclaimed freedom of thought and life, but failed to recognise that this freedom was irreconcilable with the Catholic organisation of Europe (Herzen frequently employs the word Catholic as a synonym of Christian, regarding Protestantism and liberalism as mere phases of Catholicism). German science is a speculative religion, is nothing more than the latest phase of Catholicism—Rousseau and Hegel were Christians; Robespierre and Saint-Just were monarchists.

The republic of the National Convention was a pentarchical absolutism and at the same time a church with civil dogmas; the people remained "laymen," subject to guidance.

But the world of custom, ceremonial, and authority, trembles at the dread name of liberty, and the old body cannot survive with this poison in its veins. Hence, after the irrational epoch of emperordom, people awakened to a sense of the national danger, and all profound thinkers awaited a cataclysm— Chateaubriand, Lamennais (in his ﬁrst phase), de Maistre, Hegel, and Niebuhr. At last came two giants to bring this historic epoch to a splendid close: Goethe and Byron. Byron was "the poet of doubt and indignation, at once confessor, executioner, and victim.

Byronic pride, the mood of Lucifer in Cain this is the only way to salvation. Even Goethe's Faust remains a play for children; his Mephistopheles is still content with vacillation; the tragedy, the temporary despair, end in salvation, after the German manner sub specie æternitatis. The French help