Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/55

Rh to draw special attention to individual forces when he is dealing with different countries and various times. Religion, science, literature and art, politics with journalism and parliamentarism, militarism, the economic or material conditions of social existence, may each in turn occupy "the foreground." But he insists that in all these forces the understanding is a factor, though he fails to show how and to what extent it operates, for here, as usual, precision of detail is lacking. He tells us more than once that all the evil in the world comes from the disorder in men's heads. He uses such expressions as the following: "The great facts of historic life give the tone to life." Criticise his want of precision as we may, at least we must admit that this is not the doctrine of historical materialism. Černyševskii does indeed tell us that material conditions "perhaps play the leading role in life and may be the fundamental causes of almost all the happenings in other and higher spheres of life"; but the hypothetical formulation suffices to show that Černyševskii's doctrine was not historical materialism.

There are other proofs besides the admiration for Lessing, for we find that Černyševskii assigns to literature a role very different from that assigned to it in the work of Marx. For example, Černyševskii thinks that Gogol's influence was profoundly important for Russia; great, he says, was the work done by Byron for England and for humanity as a whole (Byron was a greater power than Napoleon).

After his return from Siberia, Černyševskii wrote an essay against Darwinism, and this aroused much hostility, for he represented the Darwinian theory as a bourgeois discovery intended to justify the exploitation of the workers. Černyševskii declared himself an adherent of Lamarck, and his essay was signed "Transformist." References have been made to the relationship between Černyševskii's ideas and the newer Lamarckism. I only refer to these matters because Marx and Engels were Darwinians. In my opinion, Černyševskii more correctly diagnosed the aristocratic character of Darwin's teaching than the Darwinian Marxists who interpreted Darwinism democratically. However this may be, I may point out that Černyševskii condemned the struggle for existence on moral grounds, and I may also recall Dobroljubov's repudiation of struggle. The class struggle, again, is regarded by Černyševskii, in so far as he describes it, as a deviation from the norm, whereas to Marx this struggle is natural and normal.