Часть третья. Добро чрез историю человечества

Chapter ten. Personality and society We know that goodness in its full sense, including the concept of good or satisfaction, is finally defined as a real moral order, expressing the absolutely due and absolutely desirable attitude of everyone to everything and everything to everyone. This is called the Kingdom of God, and from a moral point of view it is absolutely clear that only the realization of the Kingdom of God is the final goal of all life and activity, as the highest good, benefit and bliss. It is equally clear, with clear and vital thinking about this subject, that the actual moral order, or the Kingdom of God, is a completely general and at the same time completely personal matter, because everyone wants it for themselves and for everyone and only together with everyone can receive it. Consequently, one cannot essentially contrast the individual and society; one cannot ask which of these two is the goal and which is only the means. Such a question would presuppose the real existence of an individual personality as a solitary and closed circle, whereas in fact each individual person is only the focus of an infinite number of relationships with another and others, and to separate him from these relationships means to deprive him of any real content of life, to turn the personality into an empty possibility of existence. To imagine the personal center of one’s being as truly separated from one’s own and the general sphere of life that connects it with other centers is nothing more than a painful illusion of self-consciousness. When a line is drawn with chalk in front of a rooster's eyes, he, as is known, takes this line for some kind of fatal barrier, which becomes completely impossible for him to cross. He is obviously unable to understand that the overwhelming, fatal significance of the chalk line for him occurs only because he is exclusively occupied with this unusual and unexpected idea for him and, therefore, is not free regarding it. A delusion that is quite natural for a rooster is less natural for a rational-thinking person. However, he too often does not understand that this limitation of his subjectivity receives its insurmountability and impenetrability solely from the exclusive concentration of his attention on this limitation, that the fatal separation of his “I” from everything else lies only in the fact that he imagines it to be fatal. He, too, is a victim of self-hypnosis, although it has, of course, objective points of support, but they are as conditional and easily removable as a line drawn with chalk. This self-deception, by virtue of which an individual person considers himself real in his own separateness from everything and presupposes this imaginary isolation of his as the real basis and even the only possible starting point for all his relationships - this self-deception of abstract subjectivism produces devastation not only in the field of metaphysics (which from this point of view is even completely abolished), but also in the sphere of moral and political life. How many confusing theories, irreconcilable contradictions and fatal questions arise here because of this! And all this insolubility and fatality would disappear by itself if we, without being frightened by big names, took into account the simple fact that these theories could be created and these fatal questions could arise only from the point of view of a hypnotized rooster. The human personality, and therefore every individual person, is the possibility for the realization of unlimited reality, or a special form of infinite content. In the human mind lies the infinite possibility of more and more true knowledge of the meaning of everything, and his will contains the same infinite possibility of more and more perfect implementation of this universal meaning in a given living environment. The human personality is infinite: this is an axiom of moral philosophy. But then abstract subjectivism draws its chalk line before the eyes of the unwary thinker, and the most fruitful axiom turns into hopeless absurdity. Human personality, as an infinite possibility, is separated from all actual conditions and actual results of its implementation, presented through society, and is not only separated, but also opposed to them. There is an insoluble contradiction between the individual and society and the “fatal question”: which of the two principles should be sacrificed? On the one hand, the hypnotics of individualism, affirming the self-sufficiency of the individual personality, who determines all his relationships from himself, see in social connections and the collective order only an external boundary and arbitrary constraint, which must be abolished at all costs; and on the other hand, there are the hypnotics of collectivism, who, seeing only the social masses in the life of mankind, recognize the individual as an insignificant and transient element of society, which does not have any rights of its own and which can be ignored in the name of the so-called general interest. But what kind of society is this, consisting of powerless and impersonal creatures, of moral zeros? Will this be human society in any case? What will his dignity, the inner value of his existence, consist of and where will it come from, and by what force will it hold on? Isn’t it clear that this is a sad chimera, as impracticable as it is undesirable? And isn’t this the same chimera, the opposite ideal of a self-sufficient personality? Take away from the actual human personality everything that is in one way or another determined by its connections with social or collective wholes, and you get an animal individual with only pure possibility, or the empty form of a person, that is, something that does not really exist at all. Those who had to descend to hell or ascend to heaven, like, for example, Dante and Swedenborg, did not find a solitary individual there either, but saw only social groups and circles. Sociality is not an incidental condition of personal life, but lies in the very definition of personality, which in essence is a rational-cognitive and morally active force, and both are possible only in the way of being social. Rational knowledge from the formal side is conditioned by general concepts expressing the unity of meaning in the elusive multiplicity of phenomena; but the real and objective community (general meaning) of concepts is revealed in verbal communication, without which rational activity, delayed and deprived of implementation, naturally atrophies, and then the very ability of understanding disappears or passes into a state of pure possibility. Language - this real mind - could not be created by a solitary person, therefore, a solitary person would not be a verbal being, would not be a person. From the material side, knowledge of truth is based on experience - hereditary, collective and accumulating, while the experience of an individual being, absolutely isolated, even if it could exist, would obviously be completely insufficient for knowledge of truth. As for the moral definition of a person, although the very idea of ​​goodness or moral assessment is not only a consequence of social relations, as many people think, it is too obvious that the implementation of this idea or the actual development of human morality is possible for a person only in a social environment through interaction with it. And in this main respect, society is nothing more than the objectively realized content of the individual. Instead of an insoluble contradiction of two mutually exclusive principles, two abstract isms, we find in reality two correlative terms that logically and historically mutually presuppose and require each other. In its essential meaning, society is not the external limit of personality, but its internal replenishment, and in relation to the plurality of individual persons, society is not their arithmetic sum or mechanical aggregate, but the indivisible whole of a common life, partly already realized in the past and preserved through the ongoing social tradition, partly realized in the present through public services and, finally, anticipating its future perfect realization in the best consciousness of the social ideal. These three basic and enduring moments of personal-social life - religious, political and prophetic - correspond in the whole course of historical development to three successively prominent, main concrete stages of human consciousness and life order, namely: 1) the tribal, belonging to the past, although preserved in the modified form of the family, then 2) the national-state system that dominates the present, and, finally, 3) the worldwide communication of life as the ideal of the future. At all these levels, society, in its essential content, is the moral fulfillment or fulfillment of the individual in a given circle of life; only the volume of this circle is not the same: at the first stage it is limited for each by his own family, at the second - to his fatherland, and only at the third does the human personality, having achieved a clear consciousness of its inner infinity, strive accordingly to realize it in a perfect society with the abolition of all restrictions not only in content, but also in the volume of life interaction. Each individual person, as an individual, has the possibility of perfection, or positive infinity, namely the ability to understand everything with his mind and embrace everything with his heart, or to enter into living unity with everything. This double infinity - the power of representation and the power of aspiration and action, called in the Bible (according to the interpretation of the church fathers) the image and likeness of God, is an indispensable property of every person; this, in fact, is the unconditional meaning, dignity and value of the human person and the basis of its inalienable rights. 82 It is clear that the realization of this infinity, or the reality of this perfection, is conditioned by the togetherness of all and cannot be the personal property of each individual, taken separately, but is acquired by him through interaction with everyone - otherwise, remaining in his individuality and limitation, an individual person thereby deprives himself of the real fullness of everything, i.e., deprives himself of perfection and infinity. It would even be a physical impossibility for a person to consistently assert his separateness or separateness. Everything that exists in general life certainly influences individual persons in one way or another, is assimilated by them, and only in them and through them reaches its final reality, or completion; and if you look at the same thing from the other side - in personal life, all its actual content is obtained through the social environment and is in one way or another conditioned by its given state. In this sense, we can say that society is an augmented or expanded personality, and personality is a compressed or concentrated society. The world's task is not to create solidarity between each and everyone - it already exists by the nature of things, but in full consciousness and then the spiritual assimilation of this solidarity on the part of everyone and everyone, in its transformation from metaphysical and physical only into moral-metaphysical and moral-physical. Human life in itself, both above and below, is an involuntary participation in the progressive existence of humanity and the whole world; the dignity of this life and the meaning of the entire universe require only that this involuntary participation of everyone in everything becomes free, more and more conscious and free, that is, truly personal - that everyone more and more understands and carries out the common cause as his own. Obviously, only in this way the infinite significance of the personality is realized, or passes from possibility into reality. But this very transition - this spiritualization, or moralization of solidarity, which exists by nature - is also an inseparable part of the common cause; The fulfillment of this highest task depends in its actual success not on personal conditions alone, but is certainly determined by the general course of world history, or the current state of the social environment at a given historical moment, so that the personal improvement of each person can never be separated from the general, personal morality from the public. Real morality is the proper interaction between an individual person and his given environment (in the broad sense of the word, embracing all areas of existence, higher and lower, with which a person practically relates). The real personal dignity of everyone is undoubtedly expressed and embodied in his relations to what surrounds him. In this personal-social reality, those endless possibilities that are inherent in human nature itself are gradually realized - in each and everyone. Historical experience finds a person already filled with a certain social environment, and then all history is only the elevation and expansion of that two-sided, personal-social life. The three main degrees or formations I have indicated in this process: tribal, national-state and universal are connected, of course, by many intermediate links, and, in addition to this, the highest form does not replace or completely abolish the lower, but only, by absorbing it into its sphere, modifies it, making it a subordinate part from an independent whole. Thus, with the emergence of the state, the clan union becomes its subordinate, private element in the form of a family, in which the kinship relationship is not abolished, but rather deepens morally, changing only its sociological and legal meaning, ceasing to be the basis of independent power or its own jurisdiction. During the transition from the lower forms of collective life to the higher ones, the personality, due to its inherent infinite potential for understanding and striving for the better, is in its chosen representatives the beginning of movement and progress (the dynamic element of history), while the given social environment, as an already achieved reality, as the objectification of moral content completed in its sphere and to its degree, naturally represents the inert, protective side (the static element of history). When individual individuals, more gifted or more developed than others, begin to experience the action of their social environment not as the fulfillment and replenishment of their life, but only as an external limitation and obstacle to their positive moral aspirations, then they become bearers of a higher social consciousness, which then strives to be absorbed into new forms and orders of life corresponding to it. Every social environment is an objective manifestation or embodiment of morality (proper relations) at a certain degree of human development; but a moral personality, due to its desire for unconditional good, outgrows this limited form of moral content embodied in society and begins to relate to it negatively - not to itself, but only to this lower stage of its embodiment. Obviously, such a clash is not a fundamental contradiction between the personal principle and the social principle as such, but only between the previous and new stages of personal-social development. For the first time, the moral significance and dignity of a person are manifested in tribal life. 83 Here we find the embryonic embodiment or organization of all morality: religious, altruistic and ascetic, in other words, the race is the realization of personal human dignity in the closest and most basic circle of society. The first condition of the real dignity of a person - reverence for that which is higher than him, for the supermaterial forces that govern his life - is realized here in the veneration of ancestors or deceased ancestors; the second condition of personal dignity - recognition of such for another - is expressed in the solidary relationship between members of the clan, in their love and advice; finally, the third (and from another point of view, the first) condition of human dignity - freedom from the predominance of carnal desires - is achieved here to a certain extent through one or another obligatory restriction or regulation of sexual intercourse in various forms of marriage, as well as through other restraining rules of clan society, which required that shame about which the ancient chronicler speaks. Thus, in this primary circle of human life, the moral dignity of a person is in all respects realized by and in society. What can be expressed here and where can the fundamental contradiction and confrontation between the individual and society come from? The relationship between them is direct and positive. Social law is not something alien to the individual, imposed on him from the outside contrary to his nature; it only imparts a definite, objective and permanent form to the internal motives of personal morality. Thus, man’s own religious feeling (found in its infancy even in individual animals) encourages him to honor the secret reasons and conditions of his existence - the ancestral cult of ancestors gives only objective expression to this desire; in the same way, the feeling of pity inherent in a person inclines him to fair and humane treatment of his relatives - social law only consolidates this personal altruism in constant and definite forms and gives it a way of faithful implementation (thus, the protection of weak members of the clan from the insult of others, impossible for a single person, is organized in the whole clan and union of clans); finally, the modesty inherent in the human personality is realized in the social commandments of a certain abstinence. How to separate personal morality from public morality here, when the first is the internal beginning of the second, and the second is the objective implementation of the first? Since the rules of clan society - such as the veneration of common ancestors, mutual assistance among relatives, the limitation of sensuality by marriage - have a moral source and character, it is clear that the implementation of these social rules is not to the detriment, but to the benefit of the individual. The more an individual member of the clan actually enters into the meaning of the clan system, which requires reverence for the invisible, solidarity with neighbors and moderation of carnal passions, the more moral he obviously becomes, and the more moral he is, the higher his internal significance or personal dignity; thus, submission to society is the elevation of the individual. On the other hand, the freer this submission is, that is, the more independent an individual person follows the inner impulses of his moral nature, consistent with the requirements of public morality, the more faithful and lasting a support such a person can serve for society; This means that the independence of a person is the basis of the strength of a social union. In other words, the relationship between the real significance of the individual and the real strength of society is not inverse, but direct. So, in what way could a person’s fundamental rebellion against society and rise above it actually be expressed in tribal life? Is it that this supposed fighter for individual rights would desecrate the tombs of his ancestors, violate his father, disgrace his mother, kill his brothers and marry his own sisters? Just as it is clear, however, that such acts are below the lowest social level, it is also clear that the actual implementation of unconditional personal dignity is impossible through the simple denial of a given social system. The moral content of tribal life is eternal; the limited form of tribal life is inevitably touched by the historical process with the active participation of the individual. The initial expansion of elementary life is, of course, due to the natural course of reproduction. Already within the same genus, after the closest ones, more distant degrees of kinship appear, but moral duties extend to them as well. Then, like the progressive division of a living organic cell, a division of a social cell occurs - a genus into many genera, which, however, retain the connection between themselves and the memory of a single origin - a new social group is formed from the genus - a tribe, embracing several neighboring genera. So, for example, among the North American redskins, the Seneca tribe, whose structure and life was studied and described by the famous sociologist Morgan, consisted of eight independent clans, apparently originating from the division of one original clan, due to which they retained a certain connection with each other. Each clan was based on recognized consanguinity, and marriages within the clan were certainly prohibited as incest. This clan enjoyed autonomy, which, however, was already in certain respects subordinated to the general power of the entire tribe, namely the tribal council, which included representatives of all eight clans. In addition to this military-political institution, the unity of the tribe was expressed in a common language and in common religious celebrations. The transitional degree between clan and tribe were those groups to which Morgan transferred the classical name of phratries. Thus, the Seneca tribe was divided into two phratries with an equal number of clans in each; the first contained the following genera: Wolf, Bear, Turtle, Beaver; second: Deer, Sandpiper, Heron, Falcon; clans in each group were considered brother clans among themselves, and in relation to the clans of the other group - cousins. It is clear that the primary clan, from which the Seneca tribe emerged, was first divided into two new clans, and each of them was subsequently divided into four, and this gradualism was preserved in the common memory. There is no reason that the extension of social solidarity to an entire group of clans should stop at the borders of the tribe. The accomplished expansion of moral horizons, on the one hand, and the perceived benefits of collective action, on the other, encourage many tribes to first begin temporary, and then enter into permanent alliances among themselves. Thus, the Seneca tribe, along with many others, is part of a union of tribes bearing the common name of the Iroquois. In such tribal unions, the community of distant ancestors is an ordinary assumption, but does not constitute an indispensable condition. In many, if not most cases, several tribes, whose ancestors separated in time immemorial and which then grew and developed independently, without any connection with each other, coming together under new conditions, enter into an alliance through treaties for the sake of mutual protection and common enterprises. The contract here, in any case, has incomparably more meaning than blood relationship, which may not be assumed at all. A union of tribes, especially those that have reached a certain degree of education and occupy a certain territory, is already a transition to a state, the embryo of a nation. The Iroquois, like most of the other tribes of red men who remained in the wild forests and steppes of North America, did not go beyond such an embryo of a nation and state. But other representatives of the same race, moving south, quickly moved from a military alliance of tribes to a permanent political system. The Aztecs in Mexico and the Incas in Peru founded true nation-states of the same type as the great theocratic monarchies of the Old World. The internal, essential connection between the original social cell - the clan - and the broad political organization is clearly expressed in the word fatherland, which in almost all languages ​​denotes a national-state union. Expressing a related relationship, the term “fatherland” (patria, Faterland, etc.) indicates not that state unity is only an expanded gens - which would be contrary to the truth - but that the moral principle of this new great union should be essentially the same as the principle of a small union - the clan. In reality, states arose from wars and treaties, but this does not prevent the fact that the purpose or meaning of their formation is to establish in a wide range of national and even international relations the same solidarity or peaceful coexistence of people that has existed from time immemorial within the clan. The process of state formation and the associated changes in the external life of people are not part of our task; We are concerned only with the moral position of the individual in relation to this new social environment. While only the beginnings and attempts to form higher forms rose above the clan - in the form of tribes and tribal unions - the position of the individual did not change significantly or changed, so to speak, only quantitatively: moral consciousness received greater satisfaction and was more fully realized thanks to the expansion of the area of ​​practical interaction - that’s all. The ancestor god of a given clan found brothers in the same gods of other clans, mutual recognition of gods took place, the religions of individual clans united and received partly (periodically, during common tribal festivals) a collective meaning, but the nature of worship remained the same. In the same way, the expression of human solidarity - the defense of one’s own and the duty of retribution for the insults inflicted on them - remained inviolable during the formation of a tribe and a union of tribes. A significant change came with the emergence of the fatherland and the state. Even though the national religion originated from the developed cult of the ancestors, its origin has been forgotten by the people themselves; in the same way, dispassionate state justice is something essentially different from bloody revenge. Here we no longer see the expansion of only the previous (tribal) order, but the creation of a new one. And in connection with the emergence of this new, national-state order, a moral, fundamental clash between the constituent social forces could and did appear, which at a superficial glance could be mistaken for a clash between greed and society as such. Not only the tribe and tribal union, but also the national-state organization - the fatherland - does not abolish the primary social cell, but only changes its meaning. This change can be expressed in such a brief but completely accurate formula: state order turns the clan into a family. In fact, before the formation of the state, family life, strictly speaking, does not exist. That elementary group of people connected by more or less close consanguinity, which forms a social organization in those days, is not at all similar to a real family in a very significant respect. A distinctive feature of the family is that it represents a form of life that is private, private, as opposed to public: “public family” is a contradiction in terms. But this difference between public and private could arise only with the formation and development of statehood, which represents precisely the public (primarily) side of the community. And earlier, before the separation of the legal and political functions of public life from everyday ones, when justice and punishment, war and peace were still the own business of elementary blood-related groups, it is clear that such groups, and even the closest of them, did not have the distinctive feature of a family or home society, and received this new character only when the mentioned functions were transferred to the state as a special public or national organization. But this transformation of the former clan, i.e., a political-everyday union, into a family, i.e., into an exclusively everyday, private, or domestic union, could be understood in two ways: from the side of purification and internal elevation of the tribal connection and from the side of its external belittlement and humiliation. 84 Since a person’s duties to his clan were for a long time the only expression of his morality, inert and passive natures may find immoral the subordination of the clan to a new, higher unity - the fatherland or the state. For personal consciousness, a previously unprecedented question arises: which of the two social unions should we side with: the closer and closer side, or the wider and more distant one? But no matter how this question is resolved by one person or another, in any case it is clear that this is not a question between the individual and society, and not even a question between two types of social connections - kinship and nationality, but only a question between the stopping of human life at the level of tribal life and the progress of this life through the state order. If in a clan union, in its moral conditions and institutions, the human personality can better realize its inner dignity than in a state of bestial isolation, then historical experience shows that its further development and improvement requires those more complex living conditions that are created only in educated states. Let the immature fantasy of the aspiring poet glorify the semi-wild life of the nomadic gypsies: the indisputable assessment of this fantasy lies in the simple fact that the son of an educated society, Pushkin, could create his own “Gypsies,” while the gypsies themselves, with their imaginary advantages, could not create their own Pushkin. 85 Everything with which we feed our spiritual nature, everything that gives beauty and dignity to our life in the field of religion, science and art, all of this grew on the soil of an educated community determined by the state order - all of this was created not by clan, but by the fatherland. Therefore, those people who, under the still prevailing tribal way of life, took the side of the fatherland that was just emerging or even just foreseen by them, which they themselves founded, were bearers of a higher consciousness, the best personal and public morality, were benefactors of humanity and historical ascetics, and it was not in vain that the grateful civil communities of Greece and other countries revered such people as their heroes - eponyms. The progress of society is not an impersonal matter. The collision of an enterprising individual with his immediate social environment led to the founding of a more extensive and significant fatherland. The bearers of super-tribal consciousness, or, more precisely, a semi-conscious desire for broader morality and society, who felt cramped in their tribal life, broke ties with it, gathered a free squad around themselves, and founded cities and states. The arbitrariness of pseudo-scientific criticism hastened to turn into a myth the fugitive Dido who founded Carthage, or the outcast brothers who founded Rome. But even historical times provide enough examples to inspire us with legitimate confidence in those ancient legends. Personal achievement, breaking apart given social boundaries to create new and higher cultural and political formations, is a phenomenon too basic for it not to occur at all ages of humanity. 86 It is impossible to admit, not only on the basis of historical, but also natural-historical experience, that a given organized group would disintegrate or undergo any significant transformation (for example, become part of another, more extensive whole) except with the participation of the final units that compose it. The final unit of human society is the individual, and it has always been the active beginning of historical progress, that is, the transition from narrowly limited and meager forms of life to more extensive and meaningful social formations. This close social group (say, a clan) has rights over an individual person, since only in it and through it could he begin to realize his inner dignity. But these social rights over the individual cannot in any way be unconditional, because this group, in its isolation, represents only one of the relative stages of historical progress, while the human personality can go through all these stages, having within itself a desire for infinite perfection, which, obviously, is not exhausted and is not finally satisfied by any limited social system. In other words, the personality, due to its inherent internal infinity, can be finally and unconditionally solidary and inseparable with the social environment not in its given limitations, but only in its infinite wholeness, which gradually manifests itself as general forms, in interaction with individual individuals, expand, rise and improve. Personal achievement is fruitful only in society, but in a mobile society. A person is not only not obliged to selflessly surrender to some limited and immobile form of community life, but also does not have the right, for he could do this only to the detriment of his human dignity. But if, thus, an enterprising member of the clan is morally right in rebelling against clan conservatism and promoting the formation of a state, by virtue of which former independent social groups are transformed into elementary cells of a new vast whole, then it also follows that this new state system does not have unconditional rights over the former clan (from now on only family) ties. Representing a relatively higher, but by no means an absolute form of human society, state order has only a relative advantage over clan life. And this, being only a transitory stage of social development, contains, however, a certain unconditional moral element, which retains its force in the state, and must be sacred for it too. In fact, we clearly distinguish in tribal morality its twofold composition: 1) that which is associated with the idea of ​​the clan as a completely independent, or self-legal, form of community life, which it was in its time, but which ceased to be with the formation of the state - this means that there is a transient, abolished element of tribal morality; and 2) natural duties arising from close, blood connections and constant cohabitation, which obviously retain all their significance during the transition to state life, or - which is the same thing - when the clan transforms into a family. The hard shell of the clan organization burst and disintegrated, but the moral grain of the family remained and will remain until the end of history. Meanwhile, when the transition from one way of life to another had just taken place, representatives of the newly formed statehood, in the consciousness of its newly discovered advantage over the clan union, could easily attribute to the new order an absolute meaning that did not belong to it and put state law above natural law. In the clashes that arise from this, moral rightness no longer belongs to these representatives of a relatively higher social order, but to the defenders of that unconditional in antiquity, which must remain equally sacred in any social order. Here conservatism ceases to be blind or selfish inertia and becomes a pure consciousness of a higher duty; here the embodiment of the protective principle - a woman - the usual stronghold of low-lying routine - becomes the bearer of moral heroism. Sophocles' Antigone is the personification of that absolutely valuable thing that remained and will forever remain from the clan's life when the clan was transformed into a family with the onset of state order. She does not think at all about the political autonomy of the clan, about the right of bloody revenge, etc. - she stands only for her unconditional right to fulfill her unconditional duty of piety and brotherly love: to give an honest burial to her closest relative, who cannot receive it from anyone but her. There is no hostility in it to the state order in its moral foundations, but only consciousness - absolutely true - that outside these foundations the requirements of positive law are not unconditional, but have their limits in natural law, sanctified by religion and protecting family responsibilities, at least against the state when it appropriates what is not due. The collision of Antigone with Creon is not a collision of two moral forces - personal and social, it is a collision of a moral force, as such, with an anti-moral force. It is impossible to agree with the generally accepted view of Antigone as the bearer and champion of personal feeling against the general law, embodied in the representative of the fatherland - Creon. The real meaning of the tragedy is completely different. Religious attitude towards the dead is a moral duty, on the fulfillment of which every society is based, and personal feeling expresses only the subjective side of the matter. And in our days, the burial and veneration of deceased relatives is not carried out according to personal feelings alone, especially in ancient times. The feeling may not exist, but the obligation remains. Antigone had a heartfelt affection for both brothers, but a sacred duty bound her to the one who needed her religious help. And being an example of a moral personality, Antigone is at the same time and thereby a representative of the true public, which is held together only by the fulfillment of duties. Without at all hiding her feelings, she refers as the basis for her actions not to them, but to a sacred duty that must be fulfilled to the end (φιλη μετ: αυτου κείσομαι, φιλου μετα, – όσια πανουργήσασα), although, of course, this duty is not an abstract duty, an expression of the eternal real order: To please me underground before those here, For there I will remain forever. Well, if you want. Do not neglect what is revered by the gods. And to Creon’s question: did you dare to break the announced laws? - she refers not to her personal feeling, but to the absolute right of the eternal moral order, irrevocable by civil laws: For it was not Zeus who announced them to me, And not a friend of the underground gods, True, And there cannot be so much power in your commands, To put the mortal will higher God's unwritten and indelible statutes. For his part, Creon is in no way a representative of statehood, the moral basis of which is the same as in the race, only with the advantage of more complete implementation - he is a representative of statehood, perverted or putting itself in a false position - arrogant. But where did this perversion, which does not lie in the essence and purpose of the state, come from, if not from the evil personal passions of its representatives, in the present case Creon? This means that it would be possible, with equal right, to say, directly opposite to the popular idea, that Antigone is the bearer of the social principle, and Creon is the bearer of the personal principle. But both will be inaccurate and insufficient. It is clear that the very opposition between the individual and society, the personal and social principles in this case, as in all others, does not agree with the truth of the matter. The real opposition and clash here is not sociological, but purely moral - between good and evil, each of which manifests itself inseparably in both the personal and public spheres. Cain killed Abel not because he was a representative of the personal principle against the kinship union - for then all developed “personalities” would certainly have to kill their brothers - but because he killed because he was a representative of the evil principle, which can manifest itself both individually and collectively, both personally and publicly. And Creon, in turn, forbade citizens from performing certain religious and moral duties, not because he was the head of state, but because he was angry and obeyed the same principle that acted in Cain before any state. Of course, every law is an act of state, but Creon’s position is determined not by the fact that he issued a law, but by the fact that he issued an wicked law, and for this it was no longer the state that was to blame, but Creon’s own moral worthlessness; for hardly anyone would dare to assert that the indispensable function of the state is to issue no other laws, but only wicked and inhumane laws. So, Creon is the bearer not of the state, but of an evil principle, rooted in personal will, but manifested and embodied in public life, in this case in the form of a bad state law. And in turn, Antigone, sacrificing her life to fulfill the religious and moral duty that underlies community life, is only a representative of good, also rooted in personal will, but realized in true society. Every clash in the life of mankind ultimately comes down not to relative sociological oppositions, but to the unconditional opposition of good and self-affirming evil. But if, therefore, the deepest essence of the question is always the same, it does not follow that the various historical situations in which it is revealed again and again are devoid - even from an ethical point of view - of their own interest and significance. The inner being of good and evil is cognized with complete clarity only in their typical manifestations. Evil, manifested in the perversion of the state idea, or in the exaltation of state law over moral law, is a completely specific evil, or a special, higher degree of evil than, for example, simple murder or even fratricide, but precisely because of its greater subtlety and complexity it is subjectively more excusable or less imputed to guilt than these gross atrocities. Therefore, Creon, for example, should be recognized, although socially more harmful, but personally less guilty than Cain. There is another important shade of the situation in this profound drama. State order in general is the highest level of historical development compared to the tribal system. This highest stage has just been reached in Hellas. The representatives of the new order still have fresh memories of its emergence, struggle and triumph. This recent victory of the new over the old, the higher over the lower, is not something accidental - in view of the obvious advantages of a unifying statehood over tribal discord, its triumph is recognized as a progressive, necessary and proper phenomenon. Hence Creon's self-confidence at the beginning of the drama. The evil law he issued, which places devotion to the new fatherland above the original religious duties, is not only an abuse of state power, but also an abuse of victory - not the local victory of the Thebans over the Argives, but the general victory of the state order - the fatherland and the city - over the clan. Therefore, Creon cannot be looked at - and the ancients did not look at it - as a tyrant only in the sense of a representative of personal arbitrariness and actual force. 87 The law he issued was intended to express the general will of the citizens. A short preface by Aristophanes the grammarian, usually placed before the drama, begins like this: Antigone, who buried Polyneices contrary to the orders of the city (or state) - παρα τήν πρόσταζιν της πόλεως. And in Sophocles himself, Ismene justifies her refusal to help Antigone, saying that she cannot force the will of her fellow citizens. And Creon speaks not in the name of autocracy, but in the name of the unconditional meaning of patriotism: And everyone who is higher than the fatherland He’ll give it to a friend, and the mail will be paid for nothing. The ethical and psychological basis of a bad law lies, of course, in Creon’s bad will, but this will is not just senseless personal arbitrariness, but is connected with a general idea, a false one, but still an idea, by virtue of which state power and its laws are above the moral law. Creon formulates this false idea with complete clarity: Whoever the city puts in place must be obeyed. And in the smallest things, in the truth and against it. This idea, despite its blatant lie, has inspired and continues to inspire people without the excuse that Creon had, who was carried away by recent progress - the victory of the state system over clan and tribal anarchy. On the other hand, if in those semi-historical times such clear protests of a better consciousness, such as Sophocles puts into the mouth of his Antigone, perhaps did not rise against this false idea, then in the era of Sophocles himself the best minds already sufficiently understood that historical progress, creating new forms of society, cannot in any way have an advantage over the fundamental foundations of any society, that it is a phenomenon, although necessary and important, but still relative, subordinate to a higher goal, and that it loses any justification when it turns against that unconditional moral good, for the sake of which the entire movement of history takes place. And no matter how highly we value the triumphers of progress, the highest dignity of a person, which evokes complete approval and sympathy for him, is not to conquer in time, but to preserve eternal limits, equally sacred for the past and for the future. Chapter Eleven. Historical development of personal and social consciousness in its main eras With the establishment of a national-state system, the moral horizon of an individual, the scope of application of his good feelings and the correct exercise of his active will in moral actions, undoubtedly expand significantly. Ideas about deity are generalized and elevated, and some religious development occurs. Altruism, or moral solidarity with other human beings, not only increases quantitatively, or in its volume, but also rises qualitatively, losing the predominant character of natural instinct, turning to invisible, ideal objects: the fatherland, the state. Although these ideas are tangibly realized in the unity of language, everyday forms, in given representatives of power, etc., everyone understands that the essence of the matter is not exhausted by these real signs, that the fatherland is not abolished with the change of certain customs, that the state does not disappear with the disappearance of its given representatives. So, the spiritual nature and ideal significance of such objects as the fatherland, the state, is preserved in any case, and the moral attitude towards them on the part of the individual, expressed in true patriotism or civic valor, represents in this sense (other conditions being equal) a higher degree of morality than simple feelings of kinship or blood ties. But, on the other hand, it is usually pointed out that with the expansion of the scope of moral relations or the social environment, the personal, internal lining of morality accordingly loses its living force and effectiveness, that the tension (intensity) of moral impulses is inversely proportional to their objective volume, that one cannot love the fatherland as sincerely and directly as one’s family or friends, and that a lively interest in one’s private good can never be compared with an abstract interest in the good of the state, not to mention the general good of humanity, interest in which is even directly denied as fiction. Leaving aside the question of humanity for now, it should be recognized that the above remark regarding the inverse relationship between tension and the volume of moral feelings has a factual basis, requiring, however, for a correct assessment the following three reservations: 1) Regardless of how individual individuals, taken individually, relate to a more or less broad social whole, there is a collective morality that embraces these individuals in their totality - as a crowd, as a people. If there is a criminal crowd, which criminologists have now begun to study, if a senseless crowd, a herd of men, makes itself felt even more, then there is also a valiant crowd, a heroic crowd, and just as a crowd, excited by brutal or bestial instincts, lowers the spiritual level of the units it captures, so the mass of the people, animated by collective moral impulses, raises to them those units in which these impulses themselves are weak and weak. insincere. The desire of the best people (in the era of tribal life) for a broader collective morality determined the creation of the state, or fatherland, but, having already been created, this new - real and powerful with all its ideal nature - social whole has a direct impact not only on the best, but also on the average and even worse people who are part of it. 2) In addition to collective morality - if the majority of people, taken individually, remain bad patriots and weak citizens, then this quantitative circumstance is qualitatively balanced by those, albeit few, high examples of true patriotism and civic valor that could not appear in primitive conditions of life and became possible only with the emergence of the fatherland, state, and nation. 3) Finally, whether the moral profit achieved by the expansion of the social environment in the national-state system is great or small, it is in any case a profit, for the former property of tribal morality is not abolished by this expansion, but only modified and purified in the form of family ties and virtues, which are not replaced, but only supplemented by patriotism. Thus, and from an individual point of view, even if our love for millions of our fellow citizens cannot have the same strength as our love for dozens of close people, then nevertheless this broad, albeit comparatively weak, love, which does not destroy that other, stronger one, is a direct acquisition, and, therefore, no matter from which side we look, the spread of the life sphere of people from the limits of the clan to the limits of the state or fatherland represents an undoubted moral progress, which, in addition to the relationship of man to his gods and to his neighbors can, as we will now see, be indicated in the area of ​​his relations to the lower, material nature. The moral principle, which requires a person to submit to the highest and solidarity with his neighbors, requires from him dominion over material nature, as the matter of reason. This domination has as its immediate object the own flesh of each individual person - hence ascetic morality in the strict sense of the word. But the material life of an individual person is only a particle of the general material life surrounding him, and there is neither a logical basis nor a practical possibility to separate this particle from the whole. While external nature completely suppresses a person, helplessly lost in virgin forests among wild animals, forced to think only about the preservation and maintenance of his existence, the thought of the dominion of the spirit over the flesh can hardly even arise, let alone experience the implementation of such a task. It is not typical for a person who is starving out of necessity to practice fasting for ascetic purposes. Subjected from birth to all sorts of deprivations, living under the constant threat of violent death, a person in a wild state is an involuntary and unconscious ascetic, and the feats of his patience have as little moral force as the suffering of a small fish pursued by pikes or sharks. The emergence of internal moral strength of spirit over the flesh presupposes a certain degree of security for a person from the destructive actions of external nature, and this security is impossible for a single person to achieve - it requires a social union. Although ascetic morality in some of its forms strives for renunciation from social ties, this very desire could, obviously, arise only on the basis of an already existing society. Both in Brahminical India and in Christian Egypt, ascetic hermits were products of a cultural social environment, which they spiritually outgrew, but without which they themselves would have been historically and materially impossible. Before the lonely ascetics who voluntarily left society for the desert, wild animals humbled themselves, having no reason to humble themselves before the forced loneliness of wandering savages, who, inferior to these animals in external strength, were still too close to them in their internal state. For both victories - both over the evil animals around and over the evil passions in oneself - a certain amount of education was necessary, which was possible only through the development of social life. Consequently, ascetic morality is not the work of an individual person, taken in the abstract, but can be manifested by a person only as a personal-social being. The internal foundations of goodness in a person do not in themselves depend on the forms of community life, but the real implementation of these good principles presupposes such forms. At the primary stage of society - in tribal life - ascetic morality has only a restrictive character: in addition to the previously mentioned restrictions on sexual sensuality through marriage, there are prohibitions on one or another food (for example, animal totems associated with a given clan as patron spirits or the embodiment of ancestors), as well as the limitation of meat food to sacrificial feasts alone (for example, especially among the Semitic peoples, the meat of domestic animals was initially only an object of religious use, see Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites). But in the conditions of tribal life, by its very essence, his asceticism cannot go beyond such elementary restrictions. As long as personal dignity is realized only in the clan connection, or in any case only under its condition, there can be no talk of the ideal of complete abstinence or of the morally obligatory struggle with such passions, which alone maintain clan life. A virtuous relative must be distinguished by vindictiveness, rapacity and has no right to dream of perfect chastity. The ideal representative of clan morality is the biblical Jacob, who has two wives and several concubines, gave birth to twelve sons and increased the clan's wealth without any consideration of means. The formation of state life had a huge, albeit indirect, influence on ascetic morality (in the broad sense of the word), that is, on that side of the moral principle that is turned to the material nature of man and the world and has in mind the complete triumph of the rational spirit over blind, elemental forces. The power of man over nature, completely impossible for a solitary savage or man-beast, achieved only in rudimentary and unsecured forms under the barbaric system of tribal life, becomes significant, lasting and, most importantly, continuously growing under the conditions of cultural existence in broadly and firmly organized political unions. The condition for spiritual development for an individual, a school of active asceticism for the masses and the beginning of the conquest of the earth for humanity was that military-theocratic despotism, which united people into large groups for cultural work in four different places on the globe - between the Yellow and Blue rivers, between the Indus and the Ganges, between the Tigris and Euphrates and, finally, in the Nile Valley. These military-theocratic despotisms, of which the military settlements of Arakcheev reminded us in miniature, were, of course, very far from normal human society. But their great historical significance as a necessary moral school for primitive humanity is recognized even by theorists of unconditional anarchism. 88 In general, in order to rise above the compulsory form of social morality, wild humanity must go through it - in order to outgrow despotism, it must survive it. And in particular, three considerations are undoubted here: 1) The more difficult the initial struggle with primitive nature was, the more necessary it was for people to unite into vast, but at the same time closely connected communities, and combining the vast volume of a social group with a close and strong connection of its members is possible only with the strictest discipline, supported by the most powerful sanction, namely religious; consequently, these political alliances, which first conquered the wilderness and laid the cornerstone of human culture, must have had the character of a religious-military despotism or a compulsory theocracy. And this cultural work, forced by moral and material pressure - these “Egyptian works” were not only by their very structure a school of human solidarity for the masses, but can be called from the point of view of their objective goal and result the first feat of collective asceticism in humanity, the first historical triumph of reason over the blind forces of matter. 2) The coercive nature of this collective feat, while not allowing one to attribute ideal dignity to it, does not, however, completely deprive it of moral significance, for the coercion here is not only material, but is ultimately based on the own faith of the masses in the divinity of the power that forces them to work; no matter how imperfect this faith may be in its subject and in its form, in any case, subordinating your life to it, enduring all kinds of hardships and labors at its request is already a moral matter, which not only in its general historical result, but also in its psychological action within each of the individuals who make up the mass of the people, has the character of real, although imperfect, asceticism, that is, the victory of the spiritual principle over the carnal. If countless Chinese sincerely recognize the Bogdykhan as the Son of Heaven, if the Hindus seriously believed that the priests came from the head of Brahma, and the kings and princes - from his hands, if the Assyrian king was really in the eyes of his people the embodiment of the national god Ashur and the pharaoh for the Egyptians was truly a manifestation of the supreme solar deity, then unconditional submission to such rulers was a religious and moral obligation for these peoples, and forced labor at their will is an ascetic exercise. This, however, did not have power for slaves in the narrow sense - foreign prisoners of war, for whom the gods of their new masters were alien gods. But even besides this national limitation, the general structure of these primitive religious-political unions represented a fundamental imperfection in the sense that the gods themselves, who accepted both voluntary and involuntary human sacrifices (both figuratively and literally), were deprived of unconditional internal dignity, representing only the infinity of power, and not the infinity of truth. Man retains a moral advantage over such gods, the advantage of achievement, and, therefore, sacrificing himself to these gods and their earthly representatives, he does not find here that higher thing for which it is worth giving up the lower. If the meaning of sacrifice is in cultural progress, then this meaning is only relative, because progress itself is, obviously, only a means, a path, a direction, and not an unconditional and final goal. Meanwhile, in the human personality there is precisely something unconditional, which can never be only a means - its inherent internal possibility of infinite perfection through the perception and assimilation of the absolute fullness of being. Such a society, where the individual is not recognized in this significance, where he is assigned only the relative value of an instrument for political and cultural purposes, even the most sublime, cannot be the ideal of human society, but represents only a passing stage of historical development. Such are especially those military-theocratic despotisms from which world history originates. But 3) these primitive forms of religious-political union not only by their imperfection required further progress, but by their nature created the external conditions necessary for this progress. While - within the confines of tribal life - each member of a given social group had to, both out of need and out of a sense of obligation, engage in theft, robbery and murder, fighting wild animals, raising livestock and producing numerous offspring, obviously there was no place for the higher, spiritual development of the human personality. It became naturally possible when, with the forced division of labor in the great religious-political organizations, a class of people free from such work, wealthy and idle, was formed over the masses of the people doomed to menial work, and here, along with the warriors, professional priests, scribes, fortune-tellers, etc. also appeared, among whom the highest consciousness truly began to awaken. This great historical moment is immortalized by the Bible in a thoughtful and majestic tale about how the best representative of tribal life, Abraham, with a crowd of armed household members, bows before the rootless priest of the Most High God, Melchizedek, who comes to him with the gifts of a new sedentary culture - bread and wine and with the spiritual blessing of Truth and Peace. 89 While the hard collective work of the masses, the scope of which was gradually expanded by the weapons of the great conquerors, ensured the external, material successes of human culture, the internal work of thought among idle and peaceful representatives of the national theocratic system moved human consciousness towards a more perfect ideal of personal and social universalism. The first world-historical awakening of human self-awareness occurred where his sleep was richest in fantastic and wild visions - in India. The overwhelming diversity of Indian mythology corresponded to the same diversity and congestion of religious-political and religious-everyday forms and living conditions. Nowhere has the theocratic system been so complex and burdensome and associated with such national and class exclusivity. It was not from China and Egypt, not from the Chaldeans and Phoenicians, and not from the Greco-Roman world, but from India that we took concepts that express the extreme degree of differentiation between classes of people 90 and the extreme degree of denial of human dignity. If the “pariahs” were deprived of human dignity, as being outside the law, then people of the sub-legal castes and the highest of them were deprived of all freedom due to the most complex system of regulations and rituals, religious and everyday. But the stronger and more artificial the fetters created by the spirit from itself and for itself, the more they testify to its inner strength and the fact that nothing external can completely bind and suppress it. Among the nightmare of ritual sacrifices, obligatory deeds and painful feats, he awakens and says to himself: all this is only my own imagination, which in a dream I took for reality; I just have to stay awake and all these fears and suffering will disappear. - But what will remain? To this we find a very subtle and not immediately clear, but in any case significant answer in the religion of awakening. Here the very moment of the return of the human personality from external objects to itself is immortalized - the act of recognizing by it its purely negative, or formal, infinity, without any specific content. The personality here is aware of its limitlessness, its freedom and universality only because it surpasses any given definition, any given connection and peculiarity, feels in itself something that is greater and higher than this caste, this nationality, this cult, this life path, above all this. Whatever objective definition a self-conscious personality sets before itself, it does not stop at it, it knows that it was set by itself, it knows that this creation of its own is not worth it, and therefore leaves it: everything is empty. But if in the objective world everything is rejected, nothing is recognized as worthy of existence, then this spiritual power of negation still remains in man, and it is very remarkable that Buddhism recognizes this power not in the form of a solitary individual, but in the form of a personal-social one, in the form of the so-called triratna, i.e. “three jewels” or “three treasures”, the faith in which every Buddhist must profess: “I recognize the Buddha, I recognize the teaching or law (Darma), I recognize the community of disciples (Samga)." Thus, even in the consciousness of its negative infinity, the human personality cannot maintain its separateness and isolation, but through general teaching it irresistibly moves into a social organization. Everything is deception, except for three things worthy of recognition: 1) a spiritually awakened person, 2) the word of awakening and 3) the brotherhood of the awakened - this is the true essence of Buddhism, which still nourishes millions of souls in far Asia. 91 This is the first surviving stage of human universalism, rising above the exclusive national-political system of religion and society. Born in the country of castes, Buddhism did not at all deny the caste organization of society, and did not at all strive to destroy it; his followers simply stopped believing in the principle of this system, in the unconditional hereditary inequality of social classes; Having arisen among a sharply isolated nationality, it did not deny this nationality, but only transferred the consciousness of people into the realm of other, universal and supra-national concepts, as a result of which the Indian religion, which was ultimately rejected in India, theoretically prepared by Indian philosophy, could take root among many different peoples of a different race and a different historical upbringing. The consciousness of the negative infinity of the human spirit appeared to individual philosophical minds before Buddhism, 92 but in it for the first time it received the force of historical embodiment in collective life. Thanks to his moral and practical universalism, which came not only from the mind, but even more from the heart, Shakyamuni the Buddha created in humanity an unprecedented form of community life - a brotherhood of mendicant monks from every caste and every nationality - “listeners” (sravakas) of the true teaching, followers of the perfect path. Here, for the first time, the dignity of the individual and the relationship between him and society were finally determined not by the fact of hereditary belonging to such and such a clan or to such and such a national political organization, but by the internal act of choosing a certain spiritual ideal. The theoretical thoughts of the first true Buddha and the living conditions of his monastic brotherhood underwent many historical transformations, but the moral essence of what he expressed and created remained to this day clearly and firmly crystallized in the Lamai monasteries of Tibet and Mongolia. This moral essence of Buddhism, as a personal-social formation, sufficiently defined over two thousand years of its historical life, consists in a feeling of religious reverence for the first Awakened Awakener - the spiritual ancestor of all further awakened ones - for the all-blessed teacher, then in the demand for holiness or complete lack of will (internal asceticism in contrast to the external mortification of the flesh in which they practiced and still practiced by the “gymnosophists” and which did not satisfy Buddha-Shakyamuni) and, finally, in the commandment of universal benevolence or benevolent compassion for all beings without distinction. From this last, most accessible and attractive side of Buddhism, however, its insufficiency is also revealed. What, in essence, is the difference between a spiritually awakened person and an unawakened person from the point of view of Buddhism? The latter, under the suggestion of sensory deceptions, accepts apparent and transitory differences as real and final and, as a result, wants and fears different things, strives for one thing and turns away from another, loves some and hates others. He who awakens from these sleepy disturbances understands that their objects are empty, and therefore calms down; finding nothing on which to concentrate his will, he is freed from all desire, preference and fear, and thereby loses all cause for discord, anger, enmity and hatred, and free from these passions, he experiences the same feeling of benevolence or mercy towards everything without distinction. But where does this feeling come from? Having become convinced that everything is empty, that all objective conditions of existence are illusory and insignificant, the awakened sage should have plunged into a state of unconditional dispassion, equally free from both malice and mercy: both of these opposite qualities equally presuppose, firstly, confidence in the actual existence of living beings, and secondly, the distinction of one from the other (for example, a suffering ignoramus calling for my mercy, from the all-blessed Buddha, who does not need it), and thirdly, and finally, mercy, no less than anger, encourages certain actions depending on the objective qualities and conditions of a given existence, and all this is completely incompatible with the basic principle of universal emptiness and indifference. Buddhist moral teaching requires active self-sacrifice - this requirement is connected with the very concept of Buddha: a perfect Buddha (like Gotama Shakyamuni) differs from an imperfect or solitary Buddha (Pratyeka Buddha) in that he is not limited to his own consciousness of the painful emptiness of existence, but decides to free all living beings from this torment. This general decision is preceded in his previous existences by individual acts of extreme self-sacrifice, with which Buddhist legends are full (for example, in one of his pre-existences he gave himself up to be torn to pieces by a tiger in order to save a poor woman with children). Such feats (in contrast to the aimless self-mortification of the pre-Buddhist ascetics of India) directly achieve the highest bliss for every “awakened one.” Thus, a typical story is known about one of the apostles of Buddhism - Arya Deva. Approaching one city, he saw a wounded dog that was being eaten by worms. To save the dog without destroying the worms, Arya Deva placed them on a cut piece from his own body. At that moment both the city and the dog disappeared before his eyes, and he immediately plunged into nirvana. Such active self-sacrifice out of mercy for all living beings, which constitutes a striking distinctive feature of Buddhist moral teaching, cannot, however, be logically consistent with the main principle of the Buddhist worldview - with the doctrine of indifference and the emptiness of everything. Of course, by pitying everyone equally from Brahma and Indra to the worm, I do not violate the principle of indifference; but as soon as the feeling of universal compassion turns into a feat of salvation, one must say goodbye to indifference. If, instead of a dog with worms, Arya Deva had met a person suffering from delusions and vices, then mercy towards this “living being” would have required from him not a piece of meat, but the words of true teaching, while turning to reasonable admonitions to a hungry worm would have been no less absurd than feeding his meat to a well-fed but deluded person. So, equal mercy towards everyone requires not the same, but a completely different active attitude towards one or another of them. This difference turns out to be not illusory for a Buddhist either, since he, of course, will agree that if Arya Deva had not distinguished between a worm and a dog from a person and would have offered suffering animals to read soul-saving books, then he would hardly have been able to accomplish any feat and deserve Nirvana. So, together with all-encompassing mercy, it becomes necessary to discern truth and give each its due: a piece of meat to an animal and a word of spiritual awakening to a rational being. But we can’t stop there either. Mercy for everyone makes me wish each and everyone the highest and final good, which does not consist in satiety, but in complete deliverance from the torment of a limited existence and the need for rebirth. But this deliverance - the only true good - the worm, remaining a worm, cannot achieve; it is accessible only to a self-conscious and rational being. Therefore, if I must extend my mercy to lower creatures, then I cannot limit myself to simply alleviating their present suffering, but must help them achieve their final goal through rebirth into higher forms. Meanwhile, the objective conditions of existence are denied by Buddhism as emptiness and a ghost, and, therefore, the elevation of living beings on the ladder of rebirth depends solely on their own actions (the law of karma): the form of a worm is the inevitable fruit of previous sins, and no outside help can raise this worm to the highest degree of a dog or an elephant. The Buddha himself could act directly only on rationally conscious beings, and then only in the sense that his preaching gave such a being the opportunity to accept or reject the truth and, in the first case, get rid of the pain of rebirth, and in the second, continue to be subject to it. The entire saving effect of the “awakened” is limited to the fact that they push their sleeping neighbors, some of whom awaken from this, while others only exchange one difficult dream for another, even more painful. Thus, the principle of active charity towards all living beings, with all its inner truth, cannot have real application from the point of view of Buddhism. We are completely unable to deliver true salvation to lower creatures, and our effect on intelligent beings in this sense is extremely limited. Despite any commandments and legends, the very formula of faith (see above) indicates that the actual sphere of moral attitude and real connection is determined for a Buddhist only by the brotherhood of “awakened” like him, supporting each other in a peaceful, contemplative life - the last remnant of previous deeds before the final transition to nirvana. The world-historical significance of Buddhism lies in the fact that here for the first time the human personality began to be valued not as a member of a clan, caste, national-political union, but as a bearer of higher consciousness, as a being capable of awakening from the deceptions of everyday sleep, freeing itself from the chains of causality. Such a being can be a person of any caste and nationality, and in this sense, the Buddhist religion marks in history - after tribal and national-state particularism - the opening of a new stage - pan-human, or universal. It is clear, however, that Buddhist universalism has only an abstract and negative character. The principle of indifference is proclaimed, the former significance of caste and ethnological barriers is denied, people of all colors and conditions are recruited into the new religious community - and then everything remains the same: the task of gathering together all parts of humanity and forming from them a new kingdom of a higher order is not yet recognized or set at all; the universalism of the monastic order—Buddhism goes no further than this. During the transition from clan life to state life, the former independent social wholes - clans - enter as subordinate parts into a new whole of a higher order - into an organized political union. Likewise, the third and highest stage of human development - the universal or universal - would require states and peoples to enter as constituent parts into a new comprehensive organization. Otherwise: no matter what broad principles are proclaimed, in real life the positive meaning will remain entirely with the existing national-political groups, and “all people” - and even more so “all living beings” - will be only an abstract concept, only symbolically embodied in the image of a monastery detached from life. Remaining completely alien to the task of actually gathering living beings, or even just scattered parts of humanity, into a new universal kingdom, Buddhism shows that it is only the first, initial degree of all-human life-understanding. personality manifests its infinite significance here, since the unconditional self has a negative attitude towards any limitation, since it says: “I am not bound by anything, I have experienced everything and know that everything is empty, I am above everything.” The negation of being through the knowledge of it is what, according to Buddhism, consists of the absoluteness of the human spirit, giving it an advantage not only over all earthly creatures, but also over all gods, who are gods only by nature, while the awakened sage becomes a god himself, by his own act of consciousness and will: he is a self-god, a self-made god. According to this, all creation is the material for those feats of will and knowledge through which a person must come to self-deification. Individual individuals who have embarked on the path leading to this goal constitute that normal society or brotherhood (monastic order) that is included in the Buddhist confession of faith (I believe... in samga). But this society, obviously, has only a temporary significance until its members have reached a perfect state: in Nirvana, the public, like all other definitions, must finally disappear. Since the unconditional character of the individual is understood only negatively, as freedom from everything, it does not require any replenishment, and all relationships with others represent only a ladder that is discarded when the peak of absolute indifference is reached. But due to the negative nature of the Buddhist ideal, not only the public, but also morality itself has only a conditional and transitory significance here. The religious and moral feeling of reverence (pietas) does not have a real and eternal subject in Buddhism. Having known everything and freed himself from everything, the sage no longer finds anything that he could bow to. When Shakyamuni Buddha reached the highest understanding, not only Indra with the entire host of Vedic deities, but also the supreme god of the powerful priests Brahma himself came as a humble listener to listen to the new teaching and, having become enlightened, gave divine honors to the teacher. Meanwhile, Buddha is a person who, by his own power, has become a god, or has reached the absolute state, and this is the highest goal for every being. Therefore, although Buddhists reverence even to the point of idolatry before the memory and relics of their teacher, this is only possible if the worshipers are in an imperfect state. A perfect Buddhist, who has achieved nirvana, is no longer different from the Buddha himself and loses any object for religious feeling. Consequently, in principle, ideally, the possibility of a religious relationship is abolished here, and in its deepest essence, Buddhism is not only a religion of negation, but also of self-denial. In the same way, the altruistic part of morality disappears at the highest stages of the true path, for here the emptiness of all differences is recognized, among other things, those due to which certain objects, phenomena and conditions evoke in us a feeling of pity. “Be merciful to all beings,” says the elementary teaching of the sutras; “There are no beings, and every feeling is the fruit of ignorance,” proclaims the highest metaphysics of Abidarma. 