Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/443

Rh abolished, was now upheld, and under the pretext of toleration its doctrines were prized as the chief means of defence against radical democracy, the obscure and ambiguous proposition that religion is a private matter being gladly represented as liberal. The liberalism of carlier.days aspired after a natural religion, but modern liberalism no longer concerns itself with religion as a matter of principle, being satisfied with the political aim of separating state and church, or with Cavour's formula of a free church in a free state. The philosophic systems, and materialism above all (which after 1848 developed strongly in opposition to the reaction of the counter-revolution), were adopted only by the more radical wing of the liberals. Materialism was the official philosophy of the socialist movement, which was now making headway.

Characteristic of the trend of liberalism towards the right is the attitude of the Jews vis-à-vis the official church. Since the Jews are an oppressed race it is natural that they should incline towards liberalism, and many Jews have therefore become socialists; but the Jews of the capitalistic stratum pay homage not only to the state but to the official church as well.

Nevertheless the process of secularisation proved irresistible. The republic was reestablished in France, and turned against Rome (le cléricalisme c'est l'ennemi); the kulturkampf raged in Germany; nolens volens, Austria had to fortify her position by liberal legislation and by the introduction of a constitution. Protestant theology has of late exhibited a number of liberal trends, of which the historic trend is the most characteristic. In the Catholic church, too, liberalising tendencies have been manifest, culminating in the contemporary modernist movement. But during the same epoch the papacy has grown stronger and has ventured the proclamation of new dogmas, such as the dogma of infallibility.

It is not surprising that the founder of positivism should have returned to fetichism, and that the author of the Life of Jesus, which was the most radical manifestation of the Hegelian left in the days before 1848, should in the beginning of the seventies have concocted The Old Faith and the New, the catechism of liberal theology and religion. Strauss was a typical representative of the new bourgeoisie. Benjamin Constant, the indefatigable theorist of liberalism, had indeed Rh