Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/38

12 and all who have an intimate knowledge of the sixties, recognise this. The young men of that day were less concerned with the philosophical foundations of the book than with following the positive example set them in What is to be Done.

It is easy for us to understand the powerful influence exercised by this novel. The mere fact that it was written and circulated during the author's prosecution could not fail to make its effects powerful upon young men of advanced views. But even Černyševskii's opponents could not close their eyes to the fact that in writing his book the captive had done a great deed. "This," he said in effect, "shows you what I want!" It would have been impossible for Černyševskii to give his official and unofficial inquisitors a more energetic or prouder answer than was given in this work.

The realists or nihilists (the latter name was given them by Turgenev, and was adopted by them) are in What is to be Done the consistent positivists, materialists, and egoists whose abstract principles Černyševskii, following Feuerbach, had previously expounded in his literary essays. The characters in the novel are guided by these principles. They are not learned, but they think scientifically; they are persons who feel it incumbent upon them to think scientifically and philosophically; they are accurate observers, and they draw logical conclusions from what they observe. The truth of actual fact and of positive knowledge is applied by them in the moral sphere. They have consistently carried out the "process of disillusionment" demanded by Herzen, not excepting the emotional life from its operations; pose of any kind is repugnant to them; naturalness, simplicity, directness, straightforwardness, are their watchwords, and characterise their lives. They therefore speak little, and would rather act or learn; but they debate much with one another, discussing chiefly philosophical and socio-political principles. One or another of them may carry his realism to an extreme, but on the whole they are persons who work for themselves and for their fellows, to whom the best which has hitherto been demanded as a great exception by the church and by society seems a mere matter of course, by which they are to guide their lives. They are at ease and self-possessed amid the most difficult problems and in the most difficult situations. Everything is so obvious.

What then is to be done? Society must be organised