Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/538

512 democracy. Other systems have been selected (empirio-criticism, for instance), and specific philosophers have been designated.

In like manner, particular sciences have been regarded as peculiarly democratic. Frequently, natural science is indicated as democratic and revolutionary. This latter statement is certainly erroneous, for there can be no question that history may exert an influence quite as inimical to theology as any that can be exerted by natural science; and this is equally true of some of the other abstract sciences—a point on which Mihailovskii rightly insisted. Theology possesses its own, distinctively "Christian" psychology, ethics, pedagogics, history, and so on; in every domain, every science may come into conflict with theological scholasticism.

Knowledge, critical knowledge, is democracy; aristocracy is the offspring of the mythological outlook. The practical import of the Kantian criticism is found above all in this, that criticism cuts at the root of mythological aristocracy. If the essence of myth lie in the premature drawing of conclusions from analogy (§ 41), the anthropomorphisation characteristic of belief in myth is, ethically considered, egoism, and, politically considered, centralism and therefore absolutism. The naively egocentric human being does not conceive of God alone as ruler, but thinks of himself as likewise occupying such a position; he creates God in his own image, discerning himself in the deity he has fashioned. In his search after miracle he has created political theurgy as well as religious theurgy; typically in Byzantium and in Spain was political ceremonial elaborated into a finished system.

Just as the mythopoeist creates God in his own image, so does he personify and anthropomorphise the state and society at large; mythical monotheism and monarchy arise by parallel development and interpenetrate one another. The attempt made by Leo XIII to reconcile the republic with Catholicism on principle, was dictated by Jesuitism and not by Catholicism.

Criticism, therefore, is a determinant, not of knowledge alone, but also of democratic equality and liberty. Without criticism and without publicity, there can be neither knowledge nor democracy. Democracy has been well described as the age of discussion.