default of religion, but the Russian must always have something to believe in. It may be the railway (Bělinskii); it may be the frog (Bazarov, the nihilist); it may be Byzantinism (Leont'ev); and so on. Leont'ev actually forces himself away from scepticism, positively talks himself into belief.
Russian thought further displays its tendency towards myth in this respect, that down to to-day in Russia far more than in Europe, poets are the true educators of the people. Puškin, Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevskii, Tolstoi, Čehov, Gor'kii—these are the thinkers of Russia. It is the thinker as poet, not the thinker as man of science, to whom Russia listens. Now the poet stands nearer to myth than does the philosopher.
Whilst Russia, therefore, has numerous literary critics, the country knows little of epistemological criticism. And when, in Russia, the problem of criticism is philosophically considered, the consideration is confined, characteristically enough, to the ethical aspects of the matter.[1]
- ↑ In exemplification I may refer to Lavrov, a writer much influenced by Kant, and will quote a passage from the fifteenth of the Historical Letters, which is entitled Criticism and Belief: "Will not the personality, if it be devoted to criticism and nothing else, tend ultimately to forfeit the energy indispensable for action? Criticism presupposes uncertainty, vacillation, the spending of time in weighing arguments pro and con. . . . If a political storm break over society and the leaderless masses become engaged in a wrong path, taking friends for foes and foes for friends, and through irresolution throwing away the advantages of power and enthusiasm, is it right for the first citizen who grasps the situation to renounce the opportunity because he critically refrains from drawing conclusions? . . . All this is perfectly true. And yet criticism is something which man must perforce undertake if he is to have a reasonable claim to be considered a fully developed personality. . . . A citizen who has held so completely aloof from the course of public affairs that he is taken by surprise when a mass movement occurs, is no effective factor in the commonwealth. . . . One who studies the motley play of history is thereby trained for the struggle, when the time comes to struggle. He needs criticism, not when the hour for action approaches, but in readiness for action . . . The severer, the more perspicacious, the colder, and the more comprehensive, his criticism has been, the more powerful and the more ardent will now be his faith. Faith can move mountains, faith and nothing else. . . . It is not enemies that are most dangerous to militant parties; their chief danger arises from those of little faith who stand in their ranks, from those indifferentists who assemble under their banner and often proclaim their watchwords more loudly than the most zealous among the leaders; the people who omit the work of criticism when it is still time to criticise, but who devote themselves to criticism when the time has come for action; those who are irresolute, who stand about doing nothing, or abandon the battle-field, when the actual fighting has begun. . . . Only in a limited sense, therefore, can it be said that there is any opposition between faith and criticism. What a man believes is a thing he no longer subjects to criticism. But this does not mean that what is the object of faith to-day may not have been subjected to criticism yesterday. Indeed, only those beliefs are rational, only those beliefs are enduring, which
