Readings on Divine Humanity

Contents Reading first Reading second Reading third Reading fourth Reading fifth Reading sixth Reading seventh Reading eight Reading ninth Reading tenth Reading eleventh and twelfth I will talk about the truths of positive religion - about subjects that are very distant and alien to modern consciousness and the interests of modern civilization. The interests of modern civilization are those that did not exist yesterday and will not exist tomorrow. It is permissible to prefer what is equally important at all times. However, I will not argue with those who currently have a negative attitude towards the religious principle, I will not argue with modern opponents of religion - because they are right. I say that those who reject religion at the present time are right, because the present state of religion itself is one of denial, because religion is not really what it should be. Religion, speaking generally and abstractly, is the connection between man and the world with the unconditional beginning and center of everything that exists. It is obvious that if we recognize the reality of such an unconditional principle, then all interests, the entire content of human life and consciousness must be determined by it, everything essential in what a person does, learns and produces must depend on it and relate to it. If we assume an unconditional focus, then all points of the circle of life must be connected to it by equal rays. Only then does unity, integrity and harmony appear in the life and consciousness of a person, only then do all his deeds and sufferings in big and small life turn from aimless and meaningless phenomena into reasonable, internally necessary events. It is absolutely certain that such a comprehensive, central significance must belong to the religious principle, if it is to be recognized at all, and it is equally certain that in reality for modern civilized humanity, even for those among it who recognize the religious principle, religion does not have this comprehensive and central significance. Instead of being everything in everything, it hides in a very small and very distant corner of our inner world, one of many different interests dividing our attention. Modern religion is a very pitiful thing - strictly speaking, there is no religion at all as a dominant principle, as a center of spiritual gravity, but instead there is so-called religiosity as a personal mood, personal taste: some have this taste, others do not, just as some love music, others do not. In the absence of an unconditional focus, we have as many relative, temporary centers of life and consciousness as we have different needs and interests, tastes and drives, opinions and views. It would be unnecessary to dwell on the mental and moral discord and anarchy that currently prevail not only in society, but in the head and heart of every individual person - this is a matter all too familiar to everyone who has ever looked into himself and around himself. This anarchy, this discord is an undoubted, obvious fact; but the equally undoubted and obvious fact is that humanity cannot stop there, that in any case it is looking for a unifying and connecting principle. We see, in fact, that modern Western civilization, which rejected the religious principle as being subjective and powerless in its given form, and this civilization, however, strives outside the religious sphere to find some connecting principles for life and consciousness, strives to replace the rejected gods with something. Although, according to the prevailing belief, all the ends and beginnings of human existence are reduced to present reality, to this natural being, and our whole life should be closed “in a close circle of sublunary impressions,” however, even in this close circle, modern civilization is striving to find a unifying and organizing principle for humanity. This desire to organize humanity outside the unconditional religious sphere, to establish itself and settle down in the field of temporary, final interests, this desire characterizes the entire modern civilization. This desire is most consistently, with the greatest consciousness and completeness manifested in two modern constructions, one of which - I mean socialism - relates primarily to the practical interests of social life, the other - I mean positivism - refers to the theoretical field of scientific knowledge. Both socialism and positivism do not have a direct relationship to religion, either negative or positive: they only want to occupy the empty place left by religion in the life and knowledge of modern civilized humanity. It is from this point of view that they should be assessed. And, first of all, I will not refute socialism. Usually he is refuted by those who are afraid of his truth. But we adhere to principles for which socialism is not terrible. So we can speak freely about the truth of socialism. And first of all, it is justified historically as a necessary consequence, as the last word of the Western historical development that preceded it. The French Revolution, with which the essential character of Western civilization was clearly outlined as a non-religious civilization, as an attempt to build the edifice of universal culture, to organize humanity on purely worldly, external principles, the French Revolution, I say, proclaimed human rights instead of the former divine law as the basis of the social order. These human rights boil down to two main ones: freedom and equality, which must be reconciled in brotherhood 1 . The Great Revolution proclaimed freedom, equality and fraternity. She proclaimed it, but did not implement it: these three words remained empty words. Socialism is an attempt to truly realize these three principles. The revolution established civil liberty. But given the existence of this social inequality, liberation from one ruling class means subordination to another. The power of the monarchy and feudal lords is only being replaced by the power of capital and the bourgeoisie. Freedom alone does not give anything to the popular majority if there is no equality. The revolution proclaimed this last thing too. But in our world, based on struggle, on unlimited personal competition, equality of rights means nothing without equality of power. The principle of equality, equality of rights turned out to be valid only for those who had power at a given historical moment. But historical power passes from one hand to another, and just as the property class, the bourgeoisie, took advantage of the principle of equality for its own benefit, because at a given historical moment this class had power behind it, so the propertyless class, the proletariat, naturally strives to use the same principle of equality in its favor as soon as power passes into its hands. The social order must rest on some positive foundation. This foundation either has an unconditional, supernatural and superhuman character, or it belongs to the conditional sphere of a given human nature: society rests either on the will of God, or on the will of man, on the will of the people. This dilemma cannot be objected to by the fact that the social system can be determined by the strength of the state power of the government, for this state power itself, the government itself, rests on something: either on the will of God, or on the will of the people. The first part of the dilemma was rejected by Western civilization: the French Revolution, having decisively done away with traditional principles, decisively established the democratic principle according to which the social system is based on the will of the people. The will of the people, from this point of view, is nothing more than the will of the aggregate of individuals who make up the people. In fact, the great revolution began with the proclamation that man as such has unconditional rights, has them by nature, by virtue of his human dignity; and since universal human dignity, which constitutes the source of all rights, equally belongs to all persons, then all persons are necessarily equal in rights. Each of these persons in itself has legislative power, but as a result, legislative power belongs to the majority of these persons, the majority of the people. If the will of the popular majority is the basis and the only basis of all rights and every law, and if the will of the popular majority naturally takes as its object the welfare of this majority, then this welfare is the highest right and law. And if one class, if a minority of the people actually enjoys greater material well-being than the majority, then from this point of view this is abuse and untruth. This is the current state of affairs. The revolution, which established democracy in principle, has in fact produced so far only plutocracy. The people govern themselves only de jure, de facto 2 and the supreme power belongs to an insignificant part of it - the rich bourgeoisie, the capitalists. Since plutocracy, by its nature, is generally accessible to everyone, it is the kingdom of free competition, or competition. But this freedom and equality appear for the majority only as an abstract possibility. The existence of hereditary property and its concentration in a few hands makes the bourgeoisie a separate privileged class, and the vast majority of the working people, deprived of any property, with all their abstract freedom and equality, in reality turns into an enslaved class of proletarians, in which equality is the equality of poverty, and freedom very often appears as the freedom to die of hunger. But the existence of a permanent proletariat, which is a characteristic feature of modern Western civilization, is precisely where it is devoid of any justification. For if the old order was based on certain absolute principles, then the modern plutocracy can refer in its favor only to the force of fact, to historical conditions. But these conditions are changing; Ancient slavery was also based on historical conditions, which did not prevent it from disappearing. If we talk about justice, is it not fair that wealth belongs to those who produce it, that is, to the workers? Of course, capital, that is, the result of previous labor, is just as necessary for the production of wealth as real labor, but no one has ever proven the need for their exclusive separation, that is, that some persons should be only capitalists, and others only workers. Thus, the desire of socialism for equality of material well-being, the desire to transfer this material well-being from the hands of the minority to the hands of the popular majority, is completely natural and legitimate from the point of view of those principles that were proclaimed by the French Revolution and formed the basis of all modern civilization. Socialism appears as a force that is historically justified and to which the near future undoubtedly belongs in the West. But he does not want to be only a historical force, to have only conditional justification, he wants to be the highest moral force, has a claim to the implementation of unconditional truth in the field of social relations. But here socialism inevitably, fatally comes into conflict with itself, and its inconsistency becomes obvious. He wants to realize the truth in society - what does this truth consist of? Again, in the uniformity of material well-being. One of two things: either material well-being is a goal in itself - in this case, since the desire for material well-being is only a natural fact of human nature, then the affirmation of this desire as a principle cannot have any moral significance. Socialism, at its first appearance, proclaimed the restoration of the rights of matter; matter really has its own rights, and the desire to realize these rights is very natural, but this is only one of the natural aspirations of man, and, of course, not the best: the meaning of unconditional truth obviously cannot be here. Proclaiming the restoration of the rights of matter as a moral principle is the same as proclaiming the restoration of the rights of egoism, as was done by one founder of a socio-religious sect in America, who replaced the ten Mosaic commandments with his own twelve, of which the first says: “love yourself” - a completely legal requirement, but, in any case, unnecessary. Or material well-being in itself is not the goal for socialism, but the goal is only justice in the distribution of this wealth. Justice, in the moral sense, is a certain self-restraint of one’s claims in favor of the rights of others; justice, therefore, is a certain sacrifice, self-denial, and the more self-sacrifice, the more self-negation, the better in a moral sense. In this case, taking a moral point of view, it is impossible to attach any moral significance on the part of the working class to the demand for an equal distribution of material well-being, since here justice - if there is justice here - is for this class identical with its benefits - the demand is therefore self-interested and therefore cannot have moral significance. Socialism sometimes claims to implement Christian morality. On this occasion, someone made a well-known joke that between Christianity and socialism in this respect there is only this small difference that Christianity requires you to give your own, and socialism requires you to take someone else’s. But even if we assume that the demand for economic equality on the part of the propertyless class is a demand only for its own, which rightfully belongs to it, then even in this case this demand cannot have moral significance in a positive sense, because taking what is yours is only a right, and not a merit. In its demands, even if we recognize them as fair, the working class obviously takes a legal, and not a moral, point of view. But if socialism cannot have moral significance as the self-interested aspiration of the propertyless class, then this, of course, does not prevent it from presenting moral character as a demand for social truth, regardless of those who make this demand. And indeed, socialism, in any case, is right in rebelling against existing social untruths - but where is the root of this untruth? It is obvious that the social system is based on the egoism of individuals, where their competition, their struggle, enmity and all social evil come from. If the root of social untruth is egoism, then social truth must be based on the opposite, that is, on the principle of self-denial or love. In order to realize the truth, each individual person making up society must put a limit to his exclusive self-affirmation, take the point of view of self-denial, renounce his exclusive will, sacrifice it. But in favor of whom? For whom, from a moral point of view, should one sacrifice one's will? Is it in favor of other individuals, each of whom stands on egoism, on self-affirmation, or in favor of everyone together? But, firstly, it is impossible to sacrifice your will, your self-affirmation for the benefit of everyone, because everyone, as a collection of individuals, does not and cannot constitute the real goal of human activity, they are not given as an actual real object, which is always only some, and not all; secondly, such self-sacrifice would be unfair, because, denying egoism in oneself, it would be unfair to affirm it in others, to support other people’s egoism. So, the realization of truth or the moral principle is possible only in relation to that which, by its very nature, is truth. The moral limit of egoism in a given person may not be the egoism of others, not their self-affirming will, but only that which in itself cannot be exclusive and selfish, which in itself, by its nature, is true. Only then can the will of everyone be a moral law for me, when all of them themselves realize the truth, they themselves participate in the unconditional moral principle. Consequently, love and self-sacrifice in relation to people are possible only when an unconditional principle standing above people is realized in them, in relation to which everyone equally represents untruth and everyone must equally renounce this untruth. Otherwise, if such an unconditional moral principle is not recognized, if others all appear only as conditional beings representing a certain natural force, then submission to them will only be violence on their part. Any power that does not represent the unconditional principle of truth, all such power is violence, and submission to it can only be forced 3. The free subordination of everyone to everyone, obviously, is possible only when all of these are themselves subordinated to an unconditional moral principle, in relation to which they are equal to each other, just as all finite quantities are equal in relation to infinity. By nature, people are unequal to each other, since they have unequal strengths, but as a result of the inequality of strengths, they necessarily find themselves in forced submission to each other, therefore, by nature they are not free; finally, by nature people are alien and hostile to each other; natural humanity in no way represents brotherhood. If, therefore, the realization of truth is impossible on the basis of given natural conditions - in the kingdom of nature, then it is possible only in the kingdom of grace, that is, on the basis of the moral principle as unconditional or divine. Thus, socialism, with its demand for social truth and the impossibility of realizing it on finite natural grounds, logically leads to the recognition of the need for an unconditional principle in life, that is, to the recognition of religion. In the field of knowledge, positivism leads to the same conclusion. Against traditional theology, the so-called enlightenment of the 18th century proclaimed the rights of human reason. But reason is only a means, a tool or a medium for knowledge, and not its content. Reason gives the ideal form, but the content of reason or rational knowledge is reality, and moreover, since supernatural, metaphysical reality is rejected by rational enlightenment, only the conditional reality of these natural phenomena remains. Truth is a given fact, something that happens or happens. This is the general principle of positivism. One cannot help but see in it a legitimate desire to realize the truth, to realize it in the extreme limits of reality, to show it as a visible, tactile fact; just as in socialism, one cannot deny the legitimate desire to realize the moral principle, to carry it into the extreme limits of life, into the sphere of material economic relations. But just as in order for truth to be realized by man in the lower sphere of life, it must first exist on its own independent of man, in the same way truth, before becoming a fact for man, must have its own independent reality. In fact, as a separate given will, it does not represent in itself any good, any truth, but becomes righteous only through a normal relationship or agreement with the general will - and universal not in the sense of a mechanical union of the will of many or all, but in the sense of a will by its nature that is universal, that is, the will of Him who is everything, the will of God; in the same way, an individual fact, an individual phenomenon obviously does not represent truth in itself, in its individuality, but is recognized as true only in a normal relation, in a logical connection or agreement with everything or with the reality of everything - and, moreover, everything, again, not in a mechanical sense, not in the sense of the totality of all phenomena or facts, for, firstly, such a totality cannot exist in our knowledge, since the number of facts or phenomena is inexhaustible and, therefore, cannot represent a certain sum, and secondly, if even if such a totality existed, it would still not constitute truth in itself, because if each individual fact is not truth, then, obviously, from the combination of all such facts that are not truth, truth cannot be obtained (just as many zeros will not produce one and many scoundrels will not make one righteous person); therefore, the reality of everything, the universal or total reality, is the reality of Him who is everything—the reality of God. But this unconditional reality is accessible in itself only to direct perception, internal revelation, that is, it constitutes the subject of religious knowledge. So, both socialism and positivism, if their principles are consistently developed, lead to the requirement of a religious principle in life and knowledge. Religion is the reunification of man and the world with an unconditional and complete beginning. This principle, as a whole or all-encompassing principle, does not exclude anything, and therefore true reunification with it, true religion cannot exclude, or suppress, or forcibly subjugate any element, any living force in man and his world. Reunification, or religion, consists in bringing all the elements of human existence, all the particular principles and forces of humanity into the correct relationship to the unconditional central principle, and through it and in it to the correct, consistent relationship between them. Since the unconditional principle, in its essence, does not allow exclusivity and violence, this reunification of the particular aspects of life and individual forces with the whole principle and among themselves must be unconditionally free; moreover, all these principles and forces, each within its own limits, within the limits of its purpose or its idea, have an equal right to existence and development. But since they are all united into one common unconditional whole, to which they all relate as different but equally necessary elements, they represent complete solidarity or brotherhood among themselves. Thus, from this side, the religious principle appears as the only real implementation of freedom, equality and fraternity. I said that according to the meaning of the religious idea, the reunification of individual beings and private principles and forces with the unconditional principle must be free; this means that these individual beings and these private principles must, on their own or of their own free will, come to reunification and unconditional agreement, and must themselves renounce their exclusivity, their self-affirmation or egoism. The path to salvation, to the realization of true equality, true freedom and fraternity, lies through self-denial. But for self-negation, preliminary self-affirmation is necessary: ​​in order to renounce one’s exclusive will, one must first have it; in order for particular principles and forces to freely reunite with the unconditional principle, they must first separate from it, must stand their ground, strive for exclusive dominance and unconditional significance, for only real experience, a known contradiction, the experienced fundamental inconsistency of this self-affirmation can lead to a free renunciation of it and to a conscious and free demand for reunification with the unconditional principle. This shows the great meaning of negative Western development, the great purpose of Western civilization. It represents the complete and consistent falling away of human natural forces from the divine principle, their exclusive self-affirmation, the desire to found the edifice of universal culture on themselves. Through the inconsistency and fatal failure of this aspiration, self-denial occurs, and self-denial leads to a free reunification with the divine principle. A radical turn, a great crisis in the consciousness of Western humanity has already begun. A clear expression of it is the development and success of pessimistic views, according to which existing reality is evil, deception and suffering, and the source of this reality and, consequently, this evil, deception and suffering lies in the self-affirming will, in the will of life, and therefore salvation is in the negation of this will, in self-denial. This pessimistic view, this turn to self-denial is so far only in theory, in a philosophical system, but one can confidently foresee that soon - precisely when in the West the social revolution achieves victory and, having achieved victory, sees the futility of this victory, sees its own inconsistency, the impossibility of founding a consistent and correct social system, of realizing the truth on the basis of a conditional transitory existence, when Western humanity is convinced by the very fact, the very historical reality that that the self-affirmation of the will, no matter how it manifests itself, is the source of evil and suffering - then pessimism, a turn to self-denial, will move from theory to life, then Western humanity will be ready to accept the religious principle, the positive revelation of true religion. But, according to the law of division of historical labor, the same cultural type, the same people cannot realize two world ideas, do two historical deeds, and if Western civilization had as its task, its world purpose, to carry out a negative transition from the religious past to the religious future, then another historical force was destined to initiate this very religious future. I said that the purpose of Western development, Western non-religious civilization, is to serve as a necessary transition for humanity from the religious past to the religious future. We can get some idea of ​​the general character of this future if we consider what the religious past was guilty of, what its main untruth was, which necessitated denial and a negative transition to other forms. The religious background I am talking about seems to be Roman Catholicism. Although the inconsistency of this form has already been recognized, until the transition from it to a new and better, and, moreover, even more positive and comprehensive form is completed, Catholicism will retain both its conditional force and its conditional right. Until the positive building principles of the future are realized in the life and consciousness of civilized humanity, the positive past still weighs heavily on the negative present. It can be abolished, and will be truly and finally abolished, only by such a principle that will give more than it, and not by an empty and weak negation. That is why Catholicism still stands and wages a persistent struggle against mental and social progress - progress that will only receive a fatal, irresistible force over the old beginning, when it reaches positive conclusions, when it receives such foundations on which it will be possible to create a new world that is not only freer, but also richer in spiritual forces. But who would dare to say that modern Europe is richer in spiritual forces than even the Catholic and knightly Europe of the Middle Ages? Currently, our Western neighbors are waging a so-called cultural struggle against Catholicism; in this struggle it is impossible for an impartial person to take either side. If the defenders of culture rightly reproach Catholicism for using violence against the enemies of Christianity, as if following the example of its patron, the Apostle Peter, who drew a sword in defense of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, if they rightly reproach Catholicism for the fact that it sought to create external earthly forms and formulas for spiritual divine objects, as if following the example of the same apostle who wanted to create material tabernacles for Christ, Moses and Elijah on Mount Tabor during the Transfiguration, then defenders of Catholicism can rightly reproach modern culture for the fact that, having abandoned Christianity and religious principles in favor of the pursuit of material well-being and wealth, it had for itself a worse example in that other apostle who betrayed Christ for thirty pieces of silver. For very obvious reasons, Catholicism is rarely treated impartially, not only from a Protestant and rationalist, but also from a positively religious ecclesiastical point of view. Rightly blaming him for his desire to “impose the rotten weight of earthly armor on the truth of God,” 4 they do not want to see in him this very truth of God, albeit in inappropriate clothing. Due to historical conditions, Catholicism has always been the worst enemy of our people and our church, but that is why we should be fair to it. The words of the poet fully apply to the Roman church: And the dust of the earth lay on her 5. Usually this dust of the earth is taken for the very essence, for the idea of ​​Catholicism; Meanwhile, in fact, the general idea of ​​Catholicism is, first of all, the truth that all worldly powers and principles, all the forces of society and the individual must be subordinated to the religious principle, that the kingdom of God, represented on earth by a spiritual society - the church, must have the kingdom of this world. If Christ said: “My kingdom is not of this world,” then precisely because it is not of this world, but above the world, the world must be subordinate to it, for Christ said: “I have overcome the world.” But since even after this victory the duality of God and Caesar was preserved, since secular society did not merge with the spiritual, the church did not assimilate the state, the question of the correct, proper relationship between the two authorities remains open. From a religious point of view, only one general answer is possible to this question: if the church is truly the kingdom of God on earth, then all other forces and authorities must be subordinate to it, must be its instruments. If the church represents the divine unconditional principle, then everything else must be conditional, dependent, auxiliary. Obviously, there cannot be two equally independent, two supreme principles in a person’s life - he cannot serve two masters. They talk about a strict separation, a distinction between the church and civil spheres. But the question is precisely this: can the civil sphere, can worldly affairs be completely independent, have the same unconditional independence that should belong to divine affairs - can the external civil interests of a person be separated from his internal spiritual interests, without thereby violating the vitality of both? Isn’t this separation of internal and external principles the very thing that is called death and decay? If a person’s temporary life serves only as a means and transition to eternal life, then all the interests and deeds of this temporary life should be only means and tools for eternal spiritual interests and deeds, should be in one way or another conditioned by eternal life and the kingdom of God, and since the state and society recognized themselves as Christian, such a point of view should be obligatory for them. The kingdom of the world must be subordinated to the kingdom of God, the worldly forces of society and man must be subordinated to spiritual power, but what kind of subordination is meant here and how, by what means and methods should it be realized? It is obvious that the nature and method of this subordination must correspond to the unconditional divine principle in whose name submission is required. And if in Christianity God is recognized as love, reason and a free spirit, then all violence and slavery, all blind and dark faith are excluded: the subordination of worldly principles to the divine principle must be free and achieved by the inner strength of the subordinating principle. “In My Father’s house are many mansions,” says Christ. Everything has a place in the kingdom of God, everything can be connected by an internal harmonious connection, nothing should be suppressed and destroyed. The spiritual society - the church - must subjugate the worldly society, elevating it to itself, spiritualizing it, making the worldly element its instrument and through its body, and external unity appears by itself as a natural result. In Catholicism, external unity appears not as a result, but as a basis and together as a goal. But for external unity as a goal, there is only one means - external force, and Catholicism assimilates it to itself and becomes along with other external, that is, worldly, forces. But by asserting itself as a worldly external force, Catholicism thereby obviously justifies the self-affirmation of those other external forces that it seeks to subjugate, and thus itself makes this subordination impossible. As the highest principle - the beginning of the general - Catholicism requires subordination from the particular and individual, the subordination of the human personality. But, becoming an external force, it ceases to be the highest principle and loses the right of domination over the human personality (as possessing internal strength), but actual domination is only violence and suppression, causing a necessary and just protest of the individual, which is the essential meaning and justification of Protestantism. Since Protestantism, Western civilization has represented the gradual liberation of the human person, the human self, from the historical, tradition-based connection that connected, but at the same time enslaved people during the medieval period. The great meaning of the historical process that began with the religious reformation is that it isolated the human personality, left it to itself, so that it could consciously and freely turn to the divine principle, enter into a completely conscious and free connection with it. Such a connection would be impossible if the divine principle were purely external to man, if it were not rooted in the human personality itself; in this case, a person could only be in involuntary, fatal subordination relative to the divine principle. A free internal connection between the unconditional divine principle and the human personality is possible only because this human personality itself has unconditional significance. The human personality can freely, from within, unite with the divine principle only because it itself is, in a certain sense, divine, or, more precisely, involved in the Divine. Human personality - and not human personality in general, not an abstract concept, but a real, living person, each individual person - has unconditional, divine significance. – In this statement, Christianity agrees with modern worldly civilization. But what does this unconditionality, this divinity of the human personality consist of? Unconditionality, like other similar concepts: infinity, absoluteness, has two meanings: negative and positive. Negative unconditionality, which undoubtedly belongs to the human personality, consists in the ability to transcend any finite, limited content, in the ability not to dwell on it, not to be satisfied with it, but to demand more, in the ability, as the poet says, “to seek bliss for which there is no name and no measure.” Not being satisfied with any finite conditional content, a person actually declares himself free from any internal limitation, declares his negative unconditionality, which constitutes the guarantee of endless development. But dissatisfaction with any finite content, partial limited reality, is thereby a requirement for total reality, a requirement for completeness of content. In the possession of complete reality, the fullness of life, lies positive unconditionality. Without it, or at least without the possibility, its negative unconditionality has no meaning, or, better said, it has the meaning of a hopeless internal contradiction. Modern consciousness finds itself in such a contradiction. Western civilization freed human consciousness from all external restrictions, recognized the negative unconditionality of the human personality, and proclaimed unconditional human rights. But at the same time, having rejected any principle that is unconditional in the positive sense, that is, in reality and already by nature possessing the complete fullness of being, limiting the life and consciousness of man to the circle of the conditional and transitory, this civilization simultaneously affirmed both an endless desire and the impossibility of satisfying it. Modern man recognizes himself as internally free, recognizes himself as above any external principle independent of him, affirms himself as the center of everything, and yet in reality he is only one infinitesimal and vanishing point on the world’s circumference. Modern consciousness recognizes divine rights for the human person, but does not give it either divine powers or divine content, for modern man, both in life and in knowledge, allows only a limited conditional reality, the reality of private facts and phenomena, and from this point of view, man himself is only one of these private facts. So, on the one hand, a person is a being with unconditional significance, with unconditional rights and demands, and the same person is only a limited and transitory phenomenon, a fact among many other facts, limited by them on all sides and dependent on them - and not only an individual person, but all of humanity. From an atheistic point of view, not only an individual person appears and disappears, like all other facts and phenomena of nature, but all of humanity, which appeared on the globe as a result of external natural conditions, can, due to changes in the same natural conditions, disappear without a trace from this globe or along with it. Man is everything for himself, and yet his very existence is conditional and constantly problematic. If this contradiction were purely theoretical, related to some abstract question and subject, then it would not be so fatal and tragic, then it could be left alone and a person could move away from it into life, into living interests. But when the contradiction is in the very center of human consciousness, when it touches the human self itself and spreads to all its living forces, then there is nowhere to escape, there is nowhere to escape from it. We have to accept one of the terms of the dilemma: either a person really has that unconditional meaning, those unconditional rights that he gives himself in his inner subjective consciousness - in this case he must also have the opportunity to realize this meaning, these rights; or, if a person is only a fact, only a conditional and limited phenomenon, which exists today, but tomorrow may not exist, and in a few decades probably will not exist, in that case, let him be only a fact: a fact in itself is neither true nor false, neither good nor evil - it is only natural, it is only necessary. So let a person not strive for truth and goodness, all these are just conditional concepts, in essence, empty words. If a person is only a fact, if he is inevitably limited by the mechanism of external reality, even if he does not seek anything more than this natural reality, let him eat, drink and have fun, and if it is not fun, then he can, perhaps, put an actual end to his actual existence. But a person does not want to be only a fact, only a phenomenon, and this reluctance already hints that he really is not only a fact, not only a phenomenon, but something more. For what is a fact that does not want to be a fact? a phenomenon that does not want to be a phenomenon? This, of course, does not prove anything, except that by accepting the first term of the dilemma, taking decisively and consistently on the side of the mechanical worldview, we do not avoid the contradiction, but only make it sharper. But the question is: what is this mechanical worldview based on, according to which man is only one of the phenomena of nature, an insignificant wheel in the world mechanism? In order to accept such a view, which deals a mortal blow to all the essential aspirations of a person and makes life impossible for anyone who would be fully and consistently imbued with this view, in order to accept it, one must obviously have very solid foundations. If this view contradicts human will and feeling, then it must at least be absolutely necessary for reason and must have unconditional theoretical truth. And this is indeed what it lays claim to. But this claim to unconditional truth from a view that recognizes only the conditional and relative is already strange. This is a new contradiction; but let’s assume this too, let’s assume that the mechanical worldview can be unconditionally true—where is the basis on which we should really recognize it as such? As Leibniz noted long ago, every doctrine is true in what it affirms and false in what it denies or excludes. Likewise, regarding the mechanical worldview or materialism (I use the two terms here indifferently, since I mean only the sense in which they coincide), we must admit that its general basic statements are completely true. They come down to two main things: 1) everything that exists consists of force and matter, - and 2) everything that happens happens with necessity, or according to immutable laws. These provisions in their generality do not exclude anything and can be recognized from the point of view of spiritualism. Indeed, everything consists of matter and force, but these are very general concepts. We are talking about physical forces, we are talking about spiritual forces. Both can equally be real forces. Recognizing further, together with materialism, that forces cannot exist on their own, but necessarily belong to known real units, or atoms, representing the subjects of these forces, we can, together with Democritus, understand the subject of spiritual forces - the human soul - as such a real unit as a special, higher kind of atom or monad, possessing, like all atoms, eternity. If the above general position does not give any reason to deny the independence of spiritual forces, which are just as valid as physical forces, and if, in fact, all the more philosophical, more logical minds among representatives of the mechanical view do not deny the reality of spiritual forces and their independence - the reduction of spiritual forces to physical ones, the assertion that the soul, that thought is the same secretion of the brain as bile is a secretion of the liver, belongs only to bad representatives of the mechanical worldview, bad scientists and bad philosophers - if, I say, from this general point of view there is no reason to deny the existence and independence of spiritual forces known to us, then in the same way there is no basis from this point of view to deny the existence and full reality of an infinite number of other unknown to us, in this state, secret forces. In the same way, recognizing that everything that happens happens with necessity, we must distinguish between different types of necessity. A necessary stone falls to the ground; the ball must hit another ball and set it in motion; it is also necessary that the sun, with its rays, causes life in the plant - a necessary process, but the very methods of this necessary influence are already different. A certain idea in the animal's mind necessarily causes this or that movement; a necessarily high idea that has penetrated a person’s soul calls him to high feats: in all these cases there is a necessity, but a different kind of necessity. The concept of necessity in a broad sense - and there is no reason to understand it in a narrow sense - this concept of necessity does not at all exclude freedom. Freedom is only one type of necessity. When freedom is contrasted with necessity, this opposition usually amounts to a contrast between internal and external necessity. For God, for example, it is necessary to love everyone and to realize in creation the eternal idea of ​​good. God cannot be at enmity, there can be no hatred in God: love, reason, freedom are necessary for God. We must say that freedom is necessary for God - this already shows that freedom cannot be an unconditional concept that logically excludes the concept of necessity. Everything is done according to immutable laws, but in different spheres of existence, obviously, heterogeneous laws (or, more precisely, different applications of the same law) must dominate, and from this heterogeneity the different relationships of these particular laws naturally follow, so that laws of a lower order can appear as subordinate to the laws of a higher order, just as, by admitting specific differences between world forces, we have the right to admit a different relationship between them, to admit the existence of higher and more powerful forces, capable of subjugating others. Thus, the basic principles of materialism, undoubtedly true, in their generality and uncertainty do not exclude anything and leave all questions open. Materialism is a definite view only in its negative, exclusive side, in the recognition that there are no other forces than physical ones, no other matter except that with which experimental physics and chemistry deals, that there are no other laws in nature except mechanical laws governing the movement of matter (and, perhaps, other equally mechanical laws of the association of ideas in human consciousness). If something is encountered in experience that is not of a mechanical nature (for example, life, creativity), then this is only an illusion: in essence, everything is a mechanism and everything must be reduced to mechanical relations. On what is this denial and this demand based? Not on science, of course, because science, while studying experimentally given phenomena and the mechanism of their external relations, does not at all ask unconditional questions about the essence of things. Without a doubt, in everything that exists there must be a mechanical side, subject to exact science, but to recognize the reality of this one side would obviously be the greatest arbitrariness. If where mechanism ends, exact science ends, then does it follow that the end of exact science is the end of all or even all knowledge? Obviously, this is the kind of logical leap that only a mind completely obsessed with a preconceived idea can make. – Science deals with substances and forces, but what substance and force essentially are is not part of its task, and if a scientist hears from a metaphysician that matter is essentially an idea, and force is essentially will, then he, as a scientist, cannot say anything for or against this statement. – But if, as is undoubtedly the case, the negative principle of materialism is not the result of exact science (which does not deal with universal and unconditional principles at all), then this is only a philosophical position. But in the area of ​​philosophical speculation (as anyone who is at all familiar with this area knows), not only is there no reason to deny the existence of spiritual forces as independent of physical forces, but there are solid philosophical grounds to assert that physical forces themselves can be reduced to spiritual ones. It would be inappropriate to prove this position here, but in any case there is no doubt that in philosophy entire teachings, one might even say more than half of philosophical teachings, recognize this reducibility of physical forces to spiritual forces, so that materialism, in any case, is only one of the philosophical opinions. But if materialism as a theory is only one of the philosophical opinions and, therefore, recognition of the unconditional truth of this opinion is only an arbitrary belief, what is the undoubted practical force of materialism? If this force does not have a positive basis, then it must have a negative basis: it is based on the powerlessness of the opposite spiritual principle, just as the power of any lie lies in the powerlessness of truth and the power of evil in the powerlessness of good. The powerlessness of truth lies, of course, not in it itself, but in us, in our inconsistency: by not pursuing the truth to the end, we limit it, and the limit of truth is scope for lies. Since truth cannot contradict itself, complete consistency inevitably gives it triumph, just as this consistency is detrimental to a lie that is maintained only by internal contradiction. The beginning of truth is the conviction that the human personality is not only negatively unconditional (which is a fact), that is, that it does not want and cannot be satisfied with any conditional limited content, but that the human personality can also achieve positive unconditionality, that is, that it can possess complete content, the fullness of being, and that, therefore, this unconditional content, this fullness of being is not just a fantasy, a subjective ghost, but a real, full of strength reality. Thus, here faith in oneself, faith in the human person is at the same time faith in God, for divinity belongs