Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/429

Rh carried out their decision? To one who thinks clearly and pursues his thoughts to their logical conclusion, revolution, the revolution of 1848, signifies crime and murder among other things. Must we then choose between crime and crime, between murder and murder?

In 1848, as an actual fact, Herzen expressed his opposition to the revolution; and his Byronic mood of that epoch, his decision in favour of murder, was but moral window-dressing. This is obvious from Herzen's reconsideration of his views on the revolution.

As early as 1840 Herzen was a Feuerbachian, and in 1845 he reconciled objectivism with subjectivism. He was by this time a positivist, and yet in 1848 he was still capable of revolutionary fervour. Not until after 1848, when he had witnessed the reaction in Austria, Hungary, Germany, France, and elsewhere, did he turn against revolution. Most of Feuerbach's disciples in Germany were enthusiasts for the revolution, and many of them were makers of revolution, but Feuerbach himself, like Herzen, was an opponent, and on the same grounds. Decision for or against revolution in general, and in particular for or against personal participation in revolutionary struggles, were questions which could be variously solved from the Feuerbachian outlook.

It is hardly necessary to show in detail that Herzen was somewhat premature in his execrations of 1848. How could he fail to see that the revolution, despite its failures, produced much of political and cultural value? Why could he not grasp that evolution moves step by step, that it is a gradual process? Even if we agree that his censure of the errors of the revolution of 1848 was justified, is the real problem solved by this censure?

Moreover, Herzen's estimate of the republic or of the various attempts at establishing the republic, was too hastily formed. He was right in holding that the republic of 1848 was not in essentials very different from the monarchy, but was there in fact no difference at all? He himself demands a socialist republic; but is not the political republic, the bourgeois republic, a step towards his ideal? Many political thinkers were concerned about these questions after 1848. Herzen's friend Bakunin, and Carl Marx who opposed both Herzen and Bakunin, attained to sounder views on this matter.

It is obvious that the unqualified rejection of constitutionalism and parliamentarism is wrong-headed. Had Herzen