93 Finally, there is no positive justification for ascetic morality in Buddhism, despite its monasteries. These monasteries are only refuges for contemplatives who have renounced the vanity of the world and are awaiting their transition to nirvana. But the struggle with the flesh to strengthen the spirit and spiritualize the body - this positive moral asceticism is not at all included in the circle of Buddhist concepts. The spirit here is only knowledge, and the body is a ghost, known as such. Physical death, the sight of which so greatly struck Prince Siddartha, only proves that life is a deception from which one must free oneself, but no Buddhist would ever think of the idea of ​​resurrection. In the absence of a higher goal of asceticism and the means leading to it cannot make sense. From the point of view of absolute indifference, ascetic rules, like any other, lose all their own meaning, and if they are preserved in the practice of external Buddhism, then only as pedagogical techniques for spiritual infants or simply as a historical legacy from Brahmanism. But a perfect Buddhist, of course, will not abstain from large meals or make a distinction between meat and plant foods. It is very remarkable that, according to legend, the authenticity of which there is no reason to suspect, the founder of this religion, which allegedly requires strict vegetarianism, died because he carelessly ate pork meat. Like any negative teaching, Buddhism is connected with what it denies - with this material world, with this sensual and mortal life. “All this is empty,” he repeats tirelessly and does not move from his place, for this empty is everything for him; he knows positively only what he denies, and about what he claims to recognize as not empty, he has no positive concept or expression, but only one negative indication: nirvana - inaction, immobility, silence, non-existence. Buddhism cognizes only the lower, only the empty, and the highest and perfect is not cognized by it, but is only required: nirvana is only a postulate, and not the idea of ​​absolute good - the idea was given to us not by the Hindus, but by the Greeks. Human reason, which found its universal and unconditional nature in the negation of everything partial and finite, could not stop at this first step; from the consciousness of the emptiness of material existence, he had to move on to that which is not empty, to that in the name of which he rejected deceptive reality. If in Indian Buddhism the personality finds its unconditional meaning only in the denial of the existence of the unworthy, then in the Hellenic worldview, which was practically embodied in Socrates and elevated to theory by the most important of his students, this unconditionality is justified by the affirmation of the existence of the worthy - the world of ideas and ideal relationships. This idealism, no worse than Buddhism, understands that everything that is transitory is empty, that current material reality is only a ghost of being, essentially non-existence (τò μη όν). And the everyday pessimism of Buddhists is completely shared by the Hellenic consciousness: Reckless and pathetic, I think, are those Who wants to extend life beyond measure, For a long life is only a long sorrow, Every day increases suffering. But you still won’t find peace in anything, If you want too much. 94 Although the characteristic Hellenic concept of measure appears here first, the thought does not stop there. Not only excessive, but all life is only sorrow: The greatest, first good - absolutely Not to be born, the second is to be born, Die quickly, but barely arrive Foolish, easy youth, - It’s already over - there will be no end to the torment; Envy, anger, riots and murder! And the last limit to everything - From curses, torment of torment! 95 For the Greek higher consciousness it was as clear as for the Indian that the worldly will, blindly striving for its material satisfaction, cannot find it under any external conditions and that, therefore, the true good from this point of view is not any use of life, but its final abolition: The bot will come, look, without marriage, This pessimistic view, expressed in poetry, was confirmed by Greek philosophy in sayings that became the truisms of every idealistic and spiritualistic moral teaching: sensory life is the prison of the spirit, the body is the coffin of the soul, true philosophy is continuous dying, etc. But, having absorbed this Buddhist foundation, the Greek genius did not stop there. The supersensible side of existence revealed its mental content to him, and instead of nirvana, the Cosmos of eternal intelligible entities appeared - ideas (among the Platonists) or the organism of universal reason (among the Stoics). The human personality here asserts its unconditional significance not through the denial only of what is false, but through mental participation in what is true; the personal bearer of this highest universal consciousness is not a sage-monk who has renounced the emptiness of the real being on the principle of indifference, but a sage-thinker who assimilates the fullness of the ideal being in the inner unity of its diversity. Both of them do not want to live by feelings, but the second lives by the mind in the world of pure ideas, that is, that which is worthy of being, and therefore truly and eternally exists. This view is dualistic: everything that exists, except for its false material side, to which Greek philosophers have the same negative attitude as the Indian “gymnosophists”, also represents the true, positive side - that which is a deceptive phenomenon for the senses and for sensuality, contains for the mind the “imprint of an idea”, according to Plato, or the “seed of reason”, according to the Stoic teaching (λόγοι σπερματικοί – “seed concepts”). Hence in human life there is an opposition between that which is in accordance with the idea and in accordance with reason, and that which contradicts the ideal norm. A true sage is no longer just a hermit or a wandering monk, renounced from life and meekly preaching such renunciation to others, but a bold denouncer of everyday untruth and unreason. That is why their endings are different: Shakyamuni Buddha dies peacefully after a fraternal meal, while Socrates, condemned and imprisoned by his fellow citizens, is condemned by them to drink poison. But, despite this tragic outcome, the clash of Hellenic idealism with unworthy reality is not a decisive struggle. The highest representative of humanity at this stage - the philosopher - is aware of his unconditional significance, since he lives with pure thought in the truly existing, intelligible world of ideas, or comprehensive rationality, despising the untrue, only apparent existence of the material-sensory environment. This contempt, when it is sincere and bold, arouses against him the anger of the crowd, completely immersed in this lower environment, and he can - as happened with Socrates - pay with his life for his idealism. But still, his attitude towards unworthy reality is only contempt. Of course, this contempt is of a different nature than in Buddhism. Buddha despises the world because everything is empty, but the very uncertainty of such an assessment takes away any sting from it: if everything is equally worthless, then no one in particular is offended by this, and if only nirvana is opposed to bad reality, then bad reality can sleep peacefully. For nirvana is only an absolute state, and not the norm for relative states. The idealist has such a norm, and he despises and condemns the life around him not for its inevitable participation in universal emptiness, but for its abnormality, irrationality, and inconsistency with the idea. Such condemnation no longer remains indifferent, it contains a demand and a challenge, it is offensive to everyone bound by everyday unreason, hence the usual enmity, and sometimes persecution and a cup of poison. And yet there is something random about this encounter. Socrates condemned the Athenian order all his life, but only in his old age, in his seventieth year, was he persecuted, apparently only as a result of a change in political circumstances. The unreasonableness of the Athenian state system was only a local feature; Spartan orders were better; Socrates's main student, Plato, subsequently went to Sicily to, with the help of Dionysius of Syracuse, found there an ideal state in which philosophers, instead of a cup of poison, would receive the reins of government. He did not succeed, but he could, having returned to Athens, teach unhindered at his academy and live serenely to a ripe old age. Both the students of Socrates and the preachers of idealism in general were never subjected to systematic persecution: they were not loved, but tolerated. The fact is that idealism, in its essence, directly gravitates towards the intelligible world, and the opposition that appears here between the normal and the abnormal, the proper and the improper, for all its comparative definiteness, remains predominantly mental, theoretical and, affecting the condemned reality, does not go deep into its very core. We know, in fact, how superficial are the practical ideals of the greatest of the idealists, Plato: they are much closer to bad reality than to truly existing things. The kingdom of ideas is an all-encompassing, unconditionally universal unity, there are no partitions in it, no discord and hostility, and the pseudo-ideal state of Plato, with all the courage of individual thoughts and with all the grace of the general structure, is essentially associated with such limited features from which humanity soon freed itself not only in ideal, but also in reality: this kingdom of philosophers is only a narrow, local national Greek community, based on slavery, constant war and sexual relations that resemble a breeding stable. It is clear that the political task is not internally connected with the main interest of the philosopher and that he essentially does not care how people will arrange themselves on earth, on which truth does not live and will not live. He himself finds real satisfaction in the contemplation of the eternal conceivable truth of everything, and the natural desire to realize or embody truth in the environment receives a sufficient counterbalance in two convictions inseparable from idealism: firstly, that ideal truth can only be reflected or imprinted on the surface of real being, and not essentially embodied in it, and secondly, that his own spirit is only in a transitory and external way connected with this reality and, therefore, cannot have any unconditional task in it. The dying Socrates was only glad that he was forever leaving the world of false existence into the realm of true existence. Such a mood, obviously, ultimately excludes any practical task; with such a view, there can be neither obligation nor desire to devote oneself to the transformation of this life, the salvation of this world. Platonic idealism, just like Buddhist nihilism, raising the human personality to an unconditional height, does not create for it a social environment corresponding to this unconditional value; both the community of monks and the state of philosophers represent only the temporary transaction of the sage with a false life, while his real satisfaction is only the pure indifference of nirvana in the first case and the purely mental world of ideas in the second. But does this mean that real life remains meaningless for idealism? Here such an internal contradiction is revealed in him that does not allow human consciousness to stop at this stage and recognize it as the highest truth. If the world in which we live were not at all involved in ideal, or true, existence, then idealism itself would be impossible. The direct representative of the ideal principle in this world is, of course, the philosopher himself, contemplating the truly existing. But this philosopher did not fall from heaven, his mind is only the highest degree of universal human reason, expressed in a word - an essentially universal phenomenon, a real idea or perceptible reason, as it was perfectly understood by Heraclitus, assimilated and interpreted by Socrates and Plato, Aristotle and Zeno the Stoic. But the presence of a higher principle is not limited to the human world. The expedient composition and movement of living beings and, in general, the teleological connection of phenomena served for Socrates himself as a favorite argument in favor of reason as the principle of the world. But the ideal principle is not limited to expediency alone; it extends to all definite being, excluding only the directly opposite principle - the immensity of chaos (τò άπειρον τò μηόν). Where there is a measure, a limit, a norm, there is thereby both reason and idea. And if so, then the essential opposition between the world of sensory phenomena and the world of intelligible ideas, which is essential for idealism, turns out to be only relative and changeable. Since every determinate being participates in an idea, then the difference can only be in the degrees of this participation. Since a plant or animal contains a more definitely conceivable content and a more complex and deeper connection with everything else than a simple stone or a separate elemental phenomenon, in plant and animal organisms one should recognize a greater presence of an idea or a higher degree of ideality than in a stone or a puddle of water; further, every person, as a verbal being or capable of rational thinking, represents the highest degree of ideality compared to an animal, but an ignorant person, devoted to passions and vices, is in the same extent inferior to the philosopher, whose word is an expression of reason not only in its general structure, but also in its actual use; and, finally, philosophers differ among themselves in the degree to which they have assimilated the highest truth. All this difference in the degrees of rationality in the world, from the cobblestone to the “divine” Plato, is not something meaningless or contrary to the idea; it would be so if reason required indifference and if “idea” meant uniformity; but reason is the general connection of everything, and the idea is the image of the internal combination of many things in one (for example, the idea of ​​an organism in which many parts and elements are combined to serve one purpose, or the idea of ​​a state that combines many interests in one common good, or the idea of ​​science in which many knowledges form a single truth); Therefore, our reality, in which countless things and phenomena converge and coexist in a single world order, must be recognized as essentially rational and consistent with the idea. Condemnation of this reality by idealism can rightfully have in mind not the general nature of the world and not the difference of degrees arising from this nature, without which there would be no higher unity, but only this or that mutual position of these degrees, which does not correspond to their inner dignity. The idea of ​​a person is not violated, but is expressed by the fact that in addition to the mind, he also has an active will and sensory receptivity; but since the mind, contemplating the truth of everything, is essentially above the aspirations and sensations limited by particulars, it must dominate over them; if, on the contrary, these lower aspects gain the upper hand in a person’s life, then his idea is distorted, an abnormal and meaningless phenomenon occurs in him. In the same way, the difference between states or classes is not contrary to the idea of ​​civil society, if only the relationship between these classes is determined by their internal quality; but if a group of people, by nature more capable of service work than of knowledge and implementation of the highest truth, gains dominance in society and takes into its own hands all matters of government and education of the people, and people of true knowledge and wisdom are forced to devote their strength to material work, then under such a system the state will contradict its idea and will lose all meaning. The dominance of the lower powers of the soul over the mind in an individual and the dominance of the material class over the intellectual in society are two cases of the same perversion and nonsense. This is what idealism recognizes when it decisively denounces the fundamental evil in both the mental and social systems of man. For these denunciations, Socrates had to die, and - strange thing! - even this tragic fact did not force his students to admit that, in addition to moral and political, there is a third typical untruth in the world - physical, namely death. An illogical stop at the first two anomalies - a bad soul and a bad society - an artificial break in thought between moral-social life and natural-organic life - a feature characteristic of the entire idealistic worldview as an intermediate and transitional, half-hearted and unsaid universalism. And yet, isn’t it clear that the dominion of death in the world of the living is the same outrage, the same perversion of degrees, as the domination of blind passions in the rational soul or the domination of the mob in human society? Since there is no doubt that the internally purposeful structure and life of organisms represent a greater measure and higher degree of realization of the ideal principle in nature than the elemental forces of inorganic matter, it is clear that the triumph of the latter’s ethics over life, their liberation from its power and their final dissolution of the organism is a contradiction to the proper ideal order, is an anomaly or nonsense. Life does not destroy the lower forces of matter, but subjugates them and thereby gives life to them. It is clear that such subordination of the lower to the higher is the norm, and therefore the reverse relationship, moreover, accompanied by the destruction of the highest form of being in its given reality, cannot be normal, cannot be justified and legitimized in the name of reason and ideas. Death is not an idea, but only the negation of an idea, only a revolt of blind force against reason. Therefore, Socrates’ joy before death was, strictly speaking, only the excusable and touching weakness of an old man tired of everyday hardships, and not an expression of higher consciousness. For a mind occupied not with personal feelings, but with the essence of things, this death should, instead of joy, cause double sadness: the death sentence was sad, like social lawlessness, like the triumph of the vicious and evil ignoramuses over the righteous and sage, and the process of death itself was sad, like physical lawlessness, like the triumph of the blind and soulless power of a poisonous substance over a living, organized body in which the rational spirit was embodied. The whole world - not only mental and political, but also physical - suffers from a violated norm, everyone needs help, and what can help it is not the lack of will of an ascetic who has renounced all life and the living environment, and not the mental contemplation of a philosopher who lives only by thought in the realm of ideas, but the living power of the entire human personality, which has unconditional significance not only in negative potency and not in idea only, but in positive reality. This is a perfect person, or a God-man, who does not leave the world for nirvana, or the kingdom of ideas, but comes into the world to save it and reborn it into the Kingdom of God - so that the perfect personality is replenished by a perfect society. The unconditional moral significance of the human personality requires for it perfection or fullness of life. This requirement is not satisfied either by a simple denial of imperfection (as in Buddhism), or by any ideal participation in perfection (as in Platonism and idealism in general); it can be satisfied only by the actual presence and implementation of perfection in the whole person and in his entire life circle, which directly or indirectly embraces everything that exists. This is the true character of Christianity and its essential difference from Buddhism and Platonism. Without touching now on the metaphysical side of the Christian doctrine, I mean here only the fact that Christianity (and it alone) is based on the idea of ​​a truly perfect person and a perfect society and, therefore, promises to fulfill the requirement of true infinity inherent in our consciousness. It is clear that to achieve this goal it is necessary first of all to stop being satisfied with a limited and unworthy reality - it is necessary to renounce it, but it is equally clear that this is only the first step and that, stopping at it, a person receives only emptiness. This first step, which the universal human consciousness needed to take, but at which it should not stop, is Buddhism. Having rejected the worthless reality, I must replace it with something that is worthy of existence, but for this I must first understand or assimilate for myself the very idea of ​​worthy existence - this is the second step represented by idealism. And again, it is clear that we cannot stop here, because truth is only conceivable, and not realized, does not fill all life, is not what is required, is not unconditional perfection. The third and final step that we can take through Christianity is the positive realization of a worthy existence in all things. The nirvana of Buddhists is outside of everything - this is negative universalism; the ideal cosmos of Platonism represents only one intelligible, or mental, side of everything - this is half universalism; only the Kingdom of God, revealed by Christianity, truly embraces everything and is positive, whole and perfect universalism. It is clear that the unconditional beginning in the human spirit in the first two degrees of universalism does not reach the end and therefore remains fruitless. Nirvana is beyond any horizon, the world of ideas, like a star circle, embraces the earth, but does not unite with it - only the absolute principle embodied in the Sun of Truth penetrates into the depths of earthly reality, creates a new life in it and is realized as a new order of being - as the entire Kingdom of God - virtus ejus integra si versa fueri in terram. 97 And without earth there is no heaven for man. Not only Buddhism, as we have seen, but also Platonism, not having the power to satisfy the unconditional moral principle, to create the fullness of life or a perfect society, with the consistent implementation of its principle, abolishes the main foundations of morality in general. Where will a consistent idealist find something for piety? He treats the gods of the people skeptically, at best with prudent restraint. Ideal essences, in which he sees absolute truth, cannot be the subject of religious veneration - neither for his mortal “body”, which knows nothing about them, nor for his immortal mind, which knows them too closely and directly in contemplation reaches complete equality with them. Religion and religious morality represent precisely that connection between the higher and the lower, which idealism in its duality breaks, leaving on one side the divine, ethereal (and sterile) mind, and on the other, the material body, completely devoid of everything divine. But this connection, broken by idealism, goes even further. It holds not only reverence, but also pity. Whom can a consistent idealist feel sorry for? He knows only two categories of existence: false - material and true - ideal; but a false being, as Anaximander of Miletus taught Plato even earlier, in justice must suffer and perish and does not deserve pity, but the true in its essence cannot suffer and, therefore, cannot evoke pity - and that is why the dying Socrates only rejoiced, moving from a world not worthy of pity to one where there is no subject for it. Finally, even for ascetic morality one cannot find a deep foundation in idealism; for a consistent idealist is ashamed of the fact that he has a body, as the greatest of Plato’s followers, Plotinus, said, but such shame is morally indifferent. Since it is impossible for a person, while he lives on earth, to be incorporeal, then, by virtue of the indisputable rule: ad impossibilia nemo obligatur (no one obliges himself to the impossible), the shame of his corporeality either obliges him to commit suicide, or does not oblige him to anything at all. If we accept Buddhism and Platonism not as the necessary transitional stages of universal consciousness, which they really were, but see in one or the other of them the last word of universal truth, then the question arises: what did they actually give to humanity, with what gain did they leave it? By themselves, they not only gave nothing, but also promised nothing. From time immemorial there has been an opposition between “nirvana” and “samsara” - a blissful emptiness for those who are spiritually awakening and a painful emptiness for those spiritually sleeping, and there was an immutable law of causing deeds and caused states (karma), which, through countless rebirths, leads a being from painful emptiness to empty bliss. As it was before Buddha, so it remained after him and will remain indefinitely. From the point of view of Buddhism itself, none of its followers, who are aware of their thoughts, can claim that the Buddha corrected anything in the world order, created something new, or really saved anyone. And there is no room for any promise ahead. In the end, it is exactly the same from the point of view of idealism. There is an eternal, truly existing world of intelligible ideas and an apparent world of sensory phenomena; there is no real bridge between them, to be in one means not to be in the other; such a division has always been and will remain forever - idealism does not provide reconciliation in the present and does not promise it in the future. 98 Christianity acts differently: it gives and promises humanity something truly new. It gives a living image of a personality perfected not only by the negative perfection of lack of will and not only by the mental perfection of ideal contemplation, but by unconditional and complete perfection, going to the end and therefore conquering death. Christianity reveals to humanity an unconditionally perfect and therefore bodily resurrecting personality; it promises humanity a perfect society in accordance with this personal principle, and since this particular society cannot be created externally and violently (then it would be imperfect), its promise contains the task for humanity and for each person to contribute to the perfect personal power revealed to the world in transforming the world environment for the collective embodiment of the Kingdom of God in it. The final truth, or unconditional and positive universalism, obviously cannot be only personal or only social: it must express the fullness and integrity of personal-social life. True Christianity is the perfect unity of three inextricably linked foundations: 1) an absolute event - the revelation of a perfect personality - the bodily resurrected God-man Christ; 2) an absolute promise - consistent with the perfect personality of society, or the Kingdom of God, and 3) an absolute task - to contribute to the fulfillment of this promise through the regeneration of our entire personal and social environment in the spirit of Christ. – With the oblivion or neglect of one of these three foundations, the whole matter is paralyzed and perverted, which is why, although Christianity is the unconditional and final revelation of truth, the moral development of mankind, as well as its external history, did not cease after the appearance of Christ. What has come true and what is promised stand firmly within the bounds of eternity and do not depend on us. But the task of the present is in our hands; we ourselves must act for the moral regeneration of our lives. Connected with this general task is the special task of moral philosophy: it has to determine and clarify, in the conditions of historical reality, the proper relationship between all the basic elements and areas of the personal-social whole in accordance with its final norm. Chapter twelve. Abstract subjectivism in morality At the stage to which human consciousness historically reaches in Christianity, moral life is revealed as a universal and all-embracing task. Before talking about the historical conditions of this task that are determined for us, we must eliminate the view that fundamentally denies morality as a historical task, or the work of a collective person, and reduces it entirely to the subjective, moral motives of individual individuals. This view arbitrarily places such narrow boundaries on human goodness that it in reality does not know and has never known. Strictly speaking, morality has never been only a matter of personal feeling or a rule of private behavior. In tribal life, the moral demands of reverence, pity and shame were inextricably linked with the responsibilities of a relative to the clan union - the “moral” was not separated from the “social”, the individual from the collective, and if at the same time morality turned out to be rather base and limited, then this was not due to the fact that it was collective, but only due to the general low level and narrow volume of this life, which expressed only the initial stage of the historical development; it was base and limited only in comparison with the further progress of morality, and in no way in comparison with the morality of savages living in trees and caves. And with the formation of the state system, despite the relative separation and isolation of home life, morality in general was determined by the relationship between individuals and the collective whole - henceforth more extensive and complex - to which they belonged. It was impossible to be moral without a definite and positive connection with the state, morality was first of all a civic virtue, and if this virtus antiqua (ancient valor (Latin)) does not ultimately satisfy us, it is not because, of course, it was a civil valor, and not just a domestic one, but because this citizenship itself was too far from the real social ideal, representing only a transition from barbarism to a truly human culture. If morality relied on valiant service to the social whole - the state, but at the same time the state itself was based on slavery, constant wars, etc., then it is not the social character of morality that is subject to condemnation, but the immoral character of society. In the same way, we rightly condemn the medieval church system of morality, but not because, of course, it was ecclesiastical, but because the church itself of that time was far from the image of a truly moral organization, for the fact that, along with good, it organized evil - the deepest evil of religious persecution and torment, thereby violating the unconditional principle of morality in its own, internal sphere. Christianity as the “gospel of the kingdom” has an unconditionally high ideal, with a requirement of absolute morality. Should this morality be only subjective, limited only to the internal states and individual actions of the subject? The answer is already contained in the question itself; but in order to bring the matter clean, let us first admit what is true among the supporters of exclusively subjective Christianity. There is no doubt that a perfect, or absolute, moral state must be internally fully experienced, felt and assimilated by an individual person - it must become his own state, the content of his life. If perfect morality were recognized as subjective in this sense, then it would be possible to argue only about names. But the matter concerns another question: how is this moral perfection achieved by individuals - is it solely through the internal work of each on himself and the proclamation of its results, or with the help of a certain social process that operates not only personally, but also collectively? Supporters of the first view, which reduces everything to individual moral work, do not reject, of course, either community life or the moral improvement of its forms, but they believe that this is only a simple, inevitable consequence of personal moral success: such is a person, such is society, as soon as everyone understands and reveals his true essence, arouses good feelings in his soul - and paradise will be established on earth. That without good feelings and thoughts there can be neither personal nor social morality is indisputable. It is also indisputable that if all individual people were good, then society would be the same. But to think that the mere virtue of a few of the best people is enough to regenerate everyone else morally means moving into the realm where babies are born from rose bushes and where beggars, for lack of bread, eat sweet pies. After all, the question here is not only whether the moral efforts of an individual are sufficient for his improvement, but also whether it is possible with these single efforts to ensure that other people, who do not make any moral efforts, begin to make them? The insufficiency of subjective good and the need for its collective embodiment is too clearly proven by the entire course of human history. I will limit myself to just one visual explanation. At the end of Homer's Odyssey, it is told with visible sympathy how this typical Hellenistic hero, having finally defeated the enmity of gods and people and exterminated his rivals, restores truth and order to his home. With the help of his son, he executes those servants who, during his twenty years of unknown absence, when he was considered dead by everyone, did not resist Penelope’s suitors, who were in charge of his house, and went over to their side: Having cleared the hall and put everything there in normal order, They ordered the condemned slaves to leave there, They gathered them in the courtyard, between the wall and the living tower, Everyone, and locked in a hopeless place, from where escape There could not be any, and the son of Odysseus said to them: You are not worthy to die an honest death, libertines, You, so me and my noble mother Penelope Here they disgraced themselves, in my house they fell in love with their suitors. Having finished, he took the rope of the blacknose ship and tightly So he pulled it, securing it on the columns under the arch It was impossible for them to reach the towers that touched the ground. There, like long-winged blackbirds or like doves, in the net A whole flock - flying for the night - caught (in cramped They tremble in their nooses, and their overnight stay becomes a coffin), They were all hanging on the rope, head to head; Each one's neck was tied with nooses, and death befell them. Soon: after twitching their legs a little, everyone calmed down at once. Afterwards the goat breeder was dragged out by force into the yard Melantius: With merciless copper they tore out the nostrils, cut off the ears, They cut off his arms and legs, and then, after chopping They threw it into crumbs to be eaten by greedy dogs. (Odyssey, XXII, 457 – 477, trans. Zhukovsky) Odysseus and Telemachus not only were not monsters, but on the contrary, they represent the highest ideal of the Homeric era. Their personal morality was impeccable, they were full of piety, wisdom, justice and all family virtues. Odysseus, moreover, despite his courage and firmness in adversity, had an extremely sensitive heart and cried at every opportunity. This is a characteristic and very remarkable feature that accompanies him throughout the entire poem. Since I have not seen any specific references in literature to this predominant feature of the Homeric hero, I will allow myself some details. Already at his first appearance in the Odyssey, its hero is depicted crying: He sat alone on a rocky shore and cried; Feeding his soul with grief and sighs, he spent his days there, The gaze, darkened by tears, stared at the deserted sea. (V, 83 – 84; also 151, 153, 156 – 158) I lost seven whole years there, and they flowed incessantly My tears are on the clothes given to me by the immortal nymph. He cried at the thought of his distant homeland and family, as well as at the memory of his own exploits: The muse inspired the singer to shout about famous people The story of the brave Achilles and the wise king Odysseus. Demodocus began the great song, and Odysseus, with his Taking the wide purple robe with a strong hand, He clothed his head with it and hid his noble face in it. He did not want to show his tears to the Phaeacians. Thus Demodocus sang about the Achaeans; incredibly touched There was Odysseus, and his eyelashes were watered with tears. So a sorrowful widow cries over the body of her husband, Fallen in a stubborn battle ahead of everyone before the hail, Trying to save my fellow citizens and family from the fateful day. He cries when he learns from Circe about his upcoming, however completely safe, journey to the region of Hades: Thus spoke the goddess, my heart was torn; I wept bitterly, sitting on the bed; I became disgusted Life, I didn’t even want to look at the sunlight, and for a long time He was torn, and for a long time, stretched out on the bed, he sobbed inconsolably. It is not surprising that Odysseus cries when he sees the shadow of his mother (XI, 87), but the shadow of the worst and most dissolute of his warriors, who He was destroyed by the demon of evil and by the unspeakable power of wine. The youngest of all on my ship, Elpenor, is not excellent Courage in battle, generously gifted with intelligence from the gods, To sleep for coolness went to the elevated roof area The house of the sacred Circe, intoxicated with strong wine. The noisy gatherings of comrades, already ready to set off, having heard Suddenly he jumped up, and in his drunkenness he forgot to turn back. I had to go down the steps from the high roof, He jerked forward, sleepy, and fell, hitting the back of his head. To the ground, broke the vertebral bone, and the soul flew away I shed tears when I saw him; compassion penetrated my soul. He also cries at the sight of Agamemnon: So we, talking about many things of the past, next to each other We sat sadly, and tears flowed down our cheeks. Odysseus cries bitterly when he finally finds himself in his native Ithaca (XIII, 219 - 221), and even more so at his first meeting with his son: Then the desire to cry penetrated into the hearts of both of them: They both raised a piercing cry of contrition; how he moans Falcon or sharp-clawed eagle, which has a hunter He stole the still unwinged chicks from their native nest, So, bursting into tears, they sobbed and moaned Loudly, and the setting sun could have caught them crying. Odysseus shed tears at the sight of his old dog Argus: looking at him sideways, shed a tear, Secretly, Odysseus wiped... He cries before the murder of the suitors, embracing the divine swineherd Eumaeus and the godlike cowherd Philotius (XXI, 225 - 227), and also cries after the brutal reprisal of twelve maids and the goat breeder Melantius: He gave free rein to tears; he wept with joy and sorrow, Recognizing everyone when meeting your dear family. And the last two songs of Odysseus cannot do, of course, without the hero’s copious tears: ...Odysseus’s chest was filled with great sorrow; Crying, he clung to the heart of his proven, faithful wife. So his father appeared to Odysseus, crushed and decrepit. He hid under a pear tree, gave free rein to his tears and, in silence, From the point of view of personal, subjective sensitivity, Odysseus was obviously in no way inferior to the most mentally developed and sensitive person of our days. In general, all the moral feelings and movements of the heart that are accessible to us were also accessible to Homer’s heroes, and not only in relation to their neighbors in the narrow sense of the word, that is, to people connected with them by a direct community of interests, but also in relation to strangers and distant ones: such were the Phaeacians for the shipwrecked Odysseus - and, however, what kindly and humane mutual relations are established between them! And if, despite all this, the best of the heroes of antiquity, with a clear conscience, committed such deeds that are now morally impossible for us, then this was, of course, not due to a lack of personal, subjective morality. In any case, these people were just as capable of good human feelings regarding their own and strangers as we are. What is the difference here and where does this change come from? Why did the virtuous, wise and sensitive people of the Homeric era consider it permissible and praiseworthy to hang frivolous maids like blackbirds and chop up unworthy servants for dog food, whereas today such acts can only be committed by maniacs or born criminals? Reasoning abstractly, one could assume that the people of that distant era, although they had good spiritual feelings and movements, did not have conscious good principles and rules, and therefore even the best person, along with the subtlest moral affects, could freely manifest impulses of wild brutality, precisely because of the simple factual nature of his morality, due to the absence of a formal criterion between what should and should not or a clear consciousness of the difference between good and evil. But in fact, we do not find such a formal deficiency in the ancient worldview. Ancient people, just like us, not only had actually good and evil natural properties within themselves, but also fundamentally distinguished good from evil and recognized that the first should be given unconditional preference. In the same Homeric poems, which sometimes amaze us with their ethical barbarisms, the concept of moral duty appears with complete clarity. Of course, the way of thinking and expressions of Penelope and Kant do not completely coincide with each other, nevertheless, in the following, for example, the words of Odysseus’s wife, we find a decisive affirmation of moral goodness as the principle of the eternal, necessary and universal. ...We don't have life in this world for long; Who is here without love and does not show love in his actions, He is hated while he lives on earth, and they wish People are evil to him; from them we vilify him mercilessly and dead; Who is blameless in soul and blameless in his actions - His name, carried with praise throughout the earth, is glorified All tribes and peoples, everyone calls him good. The form of moral consciousness, namely the unconditional obligatory nature of good and the unconditional impermissibility of evil, was in the mind of the ancients, as in ours; but perhaps the important difference between them and us in the moral assessment of the same actions comes from a change in the very content of moral ideals. That, thanks to the gospel, our ideal of virtue and holiness is much higher and broader than Homer’s, this is beyond doubt. But it is also undeniable that this perfect moral ideal, accepted only abstractly theoretically, without objective embodiment, does not produce any change not only in life, but also in the actual moral consciousness of people, does not in the least elevate their practical standard for assessing their own and others’ actions. Is it necessary to recall again the representatives of medieval Christianity, who, with a clear conscience and even consciousness of their moral duty and merit, treated the supposed enemies of their church with even greater cruelty than Odysseus treated the enemies of his family, and in a closer and more enlightened time, did not the American planters, belonging to the Christian faith, thereby stand under the banner of an unconditionally high moral ideal? and, however, not only did they actually treat their black slaves no better than the pagan Odysseus treated his unfaithful servants, but they also considered themselves (like him) right in this; Consequently, not only their deeds, but also their life consciousness remained unaffected by that highest truth, which they recognized abstractly and theoretically. In essays from the history of the Tambov region, I.I. Dubasov, tells about the exploits of the Elatom landowner K-rov, who flourished in the forties of this century. In addition to the fact that many peasants (especially children) were tortured to death by him, the investigation found that on Krov’s estate there was not a single unbeaten peasant and not a single serf girl who was not abused. But it is not these “abuses” that are especially important, but the attitude of the public environment towards them. During a general search in Elatomsky district, most of the nobles said of Krov that he was a “truly noble man.” Others added to this: “Krov is a true Christian and performs all Christian rituals.” And the leader of the nobility wrote to the governor: “The entire district is alarmed on the occasion of Mr. Krov’s disasters.” The matter ended with the fact that the “true Christian” was freed from criminal liability, and the Elato nobility calmed down (Essays from the history of the Tambov region, research by I.I. Dubasov, issue 1, Tambov, 1890, pp. 162 – 167). Another, even more famous Tambov landowner, Prince, enjoyed the same sympathy in his environment. Yu.N.G-n, about whom, however, not without reason, they wrote to the chief of gendarmes: “And the animals themselves, when meeting Yu.N-ch, instinctively hid anywhere” (ibid., p. 92). About three thousand years passed between the hero of Homer and the heroes of Mr. Dubasov, but no significant and lasting change took place in the life and moral consciousness of people regarding the unfree part of the population. The same inhuman relations that were approved by the ancient Hellenes in the Homeric era were also considered permissible by American and Russian slave owners in the first half of the 19th century. And if now these relations outrage us, then this increase in ethical requirements did not occur in those three millennia, but only in the last three decades (for us and the Americans, and for Western Europe several decades earlier). What happened in this recent time that brought about such a change in such a short time that long centuries of historical development could not bring about? Has any new moral idea, a new, higher moral ideal appeared in our days? Nothing like that existed and could not have happened, because it is impossible to imagine a higher ideal than the one that was discovered eighteen centuries ago. This ideal was known to the “true Christians” of the American states and Russian provinces. They could not find out any new idea on this part; but they experienced a new fact. What an idea, limited to the subjective sphere of personal morality, could not do for thousands of years, it did in a few years, when it was embodied in public force and became a common cause. Under very different historical conditions in both America and Russia, an organized social entity with power decided to put an end to the too gross violation of Christian - God's and human - truth in the social order. In America this was achieved at the cost of blood, a terrible internecine war, in our country - through imperious government action. Only thanks to this action, the basic requirements of justice and humanity (presupposed by the highest ideal, although not exhaustive of it) were transferred from the narrow and shaky limits of subjective feeling to the broad and solid soil of objective reality - turned into a general and binding law of life. And so we see that this external act of state immediately raises the level of our internal consciousness, that is, it does what millennia of moral preaching could not do on their own. Of course, this very social movement and government action were conditioned by the previous preaching, but for the majority, for the entire social environment, this preaching gained strength only when it was embodied in events organized by the authorities. Thanks to external constraint, brutal instincts lost the opportunity to manifest themselves, had to go into an inactive state, from lack of exercise they gradually atrophied and for the majority disappeared and ceased to be transmitted to subsequent generations. Now even people who openly sigh for serfdom make sincere reservations about “abuses,” whereas these same abuses forty years ago were recognized as consistent with “true nobility” and even with “true Christianity.” Meanwhile, there is no reason to think that the fathers of that time were in themselves worse than the sons of today. Let us assume that the heroes of Mr. Dubasov, whom the Tambov nobility defended only for the sake of class interest, really stood below the average level of the society around them. But besides them, there were so many completely decent people, alien to any villainy, who conscientiously considered themselves entitled to fully enjoy the advantages of the landowners and, for example, trade in the souls of serfs, like working cattle - in droves and at retail. And if now such things are no longer possible for scoundrels, even if they wished for it, then how can this objective success of good, this real improvement in life, be attributed to the progress of personal morality? The moral nature of man in its internal, subjective foundations is unchanged. Likewise, the relative number of good and evil people, presumably, does not change: hardly anyone would dare to say that there are more righteous people now than there were several centuries or millennia ago. Finally, there is no doubt that the highest moral ideas and ideals by themselves, taken in the abstract, do not produce any lasting improvement in life and moral consciousness. I pointed out an indisputable and unshakable historical fact: the same and even worse atrocities that the virtuous pagan of Homer’s poem committed with the approval of his social environment were committed thousands of years after him by the zealots of the Christian faith - Spanish inquisitors and Christian slave owners, also with the approval of their social environment, despite the rise in the individual moral ideal that had occurred in the meantime. And now such actions are possible only for known maniacs and professional criminals. And this sudden progress occurred only because organized social force was inspired by moral demands and turned them into an objective law of life. The beginning of perfect good, revealed in Christianity, does not abolish the objective structure of human society, but uses it as a form and instrument for the embodiment of its unconditional moral content: it requires that human society become organized morality. Experience clearly shows that when the social environment is not organized morally, then the subjective demands of good from oneself and from others inevitably decrease. Therefore, the real question is not about subjective or objective, not about personal or social morality, but only about morality, weak or strong, realized or unrealized. Every degree of moral consciousness inevitably strives for its personal and social realization, and the difference between the highest and final degree from the lower is not, of course, that morality remains forever only subjective, that is, unfulfilled, powerless - that would be a strange advantage! - but that this implementation must be complete, or comprehensive, and therefore requires an incomparably more difficult, complex and lengthy process than the previous collective embodiments of morality. In tribal life, the degree of goodness available to it is embodied easily and freely - without any history; further, the formation of vast national-political groups for the realization of a greater amount and the highest degree of good fills many historical centuries with its vicissitudes - how much more enormous is the real moral task bequeathed to us by Christianity and requiring the formation of an environment for the actual perception of good - unconditional and universal! This good in its positive concept contains the completeness of human relationships. Morally regenerated humanity cannot be poorer in content than natural humanity. Consequently, the task is not to destroy existing social divisions, but to bring them into a proper, good, or moral connection with each other. When the cosmic process reached the creation of higher animal forms, the lower form - the worm - was not excluded as unworthy in itself, but received only a new, more appropriate place, ceased to be the only and obvious (actual) basis of life, got inside - became the womb - a service tool, hidden for the sake of beauty. And other formations that dominated the lower levels were preserved (not only materially, but also formally) as constituent, subordinate parts and organs of the higher whole. In a similar way, Christian humanity - the highest form of spiritual collective life - is realized not by destroying historical social formations and divisions, but by bringing them into proper conformity with itself and mutually with each other, according to an unconditional moral principle. The requirement of this consent takes away all justification for moral subjectivism, which clings to the falsely understood interest of the autonomy of the will. The moral will must be determined to act exclusively through itself, any of its subordination to some kind of external injunction or command violates its self-legitimacy and therefore must be considered unworthy - this is the true beginning of moral autonomy, but when it comes to organizing the social environment of initially unconditional good, then such an organization is not a limitation, but the fulfillment of personal moral will - it is the very thing that it wants. I, as a moral being, want goodness to reign on earth, I know that I cannot achieve this alone, and I see a collective organization intended for this goal of mine - it is clear that this organization not only does not limit me, but, on the contrary, removes my individual limitations from me, expands and strengthens my moral will. Everyone, insofar as his will is moral, internally participates in this universal organization of morality, and it is clear that relative external restrictions for individuals that can follow from this are approved by their own supreme decision and, therefore, cannot in any way violate moral self-legitimacy. For a morally minded person, only one thing is important here: that the collective organization of man really submits to an unconditional moral principle, that social life really accepts the fulfillment of the norms of good - truth and mercy - in all affairs and relationships between people, so that the personal-social environment essentially becomes organized good. It is clear that by submitting to such a social environment, which itself truly obeys the principle of unconditional good and in fact conforms to it, a person cannot lose anything, because such a character of the social environment is, in its concept, incompatible with any arbitrary restriction of personal rights, not to mention gross violence and torture. The degree of subordination of a person to society must correspond to the degree of subordination of society itself to moral goodness, without which the social environment has no rights over an individual person: its rights arise only from the moral satisfaction or replenishment that it gives to each person. From this side, the truth of moral universalism, which is discussed in this chapter, will find its further explanation and development in the next one. As for the autonomy of evil will, no organization of good will prevent conscious villains from wanting evil for evil and acting in this direction. From this side, the organization of good deals only with the external limits of evil activity, which necessarily follow from the nature of man and from the meaning of history. We will talk about these objective limits to objective evil, which are necessarily presupposed by the organization of good, but are far from exhaustive, in the chapters on the criminal issue and on the relationship between law and morality. Chapter thirteen. Moral norm of the public The true definition of society as organized morality eliminates both currently fashionable lies: moral subjectivism, which robs the moral will of real ways of its implementation in general life, and social realism, according to which these social institutions and interests are of decisive importance for life in themselves, so that the highest moral principles turn out to be, at best, only means or instruments for protecting these interests. From such a very widespread point of view today, one or another real form of public is essentially the present and the main thing, although they try to give it a moral justification, to connect it with moral foundations and norms. But when they look for moral supports for human society, they thereby show that not only a certain form of society, but also the public as such is not the highest and unconditional definition of a person. And in fact, if he were defined in essence as a social animal (ζωον πολιτικόν) and nothing more, then the content in the concept “man” would be extremely narrowed and at the same time the scope of this concept would significantly expand: some animals would have to be included in humanity, for example. ants, for which community, as such, is an essential feature no less than for humans. “The nests of ants,” says the most thorough student of their life, Sir John Lubbock, “are not simple assemblies of independent individuals, lower temporary communities, like flocks of migratory birds, but organized communities, working with the greatest harmony for the common good.” 99 These hostels sometimes contain such a large population that, according to the same naturalist, of human cities, perhaps only London and Beijing can compare with them. 100 Much more important are three internal properties of the ant community: a complex social organization, then a certain difference in the degrees of this organization between individual societies - a difference completely analogous to the gradual development of forms of human culture from hunting to agricultural life, which shows that the ant community did not arise in some random and exceptional way, but developed according to some general sociological laws, and, finally, the extraordinary strength and stability of the social connection is remarkable, amazing practical solidarity between all members of the ant citizenry when it comes to the common good. Regarding the first point: if the characteristic feature of civilization is the division of labor, then it is impossible to deny the existence of an ant civilization. The division of labor is carried out here extremely sharply. There are very brave warriors, armed with exorbitantly developed pincer-like jaws, with which they deftly grab and tear off enemy heads, but, however, are not capable of anything else; there are workers distinguished by their diligence and skill; there are gentlemen with opposite qualities, reaching the point that they no longer know how to feed or walk themselves, but can only use the services of others; there are, finally, slaves (who do not need to be confused with workers) 101 - they are obtained by conquest and belong to other species of ants, which does not interfere with their complete devotion to their masters. In addition to this division of labor, the high degree of ant civilization is also proven by the abundance of domestic animals (that is, domesticated insects from other zoological families). “It may truly be said,” remarks Lubbock (with some exaggeration, of course), “that our English ants have a greater variety of domestic animals than we ourselves.” 102 Some of these domestic insects, carefully reared by ants, serve for food (such are especially the honey-drinking aphids (aphidae), which Linnaeus calls ant-cows (aphis formicarum vacca)), others perform some necessary public works, for example. serve as scavengers, 103 others, according to Lubbock, are kept only for fun 104 - like our pugs or canaries. Entomologist Andre presented a list of 584 insect species that are commonly found in the ant community. 105 At present, for many vast inhabited ant communities, the main means of subsistence is the abundant supplies of plant products they collect; crowds of worker ants systematically and skillfully cut grass stems and leaf cuttings - as if they were reaping them; but this semblance of agriculture is neither their only nor their original way of existence. “We will find,” says Lubbock, “different living conditions in different species of ants, curiously corresponding to the early stages of human progress. For example, some species, like Formica fusca, live primarily on hunted food; although they feed partly on the honeyed juice of aphids, they have not yet domesticated these insects. These ants probably maintain customs that were once common to all ants. They are similar to the lower races of people who exist mainly by hunting. Like them, they wander through forests and deserts, live in relatively small communities, and have little developed instincts for collective action. They hunt alone, and their battles are duels, like Homeric heroes. Species such as Lassius flavius ​​clearly represent a higher type of social life; they show more art in architecture; one can literally say that they have domesticated certain species of aphids and can be compared with the pastoral stage of human progress - with tribes that live on the products of their herds and herds. Their dormitories are much more numerous; they act with greater consent; their battles are no longer simple duels, but they know how to act together. I am ready to assume that they will gradually exterminate purely hunting species, just as savages disappear before more developed tribes. Finally, agricultural peoples can be compared to harvester ants. These seem to be three main types, presenting a curious analogy with the three great phases - the hunting, pastoral and agricultural stages - in the history of human development. 106 In addition to the complexity of the social system and the gradualness of cultural development, ant hostels are also distinguished, as noted above, by the extraordinary strength of social connections. Our author repeatedly testifies to “the highest concord that reigns between those belonging to the same society.” 107 This agreement is conditioned solely by the common good. Based not only on observations, but also on numerous experiments, Lubbock proves that in all cases when an individual ant undertakes something useful for the whole community, but exceeding its own strength, for example, dragging a dead fly or beetle into an anthill that it has come across, it always calls and finds comrades who help it; on the contrary, when an individual ant falls into some kind of disaster that concerns only him alone, this usually does not evoke any sympathy, and no help is provided to him; the patient naturalist many times rendered individual ants unconscious using chloroform or vodka: fellow citizens either did not pay any attention to the unfortunates, or threw them out like carrion. But tender participation in personal grief is not connected with any social function and, therefore, is not included in the concept of public as such; But the sense of civic duty and devotion to the general order is so great among ants that no quarrels or strife ever occur among them; their armed forces are intended only for external wars, and in those highly developed hostels, which even possess a special class of scavengers and a special breed of domestic jesters, not a single observer could notice any signs of an organized police or gendarmerie. For the animals under consideration, sociality is a sign that is at least as significant as for humans. And, if, however, we do not want to recognize their equality with ourselves, if we do not agree to immediately grant each of the countless ants swarming in our forests all the rights of man and citizen, then it means that a person has another essential feature that is not dependent on the public, but, on the contrary, determines the distinctive character of human society. This sign is that every person, as such, is a moral being or person who, regardless of his social usefulness, has unconditional dignity and an unconditional right to existence and to the free development of his positive powers. From here it directly follows that no person, under any conditions and for any reason, can be considered as merely a means for any extraneous ends - he cannot be only a means or instrument either for the good of another person, or for the good of an entire class, or, finally, for the so-called common good, that is, the good of the majority of other people. This “common good” or “common benefit” has the right not to a person as a person, but to his activity, or work, to the extent that this work, while serving the benefit of society, at the same time ensures a decent existence for the worker. The right of a person as such, based on his inherent and inalienable human dignity, on the formal infinity of reason in every person, on the fact that each person is something special and irreplaceable and, therefore, should be an end in itself, and not a means or an instrument only, is the right of a person in its essence unconditional, while the rights of society to a person, on the contrary, are conditioned by the recognition of personal right. Thus, society can oblige a person to anything only through an act of his own will, otherwise it will not be an obligation of the person, but only the use of a thing. From this, of course, it does not follow (as one of my critics for some reason imagined) that public power for every individual legislative and administrative event must ask for the special consent of each person. Instead of such an absurd liberum veto (free veto (Latin)), the moral principle logically follows (in relation to the political) only the right of every capable person to freely change his citizenship, as well as his religion. In other words, no social group or institution has the right to forcibly retain anyone among its members. The human dignity of each person, or his property of being a moral being, does not depend at all on his natural qualities or on his usefulness: these qualities and this usefulness can determine the external position of a person in society, the relative assessment of him by other persons, but not his own importance and human rights. Many animals are naturally more virtuous than many people. The conjugal virtue of pigeons and storks, the maternal love of chickens, the meekness of fallow deer, the loyalty and devotion of dogs, the kindness of seals and dolphins, the hard work and civic valor of bees and ants, etc. - all these excellent qualities that adorn our smaller brothers are far from constituting the predominant properties of the human majority. Why has it never occurred to anyone to take away human rights from the vilest of people in order to transfer them to the most excellent animal as a reward for his virtue? As for utility, not only is one healthy horse more useful than many sick beggars, but inanimate objects, such as the printing press or the steam boiler, have undoubtedly brought much more benefit to the general historical progress than entire peoples, savage or barbaric. However, if (per impossibile) (which is impossible (Latin)) Guttenberg and Watt had to deliberately and consciously sacrifice even one savage or barbarian for these great inventions, the usefulness of their cause would not prevent their action from deserving a decisive condemnation for immorality, otherwise they would have to enter into the ground of ends justifying the means. The common good or common benefit, in order to have the meaning of a moral principle, must be in the full sense general, that is, apply not only to many or to the majority, but to everyone without exception. What is truly the good of everyone is thereby also the good of everyone - no one is excluded, and, therefore, serving such a public good as a goal, each person does not become through this only a means or instrument of something external and alien, a true society that recognizes the unconditional right of each person is not a negative limit for it, but a positive completion; serving him with selflessness, the person does not lose, but realizes his unconditional dignity and significance; for, taken separately, it has unconditionality or infinity only in possibility, which becomes reality only through the internal connection of each with all. 108 The principle of human dignity, or the unconditional importance of each person, due to which society is defined as the internal, free consent of all, is the only moral norm. 109 There cannot be many moral norms, in the proper sense of the word, just as there cannot be many supreme goods or many moralities. It is easy to prove that religion (in its given, historical concreteness), that family, and property do not in themselves contain moral norms in the proper sense. That which in itself may or may not be moral, obviously must receive this or that definition from another, and cannot in any way independently be a moral norm for something, that is, convey to others a character that it itself may not have. But there is no doubt that religion may or may not be moral. How can such religions, such as, for example, the cults of Moloch or Astarte (of which experiences or analogies can still be found here and there) - how can they serve as a moral norm for anything, when their own essence is the direct opposite of all morality? Therefore, when we are pointed to religion as the normal moral basis of society, we still need to see whether this religion itself has a moral character, whether it agrees with the moral principle; and this means that the final foundation and criterion remains this beginning, and not religion as such. If we see in Christianity the true basis and norm of all good in the world, it is only because Christianity, as a perfect religion, also contains an unconditional moral principle. And with any separation of the Christian community from the demands of moral perfection, the unconditional significance of Christianity immediately disappears, which then turns into a historical accident. It also cannot be denied that the family, not only in its individual examples, but also in the general system, may or may not be moral. Thus, the family of Ancient Greece - not those special heroic families where the wife killed her husband and was killed by her son, or where the son killed his father and married his mother, but the ordinary, normal family of an educated Athenian, which required, as a necessary addition, the institution of hetaeras and even worse - had no moral character; the family of Arabs (before Islam), strong in their own way, did not have it, where newborn girls, if there were more than one or two of them, were buried alive in the ground; It is also impossible to recognize as moral the very strong Roman family, where the head of the house had the right of life and death over his wife and children. Thus, the family, not having an inherent moral character, must receive a normal moral basis for itself before imparting it to anything else. As for property, recognizing it as the moral basis of a normal society, therefore, as something sacred and inviolable, is not only a logical, but for me, for example (as I believe, for my other peers), even a psychological impossibility: the first awakening of conscious life and thought occurred in us under the thunder of the destruction of property in its two fundamental historical forms - slavery and serfdom; this destruction in both America and Russia was required and carried out in the name of public morality. The imaginary immunity was brilliantly refuted by the fact of such a successful and conscience-approved touch. Obviously, property is something that needs justification, requires a moral norm and support for itself, and does not contain it in itself. Every historical institution - religious or civil - is a fact of a mixed nature. But a moral norm, undoubtedly, can only be a pure principle, and not a mixed fact. A principle that affirms in an unconditional form what should be is something essentially inviolable; it may not be accepted or fulfilled, but this does not harm him, but only the one who does not accept and does not fulfill it. The provision that says: you must respect the human dignity in everyone, you must not make any person a means or an instrument - this provision does not depend on any fact, does not affirm any fact, and therefore cannot be affected by any fact. The principle of the unconditional right of the human person does not depend on anyone or anything, but only depending on it do societies and institutions acquire a moral character. We know in ancient and modern paganism great cultural-national bodies with an extremely strong family, religion, property, but for all that they did not have and do not have the moral character of a human community; at best, they are likened to a community of wise insects, where there is a mechanism of good order, but there is no what this mechanism should serve - there is no good itself, because there is no bearer of it - a free personality. A certain vague and perverted consciousness of what is the essence of morality and the true norm of human society exists even where the moral principle, apparently, has no application. Thus, in Eastern despotisms, only the one who has full rights is rightly recognized as a real person, that is, as a person, and such dignity is attributed here to only one. But, transformed into an exclusive and externally defined privilege, human dignity and right loses its moral character, and its only bearer ceases to be a person and, not having the opportunity, as a real, concrete being, to be a pure principle, becomes an idol. From an individual person, the moral principle requires that he respect human dignity as such, that is, in others as well as in himself. Only by treating others as persons is an individual person himself defined as a person. But the eastern ruler does not find in his world any full-fledged person, but only things without rights, therefore, due to the impossibility of having moral personal relations with anyone, he inevitably loses his moral personal character, becomes a thing - the most important thing, sacred, divine, worshiped - in a word, a fetish, or an idol. In civil societies of the classical world, full rights became the privilege not of one, but of some (in aristocracies) and many (in democracies). This expansion was very important, since it, although within narrow limits, made possible the independent moral interaction of individuals, and therefore personal self-awareness, and realized, at least for a given social union, the idea of ​​equality or justice. 