Merejkovski The Menace of The Mob

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THE MENACE OF
MOB
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DMITRI MEREJKOVSKI
The Menace of
the
By
DMITRI MEREJKOVSKI
Translated from the Russian
By
BERNARD GUILBERT GUERNEY
NICHOLAS
NEW YORK
L.
BROWN
MCMXXl
Mob
Copyright, 1921
BY
NICHOLAS
L.
BROWN
CONTENTS
PAGE
The Menace of the Mob
19
The Blossoms of Bourgeoisie
85
When
Christ Shall Rise Again
103
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
To say
that the
world to-day
passing through
is
the most crucial period of all history
of course,
is,
a commonplace; but the fact will, none the less,
bear constant reiteration.
Everything
seething and in a turmoil; there
is
are wars and rumors of wars; the world
bewildered.
Yet, though there are
ing in this wilderness
how many
are true prophets; and
how many
is ill
and
many men
cry-
are there
who
of these are not
merely crying, but also pointing a way out of the

wilderness?
It is little
short of astonishing to see
of the warnings in The
come
true.
There
is
Menace of
the
how many
Mob
scarce a line where a pin
would not prick upon a prophecy
fulfilled.
were we
sortes
to use
it
scarce a line that
warnings,
still
as a
is
have
volume for
And,
there is
not pregnant with other fore-
more
dire.
"There shall be a
slaughter the like of which has never been before"
^to
which the Great World
War
is,
perhaps, as
but the blossom to the fruit.
Kuprin, in one of his impressionistic sketches,

9
INTRODUCTION
10
describes a rural school recitation of the fable of

the grasshopper
"An
to
and the
He
ant.
writes:
oppressive, sad, and fearful thought seemed
unfold
my
itself in
mind.
group of
'stand we, a small
'Here,'
thought,
intelligents, face to
face with a numberless people,
the most
enig-
matic, the greatest and the most oppressed on earth.
What
binds
us
them?
to
Nothing.
Our poetry
tongue, .nor faith, nor work, nor art.

is
Neither
laughable to them, as nonsensical and incompre-
hensible as to a child.
Our
refined painting
them a useless and undecipherable daubing.
is to
Our
God and our creation of a God is

sheer raving to them who believe equally holily in
a calendar saint and in the hobgoblin who lives in
the bath-house.
Our music seems dreary noise to
them.
Our science is insufficient for them. Our
search for a
complicated labor
ludicrous and pitiful to them,
and simple
so wise, patient,
nature to the
is
tiller.
Yes
reckoning, what shall

beast, this sage
many
on
we say
and animal,
Nothing.
millions?
is
the cruel face of
the terrible
day of
to this infant
this giant
We
shall
and
numbering
say:
'We
sang the summer through,' and they will answer,

with the cunning smile of the peasant: 'Then go
"
.'
.
and dance a bit.
.
Has
the terrible day of reckoning
come?
Just
INTRODUCTION
11
as the above gives us a picture of the position of
the
cultured
world
classes
not
only
in
Russia,
but
helpless before the turbu-
throughout the
lent masses, so every forewarning of Merejkovski's
applies not only to Russia, but to all the world.
Dmitri Sergeivitch Merejkovski was

14,
bom August
1865, on one of the small islands near
Petersburg.
He was
St.
the youngest son of Sergeii
Ivanovitch Merejkovski, and Varvara Vasili jvna,
He had
nee Chestrokova.
brothers,
and was
three sisters and five
his mother's favorite son; writing
of his mother, he acknowledges that "if there
any good in me,

father, however,
{le
have her
to
thank for
was very stem and

;
is
it."
His
later on,
when
speaks of his education, he plainly states that
he owes as
When
little to
his schooling as to his father.
his brother Constantin proved to be a nihilist,
the father,
human
who considered
beings
nihilists
(Unmenschen)
as not even
drove him out of
the house, despite the mother's pleading.
The melancholy pervading the old marshy park

with its wooded parts, its ponds, and the view of
the sea, could not but exert
childhood
he
tells
tive as a school-boy;
us that
upon his
he was shy and secreits
influence
nor must we forget "the holy
legends and folk-tales" of his old nurse
even
be-
fore thirteen he was full of mysticism, and wrote
INTRODUCTION
12
His
poetry.
first
critical effort
was written
also
about the same age.
at
And
significant that, as a child, his winters
is
it
were spent
in
an old house built at the time of Peter
the Great, and within sight of his palace, his hut,
and his church.
He
received his education at the end of the seven-
ties
and the beginning of the eighties
the
severest
from
classicism.
In
the days of
1884 he graduated
Gymnasia, and entered the Historical-
the
Philosophical course at the University of

burg.
There he
first
came
St. Peters-
in contact with the gov-
ernment: he organized a Moliere club, which was
duly raided by the political police, Yhile he escaped

exile only through the influence of his father.
tells
He
us frankly that he owes his freedom of speech
throughout his career only to a lucky chance.
While
in the University,
and studied Spencer, Comte, Mill, and
in earnest,
Darwin.
"But being religious," he writes, "I
mised darkly the

osophy.
was
is
he took up positivism
instability of the positivistic phil-
pondered, but found no
beset with pains
and doubts."
bodied forth most definitely in
the
Mob, but
it is
way
out,
and
The way out

The Menace of
shown, in greater or lesser degree,
in practically all of his other writings as well.

this discovery
sur-
was
to
be the result of
But
later years.

INTRODUCTION
13
whom his father

whom he grew to love
In 1880 he met Dostoievsky,
knew;
also Nadson, the poet,
whom
as a brother, and with
he met the great
Saltykoff
Mme.
reli-
At the house of Plescheieff, the
gious disputes.
editor,
he held endless
satirical writer, Schedrin-
also at this period.
Davidoff the wife of the well-known musi,
cian and director of the Conservatory of
St. Peters-
burg, had a salon frequented by all the celebrities

of that day.
It
was there
that
and
on Korolenko,
"a blind, gray old man"
and
Polonsky;
later
Maikov
the poets
Michailovsky and Uspenski.

his
he met Goncharov
The
last
Garshin,
two he calls
real teachers; Michailovsky, he admits,
first
exercised a great influence on his life and personality.
During a
visit to
Uspenski, he argued the
whole night through with his host over "a question
which concerned
me
in the highest degree
the religious spirit in life."
Influenced by Tolstoy's Confessions, he undertakes a journey on foot through the Volga district,
conversing with peasants whenever an opportunity

presented
dim surmise
to
is
constantly haunted
by the
that naturalistic positivism is not the
ultimate truth.
wanted
He
itself.
It
was
also at this period that he
become a country
"was laughed out
of it."
school-teacher, but
INTRODUCTION
14
Merejkovski made his

1882, when a
in
poem
Illustrated Survey,
His
first
appearance in print
of his appeared in The
edited by Schiller-Michailov.
works appeared in Notes of the Father^

To the Northern Messenger he contributed a
later
land.
"ponderous dramatic poem,

on Chekhov, who was
just
Sylvia,^'
and an essay
appearing then, and was
as yet unrecognized.
Under
the influence of Dostoievsky,
and several
foreign poets, such as Baudelaire and
Me-
rejkovski has championed the moderns, but not so
much
the
the decadents as the symbolists.
title
He
gave
of Symbols to a volume of his verse ap-
pearing in 1890, and was the
"symbol"
first to
bring the word
into Russian literature.
After finishing the University, he went on a trip

to the Caucasus,
where he met the famous poetess,
Hippius, and proposed to her.

at Tiflis the
following winter,
They were married

and returned to St.
Petersburg.
His mother died shortly

this death,"
he writes, "the
after.
"I found that
illness of
my
wife,
and
other calamities were the foundation of the literary
The accusation that my

derived from books is false."
strain I underwent.
ligiousness
is
re-
The volume Eternal Journeys, and several translations of old Greek dramai were the fruit of his
INTRODUCTION
15
journeys in Rome, Florence, Taormina, Athens,
and Constantinople.
commenced
In 1893 he
the trilogy of Christ
and Anti-Christ, which took twelve years

Julian
plete.
to
Apostate was refused
the
com-
every-
where, but was finally accepted by the Northern
Messenger
"and
there the novel
only through pity."
welcomed
especially poorly
and
to this
day have
of enmity.
fifth
Further he
to
in
was taken really

tells us:
Russian literature,
withstand a certain attitude
my
can already celebrate
"I wâs
twenty-
anniversary of unfair persecution on the part
of Russian critics."
It
was
also at the
end of the nineties that he
founded a religious and philosophical
society, the
^rst impulse for which he received from his vife.
Needless to say, the society was suppressed.
Merejkovski admits that he was not quite

his
company with
Yasnaya Poliana. They found
book on Tolstoy.
his wife,
he visited
just in
In 1914, in
Tolstoy very friendly, and held religious disputes
with him.
"At parting he looked
good-natured,
those of a bear.
me.
am
uncanny,
rather
'I
glad that
at
me
small
with his
eyes,
like
have heard that you don't like

"
is
not
so.'
All of his activities in 1905-1906 helped variously in his development.
He
does not, howêver.
INTRODUCTION
16
consider his development completed as yet, as he

tells
us in an autobiographical sketch published in
1914, from which these biographical data have
been taken.
After the
Paris
with
Moscow
his
uprising, Merejkovski went to
wife.
There
he
published,
in
French, The Czar and The Revolution, in collabora-
The drama of Paul I was

presented, also in 1908, and was forbidden by the
authorities after the first performance.
The accusation of lese majeste was withdrawn only four
tion with Philosoff.
years later.
Upon
his
return to Russia during
1908, the manuscript of Alexander I was
confis-
cated.
The deep connection of political Russia with

religion has become fully apparent to Merejkovski,
and he has learned, "not abstractedly, but with
flesh and soul, that in Russia orthodoxy and the
existing order are inseparably
another, and that
we can
bound up with one
attain to a
new conception
of Christianity only if both autocracy and ortho-
doxy are equaly discarded."

That is Avhy, perhaps, he considers the Russian
revolutionaries he met in Paris as the best of all
the Russians he
still
of the
had ever seen
in his life,
and
is
same opinion.
The reader
of these essays cannot but perceive
INTRODUCTION
17
Merejkovski's supreme and unerring insight into

the Russian heart and mind.
All the books written
about Russia by outsiders cannot
much
as
us one
tell
jot
as the self-analytical study in contrasts in
The Blossoms of Bourgeoisie, Nor can there be

any doubt of his sincerity, his earnestness ^he
spares himself not one whit in
Rise Again
one of
When
Christ Shall
the most powerful pleas in all
literature against a universal infamy.
He
is
mystic,
not a logician, perhaps; he
and
his appeal is to a
emotion.
more
poetical factor
may probe
Yet though he
than logic
frankly a
is
our wounds mercilessly, he has a good

heals to offer us,
if
we
will but take
which
oil
it.
All his
wofks, practically, are imbued with the same spirit
and purpose
He
Christ and Christianity.
sistently a Christian.
tude and aims better
is
con-
One cannot sum up his attithan in his own words, in
conclusion to his foreword to the trilogy of Christ
and Anti-Christ:
"/ would like to dedicate

to that generation of
my
our labor
labor
Russian people which shall
understand, that Christianity not only has been, but
and
is
not only a perfect but
a constantly growing Truth;
that the liberation of
is
shall be; that Christ
Russia, the liberation of the world, cannot take
place otherwise than in the
name
of Christ/'
INTRODUCTION
18
There are many prophets crying

ness;
if
merely
in the wilder-
among them one who does not

also points a way out of the wilder-
there be
cry, but
ness, shall
also a seer
we
not heed and follow him,
if
he be
whose previous prophecies have been
fulfilled?
Bernard Guilbert Guerney.
New York
City,
October,
1920
THE MENACE OF THE MOB
f^ OURGEOISIE
'
will conquer,
and must
conquer," wrote Hertzen in 1864, in his

essay,
my
dear friend,
Ends
it is
and Beginnings, "Yes,

time to come to the calm and
submissive realization that bourgeoisie
form of
is
the final
civilization in the South,"
Hertzen can hardly be suspected of a lack of

love for Europe.
For he
is
precisely one of those
Russians who, as Dostoievsky expresses
it,
'4wo native lands: our Russia and Europe."
have
Per-
haps he did not know himself which he loved more
Russia
or Europe.
was convinced
Like his friend Bakunin, he
that the final liberation is the
deed
not of any single nation, but of all the nations together, of all
mankind; and
ate itself completely only
that a nation can liber-
by renouncing
its
national
individualism and entering the circle of the

of
all
was an
mankind.
aesthetic
life
"Universal Humanity," which

contemplation to Pushkin, in the
case of Hertzen becomes a life influence, a grand

exploit.
He
sacrificed his love for Russia to his

21

22
love for Europe, not in the abstract but in reality.
He became
a life-long exile for Europe, he lived
for her, and he was ready to die for her.
In his
periods of dejection and disenchantment he regretted not having taken the
a workman
in Paris,
at the
time of the
and not dying
man
him by
revolution of 1848
rifle off'ered to
at the barricades.
come to doubt in Europe, it was not because he had little faith in it, but
because he had too much.
And when he proIf such a
as this had
nounces his sentence:
"I see the inevitable ruin of
old Europe, and regret nothing in existence;"
when
he asserts that within the portals of the old world

is
"not Catiline, but Death," and on his brow the
though one may

personally do
Ciceronian *'vixerimt"
accept this sentence,
then,
not
not accept
it,
one cannot
but admit that, coming from the lips
of Hertzen,
has a fearful weight.
it
In support of his reasonings anent the inevitable

victory of bourgeoisie in Europe, Hertzen refers to
one of the noblest representatives of European culture,
one of
to
proach"
to
its
"knights beyond fear or re-
John Stuart Mill.
"Bourgeoisie," says Hertzen, "is no other than

the sovereign
mob
of John Stuart Mill's 'conglom-
erated mediocrity,' which reigns over all things,

the
mob
without ignorance, but without education

as well.
23
him
small; he looks with despair upon
Mill beholds everything around
becoming vulgar,
these crushing masses of
some
prolific
spawn, com-
pressed out of the myriads of bourgeois shallowness.
He
does not at
all
exaggerate
when he
speaks of the contraction of intellect and energy;

of the obliteration of personalities; of the constant
degeneration of life
it
of the constant exclusion
human
of all universally
from
interests; of its resolv-
ing itself into the interests of the counting
room
and the well-being of the bourgeoisie. Mill proclaims plainly that by following this course England will become China
we
will add:
and not
England alone,
"It
may
be that some
crisis
may
even save
it
from the Chinese marasmus. But whence will it

this I do not know, and even
come, and how?
"Where is that mighty
Mill does not know."
thought, that passionate faith, that fervent hope,
which can
steel the
static rapture,
tions,
body, bring the soul to an ec-
which
feels neither pain
and with a firm step marches on
man's block and the burning stake?
you
what
is
nor priva-
to the heads-
Look around
capable of elevating the nations?"
"Christianity has groivn shallow, and

rest in the quiet,
come
rocky harbor of reformation;
volution also has grown shallow, and
come
to
re-
to rest

