Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/582

556 Herein lies the essence of the Kantian criticism, and this explains why history and the philosophy of history were simultaneously constituted as a science.

When I refer in this manner to the supreme significance of the eighteenth century in universal history, it is necessary for me to remind the reader that the antecedent stage of evolution lasted many thousands of years. According to the conception which permeates this work, the entire antecedent period constituted antiquity in its various phases. The aspirations of the modern age began to become apparent as early as the twelfth century; but not until the eighteenth century did the new spirit begin to display itself to the full both quantitatively and qualitatively, and not until then did it become completely self-conscious in the philosophic sense.

Medieval Russia, the Russia of antiquity, was dragged without transition into the European evolutionary progess of the eighteenth and subsequent centuries.

Y exposition furnishes little support to the fashionable explanation of historical evolution as determined by nationality and race, as the outcome of national character. No one can deny that racial and national distinctions exist, but the origin of these distinctions is itself in need of explanation, and they are not of such a kind as to render them adequate explanations of historical evolution. I have discussed the problem more than once, and especially in § 59.

Further, for the reasons previously given, I find myself unable to accept the doctrine of historical materialism.

Nor can the undeniable influence of natural environment suffice to explain history, and least of all Russian history. Obviously, the influences of natural environment are peculiarly strong in Russia. The Russian, who for almost half the year is winter-bound in his miserable wooden hut, must become different from the dweller in Central Europe and from the southerner, must work in a different way. But such influences cannot fully explain the intellectual and physical life of the nations.

Were it only on account of the enormous geographical extent of Russia, great caution is needed in assigning Russian national peculiarities to the influences of nature. Very different