Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/432

406 circumstances being what they are, depends the possibility for action."

We must therefore wait and work. The strength of the old order lies not so much in political power as in the fact that it is generally approved. We must influence men so that this approval may cease, and we must therefore preach to them and go on preaching. Impatient opponents will say that the time for words is passed, that the time for action has come. "As if words were not actions! As if the time for words could ever pass! Our enemies have never made this distinction between word and deed; for words they have exacted punishment as severe as for deeds, and more severe in many cases." Herzen refuses to be a blind instrument of destiny; he will not be the scourge of God, God's executioner. Not for him the simple faith, the uncomplicated ignorance, the wild fanaticism, the immaculate childishness, of revolutionary thought. He does not believe that history, that the course of events, can make men involuntary instruments for the destruction of the old regime. The knower and thinker decides freely for himself, and his decision must be: "Preaching is necessary for mankind, incessant preaching, provided it be rational, preaching directed alike to worker and employer, to burgher and to tiller of the soil. We have more need of apostles than of officers of the advance guard or sappers of destruction. We need apostles who will preach to opponents as well as to sympathisers. Preaching to the enemy is a great deed of love. Our enemies are not to blame because they are enabled, with the aid of a kind of persistent variant of the morality of earlier days, to maintain an existence outside the current of the time. They arouse my pity like the victims of illness or accident, these persons who stand on the edge of the abyss burdened with a load of riches which will drag them down into the depths. We must open their eyes for them; we must not simply sweep them out of our way; we must give them a chance of saving themselves if they will." For himself and his fellows Herzen recognises only one power, "the power of reason and understanding. If we reject this power we become outlaws from science and renegades from civilisation."

After 1848 Herzen had invoked curses on the revolution, abandoning the bourgeoisie to the contempt of Byron's Cain and threatening it with the weapon of crime. But towards the close of his career, a few months before his death, we fiind