to man and to God, with the difference that it belongs to God in eternal reality, and by man it is only achieved, only obtained, in a given state there is only possibility, only aspiration. The human self is unconditional in possibility and insignificant in reality. In this contradiction there is evil and suffering, in this there is lack of freedom, the inner slavery of man. Liberation from this slavery can only consist in achieving that unconditional content, that fullness of being, which is affirmed by the endless striving of the human self. “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” Before a person can achieve this unconditional content in life, he must achieve it in consciousness; before cognizing it as a reality outside himself, he must recognize it as an idea in himself. A positive conviction in an idea is a conviction in its implementation, since an unrealizable idea is a ghost and a deception, and if it is insane not to believe in God, then it is even more insane to believe in Him halfway. The old traditional form of religion starts from faith in God, but does not carry this faith to completion. Modern non-religious civilization proceeds from faith in man, but it also remains inconsistent - it does not carry out its faith to the end; Consistently carried out and fully realized, both of these faiths - faith in God and faith in man - converge in the one complete and complete truth of God-manhood. Any indication of the unconditional nature of human life and of the human personality as the bearer of unconditional content - any such indication usually meets objections of the most elementary nature, which are eliminated by equally elementary, simple considerations. They ask: what unconditional content can life have when it is a necessary natural process, conditioned on all sides, materially dependent, completely relative? Without a doubt, life is a natural, materially determined process, subject to the laws of physical necessity. But what follows from this? When a person speaks, his speech is a mechanical process determined by the bodily structure of the vocal organs, which by their movement vibrate the air, while the wave-like movement of the air produces in the listener - through other mechanical processes in his auditory organs - a sensation of sound; - but does it follow from this that human speech is only a mechanical process, that it does not have a special content that is completely independent and has nothing in common with the mechanical process of speaking? And not only is this content independent of the mechanical process, but, on the contrary, this process depends on the content, is determined by it, since when I speak, the movements of my vocal organs are directed one way or another depending on what sounds I must use to express this specific idea, this content. In the same way, when we see actors playing on stage, there is no doubt that their play is a mechanical, materially determined process, all their gestures and facial expressions are nothing more than physical movements - certain muscle contractions, all their words are sound vibrations arising from the mechanical movement of the vocal organs - and, however, all this does not prevent the drama they depict from being more than a mechanical process, does not prevent it from having its own content, completely independent as such from the mechanical conditions of those movements that are produced by actors for the external expression of this content and which, on the contrary, are themselves determined by this content; and if it goes without saying that without the mechanism of motor nerves and muscles and without the vocal apparatus, actors could not materially depict any drama, it is equally certain that all these material organs, capable of all movements, could not by themselves produce any play, if independently of them the poetic content of the drama and the intention to present it on the stage were not already given. But here I can already hear the current statement of materialism, that not only our words and body movements, but also all our thoughts, therefore, those thoughts that make up this drama, are only mechanical processes, namely the movements of brain particles. Here's a very simple look! Isn't it too simple? Not to mention the fact that here the truth of the materialist principle is presupposed, which, however, in any case, is only a controversial opinion, so to refer to it as a basis is a logical error, called petitio principii 6 - not to mention this, and even taking a general materialist point of view (that is, assuming that thought cannot exist without a brain), it is easy to see that the indication given now only gives a rearrangement of the question, and in no way a solution to it in a materialistic way sense. In fact, if in our words and gestures we must distinguish their content, that is, what is expressed by them, from their mechanism, that is, from the material instruments and methods of this expression, then exactly the same distinction is necessary with regard to our thoughts, for which the vibrating brain particles represent the same mechanism as the vocal organs for our speech (which is only a thought translated from the brain apparatus into the vocal apparatus). Thus, while admitting the necessary material connection between thought and the brain, admitting that the movements of brain particles are the material cause (causa materialis) of thought, we in no way eliminate the obvious formal difference and even incommensurability between the external mechanism of brain movements and the own content of thought, which is realized by this mechanism. Let's take a simple example. Suppose you are now thinking about the Constantinople Church of St. Sophia. An image of this church is presented to your mind, and if this idea is caused by some movements of brain particles, then in the idea itself, however, these movements are not present - only the imaginary figure of the St. Sophia Church is given in it, and nothing more; from here it is clear that the material dependence of this idea on unknown partial movements of the brain does not in the least affect the formal content of this idea, since the image of the St. Sophia Church and the movement of brain particles are completely heterogeneous objects and incommensurable with each other. If, while you have the above-mentioned idea, an outside observer had the opportunity to see everything that happens in our brain (like how it is depicted in Bulwer’s fairy tale “A strange story”), what would he see? He would see the structure of the brain, the vibrations of the smallest brain particles, he would see, perhaps, light phenomena arising from nervous electricity (“red and blue flames,” as described in this fairy tale), but all this would be completely different from the image that you imagine at that moment, and you may know nothing about brain movements and electrical currents, while an outside observer only sees them; from which it directly follows that there can be no formal identity between one and the other. I have neither the opportunity nor the need to go into here a consideration of the question of the relationship of thought to the brain - a question the solution of which depends mainly on the solution of the general question of the essence of matter; I only meant to clarify by example the undoubted truth that the mechanism of any process and the ideal (more precisely, ideological) content, realized in it under any kind of relationship, with any kind of material connection, in any case represent something formally different and incommensurable with each other, as a result of which a direct conclusion from the properties of one to the properties of the other, for example, a conclusion from the convention of a mechanical process to the conditionality of its very content, is logically impossible. Returning to our subject, as soon as we admit that the life of the world and humanity is not an accident without meaning and purpose (and there is neither a theoretical basis nor a moral possibility to recognize it as such an accident), but represents a definite, integral process, then it is now necessary to recognize the content carried out by this process - a content to which all the material conditions of the process, its entire mechanism would be related as a means to an end, as methods of expression to the expressed. Just as in our previous example, the nature of the actors, physical and spiritual, all their abilities and powers and the movements arising from these forces and abilities have significance only as ways of external expression of the poetic content that is given in the drama they perform, in the same way the entire mechanical side of universal life, the entire totality of natural forces and movements can only have significance as material and as an instrument for the external implementation of the universal content, which is independent in itself of all these material conditions, which is thus unconditional. Such content is generally called an idea. Yes, the life of man and the world is a natural process; yes, this life is a change of phenomena, a play of natural forces; but this game presupposes players and what is played - presupposes an unconditional personality and an unconditional content, or idea, of life. It would be childish to pose the question and argue about what is more necessary for a truly full life: the idea or the material conditions for its implementation. It is obvious that both are equally necessary, just as in an arithmetic product both producers are equally necessary, just as for the product of 35 both 7 and 5 are equally necessary. It should be noted that the content, or idea, differs not only from the external, but also from the internal nature: not only external physical forces must serve as a means, instrument or material condition for the implementation of a certain content, but in the same way spiritual forces: will, reason and feeling - have significance only as ways or means of realizing a certain content, and do not themselves constitute this content. In fact, it is obvious that - once these powers are given: will, reason and feeling - it is obvious that there must be a certain object of desire, understanding and feeling - it is obvious that a person cannot only want for the sake of wanting, think for the sake of thought, or think pure thought and feel for the sake of feeling. Just as the mechanical process of physical movements is only the material basis for ideal content, so the mechanical process of mental phenomena, interconnected according to psychological laws, as general and necessary as physical laws, can only have significance as a way of expressing or realizing a certain content. A person must want something, think something or think about something, feel something, and this is what constitutes the defining beginning, goal and object of his spiritual powers and his spiritual life, and is exactly what is asked, what is interesting, what gives meaning. Due to the ability for conscious thought, for reflection, a person subjects all the factual data of his internal and external life to judgment and evaluation: he cannot stop at wanting only because he wants, to think because he is thought, or to feel because he is felt - he demands that the object of his will have its own dignity in order to be desired or, in school language, that it be objectively desirable or be an objective good; in the same way, he demands that the object and content of his thought be objectively true and the object of his feeling be objectively beautiful, that is, not only for him, but for everyone unconditionally. Let us assume that each person has his own small special role in life, but it does not follow from this that he can be content with only the conditional, relative content of life. In the performance of a drama, each actor also has his own special role, but could he perform it well if he did not know the entire content of the drama? And just as what is required of an actor is not only that he play, but that he play well, so what is required of man and humanity is not only that he live, but that he live well. They say: what is the need for an objective definition of the will, that is, in defining its unconditional object - it is enough for the will to be good. But how is the good quality of the will determined, if not by its correspondence with what is recognized as objectively desirable or recognized as good in itself? (It is clear to everyone that good will directed towards false goals can only produce evil. The medieval inquisitors had the good will to defend the kingdom of God on earth, but since they had bad concepts about this kingdom of God, about its objective essence, or idea, they could only bring evil to humanity.) The same thing that is said about the object of the will must be said about the object of knowledge and the object of feeling, especially since these objects are inextricably and closely connected with each other, or, better to say, they are different aspects of one and the same thing. A simple, clear, one might say, trivial distinction between good and evil, true and false, beautiful and ugly, this distinction already presupposes the recognition of an objective and unconditional principle in these three spheres of spiritual life. In fact, with this distinction, a person asserts that in moral activity, and in knowledge, and in feeling, and in artistic creativity emanating from feeling, there is something normal, and this something should be, because it is in itself good, true and beautiful, in other words, that it is unconditional good, truth and beauty. So, an unconditional beginning is required by the mental, moral, and aesthetic interest of a person. These three interests in their unity constitute a religious interest, for both will, reason and feeling are the forces of a single spirit, and the objects corresponding to them are only different types (ideas) of a single unconditional principle, which in its reality is the proper subject of religion. It is absolutely certain that the reality of the unconditional principle, as existing in itself independently of us, the reality of God (like the generally independent reality of any other being other than ourselves) cannot be deduced from pure reason, cannot be proven purely logically. The necessity of an unconditional principle for the highest interests of man, its necessity for will and moral activity, for reason and true knowledge, for feeling and creativity - this necessity makes only to the highest degree possible the actual existence of the divine principle; complete and unconditional confidence in it can only be given by faith: and this applies, as was noted, not to the existence of only an unconditional principle, but also to the existence of any object and the entire external world in general. For since we can know about this world only from our own sensations, from what we experience, so that the entire content of our experience and our knowledge are our own states and nothing more, then any statement of external existence corresponding to these states is, from a logical point of view, only a more or less probable conclusion; and if, nevertheless, we are unconditionally and directly convinced of the existence of external beings (other people, animals, etc.), then this belief does not have a logical character (since it cannot be logically proven) and is, therefore, nothing more than faith. Although the law of causality leads us to recognize external existence as the cause of our sensations and ideas, since this very law of causality is the form of our own mind, the application of this law to external reality can only have a conditional meaning 7 and, therefore, cannot give an unconditional, unshakable conviction in the existence of external reality: all evidence of this existence, reduced to the law of causality, are, therefore, only considerations of probability, and not as evidence of reliability - such evidence remains only faith. That something exists outside of us and independently of us - we cannot know this, because everything that we know (is real), that is, everything that we experience, exists in us, and not outside of us (like our sensations and our thoughts); that which is not in us, but in itself, is thereby located beyond the limits of our experience and, therefore, our actual knowledge and can thus be affirmed only by an act of the spirit that intercepts the limits of this reality of ours, which is called faith. We know that 2 + 2 = 4, that fire burns - these are the essence of the facts of our consciousness; but the existence of something beyond the limits of our consciousness (the existence, for example, of substantial fire, that is, of a being or beings that produces the effect of fire on us) obviously cannot be given in this very consciousness, cannot be its fact or state (this would be a direct contradiction), and, therefore, it can only be affirmed by an act of faith, “revealing things invisible.” But if the existence of external reality is affirmed by faith, then the content of this reality (its essence, essentia) is given by experience: what reality is, we believe, and what it is, we experience and know. If we did not believe in the existence of external reality, then everything that we experience and know would have only subjective meaning, would represent only the data of our inner mental life. If we did not believe in the independent existence of the sun, then all the experimental material contained in the representation of the sun (namely: the sensation of light and heat, the image of the solar disk, its periodic phenomena, etc.), all of this would be for us states of our subjective consciousness, mentally determined - all this would be a constant and correct hallucination, part of a continuous dream. Everything that we know from experience about the sun as experienced by us would only vouch for our reality, and not in any way for the reality of the sun. But since we believe in this latter, since we are confident in the objective being of the sun, then all experimental data about the sun appear as the action of this objective being on us and thus receive objective reality. Of course, we have the same experimental data about the external world, whether we believe in its reality or not, only in the latter case these data do not have any objective meaning; as the same bank notes represent either mere paper or real wealth, depending on whether they have credit or not. The data of experience, when believing in the existence of external objects corresponding to them, appear as information about what actually exists and, as such, form the basis of objective knowledge. To complete this knowledge, it is necessary that these individual pieces of information about existing things be interconnected, so that experience is organized into an integral system, which is achieved by rational thinking, which gives empirical material a scientific form. Everything that has been said regarding the external world fully applies (on the same grounds) to the divine principle. And its existence can only be affirmed by an act of faith. Although the best minds of mankind have been engaged in so-called proofs of the existence of God, they have been unsuccessful; for all this evidence, necessarily based on known assumptions, is hypothetical in nature and, therefore, cannot provide unconditional reliability. Both the existence of the external world and the existence of the divine principle for reason are only probabilities or conditional truths; they can be unconditionally affirmed only by faith. The content of the divine principle, like the content of external nature, is given by experience. That God exists, we believe, and that He exists, we experience and learn. Of course, the facts of internal religious experience without faith in the reality of their object are only fantasy and hallucination, but the same fantasies and hallucinations are facts of external experience, if you do not believe in the own reality of their objects. In both cases, experience provides only mental facts, facts of consciousness, while the objective meaning of these facts is determined by the creative act of faith. With this faith, the internal data of religious experience are cognized as the action of the divine principle on us, as its revelation in us, and it itself appears, thus, as the actual object of our consciousness. But the data of religious experience, even with faith in their objective meaning, appear in themselves only as separate information about divine objects, and not as complete knowledge about them. Such knowledge is achieved by organizing religious experience into an integral, logically connected system. Thus, in addition to religious faith and religious experience, religious thinking is also required, the result of which is the philosophy of religion. It is often said: why philosophize about divine things? Isn’t it enough to believe in them and feel them? Of course, it is enough... in the absence of mental interest in the believer and the feeling. This is the same as saying: isn’t it enough to believe that the sun exists and enjoy its light and warmth, why else are there physical and astronomical theories of the sun and the solar system? Of course, they are not needed for those who have no scientific interest. But on what basis is the limitation of some to be made a law for all? – If a person believes in divine objects and if he at the same time has the ability and need to think, then he must necessarily think about the objects of his faith, and, of course, it is desirable that he thinks about them correctly and systematically, that is, that his thinking be the philosophy of religion. Moreover: since only the philosophy of religion, as a coherent system and complete synthesis of religious truths, can give us adequate (corresponding) knowledge about the divine principle as unconditional or comprehensive - for outside such a synthesis, individual religious data appear only as disparate parts of an unknown whole - then the philosophy of religion is equally necessary for all thinking people - both believers and non-believers, for if the former must know what they believe in, then the latter, of course, must know what they are denying (not to mention the fact that denial itself in many cases depends on ignorance, and those believers without reason who want to turn religious truth into a matter of blind faith and vague feeling obviously act only in favor of denial). The totality of religious experience and religious thinking constitutes the content of religious consciousness. From the objective side, this content is the revelation of the divine principle as a real object of religious consciousness. Since the human spirit in general, and therefore religious consciousness, is not something finished, ready-made, but something emerging and being accomplished (improved), something in process, then the revelation of the divine principle in this consciousness is necessarily gradual. Just as external nature is only gradually revealed to the mind of man and humanity, as a result of which we must talk about the development of experience and natural science, so the divine principle is gradually revealed to human consciousness, and we must talk about the development of religious experience and religious thinking. Since the divine principle is an actual object of religious consciousness, that is, acting on this consciousness and revealing its content in it, then religious development is a positive and objective process, it is a real interaction between God and man - a divine-human process. It is clear that due to the objective and positive nature of religious development, not one of its stages, not one of the moments of the religious process can in itself be a lie or delusion. “False religion” is a contradictio in adjecto 8. The religious process cannot consist in pure lies being replaced by pure truth, for in this case the latter would appear all at once without transition, without progress - and, moreover, the question would arise: why did this sudden appearance of truth take place at this moment, and not at any other? - and if the answer were that the truth could appear only after the lie had been exhausted, then this would mean that the implementation of a lie is necessary for the realization of the truth, that is, that a lie should be, but in this case it is no longer a lie, since we mean by a lie (as well as by evil and ugliness) exactly what should not be. From the difference in the degrees of religious revelation it does not in any way follow that the lower degrees are not true. The reality of the physical sun is revealed to varying degrees for the blind, for the sighted, for the one armed with a telescope, and finally, for the learned astronomer, possessing all scientific means and abilities. Does it follow from this that the sensations of solar warmth, which constitute the entire experience of a blind person regarding the sun, are less valid and true than the experience of a sighted astronomer? But if a blind man were to assert that his experience is the only true one, and that the experience of a sighted man and the knowledge of an astronomer are errors, then only in this statement, and not in the experience with which it is connected, would lie and error appear. In the same way, in the development of religion, lies and delusions do not lie in the content of any of the degrees of this development, but in the exclusive affirmation of one of them and in the denial for the sake and in the name of all others. In other words, lies and delusions appear in a powerless attempt to delay and stop the religious process. Further, just as the experience of a blind man about the sun (sensation of heat) is not destroyed by the experience of a sighted person, but, on the contrary, is preserved in him, enters into it, but at the same time is replenished with new experience (of light sensations), thus being part of a more complete experience, whereas before (for the blind) this was his entire experience - in the same way, in religious development, the lower stages in their positive content are not abolished by the higher ones, but only lose their significance as a whole, becoming part of a fuller revelation. From what has been said, it is clear that the highest degree of religious development, the highest form of divine revelation must, firstly, have the greatest freedom from any exclusivity and one-sidedness, must represent the greatest community and, secondly, must have the greatest wealth of positive content, must represent the greatest completeness and integrity (concreteness). Both of these conditions are combined in the concept of positive universality (universality), which is directly opposed to negative, formally logical universality, which consists in the absence of any definite properties, any particularities. Religion must be universal and united. But for this, as many people think, it is not enough to take away from real religions all their distinctive, special features, deprive them of positive individuality and reduce the whole religion to such a simple and indifferent given, which should equally be contained in all real and possible religions, for example, to the recognition of God as the unconditional beginning of everything that exists without any further definitions. Such a generalization and unification of religions, such a reduction of them to one denominator, obviously results in a minimum of religious content. But in this case, why not go further and reduce religion to an unconditional minimum, that is, to zero? And indeed, this abstract religion achieved through logical negation - whether it is called rational, natural religion, pure deism or something else - always serves for consistent minds only as a transition to perfect atheism; only superficial minds, weak and insincere characters dwell on it. If, when asked what the sun is, someone answered that the sun is an external object and wanted to limit all our knowledge about the sun to this position, who would look seriously at such a person? Why do they look seriously at those who want to limit our knowledge of the divine principle with the same general and empty concepts, such as: the supreme being, the infinite mind, the first cause, etc. Without a doubt, all these general definitions are true, but it is just as impossible to base a religion on them, just as it is impossible to base astronomy on the also true position that the sun is an external object. It is obvious that from a religious point of view, the goal is not a minimum, but a maximum of positive content - the richer, more lively and concrete the religious form is, the higher it is. A perfect religion is not one that is equally contained in everyone (the indifferent basis of religion), but one that contains everything and possesses everyone (complete religious synthesis). A perfect religion must be free from all limitations and exclusivity, but not because it is devoid of all positive particularity and individuality - such negative freedom is the freedom of emptiness, the freedom of a beggar - but because it contains all the particularities and, therefore, is not exclusively attached to any of them, possesses all and, therefore, is free from all. The true concept of religion is equally opposed to dark fanaticism, which clings to one particular revelation, to one positive form and denies all others, and abstract rationalism, which resolves the entire essence of religion into the fog of vague concepts and merges all religious forms into one empty, powerless and colorless community. Religious truth, coming from one root, has developed in humanity into numerous and varied branches. To cut down all these branches and leave one bare, dry and barren trunk, which it costs nothing to throw as a sacrifice to complete atheism - this is the task of the rationalistic purification of religion. A positive religious synthesis, a true philosophy of religion, must embrace the entire content of religious development, without excluding a single positive element, and seek the unity of religion in completeness, and not in indifference. Starting the logical development of religious truth in its ideal (ideological) content (without touching yet on the real method of its revelation, since this would require various psychological and epistemological studies, which have no place here), we will follow the order in which this truth was historically revealed in humanity, since the historical and logical order in their content, that is, in internal connection (and this is what we only have in mind), obviously coincide (if only we recognize that history there is development, not nonsense). Initially we have three main elements: firstly, nature, that is, given, present reality, the material of life and consciousness; secondly, the divine principle as the sought-after goal and content, gradually revealed, and, thirdly, the human personality as the subject of life and consciousness, as that which moves from the given to the sought-after and, perceiving the divine principle, reunites nature with it, transforming it from the accidental into the due. The very concept of revelation (and religious development, as objective, is necessarily revelation) presupposes that the revealed divine being is initially hidden, that is, not given as such; but here too it must, however, exist for man, for otherwise its subsequent revelation would be completely incomprehensible: therefore, it exists and acts, but not in its own determination, not in itself, but in its other, that is, in nature, which is possible and natural, since the divine principle, as unconditional and, therefore, all-encompassing, embraces nature (but is not embraced by it, just as the greater covers the lesser, but not vice versa). This first stage of religious development, at which the divine principle is hidden behind the world of natural phenomena and the direct object of religious consciousness are only auxiliary beings and forces that directly act in nature and most closely determine the material life and destiny of man - this first main stage is represented by polytheism in the broad sense of the word, that is, all mythological or so-called religions of nature. I call this stage natural or direct revelation. At the next, second stage of religious development, the divine principle is revealed in its difference and opposition with nature as its negation, or nothing (absence) of natural being, negative freedom from it; this stage, distinguished by its essentially pessimistic and ascetic character, I call negative revelation; its purest type seems to be Buddhism. Finally, at the third stage, the divine principle is consistently revealed in its own content, in what it is in itself and for itself (whereas previously it was revealed only in what it is not, that is, in its other, or in the simple negation of this other, therefore, still in relation to it, and not in itself): this third stage, which I generally call positive revelation, itself presents several clearly distinguishable facts that are subject to special consideration. Now we will return to the first, natural religion. Since here the divine principle is recognized only in the creatures and forces of the natural world, then nature itself, as such, receives divine meaning and is recognized as something unconditional, self-existent. This is the general meaning of naturalistic consciousness: here too a person is not satisfied with the present reality, and here he is looking for another unconditional, but he is looking for and thinking of finding it in the same sphere of natural material existence, and therefore falls under the power of the forces and principles operating in nature, falls into slavery to the “weak and meager elements” of the natural world. But since the human personality distinguishes itself from nature, makes it its object and thus turns out to be not only a natural being, but something different and greater than nature, then, consequently, the power of natural principles over the human personality cannot be unconditional - this power is given to them by the human personality itself: nature dominates us externally only because and to the extent that we internally submit to it; We submit to it internally, we transfer power over ourselves to it only because we think it contains that unconditional content that could give fullness to our life and consciousness, could respond to our endless aspiration. As soon as we, that is, an individual person, as well as all of humanity, are convinced by experience that nature, as the external mechanism and material of life, is itself devoid of content and, therefore, cannot fulfill our demands, then nature necessarily loses its power over us, ceases to be divine, we are internally liberated from it, and complete internal liberation is necessarily followed by external liberation. The inner liberation from nature in the self-consciousness of the pure personality was first clearly expressed in Indian philosophy. This is what we find, for example, in the Sanhya-Karika, a work attributed to the sage Kapila, the founder of the Sanhya school of philosophy and, in all likelihood, the closest predecessor of Buddhism. “True and perfect knowledge, by which liberation from all evil is achieved, consists in a decisive and complete distinction between the material principles of the natural world from the feeling and knowing principle, that is, I. The spirit (purusha) is a spectator, a witness, a guest - it is lonely and suffering. Nature (prakriti) is a means for the spirit - it prepares it for deliverance. The union of the spirit with nature is like the union of the lame with the blind. Blind, but rich in active forces, nature carries on itself an inactive, but sighted (conscious) spirit. This is how all creation is produced. The spirit experiences the suffering of life and death until it renounces its connection with nature. Just as a dancer, having shown herself to the assembled crowd of spectators, ends her dance and leaves, so the productive nature withdraws after it has shown itself to the spirit in all its splendor. The dancer leaves because she was seen, and the spectators leave because they have seen enough: in the same way, the connection of the spirit with nature is dissolved by complete knowledge. I saw, I saw enough of her, says the spirit. They saw me, says nature, and they turn away from each other, and there is no longer a reason for their connection and for the creation that comes from this connection” 9. Nature itself is only a series of indifferent processes - a calm and indifferent existence; but when it is assigned an unconditional, divine meaning, when the purpose of life and the content of the human personality are posited in it, then this nature necessarily receives a negative meaning for man, appears as evil, deception and suffering. In fact, the entire life of nature is based on struggle, on the exclusive self-affirmation of each creature, on the internal and external denial of all others. The law of nature is the struggle for existence, and the higher and more perfectly organized a being is, the more development this law receives in its application, the more complex and profound the evil. In man it reaches its fullness. Although, as the poet says, Es wächst hienieden Brod genug Auch Myrten und Rosen, Schönheit und Lust, Und Zuckererbsen nicht minder 10, but even if it were so in reality (and this is only pium desiderium 11), then the struggle for existence has a much deeper meaning and wider scope than the struggle for bread, for myrtles and roses. Heine forgot the struggle for laurels and the even more terrible struggle for power and authority. Anyone who looked impartially at human nature will not doubt that if all people were made well-fed and satisfied with all their lower passions, then they, remaining on natural soil, on the soil of natural egoism, would probably destroy each other in competition for mental and moral dominance. Further, nature itself, as a totality of natural processes, is a constant movement, a constant transition from one form to another, a constant achievement. But if there is nothing else outside of nature, independently of it, then this movement is movement without a goal, a transition without end - an achievement by which nothing is achieved. Processes and states of natural existence can be a goal for the imagination until they are realized. The realization of a natural drive or instinct, which consists in such a natural process, appears as a necessary content, as something satisfying and fulfilling - until this realization is completed, until the natural good is achieved. Achieving it shows that this is in reality not at all what was imagined - that the imagination seemed to establish, give certain forms and certain content, set as an object and goal what in reality itself is only an indifferent and meaningless process, which itself requires content and goal. Thus, natural life, set as a goal, turns out to be not only evil, but also a deception, an illusion: all the content that a person associates in his striving with known natural objects and phenomena, all this content, all the images and colors belong to himself, to his imagination. It is not man who receives from nature something that he does not have, that could satisfy and fill his existence; on the contrary, he himself gives nature something that it does not have, something that he draws from himself. Revealed from the rich attire that is given to nature by the will and imagination of man, it is only a blind, external force, alien to him, the force of evil and deception. Submission to this higher and blind force is the root source of suffering for man; but the consciousness that nature is evil, deception and suffering is thereby the consciousness of one’s own superiority, the superiority of the human person over this nature. If I recognize nature as evil, it is only because in myself there is a force of good, in relation to which nature is evil; if I recognize nature as a deception and a ghost, it is only because in myself there is the power of truth, in comparison with which nature is a deception. And, finally, it is possible to feel suffering from nature - not this or that particular or random suffering, but the general heaviness of natural existence - only because there is a desire and ability for that bliss or for that fullness of being that nature cannot give. If, therefore, the human personality is something greater than nature, and the power of nature over it depends on this personality itself, that is, the very will of man, directed towards nature, binds man to this latter and leads to evil, deception and suffering, then liberation or redemption from the power and domination of nature is liberation from one’s own natural will - renunciation of it. The human will in all its acts is a desire for natural existence, it is the affirmation of oneself as a natural being - and renunciation of this will is renunciation of natural existence. But since nature is initially given as everything, since outside of it nothing exists for a person in a given state of his consciousness, then renunciation of natural existence is renunciation of all existence. The desire for liberation from nature is a desire for self-destruction: if nature is everything, then what is not nature is nothing. Of course, already the recognition of nature for evil, deception and suffering deprives it of the meaning of an unconditional beginning, but since besides it there is no other content in the consciousness of a natural person, then the unconditional beginning, which is not nature, can only receive a negative definition, it appears as the absence of all being, as nothing, as nirvana. Nirvana is the central idea of ​​Buddhism. If in natural religion the unconditional principle is confused with nature, with what it is not, then in Buddhism this principle is opposed to nature. But since the positive starting point is the same nature, this unconditional beginning, opposed to it, can only be defined negatively, defined by what it is not. The sacred books of Buddhists are all imbued with a theoretical and practical negation of life and everything that exists, because only in this negation does the divine principle manifest itself for a Buddhist. “This (that is, everything that exists in nature) is transitory, it is miserable, it is empty, it is devoid of substance. Everything complex disappears (and everything that exists is complex). Contemplation does not affirm any state (that is, it cannot stop at anything, hold on to anything).” But nowhere is the Buddhist principle expressed with such sharpness and consistency as in the following passage from the Prajna Pramita, a book included in the Abidarm, that is, the metaphysical part of the Buddhist scripture: “The teacher is covered with great armor only when the following thought presents itself to his mind: I must lead countless beings to perfect Nirvana - I must lead them; and, however, neither they, the followers, nor I, the leader, exist. They do not really exist, because non-existence is the intrinsic character of everything that is recognized as existing. It’s as if a skilled magician made a huge crowd of ghostly people appear at the crossroads of four major roads, who would fight among themselves, kill each other and then all disappear, but in reality there were no people who appeared, neither killed and were killed, nor disappeared; in the same way, Buddhas lead countless beings to perfect Nirvana, but in reality there are neither leaders nor followers. If the student of wisdom, having thought about this truth, is not embarrassed and does not feel fear and nevertheless leads beings to complete Nirvana, then he should be recognized as covered with great armor” 12. It is remarkable that just as the religious attitude towards nature, its subordination of human life and consciousness and its deification led to the religious denial of nature and all being, led to religious nihilism, so the philosophical deification of nature in modern consciousness, philosophical naturalism led to the philosophical denial of all being, to philosophical nihilism, which, as is known, was developed in our days in the systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. From this alone one can see that this nihilism, both in religious and philosophical form, is not something accidental, is not a product of temporary historical conditions, that it has a deeper meaning for human consciousness - and indeed, this negative worldview is a logically necessary stage in the development of religious consciousness. If man begins and, as a finite natural being, must proceed from a mixture of the unconditional beginning with the meager, weak elements of the world, then in order for him to understand and realize this unconditional beginning in his own reality, it is necessary first that he separates and contrasts it with these weak, meager elements of the world: in order to understand what an unconditional beginning is, one must first reject, both by will and thought, what it is not. This unconditional rejection of any finite, limited characteristics is already a negative definition of the unconditional principle itself: for consciousness, which does not yet possess this very principle, such a negative definition is the necessary first step towards its positive knowledge. For modern consciousness, which has transferred the center of gravity from the unconditional beginning to the conditional nature, it is necessary to go through a complete and decisive rejection of this nature in order to again be capable of perceiving the supernatural unconditional reality. Ancient and modern Buddhism can be called a negative religion, and this negative religion must necessarily precede the positive one as an inevitable transition, just as in ancient times those seeking initiation had to pass through the lesser mysteries before reaching the great ones. If the divine principle should be everything for us, then what it is not must be recognized by us as nothing. But of course - and here, if, as Christ said, “we lose our soul in order to receive it again,” then in the same way we lose the world in order to receive it again, because, as we will see, if outside the divine principle, in alienation from it, considered in itself, the natural world is evil, deception and suffering, then in a positive relation to this unconditional principle, or considered from it, it becomes a necessary instrument or matter for complete realization, for the final realization of the divine principle itself. Negative religion - the world-historical expression of which appears to be Buddhism - understands the unconditional beginning as nothing. And truly, it is nothing, since it is not anything, is not some definite, limited being or being along with other beings - since it is above any definition, since it is free from everything. But freedom from all being (positive nothingness) is not the deprivation of all being (negative nothingness). The real, positive freedom of a being presupposes power, positive strength, or power over that from which the being is free. – So, for example, it cannot be said about a child that he is free from passions or above passions - he is simply deprived of them (and in this sense below them); free from passions can only be called one who has them, but has them in his power, who possesses, but does not possess them. Thus, the divine principle, free from all being, from everything, is at the same time the positive force or power of all being, possesses everything, everything is its own content, and in this sense the divine principle itself is everything. This is indicated by the most general and necessary name that we must give to the divine principle - the name of the absolute; for the word absolutum means, firstly: detached, that is, from all particular definitions, and, secondly, complete, completed, perfect, that is, possessing everything, containing everything; Moreover, obviously both of these meanings are closely related to each other, since one can renounce everything only by possessing everything. What is all this that makes up the positive content of the divine principle? It cannot only be a set of natural phenomena, since each of these phenomena, and therefore