On the necessity and possibility of new beginnings for philosophy

Not long ago, the desire for philosophy was dominant in Europe. Even political questions occupied second place, submitting to the decisions of philosophical systems and from them borrowing their final meaning and their internal significance. But recently, interest in philosophy has apparently weakened, and since 1948 the relationship between it and politics has completely changed: all the attention of thinking people is now absorbed in political issues; There are almost no philosophical works published; Philosophical systems occupy few people, and rightfully so. There is no place for abstract, systematic thinking in the cramped conditions of enormous social events, imbued with worldwide significance and replacing one another with the speed of theatrical scenery. Moreover, philosophical development in Europe itself has reached that degree of maturity when the appearance of a new system can no longer excite minds as strongly and so visibly as it previously did, striking them at the contrast of new conclusions with old concepts. That direction towards rational self-thinking, which began in the West around the time of the Reformation, and whose first representatives in philosophy were Bacon and Descartes, constantly growing and spreading over the course of three and a half centuries, now fragmenting into many separate systems, now combining into their large results, and thus passing through all the stages of its possible ascent, finally reached the last all-encompassing conclusion, beyond which the mind of European man can no longer strive without completely changing its main direction. For when a person rejects any authority other than his own abstract thinking, can he go further than that view where the entire existence of the world appears to him as the transparent dialectic of his own mind, and his mind as the self-consciousness of universal existence? It is obvious that here is the final goal that abstract reason, separated from other cognitive forces, can only imagine for itself - the goal to which it has been moving for centuries, which it has reached in our time, and beyond which it has nothing to look for. Deprived of the opportunity to move forward, philosophy can only spread in breadth, develop in detail and bring all individual knowledge under one general meaning. For this reason, we see that modern Western thinkers, no matter how different the opinions of each, are, almost all stand at the same level of fundamental principles. Hegel's followers speak a more school language, those who have not read him speak a more human language; but almost everyone, even those who have not even heard his name, expresses the main conviction that serves as the basis and is the final conclusion of his system. This conviction, so to speak, is in the air of modern education. Therefore, if we see that few philosophical books are published, few argue about philosophical issues; if we notice that interest in philosophical systems has weakened; then one should not conclude from this that interest in philosophical thinking itself has weakened. On the contrary, it has penetrated more than ever into all other areas of the mind. Every phenomenon in social life and every discovery in the sciences lies in the human mind beyond the limits of its visible sphere and, being associated with universal human issues, takes on a rational-philosophical meaning. The very universality of social events helps this direction of mind. I lost interest in building systems for schools; but with greater effort every educated person strives to stretch the guiding thread of his abstract thought through all the labyrinths of social life, through all the wonders of new discoveries in the sciences and all the infinity of their possible consequences. The emergence of new philosophical systems has ended, but the dominance of rational philosophy continues. This rational thinking, which in modern German philosophy received its final consciousness and expression, connects all the phenomena of modern European enlightenment into one general meaning and gives them one general character. Every movement of life is imbued with the same spirit, every manifestation of the mind leads to the same philosophical convictions. The disagreement between these rational-philosophical beliefs and the teachings of faith has inspired some Western Christians to want to oppose them with other philosophical views based on faith. But the most brilliant efforts of Western Christian thinkers served only to further prove the lasting dominance of rationalism. For the opponents of philosophy, trying to refute its conclusions, cannot, however, tear themselves away from the foundation from which philosophy arose through the course of natural development, and from which other consequences can only be forced by force. For this reason, many pious people in the West, struck by this uncontrollable desire of thought for unbelief, wanting to save faith, completely reject all philosophy as something incompatible with religion, and condemn reason in general as something contrary to faith. But these pious people in the West do not notice that by such persecution of reason they harm religious convictions even more than the philosophers themselves. For what kind of religion would it be that could not bear the light of science and consciousness? What kind of faith is that is incompatible with reason? Meanwhile, it seems that a believer in the West has almost no other way to save faith than to maintain its blindness and fearfully protect it from contact with reason. This is an unfortunate but necessary consequence of the internal division of faith itself. For where the teaching of faith has at least somewhat deviated from its basic purity, there this deviation, developing little by little, cannot but appear as a contradiction of faith. The lack of integrity and internal unity in faith forces one to seek unity in abstract thinking. Human reason, having received the same rights as Divine Revelation, first serves as the basis of religion, and then replaces it with itself. But when I talk about the bifurcation of faith and the abstract rational basis of religion, I do not mean only Protestant confessions, where the authority of tradition is replaced by the authority of personal understanding. In Latinism, no less than Protestantism, we see abstract reason at the very basis of the doctrine, despite the fact that in the fight against Protestantism, Latinism rejects rationalism, relying on one tradition. For only in contradiction to Protestantism does church tradition place Latinism above human reason; but, in relation to the Universal Church, Rome in matters of faith gives preference to abstract syllogism over holy tradition, which preserves the general consciousness of the entire Christian world in living and indivisible integrity. This preference for syllogism over tradition was even the only condition for the separate and independent emergence of Rome. For how could the Roman Church otherwise break away from the Universal Church? She fell away from it only because she wanted to introduce new dogmas into the faith, unknown to church tradition and generated by the random conclusion of the logic of Western peoples. From here came that first bifurcation in the very basic beginning of Western dogma, from which first scholastic philosophy developed within faith, then reformation within faith, and finally philosophy outside faith. The first rationalists were scholastics; their offspring are called Hegelians. But the direction of Western philosophies was different, depending on the confessions from which they arose; for every special confession necessarily presupposes a special relation of reason to faith. The special relationship of reason to faith determines the special character of the thinking that is born from it. The Roman Church broke away from the Universal Church as a result of the derivation of formal-logical reason, which sought the external connection of concepts and from it deduced its conclusions about the essence. Only such external reason could tear Rome away from the Church, placing its syllogism above the living consciousness of all Christianity. Having lost the support of the Ecumenical Tradition and the general and unanimous sympathy of the entire Church, the Roman Church had to seek approval on some theological system. But since the human mind, especially the rational one, can comprehend the Divine in different ways, according to the differences in each person’s personal concepts, and since contradictions in theological reasoning could no longer be resolved by the internal consent of the entire Church, visible and invisible, the Church of all ages and peoples, the unanimity of Western Christians had to be protected by the external authority of the hierarchy. Thus, external authority, regardless of internal, became the final foundation of faith. Therefore, the relationship between faith and reason took on the character that reason had to blindly submit to the doctrine approved by the external authority of the visible Church; blindly - because it was impossible to look for any internal reason for this or that theological opinion, when the truth or falsity of the opinion was decided by the random understanding of the hierarchy. Hence scholasticism with all its rational refinements, constantly agreeing the demands of reason with the statements of the hierarchy and, agreeing with them, constantly moving away from them into countless heretical systems and interpretations. Meanwhile, having granted the mind of the hierarchy, regardless of tradition and the entirety of the Church, the highest judgment over Divine truths, the Roman Church had to together recognize its hierarchy as the source of all truth and subject to the verdict of the same hierarchical opinion the entire volume of human thinking, the entire development of the mind in the sciences and social life. For everything more or less concerns questions of Divine truth, and if once the mind of the hierarchy crossed the boundaries of Divine Revelation, then there was no reason for it to stop in its movement. Galileo's example is no exception: it expresses the constant law of the general attitude of the Western Church to human thinking. Therefore, in order to save the mind from complete blindness or from complete unbelief, the Reformation was necessary and had to arise from the same beginning from which the Roman Church derived its right to separate originality and all-intervention. The whole difference was that the right of judgment over the Divine Revelation, preserved in tradition, was transferred from the mind of the temporal hierarchy to the mind of all modern Christianity. Instead of one external authority, equally binding on everyone, everyone’s personal conviction became the basis of faith. This was the other extreme of the same deviation from the truth. The boundaries between the natural reason of man and Divine Revelation were equally violated, both in the Roman Church and in the Protestant confessions, but in different ways; That’s why their attitudes towards enlightenment were different. There, the basis of faith was tradition, subject to the judgment of one hierarchy, which thus curbed the general development of reason with its random understanding and tried to squeeze all thinking into one conventional form; here from the legend only one letter of Scripture remained, the meaning of which depended on the personal understanding of each. From these two relations a completely opposite direction of minds should have arisen. Under the influence of Latinism, it was necessary for the mind, willy-nilly, to bring all its knowledge under one system. The main truth was given; the way of understanding it is determined; many features of her