Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/466

440 their incapacity to effect anything, theirs is numerically the most powerful party; they have no substance, but they are in the majority, and are one of the most important signs of the times.

The whole wisdom of the compromisers is found in their contention that those who represent the two opposed tendencies, the positivists and the negativists, are necessarily one-sided, therefore err; truth lies in the middle, and a compromise must be secured between the opposites. But this is erroneous. Compromise is de facto impossible, for the only aim of the negative is to destroy the positive. The compromisers set forth the two terms of the proposition, and from their own standpoint they ought to allow the opposition due weight; but this opposition leads us to a dissolution, to a negation, not to a compromise. Bakunin appeals here to Hegel's logic, to Hegel's exposition of the category of contrast and its immanent development. This doctrine is of the utmost importance, and, since the category of contrast is the main category, is the very essence, of the present, Hegel is the greatest philosopher of the present, stands at the summit of modern theoretical culture. In so far as Hegel grasped and resolved this category, he was the starting-point of the necessary self-resolution of modern culture. Thus he is at once above theory and within theory. He postulates a new practical world, which will not be attained through the formal application and diffusion of ready-made theories, but only through the primordial activity of the practical and autonomous spirit.

The contrast between the positive and the negative is of such a character that the two elements are mutually exclusive, so that we are forced to ask how these two conflicting elements can be conceived in a totality. Those who wish to do this may arbitrarily turn their backs upon the cleavage, and endeavour to escape from the contrast by returning to the simple totality which existed before the cleavage occurred—but such a return is impossible. The alternative is the endeavour to compromise, but this is likewise impossible, and the would-be compromisers are in reality quite unable to succeed.

Bakunin attempts to show that the positive has a twofold significance in relation to the negative. The positive may be the quiescent, immobile, apathetic, and pure positive, excluding all that is negative. But this exclusion is itself activity, movement; and thus the positive, because of its very posi-