live who regarded humanity as a family. To practise community is to socialise the will. It is to act not for self alone, but also for other as for self. This is done in the family instinctively. When the same procedure is moralised, it is done voluntarily and universally. For the agent, the rest of men constitute a brotherhood, and the boundaries of the family are wide as humanity" (p. 120).
James Seth.
University of Edinburgh.
This work is not as intimately confessional in tone as Tolstoy's later writings, nor is it in any sense homiletic; but, on the other hand, it is distinctly not a cold, dispassionate 'System der Ethik,' excogitated by the pure intellect. It is a plan and a program of life, recording a man's struggle with the problems of moral value. The record is the more impressive to those who bear in mind the author's brave stand in the face of Russian actualities. Vladimir Solovyof or Soloviev (1853-1900) is one of the most important philosophers of Russia. From the days following the assassination of Alexander II, when his counsel of clemency, addressed to the new emperor, cost him his Petersburg professorship, he stood high in the spiritual life of his people as a champion of persistent, honest thinking and high moral and religious ideals.
Solovyof's supreme theoretic aim is the attainment of a synthesis of science, philosophy and religion. Practically, he advocated the reconciliation of Russia with Rome, to the end of realizing the Church Catholic Universal and the conscious unity of mankind in religion. In his practical efforts, he was of course disappointed; but his philosophy of life is none the less deserving of study by all who would understand the thought and ideals of modern Russia.
The natural root of human morality Solovyof finds in the sense of shame, which, according to him, does not admit of any Darwinistic explanation. The spirit of man distinguishes itself from the flesh, battles with it, and in winning the mastery over it, attains spiritual self-preservation, the principle of all true asceticism (p. 57).
The second primary datum of morality is the feeling of pity; its true essence is the recognition of the inherent worth of others. Pity or compassion is thus truth and justice; pitilessness is egoism, fantastic and unreal; for to imagine oneself the exclusive center of the universe is absurd.
Piety or reverence, the third primary datum of morality, expresses man's due relation to the superhuman principle, and is the natural basis of all religion, the germ of which Solovyof finds in ancestor-worship. These three fundamental feelings exhaust the sphere of man's possible moral relations: "Mastery over the material senses, solidarity with other living beings, and inward voluntary submission to the superhuman principle" (p. 35). They express the objective norm of right, and are at the basis of all virtue. Virtue is, fundamentally, man's right relation to everything.
- ↑ Translated by Nathalie A. Duddington, with a Note by Stephen Graham.