110 But the moral principle is essentially universal, since it requires recognition of the unconditional internal dignity of a person as such, therefore, without any external restrictions. Meanwhile, ancient society - and the clan squad of the Spartiates, and the Athenian demos, and the original combination of both forms - the senatus populusque romanus (Senate and the Roman people (lat.)) allowed the true meaning of man only within the boundaries of their civil union, and therefore they were not societies based on a moral principle, but perhaps only preliminary and approximate models of such a society. However, the structure of this life has more than one historical interest for us: in essence, we have not yet experienced it. Let us remember, in fact, what exactly in the ancient world limited the moral principle and prevented its true implementation. There were three categories of people who were not recognized as bearers of any rights and as subjects of any duties, which, therefore, were in no way the goal of activity, were not at all included in the idea of ​​the common good, but were considered only as material tools or as material obstacles to this good. These were precisely: 1) enemies, that is, initially all foreigners, 111 then 2) slaves and, finally, 3) criminals. The legalized attitude towards these three categories of people, despite all the particular differences, was essentially the same, since it was equally immoral. There is no need to present in an exaggeratedly terrible form the institution of slavery, which, as is known, replaced the simple beating of prisoners; the slaves enjoyed secure means of subsistence, and in general they were not treated badly, but this was, although not uncommon, an accident, and not a duty and, therefore, had no moral significance; they were valued for their usefulness, but this had nothing to do with the recognition of their human dignity. In contrast to these useful things, which should be protected out of prudence, external and internal enemies, as things known to be harmful, were subject to merciless extermination. In relation to the enemy in war, this mercilessness could still be limited by respect for strength and fear of retribution, but with regard to defenseless criminals, real or perceived, cruelty knew no limits: in educated Athens, for those accused of ordinary criminal offenses, torture was the first thing after being taken into custody, before any investigation. All these phenomena - war, slavery, executions - were natural for the ancient world in the sense that they logically followed from the worldview accepted by everyone and were determined by the general state of consciousness. If the significance of a person as an independent person, if the fullness of his dignity and rights were determined solely by belonging to a certain civil union, then the natural consequence is that people who do not belong to this union, are alien and hostile to it, or, although they belong to it, violate its law and threaten general security, are thereby deprived of human dignity and rights, and regarding them everything is permitted. But this state of ancient consciousness is changing. The development of ethical thought, first among the Sophists and Socrates, then among the Greco-Roman Stoics, the work of Roman jurists, and the very character of the Roman state - comprehensive and international and therefore inevitably expanding the mental and life horizons - all this gradually smoothed out the old boundaries and established the moral principle in the consciousness in the sense of its formal unlimitedness and universality. Meanwhile, on the other, eastern side, the religious and moral preaching of the prophets of Israel developed a living ideal of unconditional human dignity. And while one Roman in the theater of the eternal city, in order to express the highest degree of personal dignity, instead of the former civis romanus (Roman citizen) proclaimed through the lips of an actor a new word: homo sum (I am a man), another Roman, in a remote eastern province and on a more tragic stage, supplemented this statement of the new principle with a simple indication of its actual personal embodiment: ecce homo! (behold the man!). The internal revolution that took place in humanity from the interaction of Palestinian events with Greco-Roman theories seemed to be the beginning of an entirely new order of things. Even a complete renewal of the physical world was expected - instead, the social and moral world of paganism remains to this day without fundamental and final changes. We will not be surprised or complain about this if we imagine the task of the moral regeneration of humanity in its entirety. That the solution to this problem must be prepared by a gradual process before the final catastrophe is clear from the essence of the matter and is indicated in the Gospel itself. 112 The process of such preparation has not been completed, but is being accomplished, and there is no doubt that since the 15th and especially since the end of the 18th century, the course of history has represented a noticeable progressive acceleration. In a moral-practical sense, it is important to give yourself a clear account of what has already been done and how, what and how remains to be done in certain, definite respects. Since then, while people of different nationalities and social classes united spiritually in the worship of someone else's beggar Galilean, who was executed as a criminal in the name of national and caste interests, international wars, the lack of rights of social classes and the execution of criminals were internally undermined. Even if this internal change took eighteen centuries to even partially come out, and even if this discovery becomes noticeable just at the time when its first driving cause - the Christian faith is weakening and, apparently, disappears on the surface of consciousness - still this change in attitude towards the old pagan foundations of society penetrates the soul of humanity internally and is more and more revealed in its life. Whatever the thoughts of individual people, as a collective whole, advanced humanity has reached that moral maturity, that state of consciousness and feeling that begins to make impossible for it what was natural for the ancient world. And for individual people who have not renounced reason, the moral principle that does not allow the legalization of collective crimes has its binding force, if not in the form of religious faith, then in the form of rational conviction. The very fact of external rapprochement, acquaintance and connection between the most distant parts of humanity largely abolishes mutual barriers and alienation, natural with the narrow ancient outlook, for which the Strait of Gibraltar was the extreme limit of the universe, and people with dog heads lived along the Dnieper or Don. International wars have not yet been abolished, but the general attitude towards them, especially in recent times, has changed strikingly. The fear of war has become the predominant motive of international politics, and no government will dare to admit to aggressive designs. – Slavery in the proper sense has been abolished unconditionally and completely, and other crude forms of personal dependence that lasted until the last century, and in other places until half of this century, have also been abolished; All that remains is indirect economic slavery, but this too is an issue on the agenda. Finally, the attitude towards criminals since the 18th century has clearly changed in the sense of a moral Christian principle. And this, although late, but now rapid and decisive progress along the path intended nineteen centuries ago, raises fears for the moral foundations of society! In fact, the false concept of these foundations is the main obstacle that delays a radical moral revolution in social consciousness and life. Religion, family, property in themselves, that is, by their actual existence alone, cannot, as we know, be the normal moral foundations of society, and the task is not to support these institutions at all costs in their statu quo, but to make them consistent with the only moral norm, so that they are completely imbued with a single true principle. This beginning is essentially universal, one for everyone. Religion, as such, may not be universal, and all ancient religions were narrowly national. But Christianity, as the embodiment of an absolute moral ideal, is as universal as the moral principle itself; This is how it appeared from the beginning; but the historical institutions associated with it over the centuries did not remain universal and thereby lost the purity and completeness of their moral character. And while we affirm our religion, firstly, in its confessional specificity, and then as universal Christianity, we deprive it not only of sound logic, but also of moral significance and make it an obstacle to the spiritual rebirth of humanity. Further, universality is expressed not only in the absence of external, national, religious and other barriers, but even more in freedom from internal limitations: to be truly universal, religion should not be separated from mental enlightenment, from science, from social and political progress. A religion that is afraid of all this obviously does not even believe in its own strengths; it is internally imbued with unbelief, and with its claim to the monopoly of a moral norm for society, it lacks the most elementary moral condition - sincerity. The positive significance of the family, due to which it can represent, in a certain sense, the moral norm of society, is as follows. It is physically impossible for an individual person to actually implement his moral attitude towards everyone in everyday life. Even with the most sincere recognition of the unconditional requirements of the moral principle, a person cannot actually apply these requirements to all personal beings for the simple reason that these “all” do not really exist for him. He cannot actually prove his respect for human dignity in the person of those billions of people about whom he has no idea, he cannot set them in concrete as a positive goal of his activities. Meanwhile, without the full realization of the moral principle in tangible personal relationships, it remains an abstract principle that enlightens consciousness, but does not regenerate human life. The way out of this contradiction is for the complete realization of moral relations to take place for each person in a certain close environment that truly and constantly surrounds him. This is exactly what a family is, true to its purpose; here indeed, not only by intention and aspiration, but in fact, everyone is a goal for everyone, everyone is tangibly recognized as having an unconditional significance, everyone is something irreplaceable. From this point of view, the family is the elementary, exemplary and educational unit of the universal brotherhood, or human society, as it should be. But in order to maintain such significance, the family, obviously, should not turn into a sphere of satisfied mutual egoism, and for each of its members, from this first step, a further upward path of possible realization of the moral principle in the world should always be open. The family is either the completion of egoism, or the beginning of universal unity. Protecting it in the first sense does not mean protecting the “moral foundation” of society. Property has no moral significance at all. No one is obligated to be rich, and no one is obligated to enrich others. Equality of all property is as impossible and unnecessary as the same color or thickness of oxen. There is, however, a condition under which a person's property status becomes a moral issue. When a person cannot maintain his existence or when, to maintain his existence, he must spend so much energy and so much time that he does not have enough left to worry about his human, mental and moral improvement, such a situation is directly contrary to human dignity and the moral norm of society, here a person ceases to be a goal for himself and others, he becomes only a material instrument of economic production on a par with soulless machines. And since the moral principle, of course, requires that we respect human dignity in each and every one, and look at each and every one as an end, and not as a means only, then a society that wants to be morally normal cannot remain indifferent to this situation of any of its members. His direct responsibility is to provide everyone with a certain minimum well-being, exactly what is necessary to maintain a decent human existence. How to do this is no longer a question of morality, but of economic policy. In any case, this should, and therefore can be done. Any human society, and especially a society that recognizes itself as Christian, can strengthen its existence and raise its dignity only by becoming consistent with the moral norm. This means that the point is not in the external protection of certain institutions that may be good or bad, but only in a sincere and consistent effort to internally improve all institutions and social relations that can become good, more and more subordinating them to the single and unconditional moral ideal of the free unity of all in perfect goodness. Christianity set this ideal as a practical task for all people and nations, vouched for its feasibility with good will and promised the highest help in its implementation - help, which is sufficiently evidenced by both personal and historical experience. But by the very nature of the Christian task, as moral and, therefore, free, the help of the highest Good to man cannot consist in the rape of evil will or the external destruction of the obstacles it poses to the realization of the Kingdom of God. Humanity in people and nations must itself survive and overcome these obstacles, which appear not only in the form of personal evil will, but also in the form of complex products of collective evil will. Hence the real slowness of progress in the Christian world and the seeming ineffectiveness and ossification of Christianity. Chapter fourteen. The national question from a moral point of view The task of embodying perfect morality in the collective whole of humanity meets here - in addition to personal passions and vices - with inveterate forms of collective evil, acting endemically. This evil, as it manifested itself in ancient times, so, despite the indisputable, albeit slow progress of human society, still manifests itself now in a threefold enmity, in a threefold immoral relationship: between different peoples, between society and the criminal, between different social classes. If you just listen to how the French talk about the Germans, the Portuguese about the Dutch, the Chinese about the British and the Americans about the Chinese, if, further, you pay attention to the feelings and thoughts of the audience at criminal trials or to the actions of the crowd using lynching in America or committing lynching of witches and horse thieves here in Russia, if, finally, you listen or read what is exchanged at gatherings, meetings and in newspapers between socialist workers and representatives of the bourgeoisie, it will become obvious that in addition to the anomalies of personal will, it is also necessary to take into account the power of super-personal enmity, collective in its three types, and that issues of nationality, criminal and socio-economic, regardless of the interests of foreign and domestic policy, are of particular importance for moral consciousness. The answer to them from this point of view is all the more urgent that the worst evil has now been added to the disaster of hereditary moral illness - reckless treatment in the form of preaching the painful decomposition of humanity into its individual elements, on the one hand, and new types of social violence, on the other. The attitude of a person to a nationality is determined today in the public consciousness by two views: nationalistic and cosmopolitan. In the area of ​​feelings and tastes there may be transitions and shades, but there are only two clear and definite points of view before us. The first can be reduced to the formula: we must love our people and serve their good by all means, and we have the right to be indifferent to other peoples; in the event of a conflict between their national interests and ours, we are obliged to treat these foreign peoples with hostility. The essence of another, cosmopolitan point of view is expressed as follows: nationality is only a natural fact that does not have any moral significance; We have no responsibilities to the people as such (neither to our own nor to strangers), and only to individual people without any distinction between nationalities. It is easy to immediately see that neither one nor the other of these views expresses a proper attitude towards the fact of national divisions: the first view gives this fact an unconditional significance that cannot belong to it, and the second takes away from it all significance. It is also easy to notice that each of the two views finds its justification only in the negative side of the opposite view. Every sensible cosmopolitan reproaches adherents of nationalism not because, of course, they love their people, but only because they consider it permissible, and in other cases obligatory, to hate and despise foreigners and strangers. In the same way, the most ardent nationalist, unless he is devoid of reason, attacks cosmopolitans not because they demand justice for strangers, but only because they are indifferent to their own people. This means that in each of these views, even its direct opponents involuntarily distinguish the good side from the bad, and the question naturally arises: are these two sides connected by a necessary connection, i.e. 1) does love for one’s people entail the permissibility of all means for the sake of their interests and the legality of an indifferent and hostile attitude towards strangers? and 2) does indifference to the nationality in general and to one’s own in particular follow from the same moral attitude towards all people? The first question is easy to solve if you only analyze what is contained in the concept of true patriotism, or love for the people. The need for such an elementary analysis should be recognized by everyone, for everyone will agree that there is unreasonable patriotism, which instead of the desired benefit brings harm and leads nations to destruction, there is empty patriotism, expressing only an unfounded claim, and, finally, there is downright false patriotism, which serves only as a guise for low, selfish motives. What is real, or true, patriotism? True love for someone is expressed in the fact that we desire and try to provide the beloved being with all the benefits, not only moral, but also material, but the latter are certainly subject to the conditions of the former. For everyone I love, I wish, among other things, material well-being, but, of course, only so that he achieves it by honest means and uses it well. If my friend is in need, and for this reason I will help him to fraudulently acquire a fortune, even with guarantees of impunity for his crime, or if he is a writer, and I advise him to increase his literary fame through successful plagiarism, then everyone will rightly consider me either crazy or a scoundrel, and not at all a good friend of his friend. It is clear, therefore, that the goods that love makes us desire for our neighbor differ not only in their external properties, but also in their internal significance for the will: spiritual goods, which by their very concept exclude the possibility of bad means for their acquisition, since it is impossible to steal moral dignity, or rob justice, or delay philanthropy - these goods are unconditionally desirable; on the contrary, material goods, which by nature allow for bad means, are desirable under the condition of not using such means, that is, under the condition of subordinating material goals to moral goals. To a certain extent, everyone agrees with this elementary truth; everyone agrees that it is impermissible to enrich, through crime, neither yourself, nor your friend, nor your family, nor his family, nor even your city or the entire region in which you live. But this moral truth, clear as day, suddenly becomes dim and completely obscured as soon as it comes to one’s own people. For his supposed good, to serve his supposed interests, suddenly everything is permitted, the end justifies the means, black becomes white, lies are preferred to truth and violence is extolled as valor. Nationality here becomes the unconditional and final goal, the highest good and measure of goodness for human activity. But such undue elevation is only illusory and in fact comes down to the humiliation of the people. Since the highest human goods exclude immoral means for their achievement, then, by allowing precisely these evil methods into our service to the people and legitimizing them, we thereby limit the people's interest only to those lower material goods that can be obtained and preserved in an evil and crooked way. This is, first of all, an insult to the very people we want to serve. This is a transfer of the center of gravity of people's life from a higher sphere to a lower one - under the guise of serving the people, this is only serving the people's egoism. The moral bankruptcy of such nationalism is also exposed by history, which loudly testifies that peoples prospered and exalted themselves only when they served not themselves as an end in themselves, but the highest and universal ideal benefits. And besides, history also testifies to the factual groundlessness of the very idea of ​​a nation or nationalities as the radical and final bearers of the collective life of mankind. The separation in the human race of certain and strong groups with a national character is not a universal and original fact. Not to mention those savages and barbarians who still live in separate clans, clans or wandering bands, and in the cultural part of humanity, the division into nations has never had an exclusive predominance even in the era of state life, when the “clan” finally gave way to the “city” or “fatherland”. The fact is that the fatherland and the nation, although more or less closely related to each other, do not coincide entirely. In the ancient world we almost never see a clear division into nationalities; here we see either independent civil communities, i.e. groups smaller than nations, united not nationally, but only politically, such as cities in Phenicia, Greece, Italy, or, on the contrary, groups larger than a nation, multinational states, the so-called “world monarchies”, from the Assyro-Babylonian to the Roman, these crude preliminary to the all-human union, and ethnic differences have only material, and not formative, significance. The principle of nationality, as the supreme principle of life, had almost no place and time for its application in the ancient world. The opposition between our own people and strangers then existed much stronger and more mercilessly than with us, but it was not determined by nationality. In the kingdom of Darius and Xerxes, people of various tribes and countries were their own, equally subordinate to one common power and one supreme law, and for them only those people who had not yet submitted to the “great king” were strangers or enemies. On the other hand, in Greece, although the Athenian and the Spartan spoke the same language, had the same gods and were quite clearly aware of their national community, this did not prevent them from being foreigners and even mortal enemies to each other throughout their entire history. Similar relations existed between other cities or civil communities of Greece, and only once in a thousand years did real national or panhellenic patriotism actively manifest itself - during the Persian invasion. But this (even here only approximate) coincidence between the limits of practical solidarity and the limits of national identity did not last even forty years, giving way to the fierce and prolonged extermination of the Greeks by the Greeks in the Peloponnesian War, and this state of bloody struggle of small communities among one people, considered completely normal, continued until the moment when these communities all together lost their independence, but not in favor of national unity, but only so that, under the rule of foreign kings, the Greek people would immediately move from their political disunity to the role of cultural unifier of the entire world of that time. The contrast between fellow citizens and foreigners (i.e. inhabitants of another, albeit Greek, city) had now lost all meaning (in the sense of a higher practical principle), but was not replaced by a national opposition, between one’s own people and strangers: another, broader opposition remained - between Hellenism and barbarism, and belonging to the first was not necessarily determined by origin or even language, but only by the assimilation of a higher mental-aesthetic culture. The most pretentious of the Greeks did not, of course, consider Horace and Virgil, Augustus or Maecenas, to be barbarians. And even before that, the founders of the Hellenic “world monarchy” themselves - the Macedonian kings, Philip and Alexander, were not Greeks in the ethnographic sense. And thanks to these two foreigners, the Greeks directly moved from the narrow, local patriotism of individual civil communities to a universal cultural self-awareness, without returning at all to the moment of national patriotism of the Persian wars. As for Rome, the whole of Roman history was a continuous transition from the politics of the city to the politics of the world monarchy - ab urbe ad orbem, without any stop at the purely national moment. When Rome defended itself from the Punian invasion, it was still only the strongest of the cities of Italy, and when it crushed its enemy, it imperceptibly crossed the ethnographic and geographical boundaries of Latinity, recognized itself as a world-historical force, two centuries preceding the poet’s reminder: Remember your lot, O Rome: to rule the peoples with sovereignty. Give protection to the humble, subduing the proud with weapons. Roman citizenship soon became publicly available, and the formula “Rome for the Romans” did not appeal to anyone on the banks of the Tiber: Rome was for the world. While the Alexanders and Caesars were politically abolishing precarious national boundaries in the East and West, cosmopolitanism was developed and spread as a philosophical principle by representatives of the two most popular schools - the wandering Cynics and the imperturbable Stoics. They preached the supremacy of nature and reason, the single essence of everything that exists, and the insignificance of all artificial and historical divisions and boundaries. Man by his very nature, therefore, every man, they taught, has the highest dignity and purpose, which consists in freedom from external attachments, errors and passions - in the unshakable valor of that man who, If the whole world, having cracked, fell apart, He remained fearless in the ruins. 113 Hence the inevitable recognition as conditional and illusory of any divisions given from outside, civil, national, etc. This philosophical idea of ​​natural and therefore universal reason, a common virtue and equal right for all, was supported, in its own sphere and from its own point of view, by Roman jurisprudence, 114 and the consequence of this general mental work was that the concept of “Roman”, not only in external scope, but also in internal content, was identified with the concept of “universal”. 115 By the time of the emergence of Christianity within the ancient cultural world, only one Jewish people had developed a strong national consciousness. But here it was inseparably connected with religion, with a true sense of the internal superiority of this religion and with a presentiment of its world-historical purpose. The national consciousness of the Jews had no real satisfaction; it lived in hopes and expectations. The short-term greatness of David and Solomon was idealized and turned into a golden age, but the tenacious historical sense of the people who created the world's first philosophy of history (in the Book of Daniel about world monarchies and the kingdom of truth of the Son of Man) did not allow him to dwell on the enlightened image of the past, but forced him to transfer his ideal into the future. But this ideal, which initially had some features of universal significance, carried forward by the inspiration of the prophets, was decisively freed from everything narrowly national: already Isaiah proclaims the Messiah as a banner that will gather all nations around him, and the author of the book of Daniel fully stands on the point of view of universal history. But this messianic universalism, which expressed the true national self-consciousness of the Jews, as the highest ideal color of the national spirit, was the property of only a select few seers, and when the banner predicted by the prophets for all nations was raised in Galilee and Jerusalem, the majority of the Jews, with their official leaders (Sadducees), and partly unofficial teachers (Pharisees), found themselves on the side of national-religious exclusivity, against the highest realization of the prophetic ideal. The inevitable clash and gap between these two aspirations, as it were, the “two souls” 116 of the Jewish people, sufficiently explains (from a purely historical point of view) the great tragedy of Golgotha, from which Christianity emerged. 117 It would, however, be a clear mistake to associate the principle of cosmopolitanism with Christianity. There was no reason for the apostles to preach non-ethnicity. The harmful, immoral side of national divisions, namely mutual hatred and evil struggle, no longer existed within the boundaries of the then “universe” 118 - the war of peoples was abolished by the “Roman Peace” (pax Romana). The spearhead of Christian universalism was directed against other, deeper divisions, which retained all their practical force, despite the ideas of prophets, philosophers and jurists. The religious division remained in force - between Judaism and paganism; further cultural - between Hellenism (which included the educated Romans) and barbarism; finally, the worst division is socio-economic - into free and slaves, which retains all its power in real life, despite the theoretical protests of the Stoics. These divisions were in direct contradiction with the moral principle, which was not at all represented by the national varieties of that time (as innocent in the Roman Empire as, for example, Breton or Gascon provincialism in modern France). Between Jews and pagans, Greeks and barbarians, free and slaves, there was a denial of all solidarity; it was an opposition between higher and lower beings, and the moral dignity and human rights were denied to the lower ones. 119 That is why the apostle had to declare that in Christ there is neither Jew, nor pagan, nor Greek, nor barbarian, neither free nor slave, but the new creation is a new creation, however, and not a simple reduction of the old to one denominator. The apostle replaces the negative Stoic ideal of a dispassionate person, indifferent to the destruction of the world, with the positive ideal of a person sympathetic and unanimous with all creation, who has internalized the suffering and death for the world endured by the universal man Christ, and therefore participates in His triumph over death and in the salvation of the whole world. In Christianity, consciousness moves from the abstract universal man of philosophers and jurists to the real universal man, and thereby completely abolishes the old enmity and alienation between different classes of people. Every person, if only he allows himself to be “imagined by Christ,” 120 that is, imbued with the spirit of a perfect man, defining His image as the ideal norm for his entire life and activity, becomes a participant in the Divine by the power of the Son of God abiding in him. For a person in this reborn state, individuality - like nationality and all other features and differences - ceases to be a boundary, but becomes the basis of a positive union with the collective pan-humanity or church (in its true essence) that replenishes it. How (according to the well-known instructions of the Apostle Paul) a feature in the structure and function of a known organ, for example. eyes, which distinguishes it from other organs, does not, however, separate it from them and from the whole body, but, on the contrary, forms the basis of its certain positive participation in the life of the whole body and its irreplaceable significance for all other organs and for the whole organism, so in the “body of Christ” individual characteristics do not separate each from everyone, but connect with everyone, being the basis of its special significance for everyone and positive interaction with everyone. But the same applies, obviously, to nationality. Pan-humanity (or the church that the Apostle preached) is not an abstract concept, but the consonant completeness of all the positive features of the new or reborn creation, which means not only personal, but also national. The Body of Christ, as a perfect organism, cannot consist of simple cells alone, but must also contain more complex and larger organs, which are naturally represented here by different nationalities. A national character differs from an individual character by the greater volume and durability of its bearer, and not by anything fundamental, 121 and if Christianity does not require impersonality, then it cannot demand non-nationality. The spiritual rebirth or renewal that he actually requires from individuals and peoples is not the destruction of natural properties and forces, but only their modification, the imparting to them of new content and direction. Just as Peter and John, after their rebirth by the Spirit of Christ, retained the positive characteristics and distinctive features of their characters, did not become depersonalized at all, but, on the contrary, strengthened and developed their individuality, so it should be with entire nations accepting Christianity. The actual assimilation of true religion with the unconditional principle contained in it must destroy much in the life of the people (as well as personal), but all this, subject to destruction by virtue of the highest principle, does not constitute a positive feature or character. There is a bad collective will, a false direction in people’s life and activity, there are historical sins that weigh heavily on the people’s conscience; one must free oneself from all this, but such liberation can only strengthen the nation, strengthen and expand the manifestation of its positive character. The first preachers of the gospel had no reason to deal with the national question, which had not yet been raised by the life of mankind, since there were almost no clearly defined, independent and self-conscious nationalities on the historical scene of that time. Nevertheless, we find in the New Testament certain indications of a positive attitude towards nationality. In the words to the Samaritan woman: salvation from the Jews 122 - and in the preliminary instruction to the disciples: go first to the lost sheep of the house of Israel 123 - Christ sufficiently shows love for his people, and His final covenant to the apostles: go, teach all nations 124 - makes it clear that outside of Israel He foresaw not only individual people, but entire nations. 125 And Paul, having become the apostle of languages, did not, however, become a cosmopolitan; having separated from the majority of his compatriots in the most important matter, religious, he did not become indifferent to his people and their special purpose: “Truly I speak in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bears witness with me in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing sorrow to my heart, for I myself would like to be excommunicated from Christ for my brothers, my relatives in the flesh, that is, the Israelites, theirs.” adoption, and glory, and covenants, and the establishment of laws, and worship, and promises, theirs and the fathers, and from them is Christ according to the flesh... Brethren! my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel’s salvation.” 126 Before realizing the ideal of pan-humanity, nations had to form themselves and determine their independence. Let's look at this process in particular where it has completely ended - in Western Europe. The successors of the apostles, to whom the covenant to teach all nations passed, soon had to deal with infant nations, who, before being taught, needed initial education - the Church conscientiously and selflessly nurtured them and, then, continuing its guardianship, forced them to go through a not bad, although somewhat one-sided school. The historical adolescence and youth of the German-Roman peoples under the tutelage of the Catholic Church - the so-called Middle Ages - ended far from correctly, because the spiritual authorities did not notice the coming of age of their pupils and, due to natural human weakness, insisted on maintaining the previous relationships. The anomalies and revolutions that arose from this are not relevant to our subject. What is important for us is one phenomenon that was repeated in the national development of every European people, despite the most diverse and otherwise contradictory conditions, so that this phenomenon undoubtedly points to some general ethical-historical law. For reasons that are self-explanatory, Italy achieved national self-awareness earlier than all European peoples. Lombard League in the middle of the 12th century. denotes a clear national awakening. But this external struggle was only the impetus that brought to life the true powers of the Italian genius. At the beginning of the next century, the newborn Italian language in the mouth of St. Francis already expresses feelings and thoughts of universal significance, equally understandable to Buddhist and Christian; Italian painting immediately began (Cimabue), and then (at the beginning of the 14th century) the comprehensive creation of Dante appeared, which alone would be enough for the greatness of Italy. In this and the following centuries (until the 17th), Italy, torn apart by warring cities and podestas, pope and emperor, French and Spaniards, produced everything that it is significant and dear to humanity, of which Italians can rightfully be proud. All these immortal works of philosophical and scientific, poetic and artistic genius had the same value for other peoples, for the whole world, as for the Italians themselves. The creators of the true greatness of Italy, without a doubt, were true patriots, they attached the highest importance to their fatherland, but this was not an empty pretension on their part, leading to false and immoral demands - they really realized the highest importance of Italy in works of unconditional dignity. They did not consider it true and beautiful to affirm themselves and their nationality, but they directly affirmed themselves in the true and beautiful; these creations were not good because they glorified Italy, but on the contrary, they glorified Italy because they were good in themselves - good for everyone. Under this condition, patriotism does not need protection and justification: it justifies itself in practice, manifesting itself as a creative force, and not as a fruitless reflection, or “irritation of an idle thought.” The internal tension of creativity was matched by the widespread prevalence of the Italian element in this flourishing era: the limits of its cultural influence in Europe were the Crimea in the east and Scotland in the northwest. The first European, the Italian Marco Polo, penetrates Mongolia and China. Another Italian discovers the New World, and a third, spreading this discovery, leaves his name to it. The literary influence of Italy has for several centuries prevailed throughout Europe; Italians are imitated in epic, lyric poetry, and novel; Shakespeare takes from them the plots and form of his dramas and comedies; the ideas of Giordano Bruno stimulate philosophical thought in both England and Germany; The Italian language and Italian fashions dominate everywhere in the upper strata of society. With all this flowering of national creativity and influence, the Italians obviously did not care about Italy being for them (it was then, on the contrary, for anyone), but only about what made them themselves something for others, what gave them universal significance, that is, they cared about those objective ideas of beauty and truth, which through their national spirit received new and worthy expressions. What concept of nationality logically follows from this? Is it possible, with the national history of Italy in hand, to assert that nationality is something self-existent and self-sufficient, living in itself and for itself, when this glorious nationality turns out to be in fact only a special form of universal content, living in it, being filled with it and embodying it not only for itself, but for everyone. The Spanish people developed under very special conditions. For seven centuries the Spaniards represented the right advanced flank of the Christian world in its struggle with the Muslim world, and just after the left flank - Byzantium - was overthrown by the enemy, the Spaniards on the right won a decisive and final victory. This persistent and successful struggle justly constituted the national glory of the Spaniards. It is unacceptable for a Christian people to hate and despise Muslims (as well as anyone else) and strive to eradicate them; but defending against them during the era of their invasion of Europe was a direct Christian duty. For since Christianity, with all its historical distortions, contains within itself the absolute truth to which the future belongs, the defense of at least only the external borders of the Christian confession and culture against the exterminating violence of armed infidels is already an undoubted service to humanity. If Western Europe were to suffer the fate of Western Asia and the Balkan Peninsula, then, apart from religious beliefs, from a purely cultural point of view, would this really contribute to historical progress? 127 Defending themselves from the Moors, the Spaniards served and knew that they were serving a common cause; It would never have occurred to them to say: Spain for the Spaniards, for then why not go further and say: Castile for the Castilians, Aragonia for the Aragonese, etc. - they felt, realized and said: Spain for all of Christianity, like Christianity itself for the whole world. In this they were completely sincere, they really wanted to serve their religion as a universal one, as the highest good for everyone, and they can only be reproached for an incorrect or one-sided understanding of Christianity. The continuous seven-century struggle, although for a common and just cause, but the struggle was mainly external, with weapons in hand, 128 created both the strength and limitations of the Spanish national spirit. More than other peoples, the Spaniards distorted the truth of Christianity in their practical understanding and activities; they most decisively gave place to violence in it. Like everyone else in the Middle Ages, the Spaniards based their worldview on the difference between two swords - the spiritual, which was owned by the monks under the command of the pope, and the secular, which was owned by the knights under the command of the king; but among them, more closely than among other peoples, these two swords were connected with each other until the essential difference was lost; the spiritual sword finally turned out to be just as external, violent and only more painful and less noble than the secular sword. The special role of the Spanish element in this matter is quite visible from the two-time foundation of the Inquisition by the Spaniards - the monk Dominic in the 13th century. and King Ferdinand in the 15th. 129 If the struggle of the Spanish knights with the warlike Muslim conquerors was a merit to Christianity and the basis of the greatness of Spain, then the actions of the “spiritual sword” - against the defeated Moors and Moriscos and against unarmed Jews - were, of course, a betrayal of the spirit of Christ, a disgrace for Spain and the first reason for its fall. The bitter fruits of the fatal historical sin did not ripen immediately. Spain also rendered a positive service to the common cause in its same path of external service to Christianity, namely by spreading it overseas. Spanish sea knights and sea robbers conquered most of the New World to any Christian culture; they saved an entire country (Mexico) from such abominations and horrors of satanic paganism, 130 before which the horrors of the Inquisition (which was also soon abolished) still pale in comparison: they founded a dozen new states in South and Middle America, although weakly, but still participating in the general historical life of mankind; and at the same time, Spanish missionaries (among them such a real saint as the Jesuit Francis Xavier) were the first to bring the gospel to India and Japan. But Spain continued to consider its real purpose to be the defense of Christianity (as it understood it, that is, the Catholic Church) from its closest and most dangerous enemies. Thus, in the 16th century, Protestants appeared in place of Muslims. We can now look at the Reformation as a necessary moment in the history of Christianity itself. But for contemporaries of this revolution such a view was impossible. People either became Protestants themselves, or saw in Protestantism a hostile attempt emanating from the devil against the Christian truth embodied in the church. For Spain, which connected its entire history with the Catholic idea, there was no choice. All the forces of the most powerful power at that time were directed to suppress the new religious movement. The case was wrong in principle, outrageously bloody in execution, hopelessly unsuccessful in its outcome; the moral guilt of Spain, which found such a national and “Christian” hero as the Duke of Alba, is beyond doubt, and one can only point out mitigating circumstances in favor of the Spaniards. They were sincerely, although blindly, confident that they stood for the common good, for the most important and dear good for humanity - for the one true religion, which godless apostates, possessed by the spirit of evil, wanted to take away from the peoples. In their national struggle against Protestantism, the Spaniards stood for a well-known universal principle, namely the principle of external guardianship of the divine institution over humanity. This was a false and untenable universalism, but its defenders believed in it sincerely and disinterestedly, serving it beyond any national-political, as well as personal, egoism. At the same time, to fight Protestantism in peaceful fields, the Spanish genius of Ignatius of Loyola founded the Jesuit Order, about which you can think whatever you want, but from which one thing cannot be taken away - its universal, international character. So, having made their national idea out of the fight against Protestantism, the Spaniards did not separate it from the interests of the common good, as they understood it. – The unsuccessful external struggle for Catholicism, which undermined the Spanish state, did not exhaust the spiritual strength of the Spanish nation; the moral energy discovered in the defense of a common, albeit poorly understood cause, found another, better, ideal expression. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain made its rich national contribution to the common treasury of higher culture - in the fields of art, poetry and contemplative mysticism. In all this, the Spanish genius turned to subjects that were important not only for this people, but for everyone, and his works - with a highly national character, which they received naturally, without any premeditation on the part of their creators - had undoubtedly worldwide interest and supported the glory of Spain even at a time when her external forces were crushed and her weapons suffered just defeats. It was in the 16th and 17th centuries, despite the natural hostility that arose in half of Europe against the cruel defenders of the old religion, that Spanish cultural influence competed with Italian, not without success. The highest flowering of the English folk spirit can be briefly designated by five names: Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton, Newton and Penn. These names are associated with what is important and dear to all humanity, what all peoples owe to England, and with which the claims and demands of exclusive nationalism have nothing in common. The people who created the national greatness of England did not even think about him. One thought about the true knowledge of nature and man, about the best method and system of sciences, the other - about the artistic reproduction of the human soul, passions, characters and life's destiny, and was not at all embarrassed to take plots from foreign literature and transfer the scene of action to foreign countries. And the great leaders of the Puritan movement, who found a brilliant prophet in Milton, thought primarily about the organization of life according to the biblical ideal, which, in their conviction, was equally obligatory for all peoples. These Englishmen did not hesitate to recognize as their own and carry across the oceans an ideal that was Jewish in its original origin, German in its Protestant form... And the greatest representative of the new science, with his English mind, discovered the universal truth about the physical world as a solidary body, containing within itself, as the beginning of its unity, what he called “the sense of the Divine.” A wide, open world of scientific experience on all sides, deep artistic humanism, lofty ideas of religious and civil freedom and a majestic idea of ​​the physical unity of the universe - this is what the English people created in the person of their heroes and geniuses. “England for the English” would be too little for them; they thought that the whole world was for the English, and they had the right to think this, because they themselves were for the whole world. The external distribution of the English element corresponded to the dignity of its internal content. Of course, British merchants respected and are observing their interests; but not every merchant would have been able to colonize North America and form a new great nation out of it - after all, the United States was founded not on red Indians or blacks, but on English people and on English ideas, religious and political - ideas of universal significance; Not just any merchant could have firmly taken possession of India and, finally, on completely wild soil, create a cultural Australia. 131 In the national development of France, the culminating point (if not in content, then in the internal tension of people's life and the breadth of its external capture) is the era (of the Great Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars) when the world-historical significance of this country was most clearly expressed. Of course, the rights of man and citizen proclaimed to the whole world turned out to be half imaginary; Of course, the all-encompassing revolutionary trinity, liberté, égalité, fraternité, was realized in a rather strange way. But in any case, the people’s enthusiastic enthusiasm for these universal ideas showed too clearly that they were alien to narrow nationalism. Did France want to be only “for the French” when she gave herself up to a half-Italian, so that he, controlling her forces, would sweep away the old order throughout Europe and introduce everywhere the universal principles of civil equality, religious and political freedom? And besides this era, France has always been distinguished by a special kind of universal receptivity and communication, the ability and desire, by assimilating other people's ideas, to give them a completed and publicly accessible form and put them into circulation throughout the world. This feature, which makes the history of France a bright, emphasized résumé of pan-European history, is too striking and has been pointed out too often for it to be necessary to expand on it. Having demonstrated the great strength of its national spirit in the Reformation, Germany then in modern times (from the half of the 18th to the half of the 19th century) acquired in the field of higher culture - mental and aesthetic - the primacy that belonged to Italy at the end of the Middle and beginning of the new centuries. The universal character and significance of the Reformation, Goethe's poetry, the philosophy of Kant or Hegel do not require proof or explanation. Let us only note that for Germany, as for Italy, the time of the highest spiritual flowering of national forces coincided with a time of political impotence and fragmentation. The broad idealism of the Polish spirit, susceptible to foreign influences to the point of enthusiasm and enthusiasm, is a characteristic feature that is all too obvious. The universalism of the Poles earned them the reproach of “betrayal of the Slavs” from narrow-minded nationalists. But whoever is familiar with the luminaries of Polish thought - Mickiewicz, Krasiński, Towianski, Słowacki - knows how much the great power of the national genius was manifested in their universalism. – As for our fatherland, in whom has the Russian national spirit been embodied most brightly and powerfully so far, if not in that tsar who, with his imperious hand, forever smashed our national exclusivity, and not in that poet who had the special gift of “reincarnating” in all other people’s geniuses, while remaining entirely Russian? 132 Peter the Great and Pushkin - these two names are enough to recognize that our national spirit realizes its dignity only in open communication with all humanity, and not in alienation from it. Without listing all the other nations, we will mention here only Holland and Sweden. For the first, national glory and prosperity were the result of her ideological struggle for faith, against Spanish violence, after which the small state did not withdraw into its dearly won independence, but became an open refuge of free thought for all of Europe. Sweden, in turn, showed national significance when, under Gustavus Adolphus, it devoted its energies to serving the common cause of religious freedom against the policy of forced unification. The history of all peoples - ancient and new - that had a direct influence on the destinies of mankind, tells us the same thing. All of them, in the eras of their heyday and greatness, believed their significance, asserted their nationality not in itself, taken in the abstract, but in something universal, super-national, in which they believed, what they served and what they implemented in their creativity - national in source and methods of expression, but completely universal in content or objective results. Peoples live and act not in the name of themselves or their material interests, but in the name of their idea, that is, what is most important to them and what the whole world needs, how they can serve it - they live not only for themselves, but for everyone. What the people believe in and what they do with faith, they certainly recognize as good unconditionally, good not as their own, but in itself, therefore, for everyone, and it usually turns out to be so. Historical representatives of a people can sometimes falsely understand one or the other side of the national-universal idea that they serve, and then their service turns out to be bad and unsuccessful. Philip II and the Duke of Alba understood the idea of ​​ecclesiastical unity very poorly; the Paris Convention understood the idea of ​​human rights no better; but the bad understanding passes, and the idea remains and is enlightened in new, better manifestations, if only it is truly rooted in the soul of the people. Since folk creativity is universal, that is, what the people actually accomplish, true national self-consciousness is universal in its subject matter. The people do not recognize themselves abstractly, as some kind of empty subject, separate from the content and meaning of their life; they recognize themselves precisely in or in relation to what they do and what they want to do, what they believe in and what they serve. But if the people themselves, as is clear from history, do not set themselves, taken in abstraction, as the goal of their lives, or the material interest of their existence separately from its highest, ideal condition, then each of us does not have the right, in love for our people, to separate them from the meaning of their lives and place service to their material benefits above moral requirements. And if the people themselves, with their true creativity and self-awareness, affirm themselves in the universal - in what matters to everyone or in which they are in solidarity with everyone, then how can a true patriot, for the sake of the supposed “benefit” of his people, break off solidarity with others, hate or despise foreigners? If the people themselves see their real good in the good of everyone, then how can patriotism place the good of its people as something separate and opposed to everything else? Obviously, this will not be the moral ideal good that the people themselves desire, and imaginary patriotism will be in conflict not with strangers, but with its own people in their best aspirations. But there is, however, national enmity and confrontation? There is, of course, just as cannibalism once existed everywhere - it exists as a zoological fact, condemned by the best human consciousness of the peoples themselves. Raised to an abstract beginning, this zoological fact weighs down on the life of peoples, darkening its meaning and suppressing its inspiration, for the meaning and inspiration of the particular is only in connection and agreement with the universal. Against false patriotism or nationalism, which supports the predominance of animal instincts among the people over the highest national self-consciousness, cosmopolitanism, which requires the unconditional application of the moral law without any regard to national differences, will be right. But it is precisely the moral principle, if carried out consistently to the end, that does not allow us to be satisfied with this negative demand of cosmopolitanism. Let the direct subject of moral attitude be an individual person. But in this person himself, one of his essential features - a direct continuation and expansion of his individuality - is his nationality (in the positive sense of character, type and creative power). This is not only a physical fact, but also a mental and moral definition. At the level of development that humanity has reached, the belonging of a given person to a certain nationality is secured by his own act of self-awareness and will. And, thus, nationality is an internal, inseparable affiliation of this person, something that is highly dear and close to him. And how is a moral attitude towards this person possible if one does not recognize the existence of what is so significant for him? The moral principle does not allow turning a real person, a living person with his integral and essential national definition, into some empty, abstract subject, arbitrarily isolating from him the features that define him. If we must recognize this person’s own dignity, then this obligation extends to everything positive with which he associates his dignity; and if we love a person, then we must love his nationality, which he loves and from which he does not separate himself. The highest moral ideal requires that we love all people as ourselves, but since people do not exist outside of nationalities (just as nationalities do not exist outside of individual people) and this connection has already become moral, internal, and not just physical, then the direct logical conclusion from here is that we must love all nationalities as our own. This commandment affirms patriotism as a natural and basic feeling, as a direct duty of a person to his immediate collective whole, and at the same time this feeling is freed from the zoological properties of national egoism, or nationalism, becoming the basis and measure for a positive attitude towards all other nationalities in accordance with an unconditional and comprehensive moral principle. The meaning of this demand for love for other nationalities does not in any way depend on the metaphysical question of peoples as independent collective beings. Even if nationality existed only in its visible individual carriers, then in them it in any case constitutes a positive feature that can be valued and loved among strangers just as among one’s fellow tribesmen. If such an attitude really becomes the rule, then national differences will remain and even intensify, become more pronounced, and only hostile divisions and grievances, which constitute the fundamental obstacle to the moral organization of mankind, will disappear. The requirement to love other nationalities as one’s own does not at all mean psychological sameness of feeling, but only ethical equality of volitional attitude: I must also want the true good of all other peoples, as well as my own; this “love of benevolence” is the same because true good is one and inseparable. Of course, such ethical love is also associated with psychological understanding and approval of the positive characteristics of all foreign nations - having overcome senseless and ignorant national enmity by moral will, we begin to know and appreciate foreign nationalities, we begin to like them. But this “love of approval” cannot be identical with that which we feel for our people, just as the most sincere love for neighbors (according to the Gospel commandment), ethically equal to love for oneself, can never be psychologically the same with it. For oneself, as well as for one’s people, the invariable primacy of the starting point remains. And with the elimination of this misunderstanding, every serious objection to our principle is eliminated: love all other peoples as your own. 133 Chapter fifteen. Criminal issue from a moral point of view By accepting the unconditional moral principle as the norm for all our relations, we will not encounter any significant, internal obstacles in the application of this principle to international morality, that is, to resolving the issue of our proper attitude towards foreigners, as such. Since neither in the property of this or that nationality, nor in the property of foreignness in general there is any moral limitation, by virtue of which a given foreigner should be considered in advance as a worse person than any of our compatriots, then there is no moral basis for national inequality. The general requirement of altruism remains in full force here: to love another as oneself, and another people as one’s own. The fact of international hostility must be condemned unconditionally as directly contrary to an unconditional norm, as essentially anti-Christian. 134 A normal or proper attitude towards foreign peoples is only that which is directly required by the unconditional moral principle, and if the implementation of this principle here encounters great difficulties, psychological and historical, then there are no internal moral difficulties, complications or questions here. They appear when, instead of a morally indifferent definition of foreignness, one has to deal with a definition that undoubtedly belongs to the moral sphere, what is the property of criminality. Although the content and scope of this concept in particular differ from time to time and place, although much that was formerly criminal is no longer recognized as such, and the very property of criminality, which once embraced the family and clan of the criminal, at a certain degree of spiritual development is understood exclusively as a personal property, all these historical changes do not eliminate the essence of the matter. Regardless of imaginary criminals of various kinds, in all human societies there have always been, are and until the end of the world there will be real criminals, that is, people with an evil will so strong and decisive that they directly carry it out in practice to the detriment of their neighbors and with danger to the whole community. How should we treat such obviously dashing people? It is clear that from the point of view of an unconditional moral principle, the requirements of altruism, which received its final expression in the Gospel commandments of love, should also apply to them. But the question, firstly, is how to combine love for a dashing person with love for his victim, and secondly, how can we actually show our love for this dashing person, or criminal, in this obviously abnormal moral state of his? No one can escape this moral question; Even if a person never had to personally deal with undoubted crimes and criminals, then he knows, living in society, that there is a very complex police-judicial-penitentiary organization appointed to counteract crime, and in any case he must determine his moral attitude towards these institutions, and it ultimately depends on how he looks at the criminal and the crime. How should we look at this from a purely moral point of view? In discussing this important issue we will begin with the simplest case, which lies at the root of all further complications. When one person offends another, for example, a stronger one beats a weaker one, then the witness of this insult - if he stands on a moral point of view - experiences a double feeling and an impulse to a double course of action. Firstly, he has a need to protect the offended, and secondly, to bring the offender to reason. Both of these needs have the same moral source: recognition of someone else's life and respect for someone else's dignity, psychologically based on a feeling of pity or compassion. We directly feel sorry for this creature, subjected to physical and mental suffering; His mental suffering, more or less conscious, consists in the fact that his human dignity is insulted. But such an external violation of human dignity in the offended person is certainly associated with an internal decline in this dignity in the offender: both require restoration. Although psychologically the feeling related to the offended person is very different from the feeling aroused by the offender, the first is pure pity, while in the second indignation and moral indignation predominate; but in order for this indignation to be moral, it should not turn into injustice towards the offender, into the denial of his right, although this right in its content (materially) differs from the right belonging to the offended. This one has the right to our protection, while the offender has the right to admonition on our part. But the moral basis of these two relationships (since we are talking about rational beings) is the same: the unconditional significance or dignity of the human personality, which we recognize in others as well as in ourselves, and the double violation of this dignity that occurs during a criminal offense - passive in the offended and active in the offender - evokes a moral reaction in us, and the essence of this reaction in both relations is the same, despite the difference and even the opposite of its psychological manifestation. Of course, in those cases where an insult causes direct or indirect physical suffering to the offended person, he immediately arouses a stronger feeling of pity, but, generally speaking, the offender, as one who internally loses moral dignity, should be pitiful to the highest degree. Be that as it may, the moral principle requires that we recognize the right of both to our help to restore the violated truth in both. But this very conclusion from the moral principle, which requires (in the case of a crime, that is, an offense against a person by a person) a moral attitude towards both parties, is far from being generally accepted, and we need to defend it from two kinds of opponents. Some (their opinion is still predominant) recognize only the right of the offended or injured person (or society) to protection and revenge, and the offender or criminal (after his guilt has been proven) is recognized (at least in reality) as a powerless, suffering subject of retribution, that is, more or less complete suppression or extermination. “There is nothing to feel sorry for the villain; dog's death! - here is the common people's sincere expression of this point of view. Its direct contradiction to the moral principle and incompatibility with more or less developed human feeling (expressed, by the way, among the same people, at least the Russians, in calling criminals unfortunate) explains and psychologically excuses the opposite extreme view, which is beginning to spread in our time. Here, only the offender’s right to verbal admonition is recognized and no coercive action is allowed in relation to him, which practically amounts to taking away the right to defense from the offended person or society; their safety is made dependent on the success of admonition, that is, on something problematic that is not in anyone’s power or responsibility. Let us carefully examine these two opposing doctrines, which for brevity we will call the doctrine of vengeance and the doctrine of verbal admonition. The doctrine of vengeance has for itself a real explanation and imaginary evidence - it is very important when analyzing it not to confuse one with the other. An animal that is attacked by another in order to devour it, out of a sense of self-preservation, defends itself with teeth and claws, if it has them strong enough, or flees. No one will look for moral motives here, just as in the physical self-defense of a person whose innate means of defense are supplemented or replaced by artificial weapons. But a person, even a wild one, usually does not live alone, but belongs to some social group - a clan, a clan, a gang. Therefore, when he meets the enemy, the matter does not end with the result of single combat. A murder or other insult suffered by one of the group members is felt by the entire group and causes a feeling of vindictiveness in it. Since this includes pity for the victim, the presence of a moral element must be recognized here, but, undoubtedly, the predominant importance belongs to the instinct of collective self-preservation, like that of bees or other social animals: by defending its own, the clan or clan defends itself, by avenging its own, it avenges itself. But the offender, for the same reason, is protected by his family or clan. Single clashes thus turn into wars of entire societies. Homeric poetry has preserved for us the immortal memory of this stage of social relations, perpetuating the Trojan War, which arose from a private insult inflicted by Paris on Menelaus. The history of the Arabs before Muhammad is full of such wars. The concepts of crime and punishment here, strictly speaking, do not exist: the offender here is an enemy who is being taken revenge, and not a criminal who is being punished. The place of later criminal justice is entirely occupied here by the generally recognized and absolutely obligatory custom of blood vengeance. This applies, of course, to grievances between members of different families or clans. But, generally speaking, there is no other kind of grievance at this stage of community life. The ties of a close family group are too strong, and the authority of patriarchal power is too impressive for an individual to decide to rebel against them: this is almost as incredible as the collision of an individual bee with a whole hive. Of course, even in tribal life, a person retained the ability for personal arbitrariness, which manifested itself in certain rare cases, but these exceptional manifestations were suppressed by the exceptional actions of the patriarchal authorities, without causing general measures. The situation changes with the transition to state life, that is, when many clans and tribes, in one way or another, for one reason or another or forced circumstances, are permanently united around one common leader with more or less organized power, and the independence of individual clans and tribes is abolished and the custom of blood feud is abolished. It is quite curious that philosophers and jurists from ancient times to almost the present day have built a priori theories about the origin of the state, as if all actual states arose in some antediluvian times. This is explained, of course, by the extremely imperfect state of historical science. But what else was permissible to Hobbes and even Rousseau cannot be allowed by modern thinkers. Tribal life, which all nations have experienced in one way or another, does not represent anything mysterious: clan is a direct manifestation of a natural, blood connection. The question, then, comes down to the transition from tribal life to state life, and this can already be the subject of historical observation. It is enough to name the transformation of disparate clans and tribes of northern Arabia into a powerful Muslim state that took place before the eyes of history. Its theocratic character is no exception; the same were, to a greater or lesser extent, all other significant states of old times. Let us remember how statehood usually begins: a leader superior to others in personal strength - military or religious, and most often both together - guided by the consciousness of his historical calling, as well as personal motives, gathers around himself people from different clans, or ruts, forming with them some kind of intertribal core, around which entire clans and tribes then voluntarily or forcibly gather, receiving laws and laws from the newly formed supreme power. control and losing, to a greater or lesser extent, their independence. When in any social group we find a hierarchically organized government with a central supreme power, a standing army, finance based on taxes and duties, and finally, laws provided with criminal sanctions, then in this group we recognize the real character of the state. All the calculated signs were evident in the Muslim community in the last years of Muhammad's life. It is remarkable that the history of the initial formation of this state confirms to some extent the theory of political contract: all the main steps of the Arab prophet in this matter are indicated by formal contracts, beginning with the so-called “oath of women” and ending with the last conditions that he prescribed in Mecca after his final victory over the family of Koreish and the tribes allied to them. Let us also note that in all these agreements the main point is the abolition of blood feud between the clans and clans included in the new political union. Hence, a previously non-existent distinction arises - between public and private law: in the laws of blood feud, as in other important respects, the interests of the collective group and the individual were directly solidary, especially since in a small social whole, like a clan or clan, all or at least most of the members could personally know each other, so that each for all and all for each represented, generally speaking, a real value. But when, during the formation of a state, a social group embraces hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, such a personal real relationship between parts and the whole becomes impossible: there is a clear distinction between general interests and private ones and between the corresponding areas of law, and private law (contrary to our current legal concepts) usually includes at this stage of development such cases as murder, robbery, and serious injury. Previously (in clan life) all such atrocities were considered to directly affect the common interest, and the whole clan took revenge for them on the culprit and his relatives. With the formation of a broader political union, this right and this obligation of blood feud were taken away from the clan, but did not pass (in the previous sense and scope) to the state. The new general power, from which laws and government emanate, cannot immediately enter into the interests of all its numerous subjects to such an extent as to protect them as its own; the head of state cannot feel and act as an elder of the clan; and so we see that in protecting private individuals and property, state power is first limited to the least: not only for injury or other violence, but for the murder of a free person, the murderer or his family pays the family of the murdered person, by mutual agreement (compositio), a fine, generally quite moderate. All those ancient charters or collections of laws (such as, for example, the laws of the Salian Franks or our “Russian Pravda”), which are precisely monuments of the state life that has just emerged for the first time (in a given people), are filled with a list of such fines (different, depending on the gender of the person and other circumstances). Remarkable is this immediate and rapid transition from merciless bloody revenge, often accompanied by destructive multi-year wars of entire tribes, to simple monetary reward; From this point of view, such a leap is completely understandable. At this stage of development of statehood, only political crimes 135 are, strictly speaking, criminal in nature, and all others, not excluding murder, are considered not as crimes, but as private quarrels. But such an elementary opposition between public and private law cannot be sustainable. A monetary fine for any offense against a private person does not satisfy the injured party (for example, the family of the murdered person) and does not restrain the offender, especially if he is rich, from further atrocities. Under such conditions, bloody revenge for private grievances, abolished by the state as contrary to its essence, is actually renewed and threatens to take away from the state system the very reason for its existence: when everyone has to take revenge for his own grievances, then why will he bear the burdens imposed by the new political life? To justify its demands from private individuals, the state must take their interests under its effective protection; in order to forever abolish the private right of bloody revenge, the state must turn it into a public one, that is, take upon itself its execution. At this new, higher stage, the solidarity of state power with the individuals subordinate to it is more clearly expressed, and although the distinction between crimes directly directed against the power itself (political) and simple ones, from which only private interests suffer, still remains, it is only in degree of importance and not in essence. Every free person becomes a citizen, that is, a member of the state itself, which takes upon itself the task of protecting its security; any violation of it is considered by the state authorities as an attempt on its own right, as a hostile action against the social whole. All violence against the person and property of anyone is no longer considered as private grievances, but as violations of state law and therefore, along with political crimes, are subject to vengeance by the state itself. The criminal law doctrine of revenge thus has a historical basis in the sense that criminal punishments, still in use today, represent a historical transformation of the primitive principle of blood feud. Previously, a closer social union, called a clan, took revenge for the offended, then a more extensive and complex one, called the state, began to take revenge; Previously, the offender lost all human rights in the eyes of the family offended by him; now he has become a powerless subject of punishment in the eyes of the state, taking revenge on him for violating its laws. The difference lies mainly in the fact that in tribal life the act of revenge itself was carried out simply - the offender was killed on the first occasion, like a dog - but the consequences were very complex in the form of endless wars between tribes; in state life, on the contrary, the very act of revenge, undertaken by public authorities, is carried out slowly and with various ceremonies, but without any subsequent complications, since the private criminal no longer has a further sufficiently strong avenger - he is defenseless against state power. But from this undoubted fact that criminal executions are historical modifications of blood feud, does anything follow in favor of these executions themselves, or in favor of the principle of vengeance? Should, due to this historical basis, the concept of revenge, that is, retribution with evil for evil, suffering for suffering, ultimately determine our attitude towards the criminal? In general, logic does not allow us to draw such conclusions from the genetic connection of two phenomena. Not a single Darwinist, as far as I know, has drawn the conclusion from his accepted descent of man from lower animals that man must be a beast. From the fact that the urban community of Rome was originally created by a band of robbers, no historian has yet concluded that the true principle of the Holy Roman Empire should have been robbery. Regarding our subject - since we are talking about the transformation of blood feud, then where are the grounds to consider this transformation complete? We know that the attitude of society and the law towards criminals experienced very drastic changes, merciless family revenge gave way to monetary fines, and they gave way to “city executions”, at first extremely cruel, but from the 18th century more and more lenient. There is not even a shadow of a reasonable basis for asserting that the limit of mitigation has already been reached and that the gallows and the guillotine, lifelong hard labor and solitary confinement should remain forever in the criminal legislation of educated countries. But while historical progress clearly tends to limit more and more, and finally completely eliminate the principle of retribution or equal retribution from our legal attitude towards criminals, in favor of this principle, many philosophers and lawyers 136 continued and still continue to put forward abstract reasoning, which, due to its extreme inconsistency, will, of course, be a subject of amazement and mockery for posterity, just as we are surprised by Aristotle’s arguments in favor of slavery or some church writers in favor of a flat figure of the Earth. In themselves, the imaginary arguments used by the doctrine of vengeance do not deserve analysis, but since they are still repeated by authors who are generally worthy of respect, and their subject is of great vital importance, their refutation has to be repeated. “Crime is a violation of law; the right must be restored; punishment, i.e., a uniform violation of the right in the person of the criminal, committed by virtue of a certain law by public authority (as opposed to private revenge), covers the first violation, and thus the violated right is restored.” This supposed argument revolves around the term “right.” But the real right is always someone else's (there must be a subject of the right). Whose right are we talking about here? First of all, apparently, about the rights of the injured person. Let us substitute this real content under an abstract term. The peaceful shepherd Abel has, without a doubt, the right to exist and enjoy all the joys of life; but the evil man Cain comes and actually deprives him of this right through murder. It is necessary to restore the violated right; For this purpose, public authority appears and, contrary to the direct warning of Holy Scripture (Genesis IV, 15), hangs the murderer. So, after this, is Abel’s right to life restored or not? Since no one, except the guests of Bedlam, will argue that the execution of a murderer resurrects the murdered, then by right we have to mean here not the right of the victim, but someone else’s. Another subject of the law violated by a crime may be society itself, or the state. 