relationship to reason are indicated; All that remained was for the entire body of thinking to agree with these concepts, eliminating from the mind everything that could contradict them. In Protestantism, on the contrary, in addition to the letter of Scripture, only some personal opinions of the reformers who disagreed with each other on the most essential principles were given to guide the mind. For the fundamental relationship of man to God, the relationship of free will to grace and predestination, and similar rational relationships of faith from the very beginning were understood by them in completely different ways. Therefore, the human mind had to look for a common basis for truth, past the traditions of faith, inside its own thinking. From here, of necessity, a rational philosophy had to arise, striving not to develop a given truth, not to be imbued with it, not to rise to it, but, above all, to find it. However, not having a single and solid foundation for truth in faith, could a person not turn to thinking abstracted from faith? His very love for Divine truth forced him to seek rational philosophy. If rational philosophy, developing outside of Divine tradition, led a person to unbelief, then the first blame for this misfortune lies, of course, not with Protestantism, but with Rome, which, already having the truth and forming a living part of the living Church, consciously and deliberately broke away from it. Caring more about external unity and external dominion over minds than about internal truth, Rome maintained a monopoly of understanding for its hierarchy and could not act otherwise if it did not want to fall apart into many contradictory interpretations. The people were not supposed to think, were not supposed to understand the Divine Services, were not even supposed to read the Divine Scripture. He could only listen without understanding, and obey without reasoning; he was revered by the unconscious mass on which the building of the Church stood, and which had to remain unconscious in order for the Church to stand. Therefore, almost every original thinking that sincerely and naturally arose within the Roman Church, of necessity, turned into opposition against it. Almost all great thinkers were rejected and persecuted by it. Every movement of the mind that disagreed with its conventional concepts was heresy; for its concepts, branded by the authority of the hierarchy, officially penetrated into all areas of reason and life. The Reformation, on the contrary, contributed to the development of the enlightenment of the peoples whom it saved from the mental oppression of Rome, the most intolerable of all oppressions. This is the main merit of the Reformation, which returned man his human dignity and won him the right to be a rational being. However, in this rationality there was no force that would constantly raise it above natural ordinariness. Cut off from sympathy with the one true Church, which was shielded from them by Rome, the Protestant peoples did not see anything Divine around them except the letter of Scripture and their inner conviction, and in the joy of liberation from mental bondage, they saw in the adored letter of Scripture the truth that the Lord brought to earth more than one teaching, but together founded the Church, which He promised continuous existence until the end of centuries, and that He established His teaching in His Church, and not outside it. Between themselves and the first centuries of Christianity, Protestants saw nothing but lies and delusion; they thought that, contrary to the promises of the Savior, the gates of hell had overcome the Church, that the Church of God was dying before them, and that it was left to them to resurrect it themselves, relying on the Holy Scriptures. But the Holy Scripture, not imbued with a unanimous understanding, took on a special meaning according to the personal concepts of each. For this reason, and in order to satisfy all personal consciousnesses, it was necessary not only to find the general basis of truth in the mind of man in general, but certainly in that part of his mind that is accessible to any individual person. Therefore, philosophy, excited by Protestantism, had to be primarily limited to the area of ​​logical reason, which equally belongs to every person, whatever his inner height and structure. The combination of all cognitive abilities into one force, the internal integrity of the mind necessary for the consciousness of the whole truth, could not be the property of everyone. Only the reason of relations, the negative, logical reason, could be recognized as a general authority; only he could demand unconditional recognition of his conclusions from each special individual. For this reason, we see that rational philosophy developed almost exclusively in Protestant lands. For what is called French philosophy is actually English philosophy, transferred to France at a time of weakening faith. Although Descartes was a Frenchman, and although in the middle of the 17th century almost all thinking people in France adhered to his system, despite the fact that already at the beginning of the 18th century it disappeared of its own accord from the general belief - so little did it agree with the special character of popular thinking. The change that Malebranche wanted to make in her was even less durable. Meanwhile, for German thinking, Descartes became the founder of all philosophy. Perhaps France could have had its own philosophy, a positive one, if Bossuet's Gallicanism had not been limited to diplomatic formality, but had developed more fully, more consciously and internally, and had freed French education from the mental oppression of Rome before it had lost faith. The beginnings of this possible philosophy for France lay in what was common between the beliefs of Port-Royal and the special opinions of Fenelon. For, in addition to the dissimilarity with the official concepts of Rome, what they had in common was that they strived for the development of inner life and in its depths they sought a living connection between faith and reason, above the sphere of external cohesion of concepts. Port-Royal and Fenelon received this direction from one source, from that part of Christian wisdom that they found in the ancient Fathers of the Church and which Roman teaching did not contain. Pascal's thoughts could be the fruitful embryo of this new philosophy for the West. His unfinished work not only opened up new foundations for understanding the moral order of the world, for the awareness of the living relationship between Divine Providence and human freedom, but also contained profound guidance on another way of thinking, differing equally from the Roman scholastic and rational-philosophical. If these sparks of his thoughts were united in a common consciousness with those that warmed the soul of Fenelon when, in defense of Guyon, he collected the teachings of the Holy Fathers on the inner life; then from their joint flame a new, original philosophy should have ignited, which, perhaps, could have saved France from unbelief and its consequences. Of course, this philosophy would not be pure truth, because it would still remain outside the Church; but it would come closer to it than all rational speculation. But the machinations of the Jesuits destroyed Port-Royal with its solitary thinkers; the life-giving direction of their thoughts that was born died with them. The cold, solemn logic of Bossuet did not understand what was alive and warm in Fenelon’s deviation from the official thinking of Rome, and with complacency forced him by the authority of the pope to renounce his cherished convictions, out of respect for papal infallibility. Thus, the original philosophy of France froze in its very bud, and French education, which required some kind of mental breathing, had to submit to the laughter of Voltaire and the laws of foreign Philosophy, which was all the more hostile to the religious beliefs of France because it had nothing in common with them. In England, Locke's system could still somehow coexist with the faith around which it grew; but in France it took on a destructive character, passed through Condillac to Helvetius and, with its spread, destroyed the last remnants of faith. Thus, in those peoples whose mental life was subject to the Roman Church, original philosophy was impossible. But, however, the development of education required a mind that was aware of it and connected it. Between the living science of the world and the formal faith of Rome lay an abyss over which the thinking Catholic had to make a desperate leap. This leap was not always within the power of the human mind and not always according to the conscience of a sincere Christian. That is why, having been born in Protestant lands, rational philosophy spread to Catholic lands, permeated the entire education of Europe with one common character and replaced the former unanimity of faith of Western peoples with the unanimity of abstract reason. But it was not suddenly that the man’s thought reached its final conclusion. Only little by little she discarded all extraneous data, finding them insufficiently true for the main statement of the first truth. At first, her activities split into two sides. Among the peoples of Romansky's origin, who, by their historical nature, sought to merge inner self-consciousness with the externality of life, an experimental or sensual philosophy arose, ascending from private observations to general results and deducing all the laws of being and understanding from the order of external nature. In the peoples of Germanic origin, who, also due to their historical peculiarities, had within themselves a constant feeling of separation of external from internal life, a desire arose to derive laws for external existence from the very laws of reason. Finally, both philosophies united into one mental view, based on the identity of reason and being and developing from this identity that form of thinking that embraced all other philosophies, like individual steps of an unfinished staircase leading to one goal. But, originating from the totality of Western European education and containing the general result of its mental life, modern philosophy, like all the latest education in Europe, in its last prosperity completely separated from its root. Her conclusions have nothing to do with her past. She treats him not as a completing, but as a destructive force. Completely independent of its past, it now appears, as an original new beginning, giving birth to a new era for the mental and social life of the West. It is still very difficult to determine the real nature of its influence on European education, because its special influence is only just beginning to be identified; its final fruits are still hidden in the future. However, the recent dominance of this new system over the previous philosophical convictions of Europe does not give us the right to think that the main provisions of this latter system and its dialectical process of thinking are the exclusive property of our time. In the general life of mankind, modern philosophy is not as new as is usually believed. It is new to modern history, but for the human mind in general it is a thing that has happened, and therefore the future consequences of its domination over minds have more or less already been outlined in the past. For the same spirit of thinking dominated the educated world several hundred years before the birth of Christ. Aristotle's fundamental beliefs - not those attributed to him by his medieval interpreters, but those that emerge from his writings - are completely identical with Hegel's beliefs. And that method of dialectical thinking, which is usually revered as an exceptional feature and as a unique discovery of Hegel, constituted, even before