Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/228

202 holy synod in the service of the autocracy. Men are by nature evil and malicious; except for the chief procurator of the holy synod and all the greater and lesser aristocrats. Western civilisation is a disaster; but the modern breech-loading rifles, the new ordnance, the railways, telegraphs, and other practical acquirements of the "logic" and the logical sciences of Europe, must nevertheless serve the Russian Orthodox autocracy. Pobědonoscev, like all reactionaries, has himself been sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, or at any rate is sufficiently inconsistent to accept the fruits of European civilisation without foreseeing that the inevitable result will be to make holes in his Old Russian philosophy and by degrees to destroy it. Such is the great lie of the Russian reaction, He who makes use of locomotives, cannon, telegraphs, and telephones, may forbid logic and philosophy as much as he pleases, but the prohibition will be of no avail, for he must perforce teach mathematics and natural science, and these will once more bring philosophy and logic into honour, if by a devious route. In all seriousness, Nicholas I forbade the study of philosophy at the universities, but the prohibition was futile, for Russian thought became all the more distinctively naturalistic and even materialistic in trend. The Russian autocracy needs an army of officials, and these must be educated men. Even if they were to take Pobědonoscev's manual as their only textbook of jurisprudence, they could not understand it unless they had had an extensive preliminary training. Pobědonoscev himself, though unwittingly, definitely espouses the doctrine of economic materialism when he teaches that law is nothing more than the formal fixation of the relationships created by life and by economic conditions. Moreover, the modern state cannot dispense with political economy. The bureaucracy of the modern absolutist monarchy cannot base its actions solely on the teachings of Joannes Damascenus and on the authority of the sagas. Katkov realised this when he directed his campaign, not only against the students, but also against the Russian bureaucracy.

It need hardly be said that we may find much to agree with in Pobědonoscev's condemnation of the errors of our civilisation and of our political institutions. Who, for example, would dissent from what the chief procurator wrote about demagogy? Who could be wholly content with parliamentarism, as it exists, say, in Austria? Was Carlyle, of whose works Pobědonoscev was a diligent student, satisfied with parliamen-