attention was exclusively concentrated on metaphysical materialism and positivism. He failed to discern the great political and social movement of the masses, and failed to grasp its ethical significance. From the liberals, too, he might well be repelled by their religious indifferentism; but there were some liberals of religious inclinations, and notably Solov'ev's own opponents, Čičerin and Kavelin. By his conception of progress, Solov'ev was compelled to regard the modern civilisation of Europe secularised by the reformation, as an advance upon the religious society of former days. It is true that Voltaire, as adversary of the old (and ununified) church, was necessarily uncongenial to him, but he could not fail to recognise the Christian in the Frenchman's humanitarian efforts.
It seems to me that his attitude towards Voltaire was characteristic of Solov'ev's vacillations between rationalism and mysticism.
In Russia, Solov'ev's espousal of the cause of religion was an important and noteworthy act, seeing that the new and non-academic philosophy had been antireligious. Herzen, Bělinskii, Bakunin, Černyševskii, Dobroljubov, Pisarev, Mihailovskii, Lavrov, the Marxists, and most of the narodniki, had been disciples of Feuerbach and Comte. Solov'ev, on the other hand, though at the outset he had shared their antireligious philosophy, soon took the field as an opponent of their basic theories, alike in the theoretical and in the practical field. Faith which Granovskii had tacitly cherished, which half ashamedly he had defended against Herzen, was championed by Solov'ev with the armoury of a thoroughly cultivated philosophical mind.
Starting from the extant ecclesiastical theology, Solov'ev attempted to reconstitute that theology on philosophical lines, but he endeavoured more than he was himself willing to admit to preserve the foundations of the Russian church, to preserve its dogma, its ritual, and its mysticism. If the majority of Solov'ev's theological adversaries failed to note this clearly, it was because they themselves adhered to Solov'ev's views upon church history and church politics. In this connection it was not difficult to demonstrate Solov'ev's errors. Guettée, for instance, was right in declaring that Solov'ev's historical outlook on the filioque controversy was unsound. As I have mentioned Guettée, it may be interesting to recall that this French priest and ecclesiastical historian, was (just like Baader, the Catholic philosopher, who was influenced by Solov'ev)