Aristotle, a clear belonging of the Eleatics, so that, reading Plato’s Parmenides, it seems as if in the words of Heraclitus’ student we hear the Berlin professor himself, talking about dialectics as the main purpose of philosophy and its real task, seeing in it a miraculous power that turns every definite thought into the opposite and from it again gives rise to a new definition, and which puts abstract concepts of being, non-being and emergence at the beginning of a thought process that embraces all being and knowledge. Therefore, the difference between the new philosopher and the ancients lies not in the basic point of view to which reason has risen, not in the special way of thinking invented by him, but solely in the complete completeness of systematic development and in this wealth of mental acquisitions that man’s curiosity could collect for him during his two thousand-year quest. Reason stands at the same level, no higher, and sees the same final truth, no further; only the horizon around me became clearer. The Western mind seems to have a special affinity with Aristotle. At the very beginning of Western European education there was sympathy for his thinking. But the scholastics used his system only to assert on it another truth, not directly derived from it, but accepted by them from tradition. When, with the revival of the sciences, the boundless authority of Aristotle fell, it seemed that sympathy with him was lost forever. Liberation from it was celebrated throughout Europe with some kind of delight, as a great and saving event for the human mind. Hegel followed a different road, and outside the system of Aristotle; but nevertheless he agreed with him both in the last conclusion and in the basic attitude of the mind to the truth. He built a different system, but in the same way that Aristotle himself would have built it if he had been resurrected in our time, and if, without changing the level at which the human mind stood in his time, he had only brought the issues of modern education to his point of view. Hegel's students, substituting their terminology instead of Aristotle's, recognize in his system, although not a complete, but true reflection of the system of their teacher. The voice of the new world echoed the same echo of the past world. Ancient Greek philosophy also arose not directly from Greek beliefs, but under their influence, and beside them, arose from their internal discord. The internal discord of faith forced abstract rationality. Abstract rationality and the living, motley tangibility of the contradictory teachings of faith, opposing each other in essence, could be reconciled within the consciousness of the Greek only in contemplations of the graceful and, perhaps, also in the hidden meaning of the mysteries. Therefore, the Greek grace stands between the sensitivity of Greek mythology and the abstract rationality of its philosophy. For the Greek, the beautiful became the focus of all mental life. The development of the sense of grace constitutes, one might say, the entire essence of Greek education, internal and external. But in the very nature of this graceful thing lay the limits of its prosperity; one of its elements was destroyed by the increase of the other. As rationality developed, mythological faith weakened, along with which Greek beauty faded. For the beautiful, just like the true, when it is not based on the essential, disappears into abstraction. Growing up on the ruins of beliefs, philosophy undermined them and together broke the living spring of the development of Greek education. Having at first been its expression, at the end of its growth philosophy was a contradiction of the previous Greek education, and although it still bore the outward signs of its mythology, it had an identity separate from it. It originated and grew in Greek concepts; but, having ripened, it became the property of all mankind, as a separate fruit of the mind, rounded and ripened, and torn away from its natural root. Thus, with the final development of Greek education, one might say, the dominion of pagan beliefs over the enlightenment of mankind ended; not because there were still no pagan believers left, but because the advanced thought of education was already outside the pagan faith, turning mythology into allegory. Only an underdeveloped and, therefore, powerless thought could remain pagan; As it developed, it fell under the power of philosophy. From this negative side, Greek philosophy appears in the life of mankind as a useful educator of the mind, freeing it from the false teachings of paganism and, with its rational guidance, bringing it to that indifferent state in which it became capable of accepting the highest truth. Philosophy has prepared the field for Christian sowing. But between Aristotle and the general subordination of world enlightenment to Christian teaching, many centuries passed, during which many different and contradictory systems of philosophy nourished, consoled and disturbed the mind. However, the extremes of these systems belonged to a few: the general state of enlightenment was subordinate to what was common to the extremes, constituting their middle. Between the virtuous pride of the Stoics and the sensual philosophy of the Epicureans, between the tempting heights of the transcendental constructions of the mind in the new Platonic school and the insensitive, inexorable, all-eradicating plow of skepticism, stood the philosophy of Aristotle, to which the mind constantly returned from extreme deviations, and which, into the very one-sidedness of thinking that deviated from it, let in the logical networks of its indifferent system. Therefore, we can say that in the ancient pre-Christian world there were some philosophers of different, contradictory sects; but the entire mass of thinking humanity, all the moral and mental power of enlightenment belonged to Aristotle. What exactly was the influence of Aristotle's philosophy on the enlightenment and moral dignity of man? The solution to this question is important not only for the history of the past world. The clearest and shortest answer to this question would seem to lie in the moral and mental mood of those centuries in which this philosophy prevailed. The Roman citizen of the times of Caesar was a living imprint of her convictions. For it is not individual truths, logical or metaphysical, that constitute the final meaning of any philosophy, but the relationship into which it places a person towards the final truth sought, the inner demand into which the mind imbued with it turns. For every philosophy, in the fullness of its development, has a double result, or, more correctly, two sides of the last result: one is the general result of consciousness, the other is the dominant demand that arises from this result. The last truth on which the mind rests also points to the treasure that a person will go looking for in science and in life. At the end of a philosophical system, between its primordial truth and its sought-after goal, there lies no longer a thought that has a definite formula, but one, so to speak, the spirit of thought, its inner strength, its innermost music, which accompanies all the movements of the soul of a person convinced by it. And this inner spirit, this living force is characteristic of more than just the highest philosophies, complete and closed in their development. The system belongs to the school; its power, its ultimate demand belong to the life and enlightenment of all humanity. But, we must admit, the philosophy of Aristotle, when it did not serve as a reinforcement of someone else’s system, but acted in its own way, had a very sad influence on the enlightenment of mankind, exactly the opposite of what it had on its first student, the great conqueror of the East. The striving for the best in the circle of the ordinary, for the prudent in the everyday sense of the word, for the possible, as it is determined by external reality, were the extreme conclusions of the rationality that was instilled by Aristotle’s system. But these suggestions did not fit the standards of just one student; Everyone else could handle them. Listening to them, Alexander seemed to develop the more intensely his own identity, which was opposed to them, as if in defiance of the teacher’s advice. Perhaps even without this compulsion of prudent mediocrity, the full extreme of his unreasonable genius would not have developed in him. But the rest of humanity was all the more willing to submit to the influence of rational philosophy because, in the absence of higher convictions, the desire for the earthly and prudently ordinary naturally becomes the dominant character of the moral world. Aristotle's system tore apart the integrity of mental self-awareness and transferred the root of man's inner convictions, outside of moral and aesthetic meaning, into the abstract consciousness of the reasoning mind. The tools with which she learned the truth were limited to the logical activity of the mind and the indifferent observation of the external world. External being and the expressible, verbal side of thought constituted her only data, from which she extracted what could be extracted from them by the logical coupling of concepts - and it must be confessed that she extracted from them everything that could be extracted from them in this way at that time. Reality in the eyes of Aristotle was the complete embodiment of the highest rationality. All the differences between the physical and moral worlds were only imaginary and were not only lost in the general harmony, but were necessary sounds for its eternally unchanging completeness. The world, in his opinion, has never been better and never will be; it is always quite beautiful, for it never began, just as it will never end, and will forever remain intact and unchanged in its overall scope, constantly changing and being destroyed in its parts. But this completeness and satisfaction of the world seemed to him in the cold order of abstract unity. He saw the highest good in thinking that understands this unity through the diversity of particular phenomena, with external contentment and tranquility of life: physical and mental comfort. When a person is freed from the needs of everyday life, he said, then he only begins to philosophize (while, according to the conviction of the Stoic school, only wisdom alone can free a person from the needs and burdens of everyday life). Virtue, according to Aristotle, did not require a higher sphere of existence, but consisted in finding a golden mean between vicious extremes. It came from two sources: from an abstract conclusion of the mind, which, being abstract, did not give strength to the spirit and had no essential compulsion, and from habit, which was formed partly from an abstract desire to harmonize the will with the dictates of reason, partly from the accident of external circumstances. It is obvious that such a way of thinking could produce very intelligent spectators among the various phenomena of humanity, but completely insignificant figures. Indeed, Aristotle’s philosophy had a destructive effect on the moral dignity of man. Having undermined all beliefs that lie above rational logic, it also destroyed all motivations that could raise a person above his personal interests. Morale fell; all the springs of inner identity have weakened; man became an obedient instrument of surrounding circumstances, a reasoning but involuntary output of external forces - intelligent matter, obeying the power of earthly engines, profit and fear. The few examples of Stoic virtue constitute only rare exceptions, striking contrasts to the general mood, and do more to confirm than to weaken the concept of a general lack of inner originality. For Stoicism could only arise as a tense contradiction, as a sad protest, as a