Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/35

Rh poraries. He made no investigation of the problem of the freedom of the will nor of that of egoism, and it is indeed evident that these problems were positively alien to his mind. Since Mill's Utilitarianism was first published in 1861, this treatise was not available to Černyševskii when he wrote in 1860, but he could have instructed himself regarding the difficulties from the works of Bentham, to say nothing of Kant and other ethical writers, including Feuerbach. Moreover, at a much earlier date Hume had effected so luminous a psychological analysis of egoism, and in particular of the "rational egoism" which was the peculiar recommendation of Černyševskii, that from the scientific outlook the theory of extreme egoism was in 1860 an anachronism. (Be it noted, I make my appeal here to such ultra empiricists and sceptics as Hume and Mill, and not to a man like Jurkevič!)

As far as concerns the psychological and epistemological foundation of the ethical principle, the doctrine that man's actions are determined solely by egoism, we find passages even in Černyševskii wherein this contention is modified by the assertion that love also is natural to man, that unegoistic, disinterested, direct love for his fellows is one of man's inborn characteristics. The essays concerning Bělinskii (Sketches dealing with the Period of Gogol, 1855) contain an explicit and severe condemnation of egoism. It is true that even in this account of the matter, egoism is treated as an inborn characteristic, but love and benevolence are likewise regarded as inborn, and the human being who acts upon exclusively egoistic calculations is positively stigmatised as an unnatural monster.

We read: "Positive is he alone who desires to be a complete human being. Inasmuch as he labours for his own advantage, he also loves others, for there is no such thing as isolated happiness. He renounces thoughts and plans which are disharmonious with the laws of nature, but he does not renounce useful labour." Following Bentham, Černyševskii takes as his standard the greatest happiness of the greatest number, which it is the business of the individual to promote. The general human interest seems to him to rank higher than the interest of an individual nation; the general interest of the entire nation ranks higher than the interest of any particular class; and, finally, the interest of the state is measured in accordance with the number of its members.