Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/144

118 writings of Lavrov do Kant and Comte, Comte and Hegel seem to merge one into another. Further, just as, for Lavrov, Buckle was the chief instigator to the study of numerous questions, so Ruge was the Russian's leader in the problems of individualism.

We shall learn shortly how far as a socialist Lavrov agreed with Marx. For the moment it will suffice to say that Lavrov's socialism was ethically grounded, that Lavrov rejected historical materialism, appealing to the categorical imperative and not to the general law of evolution.

Historical Letters embodies an endeavour to solve the old problem of object versus subject, subject versus object, Lavrov contrasting history with the process of nature, civilisation with nature. By the term history, Lavrov understands objective and subjective history, to use the current distinction. He conceives objective history as part of the general nature process, considered not materialistically but in Spencer's fashion. The contrast he conceives between nature and history is therefore, properly speaking, a contrast only between nature and history in the subjective sense. Such is the significance we must attach to Lavrov's "historical realism,"the name he himself gives to his standpoint. He opens his enquiry by asking whether natural science or history is "the closer concern" of modern man. He replies that history touches man's vital interests more closely; that history is the story of human problems. Natural science may enable us to conduct life more rationally, but history alone can represent life and comprehend it. We recognise that "history" signifies here the history of consciousness, that the contrast to which reference is made is between nature and consciousness, and, be it noted, between nature and individual consciousness—nothing but individual consciousness, as Lavrov again and again insists.

This opposition between natural science and history is not subjected by Lavrov to a detailed epistemological examination. It certainly does not suffice to say that history is man's, modern man's, closer concern; but we can excuse Lavrov when we remember that Comte failed to examine the contrast with any greater precision. Nor shall we dispute the contention that history, as contrasted with natural science, embraces,