desperate consolation of a few against the meanness of all. Meanwhile, even those thinkers who did not exclusively follow Aristotle, but only studied his system, unconsciously introduced the results of his teaching even into their understanding of other philosophers. So Cicero, in the struggle between the destruction of the fatherland and personal safety, seeks justification for his cowardice in Plato; but Plato for him has only the meaning that agrees with Aristotle. Therefore, he is consoled by the thought that Plato does not advise uselessly resisting force and interfering in the affairs of a people who have lost their minds. Moral insignificance was the common mark of one and all; - and If in the time of the Caesars, with the complete decline in the internal dignity of man, external education had been even more developed; if railways and electric telegraphs and peksans and all the discoveries that subject the world to the power of soulless calculation were known, then it would be difficult to “show what” would then come out of poor humanity. Such was the influence of ancient philosophy, and mainly Aristotelian philosophy, on the enlightenment of mankind. There was no longer any salvation left for man on earth. Only God Himself could save him. However, Christianity, having changed the spirit of the ancient world and resurrected in man the lost dignity of his nature, did not unconditionally reject ancient philosophy. For the harm and lies of philosophy did not lie in the development of the mind it communicated, but in its final conclusions, which depended on the fact that it considered itself the highest and only truth, and were destroyed by themselves as soon as the mind recognized another truth higher than it. Then philosophy became a subordinate level, was a relative truth and served as a means to establish a higher principle in the sphere of other education. Having fought to the death against the lies of pagan mythology, Christianity did not destroy pagan philosophy, but, accepting it, transformed it according to its highest philosophy. The greatest luminaries of the Church: Justin, Clement, Origen, when he was Orthodox, Athanasius, Basil, Gregory and most of the great Holy Fathers, on whom, so to speak, the Christian teaching was established among pagan education, were not only deeply familiar with ancient philosophy, but also used it for the rational construction of that first Christian wisdom, which all modern development of sciences and reason connected into one comprehensive contemplation of faith. The true side of pagan philosophy, imbued with the Christian spirit, became a mediator between faith and the external enlightenment of mankind. And not only in those times when Christianity was still fighting against paganism, but throughout the subsequent existence of Byzantium, we see that a deep study of Greek philosophers was almost the common property of all teachers of the Church. For Plato and Aristotle could only be useful for Christian enlightenment, as great natural scientists of reason, but could not be dangerous for it, as long as Christian truth stood at the top of human education. For we must not forget that in the fight against paganism Christianity did not yield reason to it, but, penetrating it, subordinated to its service all the mental activity of the world, present and past, as long as it was known. But if there was a danger for the Christian people to deviate from the true teaching, then this danger was mainly hidden in ignorance. The development of rational knowledge, of course, does not provide salvation, but it protects against false knowledge. It is true that where the mind and heart are already once imbued with Divine truth, there the degree of learning becomes an extraneous thing. It is also true that the consciousness of the Divine equally accommodates all stages of rational development. But in order to penetrate, animate and guide the mental life of humanity, Divine truth must subjugate the external mind, must dominate it, and not remain outside its activity. It must stand in the general consciousness above other truths, as a ruling principle, penetrating the entire scope of enlightenment, and for each individual supported by the unanimity of public education. Ignorance, on the contrary, separates peoples from the living communication of minds by which truth holds, moves and grows among people and nations. From ignorance of the mind, despite the most correct convictions of the heart, jealousy is born that is not according to reason, from which, in turn, comes the deviation of the mind and heart from true convictions. This was the case with the West before its fall. The ignorance of the peoples subjected their mental life to the irresistible influence of the remaining traces of paganism, which imparted to their thinking the rational character of Roman external logical abstraction and by this deviation of reason forced them to seek the external unity of the Church, instead of spiritual unity. Ignorance also carried them into excessive zeal against the Arians, so that, not content with rejecting their heresy, they composed, in direct opposition to the Arians, a new dogma about the Divinity, under the influence of the same externally logical thinking - a dogma that they considered true only because it was directly opposed to one type of heresy, forgetting that the direct opposite of error usually occurs not the truth, but only another extreme of the same error. Thus, as a result of the ignorance of Western peoples, the very desire for the unity of the Church tore them away from this unity, and the very desire for Orthodoxy tore them away from Orthodoxy. Of course, it was not ignorance alone that tore the West away from the Church; ignorance is only a misfortune, and the rejection of humanity from the saving truth could not take place without moral guilt. But in ignorance there was an opportunity and a basis for this guilt; without him, the love of power of the popes could not have succeeded. Only with the combined action of papal lust for power and popular ignorance could an illegal addition to the symbol be made - this is the first triumph of rationalism over faith and the illegal recognition of the primacy of the popes, this is a constant obstacle to the return of the West to the Church. But, once torn away from it, the Roman confession already, as if on a ready-made slope of a mountain, itself descended to all those deviations that increasingly removed it from the truth and produced the entire peculiarity of Western enlightenment with all its consequences for it and for us. I say: for us, for the fate of all humanity lies in a living and sympathetic reciprocity, not always noticeable, but nevertheless real. The fall of Rome deprived the West of the purity of Christian teaching and at the same time stopped the development of public education in the East. What should have been accomplished by the combined efforts of the East and the West has already become beyond the power of the East alone, which was thus doomed only to preserve the Divine truth in its purity and holiness, without being able to embody it in the external education of peoples. Who knows? Perhaps this external impotence of the East was destined to continue until the era when, to replace the fallen Rome, another people would grow and mature, enlightened by true Christianity at the very time when the West was falling away from the East; Perhaps this new people is destined to reach mental maturity precisely at the time when the enlightenment of the West, by the force of its own development, will destroy the power of its other teachings and will move from false convictions in Christianity to indifferent philosophical convictions, returning the world to the times of pre-Christian thinking. For Christian doctrine is less capable of accepting the truth than the complete absence of Christian convictions. Then at least an external possibility will be open for the dominance of true Christianity over the enlightenment of man. For there is no doubt that all the actions and aspirations of private people and nations are subject to the invisible, barely audible, often completely imperceptible current of the general moral order of things, which carries with it all general and private activities. But this general order is composed of the totality of particular wills. There are moments, there are situations when the course of things is, so to speak, in the balance, and one movement of the will decides one direction or another. This was the moment for the West in the era of its deviation. For although popular ignorance weighed heavily on the actions of the popes, there is no doubt that at this time the firm and decisive will of one of them could still overcome the error of the people and maintain the truth in the Western Church. There was a fateful moment when the Lord apparently placed the fate of the whole world in the hand of one. He will stand in the truth, and the world will be saved from millennia-old errors and disasters, peoples will develop in the sensual communication of faith and reason, collectively destroying the remnants of paganism in the mind and social life; The East transmits to the West the light and power of mental enlightenment, the West shares with the East the development of society; everywhere enlightenment is built on the solid stone of Divine Revelation; the best powers of the spirit are not wasted on useless revolutions, which destroy the previous harm of mismanagement with the new harm of destruction; the best flower of the peoples does not perish from the destructive invasion of external barbarians, or the insurmountable oppression of internal pagan violence, which continues to triumph over the education of Christian peoples; social life, growing harmoniously, does not destroy previous acquisitions with each success and does not seek the ark of salvation in the earthly calculations of industry, or in the superstellar constructions of utopias; general education is based not on a dream or an opinion, but on the truth itself, on which it is affirmed harmoniously and unshakably: - all this depended on one minute and, perhaps, was in the power of one person. But man could not resist, and Western education, deprived of sympathy with the Universal Church, headed towards earthly goals; The Eastern one, bound by the violence of the still prevailing paganism and deprived of the help of its Western brethren, secluded itself in monasteries. However, in the 17th century there was, it seems, another moment when a return was possible for the Western world. The writings of the Holy Fathers, transferred from Greece after the fall, opened the eyes of many Europeans, showing them the difference between Christian and Roman teachings; at the same time, the abuses of the Roman Church reached such enormous proportions that the people came to a clear conviction of the need for church reform. But how to accomplish this transformation has not yet been decided in anyone's consciousness. “I am now studying the papal decretals,” Luther wrote to Melanchthon, “and I find in them so many contradictions and lies that I cannot believe that the Holy Spirit Himself inspired them, and that our faith should be based on them. After this, I will study the Ecumenical Councils and see if it is not on them, together with the Holy Scriptures (and already apart from the papal decretals), that the teaching of the Church should be affirmed?” If at this time Luther had remembered that the whole half of humanity, called Christians, recognizes only seven Ecumenical Councils, and not sixteen, and that this half of Christian humanity is clean from those abuses of the Western Church, which outraged his soul with righteous indignation - then, perhaps, instead of composing a new confession according to his personal