Fundamentals of Christianity. Volume IV. System of Religious Thought. Christian freedom

Volume I * Volume II * Volume III * Volume V The subject of this volume is the question of Christianity’s attitude to life in the fullness of its natural demands and historical development, to modern family, social, and state tasks. This issue is resolved here according to the principle of Christian freedom - the freedom of the absolute religious spirit from the conventions of historical forms and the freedom of natural-historical life from the external claims of religious authority. Natural-historical life, revealed in the tasks of family, social and national ones, appears to me in the form of a system of circles embracing a single center - personal religious creativity, where the natural-historical plane, moving within the boundaries of conditional development, falls into the depths of absolute aspirations. The innermost of these circles, adjacent to the central sphere, is morality, one side turned to internal absoluteness and the other to social-utilitarian convention: it serves as a connecting link between the Christian religion and socio-historical convention. A free religion must be based on free natural-historical development - this first of all means that religious absoluteness must be clothed in moral and cultural clothing. Therefore, the central idea of ​​a free spirit and free flesh is expressed in a more concrete image of ethical religion. On this path, two extremes meet - historical asceticism and immoral aestheticism, equally far from our idea: absolute love for God must become a real force in love for man, and this connects religion with social life. But, on the other hand, social-utilitarian tasks should not plunder all the spiritual strength of a person; they should give place to the personal-religious absoluteness of the spirit, which gives the highest justification to life. To free spiritual religion from its symbolic shell and introduce it into living life - this is our task. The principle of Christian freedom leads into the depths of personal religion - not because the theory of freedom of spirit and freedom of the flesh is a personal theory, although extracted from the fundamental principles of Christianity, but completely alien to modern consciousness, but because this principle can be realized only in the sphere of personal religion, personal absoluteness. Nevertheless, I do not assert the decisive independence of personal spiritual religion from the historical Christian worldview: here there is a general law of religious development, the law of the relationship of the personally progressive religious principle to the socio-historical conservative principle. Personal religion not only replaces the historical-social worldview, but is connected with it by the relationship of antithesis to the historically superficial and deepening to the eternally true... Types of religious and moral life One of the most important tasks of modern theology is the review of the actual forms of human life in their relation to the moral law, the study of the real conditions of life by which the moral ideal is limited and in which the moral ideal is realized, the assessment of real life - not in individual manifestations, which are in charge of the preacher, but in general forms and types - according to moral norms. This task, as its integral part, includes the study of religious and moral types. The sources for studying religious and moral types are personal observation, history, psychology, morally descriptive and accusatory writing and fine literature. A Russian theologian should take advantage of fine literature with special attention, because Russian fiction is a gratifying phenomenon in our life, the highest fruit of Russian creativity. This is the work of the Russian genius, chaste, thoughtful, truthful, mystically sublime and warmed with compassionate love for the toiling and the downtrodden. It has high epistemological value on religious and moral issues. The union of theology with Russian literature should bring valuable fruits. Religion, in its most general concept, is the moral relationship of the finite to the infinite, the earthly to the heavenly, the human to the divine. According to whether the predominance of the earthly, human, or the heavenly, divine is manifested in this respect, all religious and moral types fall into two groups. The first group - with the nature of the predominance of the earthly, human - includes two types of religious and moral life. The first of these is the type of people who, in a religious mood with varying degrees of strength, sometimes very significant, live an entirely worldly life, in the fullness of its passions, interests and goals. Religion in their life is one of the valuable means of achieving earthly goals, satisfying human passions - a means that is valuable especially because it is considered valid in those cases when all earthly means are powerless, and to which people with a strong will resort only when their own hands give up, and people are lazy even when simply labor, skill and patience would be enough. Such religious and moral life is closely familiar to the Russian observer. Andrey Pechersky (P.I. Melnikov) in interesting and truthful essays reproduces this life “In the Forests”, this freedom of Old Believer piety. With brilliant colors he paints before us the manifestations of this piety, the whole atmosphere of incense, earnest genuflection and genuflection before the icons of ancient writing, jealous observance of the traditions of the elders; here people truly enjoy the church splendor, the decorous outpost services, the shine of icons and chandeliers, the bluish clouds of incense; here they observe piety, value it, protect themselves from everything that defiles, and most of all from communication with people who are alien to ancient piety. But under this transparent veil of statutory orderliness, the passions of the heart rage and bubble in primitive incontinence, in widespread revelry: “gluttony, drunken drinking, gluttony, intemperance,” hatred, envy, ambition, love of money. Here “sin and salvation live as neighbors.” Patap Maksimych Chapurin appears before us as a typical representative of such a life. Not being a “hardened fanatic” of the Old Believers, he “passionately loved church splendor,” he had a prayer room in his house, his own canon, he was a “zealous” trustee of the chapel; he forces his daughters to sing his favorite troparia to the Epiphany almost all day long, donates a lot to the monasteries, and the monastery where his sister rules is maintained at his expense. But even more than that, Patap Maksimych loved to eat deliciously and plentifully, drink copiously, and please his sinful flesh; He passionately loved wide honor and wealth. He conducts a wide commercial business, is immersed in it to the marrow of his bones, and wants more and more. He dreams of a stone house in St. Petersburg, in front of which passers-by would stop in surprise, of medals, crosses, uniforms, close acquaintance with ministers, generals, colonels; he dreams of great fame and even personal fame for the Red Sun himself. He is despotic, arrogant, obstinate. There is a lot of dirt in his soul. He, in his own words, is “a blessed man” on the outside, but “tottering in misery” on the inside. By what kind of union are sincere piety and earthly passion united in his soul and on what basis?... Piety is useful and pleasant for him. So he stuck to the “old fashioned” because his friendships and acquaintance with rich merchants were maintained by the schism, and there was more credit from the schism. And besides, during his absences from home, in foreign places, living in schismatic houses was more free and calm for him. Wherever he goes, he goes to a little-known dissenter as if he were his own. They will reassure him in every possible way, save everything, preserve everything and please everyone. And it flattered Patap Maksimych that, after his parent, he was the trustee of the Gorodets chapel and for this he received great honor from the chapel society. And Chapurin loved honor and especially church honor. It flattered his pride when, being in that chapel for the service, he stood in front of everyone, the first to approach the kiss of the Gospel or the cross, to receive from the fugitive priest on Epiphany Christmas Eve the first jug of Epiphany water, on Palm Matins the first willow, on Bright Resurrection the first candle. Serving God gave him pleasure, which stood on a par with other earthly pleasures. So he had a “good day”, happy, successful, which brought him into a pleasant mood. And there was something to rejoice at: I received a new order, the debt was paid off, I bought wheat at a profit, I survived Vespers, I saw a new priest in the ministry, I got my daughter in marriage at a profit. Chapurin puts every good deed under this single standard. “It is a great sin before God to drive a loved one out of the house,” he told his wife regarding her drunkard brother. Disgraceful from people, submissive to family and tribe! This is not the case with good people. Thank God it won’t eat us.” In addition, he hoped to make him into a good person by sobering him up. “The prayer of a beggar reaches God,” his wife tells him. “Give for Nastya, so that the Lord will send her a good husband.” In the environment in which Patan Maksimych lived, there was an undoubted conviction that prayer, and not only one’s own prayer, but even the purchased prayer of others, greatly assists a person in achieving afterlife bliss and even in earthly affairs, regardless of their moral value. Patap Maksimych loved to donate to monasteries; Only he remembered not only the afterlife, but believed in temporary reward. From the story of Job, who sat on the dunghill, what most attracted his attention was that “God gave him more than before.” The second type is the type of people who have transferred all their passion and interests to the area of ​​religion, in which they see their department, their destiny, their service. A person of the second religious-moral type has no interests outside of religion, but in religion he has nothing except his personal interests, his passions. This man heard the calling of God and, leaving Chaldea, everyday life, moved to Palestine, to church services, to the spiritual department, but like Rachel, he brought here his idols, which he continues to worship in a new place. This is an altar server who, living at the church, brought his belongings and his habits here and settled here and feels at home; this is a priest who, caring for the idol, cleaning it and changing clothes and jewelry on it, has become accustomed to it, realizes its helplessness and his importance for it, and in the absence of witnesses familiarly pats it on the shoulder; he is a soothsayer who knows that the power of the oracle is in his own mind. The main religious and moral direction of this kind of people is determined by the conviction that God’s work is accomplished by human strength, the mind of people, their skill, dexterity, and ingenuity. In the depths of their souls lies disbelief in God’s ways, distrust of God’s mind and His providence. They are proud of their importance for the cause of faith, they are afraid that without their conscious efforts, special institutions and actions, it will perish; they do not believe in the freedom of people, in their disposition to goodness, they see in goodness not a self-sufficient good, but only the law, they do not understand that in the kingdom of God the human spirit is light and joyful, that an atmosphere free from the torment of brotherly anger, from the impurities of depravity, from the torment of revenge and external resistance to evil, an atmosphere of love, forgiveness, blessings of enemies, prayers for persecutors, that this atmosphere brings bliss to our spirit, what is worth just bring the one chosen by the Heavenly Father into contact with His kingdom and he will be irresistibly drawn towards it, and those who are not called by no means cannot be made sons of God, that a person needs, first of all, freedom from his own sin and external violence. Representatives of this type of people must be sought, as it goes without saying, among the bearers of church authority. This type of F.M. is presented magnificently, with exceptional relief, color and depth. Dostoevsky in The Grand Inquisitor. The Lord Jesus Christ founded the kingdom of God on the principle expressed in victory over temptations from the devil in the wilderness, on the principle of the free pursuit of the chosen and called to the kingdom of the spirit. “Do you see,” the tempter said to Him in the desert, “do you see these stones in this naked and hot desert? Turn them into bread and humanity will run after You, like a flock, grateful and obedient, although forever trembling that You will withdraw Your hand and Your bread will cease for them.” But He did not want to deprive a person of freedom and rejected the offer, for what kind of freedom, He reasoned, if obedience is bought with bread. In the name of free love and free faith of man, He also rejected those forces - miracle, mystery and authority, with which He could forever defeat and captivate the conscience of people. He rejected the devil’s offer to throw himself down from the wing of the church so that the angels would pick him up and carry Him and not let Him fall to the ground and hurt himself; He longed for a free faith, not a miraculous one; he thirsted for free love, and not for the slavish raptures of a slave before the power that had horrified him once and for all. Finally, in the name of the same freedom of spirit, He rejected the tempter’s proposal to conquer people and unite them with external power, royal authority, and establish a world monarchy. – But freedom of spirit is available only to a select few. Thousands and tens of thousands follow the Lord in the name of heavenly bread, believe without a miracle and live in freedom of spirit; but millions, tens of thousands of millions of weak-willed and weak-willed cannot neglect earthly bread for heavenly bread, cannot believe without miracle and mystery, cannot unite without external authority, cannot distinguish between good and evil without the yoke of law, cannot live in freedom of conscience without external authority. And the “Grand Inquisitor” was in the desert, eating locusts and roots, blessing the freedom given by the Lord, and was already preparing to become one of His chosen ones, one of the mighty and strong with a thirst to “replenish the number.” But He woke up and did not want to serve madness. He returned and joined the host of those who corrected His deed. He left the proud and returned to the humble for the happiness of the humble. He wants the salvation and happiness of all tens of thousands of millions. They can achieve peace of conscience and serene happiness only in the shackles of the strictest external discipline, slavish obedience to external authority. The bearer of such church power is the “Grand Inquisitor” before us. His meeting with the Lord who appeared on earth forms an amazing picture in the poem. Fifteen centuries later, the Lord wished to visit His children even for a moment; and now, out of His immeasurable mercy, He passes again among people in the same human form in which He walked among people for thirty-three years. He descends on the “hot hundreds” of the southern city (Seville), just in which just the day before, in a “magnificent auto-da-fé”, in the presence of the king, the court, knights, cardinals and the most beautiful court ladies, with the large population of all Seville, almost a hundred heretics were burned at once by the cardinal, the Grand Inquisitor ad majorem gloriam Dei. He appeared quietly, imperceptibly, but everyone recognizes Him. The people are drawn to Him by an invincible force, surround Him, grow around Him, follow Him. He silently walks among them with a quiet smile of infinite compassion. The sun of love burns in his heart, rays of light, enlightenment and strength flow from his eyes and, pouring out on people, shake their hearts with reciprocal love. He stretches out His hands to them, blesses them, and from touching Him, even just His clothes, healing power emanates. He heals the blind, raises the dead. There was confusion among the people, screams, sobs, and now, at this very moment, the cardinal himself, the Grand Inquisitor, suddenly walked across the square. This is an almost ninety-year-old man, tall and straight, with a withered face, with sunken eyes, but from which a shine still glows like a fiery spark. He is followed at a certain distance by his gloomy assistants and slaves and the “sacred” guard. He stops in front of the crowd and watches from afar. He saw everything, he saw the resurrection of the deceased, and his face darkened. He