ness without being able to show how the opposition could be transcended. Voltaire could not be positive; he was merely negative; his philosophy and Goethe's philosophy issued from a moribund social order.
The connection of the Faust problem and the suicide problem in Mihailovskii's thought has now been made clear. Faust's questions cannot be answered by metaphysics; his ethics can furnish no satisfaction for his aspirations. Faust, like the Brahman, can undermine the old woman's faith, but he has no power to make either himself or his associates happy In the moribund epoch, men die by their own hands.
The age is inharmonious; all our social institutions are inharmonious; individual human beings are inharmonious Epoch, society, and men, are irreligious—thus runs Mihailovskii's briefest formulation, for to him irreligion is the disharmony of reason and sentiment, of science and life, of philosophy and ethics. Upon this disharmony depends the modern malady of the will, the incapacity for living.
Faust is the representative of civilisation. The majority of German civilised beings are to some extent Fausts, and this is why Mihailovskii considers Faust the greatest of Goethe's works. Not until the end of his life does Faust succeed in doing that which every village lad learns to do from the very beginning—useful work. Mihailovskii asks which is the higher, Faust or the village lad. In accordance with his theory of progress, Mihailovskii replies that, whilst Faust has attained a higher stage of evolution, the village lad stands higher as type.
§ 130.
FROM 1901 onwards Mihailovskii wrote his literary reminiscences in a series of essays entitled Literature and Life. These were subsequently collected in book form as Literary Reminiscences and the Present Chaos. Two additional volumes of studies, reprinted from Mihailovskii's review after his death, pursue the same aim.
When Mihailovskii speaks of "the present" he thinks primarily of the nineties and of the opening years of the new century, but he is also concerned with the eighties, with the whole period since the days of Nicholas, and one may even say with the epoch since the forties, when the Russians first clearly recognised the consequences of the great revolution.
