Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/295

Rh of objectivism and subjectivism; but he fails to perceive the real significance of the matter as it was formulated before his day by Bělinskii and Bakunin.

OLOV'EV was a poet, and art plays a leading part in his system. When he wishes to give expression to his most intimate thoughts and feelings, he takes refuge in rhapsody. His last work on the philosophy of history was an apocalyptic vision. Speaking generally, his philosophy of religion is a product of the mythological imagination.

In the field of aesthetics, too, as a mystic Solov'ev followed Plato and Plotinus. Among recent writers, he was influenced by Schopenhauer and Hegel.

In harmony with his metaphysics and his free theosophy, beauty is defined as the perfect freedom of the individual parts in the completed unity of the whole; the uniting element, unity, uniformity, is the yearning of the philosopher, who desires to escape from his own internal disunion.

The beautiful is essentially identical with the good and the true. The artist's aim is the same as that of the philosopher and statesman. All three desire to grasp the meaning of existence. The artist embodies his ideas in pictures; the philosopher in ideas; the statesman in actions. Bělinskii expressed the same thought, but Solov'ev interprets the notion in the sense of his mystical theosophy, for to him an idea is what it was to Plato and Plotinus.

He frequently indicates his view that artistic genius and enthusiasm constitute a condition sui generis, rendering the enthusiast (Solov'ev, like Plato, conceives artistic inspiration as a kind of divine possession) capable of grasping ideas; artistic inspiration verges on the gift of prophecy and is essentially akin thereto.

He considers that the force of imagination is an element of primary importance in artistic creation. For him, imagination is an intimation of the higher world which, in virtue of this function of imagination, is able to come into touch with our phenomenal world. That which Schopenhauer discerns in music, Solov'ev discerns in poesy, and especially in lyric verse, here we have a direct grasp of ideas, of the higher world. Goethe, Shakespeare, and Hoffmann, are the chiefs among