frowns his thick gray eyebrows and his gaze sparkles with an ominous fire. He stretches out his finger and tells the guards to take that man. And so, such is his power and the people are so accustomed, submissive and reverently obedient to him that the crowd immediately moves aside in front of the guards and they, amid the deathly silence that suddenly sets in, lay hands on Him and take Him to prison. The crowd instantly, all as one person, bows their heads to the ground before the elder inquisitor: he silently blesses the people and passes by. At night he visits the Captive and confesses to him those principles that hold, animate and comprehend his power over the people. He takes credit for the fact that they fought for freedom and did it in order to make people happy. They proceed from the conviction that people are weak, vicious, insignificant, rebels and cannot live in freedom; but they want to save and make all people happy. They gave them bread - their own bread was divided among them, like slaves - bread that in freedom they would not have divided among themselves, they would have cut themselves off because of it and it would have become a stone in their hands. They have created a secret for people and dominate their conscience with the yoke of law, strict discipline, and the authority of power. The Inquisitor confesses with complete frankness to the Captive that they are not with Him, but with His tempter, that they are deceiving the people in His name and that this deception causes them suffering, but he is carried away by a clearly defined goal. “People,” he says, will become timid and will begin to look at us and cling to us in fear, like chicks to a hen. They will tremble in relaxation at our anger, their minds will become timid, their eyes will become teary, like those of children and women, but just as easily, at our behest, they will move to fun and laughter, bright joy and a happy children's song. We will force them to work, but in the hours free from work we will organize their life like a child’s game, with children’s songs, choirs, and innocent dances. We will allow them to sin, for they are weak and powerless, and they will love us like children because we allow them to sin. We will tell them that every sin will be atoned for if it is done with our permission. And they will not have any secrets from us. We will allow or forbid them to live with their wives and mistresses, to have or not to have children, and they will submit to us with joy and joy. The most painful secrets of their conscience - they will bring everything to us, and we will resolve everything, and they will believe our decision with joy, because it will save them from the great concern and terrible torment of making a personal and free decision. And everyone will be happy, all the millions of beings, except for the hundreds of thousands who control them. For only we, we who keep the secret, only we will be unhappy. There will be thousands of millions of happy babies, and a hundred thousand sufferers who have taken upon themselves the curse of the knowledge of good and evil. They will die quietly, they will quietly fade away in Your name, and beyond the grave they will find only death.” By the clarity of consciousness with which the Grand Inquisitor stands in alliance with the tempter of the Lord and with which he moves towards his goals, and by the suffering that this consciousness brings him, he can be recognized as a fantastic person: he appears before us on dimensions too grandiose to be suitable for life. Rather, we meet in life such inquisitors who, deceiving others, deceive themselves and therefore are complacent and do not suffer. But these grandiose dimensions of the phenomenon illuminate a lot in life: we only have to continue our straight lines, usually short, we only have to understand the principles that guide the petty inquisitors, imagine the activities of the latter on a larger scale, and we will see who they are with, with the Lord or His enemies. The second group consists of those types of religious and moral life in which the divine either outwardly prevails over the human, not giving him freedom of life and development, or internally takes possession of him, freely penetrates him, accepting him for service in the fullness of his natural life and development. It is easy to understand that this group also combines two types. And so she again crushes him with her weight, binds him with the shackles of her needs - and he is defeated. Mystical faith gives content to his mind, slightly affects his feeling and does not reach his will. It is too intellectual, subtle and weak to take possession of his entire being, direct his activities, determine his life - without work it becomes dead, it degenerates into the lifeless pursuit of theology. But he, a man of this dead faith, experienced sacred delight, looked for a precious pearl, and found it, and went and sold all his property to buy it, but, having bought it, buried it in the ground: so his mine did not bring profit. He built his house on the sand; and the rain fell, and the rivers overflowed, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and he fell, and his fall was great. The type of religious and moral life under consideration is more complex than others - if not in its internal content, then in any case in that it allows for development more than other types. This development is directed from one-sided asceticism to the intellectual lifelessness of dead faith. The image of the first is presented with remarkable truthfulness by I. N. Potapenko in the person of Grigory Lozovsky (“Living Life”), and the image of the second is masterfully personified by A. F. Pisemsky in the person of Yegor Yegorych Marfin, one of the “Masons”. Grigory Lozovsky, the hero of Potapenko’s novel, although he seemed like a mysterious creature to those around him, in the author’s depiction he appears to us as a rather transparent - simple and consistent character. In the depths of his self-awareness there are two characteristic foundations - hatred of people, combined with contempt, and pride. Lozovsky hates people. They, in his opinion, are not worth the trouble with them. He would have remained indifferent if they had all been slaughtered before his eyes. His hatred is based on contempt for people. He despises them for their stupidity and narrow-mindedness. Already at school he felt superior to others, he could not place himself alongside his comrades: “they all, like most people, have flat heads.” At the same time, he did not believe in free, disinterested good: “people are evil and selfish. If they do good, it is either out of vanity or in the hope of gratitude. Everything that people do stems from the crudest, narrowest, selfish motives. Good exists only in theory, evil in practice.” In particular, he did not like women: he considered them inferior creatures. Another main trait of Lozovsky is pride. This is primarily his pride in relation to other people whom he despises; then it is the pride of the spirit in relation to the despicable and base flesh. He seeks loneliness and believes happiness lies in having as little contact with people as possible. He does not accept benefits from people in order to feel free. He even denies friendship. “Friendship is a manifestation of weakness of spirit; she is the property of ordinary average people. The ideal of an exalted soul is loneliness. There is nothing higher than loneliness; only in him the spirit renounces vulgarity and becomes close to the deity - he himself becomes a deity.” Therefore, Lozovsky found special pleasure in living in the cemetery. Here he found solitude and, at the same time, food for his contempt for people. “If,” he told his comrade, Gleb Shchedrotov, “I ever have the power to control my personality, I will certainly settle in the cemetery. I'll build a house right in the center, among the graves and monuments, and I'll have a lot of fun. And every time a new dead person is brought to the cemetery, I will celebrate this event, I will throw a feast in honor of the fact that there is one less meager existence on earth.” Treating people with contempt, Lozovsky treated his body with extreme disrespect: “it only burdens the spirit and pulls it down.” He would like to be a non-man - a spirit, that pure spirit that knows neither weakness nor concessions - a free and great spirit. His ideal is not to be an animal, not to be an animal at all, and to carry it out to the smallest detail. He believes true happiness lies in spiritual self-improvement; His last goal is to calm down and indulge in contemplation. It is solely out of pride, pride and desire for freedom that Lozovsky dreams of becoming a monk. “A monk is a free being. He is isolated from the world and comes into contact with it only externally, he is hostile to the world, he looks at the world from the height of his loneliness, from the height of his purity and impeccability. Monasticism is a form of loneliness.” His love for Valentina played a prominent role in Lozovsky’s life. It was not normal love; he himself rightly called it madness, insanity. To the same extent that he hated people, despised the flesh, despised women, he hated Valentina and at the same time he was drawn to her by a wild elemental force. For him, love was tantamount to a loss of power over oneself, a fall from the heights of spirit, and demonic possession. He loved Valentina and together took revenge on her for his humiliation, for the fact that she pushed him from heaven to earth, mocked her and was repeatedly going to kill her and himself. Two wild animals came together in this love. Convinced from his relationship with Valentina that there is an animal inside him, that he is “not given” to live in perfect purity, Lozovsky, however, does not want to give in to his nature, he wants to achieve complete liberation, even if for this “he had to destroy himself. I, he said, have a terrible nature! There is so much base, animal, dirty in it, it is so contrary to all my aspirations, my ideal; she pulls me down. But I won't follow her. She wants to destroy my spiritual side, but no, I’d rather destroy it.” For this purpose, he covers the fire bubbling in his chest with monastic robes; Having settled in the cemetery in complete solitude, he killed himself with hunger and cold. Gleb Shchedrotov may have been wrong when he told Lozovsky that his spiritual height was simple self-pleasure, simple gymnastics of an idle mind; but there is no doubt that Lozovsky, in the fight against his wild passion, did not experience one means - a feat for his neighbor, for a living suffering person, for a living life. Yegor Egorych Marfin was very short in stature, with his face proudly raised upward, with blue eyes also thrown up to the heavens, and with small antennae sticking out like a cockroach's - as if he was all trying to fly away somewhere into the heights. He was a Freemason, that is, he set the goal of his life to organize and purify the inner man, moral improvement and perception of Christ through prayer, fasting, wisdom, wisdom reading and wisdom conversation. Reducing all dogmas to the gospel, he shied away from “official (as he put it) Orthodoxy,” because he did not find room in it for his mysticism. His Freemasonry was sincere; possessing an innate kindness and almost endless natural kindness, he sincerely strove for spiritual perfection, wanted to be an ascetic, tirelessly practiced mental work, and with deep attention and complete love studied and explained Masonic symbols and rituals. What is smart doing? “It, as Yegor Yegorych himself explains, strives to bring the dark fire of life out of the light of the external world into the light of the divine world. But since we know the external things of the world: first, through the external light in which we see them; second, through the sounds with which they speak to us, and through the bodily movements that connect them with us, then to distract all this, darkness, silence and one’s own silence are necessary; and therefore, when starting mental work, we must lock ourselves in a quiet and dark cell, silently, and remain in it in a motionless position, sitting or lying down. Therefore, the most intelligent work is carried out in seven degrees, corresponding to seven types of nature: of these seven degrees or types, three are dark, in which our fiery spirit is still only striving for heavenly light, one type is transitional and the last three are higher. In particular, these seven types and degrees of mental activity are as follows: having abstracted from the multiplicity of feelings, thoughts and desires, one must collect and concentrate all the power of the spirit in the area of ​​the heart. Auxiliary means for this are: holding your breath (nostril breathing), while mentally repeating the Jesus Prayer. This is called compression of the spirit; This compression turns into an internal impetuous movement, expressed by an increased heartbeat. In such a movement, the spirit, not being able to get out of itself, falls into languor. But the yearning of the spirit for the heavenly light brings this latter closer to us; when it comes into contact with our spirit, a shock or shock occurs, otherwise called heavenly lightning. This is a transition or breakthrough from a dark area to a light one. Here our being is introduced into the heavenly essence, which reveals itself as divine warmth, followed by heavenly sweetness, the sensation of which is not accompanied by any passionate longing and any movements in the body; the last degree is the vision of heavenly light and divine images.” As has already been said, Yegor Yegorych devoted himself intensely to smart work. Those incidents in life that call people to energetic activity usually gave him a reason to immerse himself in smart work. All his relationships with people passed through the prism of mysticism and therefore in all cases they were uniformly refracted and received the same color. From early youth he took his nephew Chentsov under his protection and energetically surrounded him with his instructions and reprimands, until Chentsov’s mother scolded him with the most disgusting and insulting words and even asked him to spare him from her visits; after her death, he hastened to make peace with his nephew and indulged in an ardent desire to enlighten him with Freemasonry, but Chentsov gave him a scandal, however, he used his pocket and in the end tragically ended his life. – Having fallen in love with the eldest of the three Ryzhov sisters, Lyudmila, he wanted to initiate her more than anyone else into the mystery of Hermetic philosophy, dreamed of arranging her marriage according to the strict rules of Masonic morality, but she, giving herself over to the depraved Chentsov, ended her years prematurely. Then turning his special attention to his second sister, Susanna, Yegor Yegorych lovingly initiates her into the secrets of Freemasonry; he takes her to a church decorated with Masonic signs and solemnly explains to her their meaning: “under the dome, he interpreted, there is an all-seeing eye with the inscription: illuxisti obscurum - you enlightened the darkness! And under this window there is a circle sine fine without end”... He writes her letters about verbal, mental, contemplative prayer, sends her soul-saving books, compiles extracts from Masonic works for her, he wanted to see in her a Mason who knows how to practice smart work. Susanna, being a “nervous-spiritual substance,” and partly due to existing family circumstances, turned out to be susceptible to the secrets of Freemasonry. Having achieved complete success in this regard, Yegor Yegorych married her. But it was a marriage of the spirit. However, Susanna, despite her spirituality and strict morality, was not at all a dry and callous creature and could not limit her wishes to the sphere of Freemasonry alone. And before his death, Yegor Yegorych had to admit that he had eaten up Susanna’s youth and entire life. Such were the relations of Yegor Yegorych to those closest to him. But has he at least achieved personal perfection, inner well-being? He knew how not to show anger, but pride, despondency and sadness constantly nested in his soul. “I’m evil, I’m impatient! Where is my spiritual self-education? He doesn’t have a penny in me! he said to himself. Aglaya (“The Ninth Wave” by G. P. Danilevsky) and Liza Kalitina (“The Nest of Nobles” by I. S. Turgenev) belong to the same type and occupy the middle place between the considered images. Let us now move on to the fourth and final type of religious and moral life. This life represents the internal and free penetration of the divine principle into the boundaries and forms of human existence, the harmonious combination of the heavenly and the human, the realization of the divine will in the conditions and laws of human existence, the