concepts, he could have directly turned to the Universal Church. Then he could still do it; for in the convictions of the German peoples nothing had yet been decided except hatred of the pope and the desire to escape from Roman iniquities. All the nations he raised would follow him, and the West could again unite with the Church; especially since the remnants of Hussitism were one of the main reasons for Luther’s successes, and Hussitism, as is known, was imbued with the memories and echoes of the Orthodox Church 1 . But Luther did not want to remember the Orthodox Church and, instead of seven Councils, compared with each other all those that the Romans call Ecumenical. As a result of this comparison, he wrote to Melanchthon: “I studied the definitions of the Councils; they also contradict one another, like papal decretals: apparently, we can only accept Holy Scripture as the basis of faith.” This is how the reformation was accomplished. A misunderstanding - voluntary or involuntary, only God knows - decided her fate. When, in the 17th century, Protestants sent the question of faith to the Eastern Patriarchs, it was already too late. The opinions of Protestants had already been formed and were ignited with all the heat of new convictions and new as yet untested hopes. By mentioning these relations of popular convictions to the contingencies of the moral arbitrariness of private individuals, we do not deviate from our subject. On the contrary, we would form a false concept of the development of human thinking if we separated it from the influence of moral and historical contingency. There is nothing easier than to present every fact of reality in the form of an inevitable result of the highest laws of rational necessity; but nothing distorts the real understanding of history so much as these imaginary laws of rational necessity, which in fact are only the laws of rational possibility. Everything should have its own measure and stand within its boundaries. Of course, every minute in human history is a direct consequence of the past and gives birth to the future. But one of the elements of these minutes is the free will of man. Not wanting to see it means wanting to deceive yourself and replace the actual consciousness of living truth with external harmony of concepts. From these two minutes of the life of Western Europe, when it could have joined the Orthodox Church - and did not join, only through the random action of human will - we see that the education of Europe, although completely different from the nature of the education of the Orthodox, is not as far from it as it seems at first glance. In its very essence lies the necessity However, one of the entire Western world professes the dogma of the Holy Trinity in accordance with the teachings of the Orthodox Church. But they themselves do not yet realize the full importance of this difference. The general character of Western education does not yet accommodate this consciousness. the possibility of separate periods of development, between which it is free from previous influences and capable of choosing one direction or another. However, if at the beginning of the Reformation there was the possibility of two outcomes, then, after its development, there was no longer any other outcome than the one that came true. Building a building of faith on the personal beliefs of the people is the same as building a tower based on the thoughts of each worker. What the Protestant believers had in common were only some special concepts of their first leaders, the letter of Holy Scripture and natural reason on which the doctrine of faith was to be based. At present, there are hardly many Lutheran pastors who would agree in everything with the Augsburg Confession, although, upon taking office, everyone promises to accept it as the basis of their doctrine. Meanwhile, natural reason, on which the Church was supposed to establish itself, outgrew the faith of the people. Philosophical concepts increasingly replaced and are replacing religious concepts. Having passed through the era of doubting unbelief, then the era of fanatical unbelief, man’s thought finally passed to indifferently reasoning unbelief, and at the same time to the consciousness of an inner emptiness that requires a living conviction that would bind man to man not by cold agreement in abstract convictions, not by an external connection of external benefits, but by the inner sympathy of a whole being, with one love, one reason and one desire permeated. But where will the West find these living convictions? It is no longer possible to return to what he believed before. Forced returns, artificial faith - the same as the efforts of some theater hunters to convince themselves that the scenery is reality. Having broken the integrity of the spirit into parts and given the highest consciousness of truth to isolated logical thinking, man, in the depths of his self-consciousness, broke away from any connection with reality and himself appeared on earth as an abstract being, like a spectator in a theater, equally capable of sympathizing with everything, loving everything equally, striving for everything, under the condition only that his physical personality should not suffer from anything or worry. For it was only one physical personality that he could not renounce through his logical abstraction. Therefore, not only was faith lost in the West, but poetry also perished along with it, which, without living convictions, was bound to turn into empty amusement and became all the more boring the more exclusively it strived for one imaginable pleasure. One thing remains serious for man: this is industry; for for him one reality of existence survived: his physical personality. Industry rules the world without faith or poetry. In our time it connects and divides people; it defines the fatherland, it designates classes, it lies at the basis of state structures, it moves nations, it declares war, makes peace, changes morals, gives direction to science, character to education; they worship her, they build churches to her, she is a real deity, in whom they believe without hypocrisy and who they obey. Selfless activity has become incredible; it takes on the same significance in the modern world as knightly activity received in the time of Cervantes. However, we still don’t see everything. The unlimited dominance of industry and the latest era of philosophy, one might say, is just beginning. Hand in hand, one with the other, they must still go through the entire circle of the new development of European life. It is difficult to understand what Western education can achieve unless some internal change occurs in the people. This possible change, obviously, can only consist in a change in basic beliefs, or, in other words, in a change in the spirit and direction of philosophy - for it now contains the whole knot of human self-consciousness. But the character of the ruling philosophy, as we have seen, depends on the character of the ruling faith. Where it does not come directly from it, where it is even its contradiction, philosophy is still born from that special mood of the mind, which is imparted to it by the special character of faith. The same meaning with which man understood the Divine serves him to understand truth in general. Under the influence of the Roman Confession, this meaning was logical rationality, which, however, acted only fragmentarily, unable to gather into its separate integrity, for the fullness of its activity was destroyed by the intervention of external authority. Under the influence of Protestant confessions, this rationality reached full development in its isolation and, recognizing itself in this fullness of its development as something higher, called itself reason (die Vernunft), in contrast to its previous fragmentary activity, for which it left the name reason (der Verstand). But for us, brought up outside of Roman and Protestant influence, neither one nor the other way of thinking can be completely satisfactory. Although we submit to the education of the West, because we do not yet have our own, we can only submit to it as long as we do not realize its one-sidedness. In the Orthodox Church the relationship between reason and faith is completely different from the Roman Church and from the Protestant confessions. This difference lies, among other things, in the fact that in the Orthodox Church Divine Revelation and human thinking are not mixed; the boundaries between the Divine and the human are not crossed either by science or by the teaching of the Church. No matter how much believing thinking strives to reconcile reason with faith, it will never accept any dogma of Revelation as a simple conclusion of reason, it will never assign the authority of Revealed dogma to the conclusion of reason. Borders are firm and inviolable. No patriarch, no assembly of bishops, no thoughtful consideration of a scientist, no authority, no impulse of the so-called general opinion of any time can add a new dogma, nor change an old one, nor attribute to its interpretation the authority of Divine Revelation and thus pass off the explanation of human reason as the holy teaching of the Church, or interfere with the authority of the eternal and immutable truths of Revelation in the field of sciences subject to development, changeability, mistakes and personal conscience of everyone. Any dissemination of Church teaching beyond the limits of Church tradition naturally leaves the sphere of Church authority and appears as a private opinion, more or less respectful, but already subject to the judgment of reason. And no matter whose new opinion may be, not recognized by previous centuries, even the opinion of an entire people, even the majority of all Christians of a certain time, if it wanted to present itself as a dogma of the Church, then with this claim it would exclude itself from the Church. For the Orthodox Church does not limit its self-awareness to any time, no matter how much this time considers itself more intelligent than the previous ones; but the entire totality of Christians of all centuries, present and past, constitutes one indivisible, eternally living collection of the faithful, bound by the unity of consciousness as much as by the communion of prayer. Such inviolability of the limits of Divine Revelation, vouching for the purity and firmness of faith in the Orthodox Church, on the one hand protects its teaching from incorrect interpretations of natural reason, on the other hand, protects reason from the incorrect interference of Church authority. So for an Orthodox Christian it will always be equally incomprehensible how one can burn Galileo for the disagreement of his opinions with the concepts of the Church hierarchy, and how one can reject the reliability of the Apostolic Epistle for the disagreement of the truths expressed in it with the concepts of some person or some time. But the more clearly defined and the firmer the boundaries of Divine Revelation, the stronger the need of believing thinking to reconcile the concept of reason with the teachings of faith. For there is one truth, and the desire for the consciousness of this unity is a constant law and the main motivation of rational activity. The freer and more sincere the believing mind is in its natural movements, the more fully and correctly it strives for Divine truth. For an Orthodox thinker, the teaching of the Church is not an empty mirror that reflects each individual’s outline; not a Procrustean bed, which disfigures living personalities according to one conventional measure; but the highest ideal to which only a believing mind can strive, the final edge of the highest thought, the guiding star that burns at the height of the sky and, reflected in the heart, illuminates the mind’s path to truth. But in order to