137 All private rights (to life, property, etc.) are guaranteed by the state; it guarantees their inviolability, placing them under the protection of its laws. The law that prohibits private individuals from killing their fellow citizens at their own discretion was rightfully issued by the state, and, therefore, in violating it (in murder), the right of the state is violated, and in executing the murderer, the right of the murdered person is not restored, but the right of the state and the meaning of the law. 138 What is fair in this argument is not at all relevant. There is no doubt that, since laws exist, violation of them should not remain without consequences and that it belongs to the state to enforce this. But the question is not the general principle of punishability of crimes as violations of the law, for in this respect all crimes are the same. If the law itself is sacred, as coming from the state, then all laws have this property to the same extent, still express the law of the state, and all their violations, without distinction, are violations of this supreme right. The material differences of crimes concern only those interests that are violated by them; from the formal side, in relation to the general, i.e., the state as such, i.e., to its power and law, every crime (imputed, of course) presupposes a will that disagrees with the law, denies it, i.e., a criminal will, and from this point of view, equal retribution would logically be required for all crimes. But the diversity of punishments for various crimes that actually exists in all legislation obviously presupposes, in addition to the general principle of punishability, some other, specific one that determines the special connection between this crime and this punishment. The doctrine of retaliation sees such a connection in that a right violated by a certain criminal act is restored by a corresponding or equal impact, for example, the murderer should be killed. What kind of correspondence or equality is there really here, however? The most famous supporters of this doctrine present the matter in the following form: law is something positive, say † (plus), violation of it is something negative - (minus); if a negation occurs in the form of a crime (for example, a person’s life is taken), then it must cause an equal negation in the form of punishment (taking the life of a murderer), and then such a double negation, or the negation of a negation, will again produce a positive state, i.e., a restored right: minus by minus gives a plus. It is difficult to remain serious in view of such “mind games”; Let us note, however, that the concept of negation of negation logically expresses a direct internal relationship between two opposite acts, for example, if the movement of evil will in a person is “negation”, namely the negation of a moral norm, then the opposite act of will that suppresses this movement will truly be a “negation of negation”, and the result will be positive - the affirmation of this person in a normal state; in the same way, if a crime, as an active expression of evil will, is a negation, then the active repentance of the criminal will be a negation of the negation (that is, not a fact, of course, but the internal cause that produced it), and the result will again be positive - his moral revival. But the execution of a criminal is obviously devoid of such significance; here denial is aimed (as in crime) at something positive - at human life. It is, in fact, impossible to admit that in the execution of a criminal, the subject of negation was his crime itself, for it is an irrevocably accomplished fact, and, as St. fathers, it is impossible for God himself to make what has been accomplished unaccomplished; but also this denied here is not the evil will of the criminal, for one of two things: either he repented of his crime, and then there is no longer any evil will, or he persists to the end, and then, that means, his will is inaccessible to this influence, and in any case, external, violent action cannot abolish or change the internal state of the will. But if, thus, in executing a criminal, it is not the evil will that is really denied, but the positive benefits of life, then it will again be only a simple negation, and not a “negation of the negation.” And nothing positive can come out of one sequence of two simple negatives. The abuse of the algebraic formula gives the whole argument a downright comical character. After all, in order for two minuses, i.e. two negative quantities produced a plus, it is not enough to place them one after the other, but it is necessary to multiply them; but what does it mean to multiply the crime by the punishment? 139 The inherent absurdity of the doctrine of retaliation or "vindictive justice" is emphasized by the fact that, except in a few cases, it has no connection with existing criminal laws. Strictly speaking, there is only one case of its apparent application: the death penalty for murder. Therefore, the pseudo-philosophical arguments in favor of this doctrine - the essence of which is conveyed above - relate precisely to this single case - a poor indicator for a principle that has a claim to universal validity. Here in Russia, where the death penalty is reserved only for some political crimes, there is not even this only apparent correspondence; for what kind of even semblance of retribution can be found, for example, between parricide and indefinite hard labor or between simple murder for mercenary purposes and 12 years of hard labor? The best refutation of the doctrine can be the fact that we find its greatest application in some legislations of semi-savage peoples or in the laws of barbarian times, where, for example, for a certain mutilation the guilty person was subjected to the same mutilation, where for impudent speeches the tongue was cut out, etc. A principle, the application of which turns out to be incompatible with a certain degree of development of education, is a condemned principle. In modern times, if I am not mistaken, the doctrine of restoration of rights through equal retribution has been defended by more abstract philosophers than by jurists. These latter accept the equation of punishment with crime only in a relatively quantitative sense (measure of punishment), that is, they require that a crime that is more serious than another should be subject to a more severe punishment, so that in general there is a ladder (scala) of punishments corresponding to the ladder of crimes. But at the same time, the base (and therefore the top) of the punitive ladder remains uncertain, and therefore the nature of the punishments themselves can be anything - inhumanly cruel and, on the contrary, extremely mild. Thus, a ladder of penalties also existed in those legislations where for all or almost all simple crimes only a monetary penalty was imposed: and there a larger fine was paid for a more serious injury, for the murder of a man more than for the murder of a woman, etc. On the other hand, where they were already hanged for theft, for more serious crimes a qualified death penalty was determined, that is, combined with varying degrees of torment. Here, of course, it is the very cruelty of punishments that is immoral, and not their gradualness. What is important for us in criminal law is the noticeably weakened, but not yet completely disappeared, tendency to preserve, if possible, cruel punishments; Not finding a sufficiently solid foundation in the pseudo-rational principle of “restored law,” this tendency seeks empirical support for itself in the principle of intimidation. In essence, this motive has always been attached to the principle of retribution. The popular aphorism “a dog is a dog and death” has always been accompanied and is accompanied by the addition: “so that it doesn’t happen to others either.” It cannot be said that this principle is unconditionally true even on utilitarian-empirical grounds. Of course, fear is one of the important motives of human nature, but it does not have a decisive role in it. The ever-increasing number of suicides proves that death is not terrible for many. Prolonged solitary confinement or hard labor, in themselves, may be more terrible, but these means do not have a demonstrable deterrent effect. I will not dwell on these and other well-known objections to the theory of deterrence (such as, for example, an indication of the criminal’s always remaining hope of hiding from trial or escaping punishment, as well as the fact that the vast majority of crimes are committed under the influence of some passion that drowns out the voice of prudence). The relative strength of all these considerations is debatable. In an indisputable way, the theory of intimidation is refuted only on moral grounds: firstly, in principle, by its direct contradiction to the basic moral principle, and secondly, in fact, by the fact that this contradiction forces supporters of intimidation to be inconsistent and little by little, due to moral motives, abandon the most valid and clear requirements of the theory. It goes without saying that here we are talking about intimidation in the sense of the basic principle of criminal justice, and not in the sense of just a psychological phenomenon that naturally accompanies any method of combating crimes. Thus, even if only the correction of criminals through educational suggestions was meant, then for self-willed and self-loving people the prospect of such guardianship, even the most meek and rational, could have a terrifying effect and deter them from crimes. But this obviously does not apply to the theory that sees in intimidation not an indirect consequence, but the very essence and direct task of punishment. The moral principle asserts that human dignity must be respected in every person and that, therefore, one cannot make anyone merely a means or instrument for someone else's benefit. But according to the theory of intimidation, the punished criminal is seen precisely as a means to instill fear in others and to protect public safety. The intention of the criminal law may, of course, also include the criminal’s own good: to deter him from committing a crime through fear of punishment; but once the crime has already been committed, then this motive obviously disappears, and the punished criminal remains from this point of view only as a means to intimidate others, that is, for a purpose extraneous to him, which directly contradicts the unconditional moral norm. From this point of view, deterrent punishment would be permissible only as a threat, but a threat that is never put into action loses its meaning. So, the principle of criminal deterrence could be moral only under the condition of its uselessness, and it can be materially useful only under the condition of immoral application. In fact, the theory of deterrence has completely dulled its edge since painful corporal punishment and the qualified death penalty were abolished in all educated and semi-educated countries. It is clear that if the purpose of punishment is to intimidate both the criminal himself and others, then these are the means that would be the most effective and appropriate. Why do supporters of intimidation abandon real, the only true means of intimidation? Presumably, because they consider these means immoral, contrary to the demands of pity and philanthropy. But in this case, deterrence ceases to be the determining principle of punishment. One of two things: either the meaning of punishment is intimidation, and then it is necessary to allow painful executions as primarily deterrent means, or the nature of punishment is subject to a moral principle, and then it is necessary to completely abandon intimidation as an essentially immoral motive. 140 The fact that in modern criminal legislation the most consistent forms of retribution and deterrence have disappeared - precisely what from the first of these points of view should be recognized as the most just, and from the second as the most useful - has disappeared - this fact alone sufficiently shows that another, moral point of view has already penetrated into this area and has made significant gains in it. Outside of this undoubted and fairly rapid progress remains only the criminal law of savage and barbaric peoples, such as the Chinese or Abyssinians, who, however, are on the eve of the loss of their everyday isolation. Nevertheless, in all our, that is, European-American penitentiary systems, there still remains a lot of unnecessary violence and torture, explained only as a dead legacy of outdated principles of vengeance and intimidation. These are: the death penalty, although it has lost ground, but is still stubbornly defended, then indefinite imprisonment, hard labor, exile to distant countries with disastrous living conditions, etc. All this systematic torture outrages the moral consciousness and changes the original feeling towards the criminal. If pity for the offended or victim and the urge to protect him arm us against the offender (criminal), then when society, incomparably stronger than the individual criminal, turns its insurmountable enmity on him, already disarmed, and makes him the subject of long-term torment, then he already becomes the offended or victim, arousing in us pity and the need to protect him. Legal consciousness, as well as practice, has decisively abandoned only the consistent implementation of the principles of retribution and deterrence, and not these ideas themselves, and the system of punishments existing in educated countries represents a meaningless and lifeless transaction between these worthless principles, on the one hand, and certain demands of philanthropy and justice, on the other. In essence, we encounter here only the remnants of the old atrocity, softened to varying degrees, and no unifying thought, no guiding principle. On the basis of such a transaction, the fundamental question for moral consciousness cannot be resolved: is the criminal deprived of his human rights by the fact of the crime or not? If he is not deprived, then how can one take away from him the first condition of any right - existence, as is done in the death penalty? If the fact of a crime deprives the criminal of his natural rights, then why all these legal ceremonies with powerless creatures? Empirically, this dilemma is eliminated by the fact that there is a difference between crimes, with some being considered to deprive the criminal of human rights, while others are only considered to limit them to a greater or lesser extent. But not only the principle and measure of these restrictions remain uncertain and changeable, but the very difference between the two types of crime turns out to be arbitrary and unequal, depending on places and times. So, for example, in the West, political crimes are not accompanied by the deprivation of human rights, but here in Russia we still fully retain the old view that these crimes are among the most serious. It would seem, however, that such an important fact as the transformation of a person from an independent and full-fledged person into passive material for punitive exercises should depend on some objective reason, or determining principle, the same always and everywhere; but in reality it turns out that in one country for such a transformation from a person into a thing one must commit a simple murder, in another - murder with aggravating circumstances, in a third - some kind of political crime, etc. Such an extremely unsatisfactory state of this important matter, such a lightness of attitude towards the life and fate of people, outrageous for the mind and conscience, has long caused a reaction of moral feeling, which, unfortunately, among many moralists goes to the opposite extreme, prompting them to deny the very idea of ​​punishment in the broad sense, that is, as a real counteraction to crimes. According to this newest doctrine, any coercion or violence against anyone is impermissible, and therefore the criminal should be acted upon solely with a word of admonition. The advantage of this doctrine lies in the moral purity of its intention, but its disadvantage is that this intention is not carried out in the proposed way. This principle of a passive attitude towards criminals, denying any coercion in general, excludes not only measures of revenge and intimidation (in which he is right), but also measures of crime prevention and educational influence on criminals. From this point of view, the state does not have the right to lock up, even temporarily, a malicious murderer, even if it was clear from the circumstances of the case that he would continue his atrocities; it similarly does not have the right to place the criminal in a more normal environment, even if only for his own good. Accordingly, for a private person, it is recognized here that it is impermissible to use force to restrain a villain who is rushing at his victim: it is only allowed to turn to him with words of admonition. In my analysis of the doctrine, I will focus specifically on this case of private counteraction to atrocities, as it is simpler and more basic. For corrupt people who deliberately commit criminal offenses, the word of reasonable conviction is effective only in extremely rare, exceptional cases. To attribute such exceptional power of action to your word in advance would be a painful conceit, and to limit yourself to a word without confidence in its success when it comes to the mortal danger of your neighbor would be inhumane. An offended person has the right to all possible help from us, and not to mere verbal intercession, which in the vast majority of actual cases can only be comical; and in the same way, the offender has the right to all our help to keep him from doing something that is an even greater disaster for him than for the victim; Only by first stopping its action can we then, with a clear conscience, admonish it with words. When, seeing the killer's hand raised above the victim, I grab it, will this be immoral violence? There will undoubtedly be violence, but not only will there be nothing immoral in this violence, but, on the contrary, it will be obligatory according to conscience, directly resulting from the requirements of the moral principle. By restraining a person from killing, I actively respect and support his human dignity, which is at risk of significant damage from the fulfillment of his intentions. It would be strange to think that the very fact of such violence, that is, the certain touch of the muscles of my hand to the muscles of the killer’s hand, with the necessary consequences of such a touch, contains something immoral: after all, in such a case it would be immoral to pull a drowning person out of the water, for this does not do without a great use of muscular force and without some physical suffering for the person being saved. If it is permissible and morally obligatory to pull a drowning person out of the water, even if he resists it, then even more so - to pull the criminal away from his victim, even in this case there are scratches, bruises and even dislocations. 141 One of two. Or the criminal we stopped has not yet lost his human feelings, and then, of course, he will only be grateful that he was delivered from sin in time, no less grateful than a drowning man for being pulled out of the water, and, therefore, in this case, the violence to which he was subjected was committed with his own tacit consent, and his right was not in the least violated, so there was, in fact, no violence here, since volenti non fit injuria. 142 Or the criminal has so lost his human feelings that he remains dissatisfied that he was prevented from stabbing his victim, but to address a person in such a state with a word of reasonable conviction would be the height of absurdity - the same as telling a dead drunk about the benefits of abstinence, instead of pouring cold water on him. If the very fact of physical violence, that is, the use of muscular force, were something bad or immoral, then, of course, the use of this bad means, even for the best purposes, would be impermissible - this would be a recognition of the immoral rule that the end justifies the means. It is impermissible and useless to counteract evil with evil; to hate a villain for his crime and therefore to take revenge on him is moral childishness. But if, without hatred for the villain, for the sake of his own good, I keep him from committing a crime, then where is the evil in that? Since there is nothing bad in itself about muscular strength, the moral or immoral nature of its use is decided in each case by the intention of the person and the essence of the matter; When used wisely for the real good of others, moral and material, muscular strength is a good means, and not at all a bad one, and such its use is not prohibited, but is directly prescribed by the moral principle. There is a thin, perhaps, but absolutely precise and clear boundary between the moral and immoral use of physical coercion. The whole point is: when opposing evil, how do we look at the villain? Do we still have a human, moral attitude towards him, do we also have in mind his own good? If it persists, if it exists, then in our forced violence there will obviously be nothing immoral, no signs of revenge and torment, then this violence will only be an essentially inevitable condition of our help to him, just like a surgical operation or the imprisonment of a violent madman. The moral principle prohibits making a person only a means for any extraneous purposes (that is, those that do not include his own good); Therefore, if we, when opposing a crime, see in the criminal only a means to protect or satisfy the victim or society, then we are acting immorally, even if our motivation was disinterested pity for the offended person and sincere concern for public safety. From a moral point of view, this is not enough, we need to feel sorry for both, and if we follow this, if we really have in mind their common good, then reason and conscience will inspire us to what extent and in what forms it is necessary to use physical coercion here. Moral issues are finally decided by conscience, and I boldly invite everyone to turn to their inner experience (mental, unless otherwise): in which of the two cases does conscience reproach us more - when we, having the opportunity to prevent an atrocity, indifferently passed by, saying a few useless words, or when we really prevented it, at least at the cost of some physical damage? Everyone understands that in a perfect society there should be no coercion, but this perfection must be achieved, and here it is already quite clear that giving evil and insane people complete freedom to exterminate normal people is by no means the right way to implement a perfect society. What is desirable here is not the freedom of evil, but the organization of good. “But,” say modern sophists, “society often mistook for evil what later turned out to be good, and persecuted innocent people as criminals; This means that criminal law is worthless and all coercion must be completely abandoned.” I did not invent this argument - I have heard and read it many times. According to this logic, the erroneous astronomical system of Ptolemy is a sufficient reason to abandon astronomy, and the unsuitability of chemistry follows from the errors of the alchemists. It would seem incomprehensible how, besides obvious sophists, people of a different mind and character could defend such an untenable doctrine. But the fact is that its real basis lies, as far as I understand, not in the ethical, but in the mystical area. The main idea here is this: “what seems evil to us may not be evil at all; deity, or providence, knows better than us the true connection of things and how to derive real good from apparent evil; We ourselves can know and appreciate only our internal states, and not the objective meaning and consequences of our own and others’ actions.” It must be admitted that for the mind of a believer this view is very tempting, but it is deceptive. The truth of any view is tested by whether it can be logically carried out to its end without falling into contradictions and absurdities. This view does not stand up to this test. If our ignorance of all the objective consequences of our own and other people’s actions was a sufficient reason for remaining inactive, then in this case we should not resist our own passions and bad inclinations. Who knows what wonderful consequences the all-good Providence can derive from someone’s fornication, drunkenness, anger towards others, etc. Someone, for example, for the sake of abstinence did not go to the tavern, and meanwhile, if he had not resisted his attraction and went there, then on the way back he would have found a half-frozen puppy and, being in this state prone to sensitivity, would have picked it up and warmed it up, and this puppy, having become a big dog, would have saved a girl drowning in a pond, who would then become the mother of a great man; whereas now, as a result of inappropriate abstinence, which frustrated the plans of Providence, the puppy froze, the girl drowned, and the great man was condemned to remain unborn forever. Another person, prone to anger, wanted to slap his interlocutor in the face, but thought that this was not good and restrained himself; and meanwhile, if he had not resisted, then the insulted person would have taken this opportunity to turn him the other cheek, which would have touched the heart of the offender to a greater triumph of virtue, whereas now their conversation ended in nothing. The doctrine, which unconditionally rejects any forced resistance to evil or protection of neighbors by force, is based in essence precisely on such reasoning. Someone saved a man’s life by force, disarming the robber who attacked him; but then the saved one became a terrible villain, worse than a robber - which means it would have been better not to save him? But exactly the same disappointment could have followed if this man had been threatened not by a robber, but by a rabid wolf. - What? Don't you need to protect anyone from wild animals? Moreover, if I save someone in a fire or flood, then it can also easily happen that those saved will then be extremely unhappy or turn out to be terrible scoundrels, so that it would be better for them to then burn or drown - which means there is no need to help anyone in any trouble at all? But after all, active help to one’s neighbors is a direct and positive moral requirement, and if we discard the duty of philanthropy for the sake of the fact that actions inspired by this feeling can have bad consequences unknown to us, then why not, on this basis, also discard the duties of abstinence and all the others, since after all, they can prompt us to actions, the consequences of which may later turn out to be harmful, as in the examples given. But if evil comes out of what seems good to us, then it means, conversely, that good can come out of what seems evil to us. So, shouldn’t we just do evil so that good can happen? Fortunately, this whole point of view destroys itself, because a number of unknown consequences may go further than we think. Thus, in my first example, when Mr. X, who had overcome his addiction to drinks, indirectly prevented through this the future birth of a great man, why do we know that this great man would not have caused great disasters to humanity, and in this case it is good that he was not born, and, therefore, Mr. X. He did a great job of forcing himself to stay at home. In the same way, we do not know what further consequences the triumph of virtue would have had as a result of the generously suffered slap; It is quite possible that this extreme generosity would subsequently become a reason for spiritual pride, worse than all other sins, and would destroy the soul of a person, so Mr. Y. did well to use violence against his anger and prevent the manifestation of the generosity of his interlocutor. In general, we can, with equal right, make all sorts of assumptions here about the possibilities in both directions, without knowing anything reliable. But from the fact that we do not know what consequences our actions can lead to, it does not at all follow that we should abstain from all actions; such a conclusion would be correct if, on the contrary, we knew for sure that these consequences would be bad, and since they can equally be bad and good, it means that we have here the same basis (or, more precisely, the same lack of reasons) for action and inaction, and, therefore, all this consideration about the indirect results of our actions cannot have any practical significance. For it to have truly determining power for our life, we would need not only to know the closest links in this series of consequences, but since after the nearest ones we always have the right to assume further ones, of an opposite nature and destroying our conclusion, then, consequently, we would need to know the entire series of consequences until the end of the world, which is inaccessible to us. So, our actions or abstinence from action should not be determined at all by consideration of their possible, but unknown to us, indirect consequences, but by motives directly resulting from the positive precepts of the moral principle. And this is true not only from a strictly ethical point of view, but also from a mystical one. If everything is attributed to Providence, then, of course, not without the knowledge of Providence, a person has reason and conscience, which inspire him with what needs to be done in each case in the sense of direct good, regardless of any indirect consequences. And if we believe in Providence, then, of course, we also believe that it will not allow anyone’s actions, consistent with reason and conscience, to have ultimately bad consequences. If we realize that stupefying ourselves with strong drinks is contrary to human dignity, or immoral, then our conscience will not allow us to consider whether we could do something while intoxicated that could then lead to good consequences. In the same way, if, for purely moral reasons, without malice or revenge, we prevented a robber from killing a person, then it would not even occur to us to consider whether anything bad would have come of this, or whether it would have been better to allow the murder. Just as, thanks to reason and conscience, we firmly know that carnal passions - drunkenness or debauchery - are in themselves bad and that we should abstain from them, on the basis of the same reason and the same conscience we also firmly know that active love is good in itself and that we should act in its sense, really help our neighbors and protect them from the elements of nature, from wild animals, as well as from evil and insane people. Therefore, if someone, out of a pure impulse of philanthropy, snatches the knife from the hands of a murderer and saves him from unnecessary sin, and his victim from violent death, or if someone uses physical violence to prevent a person suffering from delirium tremens from running freely through the streets, then he will always be justified by his conscience and general consciousness, as having actually fulfilled the moral requirement: help everyone as much as you can. From our evil, Providence, of course, extracts good, but from our good it brings even greater good, and, what is especially important, this second kind of good is obtained with our direct and active participation, while the good that is extracted from our evil does not concern us and does not belong to us. It is better to be a collaborator than a dead instrument of an all-good Providence. Punishment, as a frightening retribution (the typical form of which is the death penalty), cannot be justified from a moral point of view, since it denies the criminal a person, deprives him of the right to existence and moral rebirth inherent in every person, and makes him a passive instrument of someone else's security. But in the same way, an indifferent attitude towards crime, leaving it without counteraction, is also not justified from a moral point of view, since here the right of the offended to protection and the right of the entire society to a safe existence is not respected and everything is made dependent on the arbitrariness of the worst people. The moral principle requires real counteraction to crimes and defines this counteraction (or punishment in the broad sense of the word, which does not coincide with the concept of retribution) as a legitimate means of active philanthropy, legally and forcibly limiting external manifestations of evil will not only for the safety of society and its peaceful members, but certainly also in the interests of the criminal himself. Thus, punishment in its true concept is something multifaceted, but its various sides are equally determined by the general moral principle of philanthropy, which embraces both the offended and the offender. The victim of a crime has the right to protection and, if possible, to reward; society has the right to safety; the offender has the right to admonition and correction. Combating crimes, in accordance with the moral principle, must implement, or in any case have in mind, the uniform implementation of these three rights. For the protection of persons, the safety of society and the further good of the criminal himself, it is first required that the perpetrator of the crime be imprisoned for a period of time. If a spendthrift, in justice, in the interests of his loved ones and in his own, is deprived of freedom to dispose of his property, then it is all the more just and necessary that a murderer or molester should be deprived of freedom in the sphere of his activities. For the criminal himself, imprisonment is especially important as a stop in the development of the criminal will, as an opportunity to come to his senses and come to his senses. Currently, the fate of the criminal is finally decided by the court, which not only determines his guilt, but also assigns him a punishment. But with the real and consistent elimination of the motives of revenge and intimidation from criminal law, the concept of punishment in the sense of a predetermined (and essentially arbitrary) measure should also disappear. The consequences of a crime for the criminal must be in a natural and internal connection with his actual state. The court, having established the fact of guilt, must then determine its type, the degree of responsibility of the criminal and his further danger to society, that is, it must make a diagnosis and prognosis of a moral illness, but irrevocably prescribe the method and duration of treatment is contrary to reason. The course and methods of treatment must change according to changes in the course of the disease, and the court must leave this case to the penitentiary institutions under whose jurisdiction the offender is admitted. This idea, which until recently might have seemed like an unheard-of heresy, has recently already received the first beginnings of implementation in some countries (for example, Belgium, Ireland), where suspended sentences are allowed. In certain cases, although a criminal is sentenced to a certain punishment, he actually serves it only if he repeats the same crime; if he does not relapse, he remains free, since his first crime is considered accidental. In other circumstances, a suspended sentence refers to a period of imprisonment that is reduced in accordance with the subsequent behavior of the offender. These suspended sentences constitute a step forward in criminal proceedings of enormous fundamental importance. There was a time when mentally ill people were treated like tamed animals: they were put on chains, beaten with sticks, etc. A hundred years ago (or even less) this was considered completely in the order of things, but now they remember it with horror. Since the historical movement is moving faster and faster, I still hope to live to see the time when our current prisons and penal servitude will be looked at in the same way as everyone now looks at the old psychiatric institutions with iron cages for the sick. The current penal system, despite undoubted successes in recent times, is still largely determined by the ancient concept of punishment as torment deliberately inflicted on the criminal, according to the principle “serve the thief right.” According to the true concept of punishment, its positive task in relation to the criminal is not his physical torment, but moral healing or correction. This idea, which has long been accepted by various writers (mainly theologians, partly philosophers and only a few jurists), arouses strong objections of two kinds: from lawyers and from anthropologists of a well-known school. From the legal side, they argue that correcting a criminal means invading his inner world and that society and the state do not have the right to do this. But there are two misunderstandings here. Firstly, the task of correcting criminals is, in this respect, only one of the cases of the obligatory and positive influence of society (or the state) on its members who are incompetent in some sense and therefore do not have full rights. Denying such an influence in principle as an invasion of the inner world, one will have to reject the public education of children, the treatment of the insane in public hospitals, etc. And where is the invasion of the inner world? In fact, the criminal has discovered the fact of the crime, exposed his inner world and needs the opposite influence in order to enter its normal limits. What is especially strange about this objection is that society is recognized as having the right to place a person in corrupting conditions (such as today’s prisons and hard labor, which are not denied by lawyers), while the right and obligation to place a person in moralizing conditions is taken away from society. The second misunderstanding is that correction is understood as the imposition from the outside of some ready-made moral rules. But why take ineptitude as a principle? Of course, for a criminal who is generally capable of correction, it is mainly self-correction, and external assistance should, in fact, only put the person in the most favorable conditions for this matter, help him and support him in this internal process. The objection of anthropologists is to assert the innateness and therefore incorrigibility of criminal inclinations. That there are hereditary criminals and natural-born criminals - this can be considered undoubted, that among them there are incorrigibles - this is quite difficult to deny, but the statement that all or at least the majority of criminals are incorrigible is completely arbitrary and does not deserve criticism. If we can only assume that some of the criminals are incorrigible, then no one has the opportunity or right to say in advance with certainty whether a given criminal belongs to these few, and therefore everyone must be placed in the most favorable conditions for possible correction. The first and most important condition, of course, is that the penitentiary institutions be headed by people capable of such a high and difficult task - the best of lawyers, psychiatrists and people with a religious vocation. Public guardianship of a criminal, entrusted to competent people with a view to his possible correction, is the only concept of “punishment”, or positive counteraction to crime, allowed by the moral principle. A penitentiary system based on this, being more just and humane than the current one, will undoubtedly be more effective. Chapter sixteen. Economic Question from a Moral Point of View If people and nations had learned to value other people's national characteristics as their own, if, further, in every nation, criminal personal elements had been corrected as far as possible by re-education and reasonable care with the complete abolition of all remnants of criminal ferocity, this moral solution to the national and criminal issues would not have eliminated an important cause of both popular enmity and crime - the economic cause. Why do Americans mainly hate the Chinese? Of course, not for their braids or for the morality of Confucius, but for the dangerous rivalry in the field of material labor. What Chinese workers are persecuted for in California is what Italians are persecuted for in southern France, Switzerland, and Brazil. And in the same way, the movement against the Jews, whatever its deepest causes, finds obvious support and a visible explanation in economic considerations. – As for personal crime, although it is not born, it is for the most part nourished and supported by an environment of poverty, excessive mechanical labor and the savagery inevitable in this environment, so that even the most reasonable and humane penitentiary influences on the personality of individual criminals would generally prove to be of little success. This bad influence of the economic conditions of modern humanity on the state of the national and criminal question depends, of course, on the fact that this situation itself suffers from a moral malaise. Its abnormality is revealed in the economic field itself, since here the enmity of social classes over property, which in many countries of Western Europe and America threatens with an open struggle not to the life, but to the death, is becoming more and more prominent. For a person taking a moral point of view, it is just as impossible to take part in this socio-economic enmity as in the enmity between nations and tribes. And at the same time, it is impossible for him to remain indifferent to the financial situation of his neighbors. If the elementary moral feeling of pity, which received its highest sanction in the Gospel, demands from us to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty and warm the cold, then this demand, of course, does not lose its force when these hungry and cold are considered millions, and not just a few. And if I alone cannot help these millions, and therefore am not obliged, then I can and am obliged to help them together with others, my personal responsibility turns into a collective one - not into someone else’s, but into my own, broader responsibility, as a participant in the collective whole and its common task. The very fact of economic disasters is evidence that economic relations are not connected as they should with the beginning of good, and are not organized morally. An entire pseudo-scientific school of economic anarchist-conservatives directly denied and still denies, although without the same self-confidence, any ethical principles and any organization in the field of economic relations, and its dominance greatly contributed to the emergence of revolutionary anarchism. On the other hand, the many varieties of socialism, not only radical but also conservative, reveal the presence of disease more than they present actual means of healing. The failure of orthodox political economy (liberal or, more precisely, anarchist) lies in the fact that it fundamentally separates the economic from the moral sphere, and the failure of any socialism lies in the fact that it allows more or less complete confusion, or false unity, between these two different, although inseparable, areas. Essentially any practical statement of anything outside of its proper connection or correlation with everything is immoral. Thus, when private, conditioned and therefore dependent activity is affirmed in itself, as an unconditionally independent and entire sphere of life, then such a statement, being false in theory, is in fact immoral and can only give rise to disasters and sins. To recognize in a person only an economic figure - a producer, owner and consumer of material goods - is a false and immoral point of view. The mentioned functions have no meaning in themselves for a person and do not in the least express his essence and dignity. Productive labor, the possession and use of its results represent one of the sides in a person’s life or one of the spheres of his activity, but truly human interest is aroused here only by how and why a person acts in this specific area. Just as the free play of chemical processes can occur only in a corpse, and in a living body these processes are connected and determined by organic goals, so the free play of economic factors and laws is possible only in a dead and decaying society, and in a living and having a future, economic elements are connected and determined by moral goals, and to proclaim here laissez faire, laissez passer (connivance, permissiveness (French)) means to say to society: die and decay! Of course, at the basis of this entire economic area lies something simple and fatal, which in itself does not follow from a moral principle - the need for labor to maintain one’s existence. No, however, there has not been such a low state in the life of mankind when this simple material necessity would not be complicated by a moral question. Need forces the savage half-beast to provide for his livelihood, but at the same time he can either think only about himself, or in his need also include the need of his female and cubs. If the catch was unsuccessful, he can share with them the meager catch, remaining hand to mouth, or he can take everything for himself and leave them to their fate, or, finally, he can kill them in order to eat their meat. But no matter which of these methods of action he chooses, there is hardly a faithful servant of science who will see here the fatal effect of political-economic “laws.” Although the need to work to earn a living is indeed something fatal, independent of human will, it is only an impetus forcing a person to activity, the further course of which is determined by reasons of psychological and ethical, and not at all economic, nature. – With some complication of the social system, not only the results of labor and the method of using them - not only “distribution” and “consumption” - but also labor itself is caused, in addition to everyday needs, by other motives that do not have anything physically forced or fatal in themselves, for example - to name the most common - the passion for acquisition and the thirst for pleasure. Since not only is there no economic law that would determine the degree of self-interest and voluptuousness for all people, but there is also no such law by virtue of which these passions would generally be inevitably inherent in a person, as the fatal motives of his actions, it means that since economic activities and relationships are determined by these mental dispositions, they do not have their basis in the economic field and are not necessarily subject to any “economic laws.” Let us take the most elementary and least controversial of these so-called laws, namely, that according to which the price of goods is determined by the relationship between supply and demand. This means: the more a product is needed and the less of it is available, the more expensive it is, and vice versa. Let us imagine, however, a rich but charitable commodity owner who decided, given the increased demand for one or another reason for an item of necessary consumption he has in constant quantity, not to raise prices or even lower them for the benefit of his needy neighbors - this will be a violation of the supposed economic “law”, and yet, despite the unusual nature of such a phenomenon, of course, no one will find it impossible or supernatural. Let us assume that if the matter depended only on the good will of private individuals, then in the economic field it would be possible to look at generous motives as quantité négligeable (some extravagance (Latin)) and build everything on the solid foundation of self-interest. But we know that in every society there is a general government power, the indispensable purpose of which is to limit private self-interest, and we know many historical examples when, due to this purpose, such power not only took away this ordinary and natural character from the ordinary and natural (from the point of view of self-interest) order, but even turned the previously ordinary directly into the impossible, and to the former exceptions, on the contrary, gave the force of universal necessity. So, for example, for two and a half centuries in Russia, landowners who freed their peasants in entire communities and at the same time provided them with an allotment of land were the rarest, most unusual exception, while the ordinary order, or “law,” of mutual relations between landowners and peasants was that the latter, together with the land, constituted the property of the former. But with remarkable speed and completeness, this general law, by the good will of the government, was turned into an almost impossible lawlessness, and the former rare exception was made an absolutely mandatory rule, no longer allowing any exceptions. In the same way, the exceptional case of a merchant who does not raise the price of a necessary commodity in the face of increased demand turns into a general rule as soon as the government finds it necessary to regulate the prices of goods; and here this direct violation of the imaginary “law” becomes a real law, although not “natural”, but positive or state. It should be noted that with all the difference between these two concepts - the law of nature and the positive or state law - this latter, although it is the work of human hands, is, however, likened to the first, since within the limits of its action it has an immutable force, not allowing any unforeseen exception; 143 whereas imaginary economic laws never have such significance and at any moment can be easily violated and abolished by the moral will of man. Not a single landowner in Russia, of course, by virtue of the law of 1861, can now sell or buy peasants except in a dream, while, on the other hand, nothing prevents any virtuous St. Petersburg homeowner, even in reality, contrary to the “law” on the relation of demand to supply, from lowering the price of apartments in purely philanthropic ways, and if very few take the opportunity to do this, then this in no way proves the strength of the economy, but only weakness the virtues of these persons; for as soon as this lack of personal philanthropy is compensated by the requirement of state law, prices will immediately drop and the “iron” necessity of economic laws will immediately turn out to be fragile, like glass. This obvious truth is currently recognized by writers who are completely alien to any socialism, such as Lavele; and even earlier J. St. Mill, wishing to preserve the character of an exact science for political economy and at the same time avoid too obvious a contradiction with reality, composed the following compromise: while admitting that the economic distribution of the products of labor depends on human will and may be subject to its moral purposes, he insisted that production is entirely subject to economic laws, which here have the force of natural laws - as if production does not take place under the same general conditions and does not depend on the same forces and human agents as distribution. However, this anti-scientific, scholastic distinction was not successful and was equally rejected by both sides, between which Mill thought through it to occupy a mediate position. It goes without saying that the freedom of man as an individual and as a society from the supposed natural laws of the material and economic order is not in any direct connection with the metaphysical question of free will. By asserting, for example, the freedom of the St. Petersburg homeowner from the imaginary law that determines prices by the ratio of demand to supply, I do not at all mean that each of these homeowners, no matter what he may be in himself, can now lower the price of his apartments with increased demand for them - I only stand for the obvious truth that with sufficient strength of moral motives in a given person, a private one, and even more so governmental, no supposed economic necessity will prevent him from subordinating material considerations to moral ones in this or that matter, and it logically follows that no natural laws operating independently of the quality of the will of given persons exist in this area at all. I do not deny the laws of human actions, but only object to a special kind of material and economic law invented a hundred years ago, independent of the general conditions of psychological and moral motivation. Everything that exists in objects and phenomena of the economic field comes, on the one hand, from external nature and is therefore subject to material necessity (mechanical, chemical, biological laws), and on the other hand, is determined by human action, which is subject to psychological and moral necessity; and since no other causality, other than natural and human, can be found in objects and phenomena of an economic order, it means that there is no special independent necessity and regularity here and cannot be. Pointing to the fact that the lack of moral motives among private individuals is successfully compensated by state legislation, which streamlines economic relations in a moral sense in the form of the common good, does not prejudge the question of to what extent and in what form such streamlining is desirable for the future. What is certain is that the very facts of state influence in this area (for example, legislative regulation of prices) immutably prove that these economic relations do not express any natural necessity; for it is clear that the laws of nature could not be abolished by state laws. Since the subordination of material interests and relationships in human society to some special, self-acting economic laws is only a fiction of bad metaphysics, without even a shadow of a basis in reality, then the general demand of reason and conscience remains in force, so that this area too is subject to a higher moral principle, so that in its economic life society is an organized implementation of good. There are no independent economic laws, no economic necessity and cannot be, because economic phenomena are conceivable only as the activities of a person - a moral being capable of subordinating all his actions to the motives of pure good. There is only one independent and unconditional law for a person - moral, and one necessity - moral. The peculiarity and independence of the economic sphere of relations lies not in the fact that it has its own fatal laws, but in the fact that, in the essence of its relations, it represents a special, unique field for the application of a single moral law, just as the earth differs from other planets not in that it has some kind of its own original source of light (which it actually does not have), but only in that, due to its place in the solar system, it perceives and reflects the single general light of the sun in a special, definite way. Not only the theories of school economists collide with this truth and are crushed against it, but also the aspirations of socialists, which at first glance seem opposite to them. In their criticism of the existing economic system, in their declamations against property inequality, against the self-interest and inhumanity of the rich classes, socialists seem to take the point of view of a moral principle and are animated by a kind feeling of pity for the toiling and burdened. But if we turn to the positive side of their view, we can easily see that it was first ambiguous, and then turned directly into a hostile attitude towards the moral principle. The deepest basis of socialism was first expressed in the wonderful teaching of the Saint-Simonists, who proclaimed as their motto the restoration of the rights (rehabilitation) of matter in the life of mankind. Of course, matter has rights, and the less these rights are respected in principle, the more they make themselves felt in practice. But what are these rights? They can be understood not only in different, but also in directly opposite senses. The area of ​​material relations (primarily economic) has the right to become the subject of human moral action, has the right to realize or embody in it a higher, spiritual principle, matter has the right to its spiritualization - this is the first meaning of this principle - the meaning is absolutely true and extremely important. It would be unfair to say that the original systems of socialism remained completely alien to this meaning, but they did not focus on it, did not develop it, and very soon this glimpse of a better consciousness turned out to be only a deceptive light above that swamp of carnal passions, which little by little drew into itself so many noble and inspired souls. According to another and more widespread meaning of the proclaimed idea of the rights of matter, the actual fall of the Saint-Simonists receives direct justification and is elevated to the principle: the material life of humanity is not just a special area of ​​action or application of moral principles, but has both in man and for him its own, completely independent and full-fledged material principle - instinct or passion, which must be given full scope, so that normal social order naturally follows from the mutual replenishment and alternation of personal passions and interests (Fourier's main idea). In this case, it is no longer possible or necessary for this “normal” order to be a moral order. Alienation from higher, spiritual interests becomes necessary as soon as the material side of human life is recognized as having a special, independent and fundamental significance. It is impossible to serve two masters, and the dominant position in socialism naturally goes to the principle under whose banner this entire movement appeared, i.e., the material principle; the area of ​​economic relations is completely subordinated to it, which is then recognized as the main, fundamental, the only real, all-determining in the life of mankind. At this point, the internal difference between socialism and the bourgeois economy hostile to it disappears. In truth, if the present state of the educated world is abnormal in a moral sense, then the fault is not this or that institution in itself, but the general understanding and direction of life in modern society, due to which material wealth is increasingly becoming the main concern and the social system itself is decisively turning into plutocracy. Social immorality does not lie in individual and hereditary property, not in the division of labor and capital, not in inequality of property, but precisely in plutocracy, which is a perversion of the proper social order, the elevation of an essentially inferior and service area - economic - to the level of a higher and dominant one and the reduction of everything else to the meaning of a means and instrument of material benefits. But on the other hand, socialism also leads to this perversion. If for a representative of a plutocracy a normal person is first of all a capitalist, and then - per accidens (accidentally (lat.)) a citizen, a family man, an educated person, a member of some religious union, then from the point of view of socialism all other interests lose significance, recede into the background, if not completely disappear, before economic interest, and here, too, the lower (by its nature), material area of ​​life, industrial activity, becomes decisively predominant, closes everything else. The fact that socialism from the very beginning - even in its most idealistic expressions - places the moral perfection of society in direct and complete dependence on its economic system and wants to achieve moral transformation or degeneration exclusively through an economic revolution, clearly shows that it essentially stands on the same basis with the petty-bourgeois kingdom hostile to it - on the basis of the dominance of material interest. Both sides have the same motto: “On bread alone shall man live.” If for a representative of a plutocracy, the significance of a person depends on the possession of material wealth as an owner or acquirer, then for a consistent socialist, in the same way, a person has significance only as an owner of material wealth, but only as a producer; and here and there a person is taken as an economic agent, abstracted from other aspects of his being, and here and there economic well-being is recognized as the final goal and supreme good, and the struggle between two hostile countries is not fundamental, that is, not because of the content of the principle, but only because of the scope of its implementation: some are concerned about the material interest of the capitalist minority, and others are also concerned about the material interest of the working majority, and, as far as this majority is concerned, the working class itself begins to care exclusively about its own material interests, obviously, and this class turns out to be just as self-interested and loses all moral advantage over its opponents. At the same time, socialism, in a certain respect, implements the principle of material interest with greater consistency and completeness than the opposite side. If plutocracy, sincerely devoted only to its economic interest, admits, however, although with a subordinate meaning, the existence of other life principles with corresponding independent institutions, such as the state and the church, then socialism in its pure expression decisively denies all this: for it, man is exclusively a producer and a consumer, and human society is only an economic union - a union of workers - masters without any other significant differences; and if the predominance of material interests - the economic, industrial and financial element - constitutes a distinctive feature of the bourgeoisie or the petty-bourgeois kingdom, then consistent socialism, which wants to finally limit the life of mankind exclusively to these lower interests, is in no way an antithesis, but only an extreme expression, the last conclusion of a one-sided bourgeois civilization. Socialists and their visible opponents - representatives of the plutocracy - unconsciously shake hands with each other in the most essential matters. The plutocracy selfishly subjugates the masses of the people, disposes of them in its own favor, because it sees in them only labor force, only producers of material wealth; socialism protests against such “exploitation,” but this protest is superficial and lacks a fundamental basis; for socialism itself finally recognizes in man only (or in any case more and primarily) an economic agent, and in this capacity there is nothing that essentially should protect man from all exploitation. On the other hand, the exceptional importance that material wealth has in the modern bourgeois kingdom naturally prompts the direct producers of this wealth - the working classes - to demand equal use of those goods that could not exist without them and which they are taught to regard as the most important thing in life, so that the ruling classes themselves, with their practical materialism, evoke and justify socialist aspirations in the subordinate working classes. And when fear of the social revolution causes the plutocrats to insincerely turn to ideal principles, then it turns out to be a useless game: hastily put on masks of morality and religion will not deceive the masses, who have a good sense of where the real cult of their masters is, 144 and, having learned this cult from their masters, the workers, naturally, themselves want to be priests in it, and not victims. Both hostile sides condition themselves mutually and cannot get out of the false circle until they recognize and accept in practice the simple and undoubted, but forgotten by them, position that the significance of man, and therefore of human society, is not essentially determined by economic relations, that man is not primarily a producer of material utilities or market values, but something much more important, and that, consequently, society is also something more than an economic union. 145 For a true solution to the so-called “social question,” one must first of all recognize that the norm of economic relations does not lie in them themselves, but that they are subject to a general moral norm, as a special area of ​​its application. The triune moral principle, which determines our proper position in relation to God, people and material nature, finds its complete and indivisible application in the economic field, and due to the special property of this area, the last member of the moral trinity receives special significance - the attitude towards material nature or towards the earth (in the broad sense of the word). This third relationship can have a moral character only when it is not isolated from the first two, but is conditioned by them in their normal position. The area of ​​economic relations in its content is limited to the general concepts of production (labor and capital), distribution of property and exchange of values. Let us analyze these basic concepts from a moral point of view, starting with the most basic of them – the concept of labor. We know that the first impetus to work is given by material necessity, but for a person who recognizes the unconditionally perfect principle of reality, or the will of God, above himself, every necessity is an expression of this will. From this side, work is a commandment of God. This commandment requires us to cultivate the land with effort (by the sweat of our brow), that is, to cultivate material nature. For whom? Firstly, for yourself and for your neighbors. This answer, clear at the most elementary stages of the moral state, of course, retains its force with further development, and only the concept of “neighbors” expands in its scope. Initially, my neighbors are only those with whom I am connected by blood or personal feeling, but in the end - that’s all. The most talented of the representatives of economic individualism, Bastiat, defending the principle of “everyone for himself,” gets rid of the reproach of selfishness by pointing to that economic harmony, due to which everyone, caring only about himself (and about his own), involuntarily, by the very nature of social relations, works for the benefit of everyone, so that personal interest is in fact in harmony with the general. But in any case, this would only be that natural harmony according to which, for example, certain insects, thinking only about sweet food for themselves, involuntarily contribute to the fertilization of plants, transferring their pollen to where it should be. Such harmony testifies, of course, to the wisdom of the Creator, but does not make insects moral creatures. Man is a moral being, and therefore natural solidarity is not enough for him: he must not only work for everyone, participate in a common cause, but also know and want such participation. Whoever refuses to recognize this truth in principle will feel its actual force in financial collapses and economic crises. After all, both the perpetrators and victims of these anomalies are precisely people who work for themselves - why didn’t natural harmony harmonize their interests and strengthen their well-being? This means that in order for everyone who works for himself to work for everyone, the natural connection of economic relations is not enough, but their conscious direction towards the common good is necessary. To present self-interest or personal interest as the main motivation for work means to take away from work itself the meaning of a universal commandment, to make it something accidental. If I work only for the well-being of myself and others, then since I have the opportunity to achieve this well-being apart from work, I thereby lose the only (from this point of view) incentive to work. And if it turned out that an entire class or group of people could prosper through theft, deception, and exploitation of other people’s labor, then what could be fundamentally opposed to this from the point of view of free self-interest? A natural harmony that will abolish such abuses? But where was this natural harmony during the long centuries of slavery, feudalism, and serfdom? Or perhaps the bloody civil strife that abolished feudalism in Europe and slavery in America was precisely an expression, only a little belated, of natural harmony? But in this case, it is not clear how this harmony differs from disharmony and how the freedom of the guillotine is better than the constraints of state socialism. – If natural harmony, understood in a serious sense, turns out to be insufficient against the economic abuses of free self-interest on the part of individuals and classes and it is necessary to resort to restrictions on this freedom in the name of the highest truth, then is it permissible and noble to remember the truth only as a last resort, to place it at the end, and not at the beginning of the social order? It is not only impermissible and ignoble, but also useless. For such morality ex machina does not have any impressive and captivating power, no one will believe it, it will not deter anyone from anything, and only bare coercion will remain - today in one direction, tomorrow in the other. The principle of individualistic freedom of interests, when adopted by the powerful, does not force them to work harder, but gives rise to ancient slaveholding, medieval lordship and modern economic kulaks, or plutocracy. Assimilated by the weak, who, however, are strong as a majority, as a mass, this principle of free self-interest does not force them to work more harmoniously, but only creates the soil of envious discontent, on which the bombs of anarchists then grow. Bastiat, who readily expressed his thoughts in popular dialogues, if he had lived to this day, could himself have played the main role in such a conversation, for example: Anarchist. Out of special goodwill towards you, Mr. Bastiat, I warn you: get away from here somewhere far away, because I intend to immediately blow up this area due to the presence of various tyrants and exploiters in it. Bastiat. What a terrible situation! But think: you are finally compromising the principle of human freedom! Anarchist. On the contrary, we are implementing it. Bastiat. Who gave you these hellish ideas? Bastiat. What an incredible slander! Anarchist. No, this is the exact truth. We are your students. Have you not proven that the root of all evil is the interference of social power in the free play of individual interests, have you not mercilessly condemned any deliberate organization of labor, any forced social order? But what is condemned as evil must be destroyed. We translate your words into action and save you from menial work. Bastiat. I fought only against state intervention in economic life and against artificial labor organizations invented by socialists. Anarchist. We don't care about socialists; if they fantasize, so much the worse for them. We don't fantasize. We are rebelling against only one organization - against the one that really exists and is called social order. These cities and factories, stock exchanges and academies, the administration, the police, the army, the church - did all this grow from the earth, weren’t these the products of an artificial organization? So, in your opinion, all this is evil and must be destroyed... Bastiat. Even if it were so, then in any case not through violence and disasters! Anarchist. What is a disaster? You explained perfectly that out of apparent disasters comes the real common good; in all cases, you so cleverly distinguished between what is unimportant, what is visible, and what is important, what is not visible. In the present case, what is visible are flying sardine boxes, destroyed buildings, mutilated corpses - this is visible, but not important; and what is not visible and what is the only important thing is the future humanity, in which there will no longer be any “intervention” and no “organization” - beyond the extermination of those individuals, institutions and classes that could intervene and organize. You preached the principle of anarchy, we will create anarchy in practice... Bastiat. Gendarme, gendarme! Grab him quickly before he blows us up. What are you doing? What are you thinking about? Gendarme. This is what I'm thinking about. From the point of view of free individual interest - which I also accepted after reading your eloquent arguments - what is more profitable for me: should I take this fellow by the collar or quickly enter into a natural harmony of interests with him? Despite the imaginary economic harmony, evidence forces us to admit that, based on private, material interest as the goal of labor, we do not arrive at the common good, but only at common discord and destruction. On the contrary, the idea of ​​the common good in the true, moral sense, that is, the good of everyone, and not just the majority, is the idea of ​​such a good, set as the principle and goal of labor, and includes the satisfaction of any private interest within its proper limits. If, from a moral point of view, every person - be he a farmer, a writer or a banker - must work with the consciousness and desire for the general usefulness of his work, if he must look at it as an obligation to fulfill the will of God and serve the general well-being of his neighbors, then this obligation, precisely as a universal one, presupposes that everyone should treat this person in the same way, that is, to regard him not only as a tool, but also as an object or goal of common activity, that society has the obligation to recognize and ensure the right of everyone to independently enjoy - for themselves and for their own - a dignified human existence. A decent existence is possible with voluntary poverty - the kind that St. preached. Francis and in which our wandering pilgrims live; but it becomes impossible in such work in which the entire significance of a person is reduced to the role of a simple instrument for the production or movement of material wealth. Here, for example: “We look at the work of the hookers; the unfortunate, half-naked Tatars are exhausted; it’s painful to watch how your bent back immediately sagging under a load of 8 to 18 pounds (I’m not exaggerating in the last figure); This hard labor is paid at five rubles per thousand poods. A hooker can earn a maximum ruble a day, carrying the work of an ox and certainly straining his strength; Rarely does anyone withstand such hard labor for more than 10 years, and two-legged pack animals become crippled, paralytic...” (New [oe], Time [emya], No. 7356). Anyone who has not seen the Volga “hookmen” has probably seen “bellhoppers” in large hotels, who, panting and straining, drag multi-pound chests to the fourth or fifth floor. And this is in the age of cars and all sorts of sophistication! No one is struck by the obvious incongruity: a guest arrives at the hotel with luggage; although it would only be a useful exercise for him to climb the stairs himself, he sits down in the lifting machine, and his things, for which, it would seem, the machine is precisely intended, are thrown onto the back of the “bellhop,” who, thus, turns out to be not even another person’s tool, but a tool of his things, a tool of a tool! Except in those cases where work is incompatible with human dignity due to its exclusively and crudely mechanical character and due to the excessive tension of muscular strength which it requires, the same incompatibility with human dignity or immorality of work must be recognized even when work, while in itself not hard or humiliating, by its daily duration absorbs all the time and all the strength of the worker, so that those few hours that interrupt work are necessarily given over to physical rest, and to thoughts and concerns of an ideal and spiritual order. there is no time and energy left. 146 In addition to hours of rest, there are, of course, whole days of rest - Sundays and other holidays. But the exhausting and dulling physical labor that occupies all everyday life evokes a natural reaction on a holiday - the need for revelry and self-forgetfulness, to which these days are given over. “But let us not dwell for long on the impression made by individual, even if numerous, facts accessible to our observation. Let's turn to statistics and ask them, to what extent do wages satisfy the necessary needs of the employee? Leaving aside the wages in different types of labor, the quality of food, the size of the home, we will ask statistics only about the life expectancy of people depending on their occupation. To which we receive the following answer: shoemakers live on average 49 years, book printers - 48.3, tailors - 46.6, carpenters - 44.7, blacksmiths - 41.8, turners - 41.6, stonemasons - 33. And the average life of officials, capitalists, clergy, wholesale traders is 60 - 69 years. 