actual service of human life to the divine content. This life is created by double love - firstly, love for spiritual blessings, for heavenly purity, for eternal spiritual divine life, and secondly, love for earthly life, starting with one’s own thirst for life and ending with love for all its manifestations, all its bearers - love for “sticky leaves that bloom in spring,” the blue sky, human feats, love for children, for their joys, pity for their suffering, love for everyone to sufferers, humiliated and despised - love for the face of the person you meet, for his speech, smile, individual love, always active. The duality of this love constitutes its strength and makes it possible that earthly life is cleansed of that which is contrary to the love of the divine, contrary to spiritual bliss, from brotherly anger, from the heavy nightmare of debauchery, self-isolated and self-righteous pride, contempt - it is cleansed precisely by the power of love, but then earthly life in all its conditional forms, in all its visible humiliation, becomes an instrument of the divine will. The humiliation of earthly life, its limitations are united with divine blessings, because divine life is not an outwardly majestic life, a formidable and unapproachable glory, but an invisible spiritual life, it is united with earthly humiliation, with the forms of human existence as internal content - united by the power of faith. This religious and moral life is created by love, which is promoted by the power of faith, and by faith, which acts by love - that faith which contemplates the creative power of God in the sticky leaves that bloom in spring, which, under the rough appearance of poverty and ignorance, sees a God-like soul, from which even the ugliness of vice and the filth of crime do not hide God’s creation, a spark of divine light. Stop by picking up a stone Perhaps in dirty poverty Burns like a candle in the dark! Perhaps a victim of delusion Rare moments available When she executes her life And he cries, breaking his heart, How I cried before the doors of heaven For the first time fallen man... In this type of religious and moral life, the Spirit of God, which in those days hovered over the primeval chaos, descends into the forms of life developed by the creative power of God from this chaos, clothes itself in them, penetrates into all the streets, alleys, paths and hedges of human life, everywhere bringing warmth and light, truth and righteousness, leading everything with love to the service of God. Here man serves God in the natural relationships of earthly life, as the son of a depraved father, as the brother of an unfortunate criminal, as the father of a poor family, serving the Lord Jesus in the dark slums of poverty, disease and crime, giving food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, receiving strangers, visiting the unfortunate in prisons and hospitals, serving all the lesser brothers of Christ. This is a life of real faith and active love. Here we see the righteous in the occupations of a farmer, a tent maker, a fisherman, a minister; here we see the feats of giving a cold cup of water to a poor wanderer, washing the wound of one who fell into the hands of robbers, caring for children, teaching these little ones, serving science, art, deeds of serving truth and goodness in those actual conditions and forms in which humanity lives.... This service cannot be performed in the name of Christ without prayer, without the grace-filled help of the church and without ascetic deeds. But the fact is that in people of active Christian love, ascetic pacification of the flesh is not considered a self-sufficient perfection, but serves only as a condition for spiritual life, that in prayer and church grace they seek strength for active love, for active service to people, that for them ritual worship and church improvement are dear as symbols of active service to God, as a means of cultivating active love and vital faith. To depict the type of such religious and moral life is such a majestic and grandiose task that it could only be accomplished by such a genius, deeply religious and believer as F. M. Dostoevsky, the immortal creator of this type in the person of Alyosha Karamazov. Alyosha Karamazov is the son of a depraved father and a holy fool, the brother of Ivan Karamazov, a convinced self-lover, and Dmitry, who leads a dissolute and stupid life. He appears before us at the age of twenty, in monastic garb. He was not at all a fanatic or even a mystic. He was simply an early lover of humanity, and if he hit the monastery road, it was only because at that time it alone struck him and presented to him, so to speak, the ideal outcome of his soul, which was rushing from the darkness of worldly malice to the light of love. And this road struck him only because on it he then met an extraordinary creature, in his opinion, the famous monastery elder Zosima, to whom he became attached with the ardent first love of his insatiable heart. He was truly a wonderful old man. The author portrays him to us with unusually attractive features. His image makes your heart feel warm, joyful and tender. Filled with love for everyone, he took other people's needs to heart, was approachable and easily penetrated someone else's soul. He instructed his listeners to pray for all people and especially love. “Brothers, do not be afraid of the sin of people, love a person even in his sin, for this similarity to divine love is the height of love on earth. Love all of God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of God. Love animals, love plants, love everything. You will love every thing, and you will comprehend the mystery of God in things. Once you comprehend it, you will tirelessly begin to understand it more and more, every day. And you will finally love the whole world with complete, universal love... My friends, ask God for joy. Be cheerful like children, like birds of heaven. And do not let the sin of people bother you in your work; do not be afraid that it will overshadow your work and prevent it from being completed. Flee this despondency... Remember especially that you cannot be anyone’s judge. For there cannot be a judge of a criminal on earth until the judge himself recognizes that he is just as much a criminal as the one standing before him, and that he may be guilty above all others for the crime of the one standing before him.” Alyosha fell in love with the old man and became attached to him. From this love, some deep, fiery inner delight flared up more and more in his heart. It did not bother him at all that this old man still stood alone before him: “All the same, he is light, in his heart is the secret of renewal for everyone, that power that will finally establish truth on earth and everyone will be holy and will love each other, and there will be no rich, no exalted, no humiliated, but everyone will be like children of God and the real kingdom of Christ will come.” This is what Alyosha’s heart dreamed about. A beloved disciple of his elder, Alyosha loved people: he seemed to live all his life completely believing in people, and yet no one ever considered him a simpleton or a naive person. There was something in him that said and inspired (and throughout his life afterwards) that he did not want to be a judge of people, that he would not want to take judgment upon himself and would not condemn anyone for anything. It even seemed that he allowed everything, without condemning him at all, although he was often very bitterly sad. Moreover, in this sense he reached such a point that no one could surprise or confuse him, and this even in his earliest youth. Appearing in his twentieth year to his father (he was brought up among strangers), positively in a den of dirty debauchery, he, chaste and pure, only silently walked away when it was unbearable to look, but without the slightest appearance of contempt or condemnation to anyone. His father, who was once a hanger-on, and therefore a sensitive and subtle person to take offense, at first greeted him distrustfully and gloomily, soon ended up hugging and kissing him terribly often, no more than two weeks later, however, with drunken tears, in drunken sensitivity, but it is clear that having loved him sincerely and deeply and in a way that, of course, no one like him had ever been able to love. The most characteristic thing about Alyosha Karamazov was precisely that his love was always active; he could not love passively; having loved, he immediately began to help. This was a young man who was honest by nature, loving the truth in words, demanding truth in life, seeking and believing in it, and, having believed, demanding immediate participation in it with all the strength of his soul, demanding a quick feat, with an indispensable desire to at least sacrifice everything for this feat, even his life. As soon as he, having thought seriously, was struck by the conviction that immortality and God exist, he immediately naturally said to himself: “I want to live for immortality, but I don’t accept a half-compromise.” It even seemed strange and impossible for Alyosha to live as before. It is said: “Give everything away and follow Me if you want to be perfect”; Alyosha said to himself: “I can’t give only two rubles instead, and instead of “follow Me,” I can only go to mass.” True, at first this feat seemed to Alyosha precisely in the form of a sacrifice of his whole life - “after all, such young men do not understand that the sacrifice of life is, perhaps, the easiest of all sacrifices in many such cases, and that to sacrifice, for example, five or six years of one’s ebullient youth of life for difficult, difficult studies (Alyosha did not finish the gymnasium course of his own free will), for science, if only in order to increase his strength tenfold for serving the same truth and the same feat that he loved and which he proposed to accomplish - such a sacrifice is often almost completely beyond the strength of many of them.” But the loving, deeply religious and insightful elder Zosima gave the true direction to Alyosha’s enthusiastic asceticism. He constantly sends Alyosha from the monastery to the city to his father, to his brothers, demanding that he go there, perform a feat of love there. Not only that; the elder blessed him and completely left the monastery to live in the world. “You are needed there more. And know, son (the elder liked to call him that), that in the future there is no place for you here. Remember this, young man. As soon as God deigns to repose with me, leave the monastery. Just go. This is not your place yet. I bless you for great obedience in the world. You still have a long way to go. And you will have to get married, you must. You will have to endure everything until you arrive again. And there will be a lot to do. But I don’t doubt you, that’s why I’m sending you. Christ is with you. Keep Him and He will keep you. You will see great grief and in this grief you will be happy. Here’s a behest for you: look for happiness in grief.” And indeed, soon after the death of the elder we see Alyosha in the clothes of a layman. At the grave of his beloved elder, Alyosha experienced a strong revolution in his religious views, which was very significant for his new life in the world. With the exception of a few of his opponents from the monastery brethren, everyone, both laymen and monks, loved the elder greatly and, most importantly, got used to considering him, even during his lifetime, as an undoubted and great saint. At his grave they expected an immediate manifestation of miraculous power; The body of the deceased was surrounded not only by crowds of curious people, but many even took their sick people with them, hoping to receive healing for them. The sedate and judicious Father Paisius, one of the deceased elder’s close associates, tried to contain such impatient expectations of the believers. “Such and such immediate expectation of something great,” he told the monks, is frivolity, possible only among secular people, but inappropriate for us.” But few listened to him. And he himself, although he was indignant at the overly impatient expectations and found frivolity and vanity in them, secretly to himself, in the depths of his soul, he was waiting for almost the same thing as these excited ones, which he could not help but admit to himself. Alyosha shared the same beliefs; the conviction that his elder, upon death, would bring extraordinary glory to the monastery reigned in his soul, perhaps even stronger than that of anyone else in the monastery. But from the coffin of the deceased, even sooner than could be expected from the corpse of any ordinary person, a pernicious spirit began to emanate little by little, but the further, the more noticeable. This circumstance produced an extraordinary, grossly unbridled temptation in everyone. The enemies of the deceased were immensely happy. “To know God’s judgment is not the same as man’s,” they said, “means God deliberately wanted to indicate.” Yet those who loved the late elder suddenly became terribly afraid of something and, meeting each other, timidly only looked into each other’s faces. But Alyosha was especially deeply and painfully embarrassed by this circumstance, who subsequently considered this sad day one of the most painful and fatal days of his life. The fact that the body of his elder, instead of immediately beginning to perform healings, was, on the contrary, subjected to early decay and, as a result, ridicule and desecration - for him this was a violation of the highest justice in relation to the person on whom all his love was concentrated at that time and who shone before him in the halo of a righteous man. The one who, according to his hopes, should have been exalted above everyone else in the whole world - that same one, instead of the glory due to him, was suddenly overthrown and disgraced. The course of his thoughts at this time was undoubtedly influenced by his brother Ivan’s recent long and frank conversation with him. This was the profession de foi of Ivan Karamazov. “I believe in God,” he told Alyosha, but I don’t accept this world of God, and although I know that it exists, I don’t allow it at all.” He did not accept the peace of God because of the suffering that fills human life, because of the tears that permeate the entire earth from the crust to the center: he did not understand the meaning of these sufferings and tears. Now Alyosha spoke in the words of his brother: “I don’t rebel against my God, but I just don’t accept His peace.” Together with these words, he, as a truthful and consistent person, already stood at the line beyond which “everything is permitted,” so that the moment was near when he would fall “from saints to sinners,” and “the shame of the righteous would take place.” He was not only ready for sausage and vodka, but even went, at Rakitin’s invitation, to Grushenka, this, in Dmitry’s words, infernal woman, because of whom Dmitry fought with his father in a fight to the death. But the crisis has already occurred and Alyosha emerged victorious from his lack of faith. Having brought Alyosha to Grushenka, Rakitin was already happy to see the shame of the righteous man, but the fall did not occur. Grushenka was in very difficult circumstances, she had to choose between one of the Karamazovs and the “former” one - that Pole officer who first deceived her and abandoned her, then disappeared from sight, and now appeared again on the horizon and again called her to him. The thought of “the former” tormented her for several years: the thirst for revenge and contempt battled with the desire to forgive. This was a decisive moment in her life, at which she recalled her entire past. She was very excited. Previously, she herself had asked Rakitin to bring Alyosha to her for base reasons, but now it was not such a moment. However, she was happy with Alyosha. But even with Alyosha it was not what Rakitin could have expected. And the point was not only that his own deep grief covered him with the strongest armor against any temptation and temptation, but that this woman aroused in him a feeling of extraordinary, greatest and most sincere curiosity - he noticed suffering in her and already loved her as a sister. In turn, Grushenka was glad, at such a decisive moment in her life, to enter into communication with a person of clear conscience, in order to find in her the light for her decision. She loved Alyosha with a different love than the officer. When she learned about the death of the old man, about this great grief of Alyosha, she realized that he must be completely spared from any attack of female affection - and this love of hers restored Alyosha’s soul. Meanwhile, Grushenka revealed her whole soul to him: “I’ve only given some kind of onion all my life, I’ve only got virtues,” she said. She highly appreciated the fact that Alyosha