It is this which gives Russian philosophy its peculiar stamp; this is why that philosophy is preeminently philosophy of history and philosophy of religion. The questions continually agitating the Russian mind are two: Whither? and What is to be done?
I do not believe that the critical Russian thinker will be content to-day with the answers that have been suggested by Russian philosophers of history. For example, when Homjakov, speaking of railways and of many other things, says that all the Russians need do is to harvest the ripe fruits of the labour of other lands, whilst the rule may be good enough from a purely technological outlook, it is none the less a dangerous one to follow. The thought and the energy of those who depend much on others are apt to become enfeebled. The danger is exemplified when Homjakov takes satisfaction to himself because the Russian has not had to squander his forces in experimental work, and has not exhausted his imaginative faculties through arduous toil. We must challenge the suggestions made by Čaadaev and others that the backwardness of Russia has been her salvation.
Bělinskii sometimes declared that Russia often found it necessary to do in five years what the west had taken fifty years to accomplish. The truth of the assertion is questionable; and in so far as it is true, it merely indicates a lack of steadfastness and diligence. Too often and too urgently did the slavophils call attention to the lukewarmness of westernism and liberalism, to the lukewarmness of what Ivan Aksakov spoke of as "pothouse civilisation." It is precisely in Russia that we note a disastrous lukewarmness, a tendency to excessive reliance upon the mental work done in Europe. Detailed analysis would display the existence of several varieties of this trouble. In his biography of Granovskii, the orientalist V. V. Grigor'ev characterised one of these varieties by saying that it was a tendency "to grasp at the summits." (About this work by Grigor'ev there was much ado in its day. Kavelin took up the cudgels on behalf of Granovskii.)
Nor will it do to follow Herzen and others in the belief that it is possible for Russia to skip certain stages of historical development, to pass without transition from a low stage to a much higher one. Against the original sin of passivity it is continually necessary to guard by the encouragement of activity, steadfastness and diligence.
