§ 142.
TO know Solov'ev thoroughly we must examine his theosophy, though we shall content ourselves with a few samples. What is meant by theosophy? The desire to know, the belief that we really do know precisely, what God is, what he has made and is making.
Solov'ev finds in German philosophy the last word of philosophic knowledge as hitherto attainable. Above all it is the latest German philosophical system, that of Eduard von Hartmann, which has attracted wide attention in Russia no less than elsewhere, that discloses to Solov'ev the mission of a new and higher philosophy. From Hartmann, Solov'ev learns, first of all, that epistemologically neither rationalism nor empiricism has proved competent to furnish satisfactory and trustworthy knowledge; metaphysically, Hartmann points the way to a concrete spiritual monism; in the ethical field, finally, we gain the knowledge that our ultimate aim can be attained and our true satisfaction secured solely in the unification of all being and through the development of the world-all, to which the individual must surrender himself.
Solov'ev is unable to follow Hartmann all the way, but he considers that Hartmann is on the right track, if only because the German sets out from Schelling's positive philosophy, a synthesis of Hegel and Schopenhauer, of rationalism and volutarism. Schelling had been commended to Solov'ev by his first Russian teachers, the slavophils.
Thus in German philosophy from Schelling to Hartmann does Solev'ev discover intimations of Christian philosophy as a rationalistic and scientific interpretation of Christian revelation. Solov'ev actually believes that he is able to secure a sound understanding of Christian revelation by a synthesis of German rationalism and French positivism. Comte's philosophy of history, positivist fetichism, and Hartmann's philosophy of the world process, lead him to the gnostics and neoplatonists, and to their theosophy and their theogony.
Solov'ev believes that from this material and imperfect world we can press forward to true, absolute being. We have thus discovered the inclined plane connecting the absolute with the finite, and the inmost nature of the world is comprehended and explained.
The absolute, for Solov'ev, is the all-in-one being, is God,
