Page:Two Architects of New Europe – Masaryk and Beneš.pdf/4

30 His philosophy he founded on Hume, Mill, Spencer, and particularly Comte. In his early years he rejected Kant and Kantism and the whole German school of philosophy. He evolved a system of looking at life from a deeply religious and moral (almost puritanical) point of view. Influenced by these ideas he read widely the history of his nation and believed to have found its philosophy in the religious ideals and motives of the Hussites and the Bohemian Brethren. He became a great admirer of Palacký, the father of Czech historians, and of Charles Havlíček, the first of modern Czech journalists. For that reason, he became a Protestant, a modern Czech Puritan. For that reason, too, he did not become a Pan-Slav or Slavophil. He believed that backward, autocratic Russia should not assume the leadership or obtain the domination of the other Slavic nations. In his own conception—and he agreed here entirely with Havlíček—he believed fervently in the freedom of each Slavic nation, each partaking separately and independently of the life among the nations of Europe. For that reason—and the more so because of his Slovak parentage—he planned the ultimate inclusion of the Slovaks in the future Czechoslovak nation. Before the war he worked for a just and federalized Austro-Hungarian empire made up of a number of "politically independent nations." Having worked out his programme he declared openly: