Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/80

54 standing would make the same recommendation to every man. To Pisarev "the healthy human understanding" was ever a leading authority.

Freely following Stirner and Feuerbach, Pisarev negates all principles, all ethical aims, the concept of duty, ideals in general. He laughs the idealists to scorn, and conversely he extols the realists. Plato, for example, was merely a general of philosophy, just as others are generals of infantry. What pleases oneself, this is real, this is the real, and all the rest is idle chatter.

The realist has no need of philosophy to guide him in the observance of a reasonable measure. Pisarev likewise condemns specialisation, and has a word to say in favour of dilettantism. He will have nothing to do with philosophic pedagogics or with maxims of education. Children are to be fed and protected, and to be provided with thought-material on which they can exercise their own thinking processes.

His occupation with literature led him to write criticisms, but these were never anything more than the recapitulation of the subjective impression which the piece of literature or the work of art had made upon the realist.

Pisarev, like Stirner, denies the existence of crime. Only by their subjective taste are such men as Turgenev's Bazarov restrained from murder and robbery. It is nothing but subjective taste which incites men of similar type to make scientific discoveries.

Pisarev had a special fondness for new and vigorous expressions. It delighted him to term Puškin and Lermontov rhymesters of consumptive girls and lieutenants. "That's the sort of thing they like, whereas pastry is more to my taste."

To a certain extent Pisarev may be compared with Nietzsche, with whom he has ideas in common. Waging a rude and relentless war against the traditional and against recognised authorities, it is his wish to "reanswer" the questions that have already been answered; in this struggle he demands from his contemporaries steadfastness and hardness; like Nietzsche he is an adversary of historism; and so on.