and by the discussion which followed Turgenev's analysis of nihilism in Fathers and Children, a novel published in 1861.
In 1867 A. A. Serno-Solov'evič, belonging to that young generation which had already turned away from Herzen, brother of N. A. Serno-Solov'evič who was banished to Siberia and killed on the way to the place of exile, published a caustic pamphlet against Herzen.[1] The pamphlet was sent by Herzen to his friend Bakunin as corpus delicti for an attack upon nihilism. Bakunin rejoined with a defence. Thereupon, in 1869, Herzen finally accommodated himself to the Bazarov type.
Herzen sees in nihilism "a sublime manifestation of Russian development"; he interprets nihilism in the sense of his positivist "disillusionment"; but he attains in the end to very different conclusions, for he modifies the idea of disillusionment.
"Nihilism," he writes, "is logic without restriction, science without dogmas, the unconditional acceptance of experience, the unresisting acceptance of consequences, whatever their kind, if these are the fruit of observation and are dictated by the reason. Nihilism does not reduce something to nothing, but discerns that nothing was taken for something under the influence of an optical illusion, and that every certainty, however much it be opposed by fantastic imaginings, is healthier than these imaginings, and must be accepted in their place." Nihilism, protests Herzen, does not transform facts and ideas into nothing; it is not barren scepticism, nor yet arrogant and despairing passivity (for in this sense Turgenev and his favourite Schopenhauer might be regarded as "the greatest of nihilists"); it is the realistic criticism of Old Russia, such as we find in Gogol's Dead Souls and in the works of Bělinskii. "But nihilism has not brought new foundations or new principles."
Herzen refuses to accept Pisarev's interpretation of Bazarov. He complains that Bazarov leaves nothing in repose, and contemplates everything in Russia from above, complaining in especial that Bazarov failed to understand the decabrists and their significance.
"Science would bring salvation to Bazarov; he would
- ↑ Russian Affairs, a Reply to Herzen's article, Order Reigns, in No. 233 of "Kolokol." A German translation of this pamphlet was issued by L. Borkheim in 1871.
