Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/301

Rh The new emperor is antichrist, though an antichrist of an extremely progressive type. He believes in the good, he believes in God and Christ; but his love is given to himself alone. He is abstemious, disinterested, and gentle; he is a spiritualist, an ascetic, a philanthropist, and even a philozoist; but he considers himself greater than Christ, whom he regards with boundless envy and hatred.

In outward aspect, the civilisation of the new United States is dazzling and resplendent, but the inner spiritual life remains unsatisfied. Through the advances in psychology and physiology, the problems of "life and death," of the end of the world and of mankind, are rendered more complicated, but are not solved, all that is attained being a purely negative result. A notable decay of theoretical materialism sets in.

Antichrist establishes his world monarchy and introduces social reforms, by which everyone is remunerated in accordance with his capacities, every capacity in accordance with work and service; there ensues the equality of universal satiety. The satiated, however, as in ancient Rome, desire circuses as well as bread. These are provided for them by a magian (a half oriental, half European, bishop in partibus) with the aid of the acquirements of natural science, Antichrist having at length removed his capital from Rome to Jerusalem, now summons a general council of the Christian population, reduced by this time to forty-five millions. In Jerusalem he is unmasked, and the leaders of the three principal churches, Peter II, John, and Professor Paul (the respective representatives of Petrine, Johannine, and Pauline Christianity; of Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Protestantism), unite in brotherly love at a remote and solitary spot. John and Paul recognize Peter as shepherd of the united flocks. The Jews, who to the number of thirty millions have settled in Palestine, rise against the antichrist, who has announced himself to them as a Jew and the messiah. Christ now appears for the last judgment, and the millennium dawns.

It will be seen that in this picture of the future, Solov'ev accepts the widely diffused philosophico-historical view of the pessimists and socialists that a cataclysm is imminent, and that he shows us the development of civilisation brought to a close. Mankind has become senile; European civilisation has by the growth of positivism, materialism, and socialism, been transformed into a Chinese system; consequently the