147 Let us take data on mortality depending on the size of housing and the height of rent in parts of the city - and we will find that in areas of the city inhabited by poor, mainly working people with low rent, mortality is much higher than in parts of the city with a relatively large number of rich inhabitants. For Paris, Villarmé established this connection back in the 20s of this century: he calculated that during the five-year period 1822 - 26. in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, with an average annual rent of 605 francs, there was 1 death per 71 inhabitants, and in the 12th, with an average rent of 148 francs, 1 in 44 died. We have homogeneous data for many other cities, including St. Petersburg.” 148 From here the following fair conclusion is drawn: “Whoever does not consider the worker as an instrument of production, but recognizes in him, as in every person, a free and self-sufficient personality, cannot consider an average life of 40 years normal, if people of the wealthy classes live on average to 60 - 70. We consider this possibly long life in modern social conditions to be normal. Any deviation from this level downward, if it cannot be explained by the peculiarities of the given occupations, should be attributed only to excessive labor and insufficient income, which does not allow to cover the most necessary needs, to satisfy the least requirements of hygiene regarding food, clothing and housing. 149 The unconditional significance of a person is based, as we know, on the possibility of endless improvement lying in his mind and will, or, as the church fathers put it, deification (θέωσις). This possibility does not transform into reality for us directly, in one complete act, because then man would already be equal to God, which is contrary to the truth - this internal potential becomes more and more reality, for which certain real conditions are required. An ordinary man, left for many years on a desert island or in absolute solitary confinement, is not only deprived of the opportunity to improve mentally and morally, but, as we know, shows rapid progress towards obvious bestiality. In the same way, in essence, a person who is completely absorbed in material work, if he does not fall into complete savagery, then in any case can no longer think about the active implementation of his highest human significance. So, from a moral point of view, it is required that every person not only have secure means of subsistence (that is, food, clothing and housing with heat and air) and sufficient physical rest, but that he can also use leisure for his spiritual improvement. This and only this is absolutely required for every peasant and worker; what is superfluous comes from the evil one. Opponents of the moral improvement of socio-economic relations argue that since in order to provide workers with additional leisure time in addition to their secure material existence to possibly ensure their mental and moral development, it will be necessary, without lowering wages, to reduce the number of working hours, this will also lead to a reduction in production, that is, to economic decline or regression. Let us assume for now that a reduction in working hours at the same wage does inevitably lead to a reduction in production. But why is a temporary (one-time) reduction in production necessarily a decline or regression? After all, after bringing working time to a certain norm, the positive reasons that determine the increase in production are: technical improvements, spatial convergence of regions and countries due to new routes of communication and everyday convergence of different classes - all these reasons, completely or partially independent of wages and working time, will continue to operate, and the total amount of production will again begin to increase; even at a time when this increase has not yet reached its previous level, the production of the necessities of life for individuals and for the state will obviously not decrease, and the entire reduction will fall only on luxury goods. But what kind of misfortune threatens society if gold watches, satin skirts and velvet chairs are twice or at least three times more expensive? But, they will say, a reduction in working hours with the same pay is a direct loss for entrepreneurs. It is impossible to do anything at all without losses for someone, but can it be considered a disaster and an insult that some capitalist-manufacturers will receive half a million instead of a million, and fifty instead of a hundred thousand? Does this undoubtedly necessary and important social class necessarily consist of stingy, greedy and self-interested people? I know capitalists who are completely free from such a vice, and those who are subject to it have the right to have society take pity on them and not condone such an abnormal and dangerous state of their souls. The current socialist declamations against the rich, inspired by base envy, are disgusting to the point of nausea, the demands for equalization of property are unfounded to the point of absurdity. 150 But it is one thing to attack private wealth as some kind of evil in itself, and another thing to demand that this wealth, as a relative good, be consistent with the common good in the sense of an unconditional moral principle; It’s one thing to strive for an impossible and unnecessary equalization of property, and another thing is to recognize everyone’s right to the necessary means for a decent human existence, while maintaining property superiority for those who have it. In addition to the incorrect conclusions that opponents of the moral regulation of economic relations draw from their main statement, are they right in this statement itself, that is, does the regulation of working time and wages necessarily reduce the given production (at least of luxury goods) for some time and cause a corresponding loss to the manufacturers? This would be so if the quantity (not to mention the quality) of production depended entirely on the number of hours spent on it. But what thoughtful and conscientious political economist would dare to seriously assert such a monstrous absurdity? It is easy to understand that an exhausted, dull and embittered worker from overwork can produce less in 16 hours than the same worker will produce in 8 hours, if he works cheerfully, diligently, with a consciousness of his human dignity and with confidence in his moral solidarity with a society or state that does not exploit him, but cares for him. Thus, the moral ordering of economic relations would at the same time be economic progress. Moral philosophy, when engaged in the organization of human relations, in this case economic ones, does not have in mind these or those particular definitions and forms that will be required by life itself and implemented by the activities of professional and powerful people, theorists and practitioners - moral philosophy has in mind only those immutable conditions arising from the very idea of ​​good, without the fulfillment of which no given organization can be moral. For us, any social organization is interesting and desirable only because it embodies a moral principle - because it justifies goodness. Projection and prophecy are not the work of philosophical science; it cannot offer certain plans for social order, nor even know whether people and nations will generally want to arrange their relations in accordance with the requirements of an unconditional moral principle. Its task, in its clarity and independence from any external circumstances, is equal to the tasks of pure mathematics. Under what conditions is a segment of a triangular prism equal to three pyramids? Under what conditions do social relations in this area meet the requirements of the moral principle and ensure a given society’s lasting existence and constant improvement? We already know two conditions under which social relations in the field of material labor become moral. The first, general condition is that the area of ​​economic activity is not isolated and not established as independent, self-sufficient. The second condition, more special, is that production should not be carried out at the expense of the human dignity of the producers, so that not one of them becomes only an instrument of production, so that everyone is provided with the material means for a dignified existence and development. The first requirement is of a religious nature: do not put Mammon in the place of God, do not recognize material wealth as an independent good and the final goal of human activity, at least in the economic sphere; 151 the second is the requirement of philanthropy: to have pity on those who are toiling and burdened and not to value them lower than soulless things. To these two there must be added a third condition, to which, as far as I know, no one has yet paid serious attention in this order of ideas. I mean the duties of a person as an economic figure in relation to the very material nature that he is called upon to process in this sphere. This duty is expressly stated in the commandment of labor: to cultivate the land. 152 To cultivate the land does not mean to abuse it, to deplete and destroy it, but to improve it, to bring it into greater strength and fullness of being. So, not only our neighbors, but also material nature should not be just a passive and indifferent instrument of economic production or exploitation. It is not in itself, or taken separately, the goal of our activity, but it is included as a special, independent member of this goal. Her subordinate position relative to Divinity and humanity does not make her powerless: she has the right to our help for her transformation and elevation. Things have no rights, but nature or the earth is not only a thing, it is a materialized essence, which we can, and therefore must, contribute to its spiritualization. The purpose of labor in relation to material nature is not to use it to obtain things and money, but to improve it itself - to revive what is dead in it, to spiritualize what is material. The methods of this activity cannot be indicated here; they constitute the task of art (in the broad sense of the Greek τέχνη). But first of all, the attitude towards the subject itself, the internal mood and the direction of activity resulting from it are important. Without love for nature, it is impossible for nature itself to carry out the moral organization of material life. A threefold relationship of a person to external nature is possible: passive submission to it in the form in which it exists, then an active struggle with it, conquering it and using it as an indifferent instrument, and, finally, affirmation of its ideal state - what it should become through a person. The first attitude is completely unfair both to man and to nature: to man because it takes away his spiritual dignity, making him a slave of matter; to nature because, bowing before it in its given imperfect and perverted state, man thereby takes away from it the hope of perfection. Second, a negative attitude towards nature should be recognized as relatively normal in the sense of temporary or transitional; for it is clear that in order to impart the proper form to nature, it is first necessary to treat it negatively in its current, not proper form. But, of course, only the third, positive attitude, in which man uses his superiority over nature not only for his own, but also for her own elevation, should be recognized as absolutely normal and final. It is easy to notice that man’s threefold relationship to earthly nature outside of him is only an expanded repetition of the same relationship to his own material nature. And here we must distinguish between abnormal, compassionate, normal (positively active) and the transition from the first to the second (negatively active): the carnal man submits and surrenders to his material life in its improper, perverted form; the ascetic struggles with the flesh in order to suppress it; the perfect righteous man, having gone through such a struggle, achieves not the destruction of his physicality, but its transfiguration, resurrection and ascension. Just as in personal life there is asceticism, or the suppression of the flesh, so in the general life of humanity, the struggle with external, earthly nature and its conquest is only a necessary transition, and not the final norm of activity: normal activity here is the cultivation of the earth, caring for it in view of its future renewal and revival. The active or productive cause of labor is given in human needs; this reason is valid for all factors of production, which are alternately subjects and objects of need: the worker, as a living being, has a need for a means of subsistence, and he, as labor power, is an object of need for the entrepreneur or capitalist, who in turn, as an employer, is an object of need for the worker and in this sense the closest active cause that determines him to work; in a similar interaction, the same people, like producers in general, are in contact with consumers, etc. – The material (and instrumental) reason for labor and production is given in the forces of nature, on the one hand, in the various abilities and powers of man, on the other. But these economic causes of two kinds (i.e., active and material), studied from different sides by political economy and statistics, have the property of physical limitlessness and moral uncertainty. Needs can increase and become more complex ad infinitum; in addition, both needs and abilities can be of different merits; finally, the forces of nature can be used in a variety of directions. All this raises practical questions to which political economy itself, as a science limited by the material and factual side of the matter, cannot give any answer. Many people have a need for pornography; Should this need be satisfied by the production of obscene books, paintings, immoral spectacles? Other needs, as well as abilities, are clearly perverted in nature; Thus, for many, the well-known positive qualities of mind and will degenerate into a special ability to cleverly organize fraudulent scams on legal grounds; Should the free development of this ability and the formation of a special profession or branch of labor be allowed from it? Political economy as such obviously cannot answer such questions; this does not concern it at all; however, this directly concerns the recognized interests of society, which even here cannot limit itself to one material and factual side of phenomena, but must subordinate them to higher causality, distinguishing between normal and abnormal needs and abilities, between normal and abnormal use of the forces of nature. Since the actual existence of needs, on the one hand, and strengths and abilities, on the other, does not solve the practical question of to what extent the former should be satisfied and in what sense the latter should be used, then for a solution we have to turn to the moral principle, as determining exactly what should be done. It does not create factors and elements of labor, but indicates how to deal with data. Hence the new concept of labor, for all its generality, more definite than that which is given by political economy in itself, or taken separately. For her, labor is a human activity, arising from his needs, conditioned by his abilities applied to the forces of nature, and with the goal of producing the greatest wealth. And from a moral point of view, labor is the interaction of people in the material field, which, in accordance with moral requirements, must provide everyone with the necessary means for a decent existence and comprehensive improvement, and in its final purpose must transform and spiritualize material nature. This is the essence of labor from the side of its highest causality, formal and final, without which the two lower ones remain practically undefined. Further conditions for normal economic life are clarified by analyzing the concepts of property and exchange. All pressing issues of economic life are closely related to the concept of property, which, however, in itself belongs more to the field of law, morality and psychology than to the field of economic relations. This circumstance alone clearly shows how wrong it is to try to isolate economic phenomena into a completely independent and self-sufficient sphere. The inalienable basis of property, as all serious philosophers of modern times rightly recognize, lies in the very essence of the human person. Already in the content of internal, mental experience, we necessarily distinguish ourselves from our own - we distinguish all the thoughts, feelings and desires that appear in us as our own from the one to whom they belong, that is, from ourselves, as a thinker, a feeling, a desirer. Moreover, the relationship here is twofold. On the one hand, we certainly put ourselves above our own, because we recognize that our existence is in no way exhausted or limited by one or another mental state, that this thought, this feeling, this desire can disappear, but we ourselves remain. This is the basic expression of human personality in its formal unconditionality, completely independent of the metaphysical question of the soul as a substance. But, on the other hand, we realize that if all mental states in general are taken away from us, then we ourselves will turn into an empty place, so for the reality and fullness of being, “ourselves” are not enough, but it is necessary to have “our own.” Moreover, already in this internal, mental sphere, this “own” is not always an unconditional belonging of a person and is not in an equally close connection with him. There are mental states that, in their content, express in the closest, direct or immediate way something essential and fundamental in a given individuality and therefore, in a certain sense, are inseparable from it. Thus, when someone has an unshakable, convinced faith in God, then this faith is already an indispensable part of him - not in the sense that he should always actually have in his mind an affirmative thought about God, with corresponding feelings and aspirations, but only in the sense that every time the idea of God actually arises in his soul, or every time a question about God is put before him, a definite, positive answer certainly follows, accompanied by corresponding states of feeling and will. Other mental states, on the contrary, are only superficial and transient reactions of the personal being to external influences - random both in their content and in their occurrence, even if conditioned by a more or less complex association of ideas and other mental and physical processes; Thus, when a thought arises in someone about the benefits or harm of bicycles, a desire to drink beer, a feeling of indignation at some false report in the newspapers, etc., it is quite clear that such random states are very weakly connected with the one to whom they belong, and that with their disappearance he loses nothing and does not experience any significant change. But, finally, there are also mental phenomena in which, regardless of their content and reasons for their occurrence, it is impossible to discern at all the real reaction of the individual being who experiences them, so that their very belonging to him must be recognized as imaginary. These are very difficult to theoretically explain, but completely undoubted facts of inspired (hypnotically or otherwise) thoughts, feelings and desires with the resulting actions. However, in addition to these extraordinary phenomena, it is enough to point out the generally accepted in science and life insanity of certain actions to persons who clearly committed them; Since most of such actions are nevertheless conditioned on the part of the actor by corresponding ideas, feelings and aspirations, the recognition of insanity presupposes that certain mental states are not their own, or their own, for the person experiencing them. So, already in the area of ​​inner, psychological life we ​​find only relative and unequal property, starting from the “treasure” in which a person “puts his soul” and which, however, can be taken away from him, and ending with such states, the property of which turns out to be completely imaginary. We find a similar relativity in the sphere of external property. Its closest object is its own body, which, however, only more or less belongs to a person, firstly, in the natural sense that the person itself cannot consider to the same extent as his own such organs or parts of the body without which earthly life is completely impossible (like the head or heart), and those without which it is possible, but not red (such as, for example, the “apple of the eye”), and, finally, those whose loss does not constitute any harm (like an amputated finger or a pulled out tooth, not to mention nails, hair, etc. ), but if, therefore, the real connection of a person with his body is relative and uneven, then there is no natural basis for absolute ownership of the body, or for absolute bodily inviolability. And from the point of view of the unconditional moral principle, the bodily integrity of everyone is not something separate, but is connected with general norms that are mandatory for everyone, and, therefore, is incompatible with the violation of these norms. If I have not only the right, but also the obligation to forcibly restrain a person who is causing offense to a defenseless creature, then I thereby recognize the same right and the same obligation for others to exercise bodily coercion over me in a similar case. On the other hand, if we understand property in the strict sense as jus untendi et abutendi re sua (the right to use and abuse one’s own thing), then in relation to one’s body such a right is not recognized as unconditional: on this side it is limited by fair considerations of the common good, which have found expression in the criminal legislation of all times and countries. If the fullness of a person’s physical strength is needed, for example, to protect the fatherland, then even such a slight “abuse” of one’s body as cutting off a finger is already recognized as a crime. But even outside such special conditions, not every disposal of a person’s body is considered permissible. Whatever the moral and social restrictions on a person’s right of ownership of his body, in any case, this property (as well as the ownership of a person’s mental states) is based directly on the natural, involuntarily existing connection between oneself and one’s own and is not subject to dispute at all. As for external things, here the very basis of their belonging to one or another person or their assimilation is not given directly to them and requires explanation. Even in cases where, apparently, there is the closest connection between a person and a thing, such as, for example, between the necessary dress and the one who is wearing it at the moment, the question of ownership still remains open, since this dress may not be one’s own, but someone else’s, stolen. On the other hand, a person living in St. Petersburg or London may have real estate in Eastern Siberia, which he has never seen and will never see. If, therefore, the presence of the closest real connection between a person and a thing (as in the first case) does not at all guarantee ownership, and the absence of any real connection (as in the second case) does not prevent ownership, then it means that a real connection has nothing to do with it at all and ownership of things must have an ideal basis. According to the generally accepted philosophical definition, property is the ideal continuation of personality in things, or its transfer to things. But how and on what basis is this transfer of oneself to another accomplished, by virtue of which this other becomes one’s own? This cannot be done by one act of personal will; in general, it is sufficient only to move an already existing property right (through a will, gift, etc.), and not in any way to create the right itself. It is created, as is usually accepted, only in two direct and primary ways: possession and labor. Taking possession in the proper sense, i.e. without any special labor (for example, military labor), through one simple act of will, seizure, creates a special right of ownership, or “the right of the first occupier” (jus primi occupantis), only in those exceptional and increasingly rare cases when what is captured is an object that does not belong to anyone (res nullius). The essential basis of property, in general opinion, remains labor. The product of one’s labor and effort naturally becomes one’s own, becomes property. However, this foundation is also lame. If it were sufficient, then children should be recognized as the property of the mother, who produced them not without labor and effort. It is necessary to allow a limitation and to exclude in advance human beings from the list of objects of property, which can only be done by virtue of principles completely foreign to the economic field as such. But here a new and more important difficulty arises. The subject of property can only be things, and the basis of property is the labor that produces them. It would be good if labor could produce some things, meanwhile labor does not produce any things, but produces only utilities in things, but utilities, being only relations, and not realities, cannot be the subject of property. Although in everyday usage, established in naive times, it is customary to talk about equal things done by workers, anyone who has not been trained in political economy understands that workers only make changes in a given material that impart to it some new relative properties that correspond to one or another human needs. That they produce this labor not only for other people, but also for themselves, that this labor must satisfy their own needs, is certain. “The worker is worthy of food” 153 is a moral axiom that no one in conscience will argue against. But on what can the worker’s right of ownership of the so-called product of labor be based? In fact, labor that produces not a thing, but only some particular property in it, inseparable, however, from the whole thing, cannot give ownership rights to something that it did not produce and that does not depend on it. But the entrepreneur is in the same position as the worker, on whom only the labor of the worker depended, and not the reality of the product. So, there is no real reason why a work of labor should be the subject of someone’s property, and we must turn to ideal reasons. Every person, due to the unconditional importance of the individual, has the right to the means for a decent existence; since for an individual person this right exists only in possibility, but the actual implementation or provision of this right depends on society, then it follows that the person has a corresponding duty to society - to be useful to it, or to work for the common good. Only in this sense is labor a source of property: the worker has an inalienable right of ownership to what he has earned. But since wages can only be regulated by society (i.e., by the general authority or government) within certain limits required by the moral principle (i.e., not below a certain minimum level), and are in no way rewritten with unconditional accuracy, and since, on the other hand, the needs and conditions of a decent existence represent in a normal society only an approximately certain and constant value, then for individuals it is possible to save or accumulate material resources, i.e. capital formation. The visible, real connection between capital and the person who accumulated it, of course, is even less than between the worker and the thing on which he worked, but the close and complete ideal connection is obvious here: capital, as such, by its general essence (and not by the circumstances of its origin in individual cases) is a pure product of human will, for initially it depended on it to set aside part of the earnings or to use this share for current needs. Therefore, capital, but in fairness, must be recognized as property par excellence. 154 The concept of property contains the concept of free disposal of the subject of property. Should this freedom be allowed unconditionally, covering indifferently both the use and abuse of property? Since in general the exercise of any right is possible only if it is ensured by society, it is not clear in the name of why society would provide for personal abuse of rights that runs counter to the common good. From the fact that a person, according to the moral principle, has unconditional and inalienable rights, it does not in any way follow that every act of his will is an expression of such an inviolable right. Such an assumption, in addition to the lack of reasonable grounds for it, practically destroys itself, for a will that violates every right would also be inviolable, and, consequently, no inviolable right would remain. And if it is permissible and even should prevent a person from abusing his hands (for example, for murder), then it is also permissible and should prevent him from abusing his property to the detriment of the common good, or public truth. 155 The only question is, what is considered an abuse that triggers the intervention of public authority? Socialism recognizes as such an abuse any transfer of earned property to another person by inheritance or will. This transfer of economic advantages to those who do not personally deserve them is presented as the main untruth and the source of all social ills. But if successive ownership has real inconveniences, then they disappear in front of the positive side of this institution, which necessarily follows from the very nature of man. The continuous chain of progress in humanity is maintained by the conscious continuity of its links. While the future complete unity is still being created, the very progress of its creation requires a mutual moral connection of generations, due to which one not only follows the other, but also inherits it. Without the intentional and voluntary transfer of acquired property, there will only be a physical change of generations repeating the previous life, like in animals. The most important thing, of course, is the continuous increase of the spiritual heritage, but since only a few people are destined to bequeath lasting spiritual acquisitions to the world's posterity - and the moral requirements are the same for everyone - then the majority of people retain the right and responsibility to take care of the material improvement of living conditions for their personal successors. Anyone who directly surrenders to the universal future and already anticipates it ideally has the right to refer to evangelical carelessness. To imitate the lilies one must have their purity, and to imitate the birds of the air one must have the height of their flight. And if there is a lack of one or the other, everyday carelessness can liken us not to lilies and birds of the air, but perhaps only to that animal which, in its carelessness about the future, not only digs up the roots of a beneficent oak tree, but on occasion devours its own offspring instead of acorns. When the question is raised about an institution that is not immoral, that has ideal foundations, although it corresponds only to the average moral level, it is not permissible for a serious moralist to forget the undoubted truth that it is much more difficult for society to rise above this level than to descend below it. Even if socialism and similar teachings even intended to make every person an angel, they would still not have succeeded, and yet it is not at all difficult to bring the human mass into a bestial state. To deny, in the name of an unconditional moral ideal, the necessary social conditions of moral progress means, firstly, contrary to logic, to confuse the absolute and eternal dignity of what is accomplished with the relative dignity of the degrees of implementation as a temporary process; secondly, this means a frivolous attitude towards the absolute ideal, which, without the actual conditions for its implementation, reduces for a person to idle talk; and thirdly, finally, this pseudo-moral straightforwardness and intransigence exposes the absence of the most basic and elementary moral impulse - pity, and precisely pity for those who require it most of all - for these little ones. Preaching absolute morality with the denial of all moralizing institutions, placing burdens of inconvenience on the weak and helpless shoulders of average humanity - this is an illogical, frivolous, and immoral matter. Hereditary property is a permanent realization of moral relationships in the closest, but also in the most fundamental social sphere - the family. The hereditary state is, on the one hand, the embodiment of the experiencing, extreme pity of parents for their children, and on the other hand, a real fulcrum for the pious memory of departed parents. But with this, at least in the most important department of property - land, there is also a third moral moment: in the relation of man to external nature, i.e. the earth. For the majority of humanity, this attitude can become moral only under the condition of hereditary land ownership. Understanding earthly nature and loving it for itself is given to few; but everyone naturally becomes attached to his native corner of the earth, to his native graves and cradles; this is a moral connection and, moreover, extending human solidarity to material nature and thereby laying the foundation for its spiritualization. Here lies not only the justification of existing hereditary property (real estate), but also the basis for its further moral ordering. It is not enough to recognize in this property the ideal property that is obviously inherent in it, but it is necessary to strengthen and educate this property, protecting it from the all too natural, in the given state of humanity, preponderance of base, selfish motives. Decisive obstacles must be put in place to treat land as an indifferent instrument of predatory exploitation, and the inalienability of hereditary land plots sufficient to maintain a moral attitude towards the land must be established in principle. But, they will say, where, given the continuously increasing population, can we get so much land so that not only everyone who has can retain (at least partially) what he has, but there is still something left to give to those who do not have? This objection, for all its apparent seriousness, is in fact either not sufficiently thought out, or not entirely in good faith. To propose the provision of inalienable land plots for each and every one, as an unconditional, separate and independent measure, would, of course, be a great absurdity. This measure can and should be taken only in connection with another transformation - the cessation of that predatory economy in which there is not only enough land for everyone, but, finally, for no one. And when a moral attitude towards the land is established, with real care for it, as for a beloved being, the minimum size of a plot sufficient for each person can be reduced to such a limit that, without offense, there will be enough land for those who have and for all those who have not. As for the unlimited reproduction of people, it is not based on any physical, much less moral, law. It goes without saying that a normal economy is possible only with a normal family, which is based on reasonable asceticism, and not on the immensity of carnal instincts. The immoral exploitation of the earth cannot cease as long as the immoral exploitation of women continues. If you have an inappropriate attitude towards your inner home (as the wife is called in scripture), is it possible to have an undue attitude towards your outer home? Can a man who beats his wife properly take care of the land? In general, the essence of a moral solution to an economic issue lies in its internal connection with the whole life task of man and humanity. Just as physiological life is impossible without metabolism, so social life is impossible without the exchange of things (and the signs that represent them). This important area of ​​material-human relations is studied in its technique by political economy, financial and commercial law, but it is subject to moral philosophy only at the point at which exchange becomes deception. To evaluate these economic phenomena and relations in themselves, as other moralists do, to assert, for example, that money is evil, that trade should not exist, that banks should be destroyed, etc., is unforgivable childishness. Objects condemned in this way are obviously indifferent in moral terms, or are “average things,” and become good and evil only from the quality and direction of the will that uses them. If it is necessary to renounce money as an evil, because many people do evil through money, then it is also necessary to renounce the gift of articulate speech, since many use it for foul language, idle talk and perjury; one would also have to give up fire for the sake of fires and water for the sake of drowned people. But in fact, money, trade and banks are not evil, but become evil, or, more precisely, the consequence of an existing evil and the cause of a new one, when instead of the necessary exchange they serve selfish deception. The root of evil here, as in the entire economic sphere, is the same: the transformation of material interest from a service interest to a dominant one, from a dependent one to an independent one, from a means to an end. From this poisonous root three evil trunks emerge in the area of ​​exchange: falsification, speculation and usury. “By trade,” we read in the latest manual of political economy, “it is customary to understand the commercial activity of buying and selling goods for the purpose of making a profit.” That trade is the purchase and sale of goods is only a verbal definition, the essence of the matter is in the goal, which here is recognized only as the profit of the merchant. 156 But if trade should only be profitable, then this legitimizes every profitable counterfeit of goods and every successful speculation; and if profit is the goal of trade, then, of course, it is also the goal of such an operation as lending money, and since the loan is more profitable the higher the interest, this legitimizes unlimited usury. Recognizing, on the contrary, such phenomena as abnormal, it is necessary to recognize that trade and exchange in general can be an instrument of private profit only under the indispensable condition of being, first of all, a public service, or the performance of a public function for the benefit of all. From this point of view, these economic anomalies can only be completely exterminated at their moral roots. And everyone understands that the unhindered growth of a plant strengthens its root and spreads it both in breadth and depth, and if the roots are very deep, then first of all you need to cut down the trunk. Speaking without allegory, in addition to the internal, purely ideal and verbal struggle against the vice of self-interest, a normal society can and should decisively counteract with external, real measures such lush growths of immense self-interest as trade falsification, speculation and usury. Counterfeiting of goods, especially items of necessary consumption, threatens public safety and is not only an immoral act, but a downright criminal offense. This is how it is recognized in other cases even now, but this view must be carried out more decisively. With a general transformation of the criminal process and the penitentiary system 157, the intensified prosecution of these special atrocities will not be cruel, but only fair. At the same time, we should not forget two more things: firstly, that the people who suffer most from this evil are the poor and ignorant, already disadvantaged, and secondly, that the unhindered prosperity of these crimes, like all others, is offensive not only to their victims, but also to the criminals themselves, who in such public connivance can see justification and encouragement of their immorality. Financial transactions with imaginary values ​​(so-called “speculation”) represent, of course, not so much a personal crime as a social disease, and here, first of all, it is necessary to unconditionally prevent those institutions that feed this disease. – As for usury, finally, the only sure way to its destruction is, obviously, the widespread development of normal credit as a charitable, and not self-interested, institution. Speaking about proper economic relations in the field of labor, property and exchange, we always talked about justice and law, just as we assumed these concepts in our discussion of the criminal issue. Moreover, for the most part, justice and right could be understood as one and the same thing. Meanwhile, the concept of justice expresses a purely moral requirement and, therefore, belongs to the ethical area, while law defines a special area of ​​​​relations - legal. Is this difference just a misunderstanding? If it is fundamental, then in what sense and to what extent? Turning now to this question of the relationship between morality and law and without prejudging anything about the content of our research, we only note that the scope of the question is very wide, because the concept of law is inevitably associated with an inextricable chain of other concepts: law, power, lawful coercion, state. These concepts were already implied by us when we talked about the organization of fair social relations, for it is clear that such an organization cannot be realized by moral preaching alone. Chapter seventeen. Morality and Law In the very essence of the unconditional moral principle as a commandment or requirement (to be perfect, like the Heavenly Father, or to realize in oneself the image and likeness of God) lies the recognition of a relative element in the moral field. For it is clear that the demand for perfection can only appeal to the imperfect; obliging him to become like a higher being, this commandment presupposes lower states and relative degrees of exaltation. Thus, the unconditional moral principle, or perfect good, for us is, in Hegel’s language, the unity of ourselves and our other, the synthesis of the absolute and the relative. The existence of the relative, or imperfect, as distinct from the absolute Good, is a fatal fact, and to deny it, to confuse both terms with each other, or, through some dialectical tricks and mystical impulses, to assert their identity, would mean playing a false game. But the opposite attitude to the matter is equally false: the separation of the relative from the absolute as two completely special areas that have nothing in common with each other. With such dualism, man himself, in which absolute aspirations are inextricably linked with relative conditions, turns out to be nonsense incarnate. The only serious point of view to which reason and conscience oblige us is the recognition that the actual duality between the absolute and the relative is resolved for us into free and complete unity (and not into empty identity or indifference) through real-moral improvement from the frozen stone to the freedom and glory of the sons of God. At every stage of existence, the relative is connected with the absolute as one of the means of real improvement of all, and in this connection, the lesser good has its justification as a condition of the greater. And at the same time, this is a justification for the absolute Good itself, which would not be absolute if it could not connect with itself or include in one way or another all real relations. And in fact, in no area of ​​the world accessible to us do we find these two terms in their isolation or in their naked form: everywhere the absolute principle is clothed in relative forms and the relative is internally connected with the absolute and is held by it - the whole difference lies in the comparative predominance of one or the other side. If any two spheres or two types of real relations are distinguished from each other and are opposed to each other, and one of them is attributed an unconditional, and the other only a relative meaning, then we can know in advance that this very opposition is only relative, that in both spheres there is no pure absoluteness and pure relativity, but there is only a special connection of both, not identical in both in form and degree, but identical in essence and highest goal, and that this is the relation of each to absolute forms a positive connection or solidarity between both. Within the active, or practical, life of mankind, a visible opposition exists between the area of ​​the moral proper and the area of ​​law, and from ancient times (from the pagan Cynics and Christian Gnostics) to the present day, this opposition is taken without reference, the meaning of the unconditional is attributed exclusively to morality, and law, as a purely conditional phenomenon, is completely rejected in the name of absolute requirements. The falseness of such a look is immediately felt; Moral philosophy obliges us, without dwelling on this feeling, which can be deceptive, to consider the actual relationship between morality and law from the point of view of unconditional Good. Is this Good also justified in relation to law? A person attentive to etymology may notice that the answer already lies in the terms of the question. We will touch upon this philological circumstance further, but it should not in itself prejudge the philosophical task. In lectures on criminal law, prof. N.S. Tagantsev cites, among other things, the following Prussian edict of 1739: “If a lawyer, or a procurator, or something similar dares himself or asks another to submit some memorandum to their royal majesty, then their royal majesty is pleased that such a person should be hanged without any mercy and that a dog should be hanged next to him.” The legality or legality of such an edict cannot be questioned, and just as certain is his disagreement with the elementary requirements of justice - disagreement, as if deliberately emphasized by the extension of the criminal liability of a lawyer or procurator to an already innocent dog. Similar, although not so striking, cases of discrepancy between morality and positive law, between justice and law, are a common phenomenon in history. How should we react to this, which side should we take in this clash between the two main principles of practical life? Apparently, the answer is clear: moral requirements have in themselves that unconditional internal obligation, which may be completely absent in the provisions of positive law. From this it seems permissible to conclude that the question of the relationship between morality and law is resolved by the simple denial of law as a due or obligatory beginning of our actions; all human relations, according to this, should be reduced to purely moral interactions, and the area of ​​legal or legal relations and definitions should be completely rejected. Such a conclusion is extremely easy, but also completely frivolous. This “antinomianism” (illegalism), based on the unconditional opposition of morality and law, has never subjected and does not subject this very basic assumption to any consistent and in-depth criticism. The contradiction with moral requirements in such formally legitimate phenomena as the above-mentioned edict of the Prussian king is too obvious. But do they not contradict the requirements of the law itself? The possibility of such a contradiction between the formal legality of certain actions and the essence of law will become clearer to readers if I use a real example to point out a similar contradiction between the formal moral character of an action and the essence of morality. Recently, as newspapers reported, in the middle of Moscow, on Nikolskaya Street, near the chapel of St. Panteleimon, a crowd of people almost beat to death and mutilated a woman suspected of inducing illness on a boy through an enchanted apple. These people acted without any selfish goals or external considerations, they had no personal enmity towards this woman and no personal interest in beating her; their only motive was the consciousness that such a blatant crime as the poisoning of an innocent baby through witchcraft should receive just retribution. Thus, one cannot take away the formal moral character of this case, although everyone will agree that in essence it was decidedly immoral. But if the fact that outrageous atrocities can be committed for purely moral reasons does not lead us to deny morality itself, then on what basis do such essentially wrong, although lawful, regulations as the Prussian Edict of 1739 seem to us sufficient to reject the law? If it is not the moral principle itself that is to blame for the atrocity on Nikolskaya Street, but only the insufficient degree of development of moral consciousness among the half-wild crowd, then in the absurd Prussian law it is not the very idea of ​​law or law itself that is to blame, but only the weak degree of legal consciousness of King Frederick William. This would not be worth talking about if it weren’t for the recently growing bad habit, especially in relation to the legal field, of drawing general conclusions from individual specific cases, in spite of logic. The real contradiction and incompatibility exist not between law and morality, but between different states of both legal and moral consciousness. And that, regardless of these states and their actual manifestations, there are essential and unshakable norms in the legal sphere, as well as in the moral sphere - even the spirit of lies, sophistically attacking jurisprudence, involuntarily recognizes this: Laws and rights, hereditary disease, They are everywhere, one after another The mind has turned into absurdity, And mercy suddenly became trouble. Suffer, since you were a grandson! About that right with which everyone was born, And Mephistopheles recognizes this natural right, complaining only that there is no talk about it. 158 But in fact, this is what we are talking about every time we talk about any legal relations at all. It is impossible to judge or evaluate any fact from the legal field, any manifestation of law, if you do not have a general idea of ​​law, or its norm. Mephistopheles himself uses this idea, or norm, when he says that certain rights and laws have changed from reasonable to meaningless, and from beneficial to harmful. At the same time, he points to only one side of the matter, namely the so-called conservatism in law. And this phenomenon has its own reasonable grounds, and the inconveniences arising from it, which Mephistopheles exclusively dwells on, are eliminated by another phenomenon, which the spirit of lies does not mention, having its own reasons, namely the phenomenon of a gradual rise in legal consciousness and a real improvement of legal institutions. This undoubted progress in law can be shown even in the example of an unjust law I cited, and not in the sense that such legalizations as the Prussian Edict of 1739 became completely impossible in every European country - and the death penalty even for undoubted and greatest atrocities has long been condemned by the leading representatives of legal consciousness - but also in the fact that this edict represented, on the other hand, undeniable progress compared with those the orders that previously prevailed in the same Brandenburg or in the same Pomerania, as in the rest of Europe, when any strong baron could calmly kill peaceful people out of personal revenge or for the sake of taking possession of their property, whereas under the father of Frederick the Great, only the power of one king, who, moreover, did not have any personal or selfish goals, could take the life of a person throughout the whole country; It is clear, in fact, that when composing his edict, Frederick William was only interested in suppressing snitching and slander through the threat of execution, and not in actually taking the lives of lawyers, procurators and dogs. Those barons in their violence were undoubtedly murderers and robbers, while in this outrageous edict he still acted as a guardian of justice, albeit at a rather low level of legal consciousness. But already this difference in degrees, this real progress in law, the steady gravitation of legal provisions towards legal norms that are consistent, although not identical, with moral requirements, sufficiently shows that between these two principles there is not only a negative relationship and that getting rid of the entire field of legal phenomena and tasks by the easy way of simple and empty denial is impermissible precisely from the point of view of morality itself. The mutual relationship between the moral and legal spheres is one of the fundamental questions of practical philosophy. This is essentially a question about the connection between ideal moral consciousness and real life; the vitality and fruitfulness of moral consciousness itself depends on a positive understanding of this connection. Between ideal good and evil reality there is an intermediate area of ​​law and law, serving to embody good, limit and correct evil. Law and its embodiment - the state - determine the actual organization of moral life in all of humanity, and with a negative attitude towards law as such, moral preaching, devoid of objective means and supports in a real environment alien to it, would remain at best only innocent idle talk, and law itself, on the other hand, with the complete separation of its formal concepts and institutions from their moral principles and goals, would lose its unconditional basis and, in essence, would no longer differ in anything out of arbitrariness. However, for a completely consistent separation between law and morality, it would be necessary to abandon even the human word itself, which in all languages ​​indisputably testifies to the fundamental, internal connection of these two ideas. The concept of right and the related concept of obligation are so included in the realm of moral ideas that they can directly serve to express them. The following ethical statements are clear to everyone and no one will dispute them: I am aware of my duty to abstain from everything shameful, or, what is the same, I recognize human dignity (in my person) as having the right to my respect; I am obliged to help my neighbors to the best of my ability and serve the common good, that is, my neighbors and the whole society have the right to my help and service; finally, I am obliged to coordinate my will with what I consider to be the unconditionally highest, or, in other words, this unconditionally highest has the right to a religious attitude on my part (on which all worship of God is originally based). There is no moral attitude that could not be correctly and clearly expressed in legal terms. What could be further, apparently, from everything legal than love for enemies? And, however, if the highest moral law obliges me to love my enemies, then it is clear that my enemies have the right to my love. If I deny them love, then I am acting unfairly, violating the truth. This is the term in which alone embodies the essential unity of the legal and moral principles. 159 For what is right if not the expression of truth, but on the other hand, all virtues are reduced to the same truth or justice, that is, to what is due or right in an ethical sense. 160 Here we are not talking about the accidental sameness of terms, but about the essential homogeneity and internal connection of the concepts themselves. It does not follow from this, of course, that the spheres of law and morality coincide with one another and that it is possible to confuse ethical and legal concepts. What is undeniable is that there is a positive and close internal relationship between these two areas, which does not allow one to be denied in the name of the other. The question is: what exactly is the connection and what is the difference between these two areas? When we talk about moral right and moral obligation, we thereby eliminate, on the one hand, any thought about the radical opposition or incompatibility of the moral and legal principles, and on the other hand, we point out the essential difference between them, since by designating a given right (for example, the right of my enemy to my love) as only moral, we mean that there is another right besides moral, that is, in a different, narrow sense, or right as one to which moral character does not belong as its direct and immediate definition. And in fact, if we take, on the one hand, our duty to love our enemies with their corresponding moral right to our love, and on the other hand, we take our duty to pay a bill on time or our duty not to kill or rob our neighbors with their corresponding right not to be killed, robbed or deceived by us, then there is an essential difference between these two kinds of relations, and only the second of them belongs to law in the proper, or close, sense. The difference comes down to three main points: 1) A purely moral requirement, such as, for example, love for enemies, is essentially unlimited or all-encompassing; it presupposes moral perfection, or at least an unlimited pursuit of perfection. Any restriction, admitted in principle, is contrary to the nature of the moral commandment and undermines its dignity and significance: whoever refuses in principle the unconditional ideal, refuses morality itself, leaves the moral soil. On the contrary, the law itself, as is clear in all cases of its application, is essentially limited; instead of perfection, he demands a lower, minimal degree of moral state, only the actual delay of certain manifestations of immoral will. But this opposition is not a contradiction leading to a real conflict. From the moral side, it cannot be denied that the requirement to conscientiously fulfill debt obligations, abstain from murder, robbery, etc. there is a requirement, although elementary, but still good, and not evil, and that if we must love our enemies, then even more so we must respect the life and property of all our neighbors, and without fulfilling these lower demands it is impossible to fulfill the highest commandments; and from the legal side - although civil or criminal law does not require the highest moral perfection, it does not deny it, and, while prohibiting anyone from killing and deceiving, it cannot, and does not need to, prevent anyone from loving their enemies. Thus, on this point (which in some moral teachings is mistakenly taken as the only important one), the relationship between the two principles of practical life can only be expressed in such a way that law is the lowest limit or a certain minimum of morality. 2) From the unlimited nature of purely moral demands, a second difference follows, namely, that their fulfillment is not necessarily conditioned, and also is not limited to any specific external manifestations or material actions. The commandment about love for enemies does not indicate (other than as an example) what exactly one must do in virtue of this love, that is, what specific external actions to perform and which to abstain from, and at the same time, if one has to express one’s love through certain actions, then the moral commandment cannot be considered as having already been fulfilled by these actions and no longer requiring anything more - the task of fulfilling this commandment, as an expression of absolute perfection, remains endless. On the contrary, the legal law prescribes or prohibits very specific external actions, by the commission or non-completion of which this law is satisfied, without demanding anything further: if I got the money I owed on time and handed it over to the creditor, if I did not physically kill or rob anyone, etc., then the law is satisfied with me, and it does not need anything more from me. And in this opposition between the moral and legal law there is no contradiction: the requirement of a moral mood not only does not exclude external actions, but in general directly presupposes them as its proof or justification: no one will believe the inner mercy of a person when it is not manifested in any external deeds of charity. On the other hand, the prescription of certain actions in no way denies the corresponding internal states, although it does not necessarily require them. Both moral and legal law relate, in fact, to the inner being of a person, to his will, but the first takes this will in its generality and entirety, and the second - only in its partial realization in relation to known external facts that constitute the proper interest of law, what is the inviolability of the life and property of every person, etc. From a legal point of view, it is the objective expression of our will in committing or preventing certain acts that is important. This is another essential feature of law, and if it was initially defined as a certain minimum of morality, then, supplementing this definition, we can say that right is the requirement for the implementation of this minimum, that is, the implementation of a certain minimum good, or, what is the same, the actual elimination of a certain amount of evil, while the moral interest itself relates directly not to the external realization of good, but to its internal existence in the human heart. 3) Through this second difference the third also follows. The requirement of moral perfection, as an internal state, presupposes free or voluntary fulfillment; any coercion, not only physical, but also psychological, is essentially both undesirable and impossible here; on the contrary, the external implementation of a certain lawful order allows for direct or indirect coercion, and since here the direct and immediate goal is the realization, the external implementation of a certain good - for example, public safety - the coercive nature of the law becomes a necessity, because no sincere person will seriously assure that with one verbal conviction one can immediately stop all murders, fraud, etc. Combining these three features together, we obtain the following definition of law in its relation to morality: law is a compulsory requirement for the implementation of a certain minimum good, or order, which does not allow certain manifestations of evil. Now the question is: on what is such a requirement based and is this compulsory order compatible with a purely moral order, which, apparently, by its very essence excludes any coercion? Since perfect goodness is established in consciousness as an ideal, then shouldn’t everyone be allowed to freely realize it to the best of their abilities? Why make a forced minimum of morality into law when it is required to freely fulfill its maximum? Why declare with a threat: do not kill, when you should meekly inspire: do not be angry? All this would be true if the moral task were theoretical and if perfect goodness were compatible with egoistic dispassion, or indifference to the suffering of others. But since the true concept of good certainly includes an altruistic principle with the demand for an appropriate deed, that is, compassion for the misfortunes of others, prompting us to actively save them from evil, then moral duty cannot in any way be limited to the consciousness and proclamation of a perfect ideal. According to the natural course of things, which should not be approved and approved, but which only childishness can ignore, while some would voluntarily strive for the highest ideal and improve in dispassion, others would freely practice committing all kinds of atrocities and, of course, would exterminate the first before they could achieve a high degree of moral perfection. And regardless of this, even if people of good will were by some miracle protected from extermination by the worst people, these good people themselves would obviously not be good enough, since they would agree to limit themselves to good talk about good instead of actively helping their neighbors in protecting them from the extreme and destructive attacks of evil. Moral interest requires personal freedom as a condition without which human dignity and higher moral development are impossible. But a person cannot exist, and therefore develop his freedom and morality, except in society. So, moral interest requires that personal freedom does not contradict the conditions of existence of society. This task cannot be served by the ideal of moral perfection, left to free personal achievement, because for the urgent, practical purpose it gives too much, and at the same time too little - too much in the sense of demand and too little in the sense of fulfillment. This ideal requires love for enemies from those who recognize it, but it cannot force those who do not recognize its demands to abstain even from murders and robberies. And if a straightforward moralist says: we do not need abstinence from atrocities if it is not voluntary, then he will fall into obvious injustice, forgetting to inquire about this with the robbed and the families of the murdered, as if the insult they suffered is the basis for their final lack of rights. Meanwhile, the moral law is given to man “so that he may live by it,” and without the existence of human society, morality is only an abstract concept. But the existence of society does not depend on the perfection of some, but on the safety of all. This security, not ensured by a moral law in itself, which does not exist for people with predominant antisocial instincts, is protected by a coercive law, which is valid for them as well. In this case, referring to the gracious power of Providence, which should restrain and admonish evildoers and madmen, is nothing more than blasphemy: it is wicked to lay on the Divine what can be successfully done by good justice. So the moral principle requires that people should freely improve themselves; but for this the existence of society is necessary; but society cannot exist if everyone who wants is free to kill and rob their neighbors; Consequently, a compulsory law, which really does not allow evil will to such extreme manifestations that destroy society, is a necessary condition for moral improvement and, as such, is required by the moral principle itself, although it is not its direct expression. Let us suppose that the highest morality (from its ascetic side) requires that I be indifferent to the fact that I will be killed, maimed or robbed. But the same highest morality (from the altruistic side) does not allow me to be indifferent to the fact that my neighbors freely become murderers and murdered, robbers and robbed, and that society, without which even an individual person cannot live and improve, is in danger of destruction. Such indifference would be a clear sign of moral death. The demand for personal freedom, so that it can be realized, already presupposes the restriction of this freedom to the extent that it is, in the given state of humanity, incompatible with the existence of society or the common good. These two interests, opposite for abstract thought, but equally morally obligatory, in reality converge with each other. From their meeting law is born. The principle of law can be considered abstractly; and then it is only a direct expression of justice: I affirm my freedom as a right, since I recognize the freedom of others as their right. But the concept of right certainly contains, as we have seen, an objective element, or a requirement for implementation: it is necessary that the right has the power to always be implemented, that is, that the freedom of others, regardless of my subjective recognition of it, that is, of my personal justice, can always in fact limit my freedom to the same extent as everyone else. This demand for compulsory justice is introduced from the idea of ​​the common good or public interest, or - which is the same thing - the interest in realizing the good, for which it is imperative that justice be an actual fact, and not just an idea. The degree and methods of this realization depend, of course, on the state of moral consciousness in a given society and on other historical conditions. Thus, natural law becomes positive law and is formulated from this point of view as follows: law is a historically mobile determination of the necessary forced balance of two moral interests - personal freedom and the common good. It would be a disastrous confusion of concepts to think that law has in mind the material equation of private interests. Law, as such, has nothing to do with this. It is interested only in the two main ends of human life - the freedom of the individual and the good of society, and, limiting itself to this, without introducing its coercive element into private relations, it best serves morality itself. For a person must be moral freely, and for this it is necessary that he be given some freedom to be immoral. The law, within certain limits, ensures this freedom for him, without in the least inducing him to use it. If the creditor did not have the compulsory right to collect his money from the debtor, then he would not have the opportunity, by a free moral act, to renounce this right and forgive the poor man his debt. On the other hand, only the guarantee of forced execution of a freely accepted obligation preserves the debtor’s freedom and equality in relation to the creditor: he does not depend on his will, but on his decision and on the general law. The interest of personal freedom coincides here with the interest of the common good, since without the security of free contracts, correct social life cannot exist. The coincidence of both moral interests in the field of criminal law is even clearer. It is clear that the freedom of every person or his natural right to live and improve would be an empty word if they depended on the arbitrariness of every other person who wants to kill or maim his neighbor or take away his means of subsistence. And if we have the moral right to defend our freedom and safety from the attack of someone else’s evil will, then helping others in this regard is our moral duty; This duty is common to all and is fulfilled in favor of everyone by criminal law. But legal coercion in this area, while protecting the freedom of peaceful people, leaves sufficient scope for the action of evil inclinations and does not force anyone to be virtuous. An evil person can, if he wants, show his anger in slander, intrigue, slander, quarrels, etc. Only when evil will, encroaching on the objective public rights of others, threatens the security of society itself, then only the interest of the common good, coinciding with the interest of the freedom of peaceful citizens, should limit the freedom of evil. Law, in the interest of freedom, allows people to be evil and does not interfere with their free choice between good and evil; it is only in the interest of the common good that it prevents an evil person from becoming a villain dangerous to the very existence of society. The task of law is not at all to turn the world lying in evil into the Kingdom of God, but only to ensure that it does not turn into hell before the time comes. Such a premature hell has threatened and to some extent still threatens humanity from two sides. Since a normal, i.e., safe and worthy existing and improving society is conditioned by the correct balance of personal and collective interest, then anomalies harmful to society can be based either on the preponderance of power of personal arbitrariness, tearing apart social solidarity, or, on the contrary, on the preponderance of power of public guardianship, suppressing the individual - the first anomaly threatens with the burning hell of anarchy, the second - with the icy hell of despotism, i.e. that is, the same anarchy, the same arbitrariness, only concentrated, pulled together and pressing from the outside. Of course, in historical reality, the balance between free personal forces and the collective force of social organization is mobile and fluctuating, consisting of many individual violations and restorations. But the very fact that we notice these fluctuations sufficiently shows that there are immutable norms of personal-social relations above them, there are eternal limits that come from the very essence of morality and law and which cannot be transgressed in one direction or another for society without harmful consequences. The most general and in this sense the most important of these limits should be recognized as the one that limits the compulsory action of collective organizations to only one area of ​​real-objective, or practical, good, leaving everything else, that is, the entire internal or spiritual world of man, to the full responsibility of individuals and free (non-coercive) communities. Protecting the lives and property of everyone from the attacks of external and internal enemies, and then providing everyone with the necessary assistance, educational, sanitary, food, with everything that serves this (communication routes, postal services, etc.) - this is a practical good that can and should be carried out by the organized force of society, which inevitably imposes certain restrictions, or “duties” on individuals for this purpose. The compulsory property of these restrictions in itself is only optional, since it is clear that whoever, for example, voluntarily abstains from crimes, does not personally experience any embarrassment from criminal justice and penitentiary institutions; and in general, all the restrictions due to the necessary organization of social forces are no more contrary to personal freedom than the fact that if I want to buy something, I am forced to pay for it, or if I do not want to get wet in the rain, I am forced to take an umbrella. The main property of the good that is conditioned by legal social organization is not coercion (which is only a possible consequence), but the direct objectivity of the task. What is important here, first of all, is that known things actually exist and that known things actually do not exist. It is important that there is protection from wild foreigners, it is important that they do not burn or destroy villages and cities; it is important that dashing people do not kill or rob passers-by; it is important that the population does not die out from disease; It is important that there are accessible school conditions for intellectual education and enlightenment for everyone. The external nature of such necessary goods corresponds to the external method of obtaining them, which also allows for coercion where it is inevitable. After all, for the immediate immediate business of courts, hospitals, schools, it is completely indifferent whether they are based on voluntary or forced donations. But can the same be said about spiritual benefits? The very question is eliminated by the fact that spiritual goods by their nature cannot be forced. In the end, there are two of these benefits for a person: virtue, that is, the internal disposition of our will towards good in itself, and truth (or orthodoxy), that is, the internal agreement of our mind with the truth as such. It is already clear from these definitions that freedom, or ease, is included in the very essence of both spiritual, or internal, benefits. Consequently, any forced external action in this area is, first of all, deception. Since the goal is to force a person from the outside to have the inside, i.e. coming from within, a disposition towards goodness, or an inner receptivity to truth - cannot in any case be achieved (being a direct logical contradiction or nonsense), and aimless violence is clearly evil, then any coercive measures in spiritual matters for the sake of the supposed interests of truth and virtue are nothing more than the use of evil means for a false goal - abuse par excellence. There are three types of violence in our world: 1) brutal violence, which is committed by murderers, robbers, and child molesters; 2) human violence, which is necessarily allowed by the forced organization of society to protect the external benefits of life, and 3) the violent invasion of an external social organization into the spiritual sphere of a person with the false purpose of protecting internal benefits - a type of violence that is entirely determined by evil and lies, and therefore should rightly be called diabolical. In essence, law serves external or objective good, the interest of truth and virtue must always remain a private and unconditionally free interest. From here, in addition to principle and unlimited religious tolerance, some other consequences also follow. In the field of criminal (as well as civil) law, the freedom of one person is limited not by the private or subjective interest of another person, taken separately, but by the common good. Many self-important and proud people would rather be robbed or even maimed than to be subjected to secret slander, slander and heartless condemnation. Therefore, if the law had in mind the protection of private interest as such, then it should in these cases limit the freedom of slanderers and scolders even more than the freedom of robbers and rapists. But it does not do this, since verbal insults are not as important for the safety of society and do not show such a threatening degree of ill will as atrocities against bodily and property integrity. Even if there were an intention, there would be no way for the law to take into account all the forms and shades of individual sensitivity to insult. Yes, this would be unfair, because it is impossible to prove that the offender intended to inflict exactly the high degree of suffering that turned out to be the case. The common law can only be guided by certain intentions and objective acts that are publicly verifiable. In addition, the offended person (in cases not subject to criminal liability) can, if he wants, take revenge on the offender by the same private means - his freedom is respected here in the same way as the freedom of his opponent; and if he is morally superior to him and does not consider revenge permissible for himself, then he still would not turn to external law, despite his sensitivity to offense; and if he renounces personal vengeance, then so much the better for him, and for society, which is left free to express its moral judgment. For legal assessment, what is important is not the evil will in itself and not the result of the act in itself, which may be accidental, but only the connection between the intention and the result or the degree of implementation of the evil will in the act, since this degree of implementation and the corresponding degree of danger to society are subject to objective determination or represent external evil, protection from which is external good, allowing for legitimate coercion. Since the essence of law consists in the balance of two moral interests: personal freedom and the common good, it is clear that this latter interest can only limit the first, but in no case abolish it, for then, obviously, the balance would be disrupted or disappear through the destruction of one of its terms. Therefore, measures against a criminal cannot in any way go as far as depriving him of his life or depriving him of his freedom forever. Consequently, laws allowing the death penalty, indefinite penal servitude or indefinite solitary confinement cannot be justified from a legal point of view - they contradict the very essence of law. Moreover, the assertion that the common good requires in certain cases the final abolition of a given person also represents an internal logical contradiction. The common good is common because it, in a certain sense, contains the good of all individuals without exception, otherwise it would be the good of the majority. It does not follow from this that it consists of a simple sum of private interests or contains within itself the sphere of freedom of each person in all its infinity - this would be another contradiction, since these spheres of personal freedom can and do deny each other. But from the concept of the common good it follows with logical necessity that, limiting private interests and aspirations precisely as the general (with general limits), it cannot in any way abolish at least one of the bearers of these interests and aspirations, taking away from him life and any possibility of free action; for this common good must be, in one way or another, the good of that man also; but, depriving him of existence and any possibility of free action, therefore, the possibility of any good, it ceases to be good for him, therefore, it itself becomes only a private interest and therefore loses its right to limit personal freedom. 