24
the
in
sandy harbor of liberalism.
quiet,
With such a complacent church, with such a tame

revolution, southern Europe has begun to settle, to
seek
equilibrium."
its
"Wherever
the
human
ant-hills
and bee-hives
at-
tained a relative contentment and equilibrium, the
forward movement became more and more quiet,

until, in the end,
came
the final calm of China."
In the track of the "Asiatic nations, passed out of

history," all Europe, with a calm, imperturbable
step
is
tented
marching on
ant-hill,
to
to this final
"the
calm of a conof
crystallization
bour-
geoisie," to Chinafication.
Hertzen agrees with Mill: "If some unexpected

upheaval, which shall regenerate
ualism and give
it
human
individ-
strength to conquer bourgeoisie,
does not occur in Europe, then, regardless of

noble antecedents and
its
Christianity,
Europe
its
shall
become China."
"Ponder upon
to
it,"
Hertzen concludes
people of Rus
seem,
and your
"ponder upon
an unknown Russian,
sia,
it
would
this letter
to all the
it,
hair will stand on end."
Neither Mill nor Hertzen perceived the ultimate
cause of this spiritual bourgeoisie.

at
all
the physicians
Hertzen.
we
And, actually,
"We
are not
are the pain," warns
in all these prophecies

prophecies upon one's
own
25
head, not only for Mill,
but partly for Hertzen as well
there
is
no
result,
no knowledge, but only the cry of an unknown

pain, an unkno-^vn horror.
Hertzen and Mill could
not see the cause of bourgeoisie, as a
see his face without a mirror.
man
cannot
That with vhich
they suffer and which they fear in others, lodges

not only in others, but in themselves,
in the ulti-
mate, insurmountable, and, even to them, invisible

limits of their
own
religious, or,
more
correctly,
their antireligious, consciousness.
The last
Europe is
limit of all
positivism,
contemporary culture
in
in the terminology
of
or,
Hertzen, "scientific realism," as a method not only

of the individual scientist, but of all philosophical
and even religious thought
in general.
Having
its
growTi out of a
and philosophy, positivism has

scientific and philosophical con-
sciousness
an
birth
in
science
into
strives to abolish
religions.
unconscious
religion,
which
and replace by
itself all
former
Positivism, in this broad sense,
is
an
affirmation of a universe revealed to physical experience, as the only real one,
and a denial of a super-
physical universe; a denial of the beginning and
end of the universe in God and the affirmation of a

continuance, without beginning or end, of a universe of phenomena, of a
medium
of
phenomena
26
a
medium
to
man;
without beginning or end, impermeable
mediocrity
mediety,
absolute
that
"conglomerated mediocrity," as perfectly solid as

the Great
Wall of China,
that absolute bourgeoisie,
of which Mill and Hertzen speak without understanding the ultimate metaphysical depth of what
they are saying.

In Europe positivism
in China
it
only becoming a religion,
The
has already become one.
foundation of China
Confucius
is
is
spiritual
the teachings of Lao-tse
and
a perfect positivism, a religion with-
out a God, "an earthly religion, without a heaven,"

as Hertzen expresses himself about
realism.
tific
European
scien-
There are no mysteries of any
sort,
no depths and longings for "other worlds than

ours."
Everything
plane.
Insuperable
positiveness.
is
simple, everything
common
All that
is, is;
all,
is
and there
is
and there
no other world save
on a
insuperable
sense,
more, nor need for anything more.
is
is
nothing
This world
this.
is
Heaven
not the beginning and the end, but a continua-
tion,
without beginning or end, of the earth.
and heaven
Earth
shall not be one, as Christianity affirms,
but one substance.
The
greatest
empire on earth
is
verily the Celestial Empire, the heaven on earth,

the
Median Kingdom
the
kingdom of
the eternal
mean, of eternal mediocrity, absolute bourgeoisie,

27
"a kingdom not of God, but of man," as Hertzen,

once more, defines the
common
idealism of posi-
The European worship of descendants
tivism.
corresponds
golden age
the golden age of the future
Chinese worship of ancestors

the past.
to the
the
of
If not we, then our descendants shall see
an earthly paradise, a heaven on earth, asserts the

religion of progress.
tors
of
Both in the worship of ances-
and the worship of descendants, the only visage
man
is
equally sacrificed: personality to imper-
man-
sonality, to a countless race, to the people, to
kind "the
masses of some prolific spawn, com-
pressed out of the myriads of bourgeois shallowness," the coming universal polyp and
ant-hill.
Denying God, denying an absolute Divine Personality,
man
sonality.
inevitably denies his
own human
per-
Refusing, for the sake of a pottage of
lentils of a
moderate repletion, his divine hunger
and divine primogeniture, man inevitably
falls into
absolute bourgeoisie.
Chinamen are perfect yellow-faced
positivists;
Europeans are as yet imperfect white-faced Chinamen.
In this respect Americans are nearer per-
fection than the Europeans.
Here
furthest South
joins furthest East.
That collision of China with Europe, which
is
be-
ginning, but probably will not end before our eyes,
28
would have an especially prophetic and threatening

meaning for Hertzen and Mill. China has brought
to perfection positivistic contemplation, but positivistic action, all the
tive
applied technical side of posi-
knowledge, was lacking
to
China.
Japan, not
only the military, but the cultural vanguard of the

East, took
from the Europeans
this technical side
of civilization and at once became invincible to
As long
them.
nons
and
to the
as
Europe opposed her
best can-
Chinese wretched ones, she conquered,
this victory
appeared a triumph of culture over
But when the cannons became equal,
barbarism.
became equal as well. It was found that

Europe never even had anything save cannons
whereby she could show her cultural superiority
cultures
over the barbarians.

tianity has
Christianity?
grown shallow;"
significance,
it
still
But "Chrishas a certain
though quite a dubious one, however,
for the internal politics of Europe; but
when
con-
temporary Christianity, passing beyond the boundary of Europe, finds

bills of credit for
thing for them.
it
necessary to exchange
its
pure gold, none will give any-
And
even in Europe the most
barefaced are ashamed to talk of Christianity, because of such serious things as war.
At one time
a fountain-head of great power, Christianity has
now become
a fountain-head of great impotence, of
29
suicidal inconsistency, of the contradiction of all
culture in southern Europe.
Christianity
Semitic yeast in the Aryan blood

that
which does not
let
it
is
the old
verily just
settle definitely, interferes
with the final "crystallization," the Chinafication

of Europe.
It
the white race
would seem
is
that the positivism of
forever spoiled, "wet underneath"
with "the metaphysical and theological period."
The positivism of
the yellow race in general
the Japanese in particular
egg of the
Aryan
little
rooster
and of
this newly-laid little
Mongolian hen by the
unspoiled by an)1:hing: as
is
white
little
it
been through two or three millennia, so has

mained, so shall
tivism
is still
it
European
remain forever.
too intellectual
it
has
re-
posi-
superficial, that is:
of the skin, so to say; the yellow people are posi-
marrow of
tivists to the
their bones.
tural heritage of the ages
and theology
do
who
is
is
metaphysics
gift.
true to his physiology
consistent is strong;
conquers.
the cul-
not weaken but strengthen this
natural physiological
He who
Chinese
And
is
consistent; he
and he who
Japan conquered Russia.
is
strong
China will
conquer Europe, unless a great spiritual change be

achieved within
it,
which shall overturn the
last
metaphysical foundations of her culture, and allow

it
to
oppose
to the
cannons of the
positivistic East
30
not alone the cannons of the positivistic South, but
something more
That
is
real,
more
substantial.
where the chief "yellow peril"
without, but within; not in that Qiina
Europe, but in that Europe
Our
faces are
still
is
is
is
not
going into
going into China.
white; but already under the
white skin flows not the former rich, crimson Aryan

blood, but a "yellow" blood, thinner and thinner,
resembling Mongolian ichor; the

is
straight,
but the outlook
and narrow.
And
European day
is
light of the
is
slit
of our eyes
beginning to slant
the direct white light of the
turning into the oblique "yellow"
Chinese setting sun, or the Japanese
At the present time the Japanese seem

to be the dressed-up apes of the Europeans; who
knows but that, in time, Europeans and even Amerrising sun.
icans
may seem
the dressed-up apes of the Japanese
and Chinese, incorrigible

the old world,
masters of the
idealists, romanticists of
who only pretend to be positivists,

new world. It may be that the war
of the yellow race with the white was only a mis-
understanding: kin did not recognize kin.
When
they shall recognize each other, however, war shall
end with peace, and then there shall be "a peace

of all the world," the final calm and quietude of
heaven, the Celestial Empire, the Median
Kingdom
over all the world, from East to South, the final

"crystallization,
and
the bee-hive
31
ant-hill
of all
mankind, the solid "compressed spawn" of bourgeoisie encrusting the earthly sphere,
and
not
even bourgeoisie, but the canaille, because bourgeoisie having reached
power
is
der upon
and come
into
the canaille.
"Ponder upon
tions, as
limits
its
it,"
we may conclude
these reflec-
Hertzen concluded them formerly, "ponit,
and your hair
will stand
on end."
Hertzen had two hopes for the salvation of
Europe from China.
The
first
the
weaker one
for a social over-
Hertzen stated the dilemma thus:
turn.
"If the people will be broken, a

:^nevitable.
turn
But
if the
new China
is
people break, a social over-
inevitable."
is
Query: Having broken down the social oppression, with what,
and
in the
name
of what, will the
people break down as well the inner spiritual beginning

faith,
of
bourgeois culture?
With what new
vhat source of new nobility?
volcanic explosion of
human
With
w^hat
individuality against
the impersonal ant-hill?
Hertzen himself asserts:
"Behind the majority now
in
power
(f.
., behind
the majority of the capitalistic bourgeoisie), stands

a
still
greater majority of candidates for
it (f.
., the
32
proletariat), for
whom
the manners, conceptions,
and the ways of living of the bourgeoisie are the

only goal of
all their
endeavors; there are enough
of them for ten changes.
world without land,
the world of the city proletariat, has
no other way
of salvation, and will be all permeated with bourgeoisie,
which
in
our eyes has retrograded, but in
the eyes of the rustic population and proletarians
represents education and development."
But
the people "will be all permeated with
if
bourgeoisie," then,
Will
arrive?
it
it
may
be asked, where will
it
be out of the present, imperfect
bourgeoisie into a future and perfect one; out of

the
unhappy,
socialistic
into
the
capitalistic
a happy,
one ; out of the dark, iron age of Europe

"yellow," golden
The hungry
China?
into
ant-hill
bourgeois have
proletariat
dififerent
their metaphysics
age
and
and the satiated
economical
interests,
and religion are the same
metaphysics of a sober
common
of a sober bourgeois repletion.
of
eternity
but
sense, a religion
The war of
the
fourth estate with the third, economically real,

just as unreal metaphysically
war of
the
is
and religiously as the
the yellow race with the white; both there
and here
is
against God.
might against might, and not God

In both cases there
is
one and the
33
same misunderstanding: behind an external, temporary war there is an internal, perpetual peace.
And
so, to the
question with vhat the people will
conquer bourgeoisie, Hertzen has no answer of any

True, he could have borrowed the ansAver
sort.
of his friend, the anarchist Bakunin; he could have
gone over from socialism
to
anarchism.
Socialism
desires to replace one social order with another,
the rule of the minority with the rule of the

jority;
ma-
anarchism denies every social order, every
external rule, in the
absolute individuality
name
this
of absolute freedom,
beginning of
ginnings and end of all ends.
all
be-
Bourgeoisie, in-
vincible to socialism, seems vincible to anarchism
although only
till
a certain time, until new,
still
mpre extreme inferences, which, however, neither