reconcile reason with faith, it is not enough for an Orthodox thinker to arrange rational concepts in accordance with the tenets of faith, to select those that are appropriate, to exclude those that are contrary, and thus clear the mind of everything that contradicts faith. If such negative activity contained the relationship of Orthodox thinking to faith, then the results of this relationship would be the same as in the West. Concepts that disagree with faith, originating from the same source and in the same way as concepts that agree with it, would have the same right to recognition, and in the very basis of self-consciousness that painful split would occur, which sooner or later would inevitably lead thinking outside of faith. But this is precisely the main difference between Orthodox thinking, that it seeks not to arrange individual concepts in accordance with the requirements of faith, but to raise reason itself above its ordinary level - it seeks to raise the very source of understanding, the very way of thinking to sympathetic agreement with faith. The first condition for such an elevation of the mind is that it strive to collect into one indivisible whole all its individual forces, which in the ordinary situation of man are in a state of disunity and contradiction; so that he does not recognize his abstract logical ability as the only organ of understanding the truth; so that he does not consider the voice of enthusiastic feeling, not in agreement with other forces of the spirit, as an unmistakable indication of the truth; so that he does not consider the suggestion of a separate aesthetic meaning, regardless of other concepts, to be a true guide to understanding the higher world order; even - so that he does not consider the dominant love of his heart, separately from other demands of the spirit, as an infallible guide to the comprehension of the highest good; but to constantly search in the depths of the soul for that inner root of understanding, where all individual forces merge into one living and integral vision of the mind. And in order to understand the truth in this collection of all mental forces, the mind will not bring the thought that lies before it, successively and separately, to the judgment of each of its individual abilities, trying to reconcile all their verdicts into one common meaning. But in integral thinking, with every movement of the soul, all its strings should be heard in full chord, merging into one harmonic sound. The inner consciousness that in the depths of the soul there is a living common focus for all individual powers of the mind, hidden from the ordinary state of the human spirit, but accessible to the seeker, and alone worthy of comprehending the highest truth - such consciousness constantly elevates the very way of thinking of a person: humbling his rational conceit, he does not constrain the freedom of the natural laws of his mind; on the contrary, it strengthens his identity and at the same time voluntarily subordinates him to faith. Then he looks at any thinking emanating from the highest source of understanding as incomplete and therefore incorrect knowledge, which cannot serve as an expression of the highest truth, although it can be useful in its subordinate place, and even sometimes be a necessary step for other knowledge standing at an even lower level. Therefore, the free development of the natural laws of reason cannot be harmful to the faith of an Orthodox thinker. An Orthodox believer can become infected with unbelief, and then only with a lack of external original education, but cannot, like a thinker of other confessions, come to unbelief through the natural development of reason. For his fundamental concepts of faith and reason protect him from this misfortune. Faith for him is not a blind concept, which is only in a state of faith because it is not developed by natural reason, and which reason must raise to the level of knowledge, decomposing it into its component parts and thus showing that there is nothing special in it that could not be found in the consciousness of natural reason without Divine Revelation; nor is she the only external authority before which reason must be blind; but authority is both external and internal, the highest rationality, life-giving for the mind. For her, the development of the natural mind serves only as steps, and, exceeding the ordinary state of mind, she thereby admonishes him that he has deviated from his primary natural integrity and with this admonition encourages him to return to the level of higher activity. For the Orthodox believer knows that integral truth requires integrity of reason, and the search for this integrity is the constant task of his thinking. With such a conviction, the entire chain of fundamental principles of natural reason, which can serve as starting points for all possible systems of thinking, is below the mind of the believer, just as in the existence of external nature the entire chain of various organic beings is below man, who is capable of internal God-consciousness and prayer at all degrees of development. Being at this highest level of thinking, an Orthodox believer can easily and harmlessly understand all systems of thinking emanating from the lower degrees of reason, and see their limitations and, at the same time, their relative truth. But for thinking at a lower level, the higher is incomprehensible and appears to be unreasonable. This is the law of the human mind in general. This independence of the basic thought of an Orthodox believer from lower systems that may touch his mind does not constitute the exclusive property of some learned theologians and is, so to speak, in the very air of Orthodoxy. For no matter how little the rational concepts of a believer are developed, every Orthodox believer realizes in the depths of his soul that the Divine truth is not grasped by considerations of ordinary reason and requires a higher, spiritual vision, which is acquired not by external learning, but by the internal integrity of being. Therefore, he seeks true God-thinking where he thinks to meet together a pure, integral life, which vouches for the integrity of his mind, and not where school education alone rises. Therefore, it is also very rare for an Orthodox believer to lose his faith solely as a result of some logical reasoning that can change his rational concepts. For the most part he is carried away into unbelief rather than convinced by it. He loses faith not from mental difficulties, but due to the temptations of life, and with his rational considerations he seeks only to justify in his own eyes his heartfelt apostasy. Subsequently, unbelief is strengthened in him by some kind of rational system, replacing the previous faith; so that then it becomes difficult for him to return to faith again without first clearing the path for his mind. But as long as he believes in his heart, logical reasoning is safe for him. For for him there is no thinking divorced from the memory of the inner integrity of the mind, of that center of self-consciousness, where the real place is for the highest truth and where not one abstract mind, but the entire totality of mental and spiritual forces put one common seal of authenticity on the thought facing the mind - just as on the Mount Athos each monastery has only one part of that seal, which, put together from all the individual parts, at the general council of monastic primates constitutes one legal seal Athos. For the same reason, a double activity is always combined in the thinking of an Orthodox believer: while monitoring the development of his understanding, he at the same time monitors the very way of his thinking, constantly striving to raise his reason to the level at which he could sympathize with faith. Inner consciousness, or sometimes only a dark feeling of this sought-after, final edge of the mind, is inseparably present with every movement of his mind, with every, so to speak, breath of his thought, and if the development of original education in the Orthodox-believing world is ever possible, then it is obvious that this feature of Orthodox thinking, emanating from the special relationship of reason to faith, should determine its dominant direction. Only such thinking can, over time, free the mental life of the Orthodox world from the distorting influences of extraneous enlightenment, as well as from the suffocating oppression of ignorance, which are equally contrary to Orthodox enlightenment. For the development of thinking, which gives one or another meaning to all mental life, or, better said, the development of philosophy, is determined by the connection of two opposite ends of human thought: the one where it is associated with the highest questions of faith, and the one where it touches the development of sciences and external education. Philosophy is not one of the sciences, and it is not faith. It is the general result and common foundation of all sciences, and the conductor of thought between them and faith. Where there is faith, and there is no development of rational education, there cannot be philosophy. Where there is development of science and education, but there is no faith, or faith has disappeared, there philosophical convictions replace the convictions of faith and, appearing in the form of prejudice, give direction to the thinking and life of the people. Not everyone who shares philosophical beliefs has studied the systems from which they come; but everyone accepts the latest conclusions of these systems, so to speak, on faith in the conviction of others. Based on these mental prejudices on the one hand, and on the other, excited by current issues of modern education, the human mind generates new systems of philosophy that correspond to the mutual relationship of established prejudices and current education. But where the faith of a people has one meaning and one direction, and education, borrowed from another people, has a different meaning and a different direction, one of two things must happen; or education will supplant faith, giving rise to corresponding philosophical beliefs; or faith, overcoming this external education in the thinking consciousness of the people, from the very contact with it will produce its own philosophy, which will give a different meaning to external education and permeate it with the dominance of another principle. The latter happened when Christianity appeared among pagan education. Not only science, but also pagan philosophy itself turned into a tool of Christian enlightenment and, as a subordinate principle, became part of Christian philosophy. As long as external enlightenment continued to live in the East, so long did Orthodox Christian philosophy flourish there. It went out only with the freedom of Greece and with the destruction of its education. But traces of it are preserved in the Writings of the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, like living sparks, ready to flare up at the first touch of a believing thought and again illuminate a guiding lantern for the mind seeking truth. But it is impossible to restore the philosophy of the Holy Fathers in the form it was in their time. Arising from the relationship of faith to modern education, it had to correspond both to the issues of its time and to the education among which it developed. The development of new aspects of scientific and social education requires a corresponding new development of philosophy. But the truths expressed in the speculative Scriptures of the Holy Fathers can be for her a life-giving embryo and a bright sign of the path. To contrast these precious and life-giving truths with the present state of philosophy; to penetrate, if possible, their meaning; to understand in relation to them all the questions of modern education, all the logical truths obtained