took pity on her. “I don’t know,” she told Rakitin, I don’t know, I don’t know anything, what he said to me, it affected my heart, he turned my heart upside down... He was the first to feel sorry for me, the only one, that’s what! Why didn’t you, cherub, come before, she turned to Alyosha, suddenly falling to her knees before him, as if in a frenzy. “All my life I’ve been waiting for someone like you, I knew that someone like that would come and forgive me.” She believed that someone would love me too, disgusting, not just for my shame! .. “What have I done to you, smiling tenderly, answered Alyosha, bending over to her and tenderly taking her hands, “I gave you an onion, one very small onion, only, only”! .. And, having spoken, he himself began to cry. These were tears of beginning reconciliation. When Alyosha returned to the monastery, it was already very late, according to the monastery, his heart was sweet and strange. At the sight of his elder’s coffin, he no longer felt aching, painful pity; joy shone in his mind and his heart. The living image of his elder rose before him, and his instructions were remembered. Kneeling down and listening to the gospel read over the dead man and specifically the story of the miracle at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, he fell asleep. He dreamed of a wedding feast, among those sitting at the table was his elder. He went up to Alyosha and said to him: “Too, dear, he’s also called, he’s called and he’s called. Let's have fun. I served the onion, and here I am. And many here only served an onion, just one small onion... What are we doing? And you, quiet one, and you, my meek boy, and today you managed to give an onion to the hungry. Begin, dear, begin, meek one, your work!... Alyosha woke up in some kind of delight. The rebellion against God passed, reconciliation took place, it took place on the conviction that all our deeds are only an onion, that we are called not to the manifestation in us and through us of the magnificent miracle of the revealed power of God, but to small deeds that are available to us in our earthly lowness. He left the cell and threw himself to the ground. He didn’t know why he hugged her, he didn’t give himself an account of why he wanted to kiss her so uncontrollably, kiss her all over, but he kissed her crying, sobbing and pouring his tears, and frantically vowed to love her, to love her forever and ever... And he felt how something solid and unshakable, like this vault of heaven, descended into his soul. Some kind of idea reigned in his mind - and for the rest of his life and forever. He fell to the ground as a weak youth, and rose up as a strong fighter for the rest of his life—he stood up willingly not only to sacrifice his entire life at once, but to the feat of serving people through invisible and quiet deeds of love. Three days later he left the monastery. It is extremely interesting to compare Alyosha with one of the representatives of the previous type. For comparison, let’s take the most sympathetic and even beautiful image of a mystical life in the person of Liza Kalitina from “The Noble Nest.” Already Lisa’s appearance was as if ethereal: pale face, serious eyes and lips, light gait, quiet voice. Opposite Alyosha was a stately, red-cheeked, bright-eyed young man bursting with health. Having thrown off his cassock, he wore a beautifully tailored frock coat and looked absolutely handsome. Liza, brought up on the lives of people, believed that you need to be a Christian not for anything else, but solely for the fact that every person must die; she often thought about death. On the contrary, Alyosha loved life, loved it before logic, before its meaning, loved these sticky leaves that bloom in the spring; His character of love was always active. When the person Lisa loved confessed his love to her, she became scared; at his words: “I love you,” she shuddered, as if something had stung her, she raised her eyes to him and said: “this is all in God’s power.” On the contrary, although Alyosha was an extremely shy and chaste young man, deep down he was Karamazov, he confessed to Liza Khokhlakova: “you are more innocent than me, and I have touched much, much.” According to Rakitin’s observation, he was a holy fool by his mother, but a voluptuous father, he was quiet and holy, and at the same time, God knows what he no longer thought about, a virgin, and he had already gone through such depths. He “understood” a lot. When he read the love letter of Liza Khokhlakova, this imp, as Ivan called her, he laughed quietly, sweetly and happily. Entirely imbued with a sense of duty, the fear of offending anyone, with a kind and meek heart, Liza Kalitina loved everyone and no one in particular; she loved God alone enthusiastically, timidly, tenderly. She lived a quiet inner life. At the first failure in her life, she entered a monastery. Opposite, Alyosha, entrenched in the monastery, emerges from it into life. His love was always individual: he loved the people he met, he loved the children, he loved his father, brothers, Grushenka, Katya, Liza Khokhlakova... He is constantly tormented by worries about his brothers and everyone he loved. What kind of figure does Alyosha Karamazov appear before us, at first only occasionally appearing from the monastery in the world, and then constantly living in the world? He completely forgets about himself and is equally immersed in worries about others. Filled with love for everyone, he has a responsive heart; he feels someone else’s grief and someone else’s joy as his own, someone else’s soul is close and open to him; he understands everything about other people's passions, grief and joys. He treats everyone with complete truthfulness and sincerity; he says what he thinks; acts as he feels; he cannot limit himself to feelings and words, he longs for immediate action, even if his work is insignificant, a simple onion. He is constantly in a hurry to get somewhere, there is always something waiting for him. He hurries from his father to his brother, from one brother to another, from them to Grushenka, from her to Katya, who was first Dmitry’s bride, abandoned by him for Grushenka, and then Ivan’s bride. And he does not neglect any task, no matter how busy he is; he is always ready to postpone a planned task for the sake of something that presents itself to him directly. Absorbed in the extremely complex relationships of his father, brothers, Katya and Grushenka, he is at the same time busy reconciling the schoolchildren with their friend Ilyusha, whom they persecuted and offended, who was embittered against them, was embittered against everyone, for the deep insult of his father by the drunken Dmitry. Alyosha's acquaintance with him began when he, recognizing Alyosha as Dmitry's brother, rushed at him on the street and painfully bit his finger, while Alyosha stood up for him in front of the boys who were throwing stones at him. “Mess with the boys!” Lisa shouted angrily at Alyosha when she learned about this story. But Alyosha is looking for the boy, finds out about the insult that Dmitry inflicted on his father, about the relationship in which he was with his fellow schoolchildren, delves into the needs of his family, brings his comrades to him and makes peace with him, does not leave him until death, gets close to the boys, speaks to them as equals, binds them to himself... and this at a time when one of his brothers was on the eve of exile for the alleged murder of his father, and the other was lying at death. Yes, he never refused anyone an onion. For this onion, everyone loved Alyosha and cared about him to the extent that he forgot about himself, everyone cared about him because he was dear to everyone - he was dear to everyone because he gave everyone such an onion that no one else could give. He was dear to everyone for his truthfulness, sincerity, the purity of his conscience; he brought peace, calm, and frankness everywhere. “I’ve only ever had good moments with you, otherwise I’m an evil person,” his father tells him. “I love you most of all,” Dmitry says to Alyosha, “you are everything to me.” The thought of Alyosha saves Dmitry from suicide; He values ​​only his opinion; Alyosha's disbelief that he killed his father revives him. Even Ivan could not resist the desire to “get to know him once and for all and introduce him to myself.” “I can only learn the whole truth from you,” Katerina Ivanovna told him; she trusted him with all her being and only valued his opinion. When Grushenka looked at Alyosha, she was ashamed of herself; she loved only him differently than the others. “I will never lie to you,” Lisa told him, “I only need your tears, and let others execute me.” Alyosha’s whole trick was that with him people were better off and with him people became better. How I would like to see Alyosha in the position of a family man, an employee, a worker; but the image of Alyosha Karamazov is not finished We divided the four considered types of religious and moral life into two groups of two in each. Of course, this division is quite arbitrary. In another respect, they can be divided into two sections, placing the first three types in one and the fourth in the other. It is the first three types that have some common features by which they are united and opposed to the fourth type. What are these common features by which the first three types are opposed to the fourth? Ritual worship, outwardly legal improvement of the church community and intellectual faith are all forms of symbolic service to God, while living faith and active love constitute true, that is, service to God in deed itself. If we ask what the saving work of Christ consisted of in its most general character, then the answer can be one: all people before Christ served God outwardly and symbolically, and He, having given man eternal divine life, taught us to worship God spiritually and truly, that is, in action, invisibly. Not to mention the pagan religions, the highest of the pre-Christian religions, the Jewish religion, prescribed to man the rules of external good behavior, gave him bodily purity, not spiritual, gave him only the shadow of future blessings, and not actual blessings - in the Old Testament worship everything was external and figurative. In general, before Christ, man did not know himself, did not know the real good, true life: he believed the essence of his life in the body and external relationships, sought good in bodily beauty and strength, in the political glory of his people - in the temporary, shadowy, fleeting. And he did not devote himself to God, but only his external self. Christ revealed to man the great truth that God is spirit, that He does not, like man, need food and drink, that He does not look at persons, origin, external position and external righteousness of man, that He does not require external sacrifices from him, that He can reveal himself only in the spirit of man, that He wants spiritual sacrifice from him - spiritual purity, mercy and love; in the light of this great truth, He taught man to see the essence of his life in the spirit and in the spirit to perform service to God. God is spirit: and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth (John IV, 24). Spiritual life in man, which Christ gave to people and which manifests itself primarily in living faith and active love, spiritual life is true eternal divine life, and therefore service to God in the spirit is true, real, and not illusory service. Spiritual life is a true, enduring good for man, and at the same time, as a manifestation of divine life, a revelation of divine glory, it is genuine service to God. Christ taught us that service to God should not be constituted by special specific human actions and institutions, but the whole life of a person should be worship. Real, true life, genuine good and service to God, pleasing Him - all these are not separate areas, but they are all one and the same: you cannot live a true life and have eternal good without serving God, but serving God consists precisely in what is true good for a person and what constitutes his real life - serving God consists in spiritual life, in living faith and active love. If serving God consists of spiritual life, living faith and active love, then a worldly person can truly serve God only by ceasing to be a worldly person in spirit, only by being spiritually reborn. Otherwise, only symbolic service to God is possible for him. Thus, a Christian who follows Christ by name and retains earthly passions in his heart also serves God. While the old man, who did not know spiritual life, could serve God only symbolically, and could be completely sincere in his symbolic worship, just as in fact the pagans and Jews amaze us with their religious sincerity and complete compliance of their spiritual make-up with religious ideas and religious practice; in a Christian, one-sided symbolic service to God is a more or less conscious betrayal of the spirit of Christ, a more or less deliberate cover for earthly passions. Full spiritual life here on earth is an ideal; approaching it or retreating from it through symbolic service to God constitutes the human side in Christianity, the psychological reality of Christian life, the historical manifestation of the Christian spirit. There are three possible forms of symbolic service to God in Christianity - ritual worship, church-legal improvement and intellectual faith. We call these forms symbolic forms of serving God because they can be practiced by a Christian without the presence of the spirit of Christ, spiritual life, living faith and active love in him. One can have the right to believe, confess through the mouth of Christ, diligently perform liturgical rites and at the same time live like a pagan; you can mortify your flesh through ascetic deeds and at the same time love human glory and not have humble living faith in your heart; one can observe all church decrees, be in obedience to church authority, maintain church unity and at the same time not have the love of Christ and His spirit in oneself. Intellectual faith, ritual worship and church-legal improvement, if the spiritual life of a Christian does not correspond to them, if they are not accompanied by good deeds, is an empty symbol, a dead body, a church without a deity. These particular symbols include the words of Christ: “the kingdom of God is within you” (Luke XVII, 21); “Not everyone who says to Me: Lord! God! He who does the will of My Father in heaven will enter the kingdom of heaven. Many will say to Me on that day: Lord! God! Have we not prophesied in Your name? and was it not in Your name that they cast out demons? and did they not perform many miracles in Your name? And then I will declare to them: I never knew you; Depart from Me, you workers of lawlessness” (Matthew VII: 21 – 23). Also writes St. Apostle Paul: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, then I am a sounding gong, or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries, and have all knowledge and all faith, so that I could move mountains, but do not have love, then I am nothing. And if I give away all my property, and give my body to be burned, and do not have love, it does me no good” (and Cor. XIII, and - 3). Even about the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist, the same apostle teaches that the mere acceptance of this bread and this cup does not save a person if in his life he does not follow that covenant in the blood of the Lord, the covenant of His death, which is proclaimed by this sacrament; Merely accepting this bread and this cup not only does not save a person, but even if someone eats this bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, he will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord, he eats and drinks condemnation to himself (Cor. XI, 26 - 29). The Christian symbol is not an empty appearance, but is a symbol of spiritual life; it obliges a Christian to spiritual life, representing a means of cultivating the spirit of Christ in people. Therefore, a Christian, limiting himself to a symbol, settling on symbolic service to God, sins against the reality that the symbol denotes. If the Eucharistic bread and wine were simple bread and simple wine, then a Christian would not sin by accepting them unworthily. But since the Eucharistic bread and wine are a covenant of the death of Christ, the one who receives them unworthily sins against the body and blood of the Lord. And just as a Christian in particular is guilty in this case against the body and blood of the Lord, so a Christian in general, resting on the symbols of spiritual life, on symbolic service to God, becomes guilty against the spirit of Christ, against spiritual life. Prayer, ascetic mortification of the flesh and Christ for the sake of foolishness are only preparatory stages of spiritual life; orthodoxy obliges us to live faith and self-denial for the sake of Christ; the church community is an environment in which active love is cultivated, and, finally, ritual worship serves as a symbol of the fact that the whole life of a Christian should be a service to God.... By distinguishing in a person’s religious life the symbolic service of God from the spiritual and true worship, we get the opportunity not only to notice the individual forms of Christian life, but also to evaluate the typical forms of Christian history. In Christian history we meet the same types as in the individual lives of Christians. In fact, what is Catholicism if not the replacement of spiritual life with a symbol of ecclesiastical-legal improvement, or, at least, if not the predominance of ecclesiastical-legal appearance over the spirit of Christian life? Catholicism is a Christian community established under Roman law; The Catholic Church is a clergy headed by the infallible Pope, blindly obeying him and despotically ruling over the laity. In Catholicism we see a highly consistent, frank and grandiose application of earthly power - the power of power, authority and law - in the name of Christian goods. The papacy has at its disposal a complex system of power, an army of clergy and monastic orders; it wants to use brutal external force to take possession of the treasury of Christian blessings and dispose of it at will; it wants to lead people to these blessings by external force, to save them. “By the yoke of law, strict discipline and the authority of power,” the Catholic clergy dominates the conscience of their Christian “subjects”; It places obedience as the highest virtue, and it conditions every good deed; ruling over the conscience of Christians and setting for them the only criterion of goodness is obedience to spiritual authority, it leaves no place in their hearts for living faith and active love. It is very noteworthy that in such a characterization of the Roman Catholic Church, the reviews of the Russian artist-thinker F. M. Dostoevsky and the modern luminary of Western church science, A. Harnack (Das Wesen des Christentums, - akademische Ausgabe, Leipz. 