Hertzen nor Bakunin foresaw. The strength and
weakness of socialism, as a religion,
is in
that
it
predetermines a future social creative power and

just
through
this involuntarily includes within itself
the spirit of the eternal
Mean, of bourgeoisie,
the
inevitable metaphysical consequence of positivism
as a religion, on which socialism itself
The
it
is
strength and weakness of anarchism
builded.
is
in that
does not predetermine any social creative power,
does not bind
itself
before the past with any respon-
34
and from the historical shoal
sibility for the future,
of bourgeoisie sails out upon the open sea of un-
plumbed
historical depths,
where
it is
on the brink
new
either of a total wreck, or the discovery of a
heaven
and a new
earth.
"We
must destroy,
destroy only, without thinking of creating,
it
is
not our business to create," preaches Bakunin.
But here conscious positivism already ceases, and

hidden, unconscious mysticism commences
istic,
antitheistic, if
When Bakunin
in
"antitheologism"
you
Dieu
more
but mysticism
will,
et
athestill.
Vetat supposes that his
correctly, antitheism,
is
a basis for anarchy, he touches upon limits of negation far too
dangerous, where minus by minus
produces an unexpected plus, an accidental affirma-
some converse, unconscious religion. "The

absolutely free man" of Bakunin too greatly resem-
tion of
bles a fantastic "superman," a non-man, to be re-
ceived with peace at heart by Hertzen,
mysticism more than anything

bourgeoisie
itself,
else,
who
fears
even more than
not realizing that this supersti-
tious fear of mysticism already has something of
the mystical in
socialist
of
Bakunin the
it.
the
Be
true
anarchist,
Towards the end of

most
lost,
hope
that as
faith,
may, Hertzen, a
shrank back from
who had
it
fallen into heresy.
his life Hertzen lost, or al-
in the social overturn in
Europe;
35
apparently, however, because he had ceased to believe not so
much
in
its
possibility as in
its
salutari-
began
to
glimmer
ness.
Then
it
was
that the last light
in the advancing gloom, the last
coming despair,
rural
hope
commune, which,
Europe.
it
hope of the on-
in Russia, in the Russian
would seem, was
to save
II
IF
Hertzen was the Mephistopheles of Bakunin
in the unveiling of the unconscious mysticism
of the anarchistic "underworld," then Bakunin, in his turn,
was
the Mephistopheles of Hert-
zen in the unveiling of just as unconscious a mysti-
commune
cism about the Russian
as a savior of
Europe.
"You
Bakunin
are ready to forgive everything," wrote

to
Ogarev and Hertzen from Ischia
1866, "ready,
if
if
you
like, to
not directly then indirectly,
support everything,
if
only your mystical
holy of holies remain inviolable, the
commune
do
wordyou
Great Russia, from which mystically
angry
at
an offensive but true
in
of
not grow
expect
the salvation not only of the people of Great Russia,
but also of all the Slavic lands, of Europe, of the

world.
And, by the way,
tell
me why you
have
not deigned to answer seriously and plainly to the

serious reproach
made
to
you: you have caught in
the Russian peasant hut, which, with

rights,
has
itself caught,
its
landed
and so stands for ages, in

37

38
Why
a Chinese immobility.
has this commune,
from which you expect such wonders in

produced nothing from itself during
centuries,
An
the future,
all
of ten
except the most abominable serfdom?
abominable corruption and the patriarchal cus-
toms, with their complete lack of rights, a lack of

rights of the individual before the
community, and
the all-oppressive burden of this community, kill-
ing every possibility of individual initiative; the ab-
sence not only of juridicial rights, but of

justice
in the
decisions of this very
and the cruel unceremoniousness of
its
common
community
attitude to-
ward every poor or weak member; its systematic

oppression of those members who show pretensions
to the least
independence, and the readiness to
sell
every right and every truth for a bucket of whisky
here, in the entirety of
peasant
commune
its
real character,
is
the
of Great Russia."
What answer could the orthodox Hertzen have

made to this anathema of Bakunin, the heretic?
Nothing positive, but only mystical, rather: credo,
quia absurdum^
just as,
however, Bakunin could
not answer anything to Hertzen in the matter of the

"antitheological," but
still
too theological, founda-
tion of anarchism, this absolute liberation of absolute individuality, incomprehensible

tive
relative, that is,
from
point of view.
the posi-
Therein
is

39
the whole crux of the matter: both Hertzen
and
Bakunin had bordering deductions, having reached

which, they, looking each other in the eye, should
have burst
into laughter, like augurs.
But they
both desired to be not the augurs, the priests, of

the old gods, but to be the prophets of the new, and
therefore avoided looking into each other's eyes.
Each one,
at his
in order not to laugh at himself, laughed
opponent; but during this mutual laughter
both were grievously sad at heart.
Why,
indeed, must the
ant-hill deliver the ants
wherein
is
common ownership
from the
lot of ants?
of the
And
savage serfdom better than cultured
beastliness?
*When Hertzen ran away from Russia into Europe, he fell out of one bondage into another,
from the material into the spiritual. And when
he wanted to run away from Europe back into Russia, he fell out of the European movement toward
a
new China
of Russia.
into the old
"Chinese immobility"
In both cases, out of the frying pan into
Which of the two Chinas is better the

"Both are worse," as the children
old or the new?
Hertzen knew this, yet did not want to
answer.
know it. And when he ran from one China into
another, he was running away from himself, beatthe
fire.
ing about in the last horror of the last realization,

40
that there
was no longer anîhing
neither in
Europe nor
lead
all history
"Pray, what does
in Russia.
to, after
to believe in,
this?" he asks himself in
one of his hopeless Hamletian monologues.
"But
vhat does everything
then,
As
lead to?
for history,
But
this is the
do not make
therefore do not answer for
Why,
if all histor)^ is
make
a fuss about
potism, reaction:
ter?
all the
addressing
live
Or, what
is still
this
at
is
mat-
it
Europe:
grown
,"
has grown 5hallo\v,
one time.
positivistic
Long
live
long live bourgeoisie!"
it
plummet, adapted
asserts Hert-
means
that
it
vas
does he not sound
\^liy, then,
depth of Christianity?
tianity,
it
"the devil's vaudeville," and,
"Christianity has
deep
capable.
to fight with bourgeoisie, des-
destruction and chaos!
death!
If
is
world, there only remains to cry
out, addressing old
zen.
man
1849, after the revolution, Hertzen cries
out, as in
"Long
this is the
come vhat may, what does
all the
and
nonsense, there was nothing to
w^rld
it,
darkness, the limit
last
of despair of which the soul of
For
world
it."
answer of Cain.
Byronian Darkness, the
in this
Is
it
not because the
to the shoal of Chris-
does not reach to the bottom in deep places?
Together
with
Christianity
adds
Hertzen
41
"revolution has grown shallow as well."
common, does it not

common, and their depth
have both grown shallow
mean
that their shoal
The
also?
shoal
man
bourgeoisie of
ious
in
in
is
If they
positivistic
absolute
the
is
without God; the depth
the absolute nobility of
man
in
God.
relig-
Hert-
zen himself acknovledges the connection of revolutionary ideas with religious ones; understands that
and
the Declaration
Bill of Rights could not
have
appeared before, and without, Christianity.

he says, "just as reformation,
"Revolution,"
stands in a churchyard.
lin's
as
nephew,
much
'in the
Voltaire, blessing Frank-
name
of
God and
Liberty,'
is
of a theologian as Saint Basil the Great or
Gregory of Nazianzin, only
The cold lunar
in a different sense.
reflection of Catholicism
{i.
., one
of the greatest attempts of universal Christianity)

is
permeated with
The
last
all the destinies
word of Catholicism
is
of revolution
spoken by reforms
and revolution they have exposed its mystery

the mystic redemption is solved by political libera
The symbol of the faith of the Nicene Coun
tion.
tion
cil
expressed
itself in the
man
rights of every
versal council,
i.
the
acknowledgment of the
symbol of the
., the Convention of 1792.
morality of Matthew the Evangelist
which the
deist
last uni-
is
the very
The
same
Jean Jacques Rousseau preaches.
42
Faith, hope,
and equality
fraternity,
If that
and charity
be
then
so,
at the entrance; liberty,
at the exit."
would seem
it
before
that,
pronouncing the death sentence of European culture
and running from
it
to
Russian barbarism, in the
despair of a final unbelief, one ought to think
if
these two shoaled beginnings of universal culture
and
religion
moved from
their
sociality
their
common
could
common
it?
somehow be
positivistic shoal into
religious depths.
not Hertzen think of
not
For
still
Why,
same reason,
depths still more
the
would seem: he fears religious

than positivistic shoals; he seems
it
then, does
to
see
in the
depth of any mysticism the ferocious beast of reac-
way
tion, in its
out of
its
The
a beast of the Apocalypse, coming
abyss.
reckless
Bakunin has thought, and made an-
swer, for the cautious Hertzen; Bakunin,
who has
resolved the dilemma of Hertzen into the theological,
or
rhomme
done
done
soit
il
de
dilemma:
"anti-theological,"
nj
est
Uhomme
esclave,
a point de Dieu.
sortir
de ce cercle
''Dieu
Je
et
est
defie qui
est,
libre,
que ce
mainienant choisis-
sons,"
"God
is,
therefore
therefore there
is
man
no God.
is
a slave.
I
Man
is free,
maintain that no one

can escape out of
and
this
circle
43
now
let
us
choose."
"The religion of humanity," concludes Bakunin,

"must be founded on the ruins of the religion of
Divinity."
Voltaire asserted:
Bakunin
be invented.
if
if
there is a God,
there
no God,
is
He must
asserts the very opposite:
He must
be abolished.
minds one of the Devil's words
This
re-
Ivan Karamazov:
to
"The idea of a God must be destroyed in humanity

we must start work from that. Once human-
ity denies
God, everything new will come."
In 1869, at the Congress of the League for Peace
and Liberty
at
Berne, Bakunin proposed to adopt
program a denial
into the basis of the socialistic
of all religions and the avowal that "the existence

of a
God
is
nity, reason,
When
the
inconsistent with the happiness, dig-
morality and liberty of men."

majority
rejected
this
resolution,
Bakunin with certain members of the minority
formed a new Alliance, Alliance

first
Socialiste,
the
paragraph of whose code proclaimed: "The
Alliance declares
itself
Godless
{()
This zealous "antitheologism"
is
already not
only the denial of religion, but the religion of

denial as well, some
new
religion without a God,
44
full of a jealousy
no
less fanatical than the old re-
Turgeniev, hearing of Bak-
ligions with a God.
happened
to
was astonished.
"What has
him!" Turgeniev asked of all. "Why,
unin's prank at Berne,
he was always a believer, he even scolded Hertzen

Just what, then, has happened to
for his atheism.
him?"
It is
why
men the
plain
destroy in
it
is
necessary for the Devil to
idea of a God: that
is
why he
But A. M. Bakunin,
a Devil, in order to hate God.
regardless of all his antitheological zeal,

devil, but a simple
What,
then, has
is
man, and a religious one
happened
has he suddenly come to
is
not a
to boot.
him indeed? Why

hate the name of God,
to
and, like one possessed, begun to blaspheme?

"If there
Bakunin.
this
a God,
Why?
all authority,
sition
is
a slave," asserted
is
Because "liberty
and God
is
is
would be an axiom,
if
men
a denial of
This propo-
authority."
And
Bakunin considers an axiom.
Christ has revealed to

ity,
man
truly,
there were no Christ.
that
God
is
not author-
but love; not an external power of authority,
but an inner power of love.
He who
not desire slavery for the one beloved.
loves does
Between
him who loves and him who is loved there

other power save love; but the power of love
longer power, but freedom.
is
no
is
no

Perfect love
God
perfect freedom.
is
45
is
love, and, consequently, perfect freedom.
the
Son says
be done,"
the
to the Father:
it is
my will,
Wben
but thine,
not the submission of bondage, but
freedom of
infringe
"Not
perfect
The Son does not wish
love.
upon the
to
will of the Father not because
he cannot, but he cannot because he does not wish

to.
To
the
dilemma of Bakunin,
hatred and bondage,
i.
affirming a
God
of
., in reality not a God, but
a Devil, can be opposed another dilemma, affirm-
ing the true God, a
"God
is,
God
therefore
therefore there
is
of love and freedom:
man
no God.
can escape out of
this
is
I
free;
man
is
a slave,
maintain that no one
and
circle
now
let
us
choose."
All those
been
who have
slaves,
Bakunin.
Hertzen
believed in
God have always
would have agreed with
But the idea of God, the idea of a higher
metaphysical order, cannot be subordinated to the

experience of a lower historical order.
all,
have
slaves?
what of
all those
And,
after
who have believed in God been

Jacob, who wrestled with God;
What of
Job, who complained
against
God; what
of the prophets of Israel, what of the Christian
martyrs?
Bakunin and Hertzen, desiring
to strive against
46
the metaphysical
of God, in reality strive
idea
against historical phantoms, distorted with the refractions of this idea in the mists of political low
places; they strive not against the
name
of God, but
with those blasphemies with which "the prince of

this
screen from
is
an eternal politician, endeavors to
earth,"
men
the holiest
that
name which
and most fearful of
to
him, the devil,
all the
names of
God: Freedom.
Of
course, the greatest crime in history, as if of
a second crucifixion no longer of the God-man, but

of God-mankind, consists in this: that on the cross,
human freedom has
the sign of divine freedom,
But can
been crucified.
be possible that Bak-
it
unin and Hertzen would be bold enough

that
Himself participated in
Crucified
the
crime, that Christ desired bondage for

it
to assert
this
men?
Can
be possible that Bakunin and Hertzen have never
thought of the meaning of Christ's answer to the

Devil,
when he
doms of
offers
Him power
"For
this earth:
it
over
all the
king-
hath been delivered
unto me," said the Devil, "and to whomsoever

will I give it."
If
He,
hath been given unto
renounced
Devil, does
power of
all
it
me
Who
in
mean
love, the
that,
"All authority
heaven and on earth,"
power of ruling
not
said,
as belonging to the
between the true, inner
freedom of
Christ,
and the
out-

ward, false power, bondage, there
47
same
the
is
dif-
Kingdom of God and the

Devil?
Can it be possible that
ference as between the
Kingdom
of the
Bakunin and Hertzen have never thought of the
meaning of
this
know
the truth,
If to
them
it
is
saying of Christ also:
and the truth
this is a
word
shall
make you
that has not
shall
free."
been kept,
perhaps because they are indeed words not
understood, not fully assimilated:
them now.
is
"Ye
"Ye cannot bear
Howbeit when he, the Spirit of
come, he shall guide you into
into the final truth of love,
truth,
And
make men
all truth."
which shall
free.
In the
first
kingdom of the Father,
the
Old Tes-
tament, was revealed the power of God, as truth;

in'the second
kingdom of
ment, the truth reveals
and
last,
kingdom of
the Son, the
New
itself as love; in the third,
the Spirit, the
Coming
ment, love will be revealed as freedom.

this last
kingdom
Testa-
will be
Testa-
And
in
pronounced and heard the
Coming Lord, a name as yet unpronounced and unheard of any: The Liberator.
But here we already cast off not only from this
shore, on which stands European culture, with its
bourgeoisie of the past and the present, but from
last
name
of the
the other shore as well, on which Hertzen stands
before the bourgeoisie of the future;
we
float
out
48
into the
open ocean,
which
in
into the ocean of the
all
Coming
shores disappear;
Christianity, as one
of the three revelations of the unified Revelation of

the Trinity.
The tragedy of Hertzen
is in this
halving: with
unconsciously,
Bakunian dilemma,
he sought Him.
accepted premise: man
through
from
his consciousness he rejected God,
Just as in the
the
made
his consciousness he
there
the deduction: therefore
no God; unconsciously, he
is
no God, there
is
to
is
no meaning in
to live for, there is
life,
there
to
nothing
is
And,
nothing to die for.
he lived for, and died for the sake
is
say:
no freedom, was for Hertzen tantamount
saying: there
fact,
there
if
But
no freedom.
also
is
felt the incon-
dilemma:
trovertibility of the converse
there
free,
is
in
of, that in
which he already well-nigh did not believe.