by science, all the fruits of thousands of years of experience of the mind among its diverse activities; from all these considerations, to draw general consequences that correspond to the present requirements of enlightenment - this is a task, the solution of which could change the entire direction of enlightenment among the people, where the beliefs of the Orthodox faith are in disagreement with borrowed education. But for a satisfactory solution to this great task, the combined activity of like-minded people is needed. Philosophy, which does not want to remain in a book and stand on a shelf, but must turn into a living conviction, must also develop from the living mutual interaction of convictions, diverse, but unanimously striving for one goal. For everything that is essential in a person’s soul grows in him only socially. Then it is necessary that personal convictions come not into supposed, but into actual collision with issues of surrounding education. For it is only from actual relationships to essentiality that those thoughts that illuminate the mind and warm the soul are ignited. But in order to understand the relationship that the philosophy of the ancient Holy Fathers can have with modern education, it is not enough to apply to it the requirements of our time; one must also constantly keep in mind its connection with education, which is contemporary to it, in order to distinguish what is essential in it from what is only temporary and relative. Then the degree of development of the sciences was not the same, the nature of this development was not the same, and what excited and confused the human heart was not what worries and confuses it now. The ancient world was in irreconcilable contradiction with Christianity: not only when Christianity fought against polytheism, but also when the state called itself Christian. The world and the Church were two opposite extremes, which mutually excluded each other in essence, although they tolerated each other outwardly. Paganism was not destroyed with polytheism. It flourished in the state structure, in the laws, in the Roman government, selfish, soulless, violent and crafty; in officials, brazenly corrupt and openly double-minded: in courts, clearly corrupt and able to dress up blatant injustice in formal legality; in the morals of the people, imbued with slyness and luxury, in their customs, in their games, in a word, in the entire totality of social relations of the Empire. Constantine the Great recognized the government as Christian, but did not have time to reorganize it according to the Christian spirit. Physical martyrdom ceased, but moral martyrdom remained. It was a great thing - the legal and public recognition of the truth of Christianity; but the embodiment of this truth in the state structure took time. If Constantine's successors had been imbued with the same sincere respect for the Church, then perhaps Byzantium could have become Christian. But its rulers for the most part were heretics or apostates and oppressed the Church, under the guise of patronage, using it only as a means for their power. Meanwhile, the very composition of the Roman Empire was such that it was hardly possible for the power that ruled it to abandon its pagan character. Roman power was abstractly state power; under the government there was no people of whom it was an expression, with whom its sympathetic relations could arrange a better life for the state. The Roman government was an external and violent connection between many heterogeneous nationalities, alien to each other in language and customs and hostile in interests. The strength of the government was based on the balance of popular hostilities. The violent knot connected people, but did not unite them. Every social and local spirit by which public morality moves and is maintained was repugnant to the government. The peoples still had their homelands, but the fatherland disappeared and could not arise except from internal unanimity. One Christian Church remained a living, internal connection between people; one love for the heavenly fatherland united them; one unanimity in faith led to sympathy for life; one unity of internal convictions, strengthening in the minds, could eventually lead to a better life on earth. Therefore, the desire for unanimity and unanimity in the Church was a complete expression of love for God, love for humanity, love for the fatherland, and love for the truth. There was nothing in common between a citizen of Rome and a son of the Church. The Christian had only one opportunity for social activity, which consisted in complete and unconditional protest against the world. To save inner convictions, the Byzantine Christian could only die to public life. This is what he did when going to martyrdom; He did this when he went into the desert or locked himself in a monastery. The desert and the monastery were not the main, but, one might say, almost the only field for the Christian moral and mental development of man; for Christianity did not shy away from mental development, but, on the contrary, embraced it within itself. Due to this order of things, issues of modern education could not have a public character, and therefore philosophy had to limit itself to the development of inner, contemplative life. Historical interest, which is based on public interest, also could not enter into its sphere. Moral questions also concerned her only to the extent that they related to her lonely inner life. But the external life of a person and the laws of development of family, civil, social and state relations were almost not included in its scope. Although the general principles for these relationships are found in her general concepts of man, they have not received a scientific conclusion. Perhaps general moral concepts were revealed purer and more deeply in the solitary speculations of monasteries, the less temporary worldly influences were mixed into them. But their internal purity and depth did not have that completeness of external development that another time and another state of external education would have required of them. However, there is something in common between the questions of the inner, contemplative life of that time and between the questions of our contemporary social and philosophical education; this is the human mind. The nature of reason, viewed from the height of concentrated God-thought, experienced in the highest development of internal, spiritual contemplation, appears in a completely different form than that of reason, limited to the development of external and ordinary life. Of course, its general laws are the same. But, ascending to the highest stage of development, he discovers new sides and new forces of his nature, which cast new light on his general laws. The concept of reason, which has been developed in modern philosophy and of which the Schelling-Hegelian system serves as an expression, would not certainly contradict the concept of reason that we notice in the speculative works of the Holy Fathers, if only it did not present itself as a higher cognitive ability, and as a result of this claim to a higher power of cognition, would not limit the truth itself only to that side of cognition that is accessible to this abstractly rational way of thinking. All false conclusions of rational thinking depend only on its claim to the highest and complete knowledge of the truth. If only it realized its limitations and saw in itself one of the instruments by which truth is known, and not the only instrument of knowledge; Then it would present its conclusions as conditional and relating solely to its limited point of view, and would expect other, higher and truer conclusions from another, higher and truer way of thinking. In this sense, it is accepted by a thinking Christian, who, rejecting its latest results, can study its relative truth with greater benefit for his mental development, accepting, as the legitimate property of reason, everything that is true and explanatory in the very one-sided development of his speculations. However, if the philosophical mind were aware of its limitations, then, developing even within it, it would take a different direction that could lead it to the highest completeness of knowledge. But this consciousness of limitation would be a death sentence to his unconditional authority: that is why he was always afraid of this consciousness, and especially since it was always close to him. To avoid it, he constantly changed his forms. As soon as they understood his insufficiency, he eluded this understanding, appearing in a different form and leaving his former image, like a simple scale, in the hands of his opponents. So: in order to avoid accusations of insufficiency, he moved from formal logical evidence to experimental observations, on the one hand, and, on the other, to the inner consciousness of truth, and called his previous thinking rational, and his new one reasonable. Having discovered, as a result of his development in the new form, its insufficiency, he called it rational and moved on to pure reason. When Jacobi denounced the limitations of the theories of pure reason, as they were expressed in the system of Kant and Fichte, then at the end of his long and many years of polemics, he learned to his surprise that everything he said about reason must relate to reason. The theory of Kant and Fichte turned out to be rational; the development of reason was only to begin in the system of Schelling and Hegel. “Now,” Hegel wrote in 1802, pointing to Schelling’s system, “now only can the philosophy of mind proper begin; for the cycle of rational development ended with Fichte’s system.” Thus, reason, as the latest philosophy understands it, does not confuse itself with the logical understanding, which consists in the formal coupling of concepts and moves through syllogistic conclusions and proofs. Reason in its last form derives its knowledge, according to the laws of mental necessity, not from an abstract concept, but from the very root of self-consciousness, where being and thinking are united into one unconditional identity. His thought process does not consist in logical development, moving through abstract conclusions, but in dialectical development, emanating from the very essence of the subject. The object of thought, presented to the vision of the mind, is itself transformed from type to type, from concept to concept, constantly growing into its fullest meaning. The mind, peering into the subject of its thinking, discovers an internal contradiction in it, destroying the previous concept of it. This contradictory, negative concept, presenting itself to the mind, also reveals its inconsistency and reveals the necessity of a positive basis hidden in it, which thus already appears as a combination of positive and negative definitions into one complex (concrete). But this new concept, in turn, hardly appears to the mind in the form of the last result of awareness, when already in this claim to ultimate originality it exposes its inconsistency and reveals its negative side. This negative side again brings its positive side, which again undergoes the same modification process, until finally the entire circle of dialectical development of thought is completed, ascending from the first beginning of consciousness to the general and pure abstraction of thinking, which at the same time is also general essentiality. From here, in the same dialectical way, consciousness is filled with the entire development of being and thinking, as an identical phenomenon of one realized rationality and self-conscious essentiality. But, having expressed its last word, philosophical reason at the same time gave the mind the opportunity to recognize its limits. As a result of the yage of the dialectical process that served reason in the