Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/452

426 understand the true condition of the people. But may we not say almost the same of Herzen's adoration of the mužik?

His knowledge of history was defective. Though he had a keen and profitable interest in the living present, he erred gravely through failing to undertake a thorough historical analysis of contemporary events. Unduly one-sided is the manner in which history is reduced to the biography of Herzen. In fact all Herzen's writings are extraordinarily subjective, far too subjective for a philosopher who desired to transcend German idealism and to escape its subjectivist pitfalls.

In the political field Herzen's subjectivism takes the form of anarchism, socialistic anarchism or anarchistic socialism—it does not matter which name we use. Herzen's anarchism derives from the defects of his subjectivism, and this is itself dependent upon Herzen's social position.

He was a refugee, stranger among strangers, economically and socially independent, living upon income drawn from Russia, an opponent of capitalism, but not necessarily an opponent of Rothschild, of whom he could make an adroit literary use in opposition to the fiscalism of the Russian government and the tsar (James Rothschild the Emperor, and Romanov the Banker). In a word, this economic and social isolation made Herzen unpractical. Helplessness in practical matters, becoming objective in the philosophic and literary fields, took the form of anarchism.

In course of time, lack of practical experience is apt to lead to contempt for practical experience. Herzen was inclined to share Plato's aristocratic disdain of politics and politicians, and the reason was the same in his case as in Plato's. To the philosopher, one who studies the ultimate principles of all being and life, and writes about these abysmal matters, the details of everyday politics seem petty; to him, officials, ministers, even the tsar, are no more than unimportant wage-earners appointed by the people. They can therefore be tolerated readily enough; it matters little whether we have to do with tsar or president, with one who wears Monomach's crown or a Phrygian cap. Thus abstract and theoretical anarchism becomes in practice legitimism, but it is natural that the real practitioners should look askance at this practical legitimism.

Herzen, moreover, has in his composition a considerable element of the anarchism peculiar to authors, and a brilliant