Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/71

Rh many of his earlier ideals and idols: Malthus has become a "charlatan"; Proudhon is a "blockhead"; Hume, Kant, and Berkeley are "those fellows"; Comte is a pure nobody.

Opinions are also given concerning the authors whose works had been sent to him. For example, he censures Hellwald (author of the History of Civilisation) and Bagehot as blind followers of Darwin. Darwin, and above all the Darwinian doctrine of the struggle for existence, are utterly condemned by him. This struggle for existence, carried out by mankind and applied to human history, will simply mean a surrender to nationalism; but exclusively nationalist struggles are invariably injurious. Thus Černyševskii's judgment of Darwinism is primarily ethical.

In political matters it is interesting to note that Černyševskii favours the peaceful spread of culture, and rejects revolution in all its forms. It is evidently in connection with his view of the gradual nature of evolution that he extols Lyell and Lamarck (the latter as contrasted with Darwin). He says also that he is and always has been weary of continual invective against the bourgeoisie, and that he is becoming tired of works upon the village community.

What he has to say about excessive division of labour and other matters is a mere recapitulation of views previously expressed.

Černyševskii's most vigorous utterances in Siberia deal with his fundamental views upon philosophy. Energetically does he assert the opinion strange in a materialist that alike in the individual and in the species all human activity has a moral, not a material explanation. Especially does he reprove the historians for their lack of convictions, and he recommends the study of moralists and jurists to those who wish to secure accurate conceptions of history. He writes: "The criteria of historical phenomena in all times and among all nations are conscience and a sense of honour."

Reason and uprightness are "the true laws of human nature," with reference to which history must be explained; events are determined by the general moral character of the time. Černyševskii dissents from those who propose to explain events as the outcome of so-called general national conditions. History is the record of great events and great men, and therefore the older historiography, that of a Herodotus or Thucydides down to that of Macaulay and Grote, of a