1902, S. 158) converge to the point of literal coincidence. The Roman Church values ​​in its Christians only those services that they provide to it, and in Christian benefits it sees only a reward for these services. There is no place here for a person’s internal effort to achieve these benefits. All other aspects of Roman Catholic church life are explained by this main direction of it - the legal nature of both the church structure and doctrine, the combination of the traditionalism of faith with the arbitrariness of the pope, the sharp separation of the clergy from the laity, the restriction of the right to read and interpret the word of God by the clergy, the theatricality of worship, designed for effect, the mechanical nature of the sacraments, the nature of monastic orders as the pope's ministerial tool in dominion over conscience lay people Further, what is Protestantism if not the replacement of spiritual life with a symbol of intellectual faith? Protestantism is the intellectualism of faith, but not in its heroic form, logically and, in part, historically original, not in the form of one-sided asceticism, which in the ancient church even degenerated into heretical trends, but in the later form of abstract mysticism. The basis of Protestantism is mystical justifying faith. “God wants from us only faith and only through faith does He want to be in communion with us,” Luther repeated countless times. “Faith must be the beginning, the middle and the end of all piety,” says the later representative of Protestantism, A. Harnack (op. cit. Sa. 169. 170). The entire personal service of a Christian to God consists in the affirmation of faith; in the proclamation of the word of God and in prayer - all public worship; The church is a fellowship of faith and a community of believers in which the word of God is truly proclaimed. Protestantism lacks not only an ascetic foundation, which Protestants themselves sadly realize (ib. S. 180 – 181), and the church structure itself, so that Protestant churches are only a department in the state, without their own responsibility and activity, it not only lacks the splendor of ritual worship, which has a deep symbolic and educational meaning, but it lacks living faith and active love. It forgets that true faith is not the one that creates only the mood, but the one that acts through love, which serves as the basis of spiritual life - it neglects the words of Christ: “If you love Me, keep My commandments” (John XIV, 15 cp. ib. S. 181), - it forgets that tradition is not only an oral addition to the word of God, but is an uninterrupted continuity of spiritual life, living faith and active love. The Protestant faith is, first of all, a mystical faith, a passive mood, which, not by chance, entails a weakening of moral activity. The essence of Protestantism, therefore, is primarily manifested in a variety of mystical sects - Pietists, Quakers, Herrnhuters, etc. Along with this, it must be accepted as undeniable that the life of Protestant peoples flows in a broad channel of cultural progress. But the fact is that this cultural progress in religious terms is the only thing. the foundation of the negative freedom of Protestantism, the overthrow of the constraining yoke of Roman Catholic authority; this made it possible for the natural forces of man to unfold in all their power and together to use Christianity for worldly purposes, but this cultural progress itself is not actually a manifestation of the Christian spirit. In any case, the cultural growth of the Western world is accompanied by a weakening of religious interests in the Protestant world. Along with this weakening of the religious spirit, Protestant mystical faith takes the last step in the direction from medieval asceticism and becomes abstract gnosis, rationalism. Contemporary Protestantism is a church of theologians. This, of course, is the reason for the widespread development of Protestant theological science, but in the Protestant world itself this development is paid for by the lifelessness of theological faith. Moving on to the third historical type of Christianity - the type of ritual worship, we must name Eastern Orthodoxy and, above all, our national ritual faith. If the essence of Catholicism is in the idea of ​​ecclesiastical authority and the essence of Protestantism is in religious intellectualism, then the undoubted essence of historical Orthodoxy is in ritual belief. And all Eastern, Greek-Russian Orthodoxy is characterized by this feature, but the Greek church became one-sided ritualistic only during the period of its decline, while in its flourishing time it became famous for its unusually productive dogmatic activity and manifested itself in a complex church system. We accepted from the Greek Church and adopted mainly liturgical rituals. The forms of church structure and the symbol of faith are accepted by us and are kept in frozen immutability; our people do not live by them, while church worship has received widespread development among us, has a living educational significance for the people, and in any case, at the present time, our church worship in its splendor surpasses everything that is given in this area not only by Catholicism and Protestantism, but also by modern Greek and other Eastern churches. It is already characteristic that the only major event in Russian church history unfolded on the basis of ritual belief, dividing our church society into the Old Believers and the New Believers. All the power of Russian religious faith is concentrated on church ritual; our church-national sins are also revealed in it. Our sin is not only the lack of church authority and intellectual and religious productivity, but also the positive one-sidedness of ritual belief. If Catholicism falls towards religious violence and Protestantism - towards abstract intellectualism, then the Russian faith from ancient times and to this day suffers from an inclination towards superstition and idolatry. These are the past and present types of historically ecclesiastical Christianity. The type of Alyosha Karamazov does not summarize the past, but prophetically predicts the future - and at the same time, this is not a type of church-national Christianity, but a personal Christian life with features of universal boundlessness. However, it can be said that it has some support in the national character of Russian religiosity. Ritualism does not exhaust the content of the religious life of the Russian people, which has always been a dual faith. Along with the development of external worship, in the depths of Russian folk life, true spiritual life flows like a living spring in the deepest manifestations of humble faith and active love. The Russian people, in the depths of their religious life, live by foundations that are artistically reproduced in the image of Alyosha Karamazov. In creating this image, Dostoevsky is more national than any other writer, than he himself is in other respects. Harnack, who gave a sharp review of Eastern Orthodoxy, could not help but testify from his own acquaintance with Russian life that the Russian people live by humble faith, meekness and the power of brotherly love 1 . As a stranger to us, he could not comprehend only one thing: in this case, the Gospel ideal of humble faith and meek love finds support in the national characteristics of the people. There may be people who believe and love both among the Romanesque and among the Germanic peoples, but there are only Russian people who humbly believe and meekly love. Harnack speaks with pride of what the Germans contributed to universal history; in his opinion, the same cannot be said about the Slavs - top den Slaven lässt sich Ähnliches nicht behaupten. S. 177. No, and the Slavs make their contribution to world history. Of course, the spirit of Catholicism could be revealed only in grandiose external phenomena, Protestantism could declare itself only by the greatest revolution, and the spirit of the Russian people, in order to manifest the evangelical life through it, does not require high-profile deeds, but only tireless invisible work, an internal meek deed. However, is it therefore possible to recognize this spiritual work as less significant? According to the gospel, a different answer must be given. The contribution that the Russian people makes to the treasury of world history is not small. The Russian people live a spiritual life and contribute their share to the common Christian cause. But this work of his is carried out spontaneously in many respects, so many contrary influences prevail over him. It is necessary that he carry out this work with full consciousness, so that he steadily follows the gospel path. To promote the development of a clear Christian consciousness in him - this is the immediate task of Russian ethics, which should proceed from the words of Christ: “God is spirit: and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth,” which should reveal the principle of double love - for God and neighbor, the principle of the close connection of religious faith and moral and social progress. The question of the relationship between religion and morality must be considered difficult for many reasons. First of all, the question is difficult due to the extremes to which opposing opinions are taken, and due to the resulting mutual misunderstanding of the opponents. Thus, on the one hand, defenders of the religious foundations of morality reject even the idea of ​​the independent meaning of morality, of the freedom and originality of ethical consciousness: la morale n’est rien si elle n’est religieuse. They argue that only one religion restrains the brutal instincts in man, that one has only to give a person freedom from the bonds of religion, remove the burden of religious conscience from him, and he will perish in the vile swamp of depravity, choke in blood, suffocate under the ruins of society. Placing all their hope in religion, they identify man’s very desire for the autonomy of ethical consciousness with the desire for freedom of revelry and fratricide; for them, the effort of practical reason or philosophical thought towards ethical autonomy is inevitably the departure of the prodigal son from his father’s house of religion “to a distant country”, where he squanders his property received from God; they place autonomous ethics in inextricable connection with materialist doctrines: les doctrines matérialistes servent de fondement habituel à la morale indépendante. They relate it to the realm of material culture, to the realm of man’s personal efforts, his earthly interests, as opposed to the religious-celestial realm. Ethics, by the very fact of liberation from religion and the striving for autonomy, falls from the realm of the holy-heavenly into the realm of the earthly-worldly, ceases to be holy, and becomes one of the manifestations of utilitarian work 2 . On the other hand, defenders of autonomous morality are not content with the freedom of ethics from religion; relegating morality from the heavenly realm to the sphere of free reason, earthly experience, they imply morality and religion, indicating for it the derivative meaning of the form of ethical consciousness. “In vain,” says the famous French thinker Fouillet, “in vain do religious teachings place the source of morality in the heavens, like the Indians who considered the full-flowing Ganges to descend from the sky: science has shown us that the sources of the Ganges are on the mountains of the earth, and the sources of morality at the heights of human thought.” And then he talks about the unknowability of God, about the dependence of faith in the holiness and truth of the divine will on moral consciousness, about the dependence of obedience to the absolute will on the moral disposition of our will. From here Fouillet draws the conclusion that “religion and its demands depend on morality, and not vice versa. In essence, he writes, religion is nothing more than a symbolic morality projected by man into infinity. Man imagines that morality is included in religion, that it is part of this boundless region to the laws of which it is subject; in fact, religion is part of human morality, in the content of which it is included. The sky that we place above us is located within ourselves, in our moral consciousness; God is our inner ideal, transferred by us to the universe.” – With such opposing views on autonomous ethics, your speech about the independent position of ethics will sound different for defenders of the religious foundations of morality and different for their opponents, each of whom will understand you in his own way; you need to be very careful; it will cost you a lot of effort to convey the idea of ​​the relative independence of morality without humiliating religion, of the mutual dependence of religion and morality. Secondly, our question presents special difficulties due to the complexity of the historical relations between religion and morality. These areas of the human spirit do not pass through history in frozen forms, but each of them gradually develops, and therefore their relationship also develops. The latter, due to this, cannot be determined by one formula. What correctly defines the relationship of morality to religion at one stage of spiritual development may not be justified when applied to another stage. A direction that is useful to a person in some historical conditions can lead to spiritual decline under other conditions. However, this is not a special law that determines the relationship between faith and morality, but a general law of spiritual development - the law that the life of the spirit is in a direction, in free aspiration, and not in an ossified form. Therefore, they act erroneously if the significance of religion for moral activity, justified by historical childhood, is presented as mandatory for a person in whom a sense of moral autonomy has already been developed. Therefore, further, those who demand freedom of moral consciousness in the name of the absolute character of ethical autonomy act erroneously, while useful liberation can lead to spiritual extinction just as much as religious heteronomy if it is squeezed into the framework of an unchanging form, if liberation, as the living direction of a mature spirit, is elevated to an absolute and unchanging principle. Therefore, finally, there is no reason to object, based on the facts of the past, against the autonomous demands of the developed spirit, if only these requests claim subjective absoluteness, if the objective boundaries of the spirit are not neglected. In addition to those mentioned, other, less important, difficulties in solving our problem could be noted. But we must also point