Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/275

Rh slavophils); the second stage is characterised by the organisation of nations and of the state, wherein sex manifestations take the form of family life; this organisation continues to exist in the present, but will be replaced by the universal organisation of mankind which the future will bring.

This future organisation will be effected by the church and in the church; in the church the fullness of the genuinely human life will be attained; man will lead a complete existence, at once individually, socially, and politically.

Examining the spiritual content of evolution, Solov'ev considers that the first stage of universalism was Buddhism, the second Platonism, the third Christianity. Since the appearance of the God-man, history has been the history of the church, and the task of the philosophy of ecclesiastical history is to explain why, after Christ's coming, history should continue, and why and how the great schism of the churches should have preceded the predestined union of the churches. By his life, the God-man overcame moral evil; by his resurrection he vanquished physical evil, the evil of evils, death. Man must freely choose Christ, but freedom can be attained solely through experience, and therefore the historical process must endure after the coming of Christ. The baptised Christian must first spiritually assume Christ into himself; history makes this possible to him.

The meaning and the aim of the cosmological process and the historical process lie in this, that the world and mankind strive towards union with God; this union with God will secure for the finite, for nature, and for mankind, a share in divine immortality.

Thus does theosophy cosmologically and historically justify a belief in the kingdom of God. This kingdom is not to be identified with any of the existing churches, nor is it the sum and union of the separated churches; the union of the churches is merely the condition of its realisation in so far as it can be realised on earth.

Belief in the realm of God unites within itself three beliefs (thus is the doctrine expressed in the third of his Addresses commemorative of Dostoevskii): belief in God; belief in man; and belief in matter (nature). The severance of these three beliefs manifests itself in three one-sided intellectual trends. The quietists and pietists desire to content themselves with the mere contemplation of God; they despise the freedom of