all of them together, represents only a constant transition, a process that has only the appearance of being, and not genuine, essential and abiding being. If, therefore, our natural world, by its purely relative nature, cannot be the true content of the divine principle, then such content, that is, the positive everything (wholeness or fullness of being), can only be found in the supernatural region, which, in contrast to the world of material phenomena, is defined as the world of ideal essences, the kingdom of ideas. The ideal cosmos constitutes the main content - and the fundamental truth - of Greek philosophy in its central system - the system of Platonism. To understand the truth of this system, we must go through (albeit with the greatest haste) the entire mental path that separates it from the modern scientific worldview. Although there seems to be an impenetrable abyss between them, yet, as I will now endeavor to prove, an unbroken thread of logical thought must lead every consistent mind from the sense experience of phenomena to the speculative belief in ideas. First of all, I must reiterate some basic truths. – We are given natural phenomena that make up what we call the external, material world. This world as such (that is, as external and material) is undoubtedly only an appearance, and not a reality. Let's take some material object - let's say this table. What exactly is this item made of? We have, firstly, a certain spatial image, figure or shape, then a certain color, then a certain density or hardness: all this constitutes only our own sensations. The color of this table is only our visual sensation, that is, some modification in our sense of vision; the figure of the table is composed of a combination of our visual and muscular sensations; finally, its impenetrability or physicality is the sensation of our touch. We see, we touch this object - all these are only our sensations, only our states that take place in ourselves. If we did not have these certain external feelings, then this material object, this table, could not exist the way it exists, for all its basic qualities directly depend on our feelings. It is, in fact, quite obvious that if there were no sense of vision, then there would be no color, because color is only a visual sensation; if there were no sense of touch, if there were no tangible beings, then there would not be what we call hardness, since this phenomenon of hardness is only a tactile sensation. Thus, this external object, this table, in the form in which it actually appears, that is, precisely as a sensual material object, is not some kind of independent reality, independent of us and our feelings, but is only a combination of our sensory states, our sensations. People usually think that if all sentient beings disappeared from the world, the world would still remain what it is, with all the variety of its forms, with all the colors and sounds. But this is an obvious mistake: what does sound mean without hearing? light and colors without vision? Even taking the point of view of the dominant natural scientific worldview, we must admit that if there were no sentient beings, the world would radically change its character. In fact, for this worldview, sound, for example, in itself, that is, regardless of hearing and auditory organs, is only a wave-like vibration of air; but it is obvious that the vibration of air in itself is not yet what we call sound: in order for this vibration of air to become sound, an ear is needed on which this vibration would act and would arouse in the nervous auditory apparatus certain modifications that appear in the sentient being to which this apparatus belongs as the sensation of sound. In the same way, light for the scientific worldview is only the oscillatory movement of waves of the ether. But the movement of ethereal waves in itself is not what we call light - it is only mechanical movement, and nothing more. In order for it to become light, colors and colors, it is necessary that it act on the visual organ and, having made appropriate changes in it, arouse in one way or another in a sentient being those sensations that, in fact, are called light. If I am blind, then, of course, light will not cease to exist, but this is only because there are other sighted beings who have light sensations. But if there were no sighted creatures, then, obviously, there would be no light as light, but there would only be mechanical movements of the ether corresponding to light. So, the world that we know is, in any case, only a phenomenon for us and in us, our idea, and if we place it entirely outside ourselves as something unconditionally independent and independent of us, then this is a natural illusion. The world is a representation; but since this idea is not arbitrary, since we cannot create material objects and destroy them at will, since the material world with all its phenomena, so to speak, is imposed on us, and although its tangible properties are determined by our senses and in this sense depend on us, its very reality, its existence, on the contrary, does not depend on us, but is given to us, then, being in its sensory forms our representation, it must, however, have some independent of us cause or essence. If what we see is only our idea, then it does not follow that this idea does not have causes independent of us that we do not see. The obligatory nature of this idea makes the assumption of these reasons necessary. – Thus, at the basis of dependent phenomena, an independent essence or essential cause is assumed, which gives them some relative reality. But since the relative reality of these objects and phenomena, multiple and diverse, presupposes the relationship or interaction of many causes, then the essence that produces them must represent a certain multiplicity, since otherwise it could not contain a sufficient basis, or cause, for these phenomena. Therefore, the general basis is necessarily presented as a collection of many elementary essences or causes, eternal and unchanging, constituting the final foundations of all reality, from which all objects, all phenomena, all real being is composed and into which this real being can be decomposed. These elements themselves, being eternal and unchanging, are indecomposable and indivisible. These basic entities are called atoms, that is, indivisible. So, in reality, only indivisible elementary entities exist independently, which, through their various connections and their diverse interactions, constitute what we call the real world. This real world is truly real only in its elementary foundations or causes - in atoms, but in its concrete form it is only a phenomenon, only a representation caused by diverse interactions, only an appearance. But how should we think about these very basic essences, these very atoms? Vulgar materialism understands atoms as infinitely small particles of matter; but this is obviously a gross mistake. By substance we mean something extended, solid or solid, that is, impenetrable, in a word, something corporeal, but - as we have seen - everything corporeal is reduced to our sensations and is only our idea. Extension is a combination of visual and muscular sensations, hardness is a tactile sensation; Consequently, matter, as something extended and solid, impenetrable, is only a representation, and therefore atoms, as elementary entities, as the foundations of reality, that is, as something that is not a representation, cannot be particles of matter. When I touch any material object, its hardness or impenetrability is only my sensation, and the combination of these sensations that form the whole Object is my idea, it is in me. But what produces this in me, that is, as a result of which I receive this feeling of impenetrability, what I encounter, is obviously not in me, independent of me, it is an independent cause of my sensations. In the feeling of impenetrability, I encounter a certain resistance, which produces this sensation; therefore, I must assume some counteracting force, and only this force belongs to a reality independent of me. Consequently, atoms, as the basic or last elements of this reality, are nothing more than elementary forces. So, atoms are active, or active, forces, and everything that exists is the product of their interaction. But interaction presupposes not only the ability to act, but also the ability to perceive the actions of others. Each force acts on another and at the same time perceives the action of this other or these others. In order to act outside of itself on others, force must strive from itself, strive outward. In order to perceive the action of another force, this force must, so to speak, give it a place, attract it or put it in front of itself. Thus every fundamental force necessarily expresses itself in aspiration and in representation. In striving, she receives reality for others, or acts on others, but in representation, others have reality for her, she perceives the action of others. So, the foundations of reality are striving and representing, or perceiving, forces. Perceiving the action of another force, giving it a place, the first force is limited by this other, differs from it and at the same time turns, so to speak, onto itself, goes deeper into its own reality, receives a definition for itself. So, for example, when we touch or hit some material object, firstly, we feel this object, this other thing, this external force: it receives reality for us; but secondly, in this same sensation we feel ourselves, since this is our sensation, we, so to speak, with this sensation testify to our own reality as a perceiver, we become something for ourselves. We thus have forces which, firstly, act outside themselves, have reality for another, which, secondly, receive the action of this other or for which this other has reality or is represented by it, and which, finally, have reality for themselves - what we call consciousness in the broad sense of the word. Such forces are more than forces—they are beings. Thus, we must assume that atoms, that is, the basic elements of all reality, are living elementary beings, or what, since the time of Leibniz, has been called monads. So, the content of everything is living and active beings, eternal and abiding, through their interaction forming all reality, everything that exists. The interaction of the basic beings, or monads, presupposes a qualitative difference in them; if the action of one monad on another is determined by its striving for this other and actually consists of this striving, then the basis of this striving lies in the fact that other basic beings, other monads represent something qualitatively different from the first, something that gives the first being a new content, which it itself does not have, replenishes its existence; for otherwise, if these two fundamental beings were absolutely identical, if the second represented only the same thing as the first, then there would be no sufficient reason, no reason for the first to strive for the second. (For clarification, we can point to the law of polarity that prevails in the physical world: only opposite, or unlike, poles attract each other, since they complement each other and are necessary for each other.) So, for the interaction of basic beings, it is necessary that each of them has its own special quality, due to which it is something different from all the others, due to which it becomes the object of the aspiration and action of all others and, in turn, can influence them in a certain way. Creatures not only influence each other, but they influence one way and not another, they influence in a certain way. If all external qualitative differences known to us belong to the world of phenomena, if they are conditional, impermanent and transitory, then the qualitative difference of the basic beings themselves, eternal and unchangeable, must also be eternal and unchangeable, that is, unconditional. This unconditional quality of the fundamental being, which enables it to be the content of all others, and in consequence of which also all others can be the content of everyone, is the unconditional quality which determines all the actions of the being and all its perceptions, because the being not only acts as it is, but also perceives the actions of others according to what it is itself, this unconditional quality, I say, constitutes that being's own inner, unchangeable character, making it what it is, or constituting its idea. So, the basic beings that make up the content of the unconditional beginning are not, firstly, only indivisible units - atoms, they are not, and secondly, only living active forces, or monads, they are beings or ideas determined by the unconditional quality. In order for everything to be the content of an unconditional principle, it is necessary that it all itself represents a certain content, that is, it is necessary that each unit that makes up it all, each member of this whole, be something special, cannot be replaced or mixed with anything else, it is necessary that it be an eternal, abiding idea. The doctrine of ideas as eternal and unchanging essences that underlie all transitory existences and phenomena and constitute the true content of the unconditional principle or the eternal, unchangeable everything - this doctrine, as we know, was first developed by Greek philosophy in the person of Plato, constitutes a further step after Buddhism in the revelation of the Divine principle. Buddhism says: “This world, natural being, everything that exists is not truly existing, it is a ghost; if so, if what is is not truth, then truth is what is not, or nothing.” Platonic idealism says, on the contrary: “If what immediately exists for us, natural being or the world of phenomena, is not truth, truly existing - and in this Platonism agrees with Buddhism - then this being, this reality can be recognized as untrue only because there is another reality to which the character of truth and essentiality belongs.” A given reality is untrue or inauthentic only in relation to another true and authentic reality, or, in other words, this natural reality has its truth, its true essence in another, and this other is an idea; and, moreover, since true, authentic reality cannot be poorer, cannot contain less than ghostly reality contains, it is necessary to assume that everything that is in this latter (that is, visible, or ghostly, reality) corresponds to something in true, or genuine, reality, in other words, that every being of this natural world has its own idea or its true authentic essence. And thus, this true reality, this true essence is defined not as a simple idea, but as the ideal everything, or as the world of ideas, the kingdom of ideas. To clarify what an idea is, an indication of the internal character of the human personality can serve. Each human person is, first of all, a natural phenomenon, subject to external conditions and determined by them in his actions and perceptions. Since the manifestations of this personality are determined by these external conditions, since they are subject to the laws of external or mechanical causation, the properties of these actions or manifestations of this personality, the properties that constitute what is called the empirical character of this personality, are only natural conditional properties. But at the same time, each human personality has within itself something completely special, completely indefinable externally, not amenable to any formula, and despite this, it leaves a certain individual imprint on all actions and all perceptions of this person. This feature is not only something indefinable, but at the same time something unchangeable: it is completely independent of the external direction of the will and action of this person, it will remain unchanged in all circumstances and in all conditions in which this person can be placed. In all these circumstances and conditions, a person will manifest this indefinable and elusive feature, this individual character, and will leave its mark on every action and every perception. Thus, this internal individual character of a person is something unconditional, and it constitutes its own essence, a special personal content or a special personal idea of ​​a given being, which determines its essential significance in everything, the role that it plays and will forever play in the world drama. The qualitative difference of the basic beings is necessarily expressed in the difference in their relations: if all the basic beings were unconditionally identical, then they would relate to each other in the unconditionally identical way; if they are not identical, if each of them represents its own special character or idea, then each of them must relate to all the others in a special way, must occupy its own special, definite place in everything, and this relationship of each being to everything is its objective idea, constituting the complete manifestation or implementation of its inner peculiarity, or subjective idea. But how is the relationship between basic beings possible in general when they are qualitatively different and separate? Obviously, it is possible only when, while differing directly from each other, they at the same time converge or are equated with each other in something common to them, and for an essential relationship between ideas it is necessary that this common thing itself be essential, that is, be a special idea or basic being. Thus, the essential relation between ideas is similar to the formal-logical relation between different concepts - both here and there is a relation of greater or lesser generality or breadth. If the ideas of several beings relate to the idea of ​​one being in the same way as species concepts relate to a generic being, then this last being covers these others, contains them in itself: while differing from each other, they are equal in relation to it, it is their common center, equally replenishing all these other beings with its idea. This is how a complex organism of creatures appears; several such organisms find their center in another being with an even more general or broad idea, thus being parts or organs of a new organism of a higher order, corresponding to or covering with itself all the lower ones related to it. Thus, gradually ascending, we reach the most general and broad idea, which must internally cover all the others. This is the idea of ​​unconditional good or, more precisely, unconditional goodness or love. In essence, every idea is good - for its bearer - his good and his love. Every being is what it loves. But if every special idea is some special good and special love, then the general universal or absolute idea is unconditional good and unconditional love, that is, one that equally contains everything and corresponds to everything. Unconditional love is precisely that ideal everything, that wholeness that constitutes the proper content of the divine principle. For the completeness of ideas cannot be conceived as their mechanical totality, but precisely as their internal unity, which is love. The doctrine of ideas, correctly developed, shows us the objective essence of the divine principle or that which constitutes its own metaphysical region of existence, independent of the natural world of phenomena, although associated with it. We have learned how to think about those fundamental foundations and final elements of all being, which, on the one hand, relate to the visible world of phenomena as its substantial principles or productive causes, and on the other hand, form their own content or the internal completeness of the divine principle. To do this, we went through three mental steps, and the answer we achieved, in school language, represents three points: 1) in order to be the foundations of reality, the sought-after entities must be indivisible or indecomposable units, real centers of being - atoms 13 . 2) In order to produce a real diversity of being, these central units must act and perceive action, that is, be in interaction with each other, and, therefore, they must be active or living forces - monads. 3) Finally, in order to constitute the essential everything, or to be the content of an unconditional principle, these individual forces must represent a certain content, or be definite ideas. Various metaphysical systems have focused primarily on one of these three points, losing sight of the others, although logically they not only do not exclude, but, on the contrary, require each other, and, thus, the complete truth in response to the basic metaphysical question lies in the synthesis of these three concepts: atom, living force (monad) and idea - a synthesis that can be expressed in a simple and commonly used word, namely the word being. In fact, the concept of a being internally combines the three concepts mentioned above, since a being, in order to be such, must, firstly, constitute a separate unit, a special center of being, for otherwise it will not be an independent being, but only an accessory to another being; secondly, a being must have active force, be capable of action and modification, for a dead and inert mass is not a being; thirdly, and finally, a being must have a qualitatively defined content, or express a specific idea, for otherwise it will not be real, that is, special, this and not another being; in other words, a being as such must necessarily be both an atom, a living force (monad), and an idea. It is necessary to recognize the plurality of basic beings and think of the unconditional as their totality; for without such multiplicity action is impossible - since every action is a relation of one to another - therefore, reality as a system of actions and reality as the result of them is impossible. And if in this case the world turns into a pure ghost, then, on the other hand, this takes away its necessary condition from the existence of God, for God, deprived of an object of action, himself loses all reality, becomes pure possibility or pure nothingness. But if the denial of the plurality of beings leads at once to the denial of both God and the world, then the opposite recognition of unconditional plurality, that is, the admission of many unconditionally original beings, also leads to exactly the same result. In fact, as unconditionally independent, that is, having everything from themselves, these beings would be deprived of any internal necessary connection between themselves, there would be no basis for their interaction, and, consequently, all reality and reality arising from such interaction would be impossible. On the other hand, with the complete originality of many beings, they would be independent of a single unconditional principle, they would be completely alien to it; it would not have its own internal content in them and would remain with its dead unity as an indifferent, empty being: being limited from the outside by independent beings, it could not be unconditional or absolute - moreover, having outside itself the entire fullness of beings, it would thereby turn into pure nothingness. If, therefore, both the recognition of the unconditional unity and the recognition of the unconditional plurality of beings lead equally to negative results and take away the possibility of any rational worldview, then, obviously, the truth lies in the combination of both or in the assumption of relative unity and relative plurality. To assert the impossibility of such a connection is an obvious petitio principii: it is truly impossible if one already recognizes in advance these opposing terms as true in their exclusivity, that is, separately from one another. If we recognize that the one can be as such only in itself, excluding any multiplicity, then from this one, of course, there is no transition to multiplicity; in the same way, if we recognize pure multiplicity in itself outside of any internal unity, then, obviously, from such multiplicity there is no bridge to the one. But it is precisely the recognition of exclusive unity and exclusive plurality as the starting point that is an arbitrary thought, not justified by reason, and the impossibility of arriving at any satisfactory result from this point of view already indicates its inconsistency. On the contrary, since we can logically begin only with the unconditional, but the unconditional by its very concept cannot be something exclusive, that is, limited, cannot, therefore, be only one or only many, then we should directly admit, in agreement with both logic and equally with external and internal experience, that there is and cannot be either pure unity or pure plurality, that everything that exists is necessarily both one and many. From this point of view, many beings do not have true existence in their individuality or in unconditional isolation, but each of them can exist in itself and for itself only insofar as it is at the same time in interaction and interpenetration with others, as inseparable elements of one whole, since the own quality, or character, of each being in its objectivity consists precisely in a certain relationship of this being to everything and, therefore, in a certain interaction with everything. But this, obviously, is possible only if these beings have an essential commonality with each other, that is, if they are rooted in one common substance, which constitutes the essential medium of their interaction, embracing them all and not being contained in any of them separately. Thus, the multiplicity of beings is not a multiplicity of unconditionally separate units, but only a multiplicity of elements of one organic system, due to the essential unity of their common principle (just as the life of natural organisms known to us is due to the unity of the organic soul that forms them). This organic character of fundamental beings, on the other hand, depends on the fact that these beings are ideas. In fact, if the basic beings were only real units or only active forces and, therefore, related to each other in a purely external way, each was only in itself and outside the others, then their unity would be only external, mechanical, and the very possibility of even such a unity, the very possibility of any interaction would be subject to question. If, as we had to admit, the basic beings are not only units possessing forces, or units of forces, but also certain ideas, and, therefore, their connection consists not only in their external action on each other as real forces, but is primarily determined by their real content, giving each a special meaning and a necessary place in everything, then the internal connection of all beings directly follows from this, by virtue of which their system appears as an organism of ideas. As was already noted in the previous reading, the general character of the ideal cosmos represents some correspondence with the relationship of our rational concepts - precisely in the fact that particular beings or ideas are embraced by other, more general ones, just as specific concepts are embraced by the generic concept. But, on the other hand, there is a fundamental difference and even opposition between the relationship in the field of rational concepts and the same in the field of essential ideas. As is known from formal logic, the scope of a concept is in inverse relation to its content: the wider any concept, the greater its scope, that is, the greater the number of other particular concepts that fit it, the fewer features it has, the poorer it is in content, the more general, the more indefinite (for example, “man” as a general concept that embraces all human beings and, therefore, much broader in scope than, for example, the concept “monk”, is just as poorer in content than the latter, since in The concept of a person in general contains only those signs that are common to all people without exception, while the concept of “monk”, in addition, contains many other signs that make up the peculiarity of the monastic title, so that this latter concept is narrower than the concept of “man”, at the same time richer in its internal content, that is, richer in positive signs). Such an attitude obviously depends on the very origin of general concepts of the understanding. Being obtained by a purely negative method of abstraction, they cannot, as a result, have any independence, no content of their own, but are only general schemes of those specific data from which they are abstracted. Abstraction consists precisely in the elimination or denial of those special features that define particular concepts included in the scope of the concept of the general. (So, in the above example, the abstract concept of “man” is formed precisely through the elimination or denial of all those particular distinctive features that may be contained in concepts about various kinds of people.) Quite the opposite - between ideas as positive definitions of special beings: the relationship between volume and content is necessarily direct, that is, the wider the scope of an idea, the richer it is in content. If a general generic concept, as a simple abstraction, as a passive consequence of rational activity, can only be negatively determined by its specific concepts, excluding their positive characteristics, then the idea as an independent entity must, on the contrary, be in an active relationship with those particular ideas that are covered by it or make up its volume, that is, it must be positively determined by them. In fact, since a general idea in itself is already something or expresses an independent being, then, being in certain relations with other particular ideas or beings, perceiving their action and influencing them in accordance with its own character, it obviously thereby exercises this own character on them, develops its own content from different sides and in different directions, realizes itself in different relations; and, consequently, the greater the number of particular ideas it stands in direct relation to or the more ideas that make up its volume, the more diverse and definite it realizes itself, the more complete and rich is its own content. Thus, due to the positive nature that necessarily belongs to the interaction of ideal beings, the particular ideas that make up the scope of the general idea also constitute its content, or, more precisely, the content of this broader idea in its implementation or objectivity is directly or positively determined by those narrower ideas that are included in its scope, and, therefore, the wider the volume, the richer the content. Therefore, Spinoza’s famous saying “omnis determinatio est negatio” (every determination is a negation) cannot in any way be applied to real beings possessing positive content or idea 14 ; for here the determination, that is, the action of others on this being, encounters in it some positive force of its own, which by this action is called to manifest or reveal its content. As a living force, a being cannot have a purely passive attitude towards the actions of others: it itself acts on them and, being replenished by them, itself replenishes them; therefore, determination by others is for him at the same time self-determination; the result equally depends both on the external forces acting on it and on itself, and the whole relationship thus has a positive character. Thus, for example, every human person, having his own character and representing some special idea, interacting with others or being determined by others and determining them, thereby reveals his own character and realizes his own idea, without which this character and this idea would be pure possibility: they become reality only in the activity of the person, in which it is necessarily determined by others; Consequently, here the definition is not negation, but realization; it would be a negation only in the same case if the person had no character, did not represent any peculiarity, if it were an empty place, but this is obviously impossible. From everything that has been said, it is clear that by ideas we mean completely definite, special forms of metaphysical beings inherent in them in themselves, and not the products of our distracting thoughts; according to this view, ideas have objective (objective) existence in relation to our knowledge and at the same time positive (subjective) existence in themselves, that is, they themselves are subjects or, more precisely, have their own special subjects. Ideas are equally independent both from rational abstractions and from sensory reality. In fact, if material reality, perceived by our external senses, itself represents only conditional and transitory phenomena, and in no way original beings or foundations of being, then these latter, although connected in a certain way with this external reality, must, however, be formally distinguished from it, must have their own existence, independent of phenomena, and, therefore, to know them as real, a special method of mental activity is necessary, which we will call the term mental, already known in philosophy. contemplation, or intuition (intellektuelle Anschanung, Intuition), and which constitutes the primary form of true knowledge, clearly distinguished both from sensory perception and experience, and from rational or abstract thinking; this latter, as has been shown, cannot have any positive content of its own: an abstract concept, by its very definition, cannot go further than what it is abstracted from, cannot by itself transform random and particular facts into necessary and universal truths or ideas. Nevertheless, abstract thinking undoubtedly has a special, albeit only negative and indirect meaning, as a transition or boundary between sensory perception of phenomena and mental contemplation of ideas. In fact, every general abstract concept contains the negation of all phenomena included in its scope in their particular, immediate particularity and at the same time their affirmation in some new unity and new content, which, however, the abstract concept, due to its purely negative origin, does not give itself, but only indicates - every general concept, thus, is the negation of a particular phenomenon and an indication of the universal idea. Thus, in the previous example, the general concept of “man” not only contains the negation of the particular characteristics of this or that person separately, but also affirms some new higher unity, which embraces all people, but at the same time differs from all of them and, therefore, must have its own special, independent objectivity, making it a common objective norm for them (we directly indicate such a norm when we say: “be a man” or “act in accordance with human dignity”, etc.); But we obviously cannot achieve this objective norm itself, the very content of the highest unity, which embraces all human reality, although free from it, through abstraction, in which this new unity is obtained only as an empty space after the denial of what it is not. From here it is clear that abstract thinking is a transitional state of the mind when it is strong enough to free itself from the exclusive power of sensory perception and have a negative attitude towards it, but is not yet able to master an idea in all the fullness and integrity of its actual objective existence, to internally and essentially connect with it, and can only (metaphorically speaking) touch its surface, slide along its external forms. The fruit of such an attitude is not a living image and likeness of an existing idea, but only its shadow, denoting its external boundaries and outlines, but without the fullness of forms, powers and colors. Thus, abstract thinking, devoid of its own content, must serve either as a reduction of sensory perception, or as a preliminary to mental contemplation, since the general concepts that form it can be affirmed either as diagrams of phenomena, or as shadows of ideas 15. As for these latter, even if the need for their recognition were not based on clear logical grounds, we would still have to recognize them on other, factual grounds that give them the reliability of universal human experience: the reality of ideas and mental contemplation is undoubtedly proven by the fact of artistic creativity. In fact, those ideal images that are embodied by the artist in his works are not, firstly, a simple reproduction of observed phenomena in their particular and random reality, nor, secondly, general concepts abstracted from this reality. Both observation and abstraction or generalization are necessary for the development of artistic ideas, but not for their creation - otherwise every observant and reflective person, every scientist and thinker could be a true artist, which in fact is not the case. Everyone who is at all familiar with the process of artistic creativity knows well that artistic ideas and images are not complex products of observation and reflection, but appear to the mind’s eye at once in their internal integrity (the artist sees them, as Goethe and Hoffmann directly stated to themselves), and further artistic work comes down only to their development and embodiment in material details. Everyone knows that abstract rationality, as well as the slavish imitation of external reality, are equally shortcomings in a work of art; everyone knows that for a truly artistic image or type, an internal connection of perfect individuality with perfect community, or universality, is absolutely necessary, and such a connection constitutes an essential feature or proper definition of an intelligible idea, in contrast to an abstract concept, to which only community belongs, and from a particular phenomenon, to which only individuality belongs. If, therefore, the subject of art can be neither a particular phenomenon perceived in external experience, nor a general concept produced by rational reflection, then this subject can only be a real idea, revealed to mental contemplation. Due to this direct connection of art with the metaphysical world of ideal beings, we find that the same national genius who first comprehended the divine principle as an ideal cosmos - the same national genius was the real founder of art. Therefore, when speaking about Greek idealism, we should understand by it not only the philosophical idealism of Plato, but the entire ideal worldview of the Greek people, expressed in their entire culture and which was their real religion. Platonism raised only to philosophical consciousness those ideal foundations that already lay in the artistic religion or religious art of the Greeks. From Plato the Greeks learned only the philosophical formula of that ideal cosmos, which was already known to them as a living reality in Olympus of Homer and Phidias. If the ancient Greek knew the divine principle only as harmony and beauty, then, of course, he did not recognize its whole truth, for it is more than harmony and beauty, but, not embracing the whole truth of the divine principle, this idealism, obviously, represented, however, a certain type, a certain side of the Divinity, contained within itself something positively divine. To assert the opposite, to recognize this idealism as only a pagan delusion, means to assert that the truly divine does not need harmony and beauty of form, that it may not be realized in an ideal cosmos. If, as is obvious, beauty and harmony constitute a necessary and essential element of the Divine, then, without a doubt, we must recognize Greek idealism as the first positive phase of religious revelation, in which the divine principle, removed from sensible nature, appeared in a new bright kingdom, inhabited not by the poor shadows of the material world and not by the random creatures of our imagination, but by real beings who, with the purity of ideas, unite all the power of being and, being objects of contemplation (for us), at the same time, they are also subjects of existence (in themselves). As we have seen, all ideas are internally connected, being equally involved in one all-encompassing idea of ​​unconditional love, which by its very nature internally contains everything else, is a concentrated expression of everything or everything as a unity. But in order for this concentration or this unity to be real, that is, to be a connection of something, the separate existence of the united or its existence for itself in actual difference from the one is obviously necessary; In order for ideas to be isolated, they must be independent beings with special active forces and special centers or focuses of these forces, that is, they must be not only ideas, but monads and atoms. Thus, from the side of unity, from the point of view of the all-one idea, we necessarily come to the multiplicity of ideal beings, for without such multiplicity, that is, in the absence of what should be united, unity itself cannot be real, cannot be revealed, but remains as a purely potential, unmanifested being, as an empty possibility, or nothing. On the other hand, just as every idea, that is, every positive content, necessarily presupposes a certain subject or bearer who has certain powers for its implementation, in the same way an all-unified or unconditional idea cannot be only a pure idea or a pure object: in order to be the essential unity of everything and really connect everything with itself, it obviously must itself have essentiality and reality, must exist in itself and for itself, and not in another and for another only - in other words, an all-unified idea must be the own definition of a single central being. But how should we think about this being? If an objective idea or idea as an object, that is, in contemplation or for another, differs from all other ideas by its essential quality or character, differs objectively, then, for its part, the bearer of this idea or its subject (more precisely, the idea as a subject) must differ from others subjectively or in existence, that is, it must have its own, special reality, be an independent center for itself, must, therefore, have self-consciousness and personality, for otherwise, that is, if ideas differed only objectively, according to their recognized qualities, and would not be self-differentiated in their inner being, then they would only be ideas for another, and not real beings, which, as we know, cannot be allowed. So, the bearer of an idea, or the idea as a subject, is a person. These two terms - person and idea - are correlative as subject and object and for the completeness of their reality they necessarily require each other. A personality devoid of an idea would be something empty, an external meaningless force, it would have nothing to realize, and therefore its existence would be only an aspiration, an effort to live, and not real life. On the other hand, an idea without a corresponding subject or carrier that realizes it would be something completely passive and powerless, a pure object, that is, something only imagined, and not really existing: for real complete existence, the internal unity of personality and idea is necessary, like heat and light in a fire. Applying what has been said to the unconditional idea, we find that it, being defined in its objective essence as all-encompassing or all-unified, is at the same time defined in its internal subjective existence as an individual and unique person, containing everything equally and thereby equally different from everything. This gives us for the first time the concept of the living God, and at the same time our previous concept of God as everyone receives some new explanation. God is everything - this means that just as every real being has a certain essence or content, of which it is the bearer, in relation to which it says “I am”, that is, I am this and not another, in the same way the divine being affirms its “I am”, but not in relation to any separate particular content, but in relation to everything, that is, firstly, in relation to the unconditional all-inclusive and all-encompassing idea, and through it in it - and in relation to all the special ideas that make up the volume and content of the unconditional idea. In the Bible, to Moses’ question about the name of God, he receives the answer: ehjeh asher ehieh, that is (literally) “I will be who I will be,” that is, I am I, or I am an unconditional person 16. If in Indian Buddhism the divine principle was defined negatively as nirvana, or nothingness, if in Greek idealism it is defined objectively as the ideal everything or universal essence, then in Jewish monotheism it receives an internal subjective definition as pure self, or unconditional personality. This is the first individual, personal revelation of the divine principle. Not only Buddhism, but also Platonic idealism does not affirm the divine principle in itself, does not express its own reality for itself: the ideal “everything”, or the unconditional idea, can only be an accessory or content of the unconditional principle, and not itself. If every idea has reality only when it is represented by a certain special being, then the unconditional idea, or the ideal “everything,” can have reality not in itself, but as the content of a being, which is the subject or bearer of this idea. A deity understood only as an ideal cosmos, as everything or as the harmony of everything - such a deity appears to man only as a pure object, therefore, only in ideal contemplation, and religion, which is limited to this, has a speculative and artistic character, exclusively contemplative, and not active; the divine principle is open here to imagination and feeling, but says nothing to the will of man. And indeed, the moral element is completely alien to the entire Hellenic worldview 17. The whole field of practical activity was left to instinct rather than to principle. Although Greek philosophy dealt with ethical issues, as a result its teachings came to a simple denial of the moral principle as such. If Socrates already reduced virtue to knowledge, thus eliminating its essential feature, then his great student more definitely recognized as the highest good of man, as the norm and goal of his life, a state in which all desires and all will disappear. The ideal of man for Plato was the philosopher, and the characteristic feature of the philosopher, as Plato himself expressed (in the Phaedo), is that he constantly dies to practical life, that is, he is in a state of pure contemplation of eternal ideas, excluding any active striving, any real will. Therefore, the ideal state, according to Plato, should be the kingdom of philosophers, that is, the highest goal for society is the development of the theoretical sphere and its unconditional dominance over practical life. In the same way, the Stoics recognized the moral standard as complete equanimity of the spirit (α'ταραξία), that is, the pure negation of any definite will. But if, therefore, here (as in Buddhism) the moral goal was the simple extinguishing of the will, then this obviously happened because the unconditional norm, that is, the deity, was understood here only as a pure object, impersonal and weak-willed, therefore revealed only in pure contemplation as a state of moral indifference (since good and evil are qualities of the will, and not knowledge); for if the active principle of the will were recognized in the deity, then the moral task of man would no longer be the simple destruction of his own will, but the replacement of this will with the divine will. Therefore, only that religion could have a positive moral significance, could define and fill the area of ​​practical life - only that religion in which the deity was revealed as a leading person, whose will gives the highest standard to the human will. This is the essential meaning of the Old Testament revelation, placing it immeasurably above all other religions of antiquity. That the deity must be a guiding person, a living God, in order to positively determine the personal will of man is clear. But the question is, can a deity, by its unconditional nature, be a person? This question is obscured by misunderstandings arising from the one-sidedness of opposing views, which, however, equally contradict the very original concept of deity as unconditional. Thus, on the one hand, those who affirm the personality of a deity usually assert, at the same time, that the deity is only a person, that is, a known personal being with such and such attributes. Pantheists thoroughly rebel against