This
not the
is
new, but the
In
I see
He
prophet and martyr of a
last warrior, the
old world, of old

".
j&rst
dying gladiator of the
Rome.
The buzz of eager nations ran

.
loud-roared applause.
before
leans
me
upon
the gladiator lie;

his
hand; his manly brow
Consents to death, but conquers agony.
The beast with which
."
this gladiator fights is the
bourgeoisie of the future.
In the manner of his

"
49
come out
ancestors, the northern barbarians, he has

to the
And
combat naked, without shield or \veapon.
the other beast, "the thousand-headed hydra,
the multitudinous spawn," of the bourgeoisie of

the past and the present, watches the
ian
from
young Scyth-
the steps of the ancient amphitheater.
"And through his side, the last drops, ebbing

From the red gash, fall heavy one by one.
And now
^he is
gone.
The arena swims around him,
slow,
He heeded
not
His eyes were with his heart, and that was far away."
Hertzen's vision before death
is
of Russia as "a
land of free existence" and of the Russian peasant
commune
as the salvation of the world.
his old love for a
new
faith, but,
it
He
took
would seem,
at
the last minute understood that even this last faith
was a deception.
If faith deceived
him, however,
love did not; in his love for Russia there was
some
commune, but a
Christian sociality may, indeed, be the new faith
which the young barbarians will bring to old Rome.
true foresight: not the peasant
But in the meantime, the dying
without any
"Forgive,
man
is still
dying,
faith:
Rome
corrupt
Forgive,
native land
In the fate of Hertzen, the greatest Russian
intel-
50
ligent, is forecast a question
on which depends the
fate of the
whole Russian
comprehend
that only in the
consists the
sie
of a
will
it
coming Christianity
power capable of conquering bourgeoi-
and the coming rabble?
hend, then
intelligentzia:
it
If
it
will compre-
shall be the first confessor
new world; but
if not,
and martyr
then, like Hertzen,
it
shall be only the last warrior of the old world, the
dying gladiator.
III
^'^ "^ "YUEN
they are saying Peace and

then
safety,
sudden
cometh upon them,"
ecy has never seemed nearer
its
destruction
This proph-
fulfillment than in
our day.
At the same time that the South,

of Russia,
and
is
in the person
concluding a peace with the East,
all the nations are repeating: peace, peace,
a war-like meeting takes place in Swinemunde.
Two
of the most enlightened nations
oftly to
as
if
show
their
mailed
fists to
came together
each other.
two beasts of prey had stolen up
to
Just
each
put their muzzles together, and, snarling
other,
and baring
their teeth,
sniffed
each other, had
bristled up, all ready for a lunge to tear each other,
and, backing away, had silently gone their ways.
This
is
not an actuality, but an idealized sign of
modern European
culture.
External policies are
only a cynical exposure of the internal.

fruits shall
ye know them."
The
"By
their
fruit of internal,
spiritual bourgeoisie is external, international brutality,
militarism, chauvinism.
51
52
The ancient she-wolf of Rome, too, had sharp

teeth, and a blood-thirsty rapacity in politics.
But when it came to certain ideas held in common
Pax romana, the idea of a universal peace, and
the Eternal City, the incarnation of eternal Reason,
Rome
paused, and reverently lowered before
these unalterable sanctities
of
its
its
fasces, the insignia
And
legions with the all-conquering eagles.
in the darkest night of mediaeval barbarism, in
the midst of feudal intestine dissension, the nations
ceased war and laid

of a
meek
to their
down
old man, a
minds the
their
Roman
arms
pontiff
will of Christ:
at the
beck
who brought
"There shall be
one fold, and one shepherd."
Now
there
is
Rome, nor a
no idea held in common,
neither the empire of
Roman church. There is

no common sanctity. Over
doms
the "Christian" king-
these old gothic shops
there the half -rotted
wooden
still
rears here and
cross of Protestantism,
or the corroded brazen cross of Catholicism; but
no longer does any one pay the

them.
The
religion
of
least attention to
modern Europe
Christianity, but bourgeoisie.
From
is
not
the prudence
of well-fed bourgeoisie to an insane, famishing

brutality
to
is
only one step.
man, but nation
tual fear restrains
Not only
to nation as well.
is
man
a wolf
Only a mu-
them from a mutual devouring;

the rein
weak for
entirely too
is
If not to-day, then
beasts.
53
the infuriated
to-morrow they shall
spring upon each other, and there shall begin a

slaughter the like of which has never been before.
French writer, Villiers de L'isle-Adam, has a
fantastic story of two neighboring towns, peopled
with good, honest burghers and shop-keepers; quar-
some
reling over
trifle
town goes
to
town, and, despite their cowardice
quence of their cowardice,
war against
or in conse-
the shop-keepers ex-
terminate the shop-keepers so, that of the whole
prosperous bourgeoisie culture only scraps and

ends are
The
left.
modern Europe
international politics of
re-
n>ind one of the politics of these cowardly and ferocious shop-keepers.
When
hands
one looks upon the faces of those in whose
lies
the
of Europe,
fate
one recalls the
prophecies of Mill and Hertzen about the inevitable victory of a spiritual Qiina.
Before there
Tamerlanes,
are no monsters
of
yard-
have been monsters in history

Borgias.
tilas,
men,
like all
Now
men.
there
altar,
counter.
and insipidity
gazes,
just
Instead
stick; instead of a Bible,
What
At-
a scepter,
a ledger; instead of an
self-satisfied
vulgarity
in the expression of the faces!
One
and wonders with a great wonder, as the
54
Apocalypse has
Whence have sprung
it: ^
these
crowned lackeys, these triumphant beasts?
made
Yes, bourgeoisie has
Europe
fearful successes in
since the time of Hertzen
and Mill.
All the nobility of culture, having withdrawn
from the province of public
has concen-
affairs,
trated itself in isolated personalities, in such great
eremites as Nietzsche, Ibsen, Flaubert, and

the most youthful of the
young
still
the aged Goethe.
In the midst of the even plain of bourgeoisie, these
bottomless artesian wells of humanity vitness that
under the parched earth living waters are hidden

still.
is
But a geological upheaval, an earthquake,
necessary that the subterranean waters
forth and flood the plain, carry
away
may
the ant-hills,
overturn the old shops of bourgeois Europe.
meanwhile there
And,
just as
is
burst
But
a dead drought.
soon as they come out of the circle
of individual culture,
and touch upon
sociality,
even these great anchorites of European genius lose

their nobility,
become
trivial, shallow,
like rivers of the plains
When
^
"I
come upon
exhausted,
sands.
Goethe speaks of the French Revolution,
((1
Avith
The archaic meaning

wonder, astonishment.
XVTI,
6.
admiration, as defined by Webster,
is
great
of
Trans.
admiration."
Revelation,

he suddenly droops down
some
evil
to the earth; as if
enchantment the giant
55
through
flattens
down,
from a Hellenic demi-god he

becomes a German burgher, and may the shade
a German philister,
of the Olympian forgive me!
"Herr von-Goethe," a privy councilor to a duke of
shrivels into a dwarf;
Weimar and an
honest son of an honest shop-keeper
of Frankfort.
When
est faite
pour
Flaubert asserts: la politique
la canaille,
one
recalls with sad-
ness the salon of the Princess Mathilda and other

gilt
pig-sties
Simeon the
of the Second Empire, where this
Stylite of aesthetics cast pearls before
the swine, preaching his
new oligarchy
mandarins of learning."
When
of "the
Nietzsche makes
eyes not merely at Bismarck, but the Russian autocrat as well, as the greatest manifestation of "the
Will to Might," Wille zur Macht, in the midst of
modem European
impotence,
then,
on the pale
brow of "the crucified Dionysos" also appears the

same black spot of bourgeois contamination. The
noblest, because the frankest, of all seems Ibsen,
who expressed
few words:
his attitude toward sociality in a
An Enemy
of the People.
But the friends of the people, such genial leaders
democracy as Lasalle, Engels, Marx, while

preaching socialism not only do not warn prac-
of
56
tically,
but even theoretically do not foresee that
danger of "a new China," "a spiritual bourgeoisie,"
which Hertzen and Mill feared so greatly.
And
in
answer
to the socialists resounds the fear-
new
ful song of the
"Vive
De
Anarchism
troglodytes:
le son, vive le
son
explosion!"
is
the last spasm, no longer of social,
but of individual revolt against the unbearable
weight of state bourgeoisie.
At one time such singers of solitary despair as

Leopardi and Byron plumbed
all the
depth of the
world's sorrow, bound up with this downfall of
European
sociality.
Now
there
eye could plumb this depth:

less.
it
is
no one whose
has proven bottom-
In silence the seeing pass around
blind fall into
it
silently.
But here our gaze, in a

final hope,
the
it;
last
despair or with a
even as the gaze of Hertzen, "the dying
from one of "our

two native lands," from Europe to Russia from
gladiator," involuntarily turns
the dark South to the East, darker
still
though
al-
ready ensanguined either with the dawn or a conflagration.
For Hertzen
this "light of the
East"
was a resurrection of "the peasant commune"; for

us
it is
a resurrection of Christian sociality.
And

here again arises
at the
57
beginning of the twentieth
century the question put in the middle of the nineteenth: Will Russia conquer bourgeoisie, the un-
conquered of Europe?
IV
^"^
Russian intelligentzia
Gorky
the world," declared

I will
not desire
it,
is
the best in
recently.
not say this; not because
or think so, but because
do
embar-
For both Gorky and
assing to praise one's self.
And
are Russian intelligents.
it is
consequently
it
is
not for us to assert that the Russian intelligent
is
the very best of all possible intelligents in the best
Such an optimism
of all possible worlds.
is
gerous, especially in these times in Russia,
every frog
ter
is
praising
its
own
according to the other adage:

m.ore painful, but
chastise.
It is
And
do not undertake
so, I
Russian intelligentzia
is
Bourgeoisie has seized
is bet-
love, I
more wholesome.
whether the
a thing
unique in
all sociality in
individual personalities flee from
site:
it
when
a miracle or a monster; I
know that it is, indeed,

modern European culture.
higher culture.
Whom
to decide
only
ity of
No,
bog.
dan-
In Russia
it
Europe;
into the nobil-
it is
just the
oppo-
individual personalities are not guarded from

59
60
bourgeoisie by the low level of our culture; but

then our sociality
is
"Indeed, there
is
but there
is
If to this
public
life,
noble through and through.
something insane in our
life:
nothing vulgar, nothing bourgeois.''
be added: not in our personal, but our
then
these words of Hertzen, spoken
half a century ago, remain true to the present day.
Russian sociality
because
is
tragic through
it is
stance of tragedy
is
even
welfare,
and through.
opposed
The source of
idyll.
noble through and through
all
to the
dream," even though of Chinese
sub-
substance of the
bourgeoisie
though in bad
The
taste;
is
an
"a
idyllic
golden
Trag-
gilt tinsel.
edy, the veritable iron of the crucifying nails,
is
the source of all nobility, that ruby-red blood which
maketh
who receive its sacrament of "the

The existence of the Russian intel-
all those
blood royal."
ligentzia
is
a continual unhappiness, a continual
tragedy.
It
tion
would seem
more
that there
is
in the
world no
situa-
helpless than that in which the Russian
intelligentzia
has found
itself
a position between
two pressures: a pressure from above, of the autocratic order;
and a pressure from below, of the
dark element of the people, not so much hating as

not understanding
stand
is
but
at times failure to
worse than any hatred.
under-
Between these two

fearful pressures Russian sociality
the clean wheat of God,
if
God
is
61
grinding, like
wills,
ground and there
shall be meal, the
bread with which,
at last, the great
it
will be
meal for
that
hunger of the
people shall be appeased; but in the meanwhile

the lot of the Russian intelligent
to
is
no longer any thought of
of vheat
tragic lot.
There
it is
the lot of
the grain
bourgeoisie
is still
be crushed, ground,
not a question of getting off well,
but of getting out alive!
Look
closely:
what an amorphous
state of society,
indeed; what strange personages!
Here
cate
is
imitator of Napoleon, a student
completed his education,
not
kov.
deli-
features," the murderer of a usurious old
woman, an
f
young man, "poorly dressed, with
Here
is
Rodion
a medical student
who has
Raskolni-
disenlbovels
with his scalpel and scepsis live frogs and dead

philosophers, and preaches Stoff und Kraft with
the
same
cut-throat
bravado as the merry men of
Stenka Razin upon a time used to cry Sarin na