out some special conveniences with which our days accompany the task we have set ourselves. It is easier to understand now than it was several decades ago. Religious and ethical feelings have lately been subjected to analysis, the subtlety of which can be compared with the successes of chemistry, which replaced alchemy; psychological analysis has decomposed complex spiritual phenomena into their simplest elements, which are now accessible to observation and research in perfect purity. We evaluate faith and morality without prejudice, we approach them without oriental etiquette, without feigned fog: we believe their value lies in what they give us, and not in what we attribute to them. We look for this real value, not being afraid to approach them with an inquisitive mind. Our assessment is no longer the savage’s reverence for an idol, which he himself places on a pedestal, cleanses and dresses. We are looking for living force, and we do not want human words handed down by tradition and superstructures erected by our hands to hide the real sources from us. Let words that have lost their meaning scatter like a soap bubble, let soulless idols fall; the more surely we approach the springs of living water. Modern reason draws its tip along the line that separates what is given by heaven from what is acquired by man. Everything that bears the stamp of holiness is asked a question: is this the voice of heaven, its revelation, or is it a request of the spirit? As a result, the powers of our spirit are now revealed more fully than ever. Never before had a person revealed his abilities and desires with such frankness. Only now have people begun to answer the questions with all sincerity, without strain: what do they want in the depths of their hearts and what can they do on their own? Without pretense, they took off their tinsel decorations and looked into the depths of their souls. “We set ourselves the task,” writes Guyot in the preface to his essay on morality, “to find what morality would be and what area it would have, in which no prejudice would have the slightest share of participation, in which everything would be logically justified and correctly assessed in the sense of reliability or in the sense of simple probability of opinions and hypotheses... You do not shake the truth of morality when you show that its subject, as a science, is limited. On the contrary, limiting the scope of science is often the same as giving it the character of greater reliability: chemistry is nothing more than alchemy, limited by observable facts. Likewise, purely scientific morality should not pretend to embrace everything; instead of exaggerating the size of her area, she herself should work to limit it. She must frankly admit: in this case, I cannot prescribe anything imperatively to you in the name of duty; there is no longer any obligation or sanction; follow your deepest instincts... from this point on you are left to your Selfgovernment... Over the past millennia, humanity has become accustomed to remaining silent about its natural aspirations and impulses; it has been accustomed to conceal its strongest doubts in the depths of its heart; it has lived hypocritically, afraid to admit its baseness, afraid to speak out loud about its own heights. How often were heard “his praises mixed with sobs, blessings interrupted by groans - desperate prayers, sighs of dying breasts, rising along with the smoke of censers.” Where, in what deserts, in what solitude of the night could one overhear the frank speech of tormented and shackled humanity? Job's incredible suffering was needed to evoke his bold, although still unclear, babble before heaven. Only now have people begun to speak with their “winged”, frank words. Now we have the opportunity to observe the truthful sighs and thoughts of people - we see the most that people can do according to their own motives, according to their own reason - the most that they demand from truth and duty in order to give them a place in their hearts - the most that can be demanded of them in the name of truth and duty. Religion is a person’s relationship to the unified principle of life, to the universe. Human consciousness, even at the lowest stages of development, distinguishes man from other creatures by the fact that it includes, as a conditio sine qua non, the concept or representation of the world whole, of which man is a part. And this is not an abstract concept, as it appears only in later philosophical reflection; but this is a living relationship, expressed in an all-encompassing feeling. First of all, this is a feeling of dependence, and religion is nothing more than the creative activity of the spirit, with the goal of its self-preservation in the world whirlpool. Religion is not limited to the feeling of dependence; it is also formed by feelings of hope, trust, love. It is in these last feelings, which replace unaccountable fear, that the goal of religion is achieved. Everything else - religious knowledge, mythology, cult - forms only a changeable shell of the central core of religion. Religion, it is said, is a living relationship between a person and the universe. But the concept of the whole world is the result of prolonged intellectual development; at the first stages of development for a person, “the whole earth” is that small piece of land that he knows, the global flood is a flood covering the valley he inhabits. How is religion possible for primitive man?... It does not matter at all whether the concept of the whole approaches the actual boundlessness of the world; What is important is the representation of the whole; the subjective meaning of the representation is valid. Therefore, psychologically, the religion of a savage, for whom the boundaries of the earth coincide with the boundaries of his island and to whom the vault of heaven seems like a large tent dotted with shiny dots, and the religion of a cultured person who has comprehended the boundlessness of the world, have the same meaning. A further apparent incongruity with primitive religion is seen in polytheism. Is it possible to talk about an all-united beginning of life if a person worships many gods?.. This inconsistency is eliminated, firstly, by the fact that each moment of worship of one of the many gods must be understood as all-encompassing, and, secondly, by the fact that many gods are presented to the religious consciousness in one or another unity. “The fact that man feels dependent on many different divine beings may seem like a psychological incongruity of polytheism. One creature, it would seem, should stand in the way of another, the thought of one, it would seem, should crowd out the thought of the other. In this sense, religion, already arising from immediate motives, with its temporary and special gods can cause amazement. – The solution to the riddle is as follows. At the moment of experience and mental movement, a person is so completely absorbed by what is given in his imagination that he has no room left for comparison, comparison, and perhaps even the memory of other gods. In general, in mental life, direct absorption by impressions and reflection rhythmically alternate. In moments of reflection, we can compare and contrast with each other those ideas that make themselves known in moments of strong and deep moods. Subsequently, perhaps, contradictions will be revealed; they must be destroyed, and we strive to destroy them, because new experiences do not take hold of us with such force that we forget the difficulties and problems of reflection. This is true at all stages of religious development and under all religious points of view. But during such a rhythmic change, one wave can influence another. If reflection reveals real difficulties, then the character of the experience may undergo slow change; on the contrary, thinking can change due to the experiences of those moments when a person is completely captured by experiences. In all circumstances there will be an involuntary tendency to harmonize the different ideas which, through the difference of experience, are expressions of the object of feeling. In the sphere of polytheism, the problem is resolved in such a way that an idea is created about the unity of origin of the gods or about a single world of gods, in which each individual god has its own specific place. This method of solving the problem is found without any difficulty, because here you can use familiar analogies from human relationships. The family and the state could serve as models of harmonious joint activity of living beings; Thanks largely to these analogies, ethical and social development, in turn, influences ideas about the gods” 3. Religion has undergone development throughout history. We know the highest point to which development has reached; with more or less probability we guess its initial moments. The most important phases of religious development are the transition of religion from polytheism to monotheism, the transition from natural religion to ethical religion, and, finally, the transition from spontaneous folk religion to personally creative religion. Of course, these transitions do not follow one another strictly chronologically, but rather constitute different sides in a single essentially religious progress. There is no need to talk about the first; we will talk about the second below; Now a few words about the third. Initially, religion is the fruit of spontaneous folk creativity. Just as an organic embryo at the beginning forms an inseparable part of the maternal organism, so primitive man feels his kinship with nature. Mother earth is raw - this is not an empty phrase in his mouth. He feels the influence of the sun, he feels the attractive power of the moon and stars. This cosmic feeling lives in him, beats with rhythm in him, inspires him. Primitive man had properties that are difficult for us to understand now: he was an inspired being. He heard the voice of God walking in the cool of the day, he listened to the heavens, he saw angels descending and ascending into heaven, he lived the life of nature, the spirit of God dwelt in him. It was not only the contemplation of the universe, the concept of the whole, but the spirit of God inspired him, filled his heart, carried him. The religious hymn flowed from his heart involuntarily. He lived in a religious element. He knew the secret of nature, the secret of immersion in it, unity with it. And he was looking for this unity, he was looking for a way out of himself, ecstasy, madness, oblivion in natural, super-personal life. Even now the poet says to the wind: Oh, don’t sing these scary songs About ancient chaos, about my dear! How greedily the world of the soul is at night From a mortal's breast he bursts And longs to merge with the infinite, Oh, don’t wake up the sleeping storms, - And “then” the storms were not yet dormant. And this was not individual creativity, but public creativity - folk, tribal, family. In the beginning, it was not God and man who confronted and entered into communion, but God and family, God and tribe, God and people. Before the greatness of the universe, before the mystery of God, all humanity - in one or another real group - united, like a flock huddled together, looking for Him in their natural life, in marriage relations, in family principles, in the national or state system. To be inspired religiously, a person did not seek solitude, but communication. The inspiration was contagious, it embraced the meetings. And the gods were family, folk. The social nature of religion made certain forms of it inevitable and external authority necessary. But from this spontaneous state, the religion of every people sooner or later moves to a higher level - a personal-creative, rationally-free, or spiritual religion. This is primarily the evangelical religion, the religion of Christ. At this stage, religion breaks the boundaries of nationality, puts a person in a personal, internally direct relationship with God and therefore acquires the character of universality: personal relationships with God are declared fundamentally accessible to all people, regardless of differences in nationality, language, or social status. The highest principle of spiritual religion is the human person: its good, its free life constitutes the highest goal of religion; at the same time, the personal mind of a person, his own creativity is recognized as the last principle in determining the relationship of a person to everything externally social, to any form. “Man is not made for the Sabbath, but the Sabbath is for man.” “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” "The sons are free." “Don’t call yourself spectators: you are all brothers. And call no one on earth your father, for you have one Father, who is in heaven.” While universal on the outside, spiritual religion is absolute on the inside. Here, each commandment, losing its conventionality, is elevated to an unconditional, absolute expression: love everyone, always forgive, judge no one, love to death. Absoluteness cannot take place in social relations, in social institutions, in commandments that have as their subject matter public welfare; its only carrier is the human personality. On the other hand, the human personality finds its full manifestation in internal relations to absoluteness. Spiritual religion is the absolute content of personal life. While in the initial religions the infinity of the universe appears to man as an external power, at the highest level of religion he establishes his internal relationship to absoluteness, perceives it within himself - now he comprehends the divine as the internal principle of his life. I remember one page from B. Chicherin’s book Science and Religion. “As soon as a person goes deep into himself, as soon as the deepest recess of his soul is revealed to his inner consciousness, where thought and conscience coincide, so he cannot help but feel his dependence on the infinite being around him and the desire for unity with this being. This feeling constitutes the purest expression of his own nature, for man, being the bearer of the absolute principle, cannot help but feel the presence of this principle in himself and his connection with it. Hence the phenomenon that religious feeling is found among the most uneducated people, as well as the most educated. With a lack of mental development, it can take forms that do not correspond to the true concept, but it is widespread throughout humanity. Religion, unlike philosophy, is the property of everyone. The absence of religious feeling is always a distortion of human nature... Feeling, however, is only the initial basis of religion. In itself, it does not contain anything other than a vague feeling of spiritual deficiency and the resulting desire to make up for this deficiency. In order for this replenishment to take place, an object is needed; the object is not created by feeling: it is given to him from the outside and, moreover, not otherwise than through rational consciousness. A representation is necessary to which the feeling can turn, and representation is produced by the mind. He who has no concept of God cannot sense His presence; The concept of God is given by reason, which alone reveals to us the absolute principles of existence. Feeling, taken separately, is the expression of limitation striving for union with the infinite; but it can cleave to this infinite only when a certain image of it has appeared in the mind. Religious feeling, by its very nature, is a feeling imbued with reason. It can belong to the only rational being, for only a rational being strives to emerge from its limitations and unite with the infinite. This explains the difference between religions. Religious feeling is the same at all levels; at lower levels it can manifest itself even more strongly than at higher levels, because it is less obscured by extraneous content. But the mental state of people is different, and as a result, the understanding of the Divine is different. Religion is subject to development not because the feeling develops, but because the mind develops. God reveals himself to man to the extent that man is able to understand Him. From this it is clear that the rational principle in religion constitutes its most essential element. Every religion represents a certain worldview, that is, a certain concept about God and His relationship to the world. On this side, religion coincides with philosophy; their content is identical." There is nothing to change in these beautiful lines, but they need to be supplemented. In them, reason is considered as a theoretical ability, although developing, but characteristic of man at every stage of his historical development. However, we also know reason as a more specific ability - logical or autonomous self-awareness, in which the internally free human personality is revealed. This