Christianity to him, like all religion and all mythology, is from the ethical standpoint a system of passivity, and he speaks of it as "the apotheosis of death." He writes: "Sub specie æternitatis death has no meaning, but from this outlook there is no meaning in anything else." Thus does Herzen characterise the Christian renunciation of the world. We may assume that when Herzen adduced this argument against Christianity (1853), he was thinking chiefly of the Orthodoxy of his native land. This is manifest in his judgment of Catholicism, which he contrasts with Orthodoxy as capable of further development. His judgment of Orthodoxy and Byzantinism is most unfavourable; they represent for him a lower form of Christianity; the characteristics of Byzantine art are to him a proof of this thesis. In 1843 he spoke of Orthodoxy as in a condition of absolute arrest. Nevertheless in the weakness of Orthodoxy, as in the weakness of Russia in general, Herzen discovers a great negative advantage, and this is that the Russian church has acquired no influence on life, whereas the life of Europe has been permeated by Catholicism. For Herzen, therefore, Catholicism is Christianity par excellence, whilst Orthodoxy is no more than "an evil possibility." Orthodoxy and its lack of influence have so far been good for Russia in that Russia as yet has done nothing, and therefore must and can do all the more in the coming time.
As regards Orthodoxy, Herzen makes an honourable exception in the case of the old believers. He regards them as constituting the most energetic and healthiest element of the nation. We owe to them the preservation of the national ideal, of the folk-spirit, of national tradition, national manners and customs.
When Herzen refers to Čaadaev and his Catholicising tendency, he tells us that Catholicism, when contrasted with Russian Orthodoxy, possesses many excellent qualities which impress the Russian mind favourably, and which therefore have led many others besides Čaadaev towards Catholicism. In Herzen's view, the positive definiteness of Catholicism gives it the advantage over the comparatively negative Orthodoxy.
It is obvious that Herzen must himself be numbered among
mythical fables, faith, falsehood, the Bible, the Apocalypse, mysticism, and illusion; history, as "consecrated irrationalism," is presented as a pathological or phantasmagorial religious condition. Logic and mathematics are contrasted, as anti-social, with this socially unifying condition—and so on.
