Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/152

126 developed and progressive man, should collaborate in a party with others of the like way of thinking to ensure the realisation of progress. "History needs sacrifices, and he makes sacrifices who accepts the great and severe task of becoming a fighter for his own development and for that of others. The problems of evolution must be solved. The conquest of a historic future must be achieved. Everyone who has become a conscious of the evolutionary need has to face the terrible question: Wilt thou be one of those who are ready for all sacrifices and sufferings, that they may be numbered among the fully awakened and far-seeing fighters for progress, or wilt thou stand aside, as passive spectator of the terrible ills of the world, with the carking awareness that thou art renegade? Choose!"

Fighter for progress, but perspicacious fighter! We have already made ourselves familiar with Lavrov's theory of revolution as formulated in the program of "Vpered"; we have seen how he cautiously weighs the pros and the cons, how he endeavours to calculate the chances of the revolution, and how, just as in the Historical Letters, he feels the final decision to be a terrible responsibility. Lavrov was one who could not venture without thus estimating the chances, and this is why he and his adherenst were vilified by the Bakuninists as mere propagandists. In actual fact, as a practical revolutionary, Lavrov never failed to fulfil the three demands which he considered to be imposed upon the practitioner of progress, upon the revolutionary; but he did not show himself to be a leader of the revolutionary movement. Yet it must be remembered that Lavrov never claimed such leadership.

At the outset he opposed the terrorism of the Narodnaja Volja, but in the end he joined that camp, approving, or at least tolerating terrorist tactics. He protested against Tolstoi's doctrine of non-resistance, and expounded the ethical justification for the exceptional use of forcible measures.

We can now form a definitive judgment upon Lavrov's subjectivism, and alike from the epistemological and the metaphysical outlook this is the important matter in the study of the movement of Russian thought.

Lavrov's views are ill-defined.

Lavrov formulated his subjectivism in several different ways, and he admitted, to use his own phrase, that it was derived from various sources. He drew distinctions between