is, of course, not a new ability; but this is a stage in the development of the mind that a person reaches in personal and historical adulthood and which he does not have in childhood. Just as a son in childhood does not actually differ from a slave until he comes to filial self-consciousness and masters filial freedom, so different from slavish arbitrariness and disobedience, so in general reason, which distinguishes a person at all stages of his development, becomes autonomous, turns into logical self-consciousness, only at a certain stage of development. In addition to purely logical self-consciousness, with which the logical forms of universality and necessity are associated, we can speak in the same sense about moral autonomous self-consciousness and religious free self-consciousness. Now we are talking about the latter. It must be admitted that it is not with the first stages of religious development that a person appears in filial freedom from the “weak and poor material elements,” but at the beginning of his religious life he is a slave to these elements. The birth of filial freedom is the greatest moment in religious development, this is the beginning of a new - the highest religion. And this is precisely the transition of a folk-spontaneous religion into a personal-creative religion, into a rationally free, internally absolute one. It is easy to see that there is no reason to understand the rationality of the highest level of religion in the sense of rationality in which religion would completely coincide with philosophy and would be exhausted by a philosophical worldview. No, religion differs from philosophy, even at the highest stages of development, just as life differs from thought. Religion is inconceivable without a mystical element, without faith, without a living relationship to the Absolute. While in philosophy the world is only an object of thought, logical forms of thinking are placed above content and absoluteness belongs exclusively to them, the absolute is only an abstract concept - in religion, the absolute is transferred from the subjective world to the objective world by the power of faith and the feeling of dependence on the Absolute never disappears from religion. Religion is a philosophy and faith, and faith, living faith, always has the character of inspiration, spontaneity. But with all this, spiritual religion can be called rational not only in the sense that it is justified by reason, but in the sense of its closer relationship to reason - in the sense that it is the fruit of personal, rational creativity. In this religion, the spiritual and elemental is subject to reason, the spirits obey man; absoluteness does not press on man as an external force, but the believer recognizes in himself the same absoluteness that akin him to God, and therefore is filial-free. We call morality the attitude of a person to a person, a person to society. Just as religion is the creative activity of the spirit, aimed at its self-preservation in the infinity of the universe, so morality consists in the creative activity of the spirit, aimed at its self-preservation, its freedom, in society. Morality constitutes the subjective side of social relations. It is closely related to social development and social order. This close relationship of morality to social life is not only recognized in science, but is even sometimes accepted with some extremes, which must now be pointed out. So Iering completely identifies morality and society. He points out the source of the moral imperative not in the individual, but in society; He calls the norms of behavior of an individual coming to him from the outside. He does not deny ethical autonomy, but only recognizes it as a result and not as a starting point of moral development. He writes: “Historically, moral norms were obtained not by the individual, but by society, and their practical significance lies in the fact that society requires their observance from the individual. This opposition of external and internal has been overcome by the complete merging of the individual with the moral law, his autonomy, in short, is the last, highest form that the moral law takes. And yet, one cannot deny the reality, one cannot remain silent about the fact that moral norms were imposed on the individual from the outside, as a command - and precisely as a command of society... So, all moral norms in the broad sense of the word (law, morality, rules of society) mean exclusively the good and prosperity of society. Moral and social are one and the same; what is called moral we can always call social instead. Any moral norm is nothing more than a social imperative.” Finally, Iering considers morality to be the fruit of the instinct of self-preservation as applied to society. “The instinct of self-preservation is an ever-present companion of all life, a guardian and guardian, to whom nature has entrusted the care of its maintenance. By transferring the concept of life to society, understanding society as a personal being, we thereby recognize in it the instinct of self-preservation. This instinct manifests itself primarily in the establishment of moral order; he strives to create living conditions necessary for society at a given stage of its development. Morality is nothing more than the highest form of selfishness: the selfishness of society. The desire for self-preservation rises to morality as soon as it realizes that individual self-preservation is conditioned by social self-preservation. This is the moment when morality is born. The moment when the moral principle enters the universe is the transition from the individual to society.” There is much in this historical-social theory that needs decisive correction. That historically morality comes from those demands that society places on the individual as a necessary condition for social and, depending on it, individual existence, we must, of course, agree with this; but that in essence social and moral are one and the same, morality and law are completely the same, this opinion must be rejected. From the point of view of content, the difference between these two areas is that “law, in the words of V.S. Solovyov, is the lowest limit or a certain minimum of morality - law is a compulsory requirement for the implementation of a certain minimum good, or order, which does not allow certain manifestations of evil.” We do not provide a detailed explanation of these thoughts, referring the reader to the fourteenth chapter of Justification of the Good. From the formal side, these areas differ in that law relates to external actions, to the social system, and morality - to internal motives, to the mood of a person. This is the main idea of ​​K.D.’s book. Kavelina Problems of ethics. Neither Soloviev nor Kavelin ignores the close connection between morality and law. “Truth, morality and profit are united by indissoluble bonds”: these words stand as the epigraph in Kavelin’s book. “Connected by the unity of the main task, moral and objective activity work hand in hand with each other,” he writes in his book. Bringing all ideals, subjective and objective, to unity in one general and strict system will be the crown, the last word of knowledge, and their possible implementation and implementation in reality, in life, is the height of human wisdom.” This connection, however, does not hide from them and should not hide the difference between morality and law, which does not allow morality to be reduced to law, as Ihering does. In the field of law, society is both the goal and the subject; the subject and final goal of morality is the individual. Law is entirely directed towards the self-preservation of society; it also means the good of the individual, but only to the extent that he forms a part of the whole - no more. Therefore, in law everything is conditional, limited and specific; it does not deal with abstract truths and ideals. “It is only due to a misunderstanding that in some legislations there are (on paper) regulations requiring one to abstain from drunkenness in general, to be pious, and to honor one’s parents.” The right is valid only to the extent that it is connected with the existing conditions of life. What Ihering writes to prove the social nature of morality relates exclusively to morality. He writes: “if the individual is the target subject of morality, then the moral norms derived from the abstract concept of the individual, from the ideal type of moral person, must be the same for everyone; In this way, the possibility of influencing the moral law of a social moment, such as, for example, the division of society into classes and their different positions, is excluded. Meanwhile, the moral law prescribes one duty for one individual and another for another; during war he speaks one language, during peace he speaks another.” But this is exactly what cannot be said about morality: it speaks one unconditional language, for it every member of society is a person and nothing more. Morality is established on subjective will, on personal reason. Therefore, morality and only morality, unlike morality, has autonomy. Autonomous, or free, and moral are the same thing. Only in morality there is a place for general, autonomous and in this sense unconditionally expressed principles of activity, since unconditional principles can only be subjective. Just as in the conditional nature of society is the basis for the conditionality of law, so in the subject, in the rational individual, is the basis for moral autonomy and unconditionality. And the last goal of morality is not society, but the individual, although its closest object is society. “Society, as the target subject of morality, also embraces the individual as the target subject, but not vice versa, for the whole is a part, and not the whole in a part”: this is too little for ethics. To say: when everyone feels good, and you feel good, does not yet mean expressing the goal of morality. The subject is the last but direct goal of morality. The goal of morality is the good of the subject, achieved by good. The good is not material, not external, but spiritual - freedom of the spirit, its strength, tranquility, joy - everything that makes up the life of the spirit. If the goal of an activity is external well-being and the general well-being is chosen as the means for this, this is a simple utilitarian calculation. But the achievement of personal spiritual good by good is morality. The purpose of law is the self-preservation of society; the goal of morality is the spiritual self-preservation of the subject in society. Social life tends to crush the individual, to erase his individuality, to enslave him. The subject fights this social tendency through morality. There are other means of struggle - high social position, wealth, honor. But these means, in the end, do not give spiritual benefit, unless at most they give self-conceit; they do not revive the spirit, do not create a strong personality, a free subject. For this purpose, the only means is good. Social position, wealth, honor are surrogates that too often deceive a person; good is a real force that gives power over the world. It is rightly said: “Do not be afraid, little flock! for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell ​​your possessions and give alms”... In the end, the meek will inherit the earth. Those who serve good are true kings, and it is said to them: “Rejoice always.” It would mean descending to children's textbooks if we began to explain that this power of good is not accompanied by external splendor, that this spiritual good not only should not be identified with external well-being, but should not even be understood in the sense of a legal reward for the sake of which good is done. Even the utilitarians, Mill and Spencer, repeatedly explained to their readers that happiness can be the ultimate goal of an action without being its immediate goal. In his essay The Plan of Life, Lekki writes: “One of the first and most clearly stated rules to be followed is that happiness is best achieved when it is not the immediate goal of life.” And Tolstoy, who recognizes personal happiness as the last goal of a good life and speaks of the worldly calculation of following the teachings of Christ, ultimately does not deny that the path of goodness is strewn with hardships, suffering, humiliation, persecution, labor and struggle. If at first a person, with all the clarity of consciousness, sets himself the goal of achieving happiness, and then chooses a good life as a means to it, he will of course be mistaken in his calculations. The combination of goodness and personal benefit presupposes an already developed spiritual personality with a taste for spiritual beauty. It is not based on the abstract position that for happiness the best or only means is good; it is confirmed by the experience of a spiritually developed person who says: for me, good is possible only through good. Perhaps not having the need to do good would mean being on a surer path to achieving complete happiness, so this need should be recognized by the cross; but in any case, for those who have it, goodness is the only path to happiness. Not to happiness in general, but to spiritual joy, to strength and freedom of spiritual life - most closely to freedom from social pressure. In order to preserve one’s spiritual appearance from the pressure of human evil, in order not to get lost in the turmoil that is formed by the clash of opposing human interests, a person needs to do good to people. To take the standpoint of lupus est homo homini in your relationships with people means to lose all hope for personal human dignity. I can be a person in the only case if I recognize human dignity in every member of society. Only by doing good to people, I acquire inner peace and spiritual strength, I become higher than society, I rise above it in personal dignity, I rise from the state of a part of the whole to a value in itself. The joy of every friendly community, the strength of every human union - these are the precursors to moral joy, moral strength. To be a moral subject, a person needs not only communication with people, but also service to people. Therefore, the connection between the moral subject and society is the closest: even if society, its well-being, is not the only goal of moral actions, it is still their immediate goal. And there is no doubt that in some respects morality and society coincide, that moral norms are requirements that society, in the interests of its self-preservation, offers to the individual. But that is not the moral. The moral is that a person meets these demands of society autonomously, that he serves society for reasonable reasons. Even though historically such autonomy is only the result of social development, it is a result of fatal significance, having the force of a starting point for new development. It is only from this point that one must consider the birth of the moral subject, the birth of morality. The historical and psychological roots of morality go deep into the pre-rational subsoil, into the unconscious area of ​​instinctive aspirations. Already in the animal world we find social life with the necessary sacrifices of individual interests for the common good. Likewise, in human history, tribal life, based on blood kinship - one could say, naturally grows out of the family, if there were not a more solid scientific guess that it is not the family that precedes the tribe, but the tribe that precedes the family, which contains a higher ethical element and presupposes a higher individual development - tribal life precedes that high development of the individual in which his ethical reason can have an autonomous meaning. Before a person consciously asks himself the question of why he should sacrifice personal interests in favor of general interests, he is already, by force of necessity and the power of instincts, placed in the system of society, as a part of it. And now, with a high and powerful culture, and even more so at the dawn of history, when man was weak and unarmed, he cannot exist personally, fight with nature and acquire the means of life without being an inextricable part of society, just as the most primitive society, even society in the animal world, cannot exist without self-sacrifice or self-restraint of individuals. And this necessity acts on primitive man not through his reason, but through his instincts. It is not necessary to imagine the matter in such a way that people, who at first lived alone in dens, then began to unite into societies based on the conviction of the benefits of social life, but in such a way that the tribal or family life of primitive people forms the most stable layer of the personal psyche. Tribal consciousness precedes developed individual consciousness. The savage recognizes himself not as an individual, but as a member of his