Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/536

510 modern scientific specialists and philosophers. Not merely must they elaborate the individual details of knowledge by observation and reflection, but by independent mental toil they must win their way to the highest and most fundamental of their principles.

By its very nature, democracy counterposes science and philosophy to theology and scholasticism.

The democratic character of modern science consists mainly in its use of the scientific method as contrasted with the theocratic method. We have good reason for speaking of "scientific" work and the "scientific" division of labour. Consistent and energtic observation, the search for and discovery of new and ever new scientific details and systems, is utterly different from the cherishing of ready-made and reputedly superhuman items of knowledge based upon direct revelation. Theocracy has no science, but only esotericism, mysteries, and prophesies; it has no researchers, but only augurs. Consequently the social position of these augurs is something utterly distinct from that of the modern man of science; the theocratic priestly augur consummates the great theurgic mysteries and magics on behalf of the lay slave.

Antitheological philosophy is based upon the sciences, and its relationship to these scientific foundations is not aristocratic but democratic, is a relationship of equality and equivalence. Hegel continued to speak of philosophy as queen of the sciences, but this was merely the old aristocratic view of the relationship of theology to her handmaiden philosophy. The relationship of the sciences one to another and to philosophy is purely logical and methodological, being the outcome of the nature of the individual sciences, whereas theology determines its relationship to the understanding and to science in accordance with its measuring rod of absolute revealed truth.

Science, too, aims at universal agreement (of classes, peoples, humanity), but this agreement is to be secured solely by logical and educational methods; at an early date, modern philosophy became the philosophy of the enlightenment. The popularisation of science is one of the great tasks of the contemporary enlightenment, and the claims of popular education are continually enlarged. We must doubtless take with a pinch of salt Engels' proclamation of the workers as the successors of German classical philosophy; but in actual