Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/499

Rh the same failure to effect a careful estimate of the degree of subjectivism.

Subjectivism is regarded rather from the ethical than from the epistemological outlook. In this sense and with this scope, the "subjective method" was recommended by Lavrov and Mihailovskii; but subjectivism was looked upon chiefly as the doctrine of Stirner, and was rejected as egoism. It is because they use this ethical standard of measurement that the Russian Marxists (Plehanov, for instance) conceive subjectivism as a manifestation of scepticism and decadence, and combat it as unrevolutionary.

ělinskii vigorously opposed extreme subjectivism. We have learned that Bělinskii inured himself against Fichte's solipsism by having recourse to Hegel's reality, but have seen that Russian reality brought him back to moderate subjectivism. He looked upon extreme subjectivism as egoism and narrowness, leading to misconduct and crime; on the other hand he regarded extreme objectivism as a form of superstition.

This analysis of extreme objectivism and extreme subjectivism possesses philosophical importance. Bělinskii accurately appraised the psychology of the extreme objectivist who, succumbing to a new mythology, naïvely and uncritically accepts the outer world as a fact and thus becomes its sport. No less accurately did he appraise the danger of extreme subjectivism, of solipsism, maintaining the ethical importance of our recognition of the reality of our fellow-men, of society and history, and of the godhead.

Jesus showed long ago that all thought and all action centres round the problem, how man conceives his relationship to his fellow-men and to God; and while Jesus tells us to love God and to love our neighbour, John amplifies the command in the words, "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" Epistemologically, metaphysically, and ethically, the problem of objectivism and subjectivism is the fundamental problem of all philosophy, Russian philosophy not excepted. The Russians, being acquainted with German idealism, felt