Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/511

Rh revolutionary. Theocracy prohibited and suppressed this thought, this mental life ; but the forbidden fruits of European civilisation were plucked all the more eagerly.

In Russia, therefore, philosophy and science, art and technical progress, were revolutionary instruments; literature became a social and political leader, and at the same time a "Newgate calendar" ("register of convicts" was Herzen's phrase), a record of the thoughts of exiles and refugees.

The issue of this sudden illumination was the revolution—a mental and political revolution against the dominant theocracy. Negation, pessimism, and nihilism, are the natural consequences of an unbridged transition from Orthodoxy to atheism, materialism, and positivism.

The German has been accustomed for centuries to be left to his own guidance; the German has passed through the reformation, the renaissance, the humanist movement, and the enlightenment; the German came to Feuerbach by degrees, through many intermediate stages. This is why the influence of such writers as Schopenhauer, Stirner, and Nietzsche is less devastating in Germany than in Russia. The German has made the acquaintance of other thinkers, he is accustomed to hearing arguments pro and con. But the Russian accepts Feuerbach, Stirner, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Darwin, etc., as isolated and supreme authorities. Hence the negation of theocracy, which implies here the negation of the entire past, and implies therewith the social and political revolution.

In the eighteenth century, doubtless, as previously explained, Voltaire influenced the Russians; but Voltairism, when compared with Humism and Kantianism, is after all nothing but sceptical lemonade as against the poison which Hume and Kant instil into the veins of medieval faith. If Hume awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumber, we may say with equal truth that Kant and German philosophy awakened the Russians from their dogmatic slumber!

Long ere this, Europe had exercised an influence upon Russia; in the Russian monastery, Peter had opened a window towards Europe; Voltaire had brought into the country a breath of European fresh air. But Kant and German philosophy shook the Russian monastery and tsarist absolutism to their foundations. Europe had influenced Russia before,