Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/95

69 recommend, knowledge. Brehm's Animal Life delights him, for he finds it an embodiment of genuine, real, realistic science.

In his struggle for enlightenment, the impassioned philosopher, a man of nervous temperament, becomes an ultrarationalist. "Reason is worth more than all the rest; or, to put the matter more precisely, reason is everything." The Russian "annihilator of aesthetics" has in him an element of enlightened absolutism, a spice of Josephan utilitarianism.

Pisarev, therefore, rejects theory; or rather, and this is the true formula of realism, he demands the personal verification of theory by practice. Word and deed, as Dobroljubov says, are to be one. Pisarev repeats this.

HE designation "nihilism" was not new in Russia. As far back as the thirties, Nadeždin, in his campaign against romanticism, had given the name of nihilist to those who in literature and art would recognise no leading principles. In 1858 Dobroljubov made fun of the reactionaries who stigmatised young men and their justified scepticism as nihilistic. At this date the nihilist onslaught began to become active, and Turgenev, in his novel, did not merely present a new type but gave it its name.

Let us now attempt to analyse the concept nihilism, to display its leading content.

i. The concept of realism was first formulated in the domain of literature and art. This is readily comprehensible when we consider the importance of literature under the oppressive regime of absolutism. From the days of Bělinskii onwards literary criticism became an endeavour to present the essence of realism as contrasted with romanticism. In this sense, Bělinskii accepted for Gogol's work the name given it by opponents, who had said that this work belonged to the "natural" school. Defending such naturalism, Bělinskii presented romanticism and realism as generalised outlooks, as philosophies. Naturalness, simplicity, truth, now became the watchwords of the realist aestheticists; and folk-songs were held up to the poets as models. The advocates of this trend did not demand any slavish imitation of nature, did not