~
Here
man-philosopher, grown common and
kichku!
soil
^
the nihilist Bazarov.
Nikolai
All hands
the plank; a
turing a ship.
Here
Levin.
to the
prow!
probably as
command once
Trans.
is
in use
is
a noble-
tilling
the
a novice, as modest
a preliminary to walking
by Volga robbers upon cap-
62
as a girl
"a
red-cheeked realist," "a precocious
philanthropist,"
Alesha
And
Karamazov.
precocious misanthrope;
"the inner conscience." And,
brother Ivan
the
his
Ivan,
most
finally, the
unusual of them
"the
all,
man from
world," vith lips twisted as
if
the under-
from a perpetual
convulsion of maliciousness, with eyes full of a
new
unkno^vn
love, as yet
to the
world
the love of
a St. John; with the heavy glance of an epileptic;
an ex-convict and prisoner
at the Fortress of St.
Peter; a future unnatural hybrid of the reaction-
ary with the terrorist

tainted,
still
half-possessed,
^the
half-
Fedor Michailovitch Dostoievsky.
Behind them are

a
more
other, nameless ones,
faces of
severe, classical nobility, as if
out of marble: the images of

Aristogitons, Saint Justs
the wroth cherubim
hewn
new Harmodiuses and
and Camille Desmoulins,
of national tempests.
there are maidens, like chaste vestals, like

Judiths, going into the
prayer
But
at
camp
And
new
of Holofemes, with
heart and sword in hand.
in the very darkest depth, midst the
thunder
and lightnings of our Sinai, on the fourteenth of

December, are the already well-nigh inhuman
ages of the
first
Russian liberty,
vis-
prophets and the forefathers of
carvings no longer of marble

but of granite.
Is
it
63
not the same granite whose
mass the Bronze Horseman
tramples?
All these are whatever you will, but not bourgeois.
If
Flaubert had dared assert in their pres-
ence: la politique est faite pour la canaille, he
would sooner have become one of the rabble himself than have made them into a rabble.
For
them politics are a passion, an intoxication, "a
consuming
fire," in
comes white-hot.
which the
will, like steel, be-
These are the heroes famed in
no national legends, martyrs recorded in no church

calendars,
but
veritable heroes, veritable martyrs
fitill.
"From
the exulting and idly chattering,
Encrimsoning their hands with gore,

Lead me away to the camp of those perishing
For the great work of love they adore."
When
when
the
"the great work of love"
movement for
is
consummated,
liberation which they have
begun and are carrying on
is
ended,
only then
shall Russia understand the worth of these
men and
what they have done.
What, then,
only one of
its
is
this
unprecedented society, the
kind in the world,
is it
an order,
'A famous statue in St, Petersburg, showing Peter the Great

on a rearing horse. Trans.
64
or a caste, or a faith, or a conspiracy?
This
is
neither a caste, nor a faith, nor a conspiracy;
it
all
is
of them in one
it
the Russian intelli-
is
gentzia.
Whence has it appeared? Who created it?

The same one who created, or rather gave birth to,
all of the new Russia: Peter the Great.
I have already spoken once, and repeat anew
and
He
insist: the first
Russian intelligent was Peter.
has imprinted, struck
off,
as on the bronze of a
image on the blood and body of the Rus-
coin, his
sian intelligentzia.
The
sole legitimate heirs, the
children of Peter, are we, all Russian intelligents.
He
is in
we are in him. He who loves Peter,

he who hates him, hates us as well.
us;
loves us;
What
is
Peter?
miracle
do not undertake
monster?
or
He
Again,
dear
me, too much a part of myself, for
to
to decide.
judge of him impartially.

will be
only
know
too
is
me
to
there
no other Peter; Russia has but one of him;
and she has but one Russian

will have
no other.
And
while Peter
Russia, the great Russian intelligentzia
Every day we perish.

few friends.
Great
but great also
is
is
We
she
intelligentzia,
is
alive in
is alive
as
have many enemies,
the danger threatening us,
our hope: Peter
is
with us.
AMID
sad and fearful phenomena
all the
which Russian society has
of late,
to live
through
the saddest and most fearful is
that savage baiting of the Russian intelligentzia,
which, as yet,
fortunately taking place only in
is
the dark and obscure underground cellars of the
Russian press.
Is the
Russian intelligentzia necessary to Rus-
The question
sia?
is
so absurd, that
times, not worth while answering.
who ask
it
seems, at
Who
are those
save the intelligents themselves?
Doubt-
ing the Russian intelligentzia's right to existence,
they doubt their
own
right to existence,
however,
perhaps they do well, because the degree of their
own
"intelligence"
there
is
is
too insignificant.
something suicidal in
Verily,
this baiting, border-
ing on violent mania, for which are necessary not

the
deductions
of
reason,
but
strait -jacket.
There are times, however, when there

left
is
nothing
for reason itself save to put on this strait-
jacket against the violence of the insane.

C6
66
Amid
and
the inarticulate lamentations
revile-
ments can be made out only one accusation having
some
faint resemblance of reasoning,
the accusa-
tion of "groundlessness," of a detachment
famous "three
from the
estates," the three leviathans of na-
tional life.
Here,
we
if
you
will, is not
are ready to agree,
only "groundlessness,"
here
is
an abyss, the same
"abyss" over which the Bronze Horseman has "upreared" Russia
all
of Russia, and not merely the
Russian intelligentzia.
Let her accusers, then, say
directly: Peter is not a Russian.
case
we "groundless"
But in such a
intelligents will prefer to
remain with Peter, and with Pushkin, who loved

Peter as
if
he were the nearest of kin, rather than
remain with those
to
whom
Peter and Pushkin are
strangers.
"The Russian
is
fearfully free in
Dostoievsky, pointing to Peter.

ful
freedom of
spirit,'
says
In just this fear-
spirit, in this ability to
break away
suddenly from the earth, from existence and history, to
in the
burn
name
all its ships, to
of an
unknown
break up
future,
all its past
in just this
spontaneous groundlessness consists one of the deepest particularities of the

difficult to
move
Russian
us; but once
spirit.
It is
very
we have moved, we
reach the extreme in everything, in good and
evil,
67
and falsehood, in wisdom and
in truth
insanity.
"All we Russians love to wander along brinks and
complained even in the seventeenth
precipices,"
century our
Slavophile, Knijanin.
first
ularity very dangerous, perhaps, but what
particis to
be
To be one's own self is not always devoid

danger.
To deny one's self is to become not
done?
of
merely "groundless," but impersonal, incapable.

This resembles a paradox, but
if
at
times
it
seems as
our "groundlings," independents, and national-
ists
are far less Russian than our nihilists and de-
niers,
our intellectual "runners" and "no-sayers."
SeK-denial, self-consuming, are inconceivable, impossible anywhere save Russia.
presbyter
Awacuum, ready
Betwêen the arch-
to
be burned and to
others for the old faith, and the anarchist
Bakunin, proposing, during the revolution of Dresden, to put out on the walls of the besieged town
the Sistine
Madonna
Prussian bombs,
as a protection against the
the Prussians, d'ye see, being
educated people, will not dare
between
more
in
Raphael,
these two Russian extremes there
common
than would appear at
Pushkin compared
Pe|(er
in Peter's reorganization
first
Russian
is
far
first sight.
with Robespierre and
saw "a revolution from
above," "a white terror."

only the
to shoot at
Indeed, Peter
is
intelligent, but the first
not
Rus-

68
When
sian nihilist as well.
the "archdeacon of
the all-fools' cathedral" scoffs at the greatest national sanctities,
is
it
a nihilism far
and dangerous than the nihilism of

he scatters Pushkin right and
more daring
Pisarev when
left.
The Russian peasant Dukhobortzi, upon finding

in Canthemselves somewheres at the world's end
ada
and harnessed themselves

mercy
animals,
set their cattle free
to the plows, out of
for the
And,
not "groundlessness"?
same time, are
spirituality, distractedness; a rational-
ism, reaching to the limits of
edge of the "abyss,"

tarianism of our
"When
its
revealing
common
deductions, to the
itself in the sec-
people, reveals itself in
The
our intelligentzia as well.

says,
at the
"Dukhoborchestvo,"
these not Russian people?
an excessive
is this
Bazarov
nihilist
a burdock will grow."
die,
Nil
Sorsky orders in his will not to bury him, but

throw him somewhere in a
hound": in both
field,
like
scious metaphysics
spirit for the flesh.
not in that
it is
contempt of the
ascetic
The
intelligents' "groundless-
vital, off-shoots
The misfortune of
same uncon-
the
a deflected idealism
but very
"dead
cases, regardless of the difference
in the conclusions, there is the very
ness"
to
is
one of the
final,
of a national asceticism.
the Russian intelligentzia is
not sufficiently, but that
it is
exceed-
When
ingly Russian, Russian only.
69
Dostoievsky
sought the "all-man," the universal man, in the

depths of the Russian, he felt and wanted to forestall this
danger.
"Groundlessness"
but,
be
it
course.
is
a trait genuinely Russian,
understood, as yet not of all Russia, of

It
only one of the contradictory ex-
is
tremes which so amazingly dwell together in Russia.
Side by side with the intelligents and the na-
tional Dukhobor-rationalists, are the intelligent
and
national mystics of the Khlisty sect.
Side by side with the excessively sober are the

excessively
intoxicated.
Beside the Russia,
ex-
tending into the distance like a somewhat drear and
gray plain, the everyday Russia of Pisarev and
'Chemishevsky:
"These poor settlements.
This scanty nature,"
there
is
a Russia of the heights and of the under-
ground, extending up to the summit and down into

the depths, a mysterious, starry, nocturnal Russia
of Dostoievsky and Lermontov:

"Night
is still;
Unto God; and
Which
and
all the desert
hearkens
star to star converses.
of these two Russias
are equally authentic.
is
authentic?
."
Both
70
Their separation has

limits.
How
at present
reached
they are to be united?
great question of the future.
its final
That
is
the
VI
THE
second accusation, bound up with the
first
one of "groundlessness,"
is
the
"God-
lessness" of the Russian intelligentzia.

It is
scarcely a simple coincidence that this accu-
sation of Godlessness proceeds almost always
whom
people of
honor
me
it
has been said:
with their
lips,
from
"These people
but their heart
is
far
from me."
Of
,
the Russian intelligentzia one wants to say
at times:
"With
their lips they
their hearts are not far
do not honor me, but
from me."
Faith and a consciousness of faith are not one
Not
and the same.
believe; and not all those

lieve,
who intend to believe,

who intend not to be-
all those
The Russian
do not believe.
intelligentzia
as yet has no religious consciousness, has not been

confessed, but there
stantly
growing
is
already a great and con-
thirst for religion.
"Blessed are
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness: for
they shall be filled."
There
exist
many
opposite ways to God, not only

71
72
positive but also negative.
The God-wrestling of
murmuring of Job,
Jacob, the
unbelief of
the
are authentic ways
God.
be "publicans and
Russian
Let
of
"Publicans and
sinners"
Thomas,
all these
to
intelligents
the
the last.
the last
sin-
kingdom of God before" those

pharisees and scribes who "shut up the kingdom
of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourners go into the
ye them that are entering to
selves, neither suffer
go
in.
fer ye
'The last shall be
them
At times
that are entering to

it
seems that
Here
it
go in."
very atheism of the
some peculiar, mystical

has the same denial of religion
Russian intelligenzia
atheism.
this
Neither suf-
first.'
is
as Bakunin's, passing into a religion of denial;
same
the
tragic halving of
Hertzen's: the
great void
mind
is
mind and
heart, like
rejects, the heart seeks,
necessary for a great
God.
filling.
Is
not the "Godlessness" of the Russian intelligentzia

the void of a deep vessel which awaits filling?
"And
there were set there six waterpots of stone
"Jesus saith unto them. Fill the waterpots with

water.
And
"And he
they filled them up to the brim.

saith unto them,
Draw
bear unto the governor of the

bare
it.
out now, and
feast.
And
they

"When
73
the ruler of the feast had tasted the
made
water that was
wine,
the governor of
the feast called the bridegroom,
"And
saith unto him.
ning doth
set forth
Every man
good wine; and when men have
well drunk, then that which

the good wine until
Our hope
is
at the begin-
worst: thou hast kept
is
now."
in that our
Cana of Galilee
fore us: our waterpots yet stand empty;
is be-
we
are
drinking the worse wine, but Architriclion has kept

the
good until now.
Dostoievsky, recalling in some
way
after thirty
years one of his conversations with Belinsky, ex-
claims with as
sation
much
indignation as
the conver-
had taken place only yesterday: "This man
my
reviled Christ in
And he makes
"Belinsky
nomenon
is
presence!"
a frantic inference:
the most stupid
of Russian life."
ful misunderstanding here.

revile Christ
haps
if
still
is
and most
There
that,
some dread-
That Belinsky could
a dreadful thing.
more dreadful
is
fetid phe-
But
it
is
per-
on the basis of these
revilings, Dostoievsky after thirty years could pro-
nounce such a sentence over Belinsky, not having
consumed
candle before Some One, Whom he did
know
nor could
by name, was
with
understood that even

a
after all,
if this
man
like
not
call
not
74
was with him. "And whosoever

word against the Son of Man, it shall
Christ
Christ,
shall speak a
be forgiven him."
When
Belinsky uprose against
Gogol, because in his Correspondence With Friends
Gogol
tried to consecrate
serfdom
in the
Christ, Belinsky, "reviling" Christ,
then nearer to
Him
name
of
was of course
than Gogol, the shriven of
Christ.
Of
the Russian intelligentzia, at times, the
may be
said as of Belinsky: as yet
Christ, but Christ is already with
We
this:
hear
it
is
same
not with
it.
ought not, of course, reassure ourselves with
He stands at the door and knocks; but if we

Him not and do not open, He shall go away
to others.
VII
THE
"Godlessness" of the Russian
gentzia
of all
not in
its
dependent upon a deficiency not
is
its entity,
but of only some part of
feeling, conscience, will; but in
judgment, in the mind, the intellectus,

that
intelli-
i.
it,
its
., just
which makes the
intelligentzia the intelligent-
may be
word
zia.
It
that this
in itself does not coin-
cide altogether exactly with the sweep of the under-
The power
standing.
is
of the Russian intelligentzia
not in the intellectus, the mind, but in the heart
and
conscience.
Its
heart
and
conscience
are
nearly always in the right path; the mind often
The heart and conscience are free; the

mind is bound. The heart and conscience are fearless and "radical"; the mind is timid, and in its
strays.
very radicalism conservative and imitative.
an excess of social sentiments there

of
common
terialists,
ideas.
is
With
a deficiency
All these Russian nihilists, ma-
Marxists, idealists, realists,
are only the
waves of a spent surge, coming from the North

Sea into the Baltic.
* Called the
German Sea
in Russian.
75
Trans.
76
"Whatever the last book to him may but say

That on the surface of his soul shall stay."
Just take our Marxists, for instance.
There
is
never a doubt that these are most excellent people.

