is not entirely deserved. He was acquainted with European thinkers; he lived in Europe and derived his culture from Europe; but he adopted only what was congenial to him, and from the diverse elements that have been enumerated he constructed a whole that was expressive of his own individuality. He displayed the energy of organic synthesis.
Some of the European cultural elements by which he was influenced were operative in Russian elaborations. We trace in his mind the influence of Bělinskii, Homjakov, Kirěevskii, Čaadaev, Bakunin, and above all Černyševskii; he read Puškin and Gogol as well as Goethe and Byron.
There is no occasion to undertake a detailed exposition of the points in which Herzen agrees with his predecessors, teachers, and friends, or to trace the derivation of his views from theirs. Nor need I consider further how far Herzen modified his opinions in the year 1848. A close study will convince us that he carried Feuerbach's thought to its logical conclusion, moving in the direction of Stirner; but nevertheless Herzen's mood differed greatly from Stirner's. For Herzen, positivist disillusionment destroyed, not the religious illusion alone, but also the political illusion, the illusion of revolution.[1]
Herzen's philosophy of religion and philosophy of history are of interest to us. First of all it must be pointed out that Herzen, like Bělinskii (and like Feuerbach, Comte, and Hume), confused religion with mythology. Moreover, Herzen failed to distinguish clearly between religion and the church, between religion and ecclesiastical religion.[2]
- ↑ A closer comparison between Herzen and Feuerbach is desirable, at least as concerns the attitude of the two thinkers towards the revolution of 1848. Feuerhach analysed the personalities of the leading actors of this year, and considered that they failed to rise to the level of his philosophical demands. "In thought he deferred the revolution to later times, abandoning it as far as his own was concerned." (Grün, Feuerbach, vol i. p. 331). Feuerbach himself says (Grün, vol. ii. p. 329), that whereas emotionally he is an unconditional republican, intellectually his republican views are subject to limitations; he is for the republic only when time and place are favourable, when men in general have attained a standpoint suitable to this form of political constitution. Herzen's estimate of America is to be found in Feuerbach and so is his valuation of monarchy. Herzen's rejection of atheism as negation, shortly to be discussed in the text, is pure Feuerbach.
- ↑ I append examples of his confusion of religion with myth. Herzen employs the most diversified words to express this view. Frequently he speaks of "religious mania." In his Aphorismata, compiled in 1867 for the circle of his philosophic friends (Schiff, Vogt. etc.), we are told that history is "historical nationalism"; religion is variously jumbled together with the ideas of fantasy,