this, arguing that this means limiting the deity, depriving him of infinity and unconditionality, making him one of many. It is obvious, in fact, that the deity, as absolute, cannot be only a person, only I, that it is more than a person. But those who rebel against this limitation themselves fall into the opposite one-sidedness, arguing that the deity is simply devoid of personal existence, that it is only the impersonal substance of everything. But if the deity is a substance, that is, self-existent, then, containing everything within itself, it must be distinguished from everything or affirm its own existence, for otherwise there will be no container and the deity, deprived of internal independence, will no longer become a substance, but only an attribute of everything. Thus, already as a substance, the deity necessarily has self-determination and self-distinction, that is, personality and consciousness. So, the truth is obviously that the divine principle is not a person only in the sense that it is not exhausted by personal determination, that it is not only one, but also everything, not only an individual, but also an all-encompassing being, not only a being, but also an essence. As the unconditional, being a subject, it is also a substance; being a person, or having a personal existence, it is at the same time an unconditional content, or an idea that fills this personal existence. The deity is greater than personal existence, free from it, but not because it is deprived of it (that would be a bad freedom), but because, having it, it is not exhausted by it, but has another definition that makes it free from the first. In the historical development of religious consciousness, which gradually reached complete truth, the pagan world, the flower of which was expressed in Hellenism, affirmed primarily the deity as everything. Of the two necessary moments of divine reality: personal, or subjective, and ideal, or objective, this world perceived and expressed in a certain way only the second. Judaism, on the contrary, which in this respect constitutes the direct opposite of Hellenism, perceived and in a certain way realized the first moment of personal or subjective reality, cognized the deity as an existent, or pure self. Of course, this opposition was not and could not be unconditional. If the greatest representative of the Hellenic spirit, Plato, developed the doctrine of ideas and of divinity as the highest idea, then, on the other hand, in the same Plato we find the definition of deity as a demiurge, that is, a creative being who forms the world according to unconditional norms or ideas. But such a view appears in Plato and throughout Greek philosophy only in passing; it is obscured by another dominant view, according to which the divine principle is not a being, but only an ideal “everything.” In the same way, in Judaism, although the deity is defined as a being, or I, there is also the concept of this I as having unconditional content. But here, in the same way, this second concept is generally absorbed by the first: the dominant idea of ​​​​God in Judaism, without a doubt, is the idea of ​​him as a pure self, apart from any content: I am, who I am - and nothing more. But I, in my unconditional centrality, is something completely impenetrable, it is the exclusion from myself of everything else, of everything that is not I: the unconditional I must be the only independent being, not allowing independent reality in anything else. “I am a consuming fire,” the Old Testament God says to himself. What kind of relationship can the human personality have to the divine principle thus affirmed? What could be the connection between them, or religion? If the divine principle, as the unconditional self, as the only independent being, excludes all other independence, then man’s attitude towards it can only be unconditional submission, unconditional renunciation of all independence. Man must admit that in his entire being and in his entire life he is only a consequence, only a product of the unconditional will of this unconditional self. The will of the unconditional self, free from all content, from all ideas and all nature, is pure arbitrariness. But this arbitrariness for the human person who submits to it is law. The unconditional self is impenetrable to the other self; it appears to him as an external force, the action of this force is a necessity for him, and the recognition of necessity is a law. Thus, the religion of an unconditional personal god is a religion of law, because for the self-affirming human self, as long as it remains in this self-affirmation, the unconditional being must necessarily appear as external and its will as external law. But the Old Testament revelation - and this is its complete truth and justification - itself contains the recognition that the religion of the law is not a normal, true religion, but that it is only a necessary transition to another non-external relationship or connection with the divine principle. This recognition is expressed by the prophets, and the truth of the Old Testament biblical religion is that it is not only a religion of the law, but also a religion of the prophets. In the prophetic books we find clear indications that the law and legal cult have a purely conditional, transitory meaning. “Why do I need the multitude of your sacrifices? says Jehovah. I am satisfied with burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle, and I do not desire the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. If you come to appear before My face, then who demands this from you, so that you trample My courts? From now on, do not carry empty gifts; Smoking is disgusting for Me; I cannot tolerate New Moons, Saturdays, or holiday gatherings. Lawlessness and celebration! My soul hates your new moons and your celebrations; They are a burden for Me, hard for Me to bear” (Isaiah I, 11 – 14). “Thus says Jehovah of hosts, the God of Israel: You shall add your burnt offerings to your sacrifices and eat the flesh; For I did not speak to your fathers, nor did I give the commandment about burnt offerings on the day that they were brought out of the land of Egypt. But I gave this commandment to them, saying: Hear My word, and I will be your God, and you will be My people, and walk in every way that I will show you, so that you may prosper” (Jeremiah VII: 21-23). The rituals and sacrifices established by law cannot in themselves in any way express the will of God: as unconditional, this will cannot be associated with any external object, no external action can satisfy it - before it all distinctions between holy and unclean in external objects and actions disappear. Although certain actions are established by the law of Jehovah, there can be no internal relationship between them and Jehovah, and if a person thinks to satisfy the absolute will by performing these actions alone, then these actions thereby become unclean and criminal. “Thus says Jehovah: My throne is the heaven, and the earth is My footstool: where will you build a house for Me, and where is the place for My resting place? For my hand has created all these things, that all these things may exist, says Jehovah. He who kills an ox is the same as he who kills a man; he who sacrifices a sheep strangles a dog; the one presenting the grain offering offers pig's blood; he who burns incense blesses the idol” (Isaiah LXVI, 1 – 3). But if the divine will cannot have any separate, specific object, and yet as a will it must relate to something, then, obviously, this object can only be everything. The will of God, as absolute, cannot exclude anything from itself or, what is the same, want something exclusively: not knowing deprivation, it does not know envy; it equally affirms the existence and goodness of all and therefore is itself defined as unconditional goodness, or love. “I love you with an everlasting love,” says Jehovah to his creation, “and therefore I will extend my favor to you” (Jeremiah XXXI, 3). If the will of God is love, then this determines the internal law for the human will. “Remove the chains of unrighteousness, loose the bonds of the yoke, and set the afflicted free, and break all bonds. When you break your bread to the hungry and welcome the wandering unfortunates into your home; when you see the naked and clothe him and you cannot hide from your half-blood: then your light will break out like the dawn, and your healing will flourish quickly, and your righteousness will precede you, and the glory of Jehovah will accompany you. Then you will call, and Jehovah will answer; You will cry out and say: Behold, I am! When you destroy the yoke from yourself, stop raising your finger and saying offensive things, and give your soul to the hungry and feed the suffering soul; then your light will rise in the darkness, and your darkness will be like the noonday” (Isaiah LVIII, 6 – 10). The will of God must be the law and norm for the human will, not as recognized arbitrariness, but as conscious good. On this internal relationship there will be a new covenant between God and humanity, a new theanthropic order, which should replace that preliminary and transitional religion that was established on external law. “Behold, the days are coming,” says Jehovah, “when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; They broke that covenant of mine, so I rejected them, says Jehovah. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says Jehovah: I will put My law within them, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And they will no longer teach each other, brother to brother, and say: know Jehovah, for they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, says Jehovah, because I will forgive their guilt and will remember their sin no more” (Jeremiah XXXI, 31 – 34). This new divine-human covenant, based on the internal law of love, must be free from any exclusivity: there can no longer be room for arbitrary election and condemnation of individuals and peoples; the new internal covenant is a universal covenant, restoring all of humanity, and through it all of nature. “And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the house of Jehovah shall be made the chief of the mountains; and she will rise above the hills, and all nations will flow to her. And great nations will come forth and say: Let us go and ascend to the mountain of Jehovah, to the house of the God of Jacob, so that He may show us His ways, and we will walk in His paths. Then He will judge the nations, and rule great nations; and they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into chamois” (Isaiah II, 2-4). “Then the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the goat, and the bull and the young lion and the bull will walk together, and a little child will lead them. And the cow and the bear will graze, their children will lie down together, and the lion, like the ox, will eat grass. And the child will play over the asp's den, and the child will direct his hand toward the serpent's den; They will not do evil or harm in all My holy mountain: for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of Jehovah, as the bottom of the sea is covered with water. And it will come to pass on that day that the Gentiles will turn to the root of Jesse, which will stand as the banner of the nations, and its resting place will be glory” (Isaiah XI: 6-10). We have seen that the essential principle of Judaism - the revelation of God in His unconditional unity as a pure self - is already freed from its exclusivity in the revelation of the prophets of Israel, to whom God is no longer as a pure self, having in its activity no other basis than the exclusively subjective principle of arbitrariness, subordinating a person to itself by external force, arousing fear in him (this is what El-Shaddai originally appeared to the Jew - the God of strength and fear, this is primarily and now Allah for the Mohammedan): God is revealed to the prophets as having a certain essential ideal definition, as all-encompassing love, as a result of which God’s action on another. His attitude towards man is already determined by the objective idea of ​​absolute good, and the law of His existence no longer appears as pure arbitrariness (in Him) and external forced necessity (for man), but as internal necessity, or true freedom. According to this expansion of the religious principle, the national Jewish consciousness expands among the prophets. If the revelation of God as an exclusive self corresponded to the exclusive affirmation of the national self among other peoples among the people of God, then the consciousness to which God was revealed as a universal idea, as all-encompassing love, must necessarily free itself from national egoism, must necessarily become universal. And indeed, such is the prophetic consciousness. Jonah preaches the will of Jehovah to the pagans of Nineveh, Isaiah and Jeremiah proclaim the coming revelation as a banner of tongues to which all nations will flock. And yet it was the Jewish prophets who were the greatest patriots, completely imbued with the national idea of ​​Judaism, but precisely because they were completely imbued with it, they had to understand it as universal, intended for everyone - as great and broad enough to internally unite all humanity and the whole world. From this side, the example of the Jewish prophets, the greatest patriots and at the same time the greatest representatives of universalism, is highly instructive for us, pointing out that if true patriotism is necessarily free from national exclusivity and selfishness, then at the same time a true universal view, true universalism, in order to be something, to have real force and positive content, must necessarily be an extension or universalization of a positive popular idea, and not empty and indifferent cosmopolitanism. So, in the prophetic consciousness for the first time the subjective purely personal element of the Old Testament Yahweh (the Being) was combined with the objective idea of ​​the universal divine essence. But since the prophets were inspired figures, were practical people, in the highest sense of the word, and not contemplative thinkers, then the synthetic idea of ​​​​a divine being was more a perception of spiritual feeling and an arousal of the moral will than a subject of speculation. Meanwhile, in order to fill and define the entire consciousness of man, this idea had to become the subject of thought. If the truth of divinity consists in the unity of God as a being, or an unconditional subject, with his absolute essence, or objective idea, then this unity, this internal relationship of two elements (personal and essential) in the Divine must be in a certain way conceivable, must be defined. And if one of these divine elements (the unconditional personality of God) was revealed primarily to the genius of the Jewish people, while the other (the absolute idea of ​​the Divine) was especially perceived by the genius of Hellenism, then it is very clear that the synthesis of these two elements (necessary for the completeness of knowledge of God) most likely could have occurred where and when the Jewish and Greek peoples collided. And indeed, the implementation of this great mental task began in Alexandria among the Hellenistic Jews (that is, those who adopted Greek education), whose outstanding representative is the famous Philo (who was born somewhat earlier than A.D. and died in apostolic times), who, as is known, developed the doctrine of the Logos (the word and the mind) as the exponent of the divine universal essence and the mediator between the one God and everything that exists. In connection with this doctrine of the Logos and its further development in the same Alexandria, the Neoplatonists’ doctrine of three divine hypostases appeared, realizing absolute content or expressing in a certain way the relationship of God as one to everything or as an existent to essence 18 . This teaching was developed by Neoplatonists independently of Christianity: the most important representative of Neoplatonism, Plotinus, although he lived in the 2nd century AD, knew very little about Christianity. Nevertheless, it is absolutely impossible to deny the connection between Philo’s teaching and Neoplatonism, on the one hand, and Christianity, that is, precisely the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, or the triune God. If the essence of divine life was determined by Alexandrian thinkers in a purely speculative way on the basis of the theoretical idea of ​​​​the Divine, then in Christianity the same all-unified divine life appeared as a fact, as a historical reality - in the living individuality of a historical person. Only Christians for the first time knew the Divine Logos and the Spirit not from the side of one or another logical or metaphysical categories under which they appeared in Alexandrian philosophy: they knew the Logos in their crucified and risen Savior, and the Spirit - in the living, directly tangible beginning of their spiritual rebirth. But does it follow from this that those metaphysical and logical definitions of the Trinity were alien to Christianity as a teaching and did not express some part of the truth? On the contrary, as soon as Christians themselves have the need to make this divine life revealed to them an object of thought, that is, to explain it from its internal foundations in the deity itself - the need to understand as a universal idea what they felt as a particular fact, then they naturally turn to the speculative definitions of Greek and Greco-Jewish thinkers, who have already cognized the theoretical truth of those principles, the manifestation of which they, Christians, experienced as a living reality. And in fact, we see that the first speculations about God and his inner life among Christian teachers - in Justin the Philosopher, in Hippolytus, Clement of Alexandria, especially in Origen - reproduce the essential truth of Philonov and Neoplatonic teaching, presenting themselves as various variations of the same speculative theme - the self-revelation of the all-one Deity, and meanwhile, as is known, St. Athanasius the Great, revealing the true dogma of the Trinity, relied on the same Origen, who at that time enjoyed the high authority in the church that he fully deserved 19. The affirmation of the essential affinity between the Christian dogma of the Trinity and Greco-Jewish speculation on the same subject does not in the least diminish the original significance of Christianity itself as a positive revelation. In fact, the originality of Christianity is not in general views, but in positive facts, not in the speculative content of its idea, but in its personal embodiment. This originality is integral to Christianity, and to establish it there is no need to prove, contrary to history and common sense, that all the ideas of Christian dogma appeared as something absolutely new, so to speak, fell ready-made from the sky. This was not the opinion of those great fathers of the ancient church, who argued that the same divine Reason, which was revealed in Christ, and before its incarnation enlightened the inspired sages of paganism with eternal truth, who were Christians before Christ 20. Moving now to the exposition of this very doctrine of the trinity of the Divine as an all-one - a doctrine that together constitutes both the crown of pre-Christian religious wisdom and the main speculative beginning of Christianity - I will not dwell on the particulars of this teaching that appear in one or another system - in Philo or Plotinus, in Origen or Gregory the Theologian: I mean only the essential truth of this teaching, common to all of it modifications, and I will deduce this truth in the form that I recognize as the most logical, most consistent with the requirements of speculative reason. God exists, that is, being belongs to Him, He possesses being. But one cannot simply be, only be: the statement - I am or this is - necessarily raises the question, what am or is? Being in general obviously designates only an abstract concept, but real being necessarily requires not only a known being as a subject about which it is said that it exists, but also a known objective content, or essence, as a predicate that answers the question: what is this subject or what does it represent? Thus, if the grammatical verb “to be” constitutes only a connection between the subject and the predicate, then, in accordance with this, logically being can only be thought of as the relation of a being to its objective essence, or content - a relation in which it somehow affirms, posits or manifests this content, this essence 21. In fact, if we assumed a being that in no way affirms or posits any objective content, does not represent anything, is nothing either in itself and for itself, or for another, then we would not have the logical right to recognize the very existence of such a being, since in the absence of any real content, being would become here an empty word, by which nothing would be understood or by which nothing would be asserted, and the only answer to the question: what is this being? – would be here: nothing 22. If, therefore, God as a being cannot represent only being in general, since this would mean that He is nothing (in a negative sense) or simply that He does not exist at all, and if, on the other hand. God as the absolute cannot be only something, cannot be limited to some particular specific content - then the only possible answer to the question: what God is is what is already known to us, namely, that God is everything, that is, that everything in the positive sense or the unity of all constitutes the own content, the object or objective essence of God, and that being, the real being of God is the affirmation or position of this content, this essence, and in it the positing one, or the existent. The logical necessity of such a situation is obvious. If the divine essence were not all-one, did not contain everything, then, consequently, something could be essentially outside of God, but in this case God would be limited to this existence external to him, would not be absolute, that is, would not be God. Thus, by affirming the unity of God, dualism leading to atheism is eliminated. On the other hand, this same statement, positing in God the entire fullness or wholeness of all being as its eternal essence, has neither the motivation nor the logical possibility of connecting the divine being with the particular conventional reality of this natural world; Consequently, this statement eliminates naturalistic pantheism, which by everything does not mean the eternal fullness of divine existence, but only the totality of natural phenomena, the unity of which it calls God. Finally, as we will now see, this same affirmation of God as the All-One also eliminates idealistic pantheism, which identifies God as a being with his objective idea. In fact, if everything represents the content or essence of God, then God, as a subject or being, that is, as possessing this content or essence, is necessarily distinguished from it, just as in every being we must distinguish it itself as a subject from what constitutes its content, what is affirmed or expressed by it or in it - distinguish as the expresser from the expressed, or as ourselves from our own. Difference is relation. So, God as a being stands in some relation to his content or essence: He manifests or affirms it. In order to affirm it as his own, he must possess it substantially, that is, be everything or the unity of everything in an eternal internal act. As the unconditional principle, God must contain or contain everything in an indissoluble and immediate substantial unity. In this first position, everything is contained in God, that is, in the divine subject or being, as in its common root, everything is absorbed or immersed in it, as in its common source; Consequently, here, like everything else, it does not differ actually, but exists only in possibility, potentially. In other words, in this first position, only God as an existent is real, actual, but his content is everything or the universal essence, although it exists here too, for without it the existent itself, as we have seen, would be nothing, that is, it would not exist, but exists only in a latent state, potentially. In order for it to be valid. God must not only contain it within himself, but also affirm it for himself, that is, he must affirm it as something else, must manifest it and realize it as something different from Himself. Thus, we have the second type or second position of existence: then everything or universal content, that own essence of God, which in the first position or in the first image (way) of existence was only in a latent state as only potential, here, in this second form, appears as some ideal reality; if in the first position it is hidden in the depths of subjective, unmanifested being, then here it is posited as an object. Of course, this object cannot be external to the divine subject. Since this latter, as an absolute, cannot have anything outside itself, this is only its own internal content, which, through its internal action, it distinguishes from itself as a being, isolates from itself, or objectifies. If we want to look for some analogy for this relationship in the world of our experience, then the most suitable one is the attitude of the artist to the artistic idea in the act of creativity. In fact, an artistic idea is not something alien, external to the artist; it is his own inner essence, the essence of his spirit and the content of his life, which makes him what he is; and, striving to realize or embody this idea in a real artistic creation, he only wants to have this essence of himself, this idea not only in himself, but also for himself or in front of him as an object, he wants to present his own as something else or in a different objective form 23. In another, being remains the same, in multiplicity it remains one. But this identity and this unity necessarily differ from that identity, that unity, which is represented by the first position of existence: there it is immediate and indifferent - here it is affirmed, manifested or mediated, passing through its opposite, that is, through differentiation, and thereby strengthened (potentiated). Thus, here we have a new third position or type of absolute existence - a type of complete, perfect unity, or absolute, asserting itself as such. So, we have three relations or three positions of the absolutely existent as determining itself in relation to its content. Firstly, it is posited as having this content in immediate substantial unity or indifference with itself - it is posited as a single substance, essentially containing everything in its unconditional power; secondly, it is posited as manifesting or realizing its absolute content, opposing it to itself or separating it from itself by the act of its self-determination; finally, thirdly, it is posited as preserving and affirming itself in this content, or as realizing itself in an actual, mediated or differentiated unity with this content or essence, that is, with everything - in other words, as finding itself in another or eternally returning to itself and existing in itself. This is still only a trinity of relationships, positions or modes of existence. A similar trinity is necessarily presented to us by our own spirit, if we only recognize it as independently existing, that is, as a real being. If we pay attention to our inner, mental life, then here for observation, first of all, a certain set of certain mental phenomena will be presented: we will find here a number of states that we experience - desires, thoughts, feelings, in which or by which our inner character is expressed in one way or another, the qualitative content of our spirit is manifested. All these states, directly observed by us, are experienced by us consciously (for otherwise they would obviously not be accessible to direct observation), and in this sense they can be called states of our consciousness; in them our spirit is an active or manifesting force, they constitute its inner reality or expressed, definite being. But it is easy to see that the essence of our spirit is not exhausted by this psychic reality, that it constitutes only one periodic phase of our existence, behind the bright field of which lie the depths of spiritual existence, which is not included in the actual consciousness of the present moment. It would be illogical and contrary to experience to limit the existence of our spirit only to its actual, separate life, its discovered, tangible reality, that is, to assume that at each moment the spirit is only what it is aware of in itself at that moment. In fact, from the logical side it is obvious that the spirit, as manifested or in its internal integrity, must always be prior to its given manifestation; from the empirical side, undoubted experience indicates that not only the area of our real consciousness, that is, consciousness of external things, but also the area of our internal actual consciousness, that is, the separate experiencing of our own states, is only a superficial or, more precisely, a secondary position of our spirit and that this secondary position may not exist at a given moment, and its absence does not destroy our spiritual beings - I mean here all those states in which the thread of our separate consciousness about both the external and the internal world is interrupted, and, of course, the spirit itself does not disappear, if only its existence is allowed at all: such are the states of sleep, simple and magnetic, fainting, etc. Thus, recognizing in general the existence of our spirit, we must admit that it has an original substantial existence regardless of its particular manifestation or manifestation in a series of separate acts and states - we must admit that it exists deeper than all that internal reality that makes up our current, present life. In this original depth lie the roots of what we call ourselves or our I, for otherwise, that is, if our I, our personal being, were attached exclusively to the discovered separate acts of our mental life, to the so-called states of our consciousness, then in the mentioned cases (sleep, etc.), with the disappearance of separate consciousness, we ourselves would disappear as a spiritual being, so that later, with the return of consciousness, we would suddenly appear fully armed with our spiritual powers - the assumption (of course, again if we recognize the existence of the spirit) is completely meaningless. So, firstly, we have our original indivisible, or whole, subject: it already contains in a certain way the entire proper content of our spirit, our essence, or the idea that determines our individual character: for otherwise, that is, if this idea and this character were only products of our phenomenal (manifested) life or depended on our conscious actions and states, then it would be incomprehensible why we do not lose this character and idea along with the loss of vital consciousness (in the indicated states), why our conscious life, renewing itself every day, does not create for us a new character, a new life content: the identity of the basic character or personal idea among all the changes of conscious life clearly shows that this character and idea already lie in that original subject, which is deeper or more important than conscious life - lies, of course, only substantially, in direct unity with itself as its internal, not yet discovered or unembodied idea. – Secondly, we have our separate conscious life, the manifestation or manifestation of our spirit: here our content or essence really exists (actually) in many different manifestations, to which it imparts a certain character, revealing in them its peculiarity. Finally, thirdly, since with all the multiplicity of these manifestations, they are all only manifestations of the same spirit, equally inherent in all of them, then we can reflect or return to ourselves from these manifestations or revelations and affirm ourselves actually as a single subject, as a definite self, the unity of which, thus, through its differentiation or manifestation in the multitude of states and actions of conscious life, is not only not lost, but, on the contrary, is posited to an intensified degree; This return to oneself, reflection on oneself or affirmation of oneself in one’s manifestation is actually what is called self-consciousness and appears every time when we not only experience certain states, feel, think, etc. etc., but also by a special internal action, dwelling on these states, we affirm ourselves as a subject experiencing them, as a feeling, thinking, etc., that is, when we internally say: I feel, I think, etc. If in the second position our spirit manifests or reveals its content, that is, it distinguishes it from itself as something else, then here, in this third position, in self-consciousness, our spirit affirms this content as its own and, therefore, itself as who showed it. Thus, the threefold relation of our subject to its content is the same as the relation of the unconditional or absolutely existing subject to its unconditional content or universal essence that we indicated earlier. But this is where the equality between our being and the absolute ends. In fact, in the reality of our spirit, the three indicated positions are only periodic phases of internal existence, replacing each other, more precisely, only the first position of the existing spirit in itself is constant and invariably abiding, while the other two may or may not exist - these are only phenomena, not substances. The spirit as a substance (first position) is always there and necessary, but then it can alternately be limited to this substantial existence, remain in internal inaction, holding all its forces and all its content in the depths of essential inseparable being (first phase), then manifest and reveal these forces and this content in a separate conscious life, in a number of mental states experienced by it and the actions performed (second phase), then, finally, reflecting on these states and these actions - as experienced and performed by him, find them as his own and, as a result, affirm himself, his “yes” as possessing those powers and manifesting this content in these certain states and actions (third phase). Thus, here one and the same existing subject, one and the same spirit appears at different moments, now as only essential or substantial, now as in addition active and real, now, finally, as self-conscious, or affirming itself in its revealed reality. This change of three positions occurs in time, and it is possible only because we exist in time. In fact, these three provisions exclude each other: you cannot be both inactive and active at the same time, you cannot manifest your powers and your content and keep them hidden, you cannot simultaneously experience certain states and at the same time reflect on them, you cannot simultaneously think and think about your thought. So, these three positions, or modes of existence, incompatible in one subject at once, can belong to him only at different moments of time; their belonging to this subject as different phases of his existence is necessarily determined by the form of time. But, thus, this can only apply to limited beings, living in time. For an absolute being, which by its very concept cannot be determined by this form of time, such an alternation of three positions or its three relations to essence or content is completely impossible: it must represent these three positions at once, in one eternal act. But three mutually exclusive positions in one and the same act of one and the same subject are absolutely unthinkable. One and the same eternal subject cannot both hide in itself all its definitions, and manifest them for itself, singling them out as something else, and abide in them as if it were its own, or, in biblical language, one and the same Divine hypostasis cannot be both “living in the unapproachable light, which no one has seen among men,” and at the same time be “the light that enlightens every person coming in the world” - the same hypostasis cannot be both “By the word, all things came to him,” and “by the Spirit, he tested all things.” And if so, if, on the one hand, in an absolute being there cannot be three consecutive acts that replace each other, and, on the other hand, three eternal acts, excluding each other by definition, are unthinkable in one subject, then for these three eternal acts it is necessary to assume three eternal subjects (hypostases), of which the second, directly generated by the first, is a direct image of its hypostasis, expresses with its reality the essential content of the first, serves as its eternal, expression, or the Word, and the third, starting from the first, as already having its manifestation in the second, affirms it as expressed or in its expression. But one can ask: if God, as the first subject, already contains the unconditional content, or everything, then what other need is there for the other two subjects? But God, as the absolute or unconditional, cannot be content with having everything in himself; he must have everything not only in himself, but also for himself and in himself. Without such fullness of existence, the Divinity cannot be complete or absolute, that is, it cannot be God, and, therefore, asking: what need does God have for this triple self-position is the same as asking: what need does God have to be God? But how, by recognizing three divine subjects, can one avoid contradiction with the requirements of monotheism? Are these three subjects not three Gods? But we need to agree on what we actually mean by the word “God.” If this name is used to designate every subject involved in one way or another in the divine essence, in this case it is necessary to recognize not only three, but a great multitude of gods, for every being in one way or another participates in the divine essence according to the word of God: “I said: you are gods and sons of the Most High.” If the name of God is combined with the complete and actual possession of the fullness of the divine content in all its forms, in this case (not to mention finite beings) The name God belongs to three divine subjects (hypostases) only because they are necessarily in unconditional unity, in an inextricable internal connection with each other. Each of them is the true God, but precisely because each is inseparable from the other two. If one of them could exist separately from the other two, then, obviously, in this separation it would not be absolute, therefore, it would not be God in the proper sense, but it is precisely such separation that is impossible. True, each divine subject already contains in itself the entire fullness of deity, but precisely because in itself it already finds an inextricable connection or unity with two others, since its relationship to them is necessarily internal, essential, for there can be nothing external in deity. God the Father, by His very essence, cannot exist without the Word, which expresses Him, and without the Spirit, which affirms Him; in the same way, the Word and the Spirit cannot exist without the first subject, which is what is expressed by one and affirmed by the other, is their common source and origin. Their separateness exists only for our distracting thought, and, obviously, it would be a completely idle and uninteresting matter to determine whether the name God belongs to the divine subjects in such an abstract separateness, since it is certain that this abstract separateness does not correspond to the real truth. In the actual truth, although each of the three subjects possesses divine content, or the fullness of the Divinity, and, therefore, is God, but since he possesses this fullness, which makes him God, not in himself exclusively, but only in an unconditional and indivisible internal and essential unity with the other two, then this does not affirm three “Gods, but only one in three inseparable and consubstantial subjects (hypostases) God realizing himself. It should be noted that the general idea of ​​the trinity of God, being as much a truth of speculative reason as of revelation, never met any objections from the most thoughtful representatives of speculative philosophy: on the contrary, they treated this idea not only with recognition, but also with enthusiasm as the greatest triumph of speculative thought. This idea was incomprehensible or simply absurd only for the external, mechanical mind, which does not see the internal connection of things in their integral existence, does not see the one in many things and self-difference in the one, but thinks of all objects in their one-sided abstract exclusivity, in their supposed separateness and external relationship to each other in the forms of space and time. The negative attitude of such reason to the idea of ​​trinity serves only as a confirmation of its truth, since it depends on the general inability of mechanical thinking to comprehend the inner truth or meaning (λόγος) of objects. Mechanical thinking is that which takes various concepts in their abstract isolation, therefore considers objects under some particular, one-sided definition and then compares them with each other externally or compares them in some equally one-sided, but more general relation. In contrast, organic thinking considers an object in its comprehensive integrity and, therefore, in its internal connection with all others, which allows one to derive all others from within each concept or to develop one concept into the fullness of the entire truth. Therefore, organic thinking can be called developmental or evolutionary, while mechanical (rational) thinking is only comparing and combining. It is easy to see that organic thinking, which comprehends or grasps the whole idea of ​​an object, comes down to that mental or ideal contemplation that was discussed in the previous reading. If this contemplation is combined with clear consciousness and is accompanied by reflection, which gives logical definitions to the contemplated truth, then we have that speculative thinking that determines philosophical creativity itself; if mental contemplation remains in its immediacy, without imposing logical forms on its concrete patterns, then it is that living thinking that is characteristic of people who have not yet emerged from immediate life in a common clan or national unity; such thinking expresses what is called the folk spirit, manifesting itself in folk creativity, religious and artistic - in the living development of language, in myths and beliefs, in the forms of folk life, in fairy tales, songs, etc. Thus, organic thinking in general in its two forms belongs, on the one hand, to true philosophers, on the other, to the masses. As for those standing between one and the other, that is, the majority of so-called educated or enlightened people who, as a result of the great formal development of mental activity, have separated from the immediate national worldview, but have not achieved an integral philosophical consciousness, they have to limit themselves to that abstract mechanical thinking that breaks down or decomposes (analyzes) immediate reality - and this is its significance and merit - but is not able to give it a new higher unity and connection - and this is its limitation 24. Of course, it is possible and in fact it always happens that the same people, guided in practical life by the ideas of someone else's organic thinking in the form of religious beliefs, 25 in their own theoretical activity stand on the point of view of abstract and mechanical reason, as a result of which, of course, duality and contradiction occurs in their general worldview, smoothed out and reconciled in a more or less external way. Such duality naturally appeared in Christianity, when Christian teaching, which belongs entirely to the field of organic thinking in both its forms, became a generally recognized religion, not only for the people and for theosophists, but for the entire educated class of that time; Naturally, from this class, at all levels of the Christian hierarchy, people appeared who, although they sincerely accepted Christian ideas as a dogma of faith, were not able, from the point of view of mechanical thinking, to understand these ideas in their speculative truth. From this we see that many church teachers recognized Christian dogmas, especially the basic dogma of the Trinity, as something incomprehensible to the human mind. To invoke the authority of these teachers of the church against our assertion of the dogma of the Trinity in the sense of speculative truth would be completely unfounded, since it is obvious that these teachers, being great in their practical wisdom in church affairs or in their holiness, could be very weak in the field of philosophical understanding, and, of course, they were inclined to take the boundaries of their thinking as the boundaries of the human mind in general. But, as you know, among the great fathers of the church there were many real philosophers 26 who not only recognized the deep speculative truth in the dogma of the Trinity, but themselves did a lot to develop and clarify this truth. However, there is a certain sense in which it is necessary to recognize the trinity of God as completely incomprehensible to reason, namely: this trinity, being a real and essential relationship of living subjects, being the inner life of beings, cannot be covered, fully expressed or exhausted by any definitions of reason, which always, by their very concept, express only the general, formal, and not the essential and material side of being; all definitions and categories of reason are only expressions of the objectivity or knowability of a being, and not of its own inner subjective being and life. But it is obvious that such incomprehensibility, arising from the very nature of reason in general as a formal ability, cannot be attributed to the limitations of human reason; for anyone’s mind as a mind can comprehend only the logical side of what exists, its concept (λόγος) or general relationship to everything, and not this existing thing itself in its immediate individual and subjective reality. Further, from here it is clear that incomprehensible in this sense is not only the life of the Divine being, but also the life of every creature; for every being as such is not exhausted by its formal objective side or its concept: it, as an existing one, necessarily has its own internal subjective side, which constitutes the very act of its existence, in which it is something absolutely individual and unique, something completely inexpressible, and, on this side, it is always something else for reason, something that cannot enter its sphere, something irrational 27 . Thus, the Deity in the sky and the blade of grass on earth are equally incomprehensible and equally comprehensible to the mind: both of them in their common existence as concepts constitute the subject of pure thought and are entirely subject to logical definitions and in this sense are completely understandable and comprehensible to the mind, and in the same way both of them in their own existence as existing, and not as conceivable, are something more than a concept, lie beyond the limits of the rational as such and in this sense are impenetrable or incomprehensible to reason. Returning to the truth of the trinity, it must be said that it is not only completely understandable from the logical side, but is also based on a general logical form that determines all real being, and if this form, when applied to the deity, seems more difficult to understand than when applied to other objects, then this does not depend on the fact that the divine life is less subject to logical definitions than everything else in its formal, objective side (there is no basis for such an assumption), but only on the fact that the very realm of divine existence does not constitute the usual subject of our thinking. Therefore, for a better assimilation of the very form of the trinity, it is necessary to indicate it in application to such a being that is closer to us, more familiar to us, than the divine being; Having mastered the general form of the trinity in finite being, directly known to us, we