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Rh success, to revive Jurkevič's memory and to make the most of his attack on Černyševskii. It was all too plain that Jurkevič was merely defending theology and theocracy, and that even if Černyševskii's psychology and epistemology were defective, this did not prove that Jurkevič's ideas in the same domains were correct. It was doubtless through Katkov's influence that Jurkevič was now appointed professor at the university of Moscow, but the latter's sentimentalities about the heart, and similar romanticist survivals, did not suffice to stem the rising tide of nihilism. Katkov's own onslaught on Černyševskii, and the attacks made by the liberals, were definitely political and literary in nature; as regards the general trend, Černyševskii carried heavier metal than his opponents, and his rejoinders afforded proof of this superiority. It is true that he failed to secure a better philosophical foundation, but the controversy made plain the untenability of the opposing arguments and aims, while in the struggle against the aims Černyševskii had the best of the dispute—and had right on his side.

Černyševskii's philosophy and his literary endeavours bear the stamp of the enlightenment, and it is that of the enlightenment in its aggressive phase prior to the French revolution. Černyševskii knew that his thought was revolutionary, for he desired to continue and to strengthen the revolution of Peter the Great. As far as Russia was concerned, Peter was for him the ideal. Whilst the French enlightenment and French materialism were his philosophical and political models, he found his literary guide in Lessing.

It was Černyševskii's ambition to be a modern Aristotle, one who should instruct, not Russia alone, but all mankind. Quite in the spirit of the enlightenment, he planned several encyclopædic works in which the ideas and the material and mental development of humanity were to be jointly presented as in a codex or in the Bible. A definitive encyclopædia of "knowledge and life," published in the French tongue, was to serve the needs of all mankind.

In Černyševskii's view, the enlightenment was necessary above all for Russia, of whose culture he, like Čaadaev, took a low estimate. Russia, he said, had an army of one and a half million soldiers, and could conquer Europe as the Huns or the Mongols had done of old, but that was all. For him, as for Čaadaev, it seemed the climax of patriotism to follow