And here the point is not one of advantage at all, but of truth. If I believe that the truth is here, here exactly in what I believe, then what do I care if even the whole world should refuse my truth, mock at me and go its way? In this indeed is the strength of a great moral idea, that it unites people into the strongest union, that it is not measured by immediate advantage, but it guides the future of men towards eternal aims and absolute joy. Wherewith will you unite men for the attainment of your civic aims if you have no foundation of a primary, great moral idea?
Moral ideas are all of one kind: all of them are based upon the idea of absolute personal self-perfection in the future, in the ideal, since self-perfection bears in it all things, all aspirations, all yearnings, and from it therefore spring all our civic ideals also. Try to unite people into a civic society with the one sole aim of ‘saving their little lives.’ You will achieve nothing but the moral formula: Chacun your soi et Dieu four tous. By that formula no civic institution will live long, M. Gradovsky.
But I will go further; I intend to surprise you. Know, learned professor, that social and civic ideals, as such, in so far as they are not organically connected with moral ideals, but exist by themselves like a separate half cut off from the whole by your learned knife; in so far, finally, as they may be taken from the outside and successfully transplanted to any other place, in so far as they are a separate ‘institution ‘— sueh ideals, I say, neither have nor have had nor ever could have any existence at all! For what is a social ideal and how shall we understand the word? Surely its essence lies in men’s aspiration to find a formula of political organisation for themselves, a possible organisation whieh shall be faultless and satisfactory to all — is it not so?
But people do not know the formula. Though they have been searching for it through the six thousand years of history, they cannot find it. The ant knows the formula of the ant-hill, the bee of the hive — though they do not know it after the manner of human knowledge, they know it in their own way and desire nothing beyond — bnt man does not know his formula. If this be so, whence could the ideal of civic organisation appear in human society?
Examine the question historically and you will immediately see whence it comes. You will see that is nothing else than the product of the moral self-perfection of the individual units. Thence it takes its rise, and it has been so from time immemorial and it will be so for ever and ever. In the origin of any people or any nation, the moral idea has always preceded the birth of the nation, because it was the moral idea which created the nation.
This moral idea always issued forth from mystical ideas, from the conviction that man is eternal, that he is more than an earth-born animal, that he is united to other worlds and to eternity. Those convictions have always and everywhere been formulated into a religion, into a confession of a new idea, and always so soon as a new religion began, a new nationality was also created immediately.
Consider the Jews and the Moslems. The Jewish nationality was formed only after the law of Moses, though it began with the law of Abraham, and the Moslem nationalities appeared only after the Koran. In order to preserve the spiritual treasures they had received men instantly began to draw towards each other, and only then, jealously and avidly, working ‘beside one another, for one another, and with one another, as you so eloquently express it, only then did men begin to seek how they should organise themselves so as to preserve without loss the treasures they had received, how they should find a civic formula of common life that would really help them to exhibit in its full glory to the whole world the moral treasure whieh they had reeeived.
And observe that so soon as the spiritual ideal — after times and centuries had passed — had begun to be shaken and weakened in a particular nationality, the nationality itself also began to deeline, and at the same time her civic organisation began to fall and all the civic ideals which had formed in her began to be obscured. According to the mould in which a nation’s religion was being cast, the social forms of the people were also engendered and formulated. Therefore civic ideals are always directly and organically connected with moral ideas, and generally the former are created by the latter alone. They never appear of themselves, for when they appear they have one aim alone, the satisfaction of the moral aspirations of the particular people to the exact degree to which those moral aspirations are being formed.
Therefore ‘self-perfection in the spirit of religion ‘in the life of nations is the foundation of everything, sinee self-perfection is the confession of the religion which they have received, and ‘civic ideals ‘never appear nor can they be engendered without the aspiration to self-perfection. You will perhaps reply that you yourself said that ‘personal self-perfection is the beginning of everything ‘and that you severed nothing at all with your knife. But this is the very thing that you severed; you cut the living organism into two halves.
Selfperfection is not only ‘the beginning of everything,’ it is the continuation and the issue as well. It, and it alone, includes, creates and preserves the organism of nationality. For its sake does the civic formula of a nation live, since it was created only in order to preserve it as the treasure primarily received. But when a nationality begins to lose the desire within itself for a common self-perfection of its individuals in the spirit which gave it birth, then all the ‘civic institutions’ gradually perish, because there is nothing left to be preserved. Thus it is quite impossible to say what you say in the following phrase:
‘That is why the social perfection of a people very greatly depends upon the degree of perfection of their political institutions, which educate in man the civic, if not the Christian virtues.’
‘The civic, if not the Christian virtues ‘! Can you not see here the learned knife which divides the indivisible, which cuts the whole and living organism into two separate, dead halves, the moral and the civic? You will say that the most lofty moral idea may be contained in ‘political institutions ‘and the title of ‘citizen,’ that in mature and developed nations the ‘civic idea’ always takes the place of the original religious idea, which degenerates into the former, and to which the civic idea succeeds by right.
Yes, there are many who assert this thing; but we have not yet seen this dream in realisation. When the moral and religious idea of a nationality is spent, there is always revealed a panic and cowardly desire for a union, whose sole purpose is ‘to save men’s bellies ‘— there are no other purposes left for a civic union. At the present moment the French bourgeoisie is actually uniting itself with this purpose 4 of saving their bellies ‘from the fourth estate which is already battering at its doors. But ‘the saving of bellies ‘is the last and most impotent idea of all those which unite mankind. This is already the beginning of the end, the omen of annihilation.
They are uniting themselves and keeping a sharp eye open for the first moment of danger when they will scatter like lightning. And what can save ‘the institution ‘as such, taken by itself? If these are brothers, there will be brotherhood. If there are no brothers, you will not achieve brotherhood by any ‘institution.’ What is the sense of erecting an ‘institution ‘and carving upon it Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite”? You will get no good from an ‘institution ‘and you will be driven, necessarily and infallibly you will be driven, to add to the three consiiiuant words the fourth also: ou la mort. Fratemiie ou la mori: and brother will begin to chop off the head of brother in order to attain brotherhood by means of a 4 civic institution.’ This is only an example, but it is a good one.
You, M. Gradovsky, like Aleko, look for salvation in things and in external phenomena. Grant that we have fools and rogues in Russia. We have only to transplant some institution from Europe and — according to you—’ everything will be saved.’ The mechanical transportation of European forms into Russia (which will be shattered in Europe tomorrow), which are foreign to our people and contrary to the popular will, is we know well the all-important word of Russian Europeanism. And by the way, M. Gradovsky, when you censure our lack of organisation, blaming Russia and pointing to Europe with admiration, you say:
‘And in the meanwhile we cannot get rid of the