can easily develop those modifications of this form that are determined by the characteristics of the new content to which this form must be applied in determining absolute being. In this regard, analogies pointing to the form of trinity in the beings and phenomena of the finite world have real significance for the truth of the trinity of God, not as evidence of it - for it is proven or deduced purely logically from the very idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe Divine - but as examples that facilitate its assimilation. But for this it is not enough to point out only the presence in this or that subject of trinity together with unity, as was usually done by theologians who stood on the point of view of mechanical thinking, and, of course, such completely external analogies only shaded the supposed incomprehensibility of this truth - for a real analogy it is necessary that the trinity appears as an internal law of the very life of a being, it is necessary, firstly, that the trinity has an essential meaning for this subject, is its essential form, and not external random sign. And, secondly, it is necessary that in this very form triplicity follows from unity and unity from triplicity, so that these two moments are in a logical connection with each other, internally conditioning each other. Therefore, only the realm of spiritual existence is suitable for such analogies, as it bears the law of its life within itself. Above I have already indicated the general trinity in the life of the human spirit in its entirety; Some other, more specific and specific analogies in the same area deserve attention, of which I will cite two here. The first was first indicated with complete clarity by Leibniz and then played a large role in German idealism. – Our mind, says Leibniz, necessarily represents an internal trinity when it turns towards itself – in self-consciousness. Here he appears as three in one and one in three. In fact, in the mind, as conscious or understanding itself, the conscious (subject) and the conscious (object) are one and the same thing - precisely one and the same mind, but the very act of understanding and consciousness, connecting the conscious with the conscious (subject - object), is nothing more than the same mind in action, and those two first moments exist only with this third and in it, just as it exists only with them and in them, so that here we really have some consubstantial and indivisible trinity. Less known, although even more ingenious, is another analogy indicated by St. Augustine in his Confessiones. For some reason, it seems to have attracted much less attention than other indications of the trinity in various subjects, numerously placed by the same Augustine in his books “De Trinitate” and related to those external and irrelevant analogies that I mentioned above. In Confessiones Augustine says the following. In our spirit we must distinguish between its simple immediate existence (esse), its knowledge (scire) and will (velle); these three acts are identical not only in their content, since being knows and wills itself, but their unity goes much deeper: each of them already contains the other two in their own characteristic quality, and, therefore, each already contains within itself the entire fullness of the triune spirit. In fact, firstly, I am, but not just am - I am the knower and the willer (sum sciens et volens), therefore, here my being as such already contains both knowledge and will; secondly, if I know, then I know or am aware of my being and my will, I know or am aware that I am and what I want (scio me esse et velle); Thus, here too, in knowledge as such or under the form (in the attribute) of knowledge, both being and will are already contained; finally, thirdly, I want myself, but not just myself, but myself as an existing and knowing one, I want my being and my knowledge (volo me esse et scire); consequently, the form of the will contains in its attribute both being and knowledge, and, consequently, each of these three basic acts of the spirit in itself is complemented by two others and thus, as it were, isolated into a complete triune being. This consideration already comes very close to the truth of the trinity of God and can serve as a natural transition for us to the further development of this truth, precisely from the side of the special individual relationship of the three divine subjects to their single essence, or idea, which they realize and in which they themselves are concretely realized. We have seen that, generally recognizing the divine principle as a being with unconditional content, it is necessary to recognize in it three consubstantial and indivisible subjects, each of which in its own way relates to the same unconditional essence, in its own way possesses the same unconditional content. The first is the unconditional First Principle, the spirit as self-existent, that is, directly existing as an absolute substance; the second is the eternal and adequate manifestation or expression, the essential Word of the first, and the third is the Spirit returning to itself and thereby closing the circle of divine existence - the perfect or complete Spirit - the Holy Spirit. These are the three subjects in their relationship. Their difference, as we have seen, is logically determined primarily by the necessary threefold relationship of being to its general essence, or content. At first we could imagine this relationship only in the most general logical form (as being-in-itself, being-for-itself and being-with-itself); but now, when existence has already been defined for us as three special subjects, its threefold relationship to essence can be presented in a more definite and concrete way, which, in turn, should lead to a more meaningful definition of the three subjects themselves. If a certain being is a certain relation of a being, or subject, to its essence, or content, then the ways of this relation are the ways (modes) of being. So, for example, at a given moment my existence as a thinker is nothing more than the relation of my self to the object, that is, the content or objective essence of my thought; this relationship, which is called thinking, and constitutes a certain way (modus) of my being. But if being is the relationship between a being as such and its essence, then this latter is not a being as such, it is its other, but at the same time it belongs to it as its own internal content: a being is the positive principle of its essence, therefore, it is the beginning of its other. The beginning of one's other is will. In fact, what I posit by my will is mine, insofar as I posit it, and at the same time it is something else, different from me, otherwise I would not posit it. So, the first way of being, when the essence is not yet isolated from existence, but differs from it only potentially or in aspiration - when it is and is not, is its own and another - this way of being reveals itself to us as will. But, positing essence in the initial act of will as one’s own and another, the existent distinguishes it (that is, the essence) not only from itself as such, but also from its own will. In order for a being to will this other, it obviously must be given to him or from him in a certain way, must already exist for him as another, that is, be presented to him or him. Thus, the being of beings is defined not only as will, but also as representation. The represented entity, as another, gains the opportunity to influence the representer, since he is at the same time the willer. In this interaction, the object of the will, isolated by representation from being, is again united with it, for in this interaction the existent finds itself in essence and it in itself; acting on each other, they become perceptible to each other: thus this interaction or third way of being is nothing other than feeling. So, a being wants its essence or content, represents it, feels it, hence its very being, which is nothing more than this relation of it to essence, is defined as will, idea, feeling. What these three modes of being actually consist of as actual ones is known to us from our immediate consciousness, since our own inner experience is entirely formed from various positions of will, feeling and idea. Of course, these data of our inner experience cannot be directly transferred with all their random properties into the realm of the existence of the divine, but it is not difficult by logical analysis to separate those negative elements that are determined by the nature of a finite being, and thus obtain a positive concept of this triple being, as it should appear in an unconditionally existing one. So, regarding wills, we distinguish within ourselves an active or creative will, which acts in the implementation of some ideal principle that does not yet have external reality: for example, when an artist wants to give external existence to an artistic image that he internally contemplates, or when a thinker strives to find and define the truth, or a public figure wants to realize the idea of ​​good in practical life; from this active and internally coming will, which realizes its own internal content in another, we distinguish a passive, externally excited will (or lust), the object of which is not formed by it, but exists both materially and formally outside it and independently of it, exists not as a universal idea, but as an individual fact, and our will strives only to identify itself with this fact and, therefore, itself loses its universal and ideal character, and also becomes only an accidental and material fact. It is obvious that the absolutely existing, which, firstly, has nothing outside itself, and secondly, for which nothing can exist within it as a separate and random fact, since it contains everything within itself as a whole or in an internal connection, it is obvious, I say, that the absolutely existing cannot be subject to passive will, therefore, its will is always directly creative, or powerful. In the same way, with regard to representation as the state or action of the absolutely existent itself, the differences that exist in our representations do not make any sense, what are the differences between real (objective) representation and illusory or fantastic representation, then between contemplative or visual (intuitive) representation and abstract representation, or thinking itself (in general concepts), and in this latter between objective or cognitive thinking and subjective thinking, or opinion. These differences arise from the fact that every finite being, being only an isolated part of the whole, has outside itself a whole world of other definite beings, a whole world of external existence independent of it; this world, by its action, determines the ideas of each individual being, which (representations) only in relation to this determining cause have objective meaning, apart from it they are only subjective states of consciousness. The action of other beings, perceived by us through the external bodily environment, which itself is a complex relationship of the same beings independent of our self, we call external experience and thus distinguish the objective world that relates to us in this external experience, but independent of us in its own existence, from the subjective world of our internal states, which have no direct relationship to any other being other than our own. Although this difference is relative in nature and represents many transitional stages, nevertheless, for us it undoubtedly exists. For the absolute, as having no existence outside itself independent of it, the difference between the objective and the subjective is determined by its own will. Since the represented essence is not only represented, but is also affirmed by the will of beings as another, to that extent it receives the meaning of its own reality and how such affects the will in the form of feeling. Regarding this latter, it should also be noted that for finite beings there are two types of interaction of objective being (representation) with subjective (will): firstly, the interaction of external empirical reality or represented material objects with our material physical subject, that is, with our animal organism (which in its total life is nothing more than a manifestation of unconscious material will) - this first interaction produces external, or bodily, sensibility; secondly, the interaction of our internal objectivity, that is, our thoughts 28, with our internal subjective being, that is, our personal conscious will - this produces internal feelings or so-called mental disturbances. It is clear that in an absolutely existent this distinction cannot exist and that, consequently, in it, internal and external feelings do not exist in their own particularity. If, therefore, the three main ways of being of beings have been defined as will, idea and feeling, then accordingly we must receive some definitions for that other thing to which beings relate in these ways of being, that is, we must receive some new definitions for the essence or idea (of everything). It is obvious that the idea as such must differ according to the differences in the being of a being, since this being is only the relationship between a being and it (the idea). The idea as an object or content of a being is actually what he wants, what he imagines, what he feels or perceives. In the first respect, that is, as the content of the will of a being or as its desired, the idea is called good, in the second, as the content of its representation, it is called truth, in the third, as the content of its feelings, it is called beauty. The general meaning of these terms is given to us in our inner consciousness, but their more specific meaning will be indicated below. Existence in its unity already contains potentially will, idea and feeling. But in order for these modes of being to appear truly as such, that is, to stand out from indifference, it is necessary that beings affirm them in their particularity, or, more precisely, that it affirms itself in them as special, as a result of which they appear as independent relative to each other. But since these ways of being, by their very nature, are inextricably linked, for one cannot want without imagining and feeling, one cannot imagine without will and feeling, etc. etc., then being cannot manifest these ways of being in their simple isolation, so that, firstly, only will appears, secondly, only idea, thirdly, only feeling, and therefore, they cannot be isolated in themselves, and the peculiarity necessary for their actual existence can only lie in the isolation of being itself as, firstly, predominantly willing, secondly, predominantly representing and, thirdly, predominantly feeling: then there is, manifesting itself in its will, that which exists along with it already has both idea and feeling, but as moments subordinate to the will; manifesting itself, further, in representation, it has with it both will and feeling, but also only as subordinate to representation; finally, affirming itself in feeling, being has both will and representation in it, but as already determined by feeling, moments dependent on it. In other words, representation, being isolated from the will, necessarily receives its own will, and therefore feeling (since this latter is determined by the influence of the represented on the will), due to which the representing as such becomes a special and integral subject. In the same way, feeling, isolated from will and representation, necessarily receives its own will and its own representation, as a result of which the sentient as such is an independent and complete subject. Finally, the will, having isolated from itself the idea and feeling as such, thereby necessarily receives its own special idea and feeling, and the willer as such is integrated into a special and integral subject. From what has been said before, it should be clear that by attributing to each of the divine subjects a special will, idea and feeling, we only mean that each of them is a willing, representing and feeling, that is, each is an existing subject or hypostasis, the essence of their will, idea and feeling is one and the same, namely divine, due to which all three hypostases want the same thing, namely the unconditional good, represent the same thing, namely the absolute truth and etc. - and only the relationship between these three ways of being is different for them. So, we have three special subjects of being, of which each belongs to all three basic ways of being, but only in different respects. The first subject imagines and feels only because he wants, which already necessarily follows from his original meaning. In the second, which already has the first before it, the objective element of representation predominates, the determining cause of which is the first subject: will and feeling are subordinated here to representation - it wants and feels only insofar as it represents. Finally, in the third subject, which already has behind it both the directly creative being of the first and the ideal being of the second, special or independent meaning can belong only to real or sensory being: it represents and wants only insofar as it senses. The first subject is pure spirit, the second is mind (Νου~ς), the third, as a spirit realized or active in another, can be called, in contrast to the first, soul. The original spirit is a being as the subject of the will and the bearer of good, and as a result or therefore also the subject of the representation of truth and the feeling of beauty. The mind is a being as the subject of representation and the bearer of truth, and as a result also the subject of the will of good and the feeling of beauty. The soul, or the realizing spirit, is a being as a subject of feeling and a bearer of beauty, and only because of this or to the extent that it is also subject to the will of good and the representation of truth. Let me explain these relationships with an example from our human experience. There are people who, having fallen in love with someone immediately, already on the basis of this love, form a general idea of ​​​​the beloved object, and also by the strength and degree of this love they determine the strength and dignity of the sensory impressions excited by the beloved being. But there are also those in which each given being first evokes a certain general theoretical idea of ​​itself, and their will and feeling regarding this being are consistent with this idea. Finally, there are those who are affected primarily by the real side of the object, and the affects or sensory states aroused in them determine their mental and moral attitude towards the object. The first ones love or want, and then, out of their love or will, imagine and feel; the second ones first imagine, and according to the idea they already want and feel; the third ones first of all feel, and according to the sensations they already imagine and want. The first are spiritual people, the second are people of the mind, the third are spiritual. Corresponding to the three divine subjects (and three ways of being), as we have seen, are three images of essence or three ideas, each of which constitutes the primary subject or content of one of the three subjects. Here two questions arise: first, what exactly is contained in these three ideas, that is, what is desired as good, what is represented as truth, and what is felt as beauty - and then: in what relation do these three ideas stand to the general definition of the divine essence as one, that is, to its definition as love? What is desired, imagined, and felt as absolutely existing can only be everything; Thus, what lies in goodness, and in truth, and in beauty as ideas of the absolute is one and the same, and the difference between them is not a difference in content (material), but only in the image of the content (formal). The Absolute wants as good the same thing that it represents as truth and feels as beauty, and precisely everything. But everything can be an object of absolute existence only in its internal unity and integrity. Thus, goodness, truth and beauty are different images or types of unity, under which for the absolute there appears its content, or everything, or three different sides, from which the absolutely existing reduces everything to unity. But, generally speaking, every internal unity, every union of many coming from within is love (in the broad sense in which this concept coincides with the concepts of harmony, and peace or peace 29, cosmos). In this sense, goodness, truth and beauty are just different images of love. But these three ideas and the three modes of being corresponding to them do not equally represent an internal unity. Obviously, the strongest and, so to speak, internal (intimate) is this unity in the will as a good, for in the act of the will its object is not yet isolated from the subject even ideally: it remains in essential unity with it. Therefore, if in general internal unity is denoted by the term “love,” then in particular this term defines the absolute in the sphere where internal unity appears as original and inseparable, that is, in the sphere of will and good. The will of good is love in its inner essence or the original source of love. Good is the unity of everything or everyone, that is, love, as desired, that is, as loved - therefore, here we have love in a special and primary sense as the idea of ​​ideas: this is essential unity. Truth is the same love, that is, the unity of everything, but already as objectively represented it is ideal unity. Finally, beauty is the same love (that is, the unity of all), but as manifested or tangible: it is real unity. In other words, goodness is unity in positive possibility, strength or power (according to which the divine will can be designated as a directly creative or powerful principle), truth is the same unity as necessary, and beauty is the same as actual. To express the relation of these terms in brief words, we can say that the absolute realizes good through truth in beauty. Three ideas or three universal unities, being only different sides or positions of the same thing, form together in their mutual penetration a new concrete unity, representing the complete realization of the divine content, the totality of the absolute essence, the realization of God as the all-one, “in whom dwells all the fullness of the Divinity bodily.” In this full definition, the divine principle appears to us in Christianity. Here we finally enter the soil of Christian Revelation proper. Following the course of development of religious consciousness before Christianity, I indicated the main phases of this development; firstly, pessimism and asceticism (negative attitude towards nature and life), developed with extreme consistency in Buddhism; then idealism (recognition of another, ideal world beyond this visible reality), which reached complete clarity in Plato’s mystical speculations; further, monotheism (recognition of not only the world of ideas beyond the limits of visible reality, but recognition of the unconditional principle as a positive subject or self), as a characteristic principle of religious consciousness in Judaism; finally, the last definition of the divine principle in pre-Christian religious consciousness is its definition as the triune God, which we find in Alexandrian theosophy and based on the consciousness of the relationship of God as a being to his universal content or essence. All these phases of religious consciousness are contained in Christianity and have become part of it. First, Christianity necessarily contains an ascetic principle: it comes from the recognition expressed by the Apostle John that “the whole world lies in evil.” Secondly, a necessary element in Christianity is idealism - the recognition of a different, ideal cosmos, the recognition of the kingdom of heaven beyond the boundaries of the earthly world. Further, Christianity is essentially monotheistic. Finally, the doctrine of the triune God is also not only necessarily included in Christianity, but only in Christianity for the first time did it become a general and open religious dogma. All these phases of development thus form part of Christianity; but it is equally certain that none of them and all of them together do not represent the special characteristic content of Christianity. If Christianity were only a combination of these elements, then it would not represent any new world force, it would only be an eclectic system, the kind that are often found in schools, but never act in life, do not make world historical revolutions, do not destroy one world and do not create another. Christianity has its own content, independent of all these elements included in it, and this own content is solely and exclusively Christ. In Christianity as such we find Christ and only Christ - this is the truth, expressed many times, but very little learned. At present, in the Christian world, especially in the Protestant world, there are very often people who call themselves Christians, but recognize that the essence of Christianity is not in the person of Christ, but in His teaching. They say: we are Christians because we accept the teachings of Christ. But what is the teaching of Christ? If we take the moral teaching (and this is precisely what is meant in this case), developed in the Gospel and which all boils down to the rule: “love your neighbor as yourself,” then we must admit that this moral rule does not yet constitute a feature of Christianity. Much earlier than Christianity, Indian religious teachings - Brahminism and Buddhism - preached love and mercy, and not only to people, but to all living things. In the same way, the characteristic content of Christianity cannot be considered the teaching of Christ about God as the Father, about God as a being primarily loving, good, for this teaching is not yet specifically Christian: not to mention the fact that the name father has always been given to the supreme gods of all religions - in one of them, namely in the Persian religion, we find the idea of ​​the supreme God not only as a father, but also as an all-good, loving father. If we consider all the theoretical and all moral content of the teaching of Christ, which we find in the Gospel, then the only thing new, specifically different from all other religions, will be Christ’s teaching about Himself, pointing to Himself as a living incarnate truth. “I am the way, the truth and the life: whoever believes in me has eternal life.” Thus, if we look for the characteristic content of Christianity in the teachings of Christ, then here too we must admit that this content comes down to Christ himself. What should we think about, what appears to our minds under the name of Christ as life and Truth? The Eternal God eternally realizes Himself by realizing His content, that is, by realizing everything. This “everything,” in contrast to the existing God, as the unconditionally one, is plurality, but multiplicity as the content of the unconditionally one, as empowered by the one, as reduced to unity. Multiplicity reduced to unity is the whole. The real whole is a living organism. God as a being that has realized its content, as a unity that contains all multiplicity, is a living organism. We have already seen that “everything,” as the content of the unconditional principle, cannot be a simple sum of individual indifferent beings, that these beings each represent their own special idea, expressed in a harmonious relation to everything else, and that, therefore, each is a necessary organ of everything. On this basis we can say that “everything”, as the content of the unconditional, or that God, as having realized His content, is an organism. There is no reason to limit the concept of an organism only to material organisms - we can talk about a spiritual organism, as we talk about a folk organism, about an organism of humanity, and therefore we can talk about a divine organism. The very concept of an organism does not exclude such an expansion, since we call an organism everything that consists of many elements that are not indifferent to the whole and to each other, but are absolutely necessary both for the whole and for each other, since each represents its own specific content and, therefore, has its own special meaning in relation to all the others. The elements of the divine organism exhaust the fullness of being; in this sense, it is a universal organism. But this not only does not prevent this universal organism from being at the same time completely individual, but, on the contrary, with logical necessity it requires such individuality. We call (relatively) universal a being that contains within itself a larger number of different special elements, compared to others. It is clear that the more elements in an organism, the more special creatures included in its composition, the greater the number of combinations each of these elements is found in, the more each of them is conditioned by the others, and as a result, the more inextricable and stronger the connection of all these elements, the more inextricable and stronger the unity of the entire organism. It is further clear that the more elements there are in an organism and, therefore, the greater the number of combinations they are found among themselves, the less possible the same combination of elements in another being, in another organism, the more this organism has features and originality. Further, since every relationship and every combination is at the same time a necessary distinction, then the more elements in an organism, the more differences it represents in its unity, the more different it is from all others, that is, the greater the multiplicity of elements the beginning of its unity brings to itself, the more this very beginning of unity asserts itself and, consequently, the more individual the organism is. Thus, from this point of view, we come to the proposition that we expressed earlier, that the universality of a being is in direct relation to its individuality: the more universal it is, the more individual it is, and therefore an unconditionally universal being is an unconditionally individual being. So, a universal organism, expressing the unconditional content of the divine principle, is primarily a special individual being. This individual being, or realized expression of the unconditionally existing God, is Christ. In every organism we necessarily have two unities: on the one hand, the unity of the active principle, which reduces the multiplicity of elements to itself as one; on the other hand, this multiplicity as reduced to unity, as a certain image of this beginning. We have a unity that produces and a unity that is produced, or unity as a beginning (in itself) and unity in the phenomenon. In the divine organism of Christ, the active unifying principle, the principle expressing the unity of unconditionally existing things, is obviously the Word, or Logos. The unity of the second type, the unity produced, in Christian theosophy is called Sophia. If in the absolute in general we distinguish it as such, that is, as an unconditionally existent, from its content, essence or idea, then we will find the direct expression of the first in the Logos, and the second in Sophia, which, thus, is the expressed, realized idea. And just as being, differing from its idea, is at the same time one with it, so the Logos, differing from Sophia, is internally united with it. Sophia is the body of God, the matter of the Divine 30, imbued with the beginning of divine unity. Christ, who realizes in himself or bears this unity, as an integral divine organism - universal and individual together - is both Logos and Sophia. To speak of Sophia as an essential element of the Divinity does not mean, from a Christian point of view, to introduce new gods. The thought of Sophia has always been in Christianity, moreover, it existed even before Christianity. There is an entire book in the Old Testament attributed to Solomon called Sophia. This book is not canonical, but, as is known, in the canonical book “Proverbs of Solomon” we find the development of this idea of ​​Sophia (under the corresponding Hebrew name Chochma). “Sophia,” it says there, “existed before the creation of the world (that is, the natural world); God had it at the beginning of His ways,” that is, it is the idea that He has before Him in His creativity and which, therefore, He realizes. In the New Testament this term is also found in direct relation to Christ (in Apostle Paul). The idea of ​​God as an integral being, as a universal organism, presupposing a multiplicity of essential elements that make up this organism - this idea may seem to violate the absoluteness of the Divine, introducing nature into God. But precisely in order for God to be unconditionally distinguished from our world, from our nature, from this visible reality, it is necessary to recognize in Him our special eternal nature, our special eternal world. Otherwise, our idea of ​​the Divine will be poorer, more abstract, than our idea of ​​the visible world. The negative move in religious consciousness has always been such that first the Divinity was cleared, so to speak, of any real definition, reduced to a pure abstraction, and then religious consciousness was easily separated from this abstract Divinity and passed into a non-religious consciousness - into atheism. If we do not recognize in the Divine the fullness of reality, and therefore the necessity of multiplicity, then inevitably the positive meaning passes to the multiplicity and reality of this world. Then only a negative meaning remains for the Divine, and it is little by little rejected, because if there is no other reality, unconditional, another plurality, another fullness of being, then this reality of ours is the only one, and then the Divinity has no positive content left: it either merges with this world, with this nature - this world, this nature is recognized as the direct immediate content of the Divine, we move into naturalistic pantheism, where this finite nature is everything, and God is only an empty word - or, and this is more consistent, the Deity, as an empty abstraction, is simply rejected, and the consciousness is openly atheistic. So, God, as an integral being, belongs along with unity and plurality - a multiplicity of substantial ideas, that is, potencies, or forces, with a certain special content. These forces, as each possessing a specific specific content, variously related to the content of the others, necessarily constitute various secondary wholes, or spheres. They all constitute one divine world, but this world necessarily differs into a plurality of spheres. If the divine whole consists of essential elements, of living forces with a certain individual content, then these beings must represent the basic features that necessarily belong to every individual being - some features of a psychic character common to all living forces. If each of them realizes a certain content or idea, and if to a certain content or idea the power that realizes them can, as we have seen, be related in three ways, that is, have this content as an object of the will, contain it within itself as desired, then imagine it and, finally, feel it, if it can relate to it substantially, ideally and real, or sensually, then it is easy to see that the sensible elements of the divine whole must differ from each other according to which of them of these relations there is a predominant one: whether the will prevails - the moral principle, or the theoretical principle - the idea, or, finally, the sensual or aesthetic principle. Thus, we have three categories of living forces, forming three spheres of the divine world. The first kind of individual forces, in which the principle of the will predominates, can be called pure spirits; the second kind of force can be called umami; third kind - souls. So, the divine world consists of three main spheres: the sphere of pure spirits, the sphere of minds and the sphere of souls. All these spheres are in a close and inextricable connection with each other, representing complete internal unity or solidarity among themselves, since each of them complements the other, is necessary for the other, and is affirmed by the other. Each separate force and each sphere sets as its object, its goal all others, they constitute the content of its life, and in the same way this separate force and this separate sphere is the goal and object of all others, since it has its own special quality that they lack, and thus one inextricable bond of love connects all the countless elements that make up the divine world. The reality of this world, which is necessarily infinitely richer than our visible world, the reality of this divine world, obviously, can be completely accessible only to someone who really belongs to this world. But since our natural world is necessarily in close connection with this divine world (what this connection is, we will see later), since there is and cannot be an impassable gap between them, then individual rays and reflections of the divine world must penetrate into our reality and constitute all the ideal content, all the beauty and truth that we find in it. And man, as belonging to both worlds, by an act of mental contemplation can and should touch the world of the divine and, while still in the world of struggle and vague anxiety, enter into communication with clear images from the kingdom of glory and eternal beauty. In particular, this positive, albeit incomplete knowledge or penetration into the reality of the divine world is characteristic of poetic creativity. Every true poet must necessarily penetrate “into the homeland of flame and word” in order to take from there the prototypes of his creations and at the same time that inner enlightenment, which is called inspiration and through which we can find sounds and colors in our natural reality to embody ideal types, as one of the poets says: And my dark gaze brightened, And the invisible world became visible to me, What is elusive to others. Full of its rays, Everywhere the silent sound is heard, Beats with love in the dark depths; With love in the blue firmament With love, living juice in the leaves The stream rises melodiously. That everything born of the Word He longs to return to him again, And everywhere there is sound, and everywhere there is light, And all the worlds have one beginning, Whatever breathes love 31. The eternal or divine world, which I spoke about in the last reading, is not a mystery to the mind. This world, as the ideal completeness of everything and the realization of goodness, truth and beauty, appears to the mind as something that in itself should be normal. This world, as an unconditional norm, is logically necessary for reason, and if reason by itself cannot assure us of the actual existence of this world, then this is only because reason in general, in its essence, is not an organ for cognizing any factual reality. Any factual reality is obviously cognizable only by actual experience; the ideal necessity of the divine world and Christ as the unconditionally universal and at the same time unconditionally individual center of this world, possessing all its completeness, this ideal necessity is clear to speculative reason, which can only in this eternal sphere find that unconditional measure, in relation to or in comparison with which it recognizes the given natural world, our reality as something conditional, abnormal and transitory. So, it is not the eternal divine world, but, on the contrary, our nature, in fact, the real world given to us that constitutes a riddle for the mind; the explanation of this factually undoubted, but for the mind, dark reality is its task. This task, obviously, comes down to deducing the conditional from the unconditional, to deducing what in itself should not be from the unconditionally due, to deducing random reality from the absolute idea, the natural world of phenomena from the world of the divine essence. This derivation would be an impossible task if between two opposite terms, from which one must be derived from the other, that is, from its opposite, there were not something connecting them, equally belonging to both, to both spheres, and therefore serving as a transition between them. This connecting link between the divine and natural world is man. Man combines within himself all kinds of opposites, which all boil down to one great opposition between the unconditional and the conditional, between the absolute and eternal essence and the transitory phenomenon or appearance. Man is both a deity and a nonentity. There is no need to dwell on the affirmation of this undoubted opposition in man, because it has long been a common theme of both poets and psychologists and moralists. Our task is not to describe a person, but to indicate his significance in the general connection of truly existing things. I said in the last reading that it is necessary to distinguish a double unity in the wholeness of the divine being: the active, or producing, unity of the divine creativity of the Word (Logos), and the produced, realized unity, just as in some particular organism from the natural world we distinguish the active unity, the principle that produces and supports its organic wholeness - the principle that makes up the living and active soul of this organism - and, then, the unity of what is produced or realized by this soul is the unity of the organic body. If in the divine being - in Christ, the first or productive unity is the Divinity itself - God as an active force, or Logos, and if, therefore, in this first unity we have Christ as our own divine being, then the second, produced unity, to which we have given the mystical name Sophia, is the beginning of humanity, is the ideal or normal man. And Christ, in this unity participating in the human principle, is man, or, according to the expression of the Holy Scriptures, the second Adam. So Sophia is ideal, perfect humanity, eternally contained in the whole divine being, or Christ. Since it is beyond doubt that God, in order to exist truly and truly, must manifest Himself, His existence, that is, act in another, then this affirms the necessity of the existence of this other, and since, when speaking about God, we cannot mean the form of time, since everything that is said about God presupposes eternity, then the existence of this other, in relation to which God manifests, must be recognized as necessarily eternal. This other is not an unconditionally other for God (which is unthinkable), but is his own expression or manifestation, in relation to which God is called the Word. But this revelation, or internal revelation, of the Divinity, and therefore the difference between God as the Logos and God as the original substance, or the Father, this revelation and this difference already necessarily presuppose that in which the Divinity is revealed or in which it acts and that in the first (in the Father) exists substantially, or in a hidden form, and through the second (that is, through the Logos) is revealed. Consequently, in order for God to eternally exist as the Logos and as an active God, the eternal existence of real elements that perceive divine action must be assumed, the existence of the world must be assumed as subject to divine action, as giving place within itself to divine unity. The proper, that is, the produced unity of this world is the center of the world and at the same time the circumference of the Divine and is humanity. Every reality presupposes an action, and action presupposes a real object of action - a subject who perceives this action; consequently, the reality of God, based on the action of God, presupposes a subject who perceives this action, presupposes a person, and, moreover, eternal, since the action of God is eternal. It cannot be objected to that the eternal object of action for God already exists in the Logos; for the Logos is the same God, only manifested; manifestation presupposes that other thing for which or in relation to which God manifests, that is, presupposes man. It is obvious that when speaking about the eternity of man or humanity, we do not mean natural man or man as a phenomenon - this would be an internal contradiction and, moreover, would contradict scientific experience. Science, namely geology, shows that our natural, or earthly, man appeared on earth at a certain point in time as the final link of organic development on the globe. But man as an empirical phenomenon presupposes man as an intelligible being, and that is what we are talking about. But, on the other hand, when speaking about the essential and eternal man, we do not mean by this either the generic concept of “man” or humanity as a collective name. Of course, for those who accept a given natural reality as something unconditional and the only positive and real thing, for those, of course, everything that is not this given reality can only be a general concept or an abstraction. When they talk about a real person, they mean this or that individual person existing in a certain space and time as a physical material organism. Outside of this, man for them is only an abstraction and humanity is only a collective name. This is the point of view of empirical realism; We will not argue against it, but will only try to present it with complete logical consistency: this is the best way, as we will see, to reveal its inconsistency. Recognizing true existence only for a single real fact, we, being logically consistent, cannot recognize even a separate individual person as a real, real being: and from this point of view, he must be recognized as an abstraction only. In fact, let us take a certain human individual: what do we find in it as in reality? First of all, it is a physical organism; but every physical organism is an aggregate of many organic elements - it is a group in space. Our body consists of many organs and tissues, which all come down to a variously modified combination of the smallest organic elements, the so-called cells, and from an empirical point of view there is no reason to accept this connection as a real, and not just a collective unit. The unity of the physical organism, that is, of this entire multiplicity of elements, appears in experience as only a connection, as a relation, and not as a real unit. If, therefore, we find in experience an organism only as a collection of many elementary beings, then the individual physical man cannot, from this point of view, be called a real indivisible, or an individual in the proper sense; With the same reason we can recognize each individual organ as a real unit, and with much greater reason - a separate organic element - a cell. But we cannot stop there either, because a cell is a complex being: from the side of empirical reality, it is only a physico-chemical connection of material particles, that is, in the end, a connection of many homogeneous atoms. But the atom as a real and, therefore, extended unit (and only in this sense can atoms be admitted from the side of empirical realism) cannot be unconditionally indivisible: matter as such is divisible to infinity, and, therefore, the atom is only a conditional term of division, and nothing more. Thus, not only an individual person as an organic individual, but also the last elements that compose him, do not represent any real unit, and in general it is completely impossible to find one in external reality. But perhaps the real unity of the human individual, which is not found in his physical existence, in an external phenomenon, is found in his mental existence - in an internal phenomenon? But here, what do we have from an empirical point of view? From this point of view, we find in a person’s mental life a change of individual states - a series of thoughts, desires and feelings. True, this series is united in self-consciousness by the fact that all these states relate to one self; but this very attribution of various states to one mental focus, which we call I, is, from an empirical point of view, only one of the mental phenomena along with others. Self-consciousness is only one of the acts of mental life - our conscious self is a produced result, conditioned by a long series of processes, and not a real being. I, as an act of self-consciousness, is in itself devoid of any content, there is only a bright point in the vague stream of mental states. Just as in a physical organism, due to the constant change of matter, there cannot be a real identity of this organism at two different moments in time (as is known, a given human body, which existed a month ago, was materially completely different from its body that exists now: in this latter there is, perhaps, not a single material particle that was in the first), - in the same way, in the mental life of a person as a phenomenon, every act is something new: every thought, every feeling is a new phenomenon, connected with the rest of its mental content only by the laws of association. From this point of view, we do not find unconditional unity - a real unit - either in the external physical or in the internal mental organism of man. A person, that is, this individual individual, appears here, on the one hand, as a collection of countless elements, constantly changing their material composition and preserving only a formal, abstract unity, on the other hand, as a series of mental states, following one another according to an external, random association and connected with each other only by a formal, meaningless and, moreover, unstable act of reflective self-consciousness, expressed in our I, and this very I in each individual act self-consciousness is already something else (when I mentally say I at a given moment and when I then say the same thing at subsequent moments in time, then these are separate acts or states that do not represent any real unity). If, therefore, as a phenomenon, an individual person represents, from the physical side, only a spatial group of elements, and from the mental side, a temporal series of individual states or events, then, consequently, from this point of view, not only man in general or humanity, but even an individual human individual is only an abstraction, and not a real unit; in general, from that point of view, as has already been indicated, no real unit can be found, for just as, on the one hand, every material element included in the composition of an organism can, being in space, be divided to infinity, on the other hand, in the same way every mental event located in a certain time can be divided ad infinitum into infinitesimal moments of time. There is no final unit in either case: all accepted units turn out to be conditional and arbitrary. But if there are no real units, then there is no real everything; if there are no truly defined parts, then there is no real whole. The result from this point of view is complete nothingness, the denial of all reality - a result that obviously proves the insufficiency of the point of view itself. If, in fact, empirical realism, which recognizes a given phenomenon as the only reality, cannot find a basis for any final reality, for any real units, then we have the right to conclude from this that these real units, without which nothing can exist, that they have their own independent essence beyond the limits of given phenomena, which are only manifestations of these genuine essences, and not themselves. We must, therefore, recognize the full reality of ideal beings, not given in direct external experience, of beings who do not exist in themselves - neither materially, existing elements in our space, nor mentally, events or states occurring in our time. From this point of view, when we talk about a person, we have neither the need nor the right to limit a person to this visible reality; we are talking about an ideal person, but nevertheless quite significant and real, much more, incommensurably more significant and real than the visible manifestation of human beings. We ourselves contain an infinite wealth of forces and content hidden behind the threshold of our present consciousness, over which only a certain part of these forces and content gradually crosses, never exhausting the whole. “In us,” as the ancient poet says, “in us, and not in the stars of heaven and not in deep tartarus, dwell the eternal powers of the entire universe” 32. If man as a phenomenon is a temporary, transitory fact, then as an essence he is necessarily eternal and all-encompassing. What kind of ideal person is this? To be real, it must be one and many, therefore, it is not only the universal common essence of all human individuals, abstracted from them, but it is a universal and at the same time individual being that actually contains all these individuals. Each of us, each human being, is essentially and truly rooted and participating in the universal or absolute man. Just as the divine forces form one integral, unconditionally universal and absolutely individual organism of the living Logos, so all human elements form the same integral, together universal and individual organism - the necessary implementation and container of the first - an all-human organism, like the eternal body of God and the eternal soul of the world. Since this last organism, that is, Sophia, already in its eternal existence necessarily consists of a multiplicity of elements, of which it is a real unity, then each of these elements, as a necessary component of the eternal God-manhood, must be recognized as eternal in an absolute or ideal order. So, when we talk about the eternity of humanity, then implicite 33 we mean the eternity of each individual 34 that makes up humanity. Without this eternity, humanity itself would be illusory. Only with the recognition that every real person with his deepest essence is rooted in the eternal divine world, that he is not only a visible phenomenon, that is, a series of events and a group of facts, but an eternal and special being, a necessary and irreplaceable link in the absolute whole, only with this recognition, I say, can one reasonably admit two great truths, absolutely necessary not only for theology, that is, religious knowledge, but also for human life in general, I mean the truths: human freedom and human immortality. Starting with the latter, it is quite obvious that if we recognize a person only as a being that occurred in time, created at a certain moment, and did not exist before his physical birth, then this, in essence, is tantamount to reducing a person to his phenomenal appearance, to his discovered being, which really begins only with physical birth. But it ends with physical death. That which appeared only in time must disappear in time; endless existence after death does not logically fit in with nothingness before birth. As a natural being, as a phenomenon, man exists only between physical birth and physical death. It is possible to admit that he exists after physical death only by recognizing that he is not only that being that lives in the natural world - only a phenomenon - by recognizing that he is, in addition to this, an eternal, intelligible essence. But in this case, it is logically necessary to admit that it exists not only after death, but also before birth, because the intelligible essence, by its concept, is not subject to the form of our time, which is only the form of phenomena. Moving on to the second mentioned truth, the freedom of man, it is easy to see that, imagining man as only created out of nothing in time and, therefore, as if accidental for God, since it is assumed that God can exist without man, and actually existed before the creation of man - imagining, I say, man as unconditionally determined by divine will and therefore unconditionally passive in relation to God, we absolutely do not leave any room for his freedom. How the question of freedom can be resolved from the point of view of eternal man or from the point of view of the divine-human - we will try to show in the next reading. Religious consciousness, starting from a divine, all-perfect beginning, finds the actual natural world inconsistent with this beginning, that is, imperfect or abnormal, and as a result mysterious and incomprehensible. It is something untrue and improper, and therefore it needs to be explained from the true and proper, that is, from another, supernatural or divine world, which is revealed to religious consciousness as its positive content. The middle term or connecting link by which natural being is explained or deduced from the divine being is, as we know, humanity as the concrete unity of all principles. First of all, we need to establish what, in fact, is abnormal or imperfect in the natural world, what in it requires explanation or justification from a religious point of view. It is obvious that the constant forms of natural phenomena, their harmonious relationships and immutable laws, all the ideal content of this world, presented for objective contemplation and study - all this does not contain anything abnormal or imperfect, nothing that would be in contradiction or opposition to the character of the divine world. With a purely theoretical attitude towards nature as only contemplated and knowable, the mind does not find anything that would cause condemnation or require justification; considering nature in its general forms and laws, he can see in its phenomena only a clear reflection of eternal ideas. Treating real nature ideally, that is, contemplating it in its general, or idea, we thereby detach it from everything accidental and transitory and, as the poet says, “we look straight from time into eternity and see the flame of the universal sun.” And motionless on the fiery roses The living altar of the universe is smoking; In its smoke, as in creative dreams, All power trembles and all eternity is hidden. And everything that rushes through the abyss of the ether, And every ray, carnal and incorporeal, - Your only reflection, O sun of the world, And only a dream, only a fleeting dream 35. And truly, in ideal contemplation (as well as in purely scientific knowledge) every individual individuality, every feature of a real phenomenon is only a “fleeting dream” 36, only an indifferent and transitory case or example of the universal and one; the whole point here is not in the real existence of the object, but in its ideal content, which is something in itself perfect and completely clear to the mind. But if in pure contemplation and theory (in an objective sense) individual existence is devoid of any independent meaning in its individuality, then in practical life, for our active will (in a subjective sense), this separate egoistic existence of an individual is the first and essential; here we must, in any case, take it into account, and if this egoistic being is a dream, then it is a heavy and painful dream, from which we ourselves are not free to get rid of, which suppresses us, despite our consciousness of its illusory nature (if such consciousness exists). It is this difficult and painful dream of a separate egoistic existence, and not the objective character of nature in its general forms, that seems from a religious point of view to be something mysterious and requiring explanation. In the light of ideal contemplation, we do not feel or affirm ourselves in our separateness: here the painful fire of personal will goes out, and we are aware of our essential unity with everything else. But such an ideal state exists in us only for a moment; Apart from these bright moments, in the rest of the course of our life, our ideal unity with everything else appears to us as illusory, insignificant, while here we recognize only our separate, special self as real reality: we are closed in ourselves, impenetrable to the other, and therefore the other, in turn, is impenetrable to us. Generally admitting in theory that everything else has the same internal subjective existence as ourselves, and exists for itself, we, however, completely forget this in actual practical relations, and here all other beings appear to us not as living persons, but as empty masks. This abnormal attitude towards everything, this exclusive self-affirmation or egoism, omnipotent in practical life, even if rejected in theory, this opposition of oneself to all others and the practical denial of these others, is the fundamental evil of our nature, and since it is characteristic of everything living, since every creature in nature, every animal, every insect and every blade of grass in its own being separates itself from everything else, strives to be everything for itself, absorbing or repelling another (from which external, material being comes), then, consequently, evil is a common property of all nature: all nature, being, on the one hand, precisely in its ideal content or objective forms and laws, only a reflection of the all-unified idea, appears, on the other hand, precisely in its real, isolated and scattered existence as something alien and hostile to this idea, as something improper or bad, and, moreover, bad in a double sense: for if egoism, that is, the desire to put one’s exclusive self in the place of everything, or to abolish everything by oneself, is evil par excellence (moral evil), then the fatal impossibility of really realizing egoism, that is, the impossibility, while remaining in one’s exclusivity, to truly be everything, is a fundamental suffering, to which all other sufferings relate as special cases to the general law. In fact, the general basis of all suffering, both moral and physical, comes down to the subject’s dependence on something else, external to him, on some external fact that forcibly binds and suppresses him; but such external dependence would obviously be impossible if a given subject were in internal and real unity with everything else, if he felt himself in everything: then for him there would be nothing absolutely alien and external, nothing could forcibly limit and suppress him; feeling himself in agreement with everything else, he would feel the influence of everything else on himself as being in agreement with his own will, as pleasant to himself, and, therefore, he would not be able to experience real suffering. From what has been said, it is clear that evil and suffering have an internal, subjective meaning; they exist in us and for us, that is, in and for every being. They are the states of an individual being: namely, evil is a tense state of his will, affirming exclusively itself and denying everything else, and suffering is the necessary reaction of another against such a will, a reaction to which a self-affirming being falls involuntarily and inevitably and which it feels precisely as suffering. Thus, suffering, which constitutes one of the characteristic signs of natural existence, appears only as a necessary consequence of moral evil. We have seen that the actual existence of the natural world is improper or abnormal, since it is opposed to the existence of the divine world (as an unconditional norm); but this opposition and, therefore, evil itself is, as has just been shown, only the state of individual beings and their certain relationship to each other (namely a negative relationship), and not some independent essence or special principle. That world, which, according to the apostle, lies entirely in evil, is not some new, unconditionally separate from the divine world, consisting of its own special essential elements, but this is only another, improper relationship of the same elements that form the existence of the divine world. The improper reality of the natural world is the disjointed and mutually hostile position of the same beings who, in their normal relationship, precisely in their internal unity and harmony, are part of the divine world. For if God, as absolute or all-perfect, contains in himself all that exists or all beings, then, consequently, there cannot be such beings that would have the basis of their existence outside of God or would be substantially outside the divine world, and, consequently, nature, in its opposition to the Divine, can only be another position or permutation of certain essential elements that exist substantially in the divine world. So, these two worlds differ from each other not in essence, but only in position: one of them represents the unity of all beings, or such a position of them in which everyone finds himself in everyone and everything in everyone, - the other, on the contrary, represents such a state of beings in which everyone in himself or in his own will asserts himself outside of others and against others (which is evil) and thereby endures against his will the external reality of others (which is suffering). So, the question is: how to explain such an improper position of the natural world, this exclusive self-affirmation of beings? We know that self-affirmation is a tense state of will, concentrating in itself, separating itself and opposing itself to everything else. But will is the internal action of the subject, the direct expression and manifestation of his own being. Will is an action from oneself or an internal movement of the subject emanating from itself; therefore, every act of will is essentially free, every will is will (as in the language, at least in Russian, will and freedom are synonyms) 37. Thus, if evil or egoism is some actual tense state of individual will, opposing itself to everything, and every act of will, by definition, is free, then, consequently, evil is the free product of individual beings. But individual beings cannot be the free cause of evil as physical beings, as they are in the natural material world, because this world and they themselves, since they belong to it, are only consequences or manifestations of evil. In fact, the external material separateness and peculiarity that characterizes natural life and forms the natural world in its opposition to the divine world, this external separateness of physical being is, as we know, a direct consequence of internal discord and self-affirmation, or egoism, which itself, therefore, lies deeper than any materially isolated being - beyond the physical existence of subjects in their external separateness and multiplicity; in other words, the original free cause of evil cannot be an individual being as a physical phenomenon, itself already conditioned by external necessity. Universal experience shows that every physical being will already be born into evil; Evil will in egoism appears in every individual being already at the very beginning of his physical existence, when his free-rational, or personal, principle is not yet active, so that this fundamental evil for him is something given, fatal and involuntary, and not his own free work. Unconditional will cannot belong to a physical being as such, for it is already conditioned by another and does not act directly from itself. So, evil, without having a physical beginning, must have a metaphysical beginning; The producing cause of evil can be an individual being not in its natural already conditioned phenomenon, but in its unconditional eternal essence, to which the original and immediate will of this being belongs. If our natural world, lying in evil, like a land of curse and exile, growing thistles and thorns, is the inevitable consequence of sin and the fall, then, obviously, the beginning of sin and the fall lies not here, but in that garden of God, in which not only the tree of life is rooted, but also the tree of the knowledge of good and evil - in other words: the original origin of evil can only take place in the area of ​​​​the eternal pre-natural world. We distinguish in pre-natural being the Divinity itself as all-one, that is, as a positive (independent, personal) unity of everything - and this “everything”, which is contained in the divine unity and initially has real existence only in it, while in itself is only the potency of being, the first matter, or non-existence (μη` 'όν). Since the Divinity is eternal and absolute self-determination - for as the completeness of everything, as the all-one, it cannot have anything outside itself and, therefore, is entirely determined by itself - then, therefore, although the Divinity as a being has in itself the boundless and immeasurable potency, or force, of being (without which nothing can exist), but as the existing all-one, it eternally realizes this potency (possibility), always fills the infinity of existence with the same boundless, absolute content, always quenches their endless thirst for being, inherent in everything that exists. This should not be the case in those particular essences which, in their totality or unity, constitute the content of the all-one Deity. Each of these essences, precisely as “each,” that is, “one of all,” is not and cannot be directly in itself “all.” Thus, for “everyone” the possibility of “another” opens: “everything”, the absolute fullness of being in him (in everyone) is revealed as an endless aspiration, as an unquenchable thirst for being, as a dark fire of life, eternally seeking light. He (everyone) is “this,” but wants, being “this,” to be “everything”; but “everything” for him, as soon as “this,” does not actually exist, and therefore the desire for everything (to be everything) is in him absolutely indefinite and immeasurable, having no boundaries in itself. Thus, this boundless (τò α‛`πειρον), which in the Divinity is only a possibility, never admitted to reality (as is always a satisfied or eternally satisfied desire), here - in private beings - receives the meaning of the fundamental element of their existence, is the center and basis of all created life (μητη`ρ τη~ς ξωη~ς 38 ). But this center of nature does not open directly in particular beings, since initially they are all embraced by the unity of God and do not exist for themselves separately, do not recognize themselves outside the divine unity, do not concentrate in themselves, and therefore τò α‛`πειρον in them remains hidden potential - although not in the same sense as in God, in which it is eternally potentia post actum, whereas in them it is only potentia ante actum 39. In this initial unity with the Divine, all beings form one divine world in three main spheres, depending on which of the three main modes of being - substantial, mental (ideal) or sensory (real) - predominates in them, or which of the three divine actions (will, idea, feeling) they are predominantly determined by. The first sphere of the divine world is characterized by a decisive predominance of the deepest, most internal and spiritual principle of being - will. Here all beings are in simple unity of will with the Divine - in a unity of pure immediate love; they are essentially determined by the divine principle, they reside “in the bosom of the Father.” Since they belong to this first sphere, beings are pure spirits, and the entire existence of these pure spirits is directly determined by their will, because their will is identical with the all-one will of God. Here, therefore, the predominant tone of existence is unconditional love, in which everything is one. In the second sphere, the fullness of divine existence is revealed in a multiplicity of images connected by ideal unity; here the idea or mental activity determined by the divine mind predominates, and therefore the beings in this sphere can be called minds. Here all beings have existence not only in God and for God, but also for each other - in representation or contemplation; here there is already, although only ideally, certainty and separateness, all essences (ideas) are in a certain relation (ratio, λόγος) to each other, and thus this sphere is primarily the region of the divine Word (Logos), ideally expressing the rational completeness of divine definitions. Here, every “intelligent” being is a certain idea, which has its own specific place in the ideal cosmos. In these two spheres (spiritual and mental) of the divine world, everything that exists is directly determined by the divine principle in the first two images of its existence. But if in general the reality of the divine world consists in the interaction between the one and the all, that is, between the divine principle itself and the multiplicity of beings contained by it, then in these first two spheres the divine world in itself cannot have its full reality, since there is no real interaction here; for beings as pure spirits and pure minds, being in direct unity with the Divine, do not have a separate, isolated or concentrated existence in themselves, and as such cannot from themselves internally influence the divine principle. In fact, beings in the first sphere or as pure spirits, being in the immediate unity of divine will and love, have here in themselves only a potential existence; in the second sphere, although these multiple beings are singled out by the divine Logos as certain objective images, in a constant definite relation to each other and, therefore, receive here some specificity, but a purely ideal specificity, since the entire existence of this sphere is determined by mental contemplation or pure representation. But such an ideal peculiarity of its elements is not enough for the divine principle itself, as one; it is necessary for him that multiple beings should receive their own real particularity, for otherwise the power of divine unity or love will have nothing to manifest or reveal in its entirety. Therefore, the divine being cannot be content with eternal contemplation of ideal essences (to contemplate them and to be contemplated by them); It is not enough for him to possess them as his object, his idea, and to be only an idea for them; but being “free from envy,” that is, from exclusivity, it wants their own real life, that is, it derives its will from that unconditional substantial unity that defines the first sphere of divine existence, turns this will to the entire multiplicity of ideal objects contemplated in the second sphere, and dwells on each of them separately, interfaces with it by an act of its will and thereby affirms and imprints its own independent existence, which has the ability to influence to the divine beginning; by which real influence the third sphere of divine existence is formed. This act (or these acts) of the divine will, connecting with ideal objects or images of the divine mind and giving them through that real existence, is actually the act of divine creativity. The following consideration may serve to explain it. Although the ideal beings (or minds) that constitute the subject of divine action do not have in themselves individually substantial existence or unconditional independence - which would contradict the unity of existence - each of them represents some ideal feature, some characteristic property that makes this object what it is and distinguishes it from all others, so that it always has an unconditionally independent meaning, if not yet in existence, then in essence or idea (non quoad existentiam, sed quoad essentiain), that is, according to that internal property that determines its conceivable or intelligible relation to everything else, or its concept (λόγος), independent of its real existence. But the Divinity, as internally all-one or all-good, fully affirms everything else, that is, it posits its will as the boundless potential of being (τò α‛`πειρον) in everything else, not retaining it in itself as one, but realizing or objectifying it for itself as all-one. Due to the essential peculiarity belonging to everything else, that is, to every divine idea or every objective image (by which it is this), every such image, every idea with which the divine will is coupled, does not relate indifferently to this will, but necessarily modifies its action according to its peculiarity, gives it its own specific character, so to speak, casts it and its own form, for it is obvious that the property of the actual will is necessarily determined not only by the will, but also by its object. Each objective image, perceiving the boundless divine will in its own way, due to its peculiarity, thereby assimilates it, that is, makes it its own; Thus, this will ceases to be only divine: perceived in a certain way (idea) and from it receiving its own special, definite character, it becomes as much a property of this objective image in its particularity as it is an action of the divine being. Thus, the infinite power of being (τò α‛`πειρον), which in the deity is always covered by an act, for God always (eternally) wants or loves everything and has everything in himself and for himself, this unlimited potency in every particular being ceases to be covered by its actuality, for this actuality is not everything, but only one of everything, something special. That is, each being loses its immediate unity with the Divine, and the act of God's will, which in the Divine, never being separated from all others, has no limit, in the particular being itself receives such a limit. But, by isolating itself in this way, this being gains the opportunity to influence the single divine will, determining it from itself in one way and not another. The special idea with which the act of the divine will is united, giving this act its own special character, distinguishes it from the absolute immediate unity of the divine will, receives it for itself and about it acquires the living force of reality, giving it the opportunity to exist and act on its own as an individual or an independent subject. Thus, now there are no longer only ideal beings who have their life only in the contemplation of the Divine, but living beings who have their own reality and from themselves influence the divine principle. We call such beings souls. So, the eternal objects of divine contemplation, becoming objects of a special divine will (more precisely, isolating, due to their inherent peculiarity, the will of God acting in them), become “living in the soul”; in other words, beings substantially contained in the bosom of the one God the Father, ideally contemplated and contemplated in the light of the divine Logos, receive their own real being and action by the power of the life-giving Spirit. The unity of the divine principle, substantially abiding in the first sphere of existence, ideally manifested in the second, can receive its real realization only in the third. In all three spheres, we distinguish the active divine principle of unity, or Logos, as a direct manifestation of the Divine, and that “many” or “all” that is united by the action of this one, perceives it into itself and realizes it. But in the first sphere, this “everything” in itself exists only potentially, in the second - only ideally, and only in the third receives its own actual existence, and therefore the unity of this sphere, produced by the divine Logos, appears for the first time as a real independent being, capable of influencing the divine principle on its own. Only here the object of divine action becomes a real actual subject and the action itself becomes a real interaction. This second produced unity, opposed to the original unity of the divine Logos, is, as we know, the soul of the world, or ideal humanity (Sophia), which contains and binds all special living beings or souls. Representing the realization of the Divine principle, being its image and likeness, primitive humanity, or the soul of the world, is both one and all; she occupies an intermediate place between the multiplicity of living beings that make up the real content of her life, and the unconditional unity of the Divine, representing the ideal beginning and norm of this life. As the living center or soul of all creatures and at the same time the real form of the Divine - the real subject of created existence and the real object of divine action; participating in the unity of God and at the same time embracing the entire multiplicity of living souls, all one humanity, or the soul of the world, is a dual being; containing both the divine principle and created being, it is not determined exclusively by either one or the other and, therefore, remains free; the divine principle inherent in it frees it from its created nature, and this latter makes it free in relation to the Divine. Embracing all living beings (souls), and in them all ideas, it is not exclusively connected with any of them, free from all, but being the immediate center and real unity of all these beings, in them, in their particularity, it receives independence from the divine principle, the ability to influence it as a free subject. Since it receives into itself the Divine Logos and is determined by it, the soul of the world is humanity - the divine humanity of Christ - the body of Christ, or Sophia. By perceiving a single divine principle and connecting with this unity the entire multiplicity of beings, the world soul thereby gives the divine principle full actual implementation in everything; through it God manifests himself as a living, active force in all creation, or as the Holy Spirit. In other words: being determined or formed by the Divine Logos, the world soul makes it possible for the Holy Spirit to be realized in everything, for what is revealed in ideal images in the light of the Logos is realized by the Holy Spirit in real action. From here it is clear that the world soul contains in unity all the elements of the world only insofar as it itself is subordinate to the divine principle perceived by it, since it has this divine principle as the only object of its life will, the unconditional goal and focus of its existence; for only insofar as she herself is imbued with the divine unity, can she carry it into all creation, uniting and subjugating the entire plurality of beings by the power of the Divinity inherent in her. Insofar as she possesses the Divine, to that extent she possesses everything, for in the Divinity everything is in unity; asserting itself in all-unity, it is thereby free from everything in particular, free in the positive sense as possessing everything. But the world soul perceives the divine principle and is determined by it not by external necessity, but by its own influence, for, as we know, by its very position it has in itself the beginning of independent action, or will, that is, the ability to begin internal movement (aspiration) from itself. In other words, the world soul can itself choose the subject of its life’s aspiration. What kind of object could this be, what, in addition to the divine principle, could the world soul strive for? She possesses everything, the unlimited potential of being (τò α‛`πειρον) is satisfied in her. But it is not unconditionally satisfied and therefore not completely satisfied. The world soul directly receives “everything” as the content of its being (its idea) not from itself, but from the Divine principle, which is essentially prior to it, is presupposed by it and determines it. Only as it is open in its inner being to the action of the Divine Logos, the world soul in it and from it receives power over everything and possesses everything. Therefore, although it possesses everything, the world soul may want to possess it differently than it possesses, that is, it may want to possess it from itself as God, it may strive so that absolute originality in the possession of this fullness, which does not belong to it, should be added to the fullness of being, which belongs to it. Because of this, the soul can separate the relative center of its life from the absolute center of Divine life, and can assert itself outside of God. But in this way the soul is necessarily deprived of its central position, falls from the unified center of Divine existence onto the multiple circumference of creation, losing its freedom and its power over this creation; for she has such power not from herself, but only as a mediator between creation and the Divine, from which she is now separated in her self-affirmation. By stopping her will on herself, concentrating in herself, she takes herself away from everything, becoming only one of many. When the world soul ceases to unite everyone, everyone loses their common connection, and the unity of the universe disintegrates into many individual elements, the universal organism turns into a mechanical collection of atoms. For all the particular, special elements of the world organism, in themselves precisely as special (each as “something”, and not everything, as “this”, and not another), are not in direct unity with each other, but have this unity only through the world soul, as their common focus, which contains and embraces them all. With the isolation of the world soul, when it, arousing in itself its own special will, thereby separates itself from everything, the private elements of the world organism lose their common connection in it and, left to themselves, are doomed to a scattered egoistic existence, the root of which is evil, and the fruit is suffering. Thus, all creation is subjected to vanity and the slavery of corruption not voluntarily, but by the will of the one who subjected it, that is, the world soul as the single free principle of natural life. Having fallen away from divine unity, the natural world appears as a chaos of disparate elements. The multiplicity of disintegrated elements, alien to each other, impenetrable to each other, is expressed in real space. Real space does not consist only in the form of extension - every being for another, every representation, extended or spatial in this sense, has such a form, that is, formally, the entire content of even the internal mental world, when we concretely represent it 40; but this space is only ideal, not setting any permanent and independent boundary for our action; real space or appearance necessarily arises from the disintegration and mutual alienation of everything that exists, by virtue of which each being in all others has a constant and compulsory limit to its actions. In this state of appearance, each individual being, each element is excluded or pushed out by all the others and, resisting this external action, occupies a certain specific place, which it strives to retain exclusively for itself, revealing the power of inertia and impenetrability. The complex system of external forces, shocks and movements arising from such mechanical interaction of elements forms the world of matter. But this world is not a world of absolutely homogeneous elements; we know that each real element, each individual being (atom) has its own special individual essence (idea), and if in the divine order all these elements, positively replenishing each other, constitute a whole and harmonious organism, then in the natural order we have the same organism, actually disintegrated (actu), but preserving its ideal unity in hidden potency and aspiration. The gradual implementation of this aspiration, the gradual realization of ideal unity constitutes the meaning and goal of the world process. Just as under the divine order everything is eternally an absolute organism, so according to the law of natural existence everything gradually becomes such an organism in time 41 . The soul of this developing organism - the soul of the world at the beginning of the world process, is in reality deprived of that all-unifying organizing force that it has only in conjunction with the divine principle as perceiving and conducting it into the world; separated from it, in itself it is only an indefinite desire for unity, an indefinite passive possibility (potency) of unity. As an indefinite striving that does not yet have any definite content, the world soul, or nature 42, cannot by itself achieve what it strives for, that is, all-unity, it cannot generate it from itself. In order to bring disparate and hostile elements to unity and harmony, it is necessary for each to determine a special purpose, to bring him into a certain positive relationship with all others - in other words, it is necessary not only to unite everything, but to unite everything in a certain positive form. This definite form of unity or universal organism is contained in the Divine as an eternal idea, in the world, that is, the totality of elements (everything that exists) emerging from unity, in this world, or, better to say, in this chaotic existence of everything that constitutes the original fact, the eternal idea of the absolute organism must be gradually realized, and the desire for this realization, the desire for the embodiment of the deity in the world - a desire that is common and united in all and therefore goes beyond the limits of each - is a desire, which constitutes the inner life and the beginning of movement in everything that exists, is the world soul itself. And if, as has been said, the world soul itself cannot be realized for lack of a certain positive form in itself, then, obviously, in its desire for realization it must look for this form in another, and it can find it only in that which eternally contains this form, that is, in the divine principle, which, thus, appears as the active, formative and determining beginning of the world process. The divine principle itself is an eternal all-unity, remaining in absolute peace and immutability; but in relation to the multiplicity of finite being emerging from it, the divine principle appears as an active force of unity - Logos ad extra 43. Multiple beings in their discord rebel against divine unity and deny it; but the Divinity, being in its essence the beginning of all-unity, is only called by the negative action of disparate being to a positive reaction, to the discovery of its unifying power, first in the form of an external law, which sets a limit to the disintegration and discord of the elements, and then gradually realizing a new positive unification of these elements in the form of an absolute organism or internal unity. So, the divine principle appears here (in the world process) as the active force of the absolute idea, striving to be realized or embodied in the chaos of disparate elements. Thus, here the divine principle strives for the same thing as the world soul - for the embodiment of the divine idea or for the deification (theosis) of everything that exists through its introduction into the form of an absolute organism - but with the difference that the world soul, as a passive force, as a pure desire, initially does not know what to strive for, that is, it does not possess the idea of unity, while the divine Logos, as a positive principle, as an active and formative force, has in itself and gives the world soul the idea of unity as a defining form. In the world process, both the divine principle and the soul of the world appear as a desire, but the desire of the divine principle is the desire to realize, to embody in another what it already has in itself, what it knows and owns, that is, the idea of ​​unity, the idea of ​​an absolute organism; the desire of the world soul is to receive from another what it does not yet have in itself, and to embody what it has already received in what it has, with which it is connected, that is, in material existence, in the chaos of disparate elements; but since the goal of the aspiration is the same - the embodiment of the divine idea, and since the implementation of this goal is possible only with the joint action of the divine principle and the world soul (because the divine principle cannot directly realize its idea in the disparate elements of material existence as something alien and opposite to itself, and the world soul cannot directly unite these elements, not having a certain form of unity), then as a result of this the desire of the divine principle for the embodiment of the idea becomes its desire to unite with the world the soul, as possessing the material for such an incarnation, and, in turn, the desire of the world soul to realize unity in its material elements becomes a desire for the divine principle as containing the absolute form for this unity. Thus, the embodiment of the divine idea in the world, which constitutes the goal of the entire world movement, is determined by the union of the divine principle with the soul of the world, and the first is an active, determining, formative or fertilizing element, and the world soul is a passive force that perceives the ideal principle and imparts to the perceived one the matter for its development, the shell for its complete discovery. But now the question may arise: why is this union of the divine principle with the world soul and the resulting birth of the universal organism as an embodied divine idea (Sophia) - why does this union and this birth not occur simultaneously in one act of divine creativity? Why does this work and effort exist in world life, why should nature experience the pangs of birth, and why, before producing a perfect form corresponding to an idea, before giving birth to a perfect and eternal organism, does it produce so many ugly, monstrous creations that cannot withstand the struggle of life and perish without a trace? Why all these miscarriages and miscarriages of nature? Why does God leave nature to achieve its goal so slowly and by such bad means? Why is the realization of the divine idea in the world a gradual and complex process, and not one simple act? The answer to this question lies entirely in one word, expressing something without which neither God nor nature can be conceived - this word is freedom. By the free act of the world soul, the world united by it fell away from the Divine and disintegrated in itself into many warring elements; Through a long series of free acts, this entire rebellious multitude must reconcile with itself and with God and be reborn in the form of an absolute organism. If everything that exists (in nature or the world soul) must unite with the Divine - and this is the goal of all existence - then this unity, in order to be a real unity, obviously must be mutual, that is, come not only from God, but also from nature, and be its own work. But its work cannot be all-unity in one immediate act, as it is eternally with God: in nature, on the contrary, as being separated from God, directly actual being belongs not to ideal all-unity, but to material discord, and all-unity appears in it as a pure desire, initially completely indefinite and empty; everything is in chaos, in unity there is nothing yet, therefore, everything, being outside of unity, can only by virtue of its desire move to unity and move gradually: because initially the world soul does not know all-unity at all, it strives for it unconsciously, like a blind force, it strives for it as if it were something else; the content of this other for us is something completely alien and unknown, and if this content, that is, all-unity, in its entirety were immediately communicated or transferred to her, then this would appear to her only as an external fact, as something fatal and violent; and in order to have it as a free idea, it must itself assimilate or master it, that is, move from its uncertainty and emptiness to more and more complete definitions of unity. This is the general basis of the world process. After a series of external connections of the divine principle with the world soul and external manifestations of the divine idea (unity) in the natural world, starting from the simplest, most general and external, expressed in the law of universal gravity, according to which everything that exists is attracted to each other by unconscious blind attraction, moving further to more complex methods of connection, expressed, for example, in the laws of chemical affinity of bodies, according to which (laws) not everyone is united with everyone in the same attraction, differing only in external spatial relations (distances), and already certain bodies are connected to certain ones in certain (for each) relationships - moving further to an even more complex and at the same time more individual form of unity, which we find in the structure and life of plant and animal organisms, where the beginning of natural unity, or the world soul, is already clearly, although still incompletely and externally, realized in certain and permanent formations connecting the material elements in some strong and stable whole, which in itself has the form and law of its life - the cosmogonic process consists of the creation of a perfect organism - the human. The progressive course of this process is explained in this way. The world soul initially, as a pure meaningless desire for the unity of everything, can first receive this unity only in the most general and indefinite form (in the law of universal gravitation). This is already some real, although still completely general and empty form of unity, and, consequently, the world soul is already realized here in some way. But the world soul is not covered by this form of unity, since it is the potency not of this, but of absolute unity. Therefore, it strives again, but not as pure potency, but as a potential already realized to some extent (in the first general form of unity), and, therefore, it strives not for unity in general, but for some new, still unknown unity, which can satisfy it more than the one it has. For its part, the active beginning of the world process (the Divine Logos), now having before it the world soul no longer as a pure potentiality, but as a potentiality realized in a certain way, namely as a real unity of elementary forces gravitating towards each other, can unite with it in some new, more definite way and give birth through it some new, more complex and deep connection of the world elements, for which their previous, already realized connection serves as a real basis or material environment. At this new stage of the process, the world soul is thus clothed in some already more perfect form of unity, is more fully realized; but since this new form does not yet express absolute unity, a new striving arises, in the implementation of which the previously achieved form of unity in turn serves as the material basis, etc. A great variety of such successive stages in the world process can be distinguished, but we will indicate three main epochs of this process: the first, when cosmic matter is drawn into great cosmic bodies by the dominant action of gravity - the stellar or astral epoch; the second, when these bodies become the basis for the development of more complex forces (that is, forms of world unity) - heat, light, magnetism, electricity, chemistry and at the same time are specifically divided into a complex and harmonious system of bodies, such as our solar system; and, finally, the third era, when within the framework of such a system some already isolated individual member of it (such as our earth) becomes the material basis for such formations in which, instead of the hitherto dominant opposition of weighty, inert, impenetrable matter and weightless, ever-moving and all-permeating ether, as a pure medium of unity, there is a concrete fusion of the unifying form with the material elements strengthened by it in organic life. After this entire cosmogonic process, in which the divine principle, uniting more and more closely with the world soul, more and more overpowers chaotic matter and finally introduces it into the perfect form of the human organism - when the outer shell for the divine idea is thus created in nature, a new process of development of this idea itself begins as the beginning of internal unity in the form of consciousness and free activity. In man, the world soul for the first time internally unites with the divine Logos in consciousness as a pure form of unity. Being in reality only one of many creatures in nature, man, having in his consciousness the ability to comprehend the mind or internal connection and meaning (λόγος) of everything that exists, appears in the idea as everything and in this sense is the second all-unity, the image and likeness of God. In man, nature outgrows itself and passes (in consciousness) into the realm of absolute existence. Perceiving and carrying in his consciousness the eternal divine idea and at the same time, by his actual origin and existence, inextricably linked with the nature of the external world, man is a natural mediator between God and material existence, a conductor of the all-unifying divine principle into elemental multiplicity, the organizer and organizer of the universe. This role, which initially belonged to the world soul as eternal humanity, in natural man, that is, who occurred in the world process, receives the first opportunity for actual implementation in the order of nature. For all other beings generated by the cosmic process have in themselves actu 44 only one natural, material principle, while the divine idea in the action of the Logos is for them only an external law, an external form of being, to which they are subject by natural necessity, but which they do not recognize as their own; here there is no internal reconciliation between the particular finite being and the universal essence, “everything” is only an external law for “this”; only one person out of all creation, finding himself in fact as “this,” recognizes himself in the idea as “everything.” Thus, a person is not limited to one beginning, but, having in himself, firstly, the elements of material existence, connecting him with the natural world, having, secondly, an ideal consciousness of unity, connecting him with God, a person, thirdly, not limiting himself exclusively to either one or the other, appears as a free self, able to define himself in one way or another in relation to the two sides of his being, able to incline towards one side or the other, to establish himself in one or another sphere. If in his ideal consciousness a person has the image of God, then his unconditional freedom from ideas as well as from fact, this formal infinity of the human self represents in him the likeness of God. Man not only has the same inner essence of life - unity - that God also has, but he is free to want to have it like God, that is, he can want to be like God on his own. Initially he has this essence from God, since he is determined by it in direct perception, since his mind internally coincides with the divine Logos. But he (or the world soul in him), due to his infinity, is not content with this passive unity. He wants to have the divine essence from himself, he wants to master it himself, or assimilate it. In order to have it from himself, and not from God only, he asserts himself separately from God, outside of God, falls away or is separated from God in his consciousness, just as the world soul initially separated from Him in its entire existence. But, rebelling against the divine principle of all-unity, excluding it from his consciousness, man thereby falls under the power of the material principle, for he was free from this latter only because he had a counterweight in the first - he was free from the power of a natural fact only by the power of the divine idea; having excluded it from himself, he himself becomes only a fact instead of the dominant center in the natural world, becomes one of the many natural beings, instead of the focus of “everything” he becomes only “this”. If before, as the spiritual center of the universe, he embraced with his soul all of nature and lived one life with it, loved and understood, and therefore controlled it, now, having established himself in his own selfhood, having closed his soul from everything, he finds himself in a foreign and hostile world, which no longer speaks to him in an understandable language and does not understand and does not obey his words. If previously a person had in his consciousness a direct expression of the universal organic connection of what exists and this connection (the idea of ​​unity) determined the entire content of his consciousness, now, having ceased to have this connection in himself, a person loses in it the organizing principle of his inner world - the world of consciousness turns into chaos. The formative principles that acted in external nature and reached their internal unity in human consciousness again lose it. Consciousness is a simple form seeking its content. This content appears here, therefore, as external, as something that consciousness must still make its own, must still assimilate. This internal assimilation by consciousness of absolute content (necessarily gradual) forms a new process, the subject of which is the world soul in the form of humanity actually subordinate to the natural order. The beginning of evil, that is, exceptional self-affirmation, which plunged everything that exists into primitive chaos and was externally mastered in the cosmic process, now again appears in a new form as the conscious free action of an individual person, and the new emerging process has the goal of internal moral overcoming this evil principle. The world soul, which in man has reached an internal union with the divine principle, has moved beyond the limits of external natural existence and has concentrated all nature in the ideal unity of the free human spirit, - through a free act of the same spirit, again loses its internal connection with the absolute being, as natural humanity falls into the power of the material principle, into the “work of corruption”, and only in the unconditional form of consciousness retains the possibility (potency) of a new internal union with the Divine. Just as at the beginning of the general world (cosmogonic) process, the world soul appears as the pure potency of unity without any definite form and real content (since all reality belongs to chaos), so here, at the beginning of the human, or historical process, human consciousness, that is, the world soul that has reached the form of consciousness, appears as the pure potency of ideal unity, but all reality is reduced to the chaos of external natural phenomena arising for consciousness in the external order of space, time and mechanical causality, but without internal unity and connection. For consciousness that has lost the internal unity of everything in the Divine Spirit, only that external unity becomes available that is generated by the cosmic action of the divine Logos on the world soul as the matter of the world process. The consciousness of humanity strives to reproduce in itself those specific forms of unity that have already been generated by the cosmogonic process in material nature, and the unifying forces of this latter (the generation of the demiurge and the world soul) now appear in consciousness as defining it, giving it the content of the beginning, gradually revealing itself and dominating it as the rulers of not only the external world, but also consciousness itself, like real gods. Thus, this new process is, first of all, a theogonic process, not, of course, in the sense that these dominant principles are created in this very process, so that humanity invents its gods - we know that these principles exist before man as cosmic forces - but in this capacity they are not gods (for there are no gods without worshipers), they become gods only for human consciousness, which recognizes them as such, having fallen under their dominion as a result of their separation from the single divine center. Since both the starting point and the defining principles of the theogonic process are the same as in the cosmogonic process, and the difference lies only in the form of consciousness, 45 it is natural to expect a significant analogy between these two processes. And indeed, even the insufficient and poorly developed information that we have about the theogonic process (that is, the development of ancient mythology) allows us to establish such an analogy between this development and the cosmogonic process. How this latter, considered as a whole, represents three main eras: the astral, in which the chaos of material elements, obeying the force of gravity, is first divided into many cosmic bodies; the solar epoch, in which these bodies are dissected into complex and harmonious systems (of which only one exists for us - our solar system), and, finally, the telluric epoch, when, within the solar system itself, a known already isolated body (for us, our earth) becomes the basis for the development of more complex and differentiated forms of unity, in which the organic life of the world soul is clothed - in the same way, in the theogonic process, we distinguish three corresponding epochs: 1) when world unity is revealed to the natural consciousness of humanity in astral form, and the divine principle is revered as the fiery ruler of the heavenly armies - the era of star worship, or Tsabeism; the dominant god of this era appears to those alienated from the divine sphere of consciousness as an immeasurably high being, incommensurable with man, and therefore alien, incomprehensible and terrible to him; in its infinite sublimity it demands unconditional submission, it does not allow anything near it, it is exclusive and despotic - this is the god of unconditional isolation and inertia, hostile to any movement and living creativity - this is Kronos devouring his children, this is Moloch burning the children of men; We recognize the surviving millennia and somewhat softened form of this heavenly despot in the Allah of Muslims. Consciousness possessed by this divine power strives to exclude all free movement of human forces, diversity of life forms, all cultural progress. But the all-human consciousness cannot be satisfied for long with this majestic, but meager and deserted unity, and soon, after the motionless and unchanging god of the starry sky, the eternally moving and changing, suffering and triumphant, good and bright god appears - the sun. Astral religion is followed everywhere by solar religion: among all the peoples of antiquity, in a certain era of their religious consciousness, we encounter the dominant image of a bright solar god, first fighting, performing glorious feats (Krishna, Melqart, Hercules), then suffering, defeated by enemies and dying (Osiris, Attis, Adonis), and finally resurrected and triumphant over enemies (Mithras, Perseus, Apollo). But just as in the physical world the sun is not only the source of light, but also the source of all organic life on earth, so religious consciousness naturally passes from the god of light to the god of earthly organic life (Shiva, Dionysus). Here the divine principle appears as the beginning of a natural organic process outside of man and in him; the idea of ​​unity (the everlasting content of religion) takes the form of the generic unity of organic life, and the natural act by which this unity is preserved receives special religious significance: everywhere in the ancient world in a certain era, behind the solar cult, a phallic cult arises and fights with it for dominance - the religion of the generic process, the deification of those acts and those organs that serve this generic unity. In these phallic religions, the human soul, first subordinated to the distant powers of the heavenly bodies and in the all-encompassing infinity of the starry sky, seeing the direct expression of the infinity and unity of the divine, then moving on to the closer and more active power of sunlight and in this beneficent luminary as the center of its physical world finding a clear image of the deity as the central active principle of the universe - in phallic religions the soul finally returns to its own material principle, and The highest natural manifestation of the world connection is found in the complex unity of generic organic life. Here the individual human soul submits and worships the common natural life of humanity - the life of the race. But this generic life, this unity of the race, supported only by the constantly renewed process of birth, this unity, which is never actually realized for the individual soul (because the generic life is supported here at the expense of the individual life, absorbing, and not replenishing it, so that the life of the race is the death of the individual) - this bad, negative unity of the generic life cannot satisfy the world soul, which in man has already achieved the ability of internal, positive unity. Just as the cosmogonic process ended with the generation of a conscious human being, so the result of the theogonic process is the self-awareness of the human soul as a spiritual principle, free from the power of natural gods, capable of perceiving the divine principle in itself, and not through cosmic forces. This liberation of human self-consciousness and the gradual spiritualization of man through the internal assimilation and development of the divine principle forms the actual historical process of humanity. The first engines of this historical process are the three great peoples of antiquity: the Hindus, the Greeks and the Jews. Their relative importance in religious history has been previously indicated 46 . But the concepts we have now achieved about the world soul and the world process throw some new light on the religious and historical character of these three peoples. In India, the human soul is for the first time liberated from the power of cosmic forces, as if intoxicated by its freedom, the consciousness of its unity and unconditionality; her internal activity is not bound by anything, she dreams freely, and in these dreams all the ideal creations of humanity are already contained in the embryo, all religious and philosophical teachings, poetry and science, but all this is in indifferent uncertainty and confusion, as if in a dream everything merges and gets confused, everything is one and the same, and therefore everything is nothing. Buddhism has spoken the last word of Indian consciousness; everything that exists and non-exists is equally just an illusion and a dream. This point of view of original unity and indifference, this is the self-consciousness of the soul in itself, because in itself, as pure potency, apart from the active divine principle that gives it content and reality, the soul, of course, is nothing. But liberated from the material content of life and at the same time recognizing itself as nothing in itself, the soul either must renounce existence, or seek new immaterial content. In principle, the Indian and Eastern consciousness in general settled on the first solution; classical humanity took the second path. In the Greco-Roman world, the human soul is no longer free not only from external cosmic forces, but also from itself, from its internal, purely subjective self-contemplation, in which it is immersed among the Hindus. Now she again perceives the action of the divine Logos, but no longer as an external cosmic or demiurgic force, but as a purely ideal, internal force; here the human soul strives to find its true content, that is, unified and general, not in the empty indifference of its potential existence, but in objective creatures that realize beauty and reason - in pure art, in scientific philosophy and in the rule of law. The creation of this ideal sphere, this “world without blood and tears” is the great triumph of the supreme Reason, the real beginning of the true unification of humanity and the universe. But this unification is only in the idea, this is the revelation of the idea as truth over actual being, and not its implementation in this latter. The divine idea appears here to the soul as its object and highest norm, but does not penetrate into the very essence of the soul, does not take possession of its concrete reality. In knowledge, in art, in pure law, the soul contemplates the ideal cosmos, and in this contemplation egoism and struggle disappear, the power of the material chaotic principle over the human soul disappears. But the soul cannot remain in contemplation forever, it lives in factual reality, and this life of its remains outside the ideal sphere, is not captured by it, the idea exists for the soul, but does not cover its reality. With the revelation of the ideal world, two orders of being appear for man - material factual existence (η‛ γένεσις), undue or bad, the root of which is evil personal will - and the impersonal world of pure ideas (τό 'όντως 'òν), the realm of the true and perfect. But these two spheres remain opposed to each other and do not find their reconciliation in the classical worldview. The world of ideas, the ideal cosmos, which constitutes the truth of this worldview in its highest expression - Platonism, represents an absolutely unchangeable existence, it resides in the undisturbed peace of eternity, leaving behind the world of material phenomena, reflected in this world like the sun in a muddy stream, but leaving it unchanged, without purifying or enlightening it. And from a person such a worldview requires only that he leave this world, emerge from this muddy stream into the light of the ideal sun, so that he frees himself from the shackles of bodily existence, as from a prison or a coffin. Thus, the duality and opposition of the ideal and material world, truth and fact, remains unresolved here, there is no reconciliation. If the truly existing is revealed only to the contemplating mind as a world of ideas, then, consequently, a person’s personal life, the area of ​​his will and activity, remains outside the truth, in the world of false material existence; but in this case, a person cannot really and completely leave this false world, because this would mean leaving himself, from his own soul, which lives and suffers in this world. The ideal sphere, with all its richness, can only, as an object of contemplation, distract a person from his evil and suffering will, and not extinguish it. This evil and suffering will is a fundamental fact that cannot be abolished either by the Indian consciousness that this fact is an illusion (because here too it is an illusion only for consciousness, but for all life it remains a fact), nor by the fact that a person will temporarily move away from this fact into the region of ideal contemplation, because he will still have to return from this bright region to an evil life again. The divine principle can act in three ways on the human principle that has separated from it and established itself in the evil will: it can suppress it externally, but it can suppress only the manifestations of the evil will, and not that will itself, which, as an internal, subjective force, cannot be destroyed by any external action. Therefore, the external action of the divine Logos on man, which we find in the theogonic process, is insufficient and does not correspond to the goal of the internal reunification of humanity with the Divine. The cult of natural religion limits the self-affirmation of the human principle, forces him to involuntarily submit to the higher forces operating in nature, forces him to make sacrifices to these forces, but the root of his life, his evil will, the material principle that has risen in him remains untouched as alien and inaccessible to these external natural gods. Closer to the goal, but also insufficient, is the second kind of action of the divine principle on man, the ideal or enlightening action. The possibility of this action is determined by the fact that the human soul is something greater than its given actual state. If in this latter it is an irrational principle, like a blind force of self-affirmation, then in potential it is a rational principle, a desire for internal unity with everything. And if in external suppressive action (in natural religion) the divine Logos relates to the irrational principle of the soul as force to force, then, stimulating the rational potency of man, he can act in it as reason or inner word; namely, he can distract the soul from its actual reality, make this latter an object and show the soul the illusory nature of its material existence, the evil of its natural will, revealing to it the truth of another existence corresponding to reason. This is the ideal action of the divine Logos, which we find primarily among the cultural peoples of the ancient world in the highest era of their development. But this action, although internal, is incomplete, one-sided. To be aware of the insignificance of one’s actual reality as an object in contemplation does not mean making it insignificant in being, does not mean actually eliminating it. As long as truth as an idea is opposed to personal will and life, immersed in untruth, life remains essentially unchanged; an abstract idea cannot overcome it, because personal life will, even if evil, is still a real force, while an idea that is not embodied in living personal forces appears only as a light shadow. So, in order for the divine principle to truly overcome the evil will and life of man, it is necessary that it itself appears to the soul as a living personal force that can penetrate the soul and take possession of it; it is necessary that the divine Logos does not influence only the soul from the outside, but is born in the soul itself, not limiting or enlightening, but regenerating it. And since the soul in natural humanity is actual only in the plurality of individual souls, then the actual union of the divine principle with the soul necessarily has an individual personal form, that is, the divine Logos is born as an actual individual person. Just as in the physical world the divine principle of unity manifests itself first as the force of gravity, blindly connecting bodies, then as the force of light, revealing their mutual properties, and finally as the force of organic life, in which the formative principle penetrates matter and, after a long series of formations, gives birth to the perfect physical human organism, so in the process that follows, the divine principle first, by the force of spiritual gravity, binds individual human beings into a generic unity, then enlightens them with the ideal with the light of reason, and finally, penetrating inside the soul itself and organically, concretely connecting with it, is born as a new spiritual person. And just as in the world the physical appearance of a perfect human organism was preceded by a long series of imperfect, but still organic living forms, so in history the birth of a perfect spiritual person was preceded by a series of incomplete, but still living personal revelations of the divine principle to the human soul. We find these living revelations of the living God (primarily) among the Jewish people. Every manifestation of the divine principle, every theophany, is determined by the property of the environment that perceives this phenomenon, in history, first of all, by the property of the national character, the peculiarity of the people in which this manifestation of the Divine occurs. If the divine principle was revealed to the Indian spirit as nirvana, to the Hellenes as an idea and an ideal cosmos, then as a person, as a living subject, as I, it should have appeared in the Jews, because their national character consists precisely in the predominance of the personal subjective principle. This character is manifested in the entire historical life of the Jews, in everything that this people has created and is creating. Thus, in poetry we see that the Jews created something of their own, special only in the kind that represents precisely the subjective, personal element of poetry: they created the brilliant lyricism of the psalms, the lyrical idyll of the Song of Songs; They could not create either a real epic or drama, such as we see among the Hindus and Greeks, not only during their independent historical existence, but also subsequently - one can point to the brilliant lyricist of the Jews, Heine, but there is not a single remarkable playwright among them, precisely because drama is an objective kind of poetry. It is also remarkable that the Jews excel in music, that is, in that art that primarily expresses the internal subjective movements of the soul, and have not produced anything significant in the plastic arts. In the philosophical field, the Jews in their flourishing era did not go beyond moral didactics, that is, an area in which the practical interest of the moral personality prevailed over objective contemplation and thinking of the mind. Accordingly, in religion, the Jews for the first time fully recognized God as a person, as a subject, as an existing self; they could not stop at the idea of ​​the Divine as an impersonal force and as an impersonal idea. This character of affirmation of the subjective element in everything can be the bearer of both the greatest evil and the greatest good. Because if the power of the individual, self-affirming in its individuality, is evil and the root of evil, then the same power, subordinating itself to a higher principle, the same fire, imbued with divine light, is the power of world all-encompassing love: without the power of a self-affirming personality, without the power of egoism, the very good in man is powerless and cold, appears only as an abstract idea. Every actively moral character presupposes the subordinate power of evil, that is, egoism. Just as in the physical world, a known force, in order to actually be detected, to become energy, must consume or transform into its form a corresponding amount of previously existing (in another form) energy (so light is transformed from heat, heat from mechanical movement, etc.) etc.), similarly, in the moral world of a person who has fallen under the natural order, the potential for good contained in his soul can really be revealed only by consuming or transforming into itself the already existing energy of the soul, which in natural man is the energy of self-affirming will, the energy of evil, which must be transferred into a potential state in order for the new power of good to pass, on the contrary, from potential to act. The essence of good is given by the action of God, but the energy of its manifestation in man can only be the transformation of the power of self-affirming personal will, mastered and transformed into a potential state. Thus, in a holy man, actual good presupposes potential evil: he is so great in his holiness that he could also be great in evil; he overcame the power of evil, subordinated it to a higher principle, and it became the basis and bearer of good. That is why the Jewish people, showing the worst sides of human nature, a “stiff-necked people” and with a heart of stone, this same people is the people of the saints and prophets of God, a people in which a new spiritual man was to be born. The entire Old Testament represents the history of the personal relationships of the appearing God (Logos, or Jehovah) with representatives of the Jewish people - their patriarchs, leaders and prophets. In these personal relationships which constitute the religion of the Old Testament, a succession of three degrees is noticeable. The first mediators between the Jewish people and their God, the ancient patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, believe in a personal God and live by this faith; the following representatives of Judaism, Moses the Seer of God, David, “a man after Jehovah’s heart,” and Solomon, the creator of the great church, receive clear revelations of the personal God and try to carry these revelations into the public life and religious cult of their people; in their person Jehovah makes some external covenant or agreement with Israel as face to face. The last rank of representatives of Judaism, the prophets, realizing the insufficiency of this external union, foresee and proclaim another, internal union of the Divine with the human soul in the person of the Messiah, the son of David and the Son of God, and they foresee and proclaim this Messiah not as the highest representative of Judaism only, but also as the “banner of the tongues,” as the representative and head of all regenerated humanity. If, therefore, the environment for the incarnation of the divine principle was determined by the national character of the Jews, then its time should have depended on the general course of history. When the ideal revelation of the Word in the Hellenic-Roman world was exhausted and turned out to be insufficient for the living soul, when man, despite the enormous hitherto unprecedented riches of culture, found himself alone in an empty and meager world, when doubt about the truth and disgust from life appeared everywhere and the best people turned to suicide from despair, when, on the other hand, precisely because the prevailing ideal principles turned out to be radically untenable, the consciousness that ideas are generally not enough to combat the evil of life, there was a demand that truth be embodied in living personal power, and when external truth, human truth, state truth was really concentrated in one living person, in the person of a deified man, the Roman Caesar, then the truth of God appeared in the living face of God incarnate, Jesus Christ. Readings eleventh and twelfth The incarnation of the divine Logos in the person of Jesus Christ is the appearance of a new spiritual man, the second Adam. Just as by the first Adam, the natural, we mean not only a separate person along with other persons, but an all-individual personality, containing within itself all natural humanity, so the second Adam is not only this individual being, but at the same time a universal one, embracing all regenerated, spiritual humanity. In the sphere of eternal, divine existence, Christ is the eternal spiritual center of the universal organism. But since this organism, or universal humanity, falling into the stream of phenomena, is subject to the law of external existence and must, through labor and suffering in time, restore what it left in eternity, that is, its internal unity with God and nature, then Christ, as the active principle of this unity, for its real restoration must descend into the same stream of phenomena, must undergo the same law of external existence and from the center of eternity become the center of history, appearing at a certain moment - in the fullness of time. The evil spirit of discord and enmity, eternally powerless against God and at the beginning of time overpowering man, must in the middle of time be overpowered by the Son of God and the Son of Man, as the firstborn of all creation, in order to be expelled from all creation at the end of time - this is the essential meaning of the incarnation. Latin theologians of the Middle Ages, who transferred the legal character of Ancient Rome to Christianity, built a well-known legal theory of atonement as satisfaction under the guarantee of violated divine law. This theory, as is known, was developed with particular subtlety by Anselm of Canterbury and was subsequently preserved in various modifications and also passed into Protestant theology, is not entirely devoid of true meaning, but this meaning is completely obscured in it by such crude and unworthy ideas about the Divine and his relationship to the world and man, which are equally repugnant to both philosophical understanding and truly Christian feeling. Truly, the cause of Christ is not a legal fiction, a casuistic solution to an impossible litigation - it is a real feat, a real struggle and victory over the evil principle. The second Adam was born on earth not to carry out a formal legal process, but for the real salvation of humanity, for the real deliverance of it from the power of evil power, for the revelation in it of the kingdom of God. But before talking about the work of Christ, for which the incarnation took place, it is inevitable to answer two questions: 1) about the possibility of the incarnation itself, that is, the real union of the Divine with humanity and 2) about the method of such a union. Regarding the first question, then, of course, the incarnation is impossible if you look at God only as a separate being, located somewhere outside the world and man. With such a view (of deism), the incarnation of the Divine would be a direct violation of the logical law of identity, that is, a completely unthinkable matter. But incarnation is just as impossible from the point of view (pantheism), according to which God is only the universal substance of world phenomena, the universal “everything,” and man is only one of such phenomena. With this view, incarnation would contradict the axiom that the whole (everything) cannot be equal to one of its parts: God here cannot become a man, just as the water of an entire ocean cannot, while remaining all water, at the same time be one of the drops of this ocean. But is there a need to understand God either as a separate being or as the general substance of world phenomena? On the contrary, the very concept of God as whole or perfect (absolute) eliminates both one-sided definitions and opens the way to another view, according to which the world, as a set of limitations, being outside of God (within these boundaries), as material, is at the same time essentially connected with God by its inner life, or soul, which consists in the fact that each being, establishing itself within its own boundary as this, outside of God, at the same time is not satisfied with this boundary, strives to be everything, that is, strives to inner unity with God; Accordingly, in our opinion, God, being transcendent in himself (being outside the world), at the same time in relation to the world appears as an active creative force, leading to communicate to the world soul what it seeks and strives for - that is, the fullness of being in the form of unity, leading to unite with the soul and give birth from it to a living image of the Divine. This determines the cosmic process in material nature, ending with the birth of natural man, and the subsequent historical process that prepares the birth of spiritual man. Thus, this latter, that is, the incarnation of the Divine, is not something miraculous in the proper sense, that is, it is not something alien to the general order of being, but, on the contrary, is essentially connected with the entire history of the world and humanity, it is something prepared and logically following from this history. What is incarnated in Jesus is not the transcendental God, not the absolute, self-contained fullness of being (which would be impossible), but God the Word is incarnated, that is, the principle manifesting itself externally, acting on the periphery of being, and its personal incarnation in an individual person is only the last link in a long series of other incarnations, physical and historical - this appearance of God in human flesh is only a more complete, perfect theophany among other incomplete ones preparatory and transformative theophanies. From this point of view, the appearance of spiritual man, the birth of the second Adam, is no more incomprehensible than the appearance of natural man on earth, the birth of the first Adam. Both were new, unprecedented facts in world life, and both seem miraculous in this sense; but this new and unprecedented was prepared by everything that had happened before, it was what all previous life desired, strived for, and was moving towards: all nature strove and gravitated towards man, the whole history of mankind was directed towards the God-man. In any case, when talking about the possibility or impossibility of the incarnation of the Divine, the main thing is how both the Divinity and humanity are understood; With the concept of Divinity and humanity that is given in these readings, the incarnation of the Divine is not only possible, but also significantly included in the general plan of the universe. But if the fact of incarnation, that is, the personal union of God with man, has its foundations in the general sense of the universal process and in the order of divine action, then this still does not resolve the question of the method of this connection, that is, of the relationship and interaction of the divine and natural human principles in the divine-human personality, or what is a spiritual man, the second Adam? In general, man is a certain combination of the Divine with material nature, which presupposes in man three constituent elements: divine, material and connecting both, actually human; the combination of these three elements constitutes a real person, and the actual human principle is reason (ratio), that is, the relationship of the other two. If this relationship consists in the direct and immediate subordination of the natural principle to the divine, then we have primitive man - the prototype of humanity, imprisoned, not yet separated from the eternal unity of divine life; here the natural human principle is contained as an embryo, potentia, in the reality of divine existence. When, on the contrary, the reality of a person belongs to his material principle, when he finds himself as a fact or phenomenon of nature, and the divine principle in himself only as the possibility of another existence, then we have a natural man. The third possible relationship is that when both Divinity and nature equally have reality in man, and his own human life consists in the active harmonization of the natural principle with the divine, or in the free subordination of the former to the latter. This attitude constitutes a spiritual man. From this general concept of spiritual man it follows: firstly, in order for the coordination of the divine principle with the natural to be a reality in man himself, it is necessary that it be accomplished in an individual person - otherwise there would be only a real or ideal interaction between God and natural man, and there would not be a new spiritual man; In order for there to be a real union of the Divine with nature, a person is necessary in whom this union occurs. Secondly, for this union to be a real union of two principles, the real presence of both of these principles is necessary, it is necessary that this person be God and an actual natural man - both natures are necessary. Thirdly, in order for the very harmonization of both natures by the divine-human personality to be a free spiritual action, it is necessary that a human will participate in it, distinct from the divine and, through the rejection of a possible contradiction with the divine will, freely submitting to it and introducing human nature into complete internal harmony with the Divine. Thus, the concept of a spiritual person presupposes one divine-human personality, combining two natures and possessing two wills 47 . The primitive direct unity of the two principles in man - the unity represented by the first Adam in his paradise state of innocence and broken in the Fall - could no longer simply be restored. The new unity can no longer be immediate, innocence: it must be achieved, it can only be the result of a free deed, a feat, and a double feat - self-sacrifice of the divine and human; for for the true union or harmonization of two principles, the free participation and action of both is necessary. We have seen before how the interaction of the divine and natural principles determines the entire life of the world and humanity, and the entire course of this life consists in the gradual rapprochement and mutual penetration of these two principles, at first distant and external to each other, then increasingly closer to one another, penetrating each other deeper and deeper, until in Christ nature appears as the human soul, ready for complete selflessness, and God as the spirit of love and mercy, imparting to this soul the fullness of divine life, not in overwhelming power and not in illuminating understanding, but in life-giving goodness. Here we have a real divine-human personality, capable of accomplishing the double feat of divine-human self-sacrifice. Such self-sacrifice represents, to a certain extent, the entire cosmic and historical process; for here, on the one hand. The Logos of God, through the free action of his divine will or love, renounces the manifestation of his divine dignity (the glory of God), leaves the peace of eternity, enters into a struggle with the evil principle and is subjected to all the anxiety of the world process, appearing in the shackles of external existence, within the boundaries of space and time; then appears to natural humanity, acting on it in various finite forms of world life, which conceal rather than reveal the true being of God; on the other hand, both worldly and human nature, in its constant languor and desire for more and more new perceptions of divine images, continuously rejects itself in its given actual forms. But here (that is, in the cosmic and historical process) this self-sacrifice on both sides is not perfect; for for the Divine, the boundaries of cosmic and historical theophanies are external boundaries, defining his manifestations for another (for nature and humanity), but in no way relating to his inner sense of self 48; on the other hand, both nature and natural humanity in their continuous progress reject themselves not by a free act, but only by instinctive attraction. In the divine-human personality there is a divine principle, precisely due to the fact that it relates to another not through an external action that sets boundaries for the other without changing itself, but through internal self-limitation that gives another a place in itself - such internal union with another is a real self-sacrifice of the divine principle; here it really descends, destroys itself, takes on the form of a slave. The Divine principle here is not closed only by the boundaries of human consciousness for man, as was the case in previous incomplete theophanies, but itself perceives these boundaries: not that it has completely entered these boundaries of natural consciousness, which is impossible, but it actually senses these boundaries as its own at the moment, and this self-limitation of the Divinity in Christ frees His humanity, allowing His natural will to freely renounce itself in favor of the divine principle not as an external force (which self-denial would be not freely), but as an internal good, and thereby actually acquire this good. Christ as God freely renounces the glory of God and thereby, as a person, receives the opportunity to achieve this glory of God. On the path of this achievement, human nature and the will of the Savior inevitably encounter the temptation of evil. The divine-human personality represents a dual consciousness: consciousness of the boundaries of natural existence and consciousness of one’s divine essence and power. And so, experiencing the limitations of natural existence. The God-man may be tempted to make his divine power a means to ends that flow from this limitation. Firstly, for a being subject to the conditions of material existence, there seems to be a temptation to make material good the goal, and one’s divine power the means for achieving it: “if you are the Son of God, there will be bread of stone”; here the divine nature - “if you are the Son of God” and the discovery of this nature - the word (“arts”) should serve as a means to satisfy material needs. In response to this temptation, Christ affirms that the Word of God is not an instrument of material life, but is itself the source of true life for man: “man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word of God.” Having overcome this temptation of the flesh, the Son of man receives power over all flesh. Secondly, the God-man, free from material motives, is presented with a new temptation - to make his divine power an instrument of self-affirmation of his human personality, to fall into the sin of the mind - pride: “if you are the Son of God, cast down from below, it is written that His angel commanded You to keep You, and they will take You in their arms, lest You dash Your foot against a stone.” This action (“look down”) would be man’s proud call to God, the temptation of God by man, and Christ answers: “again it is written: Thou shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God” 49 . Having conquered the sin of the mind, the Son of Man gains power over minds. Thirdly, but here the last and most powerful temptation appears. Slavery of the flesh and pride of the mind are eliminated: the human will is on a high moral level, conscious of itself above the rest of creation; in the name of this moral height, a person may want dominion over the world in order to lead the world to perfection; but the world lies in evil and will not voluntarily submit to moral superiority - so, you need to force it to submission, you need to use your divine power as violence to subjugate the world. But such a use of violence, that is, of evil for the purposes of good, would be a recognition that good in itself has no power, that evil is stronger than it - this would be worship of that principle of evil that rules over the world: “and showing him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saying to him: I will give all this to you if you fall down in worship.” Here the fatal question is directly posed for the human race: what does it believe in and what does it want to serve - the invisible power of God or the power of evil that clearly reigns in the world? And the human will of Christ, having defeated the temptation of specious lust