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422 had been no more than temporary expedients. Just as the aging Rome had rejected Christianity, so now did the aging Christian world reject socialism.

No doubt Herzen was quite in earnest when to the decrepit and dying Europe he represented Russia as the saving new world. He endeavoured to show that Russia and socialism were one and the same, and he desired to communicate the belief to Europe. Such was the chief aim of the letters he wrote in 1854, The Old World and Russia. But Herzen would not have been Herzen had he failed to recognise that the historico-philosophical analogy between socialism and Christianity was not convincing, and was the less convincing since, generally speaking, socialism was for him above all a new outlook. Were the Russian mir and the Orthodox mužik to constitute the new world, to embody the new doctrine? As early as the beginning of the thirties Herzen had made acquaintance with the works of Saint-Simon and with the attempts of the Saint-Simonian school to secure a new socialistic outlook; somewhat later Owen and the "new Christianity" came under his notice, and he now looked to this source for the doctrine of salvation. The study of Hegel and still more the study of Feuerbach strengthened these yearnings, and Feuerbach showed Herzen how the human being must develop out of the Christian. Is it possible to think that Herzen could without scepticism regard the mužik as the desired saviour? This is why he placed the operative beside the mužik, and this is why he became reconciled with the bourgeois. The approximation effected by Herzen was of Russia to Europe, not of Europe to Russia.

ERZEN'S career recalls the fate of Goethe's Euphorion. Radiating light he rises, on high he shines, but he is dashed to pieces on the earth. In the fifties and in the early sixties Herzen was the spokesman of progressive Russia; after the liberation of the peasantry and after the Polish rising he became more and more isolated, increasingly lonely.

His criticism of Russia contributed much towards the realisation of the reforms before and after 1861; his influence upon all circles and strata of cultured Russia, not excepting the bureaucracy and the court, was powerful. The stimulating and directing effect of Herzen's personality and writings upon