161 And at this point we see that the requirements of morality completely coincide with the essence of law. In general, law in its element of compulsion to the minimum good, although it differs from morality in the proper sense, but even in this compulsory nature, meeting the requirements of the same morality, in no case should it contradict it. Therefore, if any positive law goes against the moral creation of good, then we can be sure in advance that it does not meet the essential requirements of law, and the legal interest regarding such laws may not consist in their preservation, but only in their lawful abolition. Since external, compulsory obligatoryness is one of the significant differences between a legal norm and a moral norm itself, the law in its essence requires actual support for itself, that is, sufficient strength to implement legal norms. Every personal being, by virtue of its unconditional significance (in the moral sense), has an inalienable right to existence and to improvement. But this moral right would be an empty word if its actual implementation depended entirely on external accidents and the arbitrariness of others. A valid right is one that contains conditions for its implementation, i.e., protecting oneself from violations. The first and main condition for this is community life, for a lonely person is obviously powerless against the elements of nature, against predatory animals and bestial people. But, being a necessary protection of personal freedom or natural human rights, the public is at the same time a limitation of these rights, but the limitation is not accidental and arbitrary, but internally obligatory, arising from the essence of the matter. Using a social organization to protect my existence and free activity, I must recognize its right to a real and obligatory existence for me, that is, I must subordinate my activity to the conditions necessary for society to exist and develop. Here both interests coincide, for if I wish to exercise my right or secure for myself an area of ​​free action, then, of course, I must determine the measure of this exercise or the volume of this free area by those basic requirements of the public good, without the satisfaction of which there can be no exercise of my rights and no provision of my freedom. The subordination of a person to society is completely in accordance with the unconditional moral principle, which does not sacrifice the particular to the general, but unites them as internally solidary: by sacrificing to society his unlimited, but unsecured and invalid freedom, a person acquires the actual security of his definite or reasonable freedom - a sacrifice as profitable as it is profitable to receive a live dog in exchange for a dead lion. The limitation of personal freedom determined in the given circumstances of place and time by the requirements of the common good, or - what is the same thing - a balance determined in the given conditions, or the constant compatibility of these two principles, is a positive right or law in the strict sense. The law is essentially a generally recognized and impersonal (i.e., independent of personal opinions and desires) definition of law, or the concept of the proper (in given conditions and in a given relation) balance between private freedom and the good of the whole, a definition or general concept implemented through special judgments in individual cases or cases. Hence, there are three indispensable distinctive features of a law: 1) its publicity - a resolution that is not published to the general public cannot have universal binding force, i.e. cannot be a positive law; 2) its concreteness - as the norms of special, definite relations in a given actual environment, and not as an expression of some abstract truths and ideals; 162 3) its real applicability, or ease of execution in each individual case, for the sake of which a “sanction” is always associated with it, that is, a threat of coercive and punitive measures in case of non-fulfillment of its requirements or violation of its prohibitions. 163 So that this sanction does not remain an empty threat, the law must be based on actual force sufficient to enforce it in any case. In other words, law must have actual bearers or representatives in society who are powerful enough so that the laws they issue and the judgments they pronounce can have coercive force. Such real representation of law, or such capable legality, is called power. Demanding, of necessity, from the social whole that provision of my natural rights, which is beyond the power of myself, I, by reason and justice, must recognize for this social whole a positive right to those means and methods of action, without which it could not fulfill its, for me the most desirable and necessary, task, namely, I must grant this social whole: 1) the power to issue laws binding on everyone; 2) the power to judge, in accordance with these general laws, regarding private affairs and actions; and 3) the power to force everyone to carry out both these judicial sentences and all other measures necessary for the general safety and prosperity. It is clear that these three different powers - legislative, judicial and executive - with all the necessary separation (differentiation) cannot be separated (and even less must enter into confrontation with each other), since they have the same goal: the legitimate service of the common good. This unity of theirs has its real expression in their equal subordination to a single supreme power, in which all the positive rights of the social whole as such are concentrated. This single principle of sovereignty is directly manifested in the first power - legislative, the second - judicial - is already conditioned by the first, since the court is not self-legal, but acts in accordance with the law obligatory for it, and the first two are conditioned by the third, which is in charge of the enforcement of laws and court decisions. Due to this internal connection, without the unity of the supreme power, expressed in one way or another, neither generally binding laws, nor correct courts, nor real government, i.e., would be possible. the very purpose of the lawful organization of a given society could not be achieved. It goes without saying that the proper connection of the three powers is disrupted not only by their disunity and hostile opposition, but also, on the other hand, by their confusion and distortion of the natural order between them, when, for example, the second power - the judiciary - is subordinated not to the first, but to the third, and is made dependent not on a single law, but on various executive authorities. A social body with a certain organization, containing the fullness of positive law or a single supreme power, is called a state. In any organism it is necessary to distinguish between the organizing principle, the system of organs or instruments of organizing action, and the totality of organized elements. Accordingly, in the collective organism of a state, specifically taken, there are distinguished: 1) the supreme power, 2) its various organs or subordinate authorities, and 3) the substratum of the state, i.e., the mass of the population of a certain territory, consisting of individuals, families and other more or less broad private unions subordinate to state power. Only in the state does law find all the conditions for its actual implementation, and from this side the state is embodied law. Without dwelling here on the question of the actual historical source and the highest sanctification of state power, 164 we pointed only to its formal basis as a necessary condition for the legitimate organization of society. In its simplest practical expression, the meaning of the state is that it, within its limits, subordinates violence to law, arbitrariness to legality, replacing the chaotic and destructive collision of particular elements of natural humanity with the correct order of their existence, and coercion is allowed only as a means of extreme necessity, predetermined, natural and justified, since it comes from a general and impartial authority. But this power extends only to the borders of a given state territory. There is no common power over individual states, and therefore clashes between them are finally resolved only by force - by war. That this fact does not correspond to an unconditional moral principle, as such, there can be no dispute about this. The relative significance of war and the actual path to its abolition are the last of those fundamental practical questions that the collective life of historical humanity poses to moral consciousness. Chapter Eighteen. The meaning of war No one seems to doubt that health, generally speaking, is good, and illness is evil, that the first is the norm, and the second is an anomaly; one cannot even define what health is except by calling it the normal state of the body, and for illness there is no other definition than “a deviation of physiological life from its norm.” But this anomaly of physiological life, called disease, is not, however, a meaningless accident or an arbitrary creation of external, external evil forces, foreign to the patient himself. Not to mention the inevitable diseases of growth or development, in the opinion of all thinking doctors, the real cause of disease lies in internal, deep-lying changes in the body itself, and external, immediate causes of the disease (for example, colds, fatigue, infection) are only reasons for discovering the internal cause, and in the same way those painful phenomena that are usually mistaken by ignorant people for the disease itself (for example, fever and chills, cough, various pains, abnormal discharge), in fact, they express only the successful or unsuccessful struggle of the body against the destructive action of those internal and mostly mysterious in their final basis, although in fact undoubted, disorders in which the real essence of the disease lies; hence the practical conclusion: the art of medicine should have as its main subject not the external manifestations of the disease, but its internal causes; it should determine at least their actual presence and then help the healing actions of the body itself, accelerating and replenishing these natural processes, and not forcing them. A similar situation is faced by the question of the chronic disease of humanity - international enmity, expressed in wars. Its symptomatic treatment, that is, aimed not at internal causes, but only at external manifestations, would at best be only a dubious palliative; its simple, unconditional denial would have no definite meaning. When there is a moral disorder within humanity, external wars have been and may still be necessary and useful, just as in the case of a deep physical disorder such painful phenomena as fever or vomiting are necessary and useful. In reality, regarding war, one should pose not one, but three different questions: in addition to the general moral assessment of war, there is another question - about its significance in the history of mankind, which has not yet ended, and, finally, a third question, personal - about how I, that is, every person who recognizes the obligatory moral requirements of conscience and reason, should relate now and here to the fact of war and to the conditions that practically follow from it? The displacement or incorrect division of these three questions - general moral or theoretical, then historical and, finally, personal moral or practical - constitutes the main cause of all misunderstandings and misinterpretations about the war, especially abundant in recent times. Condemnation of war in principle has long become a commonplace among educated humanity. Everyone agrees that peace is good and war is evil: our language already automatically pronounces the expressions: the blessings of the world, the horrors of war, and no one dares to say the opposite: “the benefits of war” or “the disasters of the world.” In all churches they pray for times of peace and for deliverance from the sword or from battles, which are placed here along with fire, famine, pestilence, cowardice and flood. Apart from wild paganism, all religions condemn war in principle. Even the Jewish prophets preached the pacification of all humanity and even all nature. The Buddhist principle of compassion for all living beings requires the same. The Christian commandment of love for enemies excludes war, for the beloved enemy ceases to be an enemy, and it is no longer possible to fight with him. Even the militant religion of Islam views war only as a temporary necessity, condemning it as an ideal. “Fight your enemies until Islam is established,” and then: “Let all hostility cease,” for “God hates the attackers” (Koran, Sura II). From a general moral perspective, there are not and cannot be two views on this subject: everyone unanimously recognizes that peace is the norm, what should be, and war is an anomaly, what should not be. So, to the first question about war there is one indisputable answer: war is evil. Evil can be either unconditional (such as, for example, mortal sin, eternal death), or relative, that is, one that can be less than another evil and, in comparison with it, should be considered good (for example, a surgical operation to save a life). The meaning of war is not exhausted by its negative definition as evil and disaster; there is also something positive in it - not in the sense that it is normal in itself, but only in the fact that it can be really necessary under given conditions. This point of view on abnormal phenomena cannot be eliminated at all, and one has to adopt it not in contradiction with the moral principle, but, on the contrary, due to its direct requirements. So, for example, although everyone will agree that throwing children out of a window onto the pavement is in itself an ungodly, inhuman and unnatural act, however, if during a fire there is no other way to remove the unfortunate babies from a burning house, then this terrible act becomes not only permissible, but also obligatory. Obviously, the rule of throwing children out of windows in extreme cases is not an independent principle on a par with the moral principle of saving the perishing; on the contrary, this last moral requirement remains here the only motivation for action; there is no deviation from the moral norm here, but only its direct application in a way, albeit incorrect and dangerous, but in such a way that, due to real necessity, turns out to be the only possible one under the given conditions. Doesn’t war also depend on such a necessity, due to which this method of action, which is abnormal in itself, becomes permissible and even obligatory under certain circumstances? This question can only be resolved historically, but sometimes it is mistakenly transferred to a broader basis - natural science, linking the need for war with the (supposedly) universal principle of the struggle for existence. In fact, the struggle for existence, neither in the animal kingdom nor in humanity, has nothing in common with war. When they say that a certain species of creatures has won the struggle for existence, this does not mean at all that it defeated some enemies in some direct clashes or open battles - it only means that sufficient adaptation to the external environment or surrounding conditions allowed this species to preserve and spread its existence, which not everyone succeeds in the same way. If the mammoths in Siberia disappeared defeated in the struggle for existence, and the martens won, this, of course, does not mean that the martens were braver and stronger than the mammoths and destroyed them in open battle with the help of their teeth and paws. In a similar way, the Jewish people, long since disarmed and relatively small in number, turned out to be invincible in the historical struggle for existence, while many centuries of military success did not protect the huge Roman Empire from destruction, like the warlike powers that preceded it. Just as the struggle for existence takes place apart from war and uses other means that have nothing to do with fighting, so, for its part, war has other grounds, regardless of the struggle over the means of subsistence. If it were all about these means, so that hostile clashes between creatures would occur only because of food, then the primitive era of history would be the most peaceful. For there were very few people then, their demands were simple, and everyone had great scope to satisfy them. In a fight and mutual extermination there would then be only risk and no gain. From this side, the normal outcome of all quarrels seemed self-evident. “And Abraham said to Lot: Let there be no strife between me and you and between my shepherds and yours, for we are brothers (ki anashim achim anahnu). Is not the whole earth open before your face? So let’s go our separate ways: if you go to the left, I’ll go to the right, and if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left. - And Lot raised his eyes and saw the entire region of Jordan, for all of it was filled with waters (before the Eternal destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah), like the garden of the Eternal, like the lands of Egypt, if you go to Zohar. And Lot chose for himself the whole region of Jordan, and Lot moved towards the East, and they parted with each other” (Gen. XIII, 8-11). If, however, such an amicable agreement was only a rare occurrence in those days; in general, primitive relations in humanity are more reminiscent of a “war of all against all” (according to the well-known theory of the philosopher Hobbes), then this did not result from a forced struggle for existence, but from the free play of evil passions. The fratricide with which history opens was caused by envy, not hunger. And the most ancient of the monuments of poetry that have reached us, the bloody song of Cain’s grandson, Lemech, reproduced in the Bible, speaks not of material need, but of wild anger, vindictiveness and ferocious arrogance: “And Lemech said to his wives: Ada and Zillah, hear my voice, wives of Lemech, listen to my words! that I killed a man for my wound, and a boy for my wound; that Cain will take revenge seven times, and Lemech seventy and seven times” (Gen. IV, 23, 24). Under the predominance of such feelings, humanity, which was initially small in number and weakly multiplying compared to most other animals, would have been threatened with rapid destruction if the war of all against all had not met a counterbalance in the ancestral bond, rooted in the maternal instinct, developed through family feelings and relationships and consolidated in the religion of the ancestors. The tribal way of life (in the broad sense) 165 formed by all this can be considered the initial stage of historical development, since humanity has never, in fact, consisted of only separate, solitary individuals who are in a military position relative to each other. The clan connection existed from the beginning, and the “war of all against all,” as a general rule, expresses the mutual relationship not between individual units, but only between individual clan groups; and this, of course, does not mean that each clan was in fact in continuous war with all others, but only in the fact that not a single clan was provided with anything or protected from the accident of war with any other clan. But this state could not last long. War between clans only in rare cases ended in the extermination of the weakest clan. With some balance of power, the outcome of the struggle was a treaty, or agreement, sanctified by religion. On the other hand, weaker clan groups, in order to avoid death in an unequal struggle, either joined separately to a stronger clan on terms of subordination, or many together entered into an alliance with each other on equal rights (federations). Thus, the war itself gave rise to treaties and rights as a guarantee of peace. Such unions of clans already represent the embryo of a state. In those times from which coherent historical memories begin for us, a significant part of humanity was already in a state state, moreover, of two main types: the Western or Hellenic polity, i.e., a small urban community, and the eastern vast despotism, partly single-national (for example, in Egypt), partly multi-national (the so-called “world monarchies”). Without the state, the cultural progress of mankind, based on the complex cooperation of many forces, would be impossible. Such cooperation on any large scale was unattainable for the disparate clans, which were in constant bloody hostility among themselves. For the first time, human masses act in solidarity in the state. The war has already been removed from within these masses and transferred to the wider circumference of the state. If in tribal life everyone (adult men) is always under arms, then in the state warriors constitute either a special caste or profession, or, finally (with universal conscription), military service is only a temporary occupation for citizens. The organization of war in a state is the first great step towards the realization of peace. This is especially clear in the history of vast conquering powers (world monarchies). Every conquest here was the spread of peace, i.e. an expansion of the circle within which war ceased to be a normal phenomenon and became a rare and reprehensible accident - a criminal civil strife. The undoubted, albeit semi-conscious, desire of the “world monarchies” was to give peace to the earth by subjugating all peoples to one common power. The greatest of these conquering powers, the Roman Empire, directly called itself peace - pax romana. But previous monarchies also strived for the same goal. The inscriptions of the Assyrian and Persian kings, discovered in the nineteenth century, leave no doubt that these conquerors considered it their real calling to conquer all peoples in order to establish a peaceful order on earth, although their ideas about this task and the means of achieving it were usually too simple. More complex and fruitful were the world-historical plans of the Macedonian monarchy, which relied on the supreme power of Hellenic education, which deeply and firmly penetrated the conquered eastern world. The idea of ​​universal and eternal peace reached complete clarity among the Romans, who firmly believed in their calling to subjugate the universe under the rule of one law. This idea is perpetuated especially by Virgil, who (besides the all-too-famous tu regere imperio populos etc. But you, O Roman, rule the peoples with sovereign power, Be humble by defense, humble the obstinate by war) returns to it at any time in his “Aeneid” as the highest inspiring motive of the entire poem. Jupiter appears, for example, speaking to Venus about her descendants: The Romans, rulers of the universe, a people dressed in toga: I no longer set any time or boundaries for these powers; He gave them a kingdom without end... Here, with the elimination of wars, tough times will be tamed. Gray-haired loyalty and Vesta and Rem with brother Quirin Laws will be given; the shutters will be locked with iron The same supreme god tells Mercury about the calling of the ancestor of the Romans, Aeneas, to conquer war-torn Italy in order to establish the high family of Teucros, who are destined to “bring the whole earth under the laws” (En. IV, 229 - 31). Comparing the four “world monarchies” in their succession, we find a gradual approach to the ideal of universal peace both from the external scope and from the internal foundations. The first, the Assyro-Babylonian kingdom did not leave the borders of Western Asia, was supported by incessant devastating campaigns and legislated only by military orders. Second, the kingdom of Cyrus and the Achaemenids annexed a significant part of Central Asia to Western Asia and, on the other hand, spread to Egypt; from within, it relied on the bright religion of Ormuzd, which legitimized morality and justice. In the third monarchy - Alexander and his successors - for the first time the historical West is united with the historical East, and both sides are welded together not only by the power of the sword, but also by the ideal principles of Hellenic education. Finally, the progress represented by the fourth, Roman Empire, consists not only in the fact that the Romans expanded the former unity to the Atlantic Ocean, but also in the fact that they gave it a strong political focus and a solid legal form. In all this peacemaking work, war was an indispensable means and the armed forces were a necessary support. War and peace had their exact symbol in the two opposite but inseparable faces of the Roman god Janus. War most strongly unites the internal forces of each of the warring states or alliances and at the same time serves as a condition for subsequent rapprochement and mutual penetration between the opponents themselves. Both of them appear most clearly in the history of Hellas. In this entire history, only three times did individual Greek tribes and urban communities unite for the most part for a common cause and practically reveal their internal national connection, and each time this was caused by war: the Trojan War at the beginning, the Persian Wars in the middle, and the campaign of Alexander the Great as the final feat, thanks to which the creations of the national genius of Greece finally became the common property of mankind. The Trojan War established the Greek element in Asia Minor, where it then, feeding on other cultural elements, reached its first flowering: Greek poetry (the Homeric epic) was born on the Asia Minor coast, and the most ancient school of their philosophy immediately arose and developed (Thales from Miletus, Heraclitus from Ephesus). The rise of united popular forces in the fight against the Persians caused a second, even richer flowering of spiritual creativity, and the conquests of Alexander, throwing these ripened seeds of Hellenism onto the ancient soil of cultural Asia and Egypt, produced that great Hellenic-Eastern synthesis of religious and philosophical ideas, which - together with the subsequent Roman state unification - constituted a necessary historical condition for the spread of Christianity. Without the Greek language and Greek concepts, as well as without the “Roman world” and Roman military roads, the work of Gospel preaching could not have been accomplished so quickly and on such a wide scale. And Greek words and concepts became common property only thanks to the warlike Alexander and his generals; and the Roman “peace” was achieved through many centuries of wars, it was guarded by legions, and for these legions the roads along which the apostles walked were built. “Their message went out into all the earth,” the church sings, “and their words went out to the ends of the world.” This “whole earth” and these “ends of the universe” were only the wide circle (orbis) that its bloody iron outlined around the city of Rome. Thus, all the wars with which ancient history is full only expanded the area of ​​the world, and the “animal kingdoms” of paganism prepared the way for those who proclaimed the kingdom of the son of man. But besides this, the military history of antiquity presents us with important progress towards peace in another respect. Not only were peaceful goals achieved through wars, but with the further course of history, less and less active military forces were required to achieve these goals, while peaceful results became, on the contrary, more and more extensive and important. This paradoxical fact is beyond doubt. To capture Troy, an almost complete Greek militia was needed for ten years, 166 and the direct results of this terrible effort were insignificant; whereas to accomplish that great catastrophe that crowned Greek history (the conquest of the East by Alexander the Great) and the worldwide cultural consequences of which were not slow to reveal itself, only a three-year campaign of thirteen thousand troops was required on the military side. If we compare the significance of the results, and on the other hand, take into account the large population of Greece and Macedonia under Alexander in comparison with the small number of the Achaean population, which placed such a large military contingent at Troy (110,000 people), then it will be striking to see how over these seven centuries the relative number of human sacrifices necessary to achieve historical goals has decreased. Another comparison, of a more general nature, leads to the same conclusion. The Persian kingdom, for which even millions of hordes could not ensure military success in the fight against little Greece, barely lasted under the protection of such forces for two centuries, and the Roman power, three times larger and containing at least 200 million people, kept under arms no more than 400 thousand legionnaires to protect its vast borders and lasted three times longer than the kingdom of Darius and Xerxes (about six centuries); and how incomparably more important for humanity were the benefits of education that were protected by these few legions, compared with what the countless hordes of the king of kings gathered for! Thus, the progress of military affairs, represented by the advantages of the Macedonian phalanx and the Roman legion over the Persian hordes and expressed, generally speaking, in the preponderance of quality over quantity and form over matter, was at the same time a great moral and social progress, reducing in enormous proportion the number of human victims consumed by war. The replacement of the Roman world (and the world) with the Christian one did not immediately produce any significant change in the position of the question of war from the external historical side. True, with its unconditional condemnation of all hatred and enmity, Christianity in principle, at its moral root, abolished war. But cutting the roots does not mean felling the tree; Yes, the preachers of the Gospel did not even want to cut down this Nebuchadnezzar tree, for they knew that the earth still needed its shadow until, from the small grain of true faith, that “greatest of plants” grew to replace it, under whose shade both people and the beasts of the field could reliably hide. The teachers of Christianity did not deny the state and its purpose of “bearing the sword against the evil,” and therefore did not deny war. The followers of the new faith saw for themselves a great triumph in the fact that two victorious wars made it possible for Caesar Constantine to erect the Cross of Christ over the old, unchanged building of the Roman Empire. However, under the unchanging political appearance hid the secret work of spiritual forces. For a Christian, the state, even overshadowed by the cross, has ceased to be the highest good and the final form of life. Faith in eternal Rome, that is, in the unconditional significance of political unity, was replaced by the expectation of a “New Jerusalem,” that is, an internal, spiritual unification of reborn people and nations. But besides this ideal rise of human consciousness to a higher degree, the progress of external, real unification in the body of humanity continues, albeit slowly at first. The Christian world (tota christianitas, toute la chrétienté), which in the Middle Ages replaced the ancient Roman Empire, was much broader than it. True, wars often took place within it (just as in the Roman Empire there were uprisings of peoples and revolts of generals), but representatives of Christian principles looked at these wars as regrettable civil strife and tried in every possible way to put a limit to them. And the constant struggle between the Christian world and the Muslim (in Spain and the Levant) undoubtedly had a positively cultural and progressive character, not only because the defense of Christianity against offensive Islam saved for historical humanity the guarantee of higher, spiritual development from absorption by a comparatively lower religious principle, 167 but also because the interaction of these two worlds, which, although it was hostile at the core, could not, however, be limited to bloodshed alone, over time led to the expansion mental outlook on both sides, which prepared for Christians the great era of the revival of the sciences and arts, and then the Reformation. In the history of modern times, three general facts are most important for our question: 1) the development of nationalities, 2) the corresponding development of international relations of all kinds, and 3) the geographical spread of cultural unity over the entire globe. Having escaped from the tutelage of the Catholic Church and rejecting the powerless claims of the Holy Roman Empire, European nations isolated themselves into autocratic political entities. Each nation-state recognized itself and was recognized by others as a perfect body, that is, having within itself supremacy, or absolute power, and, therefore, not subject to any extraneous court on earth. The direct consequences of this national isolation were not favorable to the cause of peace. Firstly, war even between Christian states became natural through this, as the only way to resolve the disputes of individual unconditionally independent wholes that did not have any arbitrator of disputes over them, which in the Middle Ages was - in idea always, and sometimes in practice - the Pope (and partly the emperor). Secondly, the national idea, accepted as the supreme principle of the life of peoples, naturally degenerated into national pride, the true nature of patriotism was distorted, active love for one’s people turned into idolatry of them as the supreme good, and this in turn turned into hatred and contempt for other peoples and led to unjust wars, conquests and oppression of foreign peoples. However, behind these negative aspects lies the positive meaning of nationalities: they must exist and develop in their own characteristics, like living organs of humanity, without which its unity would be empty and dead, and this dead world would be worse than war. True unity and the desired peace of mankind must be based not on the weakness and depression of peoples, but on the highest development of their strengths, on the free interaction of nationalities that complement each other. 168 And, despite all the efforts of national selfishness, striving for the hostile alienation of peoples, positive interaction between them exists and is growing in depth and breadth. The old international ties did not disappear, but strengthened internally, and new ones joined them. Thus, in the West, although the Roman Church has lost its external power, its spiritual authority has strengthened significantly, has largely been cleared of gross medieval abuses, and is making up for the damage it deservedly suffered from the Reformation with other spiritual gains. Next to this church and in the struggle against it, but with the same breadth of scope, a powerful brotherhood of Freemasons arose, in which everything is mysterious, except for its international, universal character. Another kind of connections have been established on an unprecedented scale in the economic sphere - a world market has appeared - there is not a single country that would now be self-sufficient in economic terms, that would produce everything it needs for itself, without receiving from others and without giving them in return, so the idea of ​​a separate state as a “perfect body,” i.e., an unconditionally independent social organism, turns out from this basic aspect to be pure fiction. Further, the constant cooperation of all educated countries in scientific and technical work, the fruits of which are now made common property; inventions that eliminate distances; the daily press with its continuous news from everywhere; finally, the amazingly increasing international “metabolism” along new routes of communication - all this makes cultural humanity one whole, which really, even if involuntarily, lives one common life. And this cultural humanity is increasingly becoming all of humanity. After the beginning of the new centuries, Europeans expanded their area of ​​​​action in all directions, capturing America in the west, India in the southeast and Siberia in the northeast, most of the globe with its population was already in their power. Now we can say that this power has already covered the entire globe. The Muslim world is entangled and permeated through and through with the threads of European culture and only in the tropical deserts of Sudan can it still, and then without any hope of success, defend its wild originality (the kingdom of the dervishes). The entire coastal circumference of Africa has already been divided between European powers, and now the middle of the black continent has become the arena of their rivalry. Mongolian Asia, China and Japan, remained beyond the line of European influence; before our eyes, this last barrier in humanity is being removed. With amazing haste and success, the Japanese, in a quarter of a century, assimilated the entire material and positive scientific side of European education and then, first of all, tried in the most convincing way to prove the need for such assimilation to their Mongolian brother. The Chinese, already shaken in their self-confidence by the British, but still barely understanding these foreigners, immediately understood their fellow tribesmen, and from now on the notorious Chinese Wall is no longer a symbol of ongoing isolation, but only a monument to the irrevocably past. What did this curious process of worldwide “gathering of the earth” through a single material culture have to do with war? On the one hand, war plays an active role in it. It is known how the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars powerfully contributed to the movement and spread of pan-European ideas that determined the scientific, technical and economic progress of the 19th century, which materially united humanity. And in the same way, the final act of this unification (its extension to the last stronghold of isolated barbarism, China) began to be accomplished in our eyes not by peaceful preaching, but by war. On the other hand, the universality of material culture, achieved partly through war, itself becomes a powerful means and foundation of peace. At present, the vast majority of the world's population constitutes one truly connected body, solidary (if not yet morally, then physically) in its parts. This solidarity is revealed precisely in that sphere from which no one can escape - in the economic sphere: any industrial crisis in New York is sensitively reflected immediately in Moscow and Calcutta. A common sensorium (sensorium commune) has developed in the body of humanity, as a result of which each particular impulse perceptibly produces a general effect. Meanwhile, any serious and prolonged war is inevitably accompanied by the greatest economic shocks, which, given the current connection of parts of the entire globe, will be worldwide shocks. This situation, which developed during the nineteenth century, but became clear to everyone only towards its end, is a sufficient basis for that fear of war, completely unknown in previous times, which has now seized all educated peoples. Already in the first half of the century, wars became shorter and less frequent: between Waterloo and Sevastopol, Europe saw a forty-year period of peace - an event unprecedented in its previous history. Then special historical reasons gave rise to several relatively short European wars in 1859, 1864, 1866 and 1870; Russian-Turkish war 1877 - 8 It was not possible to turn it into a European one, but a typical example is the most important of these wars - the Franco-Prussian one: although it left in the leading people of Europe a bitter consciousness of national resentment and a thirst for revenge, however, these feelings for 28 years have not had the strength to move into action out of fear of war alone! Is it even possible to imagine such abstinence even in the 18th or 17th centuries, let alone in older times? And all these monstrous weapons of European states, what do they indicate if not that great all-overpowering fear of war and, therefore, the near end of wars? 169 It would be unreasonable, however, to think and act as if this imminent end had already arrived. Although a common economic sensitivity now connects all parts of the earth’s population with a connection that is tangible to them, this connection is not equally strong everywhere and not all of these parts are equally sensitive. There are still peoples who, in the event of a world war, risk little, but there are also those who are ready to risk even a lot. The introduction of the Mongolian race into the circle of material European culture is a fact with mutual significance. This race, of which the main representative, the Chinese people, numbers at least 200 million souls, with the greatest tribal pride, is also distinguished by extreme contempt for life, not only that of others, but also its own. It is more than likely that the inevitable adoption of Western cultural technology by the entire yellow race will henceforth be only a means for it to prove in a decisive struggle the superiority of its spiritual principles over the European ones. This upcoming armed struggle between Europe and Mongolian Asia will, of course, be the last, but even more terrible, a truly worldwide war, and it is not indifferent to the fate of mankind which side will remain victorious in it. The general history of human wars, the main moments of which we have recalled, presents an amazing unity and harmony. In the foggy pink memories of historical childhood, first of all, a clear, albeit semi-fantastic image of the Trojan War appears - this first great clash of West with East, Europe with Asia. This is how Herodotus looks at the Trojan War and begins his story with it, and with it, of course, not in vain, the first inspired monument of purely human poetry (the Iliad) is associated. Indeed, this war is the beginning of the earthly, worldly history of mankind, which throughout its entire continuation revolves around the fatal struggle between East and West in an increasingly expanding arena. Now this arena has reached its maximum breadth - the entire surface of the globe: instead of the deserted Scamander - the Pacific Ocean, instead of the smoking Pergamon - the ominous bulk of China, and the struggle is still the same between the hostile principles of East and West. There was a moment of turning point and stopping in this process, when, following the external unification of the then historical East with the West in the Roman Empire - under the rule of the descendant of the Trojan Aeneas - the light of Christianity internally abolished the ancient enmity. That light flowing from the East, The West has reconciled with the East. But the old material-cultural unification turned out to be fragile, and the spiritual one is still awaiting its final implementation. True, instead of the political unity of the Roman Empire, modern humanity has developed another unity - economic, which, like the first, poses great external obstacles to armed struggle, but these obstacles, thanks to which we have recently been delivered from the European war, are not able to prevent the last and greatest strife of these two worlds - European and Asian - which are now no longer in the person of their representatives, as were the Achaeans and Trojans or even the Greeks and Persians, but in everything in its actual volume, as two great halves into which all of humanity is hostilely divided. The victory of one side or the other will truly give peace to the whole world. There will be no more struggle between states, but this political peace, this establishment of international unity in the form of a world state (monarchical or otherwise) - will it be a real and eternal peace, will it stop the struggle, even armed, between other, non-political elements of humanity? Will not what happened before our eyes on a smaller scale be repeated here on a huge scale? Germany once consisted of many states that fought among themselves, the national body suffered from a lack of real unity, and the creation of such unity became the cherished dream of patriots. Through several wars this ideal was realized and thus proved insufficient. The Germans, of course, will never give up their political unity, but they clearly see that this was only one necessary step forward, and in no way the achievement of a higher goal. The political struggle of small states was replaced throughout the empire by a deeper struggle - religious and economic; the Ultramontanes and Social Democrats turned out to be more terrible than the Austrians and the French. When all of humanity unites politically - whether in the form of a world monarchy or a world international union - will this stop the struggle of the Freemasons with the clerics, will the enmity of socialism against the propertied classes and anarchism - against every social and state organization - be tamed? Isn’t it clear that the struggle of beliefs and material interests survives the struggle of peoples and states, and the final establishment of external, political unity will decisively reveal its internal insufficiency - it will reveal the moral truth that the external world in itself is not yet a true good, but that it becomes good only in connection with the internal degeneration of humanity. And then only - when the insufficiency of external unity is recognized not by theory, but by experience - can the fullness of time come for the spiritualization of the united universal body, for the realization in it of the Kingdom of Truth and Eternal Peace. In the historical process of the external, political unification of mankind, war, as we have seen, was the main means. Wars of clans and clans led to the formation of a state that abolished war within the limits of its power. Foreign wars between individual states then led to the creation of larger and more complex cultural and political bodies, striving to establish balance and peace within their borders. Once upon a time, the entire mass of humanity, fragmented and scattered, was thoroughly permeated by war, which did not cease within many small groups. War was everywhere, but, gradually being pushed further and further, it now threatens with almost inevitable danger only on the border of the two main races into which historical humanity is divided. The process of unification is coming to an end, but this end has not yet come. The peaceful inclusion of the yellow race in the circle of universal human culture is extremely incredible, and there is no basis from a historical point of view to consider war as subject to immediate and complete abolition. But is this point of view obligatory for a person’s moral consciousness? The matter appears as follows. “Whatever the historical significance of war, it is, first of all, the murder of some people by others: but murder is condemned by our conscience, and, therefore, we are obliged by conscience to renounce all participation in the war and to instill in others the same. Spreading such a view by word and example is the real, only true way to abolish war, for it is clear that when every person refuses military service, war will become impossible.” For this reasoning to be convincing, one would first have to agree that war and even military service are nothing more than murder. But we cannot agree with this. During military service, war itself is only a possibility. During the forty-year period between the wars of Napoleon I and the wars of Napoleon III, several million people in Europe saw military service, but only a tiny number of them experienced actual war. But even in those cases when it occurs, war still cannot be reduced to murder as an atrocity, i.e. presuming an evil intention aimed at a specific object, at this famous person, who is being killed by me. In war, an individual soldier, generally speaking, does not have such an intention, especially with the currently dominant method of combat using long-range rifles and cannons against an enemy invisible at a distance. Only with the onset of actual cases of hand-to-hand combat does a question of conscience arise for an individual person, which must be decided by everyone according to their conscience. In general, war, as a clash between collective organisms (states) and their collective bodies (troops), is not the work of individual persons passively participating in it, and on their part, possible murder is only accidental. Isn't it better, however, to prevent the very possibility of accidental murder by refusing military service? Without a doubt, this would be true if it were a question of free choice. At a certain height of moral consciousness or with a special development of feelings of pity, a person will not, of course, choose combat military service of his own accord, but will prefer peaceful pursuits. But as regards the compulsory service required by the state, then, without at all sympathizing with the modern institution of universal military service, the inconveniences of which are obvious and the expediency of which is doubtful, it must be admitted that while it exists, refusal to submit to it on the part of an individual is a greater evil. Since the person who refuses knows that a certain number of recruits will be appointed in any case and that another will be called in his place, it means that he deliberately exposes his neighbor to all the hardships of military service, who would otherwise be free from them. In addition, the general meaning of such a refusal does not satisfy either logical or moral requirements, for it boils down to the fact that in order to avoid the future distant possibility of accidentally killing the enemy in a war that will not depend on me, I now myself declare war on my state and force its representatives to a whole series of violent actions against me now, in order to protect myself from the problematic commission of random violence in the unknown future. The purpose of military service is defined in our law by the formula “defense of the throne and fatherland,” that is, the state entity to which a given person belongs. The possibility for the state in the future, like many cases in past history, to abuse its armed forces and, instead of self-defense, to undertake unjust offensive wars cannot be a sufficient reason for my own actions in the present: these actions should be determined only by my, and not by other people's, moral duties. So, the question ultimately comes down to this: do I have a moral obligation to participate in the defense of my fatherland? Those teachings that have an unconditionally negative attitude towards war and charge everyone with the duty to refuse the state’s demand for military service, generally deny that a person has any duties to the state. From their point of view, the state is nothing more than a gang of robbers who hypnotize the crowd in order to keep them in obedience and use them for their own purposes. But to seriously think that this exhausts or at least somehow expresses the true essence of the matter would be too naive. This view is especially untenable when it refers to Christianity. Since the time of Christianity, our unconditional dignity, the absolute significance of the inner being of man, his soul, has been revealed to us. This unconditional dignity imposes on us the unconditional duty to implement the truth in all of our lives, not only personal, but also collective; Moreover, we undoubtedly know that it is impossible to carry out such a task for every person, individually or isolated, that to accomplish it it is necessary to replenish private life with the general historical life of mankind. One of the ways of this replenishment, one of the forms of common life - the main and dominant form at the present historical moment - is the fatherland, organized in a certain way in the state. This form is, of course, not the highest and final expression of human solidarity, and should not put the fatherland in the place of God and His universal Kingdom. But from the fact that the state is not everything, it does not in any way follow that it is unnecessary and that it is permissible to set oneself the goal of its abolition. Suppose the country where I live is beset by some general disaster, for example. hunger. What is the duty of the individual as an unconditionally moral being? Both feeling and conscience clearly say: one of two things - either feed all the hungry, or die of hunger yourself. I have no opportunity to feed millions of hungry people, and if, however, my conscience does not reproach me at all for the fact that I remain alive, then this happens solely because my moral obligation to provide bread to all the hungry is taken upon itself and can be fulfilled by the state thanks to its collecting funds and its organization, adapted to broad and rapid action. In this case, the state turns out to be an institution through which a task that is morally obligatory, but physically impossible for an individual, can be successfully accomplished. But if the state fulfills my direct moral duties for me, then how can one say that I owe it nothing and that it has no rights over me? If without him I would have to give up my life in conscience, then shall I really deny him my small share of the means that he needs to carry out my work? What if the taxes and taxes collected by the state are not used for things whose benefits are obvious, but for things that seem useless or even harmful to me? Then it is my duty to denounce these abuses, but not to deny in words and deeds the very principle of state duties, the recognized purpose of which is to serve the public welfare. But the military organization of the state has essentially the same basis. If some savages, such as the recent Caucasian mountaineers or the present-day Kurds and black flags, attack a traveler with the clear intention of killing him and slaughtering his family, then he, without a doubt, is obliged to enter into battle with them - not out of enmity or malice towards them, and also not in order to save his life at the cost of the life of his neighbor, but in order to protect the weak creatures under his protection. Helping your neighbors in such cases is an unconditional moral obligation, and it cannot be limited to your family. But successfully protecting all the weak and innocent from the violence of evildoers is impossible for an individual and for many people separately. The collective organization of such protection is the purpose of the military force of the state, and one way or another to support it in this matter of philanthropy is the moral duty of everyone, not abolished by any abuses: just as from the fact that ergot is poisonous, it does not follow that rye is harmful, so all the burdens and dangers of militarism say nothing against the need for armed forces. Military and any forced organization in general is not evil, but a consequence and a sign of evil. There was no trace of such an organization when the innocent shepherd Abel was killed out of malice by his brother. Rightly fearing that the same thing might subsequently happen to Seth and other peaceful people, the good guardian angels of humanity mixed clay with copper and iron and created a soldier and a policeman. And until Cain’s feelings have not disappeared in the hearts of people, the soldier and the policeman will not be evil, but good. Enmity against the state and its representatives is still enmity, and this enmity towards the state alone would be enough to see the necessity of the state. And isn’t it strange to be at enmity against it because it only limits by external means, and does not internally abolish in the whole world that malice that we cannot abolish in ourselves! Between the historical necessity of war and its abstract denial on the part of an individual person comes the responsibility of this person in relation to that organized whole (state), which until the end of history determines not only the existence, but also the progress of mankind. But it is precisely this undoubted fact that the state has the means not only to protect human society in its given position, but also to move it forward, that imposes on the individual other duties in relation to the state, in addition to the simple fulfillment of its legal demands. Such fulfillment would be sufficient if the state were the perfect embodiment of the normal social order, but since in fact it, being a condition and instrument of human improvement, is itself gradually improving in various respects, the individual person is obliged, within the limits of his strength and abilities, to actively participate in this general political progress. An individual person carries within himself an unconditional moral consciousness of the perfect ideal of truth and peace, or the Kingdom of God; this consciousness was received by him not from the state, but from above and from within, but we actually realize it in the collective life of humanity; this ideal cannot be achieved without the mediation of a preparatory state organization, and from here for an individual who truly stands on a moral point of view, a direct positive obligation follows to assist the state with a word of conviction or preaching, in the sense of the best fulfillment of its preliminary task, after the fulfillment of which, but not before, the state itself, of course, will become redundant. Such an influence of a person on society is possible and obligatory in relation to war, as in all other areas of public life. The evil of war is extreme enmity and hatred between parts of disintegrated humanity. In personal relationships, bad feelings are not justified by anyone, and it is useless to denounce them. But in international hatred, a bad feeling is usually combined with false opinions and incorrect reasoning, and is often caused by them. The fight against this lie is the first duty of every person who truly wants to bring humanity closer to a good world. As for the future decisive struggle between Europe and Asia, although it is highly probable, it does not represent an unconditional, externally pressing necessity for us. The matter is still in our hands. The first condition for the possible, although unlikely, peaceful inclusion of the Mongolian race in the circle of Christian education is that the Christian peoples themselves be more Christian, that in all respects of their collective life they are guided more by moral principles than by shameful self-interest and evil enmity, economic, national and confessional. Just recently, at the World Congress of Religions in Chicago, some Asians - Buddhists and Brahmins - addressed the Europeans with the following words, expressing the current opinion of the East: “You send missionaries to us to preach your religion. We do not deny the dignity of your religion, but, having become acquainted with you over the past two centuries, we see that your whole life goes against the requirements of your faith and that you are driven not by the spirit of truth and love, bequeathed to you by your God, but by the spirit of self-interest and violence, characteristic of all bad people. This means one of two things: either your religion, despite its internal superiority, cannot be practically realized and, therefore, is not suitable even for you who profess it; or you are so bad that you don’t want to do what you can and should. In both cases, you have no advantage over us and should leave us alone.” You can convincingly object to this not with words, but only with deeds. Against Europe, internally united and truly Christian, Asia would have neither the justification for the struggle nor the conditions for victory. War was a direct means for the external and an indirect means for the internal unification of humanity. Reason forbids abandoning this weapon while it is needed, but conscience obliges us to try so that it ceases to be necessary and so that the natural organization of humanity, divided into warring parts, actually passes into its moral, or spiritual, organization. The general image of this entire moral organization, which is inherent in human nature, is internally based on unconditional Good and is completely realized through world history - this image of the totality of moral conditions that justify good in the world should complete moral philosophy. Chapter nineteen. The moral organization of humanity as a whole The natural organization of humanity has the meaning that various human units and groups are placed by nature in the need for such interaction in which their particular needs and activities are balanced in results of general significance leading to the relative improvement of the whole. Thus, since ancient times, the needs of shepherds and farmers, the warlike spirit of national leaders and the selfish enterprise of merchants created everyday education and moved world history. This natural arrangement of human affairs, thanks to which private aspirations lead to general success, expresses some real unity of humanity. But this unity is imperfect both from the outside and from the inside: from the outside - due to its actual incompleteness, from the inside - because it is not the subject of the own consciousness and the own will of those units and groups that are included in it. Such solidarity of beings, apart from their thought and will, is already given in the prehuman world - in the unity of the genus and in the development of organic species; dwelling on it is unworthy of a person in whom objective and generic reason - the general predicate of nature - becomes an individual subject. A moral, conscious and voluntary organization of humanity is required, in the name and by virtue of the unified Good, and it has become the direct goal and task of thought and life since, at the middle moment of history, this Good was revealed in its unconditionality and completeness. Unity in the Good is not only the jointness and actual balancing of private aspirations and actions in a common result, but a direct community of individuals and groups in unanimous action to achieve a common goal: absolute perfection, which is understood and accepted as their own goal. Having as its task the implementation of unconditional norms of goodness, or active (practical) perfection, the moral organization of human life is generally defined as improvement. At the same time, with logical necessity, the question arises first of all: who is improving? – the question of the subject of moral organization. We know that individuals do not exist individually, and therefore do not improve. The real subject of improvement, or moral progress (as well as historical progress in general), is an individual person together and inseparably with a collective person, or society. Just as not every combination of molecules forms an organic cell and not every accumulation of cells constitutes a living being, in the same way not every collection of individuals and groups forms a real and living bearer of moral organization. In order to have such a meaning, that is, in order to organically replenish the moral personality, the collective whole must be no less real than it and in this sense equivalent and equal in rights with it. It must be given to her, not created by her. Natural groups that really expand the life of an individual are: family, people, humanity - three abiding degrees of incarnation of the collective person, to which, in historical order, the following stages correspond: blood-tribal, national-political and spiritual-universal. The latter can be revealed only under the condition of the spiritualization of the first two. Can the family be part of the ultimate and universal moral organization? Isn't this just a passing limitation in the development of human life? But the individual in his given state and in his egoistic striving for exclusive isolation is also a transitory limitation, just like the people and humanity itself. The point is not to idealize and perpetuate this corruptible side in one or another subject to life, but to open and flare up the spark of the Divine hidden under this decay, so that the unconditional and eternal meaning inherent in it is found in a conditional and transitory form and is established not only as a fixed idea, but also as the beginning of fulfillment, as a deposit of perfection. The positive elements of life in their relative and temporary manifestations must be understood and accepted by us as conditional data for solving an unconditional task. In a family, these natural data are three generations, successively linked by birth: grandfathers-parents, children-parents and children-grandchildren. The continuity and relativity of this connection does not abolish its tripartite composition as a permanent norm: the members of the series speaking for it in one direction or the other - great-grandfathers and great-grandsons - no longer represent any special independent side in the idea of ​​family relationships. The highest task is to spiritualize the relative natural connection of three generations and turn it into an unconditionally moral one. This is achieved from three sides - through family religion, marriage and education. Family religion is the most ancient, fundamental and lasting institution in humanity; it has survived tribal life, has experienced and is experiencing all changes, religious and political. The subject of family religion is the older generation, departed fathers or grandfathers. According to the most ancient concepts, grandfathers must certainly be dead; this is so necessary that, according to a natural turn of thought, all the dead, regardless of age and gender, were called grandfathers (Lithuanian-Polish dziady - a remnant or relic of a deeply archaic one). If natural grandfathers accidentally healed, then this was an outrage, a violation of religious and moral norms, which, however, was easily restored through the voluntary sacrifice of the old man. Under this wild fact there was an essentially true thought, or, more precisely, two thoughts - that, firstly, that a true object of reverence and veneration for a person cannot be a being in the same state as him, with the same needs and abilities, and secondly, that for that powerful beneficial action in the earthly area, which is characteristic of a higher being, it must itself move away from this area, renounce the direct, physical connection with it. In order for the family veneration given to the older generation to be maintained in an era of dominant power, it could not be allowed to be associated with the spectacle of decrepitude and impotence. The old people themselves understood this and with grateful wisdom parted with their weakened life in advance for another, powerful and prophetic existence. Towards sunset, the king began, my day has come, Honey no longer tastes good to me, the helmet is heavy for me. Fill two mounds for us, sons, On two shores of the bay, near the waves. When the moon sheds its shine on the rocks And dew will fall on the gravestone, We are from the hills, O Thorsten, from the waters we will rise And we will begin to whisper about the future at midnight. 170 Already in pagan veneration of ancestors, the natural connection of tribal continuity tends to acquire spiritual and moral significance. Through the revelation of the unconditional meaning of life in Christianity, it becomes possible to fully realize this religious connection with the ancestors. Instead of material sacrificial feeding of “grandfathers” who, on their part, help in external affairs, spiritual interaction is established in prayers and the sacrament; both sides have their prayer books in each other, both help each other in achieving eternal good. It's about unconditional interest - the salvation of the soul. Eternal memory, tranquility with the saints, the general resurrection of life - this is what the present generation desires, this is what the present generation helps the departed - for him, and in the same way expects help from him - for himself; mutual relationship, moving into the realm of absolute good, ceases to be self-interested and becomes purely moral, understood and realized as perfect Good. Eternal memory does not mean, of course, that people on earth will forever remember the deceased as something that was and is not: this, firstly, would not be so important for him, and secondly, this is impossible, since earthly humanity itself should not count on the eternal continuation of its temporary existence, if only there is any meaning in the world. Eternal memory, for which we turn to God and not to people, means remaining in the eternal mind of God; to create an eternal memory for someone means to create him in accordance with his eternal idea - God’s eternal thought about him and to establish him in the field of unconditional and unchangeable existence. In relation to everyday anxiety, this is eternal peace. Death in itself is not peace, and the dead in natural humanity can rather be called restless (French revenants, German Poltergeister) than dead. The peace that we pray for for our departed ones depends on God’s eternal memory of them. Confirmed in their unconditional idea, they have in it a firm, immutable guarantee of the impending final realization of perfect good in the world and therefore cannot worry, although the difference between the present and the future still exists for them, but in this future there is nothing doubtful or alarming, it is separated from them only by a necessary delay, and they can already look at everything “under the guise of eternity,” whereas for those who have died in natural humanity, the future, although it becomes their main interest, nevertheless remains a formidable mystery and mystery. And we will begin to whisper about the future at midnight. Eternal tranquility is not inaction. Activity remains with those who have departed, only its character changes significantly, it no longer comes from an anxious desire for a distant and unfaithful goal, but is performed on the basis and strength of an achieved and invariably abiding connection with the unconditional Good, and therefore here the action is compatible with serene and carefree tranquility. And just as the beneficial action of the departed expresses his moral connection with his neighbors by nature, with living offspring, so in blissful peace he is inseparable from his neighbors in God and eternity - this is tranquility with the saints. This is the norm for everyone, and if not everyone achieves it, if not all the dead are truly dead and not everyone to whom eternal memory is sung turn out to be worthy of it before God, then this does not change the religious attitude towards “grandfathers”, the basis of the family, and through it of all morality. For, firstly, the actual fate of each deceased still remains only guesswork for us; secondly, and with a greater probability of an unfavorable assumption, the religious attitude towards the fact only takes on a different shade, and the feeling of pity that comes in this case encourages an increased impact; and, finally, thirdly, each person, if not the majority, then probably already, although some “grandfathers” meet the requirements of “eternal memory” and “tranquility with the saints”, and, therefore, every person, in addition to all other connections, certainly has a family, blood connection with the world of God’s eternity - for everyone, the family, and from this main aspect, can have unconditional significance, be a true completion (through the abiding past) of his moral personality. But, on the other hand, the fullness of life of ancestors, even those eternally remembered by God, even those who rest with the saints, is determined by the action of their descendants, creating those earthly conditions under which the end of the world process can occur, and, consequently, the bodily resurrection of those who have passed away, and each departed person is naturally connected with the future final humanity through a successive line of consanguinity. 