And of course they love the people no less than the
But when they talk of the "iron
nationalists do.
law of economic necessity," they seem the ferocious

priests of Marx-Moloch, who are ready to sacrifice
the whole Russian nation.
And
themselves into the willies.
They have become
pugnant not only

well.
little
And
at
worthless god
they took their Marx, their
and crash
another adage has
a
Or,
even by
Bernneglected Marx.
dragged on and on and then
against the
little leg,
ground with him.
as
it:
licked
is
re-
themselves as
to others, but to
last,
god, by his
they have talked
calves,
the
stein calves are licking the
The Marxian cant

that of the
At
first
tramps began
we thought
to drag.
that the tramps, at least,
would
be an independent phenomenon.
But when we
looked and listened more carefully,
we found
just as the
the
Russian Marxists were repeating Marx,
German, the Russian tramps
ing Nietzsche, the German.
our
half of Nietzsche
other.
that,
also
were repeat-
The tramps took one
decadents-orgiasts took the
"Dancing Foot" had not yet had time
hide, before the worshippers of the
to
new Dionysos

began
to chant:
legs!"
"Raise higher your dithyrambic
One German
Russian derniers
side
cut in two suffices for two
cris.
Looking upon
games
77
all
these
innocent
intellectual
by side with the deepest moral and
social tragedy, one wants at times to cry out in
involuntary vexation: Hearts of gold, heads of

clay!
But the
aesthetics
Shakespeare"
so
no
wooden.
is
"Boots
above
one, of course, will say this in
many words now,
but
it
has stuck somewhere in
the sinuosities of our physiology, and, willy-nilly,
but
it
will tell in
aesthetic
form
an "evil eye" against
much accustomed
to the
times really not
much above
our
If
our
aesthetics is at
"boots."
case, Pisarev's "destruction of aesthetics"
be regretted, deeply national.
that
moral being ugly;
too easily reconciled to this contradiction.

ethics is "Shakespeare," then
outward
we
immoral; but we
Not
as a useless luxury.
assert directly: the beautiful is
are too
all
It is
In any
is, it is
to
in the nature
of Russia, of Great Russia; a grayish sky, grayish
weekdays
"Fir-woods, pines, and sand."
And
here, in the mind, the intellectus, as well as
V. IvANOV, The Religion of Dionysos, in
Problems of
Life.
78
in the heart
and wiH of our
intelligentzia, is the
same national leaning toward asceticism, to Dukhoborchestvo a monkish fear of flesh and blood,
a fear of all nakedness and beauty as a temptaHence with a truly religious
tion of the fiend.
;
regard for outward, social liberty,
respect for inner, personal liberty.
there
is
a dis-
And hence
the
of the most radical of radicals for
intolerance
schismatics and statute-makers; the mutual eaves-
dropping,
come
lest
filthy
some one
with the
eat
filth
meat
at Lent, or be-
And
of the world.
so
those without priests are realists, and the idealists

believe in priests, and the Theodosians are Marxists,
and the Molokan sectarians are nationalists;
and every order, every persuasion,
own
bow^l,
eats out of
and drinks out of a separate
little
its
"image
lamp," holding no communion with the heretics.
And
istic
all
have the same fast
xerophagy.
"We
an
taste
abstract, rational-
no meat; we drink no
wine."
There
is
a legend that the holy Seraphim Sarov-
ski subsisted for
of
swamp-grass.
many
years upon snitka
All these realisms,
a sort
idealisms,
monisms, pluralisms, empiriocriticisms, and other

dried "isms" upon which the Russian intelligentzia
subsists even to this
snitka grass.
day are reminiscent of the
79
All faces have become crest-fallen from this intellectual
hunger
crest-fallen,
and pale, and wan.
The
All are the "gloomy people" of Chekhov.
sun
is
still
in their thoughts
already rising in their hearts, but "dusk"

;
flaming
is
fire is in their hearts,
but a cooling warmth, lukewarm water, a warmed-
up German Habersuppe
in their thoughts; riotous
youth in their hearts, but a resigned old age in their

thoughts.
At times, looking
intelligent ascetics
at these
and
young
ancients, these
one longs
fasters,
to
cry
out:
You
"Dear Russian youths!
You
sincere.
are noble, honest,
are our hope, you are the salvation
Why, then, are your faces

Be merry, smile;
cast down?
and future of Russia.

*
so sad,
lift
your eyes so
up your heads and look the
Fear not the foolish old devil of political
the eyes.
reaction,
heathen
devil straight in
who
still
aesthetics,
glimmers before you, now in
now
Fear no temptations, no
in
Christian
trials,
mysticism.
no freedom,
not
only external, social freedom, but the inner, personal freedom as well, because without the second
the
first
is
also impossible.
bondage; and the worst of
Fear but one thing:

all
bondages, that of
bourgeoisie, and the worst of all bourgeoisies, that
of the rabble; for the slave
come
into
power
is
80
beast,
and the beast come
no longer the
devil,
"Coming
the
power
is
old, the fantastic, but a
truly frightful,
painted,
into
more
devil,
new, a real
frightful than he
coming prince of
Beast."
the
this
is
world, the
VIII
"^^""^^
'
UR
'
struggle
is
not against the blood
and the flesh, but against the powers

and authorities, against the world
rulers of the darkness of this age, the spirits of
evil on this earth."
And
the world ruler of this age
coming
into power, the
Coming
is
the bourgeoisie
Beast.
This Beast in Russia has three faces.
The
of
first
the present
is
over us the face of

:
autocracy, the dead positivism of bureaucracy, the

^
Chinese Wall of the table of ranks, separating the
Russian people from the Russian intelligentzia and

the Russian church.
The second face

is
of the past
alongside
of us,
the face of orthodoxy, rendering unto Caesar that
which
is
said that
God's; that church of which Dostoievsky

it
was
in
"a paralysis."
"Our bishops
are so bridled that you can lead them v/here you

will,"
complained one Russian prelate of the eigh-
teenth century;
same with a
is in
and
still
modem
prelates could say the
greater right.
Spiritual bondage
the very fountain-head of every liberty; spiritsi
82
ual bourgeoisie
is
in the fountain-head of every
The dead positivism of orthodox bu-
nobility.
reaucracy
is
in the service of the positivism of auto-
cratic bureaucracy.
The
third face
of
the future
is
under us; the
face of beastliness, coming up from below,

the hooligans, of
the
trampdom, of
of
the black hundred,
most fearful of the three faces.
These three beginnings of spiritual bourgeoisie
have united against the three beginnings of
spirit-
against the land and people,
ual nobility:
living body; against the church,
against the intelligentzia,
the
the living soul;
the living spirit of Rus-
sia.
In order that the three beginnings of spiritual
and freedom
nobility
may
in
their
turn
unite
against the three beginnings of spiritual beastli-
ness and bondage,
but such a
a common idea
common
tion, together
is
necessary;
idea only a religious regenera-
with a social regeneration, can give.
Neither religion without sociality, nor sociality

without religion, but only a religious sociality will
save Russia.
And,
first
of
all,
a religious-social consciousness
must awaken where there

sociality
is
already a conscious
and an unconscious religiousness
in the
Russian intelligentzia, which not only in name but

in its essence
must become the
incarnate, that
tellectus
is
intelligence, the in-
the reason, the con-
Reason, carried out to the
sciousness of Russia.
The
end, arrives at the idea of God.

carried out to
its
83
intelligentzia,
end, will arrive at religion.
But not in vain did the
This seems improbable.
movement
for liberation in Russia
religion.
Not in vain did such people as Novikov,
Katazin, and Qiaadaev,
commence with
as the masons, Martinists
and other mystics of the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth,
find
themselves in the very closest inner ties with the

This was, and shall be,
Decembrists.
sociality
was baptized with a
Russian
religious fire in
its
same fire will descend upon it at

coming of age, will burst into flame
infancy, and the

the time of
on
its
brow, like unto the "forked tongue of flame"
its
new Descent
in the
of the Holy Ghost upon the
living spirit of Russia
why, perhaps,
it
That
is
the Russian intelligentzia.
has found
even in
itself
the total darkness of religious consciousness, in
"Godlessness," because
revolution
from
For
has
from the
the setting sun
First
Advent
this is verily the
Russian intelligentzia, but of

Christ
Come
to the
Coming
made a complete
from
light to light,
to the rising sim,
Second.
it
its
to the
path not only of the

all
Christ.
Russia
from
84
And when
intelligentzia
merely the
this shall
will
come
it
Russian
cease to be the intelligentzia,
intelligentzia,
reason; then
to pass, the
shall
human, merely human,
become
the
manity, the Logos of Russia as a
Mind of all Humember of a uni-
body of Christ; a new true Church, no longer
versal
a temporary, local, Graeco-Russian, but an eternal,
universal Church of the
Coming Lord;
of St. Sophia of the Great
Wisdom
the Church
of God; the
Church of the Trinity, inseparable and infusible,
the
kingdom not only of
the Father
and the Son,
but of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

"Verily, verily this shall be!"
And
in order that this
may
be,
it is
necessary to
tear apart the union of religion with reaction, a
union
men
ing,
scoffing at sacred things;
understand, at
last,
the
it is
necessary that
meaning of
this say-
which has become the Flesh:
"// the Son therefore shall
make you
free,
ye
shall be free indeed." (St. John, viii. 36.)
On
to liberty, not against Christ, but with Christ.
Christ shall free the world

Christ.
geoisie,
On
with Christ
other than
against slavery, the bour-
and the rabble.
Only the Coming Christ

ing
and none
Mob.
shall
conquer the Com-
THE BLOSSOMS OF BOURGEOISIE
MY
meetings with Jaures and France were

so fleeting that perhaps
it
would not be
worth while telling about them,
were not
that there is
if
something of the symbolical
therein for us and for them; for us Russians
for the
in
and
for Europeans
necessary
Frenchmen
haps.
it
in general, per-
To travel is not sufficient it is

to live
Europe to understand our incommensurability
with them, not in conceptions merely, or feelings,
but in even the

is
first
sensations, in that physics
the foundation of all metaphysics.
which
We may
be-
come acquainted, even; may sympathize with each

other; but sooner or later a moment arrives when
they cease to understand us and look upon us as
the inhabitants of another planet.
out pride
on
say this with-
the contrary, with humility: for
we
must learn much from them, seek help from them

in
many
things
there
is
no doubt of
whether we also can help them in anything

is
as yet doubtful.
feel
At any
no need of us; in
but
that;
rate, at present
that
they
their consciousness or un87
88
consciousness the coming destinies of Europe are
bound up with our destiny; it seems, that

Russia were to go down, they would survive; but
Europe disappear we perish.
not
if
if
It is difficult,
an
scarcely possible, even, to define in
formula
exact
incommensurability,
this
what stares one in the face
we
ualists;
tain sense,
is this:
are coUectivists.
European
the Russian;
sociality
but there
but
they are individ-
Of course, in a ceris more perfect than
has poured into firm,
it
crystal-clear governmental forms; our Russian soci-
however,
ality,
is
as yet
unmined
ore, or metal
boiling in the furnace, which can pour into what-
ever forms you will, beautiful or monstrous.

are a river in
"The
tide.
seems
ality.
to
its
channel;
we
that
we have
and
evil.
may some day
we have
not found
yet
off,
lypse of "a
at
still
that
soci-
find a channel,
it,
and
it
well-nigh limitless possibilities
Whether our strength be

breaking
have been said especially of Russian
Perhaps we
we
are a river at flood-
rising of rivers like unto seas"
but at present
ness,
They
seems
good
in that, or our
weak-
believe in a universally historical
in that
sudden overturn, the apoca-
new heaven and
one time appeared as in a
sociality also; but there they
new earth," which

dream to European
have long ceased
to

believe in
89
and now gradation, deliberativeness,
it,
and uninterruptedness of development are for them

not only the external law of being, but the inner
law of the
They are
spirit.
we
in evolution,
how much they

we, no matter how much we
They, no matter
revolution.
are submissive;
in
riot,
sub-
mit, are rioting.
But the chiefest feature of our incommensurability with
Europe
namely,
the religious feature.
we have
the hardest of all to express
is
religion, they
even incorrect,
if
have not,
you
is
to say:
immodest; yes,
will; for if religion is not
already with us, then as yet there

all,
Simply
is
none.
But we
those denying and those affirming, could, in a
greater or lesser degree say of ourselves what one
Russian decadent has said: "I desire that which
Europeans will not say
not of this world."

they, at
any
world.
They are
do want that which
rate,
is
believing,
believe.
That
in contact with this world;
still
is
at the
we
They,
know; we, Avhen we know,
still
why, even in the most frantic
extremes of negation, we appear mystics
even
this;
of this
are in touch with "other worlds than ours."
when
is
still;
they,
very last limits of affirmation, appear
skeptics to us.
They and we are not halves of one

two poles of one force.
If
w^hole, tne
we have any preemi-
90
nence before ihem,
ponder
to
it is
solely in that
we have begun
We
before them.
this question
under-
stood that they are necessary to us; they cannot con-
we might ever be of need to them.

