be followed by a new beginning as foredoomed to failure as its predecessors? This is a misunderstanding of reality. Why should nature be conceived as a utilitarian instrument designed for man's progress
or happiness? Why should utility-the fulfilment of purposes-be
demanded of the infinitely rich, infinitely generous cosmic process?
Is there not a profound vulgarity in asking of what use its marvellous
colour, its exquisite scent is to the plant, or what its purpose can be
when it is doomed to perish so soon? Nature is infinitely and recklessly
fertile-'she goes . to extreme limits . . . until she reaches the outer
frontier of all possible development-death -which cools her ardour
and checks the excess of her poetic fancy, her unbridled creative
passion.'2 Why should nature be expected to follow our dreary categories? What right have we to insist that history is meaningless unless it obeys the patterns we impose upon it, pursues our goals, our transient,
pedestrian ideals? History is an improvisation, it ' "simultaneously
knocks upon a thousand doors, . . . doors which may open . . . who
knows?" "Baltic ones, perhaps-and then Russia will pour over
Europe?" "Possibly." '3 Everything in nature, in history, is what it is,
and its own end. The present is its own fulfilment, it does not exist
1 ibid.: VI 36.
I ibid.: VI 31·
1 ibid.: V I 3z.
93
R U SS IAN TH INKERS
for the sake of some unknown future. If everything existed for the
sake of something else, every fact, event, creature would be a means
to something beyond itself in some cosmic plan. Or are we only
puppets, pulled by invisible strings, victims of mysterious forces in a
cosmic libretto? Is this what we mean by moral freedom? Is the
culmination of a process eo ipso its purpose? Is old age the purpose of
youth, merely because this is the order of human growth? Is the
purpose of life death?
Why does a singer sing? Merely in order that, when he has stopped
singing, his song might be �emembered, so that �he pleasure that his
song has given may awaken a longing for that which cannot be
recovered? No. This is a false and purblind and shallow view of life.
The purpose of the singer is the song. And the purpose of life is to
live it.
Everything passes, but what passes may reward the pilgrim for his
sufferings. Gt'ethe has told us that there is no insurance, no security,
man must be content with the present; but he is not; he rejects beauty
and fulfilment because he must own the future too. This is Herz.en's
answer to all those who like Mazzini or Kossuth, or the socialists
or the communists, called for supreme sacrifices and sufferings for the
sake of civilisation, or equality, or justice, or humanity, if not in the
present, then in the future. But this is 'idealism', metaphysical
'dualism', secular eschatology. The purpose oflife is itself, the purpose
of the struggle for liberty is the liberty here, today, ofliving individuals,
each with his own individual ends, for the sake of which they move
and fight and suffer, ends which are sacred to them; to crush their
freedom, stop their pursuits, to ruin their ends for the sake of some
ineffable felicity of the future, is blind, because that future is always
too uncertain, and vicious, because it outrages the only moral values
we know, tramples on real human lives and needs, and in the name
of what? Of freedom, happiness, justice-fanatical generalisations,
mystical sounds, abstractions. Why is personal liberty worth pursuing?
Only for what it is in itself, because it is what it is, not because the
majority desires freedom. Men in general do not seek freedom, despite
Rousseau's celebrated exclamation that they are born free; that,
remarks Herz.en (echoing Joseph de Maistre),is as if you were to say
' Fish were born to fty, yet everywhere they swim.'1 lchthyophils may
seek to prove that fish are 'by nature' made to fty; but they are not.
1 ibid.: VI 94·
H E RZEN AND B A K U N I N ON LI BERTY
And most people do not like liberators; they would rather continue
in the ancient ruts, and bear the ancient yokes, than take the immense
risks of building a new life. They prefer (Herzen repeats again and
again) even the hideous cost of the present, muttering that modern
life is at any rate better than feudalism and barbarism. 'The people'
do not desire liberty, only civilised individuals do; for the desire for
freedom is bound up with civilisation. The value of freedom, like
that of civilisation or education-none of which is 'natural' or obtainable without great effort-consists in the fact that without it the individual personality cannot realise all its potentialities-cannot live,
act, enjoy, create in the illimitable fashions which every moment of
history affords, and which differ in unfathomable ways from every
other moment of history, and are wholly incommensurable with them.
Man 'wants to be neither a passive grave-digger of the past, nor the
unconscious midwife of the future'.1 He wants to live in his own day.
His morality cannot be derived from the laws of history (which do
not exist) nor from the objective goals of human progress (there are
none such -they change with changing circumstances and persons).
Moral ends are what people want for their own sake. 'The truly free
man creates his own morality.'2
This denunciation of general moral rules- without a trace of
Byronic or Nietzschean hyperbole-is a doctrine not heard often in
the nineteenth century; indeed, in its full extent, not until well into
our own. It hits both right and left: against the romantic historians,
against Hegel, and to some degree against Kant; against utilitarians
and against supermen; against Tolstoy, and against the religion of
art, against 'scientific' ethics, and all the churches; it is empirical
and naturalistic, recognises absolute values as well as change, and is
overawed neither by evolution nor socialism. And it is original to an
arresting degree.
If existing political parties are to be condemned, it is not, Herzen
declares, because they do not satisfy the wishes of the majority, for
the majority, in any case, prefer slavery to freedom, and the liberation
of those who inwardly still remain slaves always leads to barbarism
and anarchy: 'to dismantle the Bastille stone by stone will not of
itself make free men out of the prisoners'.3 'The fatal error [of the
1 'Letter on the Freedom of the Will' (to his son Alexander): XX 4-37-B.
z 'From the Other Shore': VI I 3 I .
3 ibid.: VI :z9.
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RU SSIAN T H I N K E R S
French radicals i n 1 848] is . • . to have tried to free others before they
were themselves liberated . . . They want, without altering the walls
[of the prison], to give them a new function, as if a plan for a jail
could be used for a free existence.'1 Economic justice is certainly not
enough : and this is ignored, to their own doom, by the socialist 'sects'.
As for democracy, it can well be a 'razor' with which an immature