Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/88

62 generation, was intelligent enough to escape from Macaulayism, but his chosen expedient, Don Juanism, is impossible in society which lives, or is beginning to live, a full life.

Pisarev proves his thesis on Germany, on the very land decried for its philistinism, and adduces a whole catalogue of investigators of natural science whose example Russia would do well to follow—Liebig, Virchow, etc., etc.

The reader recalls how Bazarov in Fathers and Children undertakes physiological observations upon frogs, and recommends such observations to others. Pisarev pounces upon the motif, and for all his stylistic extravagance, he is essentially in earnest when he writes: "There you have it, in the frog you will find the rescue and the renewal of the Russian people."

In brief, says Pisarev, "matters must be thought to a finish we must be honest with ourselves." The realist must be straightforward and truthful to himself, to all his fellows, and above all to women; he must enter into no relationships that are other than straightforward and truthful. The realist must put before himself a rational aim, and must not fail to attain it. But this rational aim will become clear to him alone who has been scientifically trained, and the ultimate essential therefore is to diffuse and to popularise science in Russia. The essay concludes with suggestions as to the right method of popularisation, and sums up the nature of realism in the dictum: "Love, Knowledge, and Work."

Is this all? Was it merely for this that Pisarev was denounced as a robber and an assassin? We have to remember that in the early sixties this negation of Russia seemed an extremely revolutionary doctrine. Besides, who was the new authority who permitted himself such a liberty? He was a man four-and-twenty years of age, an aristocrat, indeed, belonging to a wealthy family, but apart from this a man of no account, an arrogant upstart without even a university degree to his credit. His adversaries, on the other hand, could truthfully say that he had spent several months in a lunatic asylum, whilst the conservatives could point to the fact that he was under lock and key in the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. But it was precisely this last consideration which commended Pisarev to his young contemporaries, and commends him to our own. This is why his words have been so eagerly read, and this is why people have been willing to