Of great importance finally for Solov'ev was his doctrine that theory depends upon practice. Here, too, Solov'ev did not think after the manner of Kant and his successors (Schopenhauer, for instance), but understood by the realisation of the divine in human nature that which he termed "free theurgy." Our whole empirical reality must be "organised," must be made inwardly "subject" to our mind, just as our mind must itself be made "subject" to the divine. "Free theurgy is the realisation of the divine principle through mankind, its realisation in the whole of empirical and natural reality; it is the realisation through mankind of the divine energies in the real being of nature " We perceive that the ethical and religious imitatio Christi has become the imitatio Dei in the sense of a metaphysical creation, for Solov'ev does not speak merely of the permeation of the human by the divine, but of the like permeation of nature in general. It is manifest, however, that Solov'ev cannot apply the idea of free theurgy consistently and in all seriousness, and he is therefore content to reduce theurgy to the spheres of artistic creation and aesthetics. Manifestly we have here an attempt to outbid the thought of Schelling, and consequently we find ourselves once more in the realm of mythology and mysticism.[1]
§ 145.
TO enable us to appraise Solov'ev's mysticism, it is necessary to undertake an epistemological examination of the general nature of mysticism. This is essential to the understanding of Russian philosophy, and I should perhaps have discussed the question at an earlier stage, before giving an account of the slavophils.
The attention of the mystic is exclusively concentrated upon a single object of cognition, and especially upon God, philosophy becoming theosophy. Amid the multiplicity of things, the mystic endeavours to grasp unity, and, more directly, to grasp the one; even the dualism of the ego and the non-ego is to be transcended. The mystic is a radical monist, at once monotheist and pantheist.
In the religious domain the mystic aspires towards union
- ↑ Solov'ev's free theurgy may be compared with the doctrine of Smetana, the Schellingian, who believed that in days to come religion would be replaced by a loving art which would purify and transform nature.
