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Rh study in the west, and visited London to examine in the British Museum the sources of our knowledge of Hindostan. Thence he passed to the east, to search among the Bedouins of Egypt for remnants of ancient apostolical tradition. Returning to Moscow in 1876, he resigned his professorship in 1877. A dispute had broken out over the university statutes between the liberal and the conservative professors. Solov'ev (in opposition to his own father) espoused the cause of the conservatives, and was supported by Katkov, with whom the younger Solov'ev had now become closely acquainted, Solov'ev being a collaborator on Katkov's review. At this epoch, too, he had friendly relations with Ivan Aksakov and Leont'ev, whilst among the younger slavophils Kojalovič was a favourite associate.

Removing from Moscow to St. Petersburg, Solov'ev joined the ministry for education as a member of the scientific committee. The outbreak of the war with Turkey led him for a while to think of visiting the theatre of war as correspondent of Katkov's review, but the idea was never carried out. In St. Petersburg he became intimate with Dostoevskii, with the poet Fet, and also with Tolstoi, although his mental outlook became continually more divergent from that of the last-named.

In the year 1880, at the St. Petersburg philosophical faculty, he defended his dissertation, Critique of Abstract Principles, which had not brought him the desired professorship. Vladislavlev, professor of philosophy, was opposed to Solov'ev; Čičerin, too, was adverse at this time (see Mysticism in Science, 1880); and at a somewhat earlier date Kavelin had likewise shown himself an opponent (Apriori Philosophy or Positive Science?). Despite the veto thus exercised by two of the most notable representatives of westernism and liberalism, Solov'ev after a while (1888) moved away from Katkov towards the liberals—or at any rate his writings secured acceptance in liberal organs.

In 1881, after the assassination of Alexander II, in a public lecture Solov'ev demanded pardon for the tsaricides. Therewith his academic career necessarily came to a close. Count Deljanov, minister for education, a willing instrument of Pobědonoscev, had no place for Solov'ev as professor, for Solov'ev was "a man with ideas."

Solov'ev now devoted himself to questions concerning the philosophy of religion and the history of the church. His studies in these fields led him to defend the union of the churches