we see that he has been influenced by his friend Kirěevskii, and has thus been led to formulate a pedagogy of the will. In contrast with Kirěevskii, Homjakov was energetic, enterprising, and active, and in this respect his doctrine of the will is expressive of his personality. We must not fail to note that in certain passages Homjakov conceives the process of cognition in a thoroughly voluntaristic sense. He speaks in plain terms of "the will to understand," conceiving the process of understanding as an energy, and thus emphasising the activity of the understanding in the sense of Kant and his successors. But in Homjakov's case this voluntarism is altogether futile. The essence of Kant's active understanding lies in this, that the individual understanding begets or creates knowledge independently and subjectively; whereas Homjakov accepts the theological doctrine that the most important truths are revealed, and for him therefore knowledge is mainly a passive belief—the acceptance of the given truths with the belief which is posited as the central energy of cognition, and which (in accordance with the teaching of Schelling and Kirěevskii), is conceived as an inward cognition or contemplation. Homjakov rejects the idea of spontaneous cognition, of the active creation of knowledge; in his view the sole purpose of belief is to accept the objectively given and complete revelation. Consequently Homjakov is opposed not merely to sensualism and materialism, but also to empiricism and above all to rationalism, for he rejects individualism and subjectivism. Revelation furnishes objective knowledge, cognition, which the human being has simply to accept. This acceptance is effected by way of belief, regarded as a special faculty or part-faculty.
Thus Homjakov is in agreement, not with Kant or Fichte, but with Schlegel and the latter's "theocracy of consciousness" and "theocracy of science"; but Schlegel endeavoured to explain this theocracy psychologically, separating the believing soul from the cognising and rebellious spirit. Homjakov's analysis of reason into belief and (critical) understanding has much similarity with this doctrine. The stress that Homjakov lays on the will has as its ultimate significance that man knowingly and voluntarily subordinates his understanding to revelation. Homjakov could just as well have spoken of the "will to believe" as of the "will to understand."
It is thus plain that Homjakov, though perhaps somewhat