construction of its philosophy, this dialectical process itself was subjected to the same disintegrating view and appeared before rational consciousness as one negative side of knowledge, embracing only possible, and not actual, truth and requiring, to supplement itself, another thinking, not hypothetical, but positively conscious and standing as much higher than logical self-development as a real event is higher than simple possibility. This consciousness of the limitations and unsatisfactoriness of the latest expression of philosophical thinking now constitutes the highest degree of mental development of the West. This is not the opinion of some philosophical amateurs; not the cries of people who attack philosophy because of some extraneous interests; This is not even the judgment of people like Krause and Baader, who, with their philosophical profundity, largely helped the development of the latest philosophy, but did not have enough power over minds so that their protest against its unconditional truth could change the direction of philosophical development. They acted strongly in another field, which passes invisibly between science and life; but not one of them formed a special philosophical school 2. The one-sidedness and unsatisfactoriness of rational thinking and the latest philosophy, as its fullest manifestation, was recognized and expressed in obvious and irrefutable clarity by the same great thinker who first created the latter philosophy and elevated, according to Hegel, rational thinking from formal rationality to essential rationality. For the latest German philosophy belongs as much to Schelling as to Hegel. It was started by Schelling, approved by him on its new basis, developed by him in many separate parts, and introduced by him, together with Hegel, into the general consciousness of Germany. Hegel was long revered as a student and follower of Schelling. He is responsible for its most detailed development, embracing all branches of science and representing the complete roundness of a scientifically constructed system. That is why Schelling could so clearly recognize the limitations of this philosophy, because it was his own thought 3. Schelling's authority and the even more obvious justice of his view of the limitations of rational thinking apparently shook in Germany the unconditional trust in the conclusions of the latest wisdom and were one of the reasons for the cooling of minds towards philosophy. Of course, the Hegelians still remain and will remain for a long time, for the whole character of modern education sympathizes with their trend. But when thought, at the very peak of its development, has realized its inconsistency, then a new direction is already possible. The majority that makes up the crowd may remain in outdated beliefs for a long time; but the crowd’s conviction will not put the same fire of confidence into them. The famous Erdmann calls himself the last Mohican of Hegel's students. New philosophical celebrities are no longer visible—and they are hardly possible anymore. But Schelling’s latest system could not yet have a real effect on minds, because it combines two opposite sides, of which one is undoubtedly true, and the other is almost as undoubtedly false; the first is negative, showing the failure of rational thinking; the second is positive, outlining the construction of a new system. But these two sides do not have a necessary connection with each other and can be separated from one another, and will certainly be separated. Then the negative influence of Schelling's thinking will be even stronger. Convinced of the limitations of self-thinking and the necessity of Divine Revelation, stored in tradition, and at the same time of the necessity of living faith, as the highest rationality and essential element of knowledge, Schelling did not turn to Christianity, but moved to it naturally, as a result of the deep and correct development of his rational self-awareness; for in the fundamental depth of the human mind, in its very nature, lies the possibility of consciousness of its fundamental relationship to God. Only by breaking away from this essential depth, or not reaching it, can human thought spin in the abstract oblivion of its basic relationships. Schelling, by his innate genius and by the extraordinary development of his philosophical profundity, belonged to those creatures who are born not over centuries, but over millennia. But, striving for Divine Revelation, where could he find its pure expression, corresponding to his rational need for faith? – Having been a Protestant from birth, Schelling was, however, so sincere and conscientious in his inner convictions that he could not help but see the limitations of Protestantism, which rejected the tradition that was kept in the Roman Church, and often expressed this view of his; so for a long time there were rumors in Germany that Schelling had transferred to the Roman Church. But Schelling also clearly saw in the Roman Church the confusion of the true tradition with the untrue, the Divine with the human. The condition of a person who is tormented by an inner thirst for Divine truth and does not find a pure religion that could satisfy this all-pervading need must be difficult. He had only one thing left to do: with his own efforts, to extract and find from the mixed Christian tradition that which corresponded to his inner concept of Christian truth. It’s a miserable job to create a belief for yourself! Here he was guided not only by speculative considerations, of which he was so clearly aware of the insufficiency, but, in addition to the Holy Scriptures, he sought support for thought in the actual God-consciousness of all humanity, as long as it preserved the tradition of the primitive Divine Revelation to man. In the mythology of ancient peoples, he found traces of a distorted, but not lost Revelation. That essential relationship to God in which the first humanity found itself, breaking up into different species, in accordance with the ramifications of different nationalities, appeared in each nationality in a special limited form, and this special form of God-consciousness determined the very peculiarity of the nationality. But within all these more or less distorting restrictions, there remained unchanged features of the general essential character of Revelation. The agreement of these common internal and fundamental principles of each mythology with the basic principles of Christian tradition expressed for Schelling the pure truth of Divine Revelation. Such a view of the history of human beliefs could be very nourishing for Christian thought, if it had already stood on a solid foundation. But the uncertainty of preliminary conviction and, at the same time, the uncertainty of the internal meaning of mythology, subject to more or less arbitrary interpretation by the researcher, was the reason that Schelling’s Christian philosophy was neither Christian nor philosophy: it differed from Christianity in the most important dogmas, from philosophy in the very method of cognition. Moreover, demanding essential truth, based not on abstract speculation, but on thinking imbued with faith, Schelling did not pay attention to that special image of the internal activity of the mind, which constitutes a necessary accessory of believing thinking. For the image of rational activity changes depending on the degree to which reason ascends. Although the mind is one, and its nature is one, its modes of action are different, as well as its conclusions, depending on the degree at which it is located and what force moves and acts on it. For this driving and animating force does not come from the thought that is before the mind, but from the innermost state of the mind it proceeds to the thought in which it finds its peace and through which it is already communicated to other rational individuals. This inner nature of the mind usually escapes the attention of Western thinkers. Accustomed to abstract logical thinking, where all knowledge depends on the formal development of the subject of thought and where all meaning is absorbed by the expressible side of thought, they do not pay attention to that internal power of the mind, which in objects of living knowledge, which surpasses the formality of logical coherence, makes the movement of thinking, constantly accompanies it, floats, so to speak, over the expression of thought and imparts to it a meaning that is inconceivable by external definition, and results independent of the external form. Therefore, in the writings of the Holy Fathers, Schelling looked for expressions of theological dogmas, but did not appreciate their speculative concepts about reason and the laws of higher knowledge. For this reason, the positive side of his system, not having the internal character of believing thinking, although it found little sympathy in Germany, can find it even less in Russia. For Russia can be carried away by the logical systems of foreign philosophies, which are still new to it; but for the wisdom of the believer, it is stricter than other lands of Europe, having high examples of spiritual thinking in the ancient Holy Fathers and in the great spiritual writings of all times, not excluding the present. For this reason, the negative side of Schelling’s system, which embraces the inconsistency of rational thinking, can hardly be so impartially assessed in Germany, which is akin to its own abstract and logical thinking, as in Russia, where, after the first, youthful infatuation with a foreign system, a person can more freely return to essential rationality, especially when this essential rationality agrees with his historical originality. Therefore, I think that German philosophy, together with the development that it received in Schelling’s latest system, can serve for us as the most convenient stage of thinking from borrowed systems to independent wisdom, corresponding to the basic principles of ancient Russian education and capable of subordinating the divided education of the West to the integral consciousness of the believing mind. It is remarkable that the Moravian Brethren, whose doctrine, for the most part, was changed by the influence of Protestant confessions, are still, alone, Halibeus cannot be included in the category of philosophers who are opposed to the latest trend in philosophy. For although its principles at the very foundation are somewhat at odds with Hegel’s view of the general laws of reason, these disagreements do not take him out of the sphere of rational abstract thinking. Gerres, who was one of the most famous followers of Schelling and passed from philosophy to faith, also could not have an influence on the general development of the mind, because his transition was not due to the correct development of consciousness, but due to his personal characteristics and extraneous influences. Hegel in his history of philosophy indicates some differences between his system and Schelling’s; but these differences belong to that period of Schelling’s philosophy, when his thinking had already begun to take a different direction, which, incidentally, Hegel himself mentions. The only difference between Schelling's first system and Hegel's system lies in the way the main idea is presented. For that internal contradiction of thought, which Schelling represents in the combined manifestation of two polarities and their identity, in Hegel appears in the consistent movement of consciousness from one definition of thought to the opposite. As for mental contemplation, which Schelling spoke about and which did not fit into Hegel’s system, it does not have significant significance in Schelling’s first system either. Schelling mentions it, but does not develop it. It was only a premonition of the future direction of his thoughts. You might be interested in: