aesthetics of Pisarev and that writer's associates, whilst he stigmatises Pisarev's attitude towards PuSkin as pure vandalism. Mihailovskii is a sharp critic of realism, condemning the whole trend, but Pisarev and Blagosvětlov in especial, for this literature, he says, had no thought for the folk, but only for a sect. Mihailovskii speaks with much sympathy of the works written by his friends Eliseev and Šelgunov.
The shafts of Mihailovskii's criticism were directed against European authorities as well as against those of Russia, and in this respect he is differentiated from Černyševskii, Herzen, and Bělinskii. Consider, for example, his writings on Darwin and Darwin's successors, on Spencer, Voltaire, Renan, Stirner, Nietzsche, Hartmann, Zola, and Ibsen. Mihailovskii uses this means of attack against many of the dominant views in his own camp, for the foes of his own household seem to him more dangerous than declared opponents.
In connection with his analysis of the contemporary chaos, and in especial in his analysis of the decadent movement, Mihailovskii had a controversy with Merežkovskii and with the critic Volynskii.
I must conclude these brief and incomplete observations. It has not been my aim to expound Mihailovskii's views on aesthetics, but merely to show his spiritual associations ("Tell me thy company, and I will tell thee what thou art").
Our definitive judgment of Mihailovskii cannot but be favourable. His uniformity, consistency, and independence were af notable significance to Russia. He was not a genius, nor even a brilliant writer, but his methodical foresight, his endeavour to attain clearness and precision, made his works what they still are, a notable school of sociological and political culture. The subjective method (a bad name for an excellent thing) corrected the one-sided drift of the positivists towards natural science and materialism, and supplemented realism by the study of psychology and of mental activities.
Delight in psychological analysis led Mihailovskii to bring his philosophy into harmony with the "psychologism" of the Russian novelists, but the outcome of this psychologism was to lead Mihailovskii to reduce the theory of cognition to the sphere of psychology. The consequence was that, not in metaphysical questions merely, but likewise in epistemological questions, Mihailovskii’s thought was affected by a vagueness which was dangerous to the success of his aspirations
