Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/257

Rh has simply become a god. Christianity discovered the father of the universe and the sentiment of veneration in the spirit and in truth; the relationship of sonhood became sacred; this relationship attests what the Son of God has taught us, that we must do the Father's will, not our own; for Solov'ev, Christianity, and God incarnate, are identical ideas.

Thus for Solov'ev shame is the starting point and the rational foundation of the moral organisation of mankind. Individual chastity is the guarantee of sound asceticism; social chastity, the conscience, regulates the relationships between man and man; finally, religious chastity, the fear of the Lord, brings man into his true relationship with God.

Without entering upon a detailed criticism, we may recognise, above all, the vigour, of this attempt at a unitary construction, while perceiving that Solov'ev is more indebted than he is himself aware to Schopenhauer and modern philosophy. In a word, although his first and chief desire is to be a Christian, he seems to have mislaid Christian love. It is true that he frequently insists upon love as the basis of religion, but he is thinking of Spinoza's "amor intellectualis" and not of Christian love; the "pietas" and "reverentia" of the patriarchs are far more akin to fear, to Leont'ev's timor Domini, than they are to Christian love. Moreover, Schopenhauer's "sympathy in mutual human relationships" is not love, and it is a mere accessory that the feeling should be rationalised. Such rationalisation of basic sentiments is extremely characteristic of Solov'ev; he starts voluntaristically from feeling, but proceeds to rationalise feeling. Schopenhauer is supplemented and corrected by Kant and Spinoza. Spinoza shared with Schopenhauer the position of Solov'ev's first philosophic love.

The important question is whether Solov'ev failed to note that his explanation of morality and the religious sentiment accorded ill with Christian doctrine. In essentials Solov'ev accepted the attempts of the deists to explain religion as natural. He appealed on his own account to natural religion, never noting that natural religion and revealed religion are somewhat inharmonious. He showed, indeed, that we should not conceive religion either as fetichism or as mythology, but he merely