Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/290

264 life, but rather, as a born fighter, entered the arena on behalf of his ideals, we must be careful to avoid exaggerating his mysticism. We have learned that he regarded mere religious contemplation as inadequate. For him, religion was leadership, the active leadership of men and mankind by the church. For him, the Russian cloister and the Russian monk were historic representatives of traditional energy, in conjunction with the great landowners and the village community; but he did not consider monasticism powerful enough to conquer the modern world. He demanded the realisation of free democracy by an active "Christian policy."

From time to time, Solov'ev suffered from hallucinations, fancying he had seen Satan in bodily form, and having other spectral visitants, whilst it is not improbable that his unhygienic and ascetic life was a partial factor in inducing his mysticism, we must also recognise that his mode of life was the outcome of his mysticism. Solov'ev held spiritualistic séances amid romantic forest solitudes; when in Egypt he visited a Bedouin tribe which was supposed to have preserved secret traditions of Solomon. He sought solitude in the city, but also sought society there. There was something too restless, too nomadic, about his temperament for him to be wholly and enduringly the mystic.

He accepted theology, Christian mythology, as revelation. [sic] His philosophy, therefore, necessarily became scholastic, despite his mysticism, and despite his repudiation of scholasticism. Philosophy, said Solov'ev, must illumine the religious life, and should not attempt to demonstrate it. But he was not always guided by his own rule, and the scholastic frequently replaced the mystic!

Mysticism obscured Solov'ev's scientific insight, debilitated his critical faculties (he wrote, for example, an introduction to a work by Hellenbach), and misled him in practical matters.

Solov'ev was interested, not merely in hypnotism, but likewise in spiritualism, in the unexplained phenomena of so-called telepathy, and in the various other matters comprised under the general name of occultism, endeavouring in these fields to discover proofs for the existence of a higher world of mystery and of its influence upon human life. The impracticable theosophy of his co-national Madame Blavatsky was more than condoned by Solov'ev.

The mystics seek, and everywhere discern, the mysterious.