They are "first," we are "last"; but "whosoever
ceive that
will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all."
would seem
It
we
recall
that this
all shall
it,
is
forgotten by them; if
be well with
us.
II
became acquainted through Anwho had met him at a little table
With Jaures
drei
Bielyi,
d'hote in a
lagh,
little
where Bielyi had

hood.
It
was
Parisian
settled
It
was
suburb of Auteuil
down
in
my
neighbor-
came to breakChamber of Depu-
just there that Jaures
fast before the sessions of the

ties.
Rue Rane-
pension on the quiet
quiet
the
in
at
one of these very breakfasts that
they fell to talking of Social Democracy, with
which our poet,
it
is
known,
necting "the coming art" with
is
captivated, con-
its
triumph.
I be-
lieve in the Socialism of Bielyi as greatly as in his
"Symphonies," these magically beautiful and

derly insane "songs without words."
it
may, only
Be
ten-
that as
that superficial sociability of the
New
Athens made possible a conversation such as the

one of the two "comrades"
the
91
young Russian
symbolist and the venerable leader of French Social
Democracy.
When
room on
entered the idyllically bourgeois dining
the lower floor of the
Ranelaghian
little
pension, where the air seemed to be growing darker
and thicker from the old, old smell of dishes, I

saw at the far end of the empty and long table
Jaures with two or three "comrades"
and
his insep-
arable retinue, they must have been,
with
Andrei Bielyi.
stout
man
of fifty arose to meet
me;
slightly
unwieldy and slow, not of great height, with the

stiff bristles
of his hair and beard a reddish gray;
the skin on his face ruddy, as if weather-beaten;
with a prominently projecting chin, and simple
and kind eyes of a pale blue. Either the senior

cashier of an insurance company, or a teacher of
German
lightness,
in
Russian high-school.
Nothing of
of the South, of the Latin.
ponderosity
and
Not
solidity.
well
Teutonic
cut
but
strongly sewn.
Almost immediately
after
we had
settled do^vn,
we began talking of the Russian Revolution.

From the first words of my companion in conversation I sensed his curiosity of one who looks
out
upon a shipwreck from
the safety of a harbor.
92
Whether Russia free

he, Jaures,
herself, or
remain
would be neither hot nor
in
bondage,
cold.
also
he spoke of the revolution not as a sea-
felt that
man would speak
of the sea, but as a geographer
might.
"At the present time in Russia the Cadets are

the only party which has a feeling of the real
All that
possibilities.
political
than that
is
Your
insane.
extremists are either
fanatics or dreamers, living in a

eras.
One cannot but wonder
But the vonder

ness,
and
is
jump
to
is
out of the
you can
vexation.
Everything
You
an impulse.
by the
live.
"And you Europeans

I
at their heroism.
are ready
window and break your
instead of descending
better than
kingdom of chim-
mingled with a feeling of sad-
forgive meof
with you Russians
more extreme
is
stairs.
You
necks,
can die
."
can both
die and live?"
asked with an involuntary smile.
"Live well, die well," he parried, with that innocent
and amiable
self-satisfaction
few months back
which disarms.
had heard
his speech at a
"protest meeting" at the Winter Circus, occasioned
by
the Bielostok
pogrom, with a crowd of thousands
of Russian revolutionaries and French working-
men.
He
spoke of
human
rights, of the great cov-
enants of the French Revolution; of the universal

brotherhood of nations,
of everything
93
that at
one
time was of moment, even here in Europe, but
now has long
become
the
music of words.
For an hour and a

vithout a breathing space, he shouted, he
Jaures
half,
since
is
an inspired orator.
roared, he bellowed, he thundered
But somehow
Zeus the Thunderer.
veritable
then
just
recalled the saying of Grigorievitch about the late
"A
Stasov:
ily
Vesuvius, erupting cotton."
imagine that in the Chamber
can eas-
this florid, inflated
eloquence explodes like a punctured bladder under

the sharply pointed needles of Clemenceau.
I
looked
my
neighbors over; French workingmen
simple, honest, kindly faces, that one cannot but
love.
Attentive,
tial; just like
almost
compassionate,
reveren-
people in a church at prayer,
ing to an organ.
But
just as those
in
listen-
our day
pray in church will not go on a crusade, so these

people will not go in for a revolution.
mon
face of the crowd
republic
geoisie:
is that
"we
bit at a time,
tlie
face of the bourgeois
of imperturbable, invincible bour-
desire that which
and
The com-
is
of this world; a
quiet-like, we'll build
up
a king-
smooth and easy does

stronghold of
Something unshakeable,
any
"present
dom
of heaven on earth
it."
absolute; a
strongholds;
other save the
eternity"
same
in
scarcely
which Hertzen saw a portent
94
of a "European China."
When
bethought
me
of the police agents placed near the doors of the

hall,
felt like
laughing.
Why
the police?
To
whom?
The Russian revolutionaries, perhaps; but even they had become weaker, quieter,
dissolved in this crowd like acid in lye.
What
quiet
Water was never
revolution can there be here!
made
bum, bourgeoisie was never made

Coming out of the meeting, I got out
to
of one
At the Place de Repub-
meeting into another.

lique,
to riot.
on occasion of a holiday, a carnival had been
arranged, with show-booths and carrousels with
music.
moon
The night was calm, warm; with

in the cloudless sky.
white electric
But in the blindingly
light, like the light of
nary of night seemed
to
a full
day, the lumi-
be extinguished.
In one
of the carrousels, instead of horses, gigantic pigs
were going around; the

rings;
little tails
curled into
little
bare bodies seeming alive; the
the pink,
snouts with teeth bared, as if in laughter; and with
cunning in their
little
thing, but did not
eyes, as if they
want
to tell.
knew some-
The music was
playing a military march, and with a vertiginous
speed the men, women, and children were whirling
around astride the
were laughing.
thing that
pigs.
They, as well as the pigs,
Suddenly,
had fancied
fancied
the
same
there, at the meeting: here
95
was some limit attained; an eternity arrived, calm

and smooth waters, God's bounty of a "Median
Kingdom," of a "heaven on earth." A sadness, as
though in a dream, contracted my heart. Something eerie, ominous, of the apocalyptic, was in
this
black crowd and the light of nocturnal suns ex-
tinguishing the light of the moon, and in the rosily-
"All this has been before,
naked, laughing swine.

only
cannot recall when."
Or
will
it
be?
"Yes, you can die, but live you cannot," Jaures
had repeated
in
conclusion of our conversation
about the Russian revolution.
Then we spoke of French Social Democracy

cannot
now
recall what, but the chief impression
which remained with
me was
the
same as on
that
fevening at the Bielostok meeting: of a socialism
without a
revolution
lion
without
claws;
socialism digested in the ostrich-like stomach of
bourgeoisie; a socialism which
is
the extinguished
lava of a volcano, that nurtures the
plump
clusters
of Lacrima Christi in the earthly paradise of bourgeoisie.
Ill
In the salon of a certain French authoress of
Russian origin, Ivan Strannik, who has long lived

96
in Paris,
and who,
in that city
who
would seem,
it
the only one
is
attempts to unite oil with water
the Russians with the French,
became acquainted
The amiable
with Anatole France.
hostess
famous guest especially for me.
invited the
through unpardonable Russian barbarism,

late
But,
I
was
and arrived after France.
Do you
recollect, in
one of Chekhov's
that delicate boy, resembling a girl,

softly,
who had
stories,
who moved
a soft voice, soft, flaxen curls,

velvet jacket?
tender eyes, a soft,
little
minds one of
boy of Chekhov's.
soft
had
this
soft,
France
As
re-
soft as
can be, caressingly downy, tenderly velvety.
When you
gaze at him for long,
it is
as
if
you were
passing your hand over silver-gray velvet.
But
the impression of this inward softness does not
exclude an external distinctness, a firmness of countenance as exquisite as
if
it
were carved.
The
splendid with the splendor of
silver-gray head,
age; the noble profile, that might have been struck

off
The kind,
kind, old King Henry the
on an ancient Florentine medal.
old courtiers, of the
Fourth would be like
With me were
my
that.
friends, also Russians; with
France, his inseparable friend of
very clever
woman
eighteenth
century,
many
years, a
of the world in the spirit of the
half
Jewess,
half
French.

Their mutual salon
ried, but
The
France
her house.
is at
97
is
mar-
no one knows his wife.
hostess tried to start the conversation rolling
about Russian literature, about Tolstoy and DosBut, as
toievsky.
to Tolstoy,
proved, France wâs indifferent
it
and did not
Out of
like Dostoievsky.
politeness he did not say this, but
it
could be sur-
mised that Russian mysticism was not
to his,
perfect classic's, liking, and seemed almost nothing
"bad
else but
us;
rainbow-bridges across the gulf separating
we could
not step upon them, and fell through.
also seem, however, that France does
would
It
not willingly converse with, or listen

then, he loves to listen to himself.
to,
for
it.
have his
When he
fill,
as
others ; but
And, indeed,
one wûld scarcely have the courage
him
get
In vain did the charming hostess throw
along well.
little
The conversation did not
taste."
to
reproach
speaks, one listens and cannot
if in his
throat were a Stradivarius,
or that nightingale which, in Andersen's fairy-tale,
beguiled the death throes of the Qiinese emperor.
Of whatever
trifles
he
may
speak, his speech
dainty for the gods; whatever bitter truths he
is
may
his lips, are full of ambrosial
utter, they,
from
sweetness.
But when one recalls what has been
said,
one sees that
it is
almost nothing, over almost
nothing; everything melts like
foam
but
is it
not
98
that
foam out of which was bom
the goddess of
eternal beauty?
In reference to the collection of his political

speeches, he confessed that the delivery of even
the shortest speech before a gathering
is
for
him
a veritable torture; that several days before, he

already worries, loses his presence of mind, and,
stepping upon the platform, becomes as timid as a
schoolboy.
"Alas,
am
bom
not
an orator!" he concluded
with jocose plaintiveness.
"Why, then, do you torture yourself?"

"What can I do? One must serve the common
good
in
some way."
"Socialism?" asked the hostess, winking

"Well, yes, of course.
my
not believe in
But you,
it
at us.
seems, do
socialism?"
"Not altogether."
"Why?"
"Why, even because you are the greatest of all
skeptics who have ever been in this world, for one
thing," some one of us took up the conversation.
"For how can one unite the doubt with the deed?
How
do anything, not believing in what one does?"
"One may
not be able to do; but one
retorted France.
parties is for
me
"The struggle of
a titanic
game
may
play,"
the political
of chess.
But
99
are not all the deeds of mankind games?
gods play with us
in that lies
then, play with the gods
it
our tragedy;
may
let us,
be that then our
He who
tragedies will end in an idyll.
The
has
lost
faith in everything, derives the innocent ease
and
delight
how
of divine
sweet
The
it is
infinite
games from everything.
to rest
upon
'Oh,
the pillow of doubts!'
"
charm with which he pronounced
these words of Montaigne's I shall never forget.
Yes,
thought, everything in play, a smile for
everything, doubt in everything
wisdom
of
that is the final
Contemplation
bourgeoisie.
sponds to action, France corresponds

Just as once
upon a time
transformed
itself
now
corre-
Jaures.
to
the political insurrection
bourgeois liberalism,
into
so
the social-economic revolution will transform
itself
into
bourgeois
stronger than revolution, the calm

the storm: herein
geoisie
is
Evolution
socialism.
is
is
stronger than
the unconquered truth of bour-
unconquerable,
plane where the battle
it
may
even be, on that
being waged.
is
Clemen-
ceau would have understood France; France would
have reconciled Clemenceau with Jaures.
What
is in
one, that also
that is also at the bottom.
is
in all;
what
is
on top,
There, on the Place de
Republique, in the black crowd and the pinklynaked, laughing pigs
is
the deep, rich soil, the

THE xMENACE OF THE MOB
100
unctuous manure; while here
is
the fragrant blos-
som, like a mystic rose of bourgeoisie.

bourgeoisie
Absolute
After
of
all,
culture
absolute
is
is
that not so?
science,
swinishness.
All the golden harvest
has
bourgeoisie manure?
holy bourgeoisie?
sprung up from the
sociality,
art,
not
it
Is there
not a righteous, wise, kind,
Who
has not cursed
it,
and who has conquered
Only too frequently now
in
Russia
is
bourgeoisie denied by us, not in the
new
and a new
nobility
But
hooliganism.
two
lesser of
European
name
culture, but in the
of the old Russian barbarism, and the

if it is
evils, then, if
it?
of a
name
new Russian
necessary to choose the
you
will, bourgeoisie is
better than hooliganism.
At times
it
seems that the Russian revolutionary
sociality has given the oath of a Hannibal, to con-
quer or perish in the struggle with the bourgeoisie

of the cultured South
above thereto.
power,
of
to
It is
having no power given from

time, at last, to think of that
understand that the religious shallowness
can be conquered only through
bourgeoisie
spiritual nobility.
We
believe that
sociality,
Europe,
peans;
it
and
let
shall
alight
upon Russian
then Russia proved opposed to
if
us be
may be
it
so.
We
are opposed to Euro-
that even at that time
it
will
come

to pass, that the last shall
may
rear
serve unto
up above
all.
be
all others,
first,
101
not that they
but that they
may
WHEN
CHRIST SHALL RISE AGAIN
'
^^^'N tbislandof omSyiadierdBDiiBaajoibeiv
will
tlie
domiis ResarredioD of Chnst be
Celebrated.
does this dream come

sian?
day
of
Wbat does
itself
it
tzi:
Is
it
t:
"
mean,
Ir^^zi?
Bat
dse but dbe Rbsleali^, Aat die bullae
has disappeaied, utile die îsSde gizzi
are so plainty borae
ôn
die face of our
nnEds 4]liii^ is
aie îêi,
along widi die kias and eiczj time jn^ as tEbnnpb-
land
that the
die boij iimfaiig^, and die peal-
antly
bdb nng
on and on oict il
the eartii, as dioo^ diej weie awakenii^ .
Wbere die sgpis aie bome =0 ni- fr^tly, not 'n.
ings of resoandii^
vain aiB dbey