for power, freely subordinated itself to the true good, rejecting any agreement with the evil reigning in the world: “Jesus said to him: follow me, Satan, for it is written: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and thou shalt serve him only.” Having overcome the sin of the spirit, the Son of Man received supreme power in the kingdom of the spirit; having renounced submission to earthly power for the sake of dominion over the earth, he acquired for himself the service of the heavenly powers: “and behold, the angels came and served Him.” Thus, having overcome the temptations of the evil principle, which inclined his human will to self-affirmation, Christ subordinates and coordinates this human will with the divine will, deifying his humanity following the incarnation of his Divinity. But the inner selflessness of the human will does not yet exhaust the feat of Christ. Being fully human, Christ has in himself not only one purely human element (rational will), but also a natural material element: he not only became human, but also became incarnate - σα`ρξ ε'γένετο. The spiritual feat - overcoming internal temptation - must be completed by the feat of the flesh, that is, the sensual soul, enduring suffering and death, which is why in the Gospel, after the story of the temptation in the desert, it is said that the devil departed from Christ for the time being. The evil principle, internally defeated by self-denial of the will, not allowed into the center of the human being, still retained its power over its periphery - over sensory nature, and this latter could also be delivered from it only through the process of self-denial - suffering and death; and after the human will of Christ freely submitted to his Divinity, through this she subjugated his sensual nature and, despite the weakness of this latter (prayer for the cup), forced it to realize the divine will in itself to the end - in the physical process of suffering and death. Thus, in the second Adam, the normal relationship of all three principles, disrupted by the first Adam, is restored. The human principle, having placed itself in the proper relationship of voluntary submission or agreement with the divine principle as an internal good, thereby again receives the meaning of a mediating, unifying principle between God and nature, and this latter, purified by death on the cross, loses its material separateness and heaviness, becomes a direct expression and instrument of the Divine spirit, a true spiritual body. In such a body Christ rises and appears to His Church. The proper relationship between Divinity and nature in man, achieved by the person of Jesus Christ as the spiritual center or head of humanity, must be acquired by all humanity as His body. Humanity, reunited with its divine beginning through the mediation of Jesus Christ, is the Church, and if in the eternal primitive world ideal humanity is the body of the divine Logos, then in the natural world of origin the Church appears as the body of the same Logos, but already embodied, that is, historically isolated in the divine-human personality of Jesus Christ. This body of Christ, which appears at first as a small embryo in the form of a small community of the first Christians, little by little grows and develops in order to at the end of time embrace all of humanity and all of nature in one universal divine-human organism; because the rest of nature, according to the words of the apostle, awaits with hope the revelation of the sons of God, for the creation was subjected to vanity not voluntarily, but by the will of the one who subjected it in the hope that the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the sons of God; for we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now. This revelation and glory of the sons of God, which all creation awaits with hope, is the complete implementation of the free divine-human connection in all humanity in all spheres of its life and activity; all these spheres must be brought to the divine-human consonant unity, must become part of a free theocracy, in which the Universal Church will reach the full measure of the age of Christ. Thus, based on the concept of the Church as the body of Christ (not in the sense of a metaphor, but a metaphysical formula), we must remember that this body necessarily grows and develops, therefore, changes and improves. Being the body of Christ, the Church is not yet His glorified, completely deified body. The present earthly existence of the Church corresponds to the body of Jesus during His earthly life (before the resurrection) - a body that, although in particular cases exhibited miraculous properties (which are now inherent in the Church), but in general a mortal, material body, not free from all the infirmities and sufferings of the flesh - for all the infirmities and sufferings of human nature were taken by Christ; but just as in Christ everything that is weak and earthly is absorbed in the resurrection of the spiritual body, so it must be in the Church, His universal body, when it reaches its fullness. The achievement of this in humanity is conditioned by the same thing as in the Divine-Human personality, that is, self-sacrifice of the human will and free submission to the Divine. But if in Christ as an individual person the moral feat of victory over the temptations of the evil principle and voluntary submission to the divine principle was accomplished as a primarily internal matter, as a subjective psychological process, then in the totality of humanity this matter is accomplished as an objective, historical process - and the very objects of temptation, which in the psychological process are only ideas, in the historical process receive objective reality, so that a part of humanity actually falls under the temptations of the evil principle and is only convinced by its own experience of the falsity of the paths, rejected in advance by the conscience of the God-man. Since all humanity represents the same three essential elements as an individual person, namely, spirit, mind and sensual soul, then the temptation of evil for all humanity also appears to be threefold, but in a different order than for the person of Christ. Humanity has already received the revelation of divine truth in Christ, it possesses this truth as a real fact - therefore, the first temptation seems to be the abuse of this truth as such in the name of this truth itself, evil in the name of good - sin of the spirit; moral evil primarily, that is, what Christ had as his last temptation (according to St. Matthew). The Christian Church historically was made up of all people who accepted Christ: but Christ could be accepted internally and externally. The internal acceptance of Christ, that is, a new spiritual person, consists in spiritual rebirth, in that birth from above or from the spirit, which is spoken of in a conversation with Nicodemus, that is, when a person, having realized the untruth of the carnal, material life, feels in himself a positive source of another true life (independent of either the flesh or the human mind), the law that is given in the revelation of Christ, and, recognizing this new life, revealed by Christ, as unconditionally due as good and truth, voluntarily subordinates his fleshly and human life to it, internally uniting with Christ as the founder of this new spiritual life, the head of the new spiritual kingdom. Such acceptance of Christ's truth frees one from sin (although not from sins) and forms a spiritual person. But there can also be an external acceptance of Christ, only recognition of the miraculous incarnation of the Divine Being for the salvation of people and acceptance of His commandments to the letter as an external, obligatory law. Such external Christianity contains within itself the possibility of falling under the first temptation of the evil principle. Namely: the historical emergence of Christianity divided all of humanity into two parts: into the Christian Church, possessing Divine truth and representing the will of God on earth, and into the world that remains outside Christianity, does not know the true God and lies in evil; and so external Christians, who believe in Christ’s truth, but are not reborn by it, may feel the need and even accept it as their duty to conquer this entire external and hostile world to Christ and His Church, and since the world lying in evil will not voluntarily submit to the sons of God, then to conquer it by force. Part of the Church, led by the Roman hierarchy, fell to this temptation of religious lust for power, and carried away with it the majority of Western humanity in the first great period of its historical life - the Middle Ages. The essential falsity of this path lies in the hidden unbelief that lies at its root. In fact, with real faith in the truth of Christ, it is assumed that it is stronger than the evil reigning in the world and can itself conquer evil with its own spiritual moral power, that is, lead it to good; to assume that the truth of Christ, that is, the truth of eternal love and unconditional goodness, for its implementation needs alien and even directly contrary means of violence and deception, means recognizing this truth as powerless, means admitting that evil is stronger than good, means not believing in goodness, not believing in God. And this unbelief, which at first was hidden as an imperceptible embryo in Catholicism, is subsequently clearly revealed. Thus, in Jesuitism - this extreme and purest expression of the Roman Catholic principle - the driving principle is directly the love of power, and not Christian zeal; the peoples submit not to Christ, but to the church authorities; a real confession of the Christian faith is no longer required of them - the recognition of the pope and submission to the church authorities are enough 50. Here the Christian faith turns out to be a random form, and the essence and goal are placed in the dominion of the hierarchy; but this is already direct self-accusation and self-destruction of the false principle, for here all the foundation of the very power for which they act is lost. The falsity of the Catholic path was recognized early in the West, and finally this consciousness found full expression in Protestantism. Protestantism rebels against Catholic salvation as an external fact and requires a person’s personal religious relationship to God, personal faith without any traditional church mediation. But personal faith as such, that is, as a simply subjective fact, does not contain any guarantee of its truth—a criterion is necessary for such faith. – Such a criterion for Protestantism is initially the Holy Scripture, that is, the book. But the book needs understanding: to establish a correct understanding, research and reflection are necessary, that is, the activity of personal reason, which in the end turns out to be the real source of religious truth, so that Protestantism naturally passes into rationalism - a transition that is both logically inevitable and historically undoubtedly occurring. This is not the place to outline the moments of this transition, and we will dwell only on the general result of this path, that is, on pure rationalism. Its essence lies in the recognition that human reason is not only self-legal, but that it gives laws to everything that exists in the practical and social sphere. This principle is expressed in the demand that all life, all social and political relations be organized and governed exclusively on the basis developed by personal human reason, apart from any tradition and any immediate faith - a demand that permeated the entire so-called enlightenment of the 18th century and served as the guiding idea of ​​the first French revolution. Theoretically, the beginning of rationalism is expressed in the claim to derive from pure reason (a priori) the entire content of knowledge, or to construct speculatively all sciences: this claim was the essence of German philosophy - naively assumed by Leibniz and Wolff, consciously, but in a modest form and with limitations, put forward by Kant, decisively declared by Fichte and, finally, carried out with complete self-confidence and self-awareness and with the same complete failure Hegel. This self-confidence and self-assertion of the human mind in life and knowledge is an abnormal phenomenon, it is the pride of the mind, and Western humanity in Protestantism and the rationalism that emerged from it fell under the second temptation. But the falsity of this path was soon revealed, revealed in a sharp contradiction between the excessive claims of reason and its actual powerlessness. In the practical field, reason turned out to be powerless against passions and interests, and the kingdom of reason proclaimed by the French Revolution ended in a wild chaos of madness and violence; in the theoretical field, reason turned out to be powerless against empirical fact, and the claim to create a universal science on the principles of pure reason was resolved by constructing a system of empty abstract concepts. Of course, the failures of the French Revolution and German philosophy would not in themselves prove the inconsistency of rationalism. But the fact is that the historical collapse of rationalism was only an expression of its internal logical contradiction, the contradiction between the relative nature of reason and its unconditional claims. Reason is a certain ratio (ratio) of things that gives them a certain form. But the relation presupposes the related, the form presupposes the content; rationalism, placing human reason in itself as the supreme principle, thereby distracts it from all content and has only an empty form in reason; but at the same time, as a result of such a distraction of the mind from all content, from everything given in life and knowledge, all this given remains unreasonable for him, therefore, when, with the consciousness of his supreme rights, he comes out against reality in life and knowledge, he finds everything in it alien to himself, dark, impenetrable and cannot do anything with it; for reason, abstracted from all content, transformed into an empty concept, naturally cannot have any power over reality. Thus, the self-exaltation of the human mind, the pride of the mind, inevitably leads to its final fall and humiliation. The falsity of this path, known through experience, was recognized by Western humanity, but it freed itself from it only to fall into the third and final temptation. The human mind could not cope in life with human passions and lower interests, in science - with the facts of empirical reality, that is, both in life and in knowledge, it turned out to be powerless against the material principle: should we not conclude from this that this material principle in life and knowledge - the animal nature of man, the material mechanism of the world - is the true essence of everything, that in the greatest possible satisfaction of material needs, in the most complete knowledge of empirical facts, the whole goal consists life and knowledge? And now the dominance of rationalism in European politics and science is replaced by the predominance of materialism and empiricism. This path has not yet been completed, but its falsity has already been recognized by progressive minds in the West itself. Just like the previous one, this path suffers from internal contradiction. Based on the material principle, the beginning of discord and randomness, they want to achieve unity and integrity, to create a correct human society and a universal science. Meanwhile, the material side of existing things, the drives and passions of human nature, the facts of external experience - all this constitutes only the general lining of life and knowledge, the material from which they are created; but in order for something to really be created from this material, a formative, unifying principle and some form of unity are necessary, and if it has already turned out that the human mind is not able to serve as such a formative principle and does not contain in its abstraction any real form of unity; if it turned out that the principle of rationalism is not able to form either a correct society or a true science, then it follows that we must turn to another, more powerful principle of unity, and not that we should limit ourselves to the material side of life and knowledge, which in itself does not form either human society or science. Therefore, when we see that economic socialism wants to place material interest as the basis of all society, and positivism as the basis of all science - empirical knowledge, then we can predict in advance the failure of both of these systems with the same confidence with which we would assert that a pile of stones by itself, without an architect and a plan, will not form into a correct and purposeful building. An attempt to really put one material principle at the foundation of life and knowledge, an attempt to actually and completely implement the lie that man will live on bread alone, such an attempt would inevitably lead to the disintegration of humanity, to the destruction of society and science, to general chaos. To what extent Western humanity, having fallen into the last temptation of the evil principle, is destined to experience all these consequences cannot be said in advance. In any case, having experienced the falsity of the three broad paths, having experienced the deceptiveness of the three great temptations, Western humanity must sooner or later turn to the divine-human truth. Where and in what form will this truth appear now? and above all, is this conscious but involuntary appeal to the truth by testing every lie in practice the only path possible for humanity? In fact, not all Christian humanity followed this path: it was chosen by Rome and the Germanic-Roman peoples who adopted Roman culture. The East, that is, Byzantium and the peoples that adopted Byzantine culture, led by Russia, remained on the sidelines. The East did not fall under the three temptations of the evil principle, it preserved the truth of Christ; but, keeping it in the souls of their peoples. The Eastern Church did not realize it in external reality, did not give it real expression, did not create a Christian culture, just as the West created an anti-Christian culture. And she could not create it, could not realize the Christian truth. For what should be meant by such a realization, what should be meant by truly Christian culture? The establishment in all of human society and in all its activities of that relationship with the sin of the principles of the human being, which is individually realized in the person of Christ. This relationship, as we know, consists in the free coordination of two lower principles (rational and material) with the highest divine through their voluntary submission to it not as a force, but as a good. For such a free subordination of the lower principles to the higher, in order for them to come from themselves to recognize the higher principle as good, it is necessary that they have independence. Otherwise, truth will have nothing on which to manifest its action, nothing on which to be realized. Meanwhile, in the Orthodox Church, the vast majority of its members were captivated into obedience to the truth by direct attraction, and did not come through the conscious course of their inner life. As a result of this, the human element itself turned out to be too weak and insufficient in Christian society for the free and reasonable implementation of the divine principle into external reality, and as a result of this, the latter (that is, material reality) remained outside the divine principle, and Christian consciousness was not free from some dualism between God and the world. Thus, Christian truth, distorted and then rejected by Western man, remained imperfect in Eastern man. This imperfection, depending on the weakness of the human principle (mind and personality), could only be eliminated with the full development of this latter, which fell to the lot of the West. Thus this great Western development, negative in its direct results, has indirectly a positive meaning and purpose. If a true divine-human society, created in the image and likeness of the God-human himself, must represent a free coordination of the divine and human principles, then it is obviously determined by both the active power of the first and the co-operating power of the second. It is therefore required that society, firstly, preserve the divine principle (Christ’s truth) in all its purity and strength and, secondly, fully develop the principle of human self-activity. But according to the law of development or growth of the body of Christ, the joint fulfillment of these two requirements, as the highest ideal of society, could not be given at once, but must be achieved, that is, before a perfect union there is a division, which, with the solidarity of mankind and the law of division of historical labor arising from it, is expressed as the disintegration of the Christian world into two halves, with the East with all the strength of its spirit attached to the divine and preserving it, developing in itself the necessary conservative and ascetic mood for this, and the West uses all its energy to develop the human principle, which is necessarily done to the detriment of divine truth, first distorted and then completely rejected. From this it is clear that both of these historical directions not only do not exclude each other, but are absolutely necessary for each other and for the fullness of the age of Christ in all humanity; for if history were limited to Western development alone, if behind this continuous stream of successive movements and mutually annihilating principles there did not stand the motionless and unconditional principle of Christian truth, all Western development would be devoid of any positive meaning, and the new history would end in disintegration and chaos. On the other hand, if history had stopped at Byzantine Christianity alone, then the truth of Christ (divine humanity) would have remained imperfect due to the absence of the spontaneous human principle necessary for its completion. Now, the divine element of Christianity, preserved by the East, can achieve its perfection in humanity, for it now has something to influence, something to demonstrate its inner strength, precisely thanks to the human principle that has been liberated and developed in the West. And this has not only historical, but also mystical meaning. If the overshadowing of the human Mother by the active power of God produced the incarnation of the Divine, then the fertilization of the divine mother (the church) by the active human principle should bring about the free deification of humanity. Before Christianity, the natural principle in humanity was given (fact), the deity was sought (ideal) and how the sought-after acted (ideally) on man. In Christ, what was sought was given, the ideal became a fact, an event, the active divine principle became material. The word became flesh, this new flesh is the divine substance of the church. Before Christianity, the motionless basis of life was human nature (the old Adam), while the divine was the beginning of change, movement, progress; after Christianity, on the contrary, the divine itself, as already embodied, becomes the motionless basis, the element of life for humanity, and what is sought is humanity that responds to this divine, that is, capable of uniting with it on its own, assimilating it. As sought, this ideal humanity is the active principle - history, the beginning of movement, progress. Just as in the pre-Christian historical course the basis, matter, was human nature, or the element, the active and formative principle was the divine mind, ο‛ λόγος του~ Θεου~, and the result (generation) was the God-man, that is, God who took on human nature, so in the process of Christianity the basis, or matter is nature, or the divine element (the Word made flesh, or the body of Christ, Sophia), the active and formative principle is the human mind, and the result is a man-god, that is, a man who has received deity; and since man can perceive the deity only in his unconditional wholeness, that is, in conjunction with everything, then the man-god is necessarily collective and universal, that is, pan-humanity, or the Universal Church, the God-man is individual, the man-god is universal; so the radius of a circle is the same for the entire circle at any of its points and, therefore, in itself is already the beginning of the circle, while the points of the periphery only in their totality form a circle. In the history of Christianity, the representative of the immovable divine basis in humanity is the Eastern Church, the representative of the human principle is the Western world. And here, before becoming the fertilizing principle of the church, reason had to move away from it in order to develop all its powers in freedom, and after the human principle had become completely isolated and then recognized its weakness in this isolation, it could enter into a free combination with the divine basis of Christianity, preserved in the Eastern Church, and as a result of this free combination give birth to spiritual humanity. If the supreme importance of man as such, his self-legitimacy, is recognized, then the recognition of his freedom naturally follows, since nothing can have power over him, the source of all power; and since the property of being human equally belongs to all people, equality follows from this. Legally, actually (lat.) In this case, it is completely indifferent whether an individual, or the majority of the people, or even the majority of all mankind lay claim to such power, because quantity in itself obviously does not give any moral right, and the mass as a mass does not represent any internal advantage (if we talk about convenience, then, without any doubt, the despotism of one is much more convenient than the despotism of the masses: ου‛κ α'γαθόν πολυκοιρανίη, είς κοίρανος 'έστω). [Multiple powers are not good, let there be one ruler (Greek) – quote from Homer’s “Iliad” (II, 204).] Quote from the poem “David” by A. S. Khomyakov. Quote from the poem by A. S. Khomyakov “Inscription on the picture (An angel saves two souls from Satan).” Conclusion from the unproven (lat.) That is: If our reason has objective power, if objective knowledge and science should exist, then, etc. Conflict in definition (lat.) See the translation of the Sankhya-Karika appended to Colebrooke's famous book on Indian philosophy in the French translation by Potier. Quote from a poem by G. Heine: Plenty of grain grows on the earthˆFor all the sons of men, But the beauty and sweetness of myrtles and roses And there won't be any sugar snap peas (German) You think in vain, artist, That you are the creator of your creations, and so on. See: Eugene Burnouf. "Introduction dans l'histoire du Bouddhisme indien." Here we mean for now only their relationship with each other and with that external phenomenal being for which they are the foundations and centers. In relation to the absolute being, they cannot have the meaning of unconditionally real centers: for him they are permeable, since they themselves are rooted in him. Therefore, when speaking about indivisible units, or atoms, we use only a relative definition. Of course, I take here this aphorism in its general meaning to explain my thought, without going into consideration of the special meaning that may belong to it in the system of Spinoza himself. By the way, the famous dispute between nominalists and realists in scholasticism is based on the confusion of ideas with concepts. Both sides were essentially right. The nominalists, who affirmed universalia post res, initially understood universalia to be general concepts and in this sense rightly proved their lack of independence and contentlessness, although, by defining them as only nomina or voces, they fell into an obvious extreme. On the other hand, the realists who affirmed universalia ante res [The universal after the thing; name or words; universal before things (lat.)], understood by them real ideas and therefore thoroughly ascribed to them independent existence. But since both sides poorly distinguished between these two meanings of the word universalia, or in any case, did not define this difference with sufficient accuracy, then endless disputes should have arisen between them. In all likelihood, here the future ehjeh is only a replacement for the present, which for this verb does not exist in the Hebrew language. The interpretations of these words, which here assume a direct meaning of the future tense and see in this an indication of the future revelations of God, seem to us very strained. In any case, the concept of God as a pure self is expressed with sufficient clarity in the Old Testament, even in addition to the above saying, so that one or another understanding of this latter does not have much meaning for us. Therefore, when giving the absolute idea the moral definition of love, we had in mind the complete truth of idealism, and not its one-sided expression in the Greek worldview: for this latter, the absolute quality was not goodness or love, but only goodness, that is, again, only an object. The expression: three divine or three initial hypostases is Plotinus’s own expression, we hide, of course, it has its own philosophical meaning, and not a Christian one. As for the formulas of this dogma in general, established by the Church at the Ecumenical Councils against Arius, Eunomius and Macedonius, then, being, as we will see, completely true and from a speculative point of view, these formulas are limited, of course, only to the most general definitions and categories, such as consubstantials, equality, etc.; the metaphysical development of these definitions and, consequently, the speculative content of these formulas, naturally, was left by the church to the free activity of theology and philosophy, and there is no doubt that these definitions can be reduced to these Orthodox formulas and covers all the essential content of Alexandrian speculation about the three hypostases - of course, if you look at the thoughts and not be attached to just words. On the other hand, for a complete logical understanding of this fundamental dogma, those definitions of pure logical thought that have been developed with such perfection in the latest German philosophy can serve us as an invaluable means, which from this formal side has for us the same meaning that the doctrines of the Academy and Lyceum had for the ancient theologians, and those who now rebel against the introduction of this philosophical element into the religious field would first have to reject the entire previous history of Christian theology, which, one might say, fed by Plato and Aristotle. The expression of St. Justin about some Greek philosophers. – Although the close internal connection between Alexandrian theosophy and Christian teaching is one of the firmly established positions of Western science, but since in our theological literature, for one reason or another, this completely reliable position does not enjoy general recognition, I consider it necessary at the end of these readings to devote a special appendix to this issue [Such an appendix was not published. – Ed], in which I will also have to touch on the meaning of native Egyptian theosophy (the revelations of Thoth or Hermes) in its relation to both named teachings. This is not contradicted by those expressions in which the verb to be itself seems to play the role of a predicate, precisely when the simple existence of something is asserted. The fact is that this is only a way of expression for a distracting thought, and it is not at all intended to express the complete truth of the subject. So, for example, if I say simply: the devil is or is the devil, then although I am not saying here what the devil is, at the same time I do not want to say that he is not something, I am not suggesting here that he only is or was only an existent, a subject without any objective qualitative determination, without any essence or content - here I just do not dwell on the question of this essence or content, limiting myself to indicating only the very existence of this subject. Thus, such expressions represent only the omission of the real predicate, and not its denial or identification with simple being. This is the deeply true meaning of the famous Hegelian paradox, with which his logic begins, namely, that being as such, that is, pure, empty being, is identical with its opposite, or is nothing. Of course, this analogy is incomplete, since our artistic creativity presupposes a certain passive state of inspiration or internal perception, in which the artist does not, but sometimes does, possess his idea. In this sense, the words of the poet are true. So, the second position or the second mode of existence of beings is only another expression of what already exists in the first. But in the first position, what is expressed, that is, the absolute content as the whole of all essential forms or the completeness of all ideas, appears only internally, in the positive possibility or power of the absolute subject, has, therefore, only an essential, and not an actual existence, since all reality here belongs to this unconditional subject itself, or the existent, in its immediate unity; it as a single thing is a pure act here, a pure unconditional reality, about which we can gain some knowledge when, abstracting from all the manifested, determined content of our life, external and internal, abstracting not only from all impressions, but also from feelings, thoughts and desires, we gather all our forces in a single focus of immediate spiritual existence, in the positive power of which all the acts of our spirit lie and which determines the entire circumference of our life: when we are immersed in that the mute and motionless depth in which the muddy stream of our reality originates without disturbing its purity and peace - in this original source of our own spiritual life we internally come into contact with the original source of universal life, we essentially know God as the first principle, or the substance of everything, we know God the Father. This is the first image of existence - the reality of it alone. In order for not only he himself as a subject, but also that of which he is the subject, that is, the entire fullness of absolute content, to receive the same reality and from potential to become actual, some act of self-determination or self-limitation of the existing is necessary. In fact, since outside of God as the absolute there is and cannot be anything unconditionally independent, nothing that would initially be different from him or determine him from the outside, then any determinate being can initially only be an act of self-determination of an absolutely existent. In this act, on the one hand, a being opposes or opposes itself to its content as its other or object - this is an act of self-difference of a being into two poles, of which one expresses unconditional unity, and the other - everything or multiplicity; on the other hand, through its self-determination, beings receive some active force and become energy. Indeed, if being were only in the first position, that is, if it were only an infinite, and therefore indifferent act, then it could not act, since it would then have no real object for which it (being reality in itself) would appear as a positive possibility or force. For every action, in its concept, is the unity of force, or power, and reality, or the manifestation of its inner reality on another or for another as force. And since there is nothing outside the deity and his subject lies in himself, then his action is not the definition of another by another, but self-determination, that is, the separation from oneself of one’s content or its objectification through self-limitation in one’s immediate, limitless, or purely actual existence. As absolute, the deity cannot be only a direct act, it must also be potency or power, but as in the absolute, this power is only its own power over itself or over its immediate. If limitation by others contradicts the concept of the absolute, then self-restraint not only does not contradict it, but is directly required by them. In fact, by self-determining and thereby realizing its content, being, obviously, not only does not cease to be what it is, that is, absolutely existing, not only does not lose its reality, but, on the contrary, realizes it completely, becoming valid not only in itself, but also for itself. Since what God realizes in the act of his self-determination - everything or the fullness of all - is his own content or essence, then its implementation is only the full expression or manifestation of the one to whom this content or essence belongs and who is expressed in it or by her in the same way as the subject is expressed by the predicate. So, returning to our comparison, a poet who completely devotes himself to creativity and, so to speak, translates his inner life into objective artistic creations, not only does not lose through this, but, on the contrary, highly affirms and more fully realizes his own individuality. Absolutely existing, not subject to any definition in itself, defines itself; manifesting itself as unconditionally unified through the position of its other or content, that is, everything; for the true one is the one that does not exclude plurality, but, on the contrary, produces it in itself and is not violated by it, but remains what it is, remains one, and thereby proves that it is unconditionally one, that is, one in its very essence, which cannot be sublated or destroyed in its unity by any plurality. If the one were such only by the absence of plurality, that is, it would be a simple deprivation of plurality and, therefore, with its emergence would lose its character of unity, then, obviously, this unity would be only accidental, and not unconditional, multiplicity would have power over the one, he would be subordinate to it. True unconditional unity is necessarily stronger than plurality, surpasses it, and it can prove or realize this superiority only by producing or positing in itself any multiplicity and constantly triumphing over it, for everything is tested by its opposite. Likewise, our spirit is truly one, not because it was deprived of plurality, but, on the contrary, because, manifesting in itself an infinite multiplicity of feelings, thoughts and desires, at the same time it always remains itself and imparts the character of its spiritual unity to all this elemental multiplicity of manifestations, making it its own, belonging to it alone. Like immovable depth in a powerful space Still the same as in stormy excitement - The spirit is clear and bright in free peace, But it is the same in passionate desires. Freedom, bondage, peace and excitement They pass and appear again, And he is still alone, and in spontaneous striving Only his power is revealed 1 This ability of analysis, necessary as a means or as a transition to an integral, but conscious worldview from the instinctive popular mind, - but completely sterile or even harmful if limited to it - is precisely in this limitation the real pride of semi-educated people (which includes the majority of learned specialists, who in our time understand little outside their specialty) - pride before the “unenlightened masses, immersed in superstitions,” as well as before real philosophers, devoted to the mystical fantasies. However, the significance of these groundless deniers is as illusory as their knowledge is superficial. Speaking about religious beliefs as a product of organic thinking, we must remember that this thinking is based on ideal contemplation and this latter, as indicated in the previous reading, is not a subjective process, but a real attitude towards the world of ideal beings or interaction with them; therefore, the results of this contemplation are not works of subjective arbitrary creativity, they are not inventions and fantasies, but they are real revelations of superhuman reality, perceived by man in one form or another. Hegel also asserts this in his history of philosophy. Irrational not in the sense of unreasonable, but in the sense of not being subject to reason, incommensurable with it; for irrationality is a contradiction between concepts, therefore, it belongs to the realm of reason, is judged and condemned by it, the same side of being that we are talking about is precisely outside the limits of reason and, therefore, can be neither reasonable nor unreasonable, just as, for example, the taste of lemon can be neither white nor black. If our thinking in relation to external reality is something subjective, then in relation to our will it represents an objective element. Obviously, these definitions are completely relative. The meanings of these words differed in spelling: peace - absence of quarrel, enmity, harmony, harmony, affection, goodwill, silence, peace, friendship; mip – universe; globe, earth, light, human race, community. We use words such as “body” and “matter” here, of course, only in the most general sense, as relative categories, without connecting with them those particular ideas that can only take place when applied to our material world, but are completely unthinkable in relation to the Divine. Quote from A. K. Tolstoy’s poem “Me, in darkness and dust...”: I, in darkness and dust, who had hitherto dragged out the shackles, were lifted by wings of love into the homeland of flames and words. And my dark gaze brightened, And the invisible world became visible to me, And the ear hears from now on, What is elusive to others. And from the heights above I came down, I was completely pierced by its rays, and I looked at the wavering valley with new eyes. And with a prophetic heart I understood that everything born from the Word, Rays of love all around, longs to return to Him again. And every stream of life, Submissive to the law of Love, Strives with the power of existence Uncontrollably towards God’s bosom. And everywhere there is sound, and everywhere there is light, And all the worlds have one beginning; And there is nothing in nature that does not breathe love. Ovid. “The Science of Love” (III, 549 – 550); Wed the same quote in “Critique of Abstract Principles” (chapter 44). Speaking about the eternity of each human individual in the indicated sense, we, in essence, are not asserting here anything completely new, much less one that contradicts recognized religious principles. Christian theologians and philosophers who discussed the origin of the world have always distinguished between the finite appearance of the world in space and time and the eternal existence of the idea of ​​the world in Divine thought, that is, the Logos, and it must be remembered that in God as an eternal reality the idea of ​​the world cannot be represented as something abstract, but must necessarily be presented as eternally real. Inaccurate quote from A. A. Fet’s poem “Exhausted by life, by the treachery of hope...”. Quote from the same poem. This in no way contradicts the undoubted truth that all acts of will are determined by motives. In fact, every motive causes a certain act of will only because it acts on this certain being; it is only an impulse that calls a certain being to independent action in accordance with the own character of this being; if it were otherwise, if the whole matter depended unconditionally on the motive, then this motive would produce its effect equally on every will, but in reality we see something different, for the same motive, for example, sensual pleasure, motivates one being to act under certain conditions, but under the same conditions does not act on another at all or causes resistance and rejection of the motive, that is, for one will it is a real positive motive, but for another it is not. Consequently, the reality of motives, that is, their ability to evoke a certain act of will in the subject, initially depends on the subject himself. The effective force does not belong to the motive itself, but to the will on which it acts and which, thus, is the direct cause and essential basis of the action. If I act well under the influence of good motives, then these good motives themselves, as such, can have an influence on me only because I am generally capable of acting well, otherwise they would be powerless over me. Thus, motives do not determine the active will itself in its quality and direction (on which, on the contrary, the reality of the motive itself depends), but only the fact of the discovery of this will at a given moment is caused, in other words, motives are only reasons for the action of the will, while the producing cause of any action is the will itself, or, more precisely, the subject himself as the willer, that is, beginning the action from himself or from himself. Every act of will is not the action of a motive, but the influence of the subject on the motive, determined by the subject’s own character. Mother of Life (Greek) - a formula from the Greek troparion for the feast of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary. Infinity; power after action, power before action (Greek). For example, in a dream we undoubtedly imagine ourselves in a certain space, and everything that happens in a dream, all the images and pictures of dreams are presented in spatial form. If space is a form of external unity of the natural world and a condition for the mechanical interaction of creatures, then time is a form of internal unification and a condition for restoring the organic connection of the existing, which in nature, not being given, is necessarily achievable, that is, as a process. The Latin word natura (having to be born) is very expressive to designate the world soul; for in fact it does not yet exist as a real subject of all-unity - in this capacity it still has to be born. To the extreme (lat.). In fact, in reality (lat.). To be more specific, the formative principles of material nature, the forces of unity existing and operating in it, which the human spirit originally had in itself and under itself as its basis (since human consciousness arose genetically from the same world process) - these forces now (due to the fall of man) appear outside of him and above him and, gradually entering consciousness (in the theogonic process), take possession of it as higher or divine forces. In the 3rd, 4th and 5th readings. This definition, arising from our concept of “spiritual man”, or the second Adam, is certainly identical with the dogmatic definitions of the Ecumenical Councils of the 5th - 7th centuries, developed against the Nestorian, Monophysite and Monothelite heresies, each of which represents a direct contradiction to one of the three essential logical conditions for the true idea of ​​Christ. To explain this with a comparison from the natural world - man, as a comparatively higher being, acting on some lower animal, cannot appear to him in the fullness of his human life: but those limited forms in which, for example, a dog perceives the appearance of its owner, belong only to the mind of the animal, without in any way limiting or changing the own existence of the person perceived by it. These words are sometimes understood as if Christ were saying to the tempter: do not tempt Me, for I am the Lord your God. But this would not make any sense, because Christ is tempted not as God, but as a man. In fact, the second objection of Christ, like the first, represents a direct response to what is proposed by the tempter: it is proposed to tempt God by bold action, and against this, as against the first proposal, Christ refers to Scripture, which prohibits tempting God. Several years ago in Paris I heard the following reasoning from a French Jesuit: “Of course, at the present time no one can believe in most Christian dogmas, for example, in the Divinity of Christ. But you will agree that a civilized human society cannot exist without firm authority and a firmly organized hierarchy, but only the Catholic Church has such authority and such a hierarchy, therefore every enlightened person who values ​​​​the interests of humanity must stand on the side of the Catholic Church, that is, he must be a Catholic.”