Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/163

Rh exercise his faculty of epistemological criticism. Had he done so he would not have remained a positivist. But his tlook on positivism was less naïve than that of many of his contemporaries.

In epistemological matters Mihailovskii was a positivist and an ultra-empiricist. Comte's formula, that while observation cannot take place in the absence of a guiding theory, his theory cannot possibly have been constructed without preliminary observation, is accepted by Mihailovskii as it was accepted by Mill, the former believing with the latter that this is not to argue in a vicious circle. The observations and generalisations which are at first unnoticed (Mihailovskii writes that they are "unconscious"), are subsequently developed into clearly formulated general and abstract propositions, which guide the detailed observations. These propositions are generalisations from experience; there is nothing innate apriori about them.

Mihailovskii expressly rejects innate ideas, as expounded by the doctrine of idealism. Not merely is he, with Mill, opposed to the notion that there are inborn moral ideas; but further, touching upon the problem of mathematical axioms, he decides with Comte and Mill that these axioms, and axioms in general, are no more than extremely simple and therefore generally recognised truths.

In opposition to Kant, Mihailovskii borrows here also from Spencer. By empiricism (experience) he understands, in addition to our own experience, the experience of our forefathers. The brain of the newborn is not a tabula rasa. He even believes that hereditary transmission of ancestral experience is manifested physiologically through changes in the descendants' nerves. It is true that Mihailovskii does not verify the hypothesis, and all that he says under this head amounts in the end to no more than to show that the so-called innate ideas are referable historically to tradition and psychoogically to apperception ("apperception preponderates over perception"). It is true that he has certain hesitations, seeing, for example, that tradition may be false as well as true; and seeing that the apriori of idealism, when explained by inheritance, becomes tantamount to "preconceived opinions," i.e. to prejudices. But he is satisfied in the end with the emendations that result from experience and from increasing insight.

In metaphysics, too, Mihailovskii follows Comte, holding