Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/588

562 The task for the critical Russian thinker is, starting from what actually exists, to promote the attainment of the desirable aims by a process of organic development. These aims may in part be determined by the example of other nations, for in many respects the future of Russia is foreshadowed in the present and the past of the west. But at the same time the Russian, applying his knowledge of his own people and its history, must never fail to aspire towards an active and independent development, and must never cease from the endeavour to create the ideals for such a development.

I believe we may deduce from an analysis of Russian philosophy of history the lesson that criticism alike of Russia and of Europe may be renovated on the basis of a profounder knowledge of these two objects of comparison. Such criticism must deal with the inner life as well as with externals, must deal with moral, religious, and mental life in its entirety. Then only can the great synthesis be effected; then only can the reformative revolution prove successful.

This philosophical criticism we expect from the Russians will have to return to Hume and to Kant; it will have to discard nihilism and the negation of all that is old; it will have to discard uncritical revolutionism; and it will have to discard an easy-going imitativeness.

HIS critical revisionism will have to be based upon a sociological and philosophico-historical appraisement of European as well as of Russian civilisation. The question is not merely, "what elements of Old Russia are valuable, worthy of preservation and of further development?" We have likewise to ask, "what elements of Old Europe are valuable?"

In § 14 I showed that as long ago as the reign of Catherine II Boltin attempted to prove that the defects which the Europeans discovered among the Russians, existed also in Europe. In my own study of Russia I have had my attention directed to more than one instance of European happenings which, though they may not excuse what has been done in Russia, must none the less make us chary about comparisons derogatory to Russia. One who reads the reports concerning the Austrian censorship prior to the year 1848, will be little inclined to express surprise at the cruelties of the censorship under Nicholas I. Again,