171 Acting on his physicality and on external material nature in the sense of its actual spiritualization, everyone fulfills his duty towards his ancestors, pays them his moral debt: having received from them physical existence and the entire heritage of the previous history, the new generation carries on further work, at the end of which the conditions of fullness of life are created for those who have passed away. This means that from this new point of view, the natural connection with previous generations, or the family religion of the past, receives unconditional significance and becomes an expression of perfect Good. Man's spiritualizing work on his physicality and on earthly nature in general will have its beneficial effect back into the past only when the goal is achieved: the past will receive the fullness of its reality only in the future. But until the matter is over and that perfection of life has not yet been achieved in which spiritual and physical being completely penetrate each other, the abyss between the visible and invisible world will be completely abolished and death will become an impossibility not only for the living, but also for the dead - a necessary condition for this very future perfection and the moral task of the present must be the struggle of the spirit with the flesh, its concentration and strengthening. The real means for bodily resurrection is the subjugation of the flesh; an indispensable condition for life's fullness is the suppression of life's immensity, or asceticism. True asceticism, that is, spiritual possession of the flesh, leading to the resurrection of life, has two paths: monasticism and marriage. We spoke about the first, predominant and exclusive, in another place, 172 the explanation of the second belongs to the current reasoning. Such a simple, apparently, relationship, the physical basis of which is already in the animal and even plant kingdom, is not without reason, however, called the “great mystery” and is accepted as a permanent, sanctified image by the word of God, denoting the union of the Lord of Israel with the people, Christ crucified with the earthly church and Christ the King of glory with the New Jerusalem. If veneration of ancestors and religious interaction with them connects a person with perfect Good through the past, then true marriage has the same meaning for the present, middle moment of life. This is the implementation of an unconditional moral norm in the very real center of human existence. Sexual opposition, which in the world of subhuman organisms expresses only the general interaction of formative and formed life, the active and passive principles, receives a more definite and deeper meaning for humans. A woman is not, like animal females, only the embodiment of one passive-perceiving side of natural existence - she is the concentrated essence of the whole nature, the final expression of the material world in its internal suffering, as ready for the transition to a new, higher kingdom - to moral spiritualization. And the man here does not represent only the active principle in general, but is the bearer of strictly human activity, determined by the unconditional meaning of life, to which the woman also participates through him. And he, in turn, owes it the possibility of the immediate immediate realization of this meaning, or absolute good. The highest morality, coming from an unconditional beginning and determined by it (what is called grace in theology) is not the destruction of nature, but the imparting of real perfection to it. The natural relationship between a man and a woman has three aspects: 1) material – in physical attraction, conditioned by the nature of the organism; 2) ideal - in that exaltation of spiritual feeling, which is called falling in love; and, finally, 3) a natural sexual relationship is determined from the point of view of its expediency, or its final result, i.e., procreation. In a true marriage, the natural sexual relationship is not destroyed, but transubstantiated; but while this transubstantiation has not yet become a fact, it is a moral task, and the elements of natural sexual relations are the data of this task. The main significance in this regard belongs to the middle element - love exaltation, or the pathos of love. A person sees his natural addition, his material other - a woman not as she appears to external observation and as others, strangers see her, but he sees into her true essence or idea, into what she was originally destined to be, what God has seen her from eternity and what she must ultimately become. Here, in fact, material nature in its highest individual expression - a woman - is recognized as having an unconditional significance, and she is affirmed as a moral person, as an end in itself, or as a being capable of spiritualization and “deification.” From such recognition follows a moral obligation to act in the sense of realizing in this actual woman and her life what she should be. This corresponds to the special character of the highest love feeling in a woman, who sees in her chosen one a real savior who must reveal to her and fulfill the meaning of her life. Marriage remains the satisfaction of a sexual need, only this need itself no longer relates to the external nature of the animal organism, but to a humanized nature awaiting deification. A huge task arises, solved only by constant feat, which in the fight against hostile reality can only be won by going through martyrdom. 173 From this point of view, the fullness of life satisfaction, which also embraces bodily sensuality, is associated not with the preceding lust, but with the subsequent joy of achieved perfection. It goes without saying that in a perfect marriage, in which the inner fullness of the human being is fully realized through its complete union with the spiritualized material essence, external procreation becomes both unnecessary and impossible - unnecessary because the highest task has been completed, the final goal has been achieved; impossible - just as it is impossible that when two equal geometric figures are superimposed, a remainder of discrepancy is obtained. A perfect marriage is the beginning of a new process that does not repeat life in time, but restores it for eternity. But we must not forget that a perfect marriage is not necessarily an initial condition, but only the final consequence of the moral union of a man and a woman. You cannot assume this highest thing in advance and begin construction from the roof, and you also cannot claim that a real house is such a roof. A true human marriage is one that consciously strives towards the perfect union of man and woman, towards the creation of the whole person. But as long as he is just being guided and has not yet realized the idea in himself as real completeness, has not yet freed himself from the duality between it and the material empirical reality that is opposite to it, so long does external physical procreation appear both as a natural consequence of perfection not achieved in the present, and as a necessary path for its future achievement. It is clear that until the union of a man and a woman is fully spiritualized, its fullness remains only in the idea and in subjective feeling, and in objective reality it continues to be external and superficial in the image of animals, and the result of this union cannot have a different character. But the highest expediency of this result given the imperfection is also clear; for what the parents did not do will be done by the children. External, temporary continuity of generations exists because marriage has not reached its perfection, that the union of an individual man and woman is not spiritual and complete enough to internally revive in them the whole person in the image and likeness of God; but this is why it turns out together and for this purpose - precisely so that the task that turned out to be beyond the strength of this individual person (man and woman) was nevertheless accomplished by him indirectly, through a series of future generations coming from him. Thus, the internal completeness and self-integrity of the family is restored, a person, even if imperfect, remains unconditionally important, and there remains a continuous solidary connection between the temporary members of the life series going into eternity. Just as for the moral organization of humanity, on the part of the past, the mere fact of heredity, i.e., descent from a given series of ancestors, is not sufficient, but the establishment of an abiding moral connection with these ancestors is required, which is fulfilled in family religion; Just as, further, the natural fact of sexual intercourse is not sufficient for the same organization in the present, but it is necessary to raise this connection to the level of spiritual achievement, which is what happens in a true marriage, so on the part of the future, the moral organization of a collective person, not limited to the significance of children as a new generation to which an unknown future belongs, in addition to the actual, external continuity, requires internal, moral continuity - it is not content with the fact that parents produced children for the future, but imposes the obligation to educate these carriers and engines of the future for their specific world-historical task. The natural moral feeling of pity, which does not allow us to offend our neighbors and forces us to help them, naturally focuses on those neighbors who are most closely connected with us and at the same time most in need of our help, that is, on children. This connection, which already has a moral character in the family as an element of natural human life, acquires unconditional significance in the family as the primary basis of a new, spiritually organized life. The moral significance of marriage lies in the fact that a woman ceases to be an instrument of natural desires, but is recognized as a being absolutely valuable in herself, as a necessary completion of the individual person to his true wholeness. The failure or insufficient success of marriage in realizing this unconditional meaning of human individuality forces us to shift the task forward - to children as representatives of the future. Here, with simple, natural pity for this weak and suffering loved one, the world’s sorrow for the evil and misfortunes of life is associated, then the hope that these new creatures will be able to alleviate the universal burden, and, finally, the duty to protect them for this task and prepare them for it. In a spiritually organized family, the attitude of parents towards children has mainly in mind the unconditional purpose of a person; the purpose of education here is to connect the temporary life of this future generation with the supreme and eternal good, which is common to all generations, in which grandfathers, fathers and children are inseparably consubstantial with each other; for the Kingdom of God can become manifest and the resurrection of life can be accomplished only through the abolition of the temporary disintegration of man into mutually exclusive generations, displacing one another from life. In the meantime, on the path to this perfection, the moral connection of generations and the unconditional, super-temporal unity of man is maintained through the veneration of ancestors in one direction and through the upbringing of children in the other. The great debate is between time and eternity in man about who is stronger: Good or Death? “Your fathers,” the Prince of Peace says to the man, “those through whom you received everything you have, they were, they are not and will not be forever, and if so, then where is Good? You come to terms with the death of your fathers, you confirm it with your consent, you live and enjoy, and those to whom you owe this have disappeared forever. Where then is goodness, where is the very beginning of piety - gratitude, where is pity, where is shame? Are they not completely overcome by selfishness, selfishness, and sensuality? But do not despair: after all, such a condemnation of your life makes sense only from the point of view of Good, only on the assumption that Good exists, and this very assumption constitutes a fundamental mistake: it is precisely Good that does not exist at all. If it had been, then your fathers either would not have died, or you would not have been able to come to terms with their death; and now it is clear that this Good with its fictitious demands and standards of piety, shame and pity is nothing more than an empty pretense. If you want to live, live, forgetting about the Good, since it is eaten up by death without a trace, and it is no more and will not be... - Your fathers died, but did not cease to exist, for the keys of existence are with me, says Eternity, do not believe that they have disappeared, and in order to see them, connect yourself with the invisible with a true connection of Good: honor them, regret them, be ashamed to forget them. - Illusion! - says the Prince of the Age again, believe, perhaps, in their hidden, subjective existence, but if for yourself you are not content with such a counterfeit of being, but hold on to the fullness of obvious, objective life, then you must demand it for the fathers, if only there is Good. But obvious objective existence - the only one worth talking about - was lost by your fathers and will not return to them forever: give up the powerless Good, the exhausting struggle with ghosts and live a full life. – But the last word belongs to Eternity, which, without renouncing the past, all the more boldly appeals to the future: Good does not depend on the degree of your strength, and your weakness is not the powerlessness of Good, and you yourself are powerless only when you stop at yourself, the incompleteness of your life is your own creation; truly everything is open to you, live in everything, be the unity of yourself and your other, not only in the direction of the past, in relation to your ancestors, but also forward: affirm yourself in new generations, so that with your present assistance they will bring the world to that final state in which God will resurrect the fullness of life for everyone - both for themselves, and for you, and for fathers and grandfathers. By this, even in the present moment, you can actually demonstrate the absolute power of Good over time and death, not idly denying them, but using them for the fullest manifestation of immortal life. Take advantage of the death of your ancestors in order to preserve in the religion of those who have passed away a strong guarantee of their resurrection, use your temporary existence so that, by giving it to your descendants, transferring the center of your moral gravity to the future, you can anticipate and bring closer the final revelation of the Kingdom of God in this world. Already conventional everyday morality requires a person to pass on to his children not only the good that he has acquired, but also the ability to work to further ensure his life. The highest, unconditional morality also obliges the present generation to pass on to the new a double legacy: firstly, everything positive that has been achieved by the past of humanity, all the results of historical savings, and secondly, the ability and willingness to use this fixed capital for the common good, for a new approach to the highest goal. This is the essential purpose of true education, which must be simultaneously and inseparably traditional and progressive. The division and opposition between these two producers of true life - between the foundation and what is based on it, between the root and what is to grow from it - is equally absurd and equally deadly for both sides. If the old, the good is sufficient to itself and is no longer a real basis for the new, the better, then this means that the old has lost its vitality; Recognizing it as something finished and worshiping it in this form as an external object, we make of religion only a relic - dead, but not miraculous. This is the fundamental sin of walking conservatism, which seeks to replace the living fruits of the spirit with artificial canned food. Since it is expressed in education, this false conservatism produces people who are indifferent and hostile to religion. Faith cannot be obtained as a result of such upbringing when it is no longer in the cause. It is clear, in fact, that exceptional zeal for preserving the faith can only come from the lack of faith of the zealots themselves: they have no time and there would be no need to grieve and worry about faith so much if they lived by faith. Where tradition is put in the place of the devotee (where, for example, the traditional correctness of the concept of Christ is preserved unconditionally, but the presence of Christ Himself and His Spirit is not felt), there religious life is impossible, and any efforts to artificially evoke it only more clearly expose the fatal loss. But can the life of the future grow from a truly dead past? If the connection of times has truly broken down, then what does progress mean? Who is progressing? Could a tree really grow if its roots and trunk existed only mentally and only its branches and leaves enjoyed real reality? But, without dwelling yet on the logical inconsistencies of such a point of view, we will confine ourselves to the ethical side of the matter. Man as a moral being has unconditional significance; its present reality, taken separately, does not correspond to this meaning (is not adequate); hence the moral task is not to separate oneself, one’s personality and one’s existence from the unconditional good that exists as one in everything. Since a moral being is internally connected with everything, it truly has unconditional value, or satisfies its dignity. In the order of time, that “everything” from which we should not separate ourselves, with which we should internally unite, appears on both sides, in the closest image, as our past and our future, as ancestors and descendants. In order to realize our moral dignity in time, we must become spiritually what we already are physically - a link of connection and mediation between one and the other, and for this we must recognize an abiding reality for those who have passed away, recognize an unconditional future for our ancestors. We should not consider those who have passed away to be finished - they are bearers of an unconditional principle, which for them must be fully realized. The departed, the ancestors, along with their existence in the memory of the past, have a secret existence in the present and will receive an obvious existence in the future: they have both reality and future. Only on this basis is real education possible. If we are indifferent to the future of our ancestors, why should we care about the future of the new generation? If we cannot have unconditional moral solidarity with those who have died, then where will such solidarity come from with those who will certainly die? Since education essentially consists in the transfer of moral obligations from one generation to another, the question is: what kind of obligation and in relation to whom is it transmitted by us to our successors if our own connection with our ancestors is broken? A responsibility to move humanity forward? But this is just a play on words, because neither “forward” nor “humanity” have any real meaning here. “Forward” should mean towards Good, but where will it come from when evil is the basis - the most elementary and undeniable evil of ingratitude towards fathers, reconciliation with their disappearance, calm separation and alienation from them? And where is the humanity that our pupils and successors must move forward? Do last year’s leaves, scattered by the wind and rotting in the ground, together with new foliage form one tree? From this point of view, no humanity exists at all, but there are only separate generations of people replacing each other. If we must replace this external and constantly disappearing connection with an essential and abiding moral connection, then, obviously, this must be done in both directions. The form of time, morally indifferent in itself, cannot essentially determine our moral relations. No deal is possible here—there cannot be two unconditional principles of life. We must finally and irrevocably decide for ourselves the question: do we recognize the unconditional significance of the temporal order of phenomena or the moral order, the internal connection of beings? With the first solution - with the disappearance of real unity in humanity, as incurably fragmented in time, there can be no common task, and therefore, there can be no obligation to educate future generations for the further fulfillment of such a task. And with the second decision, education is inextricably linked with honoring the past and constitutes its natural completion. This traditional element of education also determines its progressive element, since moral progress can only consist in the further and better fulfillment of those duties that follow from tradition. The same unconditional significance of the human being (its ability to be the bearer of eternal life and a participant in the divine fullness of being), which we religiously honor in those who have passed away, we morally educate in the coming generation, affirming its connection with those as manifested through triumph over time and death. Particular issues, the technique of education, belong to a special specialized area into which we do not enter. But if pedagogy wants to have a general positive principle, indisputable in a moral sense and imparting unconditional dignity to its aspirations, then it will find it only in one thing: the indissoluble connection of generations supporting each other in the progressive fulfillment of one common cause - preparation for the manifest Kingdom of God and for the resurrection of all. The veneration of ancestors and family education based on it overcome immoral discord and restore the moral solidarity of people in the order of time, or the sequence of being. This is the victory of good over individual egoism - the affirmation of personality as a positive element in a family union that endures, despite death and time. But this union, in order to be the basis of a moral and, therefore, universal organization, in order to be the initial form of unconditional and, therefore, all-encompassing good, cannot be self-sufficient, closed and exclusive. The family is the closest restoration of moral integrity in one basic respect - the continuity of generations. But this integrity must also be restored in the order of coexistence. The linear infinity of a family can find its moral completeness only in another, broader whole, just as a geometric line is realized only as the limit of a plane, which is for a line what the line itself is for a point. And if a moral point - a single person - has real reality only as a bearer of family succession, then the entire line of this succession receives the real content of being only in connection with the multitude of collectively coexisting families that make up the people. If we received all our physical and spiritual wealth from our fathers, then our fathers had it only through the fatherland. Family legends are a fraction of folk legends, and the future of the family is inseparable from the future of the people. Therefore, it is necessary that veneration of fathers transforms into veneration of the fatherland, or patriotism, and family education is adjacent to national education. Good, essentially inexhaustible and unenviable, imparts to each subject of moral relations, individual as well as collective, its own internal dignity and unconditional significance. Therefore, the moral connection and moral organization differ significantly from any other in that here each subject of a lower or, more precisely, a closer order, becoming a subordinate member of a higher or broader whole, is not only not absorbed by it, not only retains its peculiarity, but finds in this subordination both internal conditions and an external environment for the realization of its highest dignity. Just as a family does not abolish its individual members, but gives them the fullness of life in a certain sphere, lives not only by them, but also in them and for them, so the people do not absorb either families or individuals, but fills them with vital content in a certain national form. This specific form, which constitutes the own meaning or positive quality of a people, is represented primarily by language. Language as a specific expression, a special quality of the universal mind, connecting those who speak this language, does not separate them, however, from those who speak another language, since all languages ​​are only special qualities of the all-one word, all are commensurate with each other or understandable to each other. The plurality of languages ​​in itself is something positive and normal, no less than the multiplicity of grammatical elements and forms in each of these languages. The only abnormal thing is mutual misunderstanding and the resulting disunity. In the sacred legend of the Pillar of Babylon, the heavenly punishment (and at the same time a natural consequence) for the desire for external and godless unity appears to be the loss of internal unity and solidarity, expressed in mutually incomprehensible dialects (which is possible even with identical lexical composition). If internal moral unity had not been lost, then the difference in languages ​​would not be a disaster: they could be learned and there would be no need to be scattered across the face of the earth. But the point was not in the creative emergence of languages, but in their mixing. “Let us go down and confuse (nabla) their speech (safatam) there, so that everyone does not understand the speech of his neighbor. And the Lord scattered them from there over the face of all the earth, and they stopped building the city; That’s why his name is called Babel (confusion), for there the Eternal mixed up the conversations of the whole earth, and from there the Eternal scattered them over the face of the whole earth” (Gen. XI, 7-9). It is clear that this legend does not at all refer to the origin of multiple languages, since in order to be mixed, they must already have existed. The full meaning of this ancient revelation, amazing in its depth, is understandable only when comparing the book of Genesis with the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles. “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all with one accord. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, like a rushing strong wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting. And cloven tongues as of fire appeared to them, and one rested on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. Now in Jerusalem there were Jews, pious people, from every nation under heaven. When this noise was made, the people gathered and were in confusion, for everyone heard them speaking in his own dialect. And they were all amazed and amazed, saying to each other, “Are these not all Galileans who speak?” How did we each hear our own dialect in which we were born - Parthians and Medes, and Elamites, and those living in Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya adjacent to Cyrene, and those who came from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians - heard them, our speaking with tongues the great works of God?” (Acts II, 1–11). Unity in the true sense is realized in many ways, not by abolishing it, but by freeing it from the boundaries of exclusivity. Monolingualism, according to the action of the Spirit of God, is the communication and intelligibility of many separate, separating, but not dividing languages. But this is how the inventors and supporters of various Volapuks and Esperants, conscious or unconscious imitators of the Babylonian pandemoniums, understand this matter. 174 A normal relationship between languages ​​is at the same time a normal relationship between peoples (both concepts are expressed in one word in Slavic). Just as the true unity of languages ​​is not monolingualism, but pan-language, i.e., commonality and intelligibility, the interpenetration of all languages ​​while preserving the characteristics of each, so the true unity of peoples is not homogeneity, but pan-nationality, i.e., interaction and solidarity of all of them for the independent and full life of each. When we, having learned another language, understand a foreigner speaking his native, but for us, foreign language, we understand not only the meaning of the words he utters, but with the help of this speech we enter into real communication with him of feelings, thoughts and aspirations, we already clearly show that the real unity of people is not exhausted by the unity of the nationality. It is impossible to deny this fact, the fact of interlingual and international, therefore, all-human communication, but perhaps this communication is only a superficial relationship that does not have any real unity behind it? This is what many people think, who claim that a people is a real whole, while humanity is only a generic concept, abstracted from the interactions into which separate peoples, essentially external to each other, enter into each other. Leaving to metaphysics the question of the extent to which any interaction presupposes an essential unity of those interacting, let us note for now that the property of those interactions in which different peoples or people belonging to different peoples enter among themselves requires, regardless of any metaphysics, to accept between them at least the same real unity as is accepted within each nation between the individuals and groups that compose it. On what grounds do we recognize the nationality as a real force and the people as something truly united, and not as a simple accumulation of many human units? A similar question regarding family is resolved by pointing to an obvious physical connection. Regarding the people, three reasons are pointed out. 1) An assumed physical connection, or unity of origin. But this assumption has not only equal, but also incomparably greater force when applied to humanity than in relation to nationality. The original unity of the human race is not only a dogma of faith of the three monotheistic religions, but also the prevailing opinion among philosophers and natural scientists, while the immediate unity of physical origin within a nationality is in the vast majority of cases a deliberate fiction. 2) Language. The unity of language binds those who speak it, but we know that the difference of languages ​​does not interfere with the unanimity, like-mindedness and even agreement of people; for in this difference is not abolished, but a single inner word is revealed, undoubtedly common to all people, since everyone, under certain conditions, can understand each other, no matter what languages ​​they speak; and this is not a superficial result of external interaction, for what is mutually understood here does not relate only to random objects, but embraces the very inner content of the human soul, and, therefore, already in this deepest and most valid basis of life lies the real connection and unity of all people. The difference in languages ​​is a difference in the essential forms of mental life, and this is important, since each of these forms represents a special quality of the soul, but even more important is the content that each of them perceives in its own way and which, perceived by everyone, is not exhausted by any one and does not exclude any one, is the positive and independent beginning of hidden unity and obvious unification for all. Language is the deepest and most basic expression of national character, but just as the difference in individual characters does not interfere with the real unity of the people, which includes all these diverse people, so the difference in national characters cannot interfere with the real unity of all peoples in humanity, which is also “character”. 3) History. If national history is the basis of national unity, then general or world history is the basis for a broader, but no less strong unity of all mankind. Moreover, national history is completely unthinkable other than an inseparable member of world history. Try to imagine Russian history in terms of exceptional national identity. Even if it were possible to eliminate the Scandinavian origin of our state by all sorts of lies, then it is no longer possible to deny that the baptism of Rus' by the Greeks immediately introduces our people into the sphere of world, supernational life. In itself, in its content, Christianity is an absolute truth, therefore, superhuman and, even more so, supernational. But even from a purely historical point of view, it is impossible to associate it with any particular nationality: how can one separate the Jewish grain here from the Chaldean and Iranian, Egyptian and Phoenician, Greek and Roman shells? And at the same time, without this national grain and without these national shells there would be no Christianity as a positive revelation and, therefore, the foundation of the universal Kingdom of God would not have been laid. But whatever the significance of the national elements in the historical formation of the world religion, new peoples, like Russia, who appeared after the establishment of Christianity and accepted it in ready-made form, as the final revelation of the highest unconditional Good, can no longer look in themselves for the true source of their life; their history can only make sense as a more or less perfect assimilation of the given, a more or less successful preparation for the fulfillment of the task already posed by Christianity. And it is clear that in this very preparatory process one Christian people cannot and should not remain in isolation, alienation and enmity towards others, for such an attitude is contrary to the very essence of Christianity, and it is impossible to prepare for the fulfillment of a certain task, establishing itself in direct contradiction with its internal meaning. Russia resolutely reaffirmed its confession of Christian universalism when, in the most important and glorious epoch of its modern history, it finally emerged from national isolation and revealed itself as a living member of the international whole. And only then was the national strength of Russia revealed in what is still most significant and valuable to us, not only for ourselves, but also for other peoples: on the powerful trunk of Peter’s Europeanized statehood, the beautiful flower of our deep, thoughtful and tender poetry grew. Russian universalism - which is as different from cosmopolitanism as the language of the apostles is from Volapuk - is associated with the names of Peter the Great and Pushkin: let them name other national Russian names equal to these! Just as an individual person has the meaning of his personal existence only through the family, through his connection with his ancestors and descendants, just as the family has an abiding life content only among the people and folk tradition - so in the same way the nationality lives, moves and exists, only carried by the supranational and international environment; just as a whole series of successive generations lives in an individual person and through him, just as a single people lives and acts through them in the totality of these genera, so in the fullness of peoples a single humanity lives and completes its history. If the people are a real fact, and not an abstract generic concept, if the internal, organic nature of the connection connecting peoples with each other in world history is also a real fact, then humanity in its entirety must be recognized as the same fact, for real and living organs can only be organs of a real and living body, and not in any way an abstract concept. And that same unconditional moral solidarity in the Good, which connects a person with his ancestors and descendants, forming a normal family, - through these first and immediate liberating bonds, it also connects him with the universal whole that is concentrated in humanity. The complete collective subject, or “perceiver,” of perfect Good, the complete image and likeness of the Divine, or the bearer of the actual moral order (the Kingdom of God), is humanity. But, as already said, by the very essence of the moral order, or moral organization, each part or each member of the great collective man participates in the absolute completeness of the whole, since he is necessary for this completeness no less than it is for him. A moral connection is a completely mutual connection. Just as humanity is unthinkable separately from the peoples that compose it, the people separately from families and the family separately from individual individuals, in the same way, and vice versa: an individual person is impossible (not only physically, but also morally) outside the clan continuity of generations, the moral life of a family is impossible outside the people and the life of the people - outside humanity. This truism was willingly accepted by everyone until recently in its entirety, but for some time now (for reasons that are still obscure to the existing systems of philosophy of history) it has become a custom, contrary to all logic, to separate from this elementary truth its necessary peak and declare the internal dependence of the people on humanity to be a fantasy and a chimera. It is agreed that a bad son and a bad father, a man who does not honor his ancestors and does not care about the education of his (physical or spiritual) descendants, cannot be a good patriot, and a bad patriot cannot be a true servant of the common good; They also admit in reverse order that a bad patriot cannot be a normal family man, and a bad family man cannot be a normal person. But they do not want to admit that the same solidarity between different degrees of moral organization does not allow a person who is indifferent to the single highest good of all nations together to be a real, good patriot (and, as a result, a normal bearer of family and, finally, personal life). Meanwhile, it is absolutely clear that if someone sets the highest goal for the good of his people, taken separately, without regard to others, then, firstly, he takes away from the Good an essential sign of universality and, therefore, distorts the very goal; secondly, by separating the good of one people from the good of others, when in reality they are jointly connected, he distorts the idea of ​​his people, and from this double distortion it follows, thirdly, that such a person can only serve a distorted people, imparting to them a distorted good, that is, he can only serve evil, and, bringing only harm to his fatherland, must be recognized as a bad patriot. Good embraces all the particulars of life, but it itself is indivisible. Patriotism, as a virtue, is part of the general proper attitude towards everything, and this part in the moral order cannot be separated from the whole and opposed to it. In a moral organization, one people cannot prosper at the expense of others, cannot assert itself in a positive way to the detriment or detriment of others. Just as the positive moral dignity of a private person is recognized from the fact that his success is truly useful to all others, so the success of a people faithful to the moral principle is necessarily connected with the general good. This logical and moral axiom is grossly distorted into current sophism: we should think only about our people, since they are good, and, therefore, their success is for the benefit of everyone. Here, with astonishing frivolity, or with astonishing impudence, the obvious truth is seen that this very alienation of one’s people from others, this exclusive recognition of them as good primarily is already evil and that on this evil basis nothing but evil can happen. One of two things: either it is necessary, renouncing Christianity and monotheism in general, according to which “no one is good except God,” to recognize one’s nationality in itself as good (i.e., the highest good), that is, to put it in the place of God; or it must be assumed that a people becomes good not due to the simple fact of a given nationality, but only by conforming to and becoming involved in absolute Good, which, obviously, is possible only with a good attitude towards everything, and in the present case, primarily towards other peoples; A people cannot be truly kind as long as it harbors malice or alienation towards others, until it recognizes them as its neighbors and loves them as itself. This determines the moral duty of a true patriot - to serve the people in Good, or the true good of the people, inseparable from the good of all, or - which is the same - to serve the people in humanity and humanity in the people. Such a patriot will find a positive, good side in every foreign tribe and nationality and through it will connect this tribe and this people with his own - for the benefit of both. When they talk about the rapprochement of peoples, about international agreements, friendships and alliances, before rejoicing or being sad about this, you need to know in what way the rapprochement or union is taking place: in good or evil. The very fact of connection does not solve anything. If two are united by hatred of a third - whether it be two private individuals or two nations - their union is evil and the source of new evil. Whether they are united by mutual interest or their common good - the question is not resolved by this either, for the interest may be unworthy, the good may be imaginary, and then the union of peoples, as well as individual people, in this unworthy interest, in this imaginary good, if not directly evil, then cannot be good, desirable for its own sake. Any union of people and nations can be positively approved only insofar as it contributes to the moral organization of humanity, or the organization of unconditional Good in it. We have found that the final subject of this organization - the real being of the moral order - is the collective man, or humanity, successively divided into its organs and elements - peoples, families and individuals. Now, knowing who is organized morally, we must decide in what way he is organized - consider the question of the general forms of moral order. A person’s proper or worthy relationship to the higher world, to other people and to lower nature is organized collectively in the forms of church, state and economic society, or zemstvo. Individual religious feeling receives its objective development and implementation in the Church (universal), which is, therefore, organized piety. From the point of view of religious morality, a person lives in three different environments: worldly, or conditional (“this world”), divine, or unconditional (the Kingdom of God), and mediating between them, or really connecting them, actually religious (Church). To dwell finally on the direct opposition between the world and the Divine, between earth and heaven is contrary to sound religious feeling. Even if we are sincerely ready to look at the whole world as worthless dust; but this dust is not afraid of our contemptuous gaze - it remains. On whom? If we say that it is on the Divine, this will be clearly impious, but if we recognize the worldly dust only as a ghost of our imagination, then our own self, subject to the tedious nightmare of phenomena, powerless before the ghosts created by it, will itself turn out to be a worthless speck of dust, from somewhere falling into the eye of eternity and hopelessly confusing its purity - and this second glance will be even more impious than the first. Since everything ultimately comes down to God, the more contemptuous we are of worldly existence, the more unworthy are our concepts of an absolute being, and when we declare that the world is pure nothingness, we fall into extreme blasphemy, since all the bad aspects of existence, which are not abolished by verbal denial, we must then attribute directly and directly to God himself. This dialectic cannot be avoided as long as only two opposing terms are recognized. But there is a third, intermediate one, there is a historical environment in which the worthless dust of the earth, through a skillful system of fertilization, is reborn into the beneficial soil of the future Kingdom of God. A sound religious feeling does not require us to deny and abolish the world, but only that we do not accept the world as an unconditionally independent beginning of our life - being in the world, we must not only become not of the world, but in this capacity we must also act on the world so that it ceases to be from itself and becomes more and more from God. The essence of piety at the highest level of universal consciousness is to recognize unconditional dignity only in the Divine and only in connection with Him to value everything else, as it can also have absolute value, but not in itself and from itself, but in God and from God. Everything becomes more worthy through the establishment of its positive relationship with the only worthy one. If all people and nations were truly pious, that is, they revered as their own good the one absolute Good and Good, that is, God, then they would obviously be united with each other, and being united or in solidarity with each other in God, they would obviously live in God’s way - their unity would at the same time be holiness. Real humanity, not concentrated and not raised by a single absolute interest in God, is scattered in its will between a multitude of relative and incoherent interests; hence the actual discord and disintegration, and on the basis of a bad fact, acts of good cannot occur, and therefore the activity of a disintegrated humanity in itself can only lead to sin. Therefore, the moral organization of humanity must begin with its unification in essence and the sanctification of its activities. Perfect unity and holiness - in God, in worldly humanity - discord and sin, unification and sanctification - in the church, reconciling and reconciling the broken and sinful world with God. But in order to unite and sanctify, the church itself must be one and holy, that is, it must have its foundation in God, regardless of scattered and sinful people who need unification and sanctification and, therefore, cannot receive it from themselves. So, the Church is essentially the unity and holiness of the Divinity, but not in itself, but since it abides and acts in the world, it is the Divinity in its other, or the real essence of God-manhood. The unity and holiness of the church are manifested in space as its universality, or catholicity, and in time as apostolic succession. Catholicity (καθ᾿ ò λον - according to the whole or in accordance with the whole) consists in the fact that all church forms and actions connect individual people and individual nations with the whole of God-manhood, both in its individual focus - Christ, and in its collective circles - in the world of disembodied forces, the departed and living saints in God, as well as the fighting faithful on earth. Since in the church everything is consistent with the absolute whole, everything is catholic, all exclusivity of tribal and personal characters and social positions fall away, all separations or disunities fall and all differences remain, for piety requires accepting unity in God not as empty indifference and meager monotony, but as the unconditional fullness of all life. There is no separation, but the difference between the invisible and visible church remains, for the first is the hidden active force of the second, and the second is the becoming visibility of the first - they are one with each other in essence and different in state; there is no separation, but the difference remains in the visible church between many tribes and peoples, in the unanimity of which one Spirit testifies with separate tongues to one truth and communicates one Good with different gifts and callings; Finally, there is no separation, but the difference remains between the church of those who teach and those who are taught, between the clergy and the people, between the mind and body of the church, just as the difference between husband and wife is not an obstacle, but the basis for their perfect union. The catholicity of the church - the main form of the moral organization of humanity - is the conscious and deliberate solidarity of all members of the universal body in a single unconditional goal of existence with the complete “division of spiritual labor” - gifts and ministries that express and realize this goal. This moral solidarity, internally different in its consciousness and voluntariness from the natural solidarity that we find between the various members of the physical organism, as well as between various groups of natural beings, forms a true brotherhood, in which lies positive freedom and positive equality for man. A person does not enjoy real freedom when his social environment weighs down on him as external and alien. Such alienation is essentially abolished only by the principle of the universal church, where everyone should have in the social whole not an external border, but an internal fullness of their freedom. In any case, a person needs such replenishment from the “other”, because from the side of his natural limitations he is, of necessity, a dependent being and cannot be himself or alone a sufficient basis for his existence. Take away from any person everything that he owes to others, starting from his parents and ending with the state and world history, and not only from his freedom, but from his very existence there will be absolutely nothing left. To deny this fact of inevitable dependence would be madness. Not having sufficient power within himself, a person needs help so that his freedom is a deed, and not just a verbal claim. But the help that a person receives from the world is only accidental, temporary and partial, but from God through the universal Church he is promised true, eternal and complete help. Only with such help can he be truly free, that is, have the strength sufficient to satisfy his will. The real freedom of a person is obviously incompatible with the necessity of what he does not want, and with the impossibility of what his will requires. But every object of desire, every good is possible for a person only under the condition that he himself lives and those whom he loves live, therefore, there is one main object of desire - the continuation of life and one main object of non-wanting - death. But it is precisely in the face of this that all worldly help turns out to be untenable. The calamity of all calamities - death, turns out to be an unconditional necessity here, and the good of all blessings - immortality - is an unconditional impossibility. This means that a person cannot receive real freedom from the world. Only God-manhood, or the Church, based on internal unity and a comprehensive combination of manifest and secret life in the order of the Kingdom of God, only the Church, which affirms the essential primacy of the spirit and promises the final resurrection of the flesh, opens to man the realm of the positive exercise of his freedom, or the real satisfaction of his will. To believe in this or not to believe does not depend on philosophical reasoning. But if the most perfect philosophy can neither give nor take away faith, then the simplest act of logical thought is enough to admit that a person who wants to live and is sentenced to death cannot, seriously speaking, be considered free, and in such a situation, from the worldly, or natural, point of view, without a doubt, every person and all of humanity finds himself. Consequently, only in another, supramundane order, represented by the universal Church, can a person generally have positive freedom. It is no different that positive equality is possible for him there. Given the natural heterogeneity of people - as inevitable as it is desirable: it would be very sad if all people were spiritually and physically alike, then the very plurality of people would not make sense - direct equality between them in their particularity or individuality is completely impossible; they cannot be equal in themselves, but only through their identical relationship with something else, general and higher. This is the equality of all before the law, or civil equality. For all its importance in the order of worldly existence, this equality by its nature remains only formal and negative. The law affirms certain general limits of human activity, equally binding for everyone, but it does not enter into the content of anyone’s life, does not provide anyone with its essential benefits and indifferently leaves behind one his helpless insignificance, and behind another an excess of all advantages. Worldly society can recognize for each person an unconditional significance in the sense of an abstract possibility, or a fundamental right, but the implementation of this possibility and this right is given only by the Church, which, actually introducing everyone into the divine-human whole, imparts to everyone the absolute content of life and thereby equalizes everyone, just as all finite quantities are equal to each other in relation to infinity. If in Christ, as the apostle says, the fullness of the Divinity lives bodily, and Christ lives in every believer, then where is the place for inequality? Communicating with the absolute content of life through the universal Church, positively liberating and equalizing everyone, makes of them one unconditionally solidary whole, or perfect brotherhood. Since this brotherhood, perfect in essence, is conditioned, however, by origin, as having become and becoming in time, it requires an appropriate form for its divine-human connection with the past as such - it requires religious succession, or spiritual fatherhood. This requirement is satisfied by the latter definition of the church as apostolic. Since we live in time, then in time the connection of our dependence on the beginning of the divine in its historical manifestation must be preserved and transmitted through it, precisely as such a connection by virtue of which the spiritual life of our present begins not from ourselves, but from earlier, or older, bearers of theanthropic grace. The one, holy, catholic (catholic) church is necessarily an apostolic church. Apostleship, or mission, is the opposite of imposture. Messengership is the basis of religious activity, imposture is anti-religious. It is in this very thing that Christ indicates the sign of the opposition between himself and the man of lawlessness (Antichrist): I came in the name of the Father, and you do not believe Me, but another will come in his name, and you will believe him. – In Christianity, the original basis of religion reaches its perfect expression - the pious recognition of one’s dependence on the ancestor. “The Father has sent me,” “I do the will of him who sent me.” The Only Begotten Son is sent primarily, an apostle of God in essence, and to him, in fact, belongs the deepest and eternal meaning of the definition of the church as apostolic (on which the other, immediate meaning, the historical one, also depends). “As the Father sent Me, so I send you,” the apostles born of Christ in word and spirit are sent to them for the spiritual birth of new generations, so that the eternal connection of the Father and the Son, the sender and the sent, is continuously transmitted in time. The filial relationship is the prototype of piety, and the only begotten Son of God - the son par excellence - is piety itself, individually embodied, and the church, as a collective organization of piety, must be completely determined by it, both in its social structure, and in its teaching, and in sacred rites. Christ as piety incarnate is the way, and the truth, and the life of his church. The path of piety for everything that exists (of course, except for the one First Principle and Primary Subject of all piety) consists in coming not from oneself and not from the lower, but from the higher, elder, presented; this is the hierarchical path, the path of sacred succession and tradition. Because of this, no matter what external forms the order of church government takes under the influence of historical conditions, the actual church religious form - succession through ordination - always occurs in a hierarchical order - from top to bottom: not only the laity cannot ordain spiritual fathers, but in the spiritual rank itself an order of degrees is necessary, so that only the highest - the saints - represents the active principle, transferring sanctification to the other two. The truth of the church is conditioned by the same piety - although from the other side or in a different respect, theoretically. The truth of the church, which conveys to us the mind of Christ, is neither scientific, nor philosophical, nor even theological - it contains only the dogmas of piety. This fact contains the key to understanding Christian dogma and the councils that formulated it. In the field of religious doctrine, the interest of piety obviously lies in the fact that in ideas about the deity, the fullness of the religious attitude towards him, originally given in Christ as the Son of God and the Son of Man, should not be diminished in any way. All the “heresies” from which the church was protected by its dogmatic definitions, in one way or another denied this religious completeness, or the wholeness and comprehensiveness of our adoption to God through the perfect God-man. Some recognized Christ as a demigod, others as a half-man; sometimes instead of a single God-man they accepted some kind of double personality, sometimes they limited the God-human combination to one intelligible side, recognizing the deity as not subject to tangible expression, etc. 175 The legal path of the hierarchical order, just like the truth of faith, has its fulfillment and justification in the life of the church. Human life must be internally collected, united and sanctified by the action of God and thus transformed into divine-human life. Both the essence of the matter and the principle of piety require that the process of rebirth begin from above, from God, that its foundation be the action of grace, and not the natural will of man, taken separately - it is required that the process be divine-human, and not human-divine. This is the meaning of the sacraments as the very foundation of new life. The moral meaning (from the side of religious morality, or piety) that belongs to the sacraments in general consists precisely in the fact that here a person accepts his proper position of unconditional dependence on a completely real, but at the same time completely mysterious, sensually incognizable good, which is given to him, and not created by him. Before the sacrament, the human will completely renounces everything that is its own, remains in perfect potentiality, or purity, and through this becomes capable, as a pure form, of accepting superhuman content. Through the sacraments, that one and holy essence, which is the Church in itself (Ding an sich, or the numenon of the church, in philosophical terminology), really unites with itself or absorbs the inner being of man and makes his life divine-human. This life, supernatural for other kingdoms of nature (ending with the rational-human), but completely natural for the kingdom of God, has its own regular circle of development, the main moments of which are designated by the church in seven mostly so-called sacraments. This life is born (in baptism), receives the beginning of proper organization, growth and strengthening (in confirmation), is healed of incidental injuries (in repentance), is nourished for eternity (in the Eucharist), completes or integrates the individual being of man (in marriage), creates a spiritual patronymic as the basis of the true social order (in the priesthood, or ordination) and, finally, sanctifies the sick and dying corporeality for completeness. the integrity of the future resurrection (in the unction, or consecration of oil). 176 The real-mysterious guarantees of higher life, or the Kingdom of God, received in the sacraments of the church, do not depend in their beginning and essence on the will of man. Nevertheless, this higher life, like the divine-human one, cannot be content with our passive participation alone; its process requires the conscious and free assistance of the human soul to the highest Spirit. Although the positive forces for this assistance come from the very first beginning from the grace of God (inattention to this truth gives rise to the disastrous errors of semi-Pelagianism), they are assimilated by the human will, which is formally distinguished from the will of God, and are manifested in the image of its own action (the oblivion of this second truth, as important as the first, was expressed in Christology as the Monothelite heresy, and in moral teaching - quietism). Actually, human actions or actions consistent with the grace of God (and caused by its preliminary action), obviously, must express the person’s normal attitude towards God, towards people and towards his material nature, corresponding to the three general foundations of morality: piety, pity and shame. The first concentrated active expression of religious feeling, or piety, its work par excellence, is prayer; the same work of pity is alms, and the work of shame is abstinence, or fasting. 177 These three deeds determine on the part of a person the beginning and development in him of a new grace-filled life, as is depicted with amazing clarity and simplicity in the sacred narrative of the pious centurion Cornelius, who was “doing alms to many people and praying to God always,” and further as he himself says: “From the fourth hour of the day even until this hour, I fasted, and at the ninth hour I prayed in the house mine, and behold, a man stood before me in bright clothes and said: Cornelius, your prayer was heard and your alms were remembered before God” (the command follows to invite Simon, called Peter, who has the words of salvation) (Acts of the Apostle X). If the hidden, preliminary action of the grace of God, not rejected by Cornelius, encouraged him to deeds of human good and supported him in these deeds - in prayer, alms and fasting, then these deeds themselves, as is directly indicated here, gave rise to new obvious actions of the grace of God, and it is remarkable that the appearance of a heavenly angel was only an extraordinary means for observing the established path of piety - for inviting the earthly messenger of God, the earthly mediator of the highest truth and life, so accurately following the preaching of Peter in the house of Cornelius, the unusual and abundant outpouring of the gifts of St. The Spirit on the newly catechumens did not make the usual, so to speak, organic method of the truly mysterious beginning of a life of grace - through baptism - unnecessary for them (ibid., end of chapter). What is even more significant about this typical narrative is what is missing from it. Neither the angel of God, nor the Apostle Peter, the messenger of the peace of Christ, nor the voice of the Holy Spirit himself, suddenly revealed in the new converts, told the centurion of the Italian cohort what, according to the latest ideas about Christianity, was the most important and urgently necessary for this Roman soldier - they did not tell him that, becoming a Christian, he must first of all throw away weapons, certainly refuse military service: about this supposedly indispensable condition of Christianity - not a word, not a hint in the entire story, although it is about a representative of the army. Renunciation of military service is not at all included in the New Testament concept of what is required of a worldly warrior in order to become a full citizen of the Kingdom of God. In addition to those conditions that have already been fulfilled by the centurion Cornelius - namely, in addition to prayer, alms, fasting - he also needs to “call Simon, called Peter... he speaks to you verbs, in them you and your whole house will be saved.” And Cornelius said to Peter who came: “Now we all stand before God to hear everything commanded to you from God.” But in all this that God tells the apostle to tell the Roman soldier for his salvation, there is nothing about military service: “Peter opened his mouth and said: Truly I understand that God does not look at personalities, but in every language he who fears him and practices righteousness is acceptable to Him. He sent a word to the children of Israel, preaching peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all. You know what happened throughout all Judea, starting from Galilee, after the baptism preached by John, how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and power, and He went through, preaching the gospel and healing all those who had been raped by the devil, for God was with Him. And we are witnesses to everything that He did in the land of Judea and in Jerusalem - and they killed Him, hanging him on a tree. This one God raised up on the third day and gave Him to be revealed - not to all people, but to us, witnesses ordained by God, who ate and drank with Him after His resurrection from the dead. And he commanded us to preach to the people and testify that He is the appointed judge of God, the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about Him that everyone who believes in Him will receive remission of sins in His name. “And while Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word.” We dwell on the history of the centurion Cornelius not in order, in fact, to return to the special question of military service, 178 but because we find here a clear indication for resolving the general question of the relationship of the church to the state, Christianity to the Empire, the Kingdom of God to the worldly kingdom, or, what is the same, the question of the Christian state. If the centurion Cornelius, having become a fully Christian, remained a warrior and, however, could not be divided into two persons alien to each other and unrelated to each other, then it is clear that he became a Christian warrior. A collection of such warriors forms a Christian army. But an army is both an extreme expression and the first real basis of statehood, therefore, if there can be a Christian army, then by the same token, and even more so, there can be a Christian state. The solution of the question by historical Christianity precisely in this sense is an undoubted fact. Only the question of the internal foundations of this fact is subject to discussion. When the centurion Cornelius was a pagan, the feeling of pity that forced him to “give out many alms”, it also, of course, prompted him to protect the weak from all insults and force violent rapists to obey the laws. Although he knew that the law, like any human utility, is only a relative good and subject to abuse; although he had heard, apparently, about the outrageous abuse of legal power committed by the procurator Pontius, under the influence of the envious and evil Jerusalem priesthood, who condemned the virtuous rabbi from Nazareth to execution, but, as a just man, Cornelius knew that abusus non tollit usum (abuse does not cancel the use (lat.)), and did not draw a conclusion from exceptional cases to the general rule. A true Roman (judging by his name), he was aware with noble pride of his share in the general calling of the world-ruling city: ...Rule the peoples with great power, To be a meek defense, a weapon to humble the arrogant. And this was not an abstract conviction for him: in Palestine, where his cohort was stationed, only Roman weapons stopped, although for a time, fierce civil strife, dynastic and party, accompanied by wild beatings, and all around in the neighborhood the Idumean and Arab clans, only under the cover of the same Roman power, began to gradually emerge from the state of continuous wars and gross barbarism. So, Cornelius did not deviate from the truth when he respected his service and considered the state and its main organ - the army - to be a force necessary for the common good. Should he have changed this judgment by becoming a Christian? A new, higher, purely spiritual life opened up in him, but did this abolish the evil outside of him? After all, the pity that justified his military service - after all, it applied specifically to those suffering from external evil, which remained as it was. Or, perhaps, the higher life that was revealed in him, without abolishing external evil, should have abolished the internal goodness in him - that very pity or mercy that was “remembered before God” (see above), and replaced it with indifference to the suffering of others? But such indifference, or soullessness, is a distinctive property of a stone - the lowest, and not the highest degree of being. Or, without giving up compassion, a Christian, along with his new life, receives a special power to defeat all external evil, without resisting it by force - to defeat it with one direct moral action, or a miracle of grace? The assumption is remarkably unfounded, possible only with a complete misunderstanding of both the essence of grace and its moral conditions. We know that Christ himself met on earth with such a human environment where his grace could not work miracles “due to their unbelief”; we know that in the best environment - among his apostles - he found the “son of perdition”; we know, finally, that of the two thieves on the cross only one repented; it is unknown whether he would have succumbed to divine power under other circumstances, but it is quite known that his comrade turned out to be inaccessible to her even under such circumstances. Those who claim that every villain can be immediately converted to good and kept from crime by one direct action of internal, grace-filled power do not at all delve into what they are talking about. If we are talking about the internal, purely spiritual force of good, then it is distinguished in this quality by the fact that it does not act as a mechanical engine fatally producing external, factual changes, but acts only under the condition of its internal assimilation by those others on whom it acts; therefore, the result of the action is never predetermined here by the good will of the actor, but depends ultimately on the properties of the reactions of the other party (a truth that the example of Judas Iscariot should, it would seem, make clear even to the blind). The gracious power of Christ acted on people who sinned through the weakness of the flesh, and not through the firmness of an evil will, on people who did not rest in their sins, but were sick with them and felt the need for a doctor; Christ said about these sick people who were ready for healing that they would enter the Kingdom of God before the self-righteous righteous, who because of this were at enmity against him, reproaching him for his condescending communication with tax collectors and harlots. But his enemies could not find any reason to reproach him for conniving with bloodthirsty murderers, wicked sacrileges, shameless molesters and all kinds of criminals by trade, enemies of human society. But he left them alone? But why did He need to deal with them when there were Jewish and Roman authorities designed specifically for the feasible resistance to evil by coercion. According to the spirit of the Gospel (as well as to the letter), we should not turn to the authorities for forced protection of ourselves against personal and property insults. We should not drag to court and prison the person who hits us or takes off our fur coat. We must wholeheartedly forgive the offender for the insults he inflicts on us, and not show him any resistance on our own behalf. It's clear and simple. It is also clear that we should not give in to evil feelings against the offender of our neighbors - and we must forgive him in our souls and not cease to see in him the same person as us. But what practical obligation does the moral principle impose on us in this case? Can this duty really be the same in the case of one’s own and someone else’s offense? To allow offense against oneself means to sacrifice oneself, and this is a feat of self-sacrifice; allowing others to be offended means sacrificing others, and this can in no way be called self-sacrifice. A moral obligation to others, psychologically based on pity, should not practically give rights to some rapists and villains. Peaceful and weak people also have the right to our active pity, or help. And since we, as an individual person, cannot constantly and sufficiently help all the offended, we are obliged to do this as a collective person, that is, through the state. Political organization is a natural human good, as necessary for our life as our physical organism. Christianity, while giving us the highest good, the spiritual, does not take away from us the lower, natural goods and does not pull out from under our feet the ladder along which we walk. Did the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms disappear for us with the advent of Christianity, with the proclamation of the Kingdom of God? If they are not abolished, then why should the natural-human kingdom embodied in political organization, which is the same necessity in the historical process as they are in the cosmic process, be abolished? We cannot stop being animals, but we must stop being citizens! Can you think of a more blatant absurdity? From the fact that the purpose of Christ’s coming to earth could not be to create a kingdom from this world, or a state - which had already been created long ago - does it really follow His negative attitude towards the state? From the fact that the gospel does not concern external ways of protecting humanity from the grossly destructive action of evil forces, one could conclude something only if the gospel appeared before the founding of the state, in a lawless, lawless and powerless society. But why was it necessary to again give in the Gospel those civil-legal statutes of community life, which many centuries earlier had already been given in the Pentateuch? Christ, if he did not want to reject them, could only confirm them, which He did: “Not one jot or tittle will pass from the law... I did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it.” But the grace and truth that appeared in Christ supposedly abolished the law. When, however, did this happen, when exactly? Was it then, when Judas betrayed his teacher, was it then, when Ananias and Sapphira deceived the apostles, was it then, when Deacon Nicholas, under the pretext of brotherhood, started sexual immorality, or when the Corinthian Christian indulged in incest? Or when the Spirit wrote through the New Testament prophet to the churches in the person of their leaders - to one like this: “I know your works, that you have a name as if you were alive, but in fact you are dead” (Revelation III, 1), and to the other like this: “I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. Oh, that you were either cold or hot! But since you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of My mouth” (15, 16). And if grace and truth from their first appearance to the present day have not taken possession of all, or even the majority of Christian humanity, then the question arises: how and in whom was the law abolished? Could the law be abolished by grace in those who have neither grace nor law? Isn’t it clear that for them, that is, for the majority of humanity, the law, until its fulfillment, according to the word of Christ, must remain in its own force, precisely as the outer limit of their freedom? And to truly be such a limit, the law must have sufficient coercive power behind it, that is, it must be embodied in a state organization with its courts, police, and troops. And since Christianity did not abolish the law, it could not abolish the state. But from this reasonable and necessary fact - the non-abolition of the state as an external force, it does not at all follow that the internal attitude of people towards this force, and through this the very nature of its activity - in general and in particular - remains without any change. The chemical substance was not abolished in the bodies of plants and animals, but received new characteristics in them, and it is not for nothing that the whole science of “Organic Chemistry” exists. There is a similar basis for Christian politics. The Christian state, unless it remains an empty name, must have certain differences from the pagan state, although both of them, as states, have the same basis and common task. “A peasant will go out into the field to plow the land, a Polovtsian will run at him, kill him, and steal his horse; Then the Polovtsians will come to the village in a crowd, kill all the peasants, burn the houses, take the wives into captivity, and at this time the princes are engaged in their own strife.” – Pity for these peasants, in order not to be limited to sensitive words alone, should have naturally turned into the organization of a strong and unified state power, sufficient to protect the peasants from princely strife and Polovtsian raids. When in another country its greatest poet exclaimed with deep sorrow, which he showed not only in words: Ahi, serva Italia dei dolor' ostello, Nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta! 179 - the same pity directly prompted him to call from behind the Alps the supreme bearer of state power, the establisher of social order, a strong defender from continuous and intolerable petty violence: and this pity for the real misfortunes of Italy, expressed in so many places in the Divine Comedy, and this appeal to a sovereign state as a necessary means of salvation, took the form of a clear, thoughtful conviction in Dante’s book “On Monarchy.” The disasters of a stateless or weak state life, which evoked the pity of Vladimir Monomakh or Dante, are abolished or limited only to a strong state and with its disappearance would certainly arise again. Purely moral motives that internally restrain people from mutual extermination, which were clearly insufficient in the 12th and 13th centuries, although they may have developed and strengthened at the present time (the issue is debatable), but for them to now become completely sufficient on their own is ridiculous to even talk about, and if the inhabitants of Italian cities do not show their party hostility in minute-by-minute massacres, then it is too clear that they owe this only to the forced system of the state with its army and by the police. As for Russia, then, not to mention the princely strife and the fist “rules of the people,” those wild foreign elements that the Muscovite kingdom and the All-Russian Empire with such difficulty and gradually pushed further and further to the borders of the country, without a doubt, submitted more than they were degenerated, and, if on the Transcaucasian, Turkestan and Siberian borders a bayonet and a pike - God forbid - disappeared or weakened, any moralist would have to immediately understand the true essence of these excellent institutions. 