his 'essence' was intended. This could not consist in scientific rationalism (as the French eighteenth-century materialists had taught), for it was a delusion to think that life was governed by mechanical laws. It
was an even worse delusion to suppose that it was possible to apply a
scientific discipline, derived from the study of inanimate matter, to
the rational government of human beings and the organisation of
their lives on a world-wide scale. The duty of man was something
very different-to understand· the texture, the 'go', the principle of
1 20
B I RT H OF T H E R U SS I A N IN T E L L I G ENTSIA
life of all there is, to penetrate to the soul of the world (a theological
and mystical notion wrapped by the followers of Schelling and Hegel
in rationalist terminology), to grasp the hidden, 'inner' plan of the
universe, to understand his own place in it, and to act accordingly.
The task of the philosopher was to discern the march of history, or
of what was, somewhat mysteriously, called 'the Idea', and discover
whither it was carrying mankind. History was an enormous river,
the direction of which could, however, only be observed by people
with a capacity for a special kind of deep, inner contemplation. No
amount of observation of the outer world would ever teach you where
this inward Drong, this subterranean current, led. To uncover it
was to be at one with it; the development both of your individual
self as a rational being, and of society, depended upon a correct assessment of the spiritual direction of the larger 'organism' to which you belonged. To the question of how this organism was to be identified what it was-the various metaphysicians who founded the principal romantic schools of philosophy replied differently. Herder declared
this unit to be a spiritual culture or way of life; the Roman Catholic
penseurs identified it with the life of the Christian Church; Fichte
somewhat obscurely, and after him Hegel unequivocally, declared it
to be the national state.
The whole notion of organic method militated in favour of supposing that the favourite instrument of the eighteenth centurychemical analysis into constituent bits, into ultimate, irreducible atoms, whether of inanimate matter or of social institutions-was an inadequate
way of apprehending anything. 'Growth' was the great new term new, that is, in its application far beyond the bounds of scientific biology; and in order to apprehend what growth was, you had to have
a special inner sense capable of apprehending the invisible kingdom,
an intuitive grasp of the impalpable principle in virtue of which a
thing grows as it does; grows not simply by successive increments of
'dead' parts, but by some kind of occult vital process that needs a
quasi-mystical power of vision, a special sense of the Row of life, of
the forces of history, of the principles at work in nature, in art, in
personal relationships, of the creative spirit unknown to empirical
science, to seize upon its essence.
I V
This is the heart of political romanticism, from Burke to our own
day, and the source of many passionate arguments directed against
,I
1 21
R U SSIAN TH INKERS
liberal reform and every attempt to remedy social evils by rational
means, on the grounds that these were based on a 'mechanical' outlook
-a misunderstanding of what society was and of how it developed.
The programmes of the French Encyclopedists or of the adherents of
Lessing in Germany were condemned as so many ludicrous and
Procrustean attempts to treat society as if it were an amalgam of
bits of inanimate stuff, a mere machine, whereas it was a palpitating,
living whole.
The Russians were highly susceptible to this propaganda, which
drew them in both a reactionary and a progressive direction. You
cauld believe that life or history was a river, which it was useless and
perilous to resist or deflect, and with which you could only merge
your identity-according to Hegel by discursive, logical, rational
activity of the Spirit; according to Schelling intuitively and imaginatively, by a species of inspiration the depth of which is the measure of human genius, from which spring myths and religions, art and
science. This led in the conservative direction of eschewing everything analytical, rational, empirical, everything founded upon experiment and natural science. On the other hand, you might declare that you felt within the earth the pangs of a new world struggling to be
born. You felt-you knew-that the crust of the old institutions was
about to crack under the violent inner heavings of the Spirit. If you
genuinely believed this, then you would, if you were a reasonable
being, be ready to risk identifying yourself with the revolutionary
cause, for otherwise it would destroy you. Everything in the cosmos
was progressive, everything moved. And if the future lay in the
fragmentation and the explosion of your present universe into a new
form of existence, it would be foolish not to collaborate with this
violent and inevitable process.
German romanticism, in particular the Hegelian school, was
divided on this issue; there were movements in both directions in
Germany, and consequently also in Russia, which was virtually an
intellectual dependency of German academic thought. But whereas
in the west ideas of this kind had for many years been prevalenttheories and opinions, philosophical, social, theological, political, had since the Renaissance at feast, clashed and collided with each other
in a vast variety · of patterns, and formed a general process of rich
intellectual activity in which no one idea or opinion could for long
hold undisputed supremacy-in Russia this was not the case.
One of the great differences between the areas dominated by the
1 22
B I RT H O F THE R U SSIAN INTEL L I G ENTSIA
eas.:em and the western Churches was that the former had had no
Renaissance and no Reformation. The Balkan peoples could blame
th'e Turkish conquest for their backwardness. But the case was little
better in Russia, which did not have a gradually expanding, literate,
educated class, connecting-by a series of social and intellectual stepsthe most and the least enlightened. The gap between the illiterate peasants and those who could read and write was wider in Russia
than in other European states, in so far as Russia could be called
European at this time.
Thus the number and variety of social or political ideas to be heard
if you moved in the salons of St Petersburg and Moscow were nothing
like so great as you would find in the intellectual ferment of Paris or
Berlin. Paris was, of course, the great cultural Mecca of the time. But
even Berlin was scarcely less agitated with intellectual, theological,
artistic controversies, despite the repressive Prussian censorship.
You must therefore imagine in Russia a situation dominated by
three main factors: a dead, oppressive, unimaginative government