Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/579



F at the close of these studies and sketches I were to venture an attempt to summarise the present drift of Russian thought, my formula would run as follows: Russian Orthodoxy is being replaced by (German) Protestantism.

By the terms Orthodoxy and Protestantism are to be understood, not merely the theology, but the whole ecclesiastical culture, leadership, and organisation of the respective societies. Ecclesiasticism in its entirety is regarded in the sense in which Kant spoke of the philosophy of Protestantism, and in which the slavophils looked upon German philosophy in general as Protestant philosophy. The postkantian philosophers, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Feuerbach, and Schopenhauer; the materialists, Vogt, Büchner, and Moleschott; finally, Marx, Darwin, and Spencer: these were the thinkers who awakened the Russians from the slumber of Orthodoxy. The part played by individuals in promoting this awakening has been sufficiently considered, and we have learned that the influence of Feuerbach was peculiarly strong and decisive.

I would ask the reader to be good enough to recall the description of my visit to the Troicko-Sergievskaja monastery; to recall how to the eager young monk who acted as my guide I represented an embodiment of Feuerbach's philosophy of religion; how my coming and my conduct revealed to him the great secret that his faith, that the content of his religious thoughts and aspirations, were nothing more than the naive egoistic formulation of the desires which the exigencies of Russian life had impressed upon his mentality; how the