180 Just as the church is collectively organized piety, so the state is collectively organized pity. Therefore, to assert that the Christian religion essentially denies the state means to assert that this religion essentially denies pity. In fact, the Gospel not only insists on the morally obligatory meaning of pity, or love of mankind, but also decisively confirms the view already expressed in the Old Testament that without love of mankind there can be no true piety: “I want mercy, not sacrifice.” If we recognize pity in principle, then it is logically necessary to admit that historical organization of social forces and affairs, which brings pity out of the state of a powerless or tightly limited feeling, gives it reality, widespread application and development. If I take the point of view of pity, then I cannot deny the institution, thanks to which one can actually feel pity, that is, give help and protection instead of tens and at most hundreds of units - to tens and hundreds of millions of people. The definition of the state (from the side of its moral meaning) as organized pity can only be denied due to a misunderstanding. We need to consider some of these misunderstandings before moving on to the concept of a Christian state. They point to the harsh and often cruel nature of the state, obviously contradicting its definition as organized pity. At the same time, they do not distinguish between necessary and expedient severity and useless and arbitrary cruelty. Meanwhile, the first does not contradict pity, and the second, as abuse, contradicts the meaning of the state itself, and, therefore, neither one nor the other says anything against the definition of the state (of course, normal) as organized pity. The apparent contradiction here is based on the same superficial appearance as if someone pointed out the senseless cruelty of an unsuccessful surgical operation, and also, by the way, the suffering of the patient even during a successful operation, as an obvious contradiction with the concept of surgery, in the sense of a beneficent art that helps people in certain bodily sufferings. It is too obvious that such representatives of state power, such as, for example, Ivan IV, testify as little against the humane foundation of the state as bad surgeons against the beneficialness of surgery itself. I am aware that an educated reader has the right to feel insulted when such an alphabet is reminded to him, but if he is familiar with the latest trends of thought in Russia, then he will not consider me the culprit of this insult. But the state, even in its most normal manifestations, is inevitably ruthless. While pitying the peaceful people whom it protects from predatory rapists, it must deal mercilessly with them. Such one-sided pity does not correspond to the moral ideal. This is indisputable, but again does not say anything against our definition of the state, for, firstly, pity, even one-sided, is still pity, and not something else; and secondly, the state, even a normal one, is in no way an expression of an achieved moral ideal, but only one of the main organizations necessary to achieve this ideal. The achieved ideal state of humanity, or the Kingdom of God as realized, is obviously incompatible with the state, but it is also incompatible with pity. When everything is “good and good” again, then who can we feel sorry for? In the meantime, there is someone to pity, there is someone to protect, and the moral need for a purposefully and widely organized system of such protection, i.e., the moral significance of the state, remains in force. And the ruthlessness of the state towards those from whom or against whom it is necessary to defend a peaceful society - is this ruthlessness, virtually undoubted, something absolutely fatal, and even in fact - is it something unchangeable? Is it not a historical fact that the attitude of the state towards its enemies is progressing precisely in the sense of less cruelty and, therefore, more pity? Previously, they were painfully exterminated by entire families and clans (as is still done in China); then everyone began to be responsible for themselves, then the very nature of responsibility changed: they stopped torturing criminals for the sake of torment alone; finally, they are now setting the positive task of moral assistance to them. What is the final reason for such changes? When the state limits or abolishes the death penalty, abolishes torture and corporal punishment, and takes care of improving prisons and places of exile, is it not clear that, pitying and protecting peaceful people suffering from crimes, it begins to extend its pity to the other side - to the criminals themselves? Consequently, the indication of one-sided pity actually begins to lose its force. And it is only thanks to the state that the organization of pity ceases to be one-sided, for the human crowd, even now, in its attitude towards public enemies, is guided in most cases by the old merciless maxims: death for a dog; serves the thief right; so that it would be disgraceful for others too. Such maxims lose their practical force thanks to the state, which is freer in this matter from one-sidedness in both respects, since, while powerfully restraining the vengeful instincts of a crowd ready to tear a criminal to pieces, the state will never abandon the duty of philanthropy - to counteract crimes, as those strange moralists would like, who in fact pity only offenders, rapists and predators with complete indifference to their victims. This is truly one-sided pity! 181 A less serious misunderstanding about our concept of the state may arise from legal philosophers who see in the state the embodiment of law as an absolutely independent principle and separate from morality in general and from the motives of mercy in particular. The real difference between law and morality was previously indicated by us: 182 it does not abolish the connection between them, but, on the contrary, is conditioned precisely by this connection. In order to replace this difference with separateness and opposition, one must look for an unconditional principle that determines in the final basis every legal relationship, as such, somewhere outside the moral realm and, as far as possible, from it. Such an immoral and even anti-moral principle for law is, first of all, strength or power: Macht geht vor Recht (power gives right (German)). That legal relations in the historical order follow violent ones is as certain as the fact that in the history of our planet organic life appeared after and on the basis of inorganic processes, from which, of course, it does not follow that the proper principle of organic forms, as such, was inorganic matter. The play of natural forces in humanity is only the material of legal relations, and not their principle, otherwise what would be the difference between law and lawlessness? Law is limited power, but the point is precisely that which limits power. In a similar way, morality can be defined as evil that can be overcome, from which it does not follow that the principle of morality is evil. We will not advance further in the definition of law if we replace the concept of force, taken from the physical realm, with the more human concept of freedom. That individual freedom lies at the deepest basis of all legal relations is certain, but is it really an unconditional principle of law? This is impossible for two reasons: firstly, because it is not really unconditional, and secondly, because it is not a defining principle of law at all. On the first point, I do not want to say that human freedom is never unconditional, but only that it does not have this character in the area of ​​​​real relations in which and for which law exists. Let us assume that some person living on earth in the flesh really has unconditional freedom, that is, that he can, by one act of his will, regardless of any external conditions and intermediary necessary processes, do whatever he wants. It is clear that such a person would stand outside the realm of legal relations: if his unconditionally free will was determined in the direction of evil, no other person’s action could limit it, it would be inaccessible to law and authority, and if it were determined in the direction of good, then it would make all power and every law unnecessary. So, about unconditional freedom, as belonging to a completely different sphere of relations, there is nothing to say about law: it deals only with limited and conditional freedom, and the question is precisely what kind of restrictions or conditions have a legal character. The freedom of one is limited by the freedom of another, but not every such restriction expresses a right. If the freedom of one person is limited by the freedom of his neighbor, who will freely twist his head or put him in a chain at his discretion, then this is not called law at all, and in any case such a restriction of freedom does not represent any specific signs of a legal principle as such. They must be sought not in the fact of any restriction of freedom, but in the uniform and universal nature of the restriction: if the freedom of one is limited in the same way as the freedom of another, or if the free action of each is given a limit common to all, then only the restriction of freedom receives a legal character. So, the principle of law is freedom within the limits of equality, or conditioned by equality, therefore, conditional freedom. But equality, which defines it, is not an unconditionally independent principle for law. By its essential feature, a legal norm meets, in addition to the requirement of equality, the requirement of justice. Although these two concepts are related, they are far from identical. When the Egyptian pharaoh issued a law commanding the death of all Jewish newborns, the injustice of this law, of course, consisted not only in the inequality of treatment of Jewish and Egyptian babies; and if Pharaoh then ordered the death of not only the Jews, but all newborns in general, then although this new law would satisfy the requirement of equality, no one would dare to call it fair. Justice is not simple equality, but equality in the fulfillment of what is due. A just debtor is not one who equally refuses to pay all his creditors, but one who equally pays his debt to all of them; a just father is not, of course, the one who is equally indifferent to all his children, but the one who shows them all the same love. There is, therefore, unjust equality and fair equality, and law is determined by the latter, that is, ultimately by justice. This concept already takes us directly into the moral realm. And here, as we know, each virtue is not a separate cell, but all of them, including justice, are different modifications of a single or, more precisely, triune principle that determines our proper attitude towards everything; moreover, justice, as belonging to the field of moral relations between a person and others like him, is only a modification of the main proper motive of such relations, namely pity: justice is pity, evenly applied. 183 So, since law is determined by justice, it is essentially connected with the moral realm; all definitions of law that try to separate it from morality do not get to the essence of the matter. So, in addition to those indicated, what does the famous definition (Ieringa) mean, according to which “a right is a protected or protected interest”? There is no doubt that law protects interests, but not all interests. Which ones exactly? Obviously, only fair interests, or, in other words, it protects every interest to the extent of its fairness. What does justice mean here? To say that a just interest is an interest protected by law would obviously mean falling into the crudest logical circle, which can only be avoided if we understand here justice in essence, that is, in the moral sense. This does not prevent us from recognizing in the moral principle itself, from the inevitable conditions of its implementation, various degrees and spheres of action, which is the distinction between external, formal, or strictly legal truth, from internal, essential, or purely moral truth, and the supreme and final measure of right and wrong remains the same principle - the moral. A possible clash between “external” and “internal” truth in particular cases does not in itself say anything against their homogeneity, since no less a clash can occur in the implementation of the simplest and most basic moral impulse, for example, when pity requires me to save two drowning people from the water and, not being able to pull both out, I must choose between one or the other: if the fact of a collision between two movements of pity does not prove that pity itself exists a principle that contradicts itself, then cases of difficult choice between complex applications of law and morality in the narrow sense can just as little convince of their essential and irreducible opposition. It is equally unconvincing that concepts of justice and morality change historically; this could mean something if the rights and laws remained unchanged. But they vary even more in places and times. So what? Concepts of justice change, rights and laws change, but one thing remains unchanged: the requirement that rights and laws be fair. Consequently, regardless of any external conditions, the internal conditioning of law by morality remains. To avoid this conclusion, you need to go too far: to that country, seen by Ostrovsky’s pilgrims, where legitimate requests to Mahmut of Turkey and Mahmut of Persia had to begin with the appeal: judge me, unjust judge! Ihering's definition varies in the formula according to which law is a delimitation of interests, in contrast to morality as an assessment of interests. That the law demarcates interests is as certain as the fact that it protects them. But this fact in itself does not give any idea of ​​the essence of law, because interests are delimited on grounds that do not have a legal nature at all, and, consequently, the definition turns out to be too broad. So, if robbers in the forest, having robbed travelers, leave them with their lives, and take only their property for themselves, then this will undoubtedly be a differentiation of interests, but one can see here something in common with law only in the sense in which all violence is an expression of law - namely the fist, or the law of force. In a serious sense, law is determined, of course, not by the facts of differentiation of interests, but by the general and constant norm of such differentiation. To have a legal character, the distinction of interests must be correct, normal, or fair. By distinguishing normal distinctions of interests from abnormal ones and referring only the first to law, we obviously make an assessment of them, and, consequently, the imaginary opposition between law and morality falls by itself. When we find some laws unjust and strive for their legal abolition, then, without leaving the legal sphere, we, however, are not engaged in some real differentiation of interests, but first of all in assessing the existing distinction, and at one time it was also conditioned by an assessment, only a different one, with which we now do not agree. So, if morality is defined as an assessment of interests, then law essentially enters into morality. This does not at all contradict this, but the standard of assessment for law and for morality (in the narrow sense) is not the same thing: this very difference, i.e. the need to allow the realm of legal relations outside the realm of purely moral relations, has not some other, but again a moral basis, namely in the requirement that the highest, final good be realized without any external coercion, therefore, with a certain scope of choice between good and evil, or, to put it Paradoxically, the highest morality requires some freedom for immorality, which is carried out by law, obliging the individual will only to the minimum goodness necessary for community life and protecting it - in the interests of true moral, i.e. free perfection - from meaningless and harmful experiences of forced righteousness and forced holiness. 184 So, if the state is an objective structure of law, then it is precisely because of this that it inevitably enters into the moral, i.e., proper, obligatory for good will, organization of humanity. The connection between law and morality makes it possible to talk about a Christian state. It would be unfair to say that before Christianity the state was devoid of a moral basis. Not to mention the kingdoms of Judah and Israel, to which the prophets directly set moral standards and denounced them for their failure to fulfill them, and in the pagan world it is enough to recall at least the image of the Athenian king Theseus, freeing his fellow citizens from the cannibalistic tribute to Crete at the risk of his life, in order to recognize here the main moral motive of the state, namely pity, which requires active assistance to the offended and suffering. This means that the difference between the Christian and pagan states is not in their natural basis, but in other respects. From a Christian point of view, the state is only a part in the organization of collective man - a part conditioned by a friend, a higher part - the church, from which it receives its sanctification and final purpose - serves indirectly in its worldly field and by its means the absolute goal that the church directly sets - the preparation of humanity and the whole earth for the Kingdom of God. Hence the two main tasks of the state - conservative and progressive: to protect the foundations of community life, without which humanity could not exist, and then to improve the conditions of this existence, promoting the free development of all human forces that should become bearers of the future perfect state and without which, therefore, the Kingdom of God could not be realized in humanity. It is clear that just as without the conservative activity of the state, humanity would have disintegrated and there would have been no one to enter the fullness of the higher life, so without the progressive activity of the state, humanity would always remain at one stage of the historical process, would never reach the ability to finally accept or reject the Kingdom of God, and, therefore, people would have nothing to live for. In paganism, the exclusively conservative task of the state prevailed: although it contributed to historical progress, it was only against its will and its consciousness. The highest goal of activity was not set by the leaders themselves, and was not the goal for them, who had not yet heard the “gospel of the Kingdom.” Therefore, the progress itself here, although it differed formally from the gradual improvement of the kingdoms of external nature, did not, however, essentially have a purely human character: it is unworthy of a person to move involuntarily towards a goal unknown to him. The great pagan monarchies are beautifully depicted in the word of God under the guise of powerful and outlandish beasts, which quickly appear and just as quickly disappear. A natural, earthly person does not have final meaning, and the state created by such a person cannot have this meaning - his collective embodiment. But this pagan state, being essentially conditional and transitory, asserted itself as absolute. The pagans began with the deification of individual bodies (astral, plant, animal and especially human) in a multitude of various gods, and ended with the deification of the collective body - the state (the cult of monarchs in Eastern despotism, the apotheosis of the Roman Caesars). The error of the pagans lies not in the fact that they recognized the positive significance of the state, but only in the fact that they considered it to have this significance from themselves. This was clearly not true. Both the individual and collective body of a person does not have its life from itself, but receives it from the spirit living in it, which is clearly proven by the decomposition of both individual and collective bodies. The perfect body is the one in which the Spirit of God lives. Therefore, Christianity demands from us not that we deny or limit the sovereignty of the state, but that we fully recognize the principle that can give the state the real fullness of its meaning - its moral solidarity with the cause of the kingdom of God on earth, with the internal subordination of all worldly goals to the one Spirit of Christ. The question of the relationship of the church to the state, which arose with the advent of Christianity, receives from this point of view a final, fundamental solution. The Church, as we know, is a divine-human organization, morally determined by piety. By the very essence of this motive in the church, the divine principle decisively prevails over the human, in their connection the first is predominantly active, and the second is predominantly passive: this, obviously, should be the case with a direct correlation of the human will with the highest principle. The active manifestation of this will, required by the Divinity itself, is possible only in the worldly realm, collectively represented by the state and having its reality before the revelation of the divine principle and without direct dependence on it. The Christian state is connected with the Divine, like the church; it is also, in a certain sense, a divine-human organization, but with a predominance of the human principle, which is possible only because this state has the realization of the divine principle not in itself, but in front of it - in the Church, so that the Divine gives here, in the state, full scope to the human principle and its amateur service to the highest goal. From a moral point of view, both the independent action of man and his unconditionally subordinate attitude to the deity as such are equally necessary; the solution to this antinomy, the combination of both positions, is possible only through the distinction between two spheres of life (religious and political) and its two immediate motives (piety and pity) - according to the difference in the immediate object of action with the unity of the final goal. A pious attitude towards the Divine (perfect) requires pity for people. The Christian Church demands a Christian state. Here, as elsewhere, disunity instead of distinction inevitably leads to confusion, and confusion leads to discord and destruction. The complete separation of church and state forces the church to one of two things: either to renounce all active service to Good and indulge in quietism and indifference, which is contrary to the spirit of Christ, or, having zeal for the active preparation of the world for the coming of the Kingdom of God, but not having, in disunity and alienation from the state, any means for realizing its spiritual action, the church, in the person of its powerful representatives, itself grabs hold of the real instruments of worldly action and intervenes in all earthly affairs and with the undoubted purity and height of the original goal, he forgets more and more about it in concern for the means, and if such a confusion were allowed to strengthen, then the church would lose the very foundation of its existence. This disunity turns out to be no less harmful for the other side. A state separated from the church either completely renounces spiritual interests, is deprived of the highest sanctification and dignity, and, along with moral respect, loses the material obedience of its subjects; or, realizing the importance of spiritual interests in human life, but not having, due to its alienation from the church, a competent and independent authority to which it could provide the highest care for the spiritual well-being of its subjects, or for the education of peoples for the Kingdom of God, the state decides to take this concern entirely into its own hands; and for this he would have to consistently assign to himself ex officio (out of duty (lat.)) the highest spiritual authority, which would be an insane and destructive usurpation, reminiscent of the “man of lawlessness” of the last days: it is clear that the state, forgetting its filial position in relation to the church, would act here in its own name, and not in the name of the Father. So, the normal relationship between the Church and the state is that the state recognizes for the universal Church the highest spiritual authority belonging to it, denoting the general direction of the good will of mankind and the final goal of its historical action, and the church grants to the state all the power to agree legitimate worldly interests with this higher will and to conform political relations and affairs with the requirements of this final goal, so that the church has no coercive power, and the coercive power of the state has no contact with the field of religion. The state is the middle social sphere between the Church, on the one hand, and material society, on the other. Those unconditional goals of the religious and moral order that are set and presented by the Church could not and cannot be realized in the given human material without the formal mediation of legitimate state power (in its worldly sphere of action), which holds the forces of evil within certain relative limits until all human wills are ripe for a decisive choice between absolute good and unconditional evil. The direct and main motive for such retention is pity, which determines the entire progress of law and the state. This is a progress not in principle, but in application. The sphere of compulsory state action immediately retreats before individual freedom and at the same time moves forward with help in public disasters. The rule of true progress is that the state should constrain the inner moral world of man as little as possible, leaving it to the free spiritual action of the church, and at the same time, as accurately and broadly as possible, provide external conditions for the dignified existence and improvement of people. A state which, by virtue of its own authority, would like to teach its subjects true theology and sound philosophy, while allowing them to remain illiterate, to be slaughtered on the highways, or to die of hunger or infection, would lose the reason for its existence. The voice of the true church could say to such a state: “I have been entrusted with the care of the spiritual salvation of these people, and all that is required of you is to regret their everyday burdens and weaknesses. It is said that man will not live on bread alone, but it is not said that he will live without any bread. Pity is obligatory for everyone, and for me as well, and therefore, if you do not want to be the collective body of my pity, if you do not want, through the correct division of labor between us, to give me the moral opportunity to devote myself entirely to the cause of piety, I will have to take up the matter of pity myself, as in ancient centuries, when you, the state, were not yet called Christian; I myself will take care that there is no hunger and excessive work, and the sick without charity, and the offended without satisfaction, and the offenders without correction. But won’t all people then say: why do we need a state that does not pity us, when we have a church that has pity not only for our souls, but also for our bodies? A Christian state worthy of this name is one that, without interfering in the affairs of the priesthood, within the limits of its means, acts in the royal spirit of Christ, who pitied the hungry and sick, taught the dark, forcibly curbed abuses (expulsion of traders), but was merciful to the Samaritans and pagans and forbade his disciples to resort to violence against unbelievers. Just as the main moral motive of piety, which determines our proper attitude towards the absolute principle, is organized in the church, and another moral basis - pity, which determines our proper attitude towards our neighbors, is organized in the state, so our main moral attitude towards the lower nature (our own and external) is organized objectively and collectively in the third general life sphere of humanity - in society, as an economic union, or in the zemstvo. The moral duty of abstinence, based in fact on the sense of shame inherent in human nature, is the true principle of the economic life of mankind and the social organization corresponding to it in terms of its own special task. The economic task of the state, acting on the motive of pity, is to forcibly provide everyone with a certain minimum degree of material well-being as a necessary condition for a decent human existence. This solves the economic issue correctly, but only on one side - in the area of ​​interpersonal relations. But for economic activity as such, man’s relationship to material nature is essential, and since the unconditionality of the moral principle and the completeness of the moral order certainly require that this relationship be introduced into the norm of goodness or perfection, then humanity must be morally organized not only in the church and state, but also in the specifically economic sphere of relations. And just as between church and state, so between all three spheres of the collective moral organization there must be unity without confusion and distinction without separation. What form should goodness take in a material-economic society like this? It goes without saying that moral philosophy can only indicate the formative principle and final goal of this society, what it should be. This principle is abstinence from bad carnal immensity, and this goal is the transformation of material nature - one’s own and external - into the free form of the human spirit, which does not limit it from the outside, but unconditionally replenishes its internal and external existence. What, however, is common between such ideas and that economic reality, the principle of which is the immense proliferation of needs, and the goal is the same proliferation of things that satisfy these needs? There is, of course, commonality between shame and shamelessness, between the spiritualization of bodies and the reification of souls, between the resurrection of the flesh and the mortification of the spirit. This commonality is only negative, but what of that? The actual negation of a moral norm does not abolish, but only emphasizes its internal significance. There is no reasonable basis to assume in the economic field such a ready correspondence to the ideal, which we do not find in the empirical reality of the church and the state. Without a doubt, there is some contradiction between the feeling of shame and ordinary stock exchange transactions, no more, however (but rather less) than between piety in the spirit of Christ and medieval church politics. There is a discrepancy between the principle of abstinence and monetary speculation, but again not more, but rather less, than between the moral and legal principle of the state and the institution of lettres de cachet, dragonnades, or mass expulsions of infidels. It is possible, on the basis of what has happened and is happening, to see in the entire economic field only the field of self-interest and greed, just as for others the entire meaning of the church and religion is exhausted by hierarchical lust for power and popular superstition, while others in the entire political world see only the tyranny of rulers and the stupid obedience of the crowd. Such views exist, but they only express either an unwillingness or an inability to understand the essential meaning of objects. The following instruction is more serious. Refusing the unjust demand for ideal perfection in human relations, one must, however, in order to recognize them as having any moral dignity and significance, demand two properties from them: 1) that their supposed normal principle should not be completely alien to them, but manifest itself in them, even if in an imperfect way, and 2) that in their historical development they should approach the norm, or improve. But it is precisely economic life, if we understand it as a certain organization of material relations, that does not at all satisfy these two indispensable requirements. With all the possible abuses in the area of ​​the church, one cannot seriously deny the moral principle of piety inherent in the church; it cannot be denied, for example, that the churches of God are generally created by this feeling of piety and that it is also what motivates the majority of people who gather for worship; it cannot also be denied that in some, if not all, respects church life is improving and that many former abuses are no longer possible. Likewise, no just person will deny in government institutions - courts, police, schools, hospitals, etc. - neither their inherent moral goal: to protect people from harm and disaster and promote their well-being, nor the fact that the methods of achieving this goal by the state are gradually improved in the sense of greater altruism. But where in the economic sphere is there at least some institution in which the virtue of abstinence would be objectified and which would serve the spiritualization of material nature? The moral principle, which should determine our material life and transform our external environment, has no reality at all in the economic environment, and therefore there is nothing to improve here. This complete alienation of economic life from its own moral task, although virtually undeniable, has, however, from our point of view, a satisfactory explanation. The moral organization of humanity, fundamentally defined in Christianity, could not be uniformly implemented in all its parts. A well-known historical sequence emerged here from the very essence of the matter. The religious task, the organization of piety in the church, had to come to the fore - not only as the main and fundamental matter, but also as in a certain sense the simplest matter, the least conditioned from the human side. In fact, the connection of a person with the unconditional principle that has been revealed to him cannot, as the highest, be determined by something else - it rests on its own basis - on what is given. The second task of moral organization - the task of the Christian state - in addition to its own motive - collective pity, is determined by a higher, religious principle, freeing this worldly pity from the restrictions that it had in the pagan state. We see that the political task of historical Christianity, more complex and conditioned than the church task, appears after it, so that there was an era in the Middle Ages when the church had already assumed solid organic forms, while the Christian state represented the same state of visible non-existence in which the Christian economy now finds itself. Is the fist law of the Middle Ages more consistent with the moral norm of the state than modern banks and exchanges with the moral norm of economic relations? The practical implementation of this latter, naturally, comes after all, since this area is the extreme limit for the moral principle, and its proper organization, i.e. the establishment of a moral connection between man and material nature is not simple, but purely conditioned in essence: firstly, by the normal religious status of humanity, established in the church, and secondly, by normal interpersonal, or altruistic, relations, organized in the state. It is not surprising, therefore, that the true economic task, to which some socialists of the first half of the 19th century only groped and from which modern socialists are as far away as their opponents, has not yet received a firm and definite expression even in the theoretical consciousness. But despite this uncertainty of the last practical task, the change in the prevailing moral sentiments in the history of the Christian world already represents with sufficient clarity three main eras. The era of piety with a predominant desire for the “divine”, with indifference and distrust towards the human principle, with enmity and fear towards the natural principle. This first era, for all its strength and duration, however, carried within itself the internal seed of destruction: the one-sided exclusive piety of the Middle Ages in spirit contradicted the fullness of Christian truth, which in letter was recognized as the absolute norm. When this contradiction found its direct and extreme expression in the inhumanity and ruthlessness of “pious” religious persecution, a reaction began, first of ideological humanism, and then of practical pity and philanthropy. This movement of human morality, which characterizes the second epoch of Christian history - from the 15th to the 19th century inclusive, in this same last century began to move into the third epoch, when two preparatory truths appeared in the living consciousness of people: firstly, that the real implementation of love for mankind should embrace the area of material life, and secondly, that the norm of material life is abstinence - a truth that was clear to philosophical schools even in ancient times, but for the general feeling even now more shimmering and sparkling than luminous. This flickering of it, undoubtedly, began in the 19th century in such phenomena as the ascetic morality of the fashionable philosopher Schopenhauer, the success of vegetarianism, the spread of poorly understood, but taken precisely from the ascetic side of Indianism and Buddhism, the success of the “Kreutzer Sonata”, the fear of good people that the preaching of abstinence would lead to the sudden cessation of the human race, etc. Economism and asceticism are two apparently completely alien orders of ideas and phenomena, which at the beginning of the 19th century were - in a completely external and crude way - brought together in Malthusianism, but their internal, essential connection lies in the positive duty of man, which we affirm, to rid material nature of the need for corruption and death and to prepare for the general bodily resurrection. According to current concepts, the goal of economic activity is to increase wealth. But the goal of wealth itself - unless you take the point of view of the “miserly knight” - is the possession of the fullness of physical existence. This completeness, no doubt, depends on man’s attitude to material nature, and here we have two paths ahead of us: either to selfishly exploit earthly nature, or to nurture it with love. The first, well-known path did not remain without indirect benefits for the mental development of a person and his external culture, but the main goal cannot be achieved by it. Nature superficially yields to man, giving him the appearance of domination over herself, but imaginary treasures obtained by violence do not bring happiness and crumble like burnt coal. A person cannot ensure his material well-being, that is, first of all, heal his physical life and give it immortality through external exploitation of earthly forces. But he cannot internally master nature without knowing its true essence. But he already knows, thanks to his reason and conscience, those moral conditions within his own power that can put him in a proper relationship with nature. Reason reveals to him that every real phenomenon and relationship in the world is subject to the immutable law of conservation of energy. Carnal desires strive to connect the soul with the surface of nature, with material things and processes and transform the internal, potential infinity of the human being into the bad, external immensity of passions and lusts. Conscience, already in its basic elementary form - shame, condemns this path as unworthy, and reason shows that it is harmful and why it is harmful: the more the soul is squandered outward, on the surface of things, the less free internal strength remains for it to penetrate to the essence of nature and master it. It is clear that a person can truly spiritualize nature or excite and raise the inner life in it only from the excess of his own spiritualization, and it is equally clear that a person’s own spiritualization can only be accomplished through his external, outwardly directed spiritual forces and aspirations. The forces and aspirations of the soul must be absorbed inside and through this increase in their intensity, and the strengthened, powerful and spiritualized being of a person will no longer correlate with the material surface of nature, but with its inner essence. What is required is not a person’s renunciation of external influence on nature and cultural labor, but only a rearrangement of life goals and a volitional center of gravity. External objects, which most people passionately pursue as goals, connecting with them and spending on them their internal, spiritual forces of feeling and will, must become entirely only means and tools, and internal forces, collected and concentrated in themselves, must be applied as a powerful lever in order to lift the weight of material existence, suppressing both the scattered soul of man and the fragmented soul of nature. The normal principle of economic activity is economy, conservation, accumulation of mental forces through the transformation of one type of mental energy (external, or extensive) into another type of energy (internal, or intensive). A person either squanders his sensual soul or collects it. In the first case, he achieves nothing either for himself or for nature, in the second he heals and saves himself and her. Organization in its most general definition is the coordination of many means and instruments of a lower order to achieve one common goal of a higher order. Therefore, the hitherto dominant principle of economic activity - the indefinite proliferation of external and private needs and the recognition of external means of satisfying them as independent goals - is the principle of disorganization, social decay; and the principle of moral philosophy - the collection or absorption of all external, material goals into one internal and spiritual goal of the complete reunification of the human being with the natural essence - is the principle of organization and universal restoration. But at the same time we must remember that this is the third task in the matter of the general moral organization of mankind and that the actual solution of this third task is conditioned by the first two. Just as methods of personal asceticism can be normal and expedient only under the condition of a pious attitude towards God and pity for people, otherwise the devil would be the model of an ascetic, in the same way the collective arrangement of the material life of mankind on the principle of gathering internal forces and abstaining from external needs can be correctly and successfully carried out not by isolated figures in the economic sphere in itself, but only under the condition of recognition of the absolute goal - the Kingdom of God, represented by the church, and through the rightful means of the state organization. Neither an individual nor a collective person can properly arrange his material or natural life if he does not implement the moral norm in his relationships, religious and interpersonal. The moral organization of humanity, or its rebirth into divine humanity, is an inseparable triune task. Its absolute purpose is posited by the church as organized piety, collectively receiving the divine action; its formal means and instruments are given by a purely human, free principle of just pity or sympathy, collectively organized in the state; and only the last substratum or material of the divine-human organism is located in the region of economic life determined by the principle of abstinence. The participation of the personal principle is essentially inseparable from the social, or collective, side in the moral organization of humanity. Humanity is being improved, or morally organized in various spheres of its existence, only through the activities of personal carriers of the supreme principles of life. The unity, completeness and correct course of general moral progress depends on the consonant action of these leading or “representative” persons. The normal connection between church and state would find both an essential condition and a clear, real expression in the constant consent of their highest representatives, the high priest and the king, and the second would sanctify the fullness of his power with the authority of the first, and the first would exercise his authoritative will only through the sovereignty of the second. The High Hierarch of the church, the direct bearer of the divine principle, the representative of the spiritual fatherhood, the father par excellence, with any temptation to abuse his authority, turning it into coercive power, should have remembered the gospel word that the Father does not judge anyone, but has left all judgment to the Son, because he is the son of man. And in turn, the Christian sovereign, the son of the church par excellence, against the temptation to elevate his supreme worldly power to the level of the highest spiritual authority and allow it to interfere in any way in matters of faith and conscience, should remember that even the King of Heaven does only the will of the Father. But both saintly authority and state power, inextricably linked with external advantages, are subject to too strong temptations, and the inevitable litigation, seizures and misunderstandings between them obviously cannot be finally left to the decision of one of the interested parties. Any external mandatory restrictions are, in principle or ideal, incompatible with the supreme dignity of the high priestly authority and royal power. But purely moral control by the free forces of the people and society is not only possible for them, but also highly desirable. In ancient Israel there was a third supreme ministry - the prophetic. But, rightfully abolished by Christianity, it actually disappeared from the historical stage and appeared on it only in exceptional cases - mostly in distorted forms. Hence all the anomalies of medieval and modern history. The restoration of the prophetic ministry is not a matter of human will, but recalling its purely moral significance is very timely in our days and appropriate at the end of moral philosophy. Just as the high priest of the church is the pinnacle of piety, and the Christian sovereign is the pinnacle of mercy and truth, so a true prophet is the pinnacle of shame and conscience. In this internal essence of prophetic service lies the basis for its external signs: a true prophet is a public figure, unconditionally independent, not afraid of anything external and not subordinate to anything external. Along with the bearers of unconditional authority and unconditional power, there must be bearers of unconditional freedom in society. Such freedom cannot belong to the crowd, cannot be an attribute of democracy. Everyone, of course, desires moral freedom, just as everyone, perhaps, also desires supreme authority and power, but there is little desire here. Supreme authority and power are given by the grace of God, and real freedom must be earned by man himself through inner deed. The right of freedom is based on the very essence of man and must be ensured externally by the state. But the degree of implementation of this right is precisely something that entirely depends on internal conditions, on the degree of achieved moral consciousness. The real bearer of complete freedom, both internal and external, can only be one who is not internally bound by any external appearance, who ultimately does not know any other standard of judgment and action other than good will and clear conscience. Just as every high priest is only the top of a numerous and complex class of clergy, with whom he is connected with the fullness of the laity, just as, further, the royal power carries out its calling among the people only through a complex system of civil and military services with their personal bearers, so free figures of the highest ideal carry it into the life of society through a multitude of more or less full participants in their aspirations. The simplest difference between the three ministries is that the priestly ministry is mainly based on strong pious devotion to the true traditions of the past, the royal ministry is based on a correct understanding of the true needs of the present, and the prophetic ministry is based on faith in the true image of the future. The difference between a prophet and an idle dreamer is that for a prophet the flowers and fruits of an ideal future do not hang in the air of personal imagination, but are supported by the obvious trunk of real social needs and the mysterious roots of religious tradition. This is also the connection between the prophetic ministry and the priestly and royal ministry. This meaning of the image and likeness of God in the internal connection and relative difference of these terms is essentially the same as that stated above in the second part. It is clear, in fact, that the infinite power of representation and understanding of everything can only give us an image (“scheme”) of perfection, while infinite striving, with the goal of actually realizing perfection, is the beginning of our likeness to the living God, who is perfection not only in idea, but in reality, which is what we strive for. I mean a genus in a broad sense - as a group of persons connected in a single closed community by blood relationship and property, in whatever basic form this connection may manifest itself - “paired” or “punalual”, matriarchal or patriarchal. This dual point of view can be illustrated with a similar example from a completely different sphere of relationships. Even sincere and good Catholics can look at the taking away of temporal power from the Pope of Rome or the abolition of the church state in different and directly opposite ways: either as a favorable condition for the elevation of the internal moral authority of the pope, or as a deplorable diminution and humiliation of his political role. However, the same poet devotes his more mature work “with reverence” to the historian of the Russian state. The absurdity of those points of view, which negative historical criticism usually adopts, escapes general ridicule only thanks to the “darkness of times” in which the subjects of its exercises fall. If her favorite techniques and considerations were applied, for example, to Muhammad or Peter V., then there would be as little left of these historical heroes as of Dido or Romulus. Anyone who has read Whatley’s excellent book about Napoleon must agree that the solar meaning of this mythological hero is revealed in it according to the strict rules of the critical school, and, moreover, with such consistency, clarity and completeness that we do not find in many more or less famous works of negative criticism, written not for ridicule, but with the most serious intentions. The Greek word τύραννος initially did not, as is known, have a bad meaning, but meant any monarch: thus, in the same trilogy of Sophocles, the first drama is called “οίδίπουζστύραννος”; which is unmistakably translated “Oedipus the King,” this word should be translated no differently in Antigone when applied to Creon. I will point in particular to the interesting book by Lev Mechnikov “La civilization et les grands fleuves”. See about her my article “From the Philosophy of History” in “Questions of Philosophy and Psychology” of 1891, as well as the article by Prof. Vinogradov in the same magazine. One venerable critic imagined that when I spoke of military theocracy as a historical school of asceticism, I had in mind the personal intentions of the Egyptian pharaohs and Chaldean kings!! I am speaking here, of course, only about the cultural and historical meaning of this legend, without touching on its mysterious meaning. Although the word caste is not Indian, but Portuguese, it arose (in this sense) to designate specifically Indian relations. Let us note, by the way, that with the light hand of the tendentious Schopenhauer, the number of Buddhists is usually exaggerated beyond all measure: they talk about 400, 600 and even 700 million followers of this religion. These figures would be plausible if all of China and Japan were inhabited by Buddhists. In fact, the teachings of Buddha in its various modifications are the religion of the masses only: on about. Ceylon, Indo-China, Nepal, Tibet, Mongolia and among our Buryats and Kalmyks, which, according to the highest estimate, will amount to 75 or 80 million souls. In the Chinese Empire and Japan, this is only one of the accepted teachings, to which educated people more or less closely adhere, without abandoning their national cult, as in our country, for example, under Alexander I, many Orthodox Christians visited Freemasonic lodges. Regarding the antiquity of Indian philosophy, fantastic ideas have long existed, which are beginning to disappear before more rigorous scientific research. The Hindus acquired most of their scholastic and philosophical wealth in later times, partly under the direct influence of the Greeks after Alexander the Great, partly even later with the help of the Arabs - Aristotle’s guides to the East no less than to the West. But, on the other hand, not to mention the Arabs, there is no doubt that the Greeks, at their first acquaintance with India, already found there a peculiar native philosophy of “naked philosophists” (gymnosophists) as a typical and ancient, traditional phenomenon. By external signs, these Indian Adamites cannot be identified with followers of Buddhism; in all likelihood, they were representatives of ascetic mysticism - Yoga, which existed before the Buddha. Even older was the pantheism of the Upanishads. The closest forerunner of Shakyamuni, not without reason, is considered to be the creator of the system of spiritualistic dualism (set out in the Sankya-Karika), although the personality and very name of this sage - Kapila - cause confusion. The entire body of Buddhist teaching is distributed, as is known, into three sections of the sacred canon, therefore called the “Three Baskets” (tripitaka): the sutras contain moral teaching, the Vinaya - the monastic rule and Abidarma - transcendental wisdom. Sophocles "Oedipus at Colonus", trans. D. Merezhskovsky. “His strength is intact when it turns to the ground” (Tabula smaragdina). The momentary rise of Plato's thought to the idea of ​​Eros as a bridge connecting the world of truly existing things with material reality remained without consequences: the philosopher pointed out this bridge in mysterious terms, but was unable to walk along it and lead others. “Ants, bees and wasps. Observations on the Manners of the Sociable Hymenoptera,” Sir John Lubbock, trans. from 5th ed. D.V. Averkieva. St. Petersburg, 1884, p. 92. Worker ants (like worker bees) do not, as is known, represent a special breed, but come from a common queen, but only remain underdeveloped (sexually). See above, chapter ten “Personality and Society”. This position is logically justified in the elementary part of moral philosophy, which (part) received, thanks to Kant, the same character of strict scientificity in its field as pure mechanics in another field (see appendix at the end of the book). Whereas in the eastern despotisms there could be no talk of any equality of rights, but only the negative equality of everyone in a general lack of rights. But equal distribution of injustice does not make it justice. The concept of equality in itself (taken abstractly) is only mathematical, not ethical. Hospitality towards peaceful strangers is a very ancient phenomenon, but it is hardly original. In Greece, Zeus, a representative of only the third generation of gods (after Kronos and Ouranos), was revered as its founder. Before being a guest in the sense of a disinterested friendly visitor, the stranger was a guest in the sense of a merchant, and even before that he was understood only in the sense of the Latin hostis (enemy). However, in even more ancient times, about which, however, classical legends have been preserved, a good guest was greeted with even greater joy than in later hospitable times, but only as a tasty roast at a family feast. Apart from such extremes, the prevailing attitude towards strangers in primitive society was, no doubt, similar to what Sir John Lubbock constantly observed in the anthill, when a stranger of at least the same species, but from a different hostelry, entered there; after dragging him for quite a long time by the mustache and tormenting him half to death, they either finished him off or drove him out. In the parables of the leaven, the wheat and the tares, the mustard seed, etc. Si fractus illabatur orbis, Impavidum ferient ruinae. For confirmation of these latest instructions, see “The National Question” (I issue, 3rd ed., last chapter) Stoic philosophy, although it originated in Greece independently of Rome, developed only in the Roman era, was especially widespread among the Romans and exerted its practical influence mainly through Roman jurists. Oh! Two souls live in my chest. // And they are torn apart and long for separation. (Goethe) The fact that the best part of the Pharisees did not take any part in the persecution of I. Christ and favored primitive Christianity. see excellent research by prof. Khvolson in Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences (1893) Οικουμένη (i.e. γη) is the Greek name for the Roman Empire. Regarding the opposition between Judaism and paganism, I mean, of course, not the teaching of Moses, the prophets and sages - all of them, in principle, recognized human rights for the pagans, but only the mood of the crowd and its leaders. “As soon as Christ is imagined in you” is the expression of St. Pavel. This is all the more clear since the only reasonable way to explain genetically any stable national character, for example. Jewish, not susceptible to any external influences of climate, history, etc. is to recognize in him the inherited personal character of the founder of this nation. The inner truth of the biblical characterization of Jacob - the ancestor of the Jews (as well as Ishmael - the ancestor of the northern Arabs) must be recognized by every impartial mind, no matter how he relates to the historical, factual side of these genealogies and legends. Let us even assume that a man with the name of Jacob, who did what is told in the Book of Genesis, never existed at all; however, the Jews, or at least the main tribe of Judah, must have had some common ancestor, and based on the given national character of the Jews, we must conclude that this ancestor was distinguished by precisely those typical characteristics that are attributed to Jacob in the Bible. See S.M. about this. Solovyova. Observations on the historical life of peoples (Works, vol. I), and also in my Philosophy of Biblical History. What we read in the Book of Acts (I 8): “And ye shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the ends of the earth,” shows even more clearly that the Savior of the world recognized for his universal work a certain starting point, local and national. At one time, the culture of the Moors in Spain was not lower, but in certain respects higher than the then Christian one; but history sufficiently shows the fragility of any Muslim culture, and the end that befell it in the Middle Ages in Damascus, Baghdad and Cairo would, without a doubt, be repeated in the West: and here it would have been replaced by lasting barbarism like the Turkish one; but if, in this way, Bashi-bouzoukis began to rule London, and Saxony were subjected to constant raids by the Kurds, then what would happen to the British Museum and the Leipzig book trade? This is ad homines (in relation to a person (lat.)). And speaking seriously and fully recognizing Islam’s comparative merits and the historical tasks still ahead of it in Asia and Africa, we must remember that this religion, as having deliberately renounced the absolute height of the moral ideal, i.e. from the principle of perfect God-manhood, cannot rightfully dominate Christian peoples, and, therefore, Europe’s repulsion of the Muslim invasion, while generally a historical necessity, was at the same time a historical merit for the Christian peoples, who took a particularly active part in this struggle. Mainly, but not exclusively, since there were truly spiritual champions of Christianity in Spain, for example. Raymond Lully, who devoted his life to the spread of true religion through rational persuasion. At first, he invented a special method for this, through which, as it seemed to him, the dogmas of faith could be given the same evidence as the truths of pure mathematics and formal logic; then he became a missionary and was killed for peacefully preaching the gospel in the barbarian dominions. Let us note that it is a curious coincidence that in the East, in Byzantium, the first inquisition for matters of faith, specifically against the Manichaean heresy, took place back in the 4th century. founded by the Spaniard, Theodosius V [the great]. It is also curious that Albigensianism, against which the Dominican Inquisition was originally directed, was a direct branch of that very Manichaean heresy, for which nine centuries earlier the Emperor had appointed his “inquisitors.” Feodosius. And shortly before that, the sad historical role of the Spanish people in the matter of religious violence was foreshadowed by the fact that the first execution for the faith (Priscillian heretics) was suggested to the secular authorities by two Spanish bishops, which, as a hitherto unheard of thing, caused protests both in Italy (St. Ambrose of Milan) and in France (St. Martin of Tours). For an impartial statement of the relevant facts, see A. Reville's book on the religion of the Mexicans and Peruvians. Now Hindus trained in English schools are beginning to talk (in English and native newspapers, based on the English model) about the hardships of English rule and the need for national unification and liberation. Why didn't they think of this earlier? The fact is that such concepts as nationality, national spirit, national dignity, patriotism, solidarity, development, they received only from the British, and they themselves, despite their ancient wisdom, could not think of all this during two and a half thousand years of their history. A well-known instruction from Dostoevsky, who himself was just as comprehensive in the best moments of his work. I cannot take seriously the remark of one critic that equal love for one’s own and for foreign peoples is impossible because in war it is necessary to fight for one’s own against strangers. It would seem clear that the moral norm of international relations should be derived not from the fact of war, but from something else. Otherwise, perhaps, even for personal relationships one would have to recognize as the norm such facts as, for example, a bloody fight between one artist and one official, which the newspapers recently dealt with. The question of war, although historically connected with the fact of international hostility, is not, however, exhausted by this connection. In addition to international wars, there have been, there are, and there may continue to be internecine wars - religious and social. Therefore, the question of war requires special consideration, and one of the following chapters will be devoted to it. The scope of this concept expands and contracts in accordance with historical conditions. In the Middle Ages, when the criminal nature of simple murder was not yet clear to the legal consciousness, counterfeiting coins entailed a painful death penalty, as a crime harmful to the whole society, violating the privilege of state power and, in this sense, political. The former are predominantly in Germany, the latter especially in France. Regarding the present subject, these two terms can be used indifferently. According to one critic, my assumption that a crime necessarily violates someone's rights is a mistake. Regardless of any subject of law (individual or collective, private or public), and also independently of the moral norm - the unconditional Good, there is supposedly a right in itself - as an independent objective entity, and the own purpose of punishment is supposedly to satisfy this self-existent right. The critic is in vain in thinking that this metaphysical guise of ancient Moloch is unknown to me. But there is no reason for me to study it, since not a single serious criminologist has stood for it for a long time. It is too clear that law, by its very concept, is a relationship between subjects, conditioned by one or another moral and practical norms, and that, therefore, subjectless and non-relative law is Unding - a thought in which nothing is thought. Obviously, here one cannot go beyond addition (of material results): one can add the corpse of a murdered man with the corpse of a hanged murderer, and one gets two corpses, i.e., two negative quantities. In the 18th century, at the height of the movement against the cruelties of the criminal law, some writers tried to prove that the torment of criminals was not only inhumane, but also useless in the sense of deterrence, since it did not deter anyone from committing a crime. This opinion, if it were proven, would, in addition to its direct purpose, take away all meaning from the theory of deterrence in general. It is clear, in fact, that even if painful executions are not enough to intimidate criminals, then milder punishments can have such an effect even less. But what if, while holding the murderer, in the struggle we unwittingly cause him more serious injuries and even death? This will be a great misfortune for us, and we will lament it as if it were our involuntary sin; but in any case, accidentally killing a criminal person is a lesser sin than, at your own discretion, allowing the intentional murder of an innocent person. “There is no offense to the one who wishes,” that is, an action to which the will of the one who undergoes this action agrees cannot be a violation of his right. And direct violation of the law by evil will is foreseen by the law as a crime, which, according to the law, causes corresponding punishment. A few years ago, a surprisingly characteristic example of plutocratic hypocrisy appeared, but went unnoticed - an article by the famous (since deceased) Jules Simon about the three main disasters of modern society: the decline of religion, family and... rent. The family talks about religion in a sluggish and vague way, but the lines about some kind of reduction in the interest on capital (if I’m not mistaken, from 4% to 2 1 2 %) were written in the blood of the heart. These indications that socialism and plutocracy coincide in their common materialist principle, expressed by me eighteen years ago (to the XIV chapter of the “Critique of Abstract Principles,” which first appeared in the “Russian Messenger” of 1878), aroused reproaches against me for an incorrect understanding and unfair assessment of socialism. Now I don’t have to answer these reproaches, since they have been brilliantly refuted by the subsequent history of the socialist movement itself, which has now decisively defined itself in its main stream as economic materialism. Conductors of horse-drawn railways, for example, in St. Petersburg work more than 18 hours a day for a pay of 25 or 30 rubles per month (see New [oe] Time [emya], No. 7357). The author cited here refers to Haushofer, Lehrbuch der Statistik. All the figures given appear to refer to Western Europe. A.A. Isaev. Elements of Political Economy, ed. 2nd, p. 254–5. The diametric opposition between socialism and Christianity has been noted many times, but its essence is mostly misunderstood. More witty than profound is the current remark that socialism requires the poor to take from the rich, while the gospel wants the rich to give to the poor. The opposite lies much deeper - in the moral attitude towards the rich themselves: socialism envies them, and the gospel pities them, pitying them in view of the obstacles that the connection with Mammon poses for moral improvement: it is difficult for the rich to enter the Kingdom of God. Meanwhile, socialism posits this very kingdom, that is, the highest good and bliss, in nothing other than wealth, only distributed differently. What is an obstacle for one is a goal for another: if this is not an antithesis, then I do not know what to call by this name. Recognizing material wealth as the goal of economic activity can be called the original sin of political economy, since Adam Smith was also guilty of this. The Hebrew words “laobod ef gadaamah” (Gen. III 23) literally mean “to serve the earth” - to serve, of course, not in the sense of a religious cult (although the word obod is used in this sense), but in the sense in which angels serve humanity or a teacher serves children, etc. Of course, “food” in the broad sense that was explained above. I pointed to the source of capital in the simplest normal scheme. But even with all sorts of anomalies that accompany the emergence and formation of capital in reality, the essential importance of will, or practical fortitude, remains. Since there is no doubt that any wealth can be squandered, then the mere fact of preserving it is for the preserver an obvious merit of the will, disappearing in comparison with merits of a different, higher order, but in the absence of such, undoubtedly has its own importance. Even Roman law, with all its individualism in this area, does not leave the above absolute formula without significant limitations: proprietas est jus utendi et abutendire sua quantenus juris ratio patitur, property is the right to use and abuse one’s property, as far as the meaning (or reasonable basis) of the law allows. – But the meaning of law precisely requires the limitation of private arbitrariness in favor of the common good. I, of course, do not blame this definition on the author of the manual, who here conveys only what is “accepted.” In addition to the direct meaning of this remark, one can also see in it a certain prophecy about the persecution that, a quarter of a century after Goethe, befell the idea of ​​natural law in legal science. There are signs that this persecution is coming to an end (“A quarter of a century after Goethe,” that is, approximately in the middle of the 19th century, the idea of ​​natural law was denied by the then dominant historical school of law, the main representatives of which in Germany were Karl von Savigny, Karl Friedrich Eichhorn, Jacob Grimm.). In all languages, moral and legal concepts are expressed by words that are either identical or derived from the same root. Russian “debt”, just like Lat. debitum (from where the French devoir) is also equal to German. Schuld have both moral and legal significance; δίκη θ δικαιοσυνη, jus and justitia as Russian “right” and “truth”, German. Recht and Gerechtigkeit, English. right and rightousness distinguish these two meanings only by prefixes; Wed also Hebrew tzedek and tz'dakah. See above, in the first part, the chapter “On Virtues.” After what was said in Chapter Fifteen (about the criminal issue), should I still explain that the moral principle not only allows, but in certain cases requires subjecting a criminal person to temporary deprivation of personal freedom for the sake of his own benefit and the safety of society. Along with the death penalty, only lifelong, predetermined forever deprivation of freedom from a person should be recognized as morally impermissible. Although in some legislations there are (on paper) regulations prescribing to abstain in general from drunkenness, to be pious, to honor parents, etc., such imaginary laws represent only an uncollected remnant of the ancient state of unity or confusion of moral and legal concepts. Mentioned in the previous approx. the pious desires of the legislator are not accompanied by any sanction, which sufficiently shows that these are imaginary laws. See above, in chapters ten and fifteen, and below, in ch. eighteenth and nineteenth. One cannot, of course, attribute literal accuracy to the account of the Greek forces in the Iliad, but as an approximate account this account (110,000 soldiers) seems quite plausible. Let us note in general regarding the reliability of the Iliad that the latest scientific excavations have restored for this poetic monument the significance of a historical source, of course mythologically colored. See above, in chapter fourteen. See above, chapter “The National Question from a Moral Point of View.” This is not contradicted by the last three semi-European wars: the Serbian-Bulgarian 1885, the Greek-Turkish 1897 and the Spanish-American 1898, which ended before a serious start. Frithiof Tegner, translation by J.K. Grota. I cannot yet expand on the immediate circumstances of this connection and other issues related to this without moving into the area of ​​metaphysics and mystical aesthetics. But the general necessity of resurrection as the fullness of spiritual-physical being is quite clear from the point of view of the unconditional moral principle and the reality of the moral order. See above, chapter two, “The ascetic principle in morality.” The late philosophy professor P.D. Yurkevich told me that one young scientist, the son of an evangelical pastor in Moscow, once present at a wedding in a Russian church, was struck by the fact that in the sacred song, wedding crowns are equated with the crowns of martyrs. This thoughtful look sank into his soul so much that it caused a whole revolution in it, which ended with the young philologist giving up secular science and the university department assigned to him and, to the chagrin of his loved ones, going to a monastery. This was the famous father Kliment Zederholm, whose excellent characterization and biography was subsequently given by the late K.N. Leontyev. The internal connection and contrast between the Babylonian pandemonium of the pagans and the Zion assembly of the apostles, as between the violation and restoration of the norm, is clearly indicated in the church songs on the day of Pentecost. The deep and important meaning of dogmatic disputes, in which the very essence of the Christian religion, or piety, was at issue, was more definitely indicated by me in other writings. See The Great Controversy and Christian Politics (1883), The Dogmatic Development of the Church (1886), La Russie et l'Eglise Univeselle (1889). – This meaning is especially clear in the iconoclastic dispute, which ended the circle of dogmatic development in the Christian East. See for more details “Spiritual Foundations of Life”, ed. 3rd 1897, and "La Russie et l'Eglise Universelle" (last chapter). These three religious and moral activities were discussed in detail by me in the first part of the essay “Spiritual Foundations of Life.” See above, in the chapter “The Meaning of War”. Italy is a slave, a haven of suffering, // A ship without a helmsman among great storms. (Dante A. Divine Comedy. Purgatory VI 78). As a child, my father was able to hear the recollections of eyewitnesses about how armed crowds of foreigners on the Volga openly robbed, took Russian travelers with entire families into captivity and tortured them in every possible way. This no longer happens on the Volga, but on the Amur, as we know, it happens even now, which means that the permanent military mission of the state has not yet ended, and if the virtuous centurion Cornelius lived in Russia today, then no moral motive could prevent him from being a Cossack centurion in the Ussuri region. See above, chapter “Criminal Issue from a Moral Point of View”. See above, chapter “Morals and Law”. See above, chapter “On Virtues.” See above, ch. "Morality and Law".