Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/235

Rh peasants, monks, and nuns, not rose-water Christianity with its chatter of love, and the rest of it. To Leont'ev, love for humanity was unchristian, was the idolisation of mankind. He considered fear the foundation of true religion, the fear of God, the fear of punishment here and hereafter. Man, the world, mundane life, are all essentially evil. The true life of the Christian is not found here but in heaven. The true (read Orthodox) Christian despises the flesh, and declares all nature, all natural inclinations and reason, to be evil; the true Christian renounces the world as the ascetics of the Orthodox church had renounced it. "Such were the views," wrote Leont'ev "which I learned from the Orthodox church and its monasteries—in these alone is truth to be found."

God had cursed the world; everything existing in the world must perish. Leont'ev's deductions were here identical with those of Mephistopheles. It was undeniable that the earth was beautiful, and the truth of mundane life was on the side of aesthetics; but Christianity ran counter to aesthetics, and the true Christian must sustain Christianity against the truth.

God and the world are opposites. "We must constrain ourselves to belief in God The recognition of God as a God of love is a falsehood." For Leont'ev, religion was far from being always consolatory. Often, he said, religion is a heavy yoke, but the true believer would not willingly be without this yoke.

The religion of fear, which represents God as the almighty Jehovah, the wielder of force, is logically and practically carried out on earth by the ruler, the anointed of Jehovah. This ruler must be a true image of the unloving God; he must be God on earth; the absolutist autocracy is the only true Christian state. Christian society is a theocracy; the autocrat is God's right hand; despotism was and remains necessary to the organisation of society; the human masses must be held together with the mailed fist.

The tsar is the highest and most sacred authority; what he does is good and legal; his actions must not be judged by results. One who fails to grasp this may be an excellent man, but is no Christian, no true Russian.

Leont'ev acclaimed the manifesto of Alexander III maintaining the principle of autocracy, for Leont'ev did not fear. the name of reactionary. Russia needed reaction, needed forcible measures. Constraint, rightly used, was a good thing; the Russian peasant loved to be vigorously ruled- The true Rh