critic as well as poet, moral
philosopher, and theologian, is one of the most interesting figures in
Russian literature. What is most remarkable about him, and what makes
him stand out, a radiant exception in Russian criticism, is his
absolute independence. He belonged to no camp; he was a slave to no
party cry; utterly unselfish, his sole aim was to seek after the truth
for the sake of truth, and to proclaim it. In an age of positivism, he
was a believing Christian, and the dream of his life was a union of
the Eastern and Western Churches. He deals with this idea in a book
which he wrote in French and published in Paris: _L'Eglise Russe et
l'Eglise Universelle_. He admired the older Slavophiles, but he
severely attacked the Nationalists, such as Katkov. His range of
subjects was great, and his style was brilliant; like many great
thinkers, he was far ahead of his time, and in his criticism of the
_Intelligentsia_ anticipated some tendencies, which have become
visible since the revolution of 1905. He reminds one at times of Mr.
A. J. Balfour, and even of Mr. G. K. Chesterton, with whose
"orthodoxy" he would have much sympathy; and he deals with questions
such as Woman's Suffrage in a way which exactly fits the present day.
He never became a Catholic, holding that the Eastern Church _qua_
Church had never been cut off from the West, and that only one
definite schism had been condemned; but he believed in the necessity
of a universal Church. He was the first intellectual Russian to point
out to a generation which took atheism as a matter of course that they
were possibly inferior instead of superior to religion. He believed in
Russia; he had nothing against the Slavophile theory that Russia had a
divine mission; only he wished to see that mission divinely performed.
He believed in the East of Christ, and not in that of Xerxes. He died
in 1900, before he had finished his _Magnum Opus_, a work on moral
philosophy written on a religious basis. He preached self-effacement;
pity towards one's fellow men; and reverence towards the supernatural.
His whole work is a defence of moral principles, written with the soul
of a poet, the knowledge of a scholar, and the brilliance of a
dialectician. It is only lately that his books have gained the
appreciation which they deserve; they are certainly more in harmony
with the present generation than with that of the sixties and the
seventies. His _Three Conversations_ has been translated int