^lall awake."
where rif-
i.t
i'Itz
It"
Thus Gogol, wliose birdxday falls cm die HotBday
can
be in oxder Aat, dead, die eierliving one may teS ns anew dbat iduib be
has said when lining, heeded of none? Can it be
that now also we diall not beed?
of Glory:
''No, diis
it
age
is
Glorious Holiday as
he concludes.
not the one to cde-r-'f

it
ooît to be
'j:r
.::^::
'
106
Why,
Why,
then, not celebrate it?
indeed, this
Why
holiday which does not fall on a holiday?

has
vanished, as though
it
Do you remember,
were forever eclipsed?
it
in our childhood
seemed
it
to
us that on this day the sun in heaven sparkled as
on none of the other days in the year? Why, then,

does it grow dim and tarnished, as though the light
Why
had gone out of our eyes?
do "the pealings
of resounding bells" ring on and on above us not
The
with holiday pealing, but as though tolling?
pronounce: "Christ
lips
"Verily
the
though
is
He
risen!" the lips reply:
risen;" but the heart keeps silence,
heart
keeps silence:
He be
risen,
know
"I
is
He
that people
is
is still
because,
it
even
not risen for us?
who commit crimes which
they call executions will not hear, because they do

not want to hear that which
which
am
am
crying out, that
beseeching them: but
I will
still
not
cease to cry out, to beseech always about the one
and only thing
till
the last minute
by
my
life," says
Tolstoy, in his recent essay: Christianity

ital
and Cap-
Punishment,
"Liev Nikolaievitch begs

ski's essay
to write
on capital punishment
and has always aroused
his
is
you
that Jukov-
known
to
indignation.
him,
Liev
Nikolaievitch thinks that you have done well in-
deed
in recalling to the
memory
of readers this old.
WHEN CHRIST SHALL
RISE AGAIN
107
horrible scoffing at sacred things," writes Tolstoy's

secretary, in a private letter in reference to a certain essay on capital punishment, also a recent one.
And
in
at the
end of the
Tolstoy himself adds,
letter
an aged, weakening hand:
"During the
few days
last
weak from renewed

age; but
want
ill-health
to write
myself very
feel
in
from
only a few
reality,
you myself,
if
words, in gratitude for your essay, and, especially,

for your fine
may,
I try,
letter.
to struggle
as
much
and
as I can
with this evil of the representation
of a churchly lie in place of the truth of Christianity,
ation
which you point out; but
from falsehood
is
think that liber-
reached not through the
pointing out of the falsehood of falsehood, but
through a full adoption of truth
wherein truth becomes the

guide of
life.
such an adoption
even the chief
sole, or
."
Alone, amid a silence as of the grave, he
is
cry-
ing out, his voice sinking lower and lower, as

in reality,
"a soaped rope had been thrown around
his old neck."

to the last
if,
He
is
crying out, and will cry out
minute of his
life,
repeating always the
same words, stubbornly, wearily monotonously,

hopelessly, almost senselessly, almost dully: "This
is
horrible, horrible, horrible!
Yes, the
tude of Christian humanity at present
is
atti-
horrible!
108
...
It
not good to kill one another!
is
."
for murder," says Dostoievsky, "is
"To murder
a punishment immeasurably greater than the crime
Murder under a sentence is immeasurably

more horrible than murder by a cut-throat; here all
itself.
final hope, with
away by
taken
is
which
the horrible torture

all the
man
nature of
is
is
and
certainly no escape lies all
and
there
is
Who
world.
no torture more
has said that the
capable of enduring this without
Wherefore
insanity?
ten times easier to die,
certainty; here is a sentence,
precisely in that there
powerful in
it is
this
Of
unnecessary, futile?
revilement,
this torture
horror even Christ has spoken.
hideous,
and of
this
No, man cannot
be treated thus."
"We
in Russia
have no capital punishment,"
joices Dostoievsky, never suspecting
these words
"The
Two
voice.
what mockery
would become forty years
priest
re-
after.
was reading the prayers
in a
low
other assistants approached, nimbly
took the waistcoat off Tropman, put his hands be-
hind his back, tied them together, crosswise, and
wound
man
the
whole body up with
submissively
bent
his
straps.
head.
drawled out the words of the prayer.

not take
.
my
The
...
Troppriest
could
gaze off the slender, youthful neck.
The imagination
involuntarily
drew a
trans-
WHEN CHRIST SHALL

upon
versal line
*in
it.
RISE AGAIN
*Right there,'
109
thought,
a few moments, dismembering the vertebrae,
cleaving muscles and veins, a thirty pound axe will
go through.
grew up on the
I
.
.'
saw how a headsman suddenly
saw how Tropman made his way up the

.
How
he halted
at the top,
how from
men pounced upon

spiders upon a fly, how he suddenly
first, and how his heels gave a kick.
and
platform
left side of the guillotine
left
steps.
the right
him, just like
two
down head
fell
.
But here
turned away and began to wait, while the ground
started quietly floating underfoot.
pause.
breathless
dully and rolled on
Then
heaved
enormous beast had coughed.
Ensued a
something
a sigh.
.
roared
... As
if
an
Everything be-
came confused.
." ^
Everything has become confused, has grown dark
The Glorious Resurrection has
in our eyes also.
grown dark
That
day
is
why
to us.
must
as well.
the holiday does not fall
We
on a
can not, we do not want
not, celebrate the Resurrection of
holi-
we
to,
Him Who
Died, where the putting to death of the living takes

place.
being
Christ can not arise where Christ

crucified.
risen!" with the
One can
same
lips
not
sing
is
still
"Christ
is
which clamor "Crucify
TURGENIEV, The Execution of Tropman (1870).
110
Him!"
For what
mankind
God?
new
not a
if
every new execution
is
crucifixion of the
execution of
Is not the
among
Son of
Him who was
exe-
aU
cuted for all repeated in the execution of
the
executed?
"For
I
was
was an hungered, and ye gave me no meat:

and ye gave
thirsty,
me no
"I was a stranger, and ye took
me
and ye clothed
visited
me
not."
and ye knew
me
not in ; naked,
in prison,
not.
people shout about
scoffing at sacred things
it is
compare Christ with
But did not the
evil-doers.
Him
also:
"Away
with this
Was
man, and release unto us Barabbas"?
He
and ye
was upon the headsman's block,
will be said that
It
to
me
and
not; sick,
drink:
also crucified between two thieves,
not
and num-
bered with the transgressors?
What
the cross save a
is
Roman
engine of exe-
same as the French guillotine, the Russian gallows?

Wherefore did He die upon the
cution
the
cross if not to
engine
of
the engine of execution the
does
it
He
Through Death
salvation?
quished Death
ital
make
not
mean
van-
that through cap-
punishment of himself he vanquished capital
punishment
all eternity?
Him,
it
annulled, abolished, destroyed
But
means
if it is
that
He
it
for
necessary to execute after
has died and
is
not yet
WHEN CHRIST SHALL

risen;
means
it
RISE AGAIN
that the cross is
still
111
an engine of
execution, "the accursed wood," and that "accursed
he who
is
Where
upon
is
the
wood."
a gallows rears up, the cross is laid low.
God
In place of the Cross of

Christ
From
the Cross of Anti-
is
the gallows.
this
shadow has
very cross of Anti-Christ a black
stretched over all Russia;
from
it
as
well has the sun of the Resurrection grown dim.

It is
as if the "pealings of resounding bells" are
ringing out: "Christ
answers: ''Verily
not risen!''
is
is
He
not risen!"
radiant!" chants the Church

that rather
Shall
we
it
is
ask,
He
us
God had abjured
as
it
is
seems
seething within
pours out of
it
press out and drink.
it,
is
and
Here
us,
though accursed?
the cup of wrath in the

is
to
Wherefore the blessing of God
Holy Russia become

wine
but
"Easter
ruddy with blood.
not over us, as though
is
and our heart
hand of the Lord; the

and
full of confusion,
for us; even
its
lees
we
shall
Calamity upon calamity,
dis-
grace upon disgrace, Tsushima upon Tsushima.^

It
seems as
we
are
we
^
if
we could
falling.
not fall any lower, but
Wherefore?
Is
it
still
not because
are so used to the sight of blood, to the cry of
An
to the
island in Korea Strait scene of a naval battle disastrous

Russians during the Russo-Japanese War. Trans.
;
112
we no
blood, that
longer see, no longer hear, this
infamy of infamies?
And
we dare
still
talk of "Great Russia," of the
"honest, kind face of our nation,"
why it is
headsman has bent it down
why it is not to be seen.
where
it
That
flesh
has gone,
to the
ought not be proven to man.
ask
to
The
seen.
horrible and repulsive to eat
is
it
not to
dare
be
block
Just so
not be proven that capital punishment
is
that is
human
it
ought
horrible
"murder under sentence is immeasurably more horrible than murder by a cutand repulsive,
that
throat."
A common
murder destroys
the religious life of
the murderer; capital punishment destroys the re-
Executing one,
ligious life of the entire nation.
we
are executing all; killing the
are killing the soul of

this thing to
us?
all.
Who
is
body of
Who,
we
one,
then, has
done
guilty?
Let us not, accusing others, justify ourselves.
There
who
is
none righteous,
write,
all are guilty,
and thou, who readest
this,
we
both
all
are
guilty.
With blood
blood
permeated the air we breathe, vith blood
is
wetted the bread
water
we
drink.
we
is
bought the
eat,
life
with blood
We know,
we
is
live,
I,
with
is
mixed the
see this ; others are

WHEN
CHRIST SHALL RISE AGAIN
113
The seeing are more crim-
blind, or will not see.
inal; the blind are unhappier.
Nor
let
them say
to
us that capital punishment
necessary for the salvation of Russia.

necessary,
let
If
were
it
us say, to crucify Christ anew in
Him?
order to save Russia, would
we
At
day we believe
this day, at least,
we would
at this
which has
"Wherefore does
summon more and more
into
lost its
it
mean-
come anew
one family, and, having called out sadly, de-
truly
then,
it
that
faintly parted people
unknown and a stranger

unknown and a stranger to all?
parts like one

it
crucify
Him.
this holiday
ing?" asks Gogol.

to
not crucify
"Wherefore
is
have people survived
in
some
to all?
But why,
places, to
seems as though they grev brighter on
and who celebrate
Is
whom
this day,
their infancy, that infancy
whose
celestial kiss, like the kiss of eternal spring,
pours
upon the soul?

Wherefore is all this, and to
what end? This: that some, though even a few,
who still sense the breath of spring in this holiday,
.
may
suddenly grow exceedingly pensive, as pensive
as an angel in heaven
is
pensive, and that they
cry out with a heart-rending cry, and fall

the
feet
of
their
brethren,
beseeching
may
down
at
them
to
snatch out this one day, at least, out of the rank of
THE MENACE OF TOE MOB
114
embrace and
clasp a man as a guilty friend embraces a gen-
the others; for one day, at least, to
erous friend
who has forgiven him
all.
Even
to
wish thus, even as though compelling one's self
to
do
seizes
upon a board!
wish alone there
down
to
upon
this, to seize
is
this as
man drowning
God knows, perhaps
for this
a ladder all ready to be thrown
from heaven and a hand stretched out

help us fly up on it."
to us
Yea,
may
it
not be in vain that
the Resurrection the risen
upon
the
day of
Gogol newly, as of yore,
our feet and cries out with a heart-rending
falls at
cry:
"Even
to
wish thus!"
There
is
in
faith
man an
omnipotent
miracles, which
in
will, there is
of itself
is
already a
Let us wish, then, with such a will;
miracle.
let
us believe with such a faith in the miracle of the

Resurrection of Christ, in the miracle of a resurrection of Russia.
Let
Christ,
us
not
implore:
"Annul
it!"
who vanquished death through
annulled execution through execution,

capital
And
but
with
death.
Who
let
us annul
punishment ourselves.
then only shall
we
celebrate the Glorious
Holiday then only will the sun begin to sparkle in

;
WHEN CHRIST SHALL
115
heaven, and the pealings of resounding bells will

ring out: Christ
And
all
Verily
is
risen!
Russia will answer:
is
He
risen!
RISE AGAIN
THE END
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Translated from the Russian

The Menace of the Mob

The Blossoms of Bourgeoisie

Christ Shall Rise Again

the most crucial period of all history

a commonplace; but the fact will, none the less,

bear constant reiteration.

seething and in a turmoil; there

are wars and rumors of wars; the world

Yet, though there are

ing in this wilderness

are true prophets; and

of these are not

merely crying, but also pointing a way out of the

short of astonishing to see

of the warnings in The

scarce a line where a pin

would not prick upon a prophecy

scarce a line that

not pregnant with other fore-

slaughter the like of which has never been before"

which the Great World

but the blossom to the fruit.

Kuprin, in one of his impressionistic sketches,

describes a rural school recitation of the fable of

oppressive, sad, and fearful thought seemed

'stand we, a small

face with a numberless people,

matic, the greatest and the most oppressed on earth.

tongue, .nor faith, nor work, nor art.

laughable to them, as nonsensical and incompre-

them a useless and undecipherable daubing.

God and our creation of a God is

ludicrous and pitiful to them,

reckoning, what shall

the cruel face of

sang the summer through,' and they will answer,

the terrible day of reckoning

as the above gives us a picture of the position of

helpless before the turbu-

lent masses, so every forewarning of Merejkovski's

applies not only to Russia, but to all the world.

Dmitri Sergeivitch Merejkovski was

1865, on one of the small islands near

the youngest son of Sergeii

Ivanovitch Merejkovski, and Varvara Vasili jvna,

three sisters and five

his mother's favorite son; writing

of his mother, he acknowledges that "if there

any good in me,

was very stem and

speaks of his education, he plainly states that

his schooling as to his father.

his brother Constantin proved to be a nihilist,

drove him out of

the house, despite the mother's pleading.

The melancholy pervading the old marshy park

nor must we forget "the holy

legends and folk-tales" of his old nurse

fore thirteen he was full of mysticism, and wrote