Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/530

504 because the gulf between the two is so much wider. The slavophils look upon Protestantism as a mere philosophy, and not as a religion at all. Hence Russian divinity students (and the remark applies also to the divinity students from the Greek and other branches of the Orthodox church) are officially sent to Protestant, not Catholic, theological faculties, above all in Germany. Protestant influence leads individuals (Tolstoi) and masses (the stundists) to break with the church, whilst Catholicism works an inward change. Dostoevskii was keenly aware of the Catholic peril, continually animadverting upon it in his later writings.

From this outlook we are enabled to understand the general differences between French and German influence, between Catholic and Protestant influence, upon Russia (§ 22).

In the west, modern philosophy and modern science developed as an opposition to the church and church doctrine, as an opposition to theocracy. In Russia the like opposition was implicit, and its development was accelerated and strengthened by the influence of western thought.

In contradistinction to the newest Russian scholasticism, Russian progressive philosophy early became antitheocratic and antireligious. Russian religious negation was more radical than that of Europe; the contrast between church doctrine and European philosophy was greater and more definite in Russia, owing to the absence in that country of a scholasticism and a theology competent to sustain their teachings in argument against the attacks of persons of education, and competent to render these teachings acceptable. Blind faith in authority succumbed to the unanticipated onslaught, and atheism and materialism were accepted with as much credulity as had of old been exhibited towards ecclesiastical theism.

This explains why Russian radical philosophers of history have displayed scant interest in the religious problems of Europe. Herzen makes a few casual references to Catholicism and Protestantism, both of which he consistently rejects just as he rejects Orthodoxy. Čaadaev can constrain himself to no more than passing observations on Catholicism.

To Protestantism, too, radical writers have devoted very little attention, although since the time of Peter, Protestantism