It was the same thing in art. A knowledge of Goethe, especially of the second part of Faust (either because it is inferior to the first or because it is more difficult), was as obligatory as the wearing of clothes. The philosophy of music had a place in the foreground. Of course. no one ever spoke of Rossini ; to Mozart they were indulgent, though they did think him childish and poor. To make up for this they carried out philosophical investigations into every chord of Beethoven and greatly respected Schubert, not so much, I think. for his superb melodies as for the fact that he chose philosophical themes for them, such a s 'The Omnipotence of God' and 'Atlas.' French literature--everything French in fact, and, incidentally, everything political alsoshared the interdict laid on Italian music.
From this it is easy to see on what field we were bound to meet anr1 do battle. So long as we were arguing that Goethe was objective but that his objectivity was subjective, while Schiller as a poet \vas subjective but that his subjectivity was objective, and vice versa, everything went peaceably. Questions that aroused more passion were not slo\v to make their appearance.
\'Vhile Hegel was Professor in Berlin, partly from old age, but twice as much from satisfaction with his position and the respect he enjoyed, he purposely screwed his philosophy up above the earthly level and kept himself in an ambience where all contemporary interests and passions became somewhat indistin-
Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod 235
guishable, like buildings and villages seen from an air-balloon ; he did not like to be entangled in these accursed practical questions with which it is difficult to deal and which must receive a positive answer. How clamant this violent and insincere dualism was, in a doctrine which set out from the elimination of dualism, can be understood readily. The real Hegel was the modest Professor at Jena, the friend of Hoelderlin, who hid his Phenomenology under his coat when Napoleon entered the town; then his philosophy did not lead to Indian quietism, nor to the justification of the existing forms of society, nor to Prussian Christianity; then he had not given his lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, but had written things of genius such as the article on the executioner and the death penalty, printed in Rosenkranz's biography.
Hegel confined himself to the sphere of abstractions in order to avoid the necessity of touching upon empirical deductions and practical applications; the one domain which he, very adroitly, selected for the practical application of his theories was the calm, untroubled ocean of aesthetics. He rarely ventured into the light of day, and then only for a minute, wrapped up like an invalid; and even then he left behind in the dialectic maze just those questions that were most interesting to the modern man.
The extremely feeble intellects (Gans is the only exception), who surrounded him, accepted the letter for the thing itself and were pleased by the empty play of dialectics. Probably at times the old man felt sad and ashamed at the sight of the limited outlook of his excessively complacent pupils. If the dialectic method is not the development of the reality itself, the educating of it to think, so to speak, it becomes a purely external means of making a farrago of things run the gauntlet of a system of categories, an exercise in logical gymnastics, as it was with the Greek Sophists and the mediaeval schoolmen after Abelard.
The philosophical phrase which did the greatest harm, and in virtue of which the German conservatives strove to reconcile philosophy with the political regime of Germany-'all that is real is rational'-was the principle of sufficient reason and of the correspondence of logic and facts expressed in other words.
Hegel's phrase, wrongly understood, became in philosophy what the words of the Christian Girondist Paul once were:
'There is no power but from God.' But if all powers are from God, and if the existing social order is justified by reason, the struggle against it, if only it exists, is also justified. These two sentences accepted in their formal rr.eaning are pure tautology; but, tauwlogy or not, Hegel's phrase led straight to the recogni-
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
236
tion of the sovereign authorities, led to a man's sitting with folded arms, and that was just \vhat the Berlin Buddhists wanted. However contrary such a view may be to the Russian spirit, our Moscow Hegelians were genuinely misled and a ccepted it.
Belinsky, the most a ctive, impulsive, and dialectically passionate, fighting nature, was at that time preaching an Indian stillness of contemplation and theoretical study instead of conflict.
He believed in that view and did not flinch before any ·of its consequences. nor was he held back by considerations of moral propriety nor the opinion of others, which has such terrors for the weak and those who lack independence. He was free from timidity for he was strong and sincere; his conscience was clear.
'Do you know that from your point of view,' I said to him, thinking to impress him with my revolutionary ultimatum, 'you can prove that the monstrous tyranny under which we live is rational and ought to exist?'
'There is no doubt about it,' answered Belinsky, and proceeded to recite to me Pushkin's 'Anniversary of Borodino.'
That was more than I could stand and a desperate battle raged bet\veen us. Our falling out reacted upon the others, and the circle fell apart into two camps. Bakunin wanted to reconcile, to explain, to exorcise, but there was no real peace. Belinsky, irritated and dissatisfied, went off to Petersburg, and from there fired off his last furious salvo at us in an article which he likewise called 'The Anniversary of Borodino.'
Then I broke off all relations with him. Bakunin, though he argued hotly, began to reconsider things ; his sound revolutionary judgment pushed him in another direction. Belinsky reproached him for weakness, for concessions, and went to such exaggerated extremes tha t he scared his own friends and admirers. The chorus were on Belinsky's side, and looked down upon us, haughtily shrugging their shoulders and considering us to be behind the times.
In the midst of this intestine strife I saw the necessity ex ipso fonte bibere and began studying Hegel in earnest. I even think that a man who has not lived through Hegel's Phenomenology and Proudhon's Contradictions of Political Economy, who has not passed through that furnace and been tempered by it, is not complete, not modem.
"'{hen I had grown used to Hegel's language and mastered his method, I began to perceive that he was much nearer to our viewpoint than to that of his followers; he was so in his early works, he was so everywhere where his genius had taken the bit
Moscow, Petersburg and Novgorod
237
between its teeth and had dashed forward oblivious of the Brandenburg Gate. The philosophy of Hegel is the algebra of revolution; it emancipates a man in an unusual way and leaves not one stone upon another of the Christian world, of the world of tradition that has outlived itself. But, perhaps with intention, it is badly formulated.