tribe, and all his feelings correspond to this consciousness. In a strict sense, one cannot speak of the self-sacrifice of an individual in a primitive society as an act of will, because common interests, which not only level savages, but also unite them, in each of them are psychologically stronger than individual interests. This community constitutes the original, instinctive, tribal ethics. This ethics of tribal, tribal, or later folk life is precisely tribal or clan ethics because it determines not the relationship of man to man, but the relationship of tribes, or clans, or peoples, in the person of their members. Each member of such a tribe observes the rules of primitive society in relation to his own tribe to the same extent as he considers it obligatory to violate them in relation to members of another tribe. Not killing someone from his own tribe is as obligatory for him as it is obligatory to kill members of another’s tribe. However, even within the boundaries of one’s tribe, to which tribal ethics is limited, instinctive social life does not deserve the name ethical in the proper sense. Morality does not lie in the individual sacrificing personal interests for the benefit of society, but in the fact that he does this for reasonable reasons. When, over time, personality develops in a primitive society and reason replaces the social instinct, then and only then does human morality emerge. It is neither a transition from individual life to social life, nor a transition from tribal to individual life; the emergence of morality is a transition from instinctively social life to rational social life. At the same time, custom, which determines both the social system and personal mood, breaks down into personal morality and public law. However, these areas are not torn apart, but, differing, develop in close connection. Moral consciousness, revealing itself individually, strives to be embodied in a social system that implements a minimum of morality. Separated from the social system, contained in an isolated individual, moral consciousness perishes along with the physical life of the solitary individual. But, on the other hand, the law is interested not only in embodying the minimum moral consciousness of the advanced members of society, but also in giving freedom of personal ethical development. Law is a flywheel that regulates the moral energy of a person in transmitting it to the social mass. Morality is an actively progressive force; right – conservative. If morality is powerless in life without being embodied in law; then the law, which does not develop in the consciousness of progressive minds, the prophets of society, embodying at the beginning a minimum of morality, must turn, congealing, into a brake on the moral development of society. With such a close connection between ethics and the social sciences, one can, however, insist on the independence of ethics, since it deals not with the embodiment of ethical principles in the social system, not with the transfer of personal energy to the crowd, but with ethical ideals themselves. The development of morality is expressed in the transition from the instinctive principles of social life to rational-autonomous morality. This is a very complex process. The full scope of rational-ethical autonomy includes the concept of human dignity, or a person in general, regardless of tribal or national affiliation. This concept was developed with the greatest slowness, invariably depending on the ethnographic horizon, on the gradually expanding friendly relations of peoples among themselves, until they actually united, or almost united, in one universal human family. It is known about the limitations in this regard of all ancient peoples, each of whom considered their neighbors barbarians. It is perhaps in Cicero that we first encounter a more or less clear ethical concept of man - he wrote: “a man is obliged to promote the happiness of every other person, no matter who he is, for the simple reason that he is a man.” We do not, however, need to follow the historical moments of this development and distinguish between different stages on the path of rational-ethical autonomy, since, depending on the historically developing relations between all peoples, in essence it is not a quantitative universality in the concept of man, quantitative absoluteness, but it is a qualitative absoluteness, subjective: the rational-ethical attitude is not an attitude towards all people, but actually an attitude towards every person as a person - an attitude affirmed on a qualitative, subjective knowledge of human dignity. – In any case, true morality is an autonomous morality, completely established in one’s own reason. The convention of the historical and psychological origin of morality says nothing against moral autonomy; there is no reason to object to ethical autonomy on this side. It is already important that representatives of positive science, who could precisely put forward this argument against the absoluteness of moral consciousness, refuse it, consider it unsuitable, thereby weakening it as evidence against the reasonable foundations of autonomous ethics. So Guyot and Fouillet, who writes: “ethics does not at all depend on the question of origin, it is based on the properties of our nature in the form in which it currently exists, and on the final ideal that we set for ourselves: if at the present time we have moral virtues, then it doesn’t matter who we come from: from an improved monkey, or from a “degenerate Adam.” In the first case, we have before us the prospect of progress, which has already accomplished a very important transformation and, therefore, in the future is capable of producing something even more amazing. In the second case, we are victims of an incomprehensible fall and fatally pay for it not only with physical ailments, but (more importantly) with moral shortcomings.” It goes without saying that, while remaining on a scientific basis, we cannot base ethical autonomy on metaphysical premises, we cannot talk about intuitions or innate moral views that do not depend on education and function with instinctive correctness,” we cannot talk “about absolute value, or absolute good, meaning by absolute – exceptional, independent of any correlation” (Gizicki). We can only talk about relative good, that is, about that which is good for a person; we are talking about reasonable ethical autonomy in the only sense that for reason, for rational consciousness, what is necessarily reasonable, both in theoretical and practical terms. Ethics, as a science, is based on the fact that a person, at a certain stage of development, ceases to be guided by instinct and is guided by reason, that the ideas of reason are forces; starting from here, it comes to the aid of the individual mind and explains what is obligatory for the mind as reasonable. Ethical autonomy is obligatory for the rational mind, and only in this. It begins from the moment when the mind reaches logical self-awareness - in this self-awareness it has its support and therefore is independent of the question of the historical and psychological origin of morality. We accept moral autonomy only in the sense of obligation for the rational mind, in which the moral teaching of Socrates, the practical philosophy of Kant, the theory of ideas-forces of Foulier and Guyot coincide. It is also necessary to recognize as naive the objection to the theory of autonomous morality that, by shaking the instinctive and nomistic foundations of life, it throws a person onto the unstable soil of personal arbitrariness, on which the thorns of animal instincts quickly grow, drowning out all morality. Agreeing that indeed, in transitional eras from the nomistic principles of life to the freely rational principles, the moral level in the crowd may temporarily decrease, when the old principles are shaken and the new has not yet become stronger, we must accept as a general rule that the rational principles of life cannot have either a positive or negative lasting effect on people who blindly obey instincts and dark feelings, for which there is therefore no reason to fear; that, on the contrary, people who have already emerged from the power of instincts and have come under the banner of reason are in decisive need of the instructions of autonomous ethics. In this regard, attention should be paid to the nature of the historical moment when the idea of ​​independent morality was first clearly identified in the consciousness of European society in the 19th century: it was a time of decisive collapse of the traditional principles of life 4 . By insisting on moral autonomy, we understand it in such a way that at the same time we can assert the objective limitations of moral consciousness. Moral autonomy is autonomy based on what is necessarily reasonable for reason; it does not presuppose the metaphysical absoluteness of the moral subject, or the absoluteness of the objective good, it does not require that a person’s objective relations to the external world correspond to his claims, it is completely limited to the subjective world. “I want this because this is my good”: this is the autonomy of rational consciousness. This does not mean that my good is absolute. Likewise, there is no reason to understand the content of the natural moral law as absolute. “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”: this is not the language of morality, this is the language of religion. From the point of view of reasonable morality, one cannot demand from a person: “sell your property and give alms,” one cannot demand from him such an attitude towards his wealth that he becomes a beggar. It is not reason that requires a person to hate his father, his mother, his wife, his children. Reasonable morality condemns charity that ruins the very source of goodness (Cicero). It condemns charity that does not pay attention to the consequences. “Indiscriminate monetary charity, manifested in giving alms to every beggar, will be a socially harmful course of action; it creates professional beggars, people who find it more convenient to have others work for them than to work themselves, and in the end consider this feeding on the labor of others to be their legal right. We, of course, should not refuse help to anyone who asks us for it, just because he asks for it; but we should not indiscriminately squander help just because we are asked for it” (Gizzycki, Fowler, etc.). In America they do not encourage begging, but donate millions to education and industry that eliminate poverty. It is reasonable to advise giving a beggar no more, but no less than what he needs to get on his feet and earn money for himself. Reasonable morality has as its immediate goal social well-being, taking upon itself the limitations or conventions necessarily associated with public affairs. It renounces the cause of social improvement only at one moment, in one direction, in order to draw within the spirit the basis for a progressive attitude towards social issues and find strength in subjective autonomy, again returning to social improvement as its immediate goal. It strives for a balance between the individual and society, defending not only altruism against egoism, but also egoism against immoderate altruism (Spencer), basing the possibility of more decisive self-sacrifice only on an excess of personal fortitude and the benefit of risk (Guyo). The highest principle of autonomous morality is justice; more than this cannot be demanded from a person in the name of reason. It must be recognized that the most unfounded in the theological criticism of autonomous ethics is the reproach that its principle is limited. On the contrary, the merit of scientific ethics is that “instead of exaggerating the size of its field, it itself works to limit it.” Morality needs at least a limited area in which it could be autonomous. its absoluteness, i.e. autonomy is of a purely subjective nature and relates only to the basis of ethics, but not to the side by which ethics is addressed to the public, not to its content. In conclusion of the section on morality, I would like not only to point out the insufficient disclosure of some provisions that require more special treatment, although I tried to stay on the ground that is common to different directions in ethics, but also to make one remark. “Everything beautiful in this world has its own caricature: the doctor is a charlatan, the patriot is a braggart, the believer is a bigot, the virtuous man is a hypocrite, the poor man is that ever-hungry wolf, that voracious shark, which are the people who have chosen beggary as their craft.” I would add: the spiritual understanding of religion has rationalism and the autonomous ethics has scientific materialist ethics. Speaking about reason as the basis of morality, we distinguish reason from science, which has as its subject exclusively the external world, including man as part of the world. We know of experiments in substantiating ethics through such science, through empirical knowledge 5 . But we are talking about the mind turned towards itself, forming a spiritual personality. To speak of autonomous morality does not necessarily mean to consider the historical method the only method of ethics, and all fundamental objections to this method in ethics cannot be raised against any idea of independent morality Religion and morality in their very essence contain the basis for close mutual relations. In fact, if religion has the goal of self-preservation of the spirit in the world as a whole, and morality has as its goal its freedom in society, then obviously religious and moral activity is homogeneous from the subjective side and differs only in object. This naturally includes the relationship of the human spirit to the body with its needs and passions, pleasures and sufferings: the self-preservation of the spirit presupposes its freedom in relation to the body - moderation, courage, etc. But these mental-physical, or ascetic virtues, do not have independent spiritual value, but acquire such only in religious or ethical (altruistic) light. Temperance and courage are religiously valuable if a person curbs himself, renounces material wealth, for the sake of religious goals; they are morally valuable if a person sacrifices his bodily goods for the benefit of his neighbors, if he spiritually protects himself from the seizures of the flesh as a member of society, which he is obliged to serve and not be a burden, and, of course, from a religious and altruistic point of view, moderation, abstinence, and self-denial are required of a person only against the general background of concerns about his life and health. Then, asceticism does not provide a positive religious and ethical benefit, but only serves as its negative condition, being in this sense on a par with hygiene, aesthetics, and culture in general: a savage oppressed by need, or a person drowning self-consciousness in bestial pleasures, do not have freedom of spiritual life; but health, abstinence, courage, culture - by themselves do not yet give rise to the reality of spiritual life. What positively creates the spiritual life of an individual is religion and moral attitude towards society. As the only positive ways of spiritual self-preservation of the individual, religion and morality are predominantly related to each other. This relatedness, while the objects of religion and morality differ, presupposes their relative independence, on the basis of which their relationship is revealed. The latter, as already said, is very complex, and we will consider only a few of the most important, logical and historical points of this relationship. First of all, let's see how autonomous morality relates to folk-traditional religion. We consider ourselves entitled to raise this question, since moral autonomy develops before spiritual religion. The very limited area over which reasonable morality extends, its purely human, earthly character, contributes to its early emergence. Spiritual life is first created on the basis of a person’s relationship with others like himself. Here, rather, a person seeks his freedom and common unity 6. Here, earlier, his work becomes personally intelligent. The history of religions testifies to a clear clash between rational ethical consciousness and religious tradition; Modern reality tells us the same thing. But it is not enough to admit this fact. We must recognize as logically justified the freedom of ethical self-consciousness in relation to religion, the moral criticism of religion. We must recognize a person’s right to reject one or another form of religion that does not satisfy a person’s moral consciousness, the right to consciously obey religious authorities for ethical reasons. If this truth has not yet found universal recognition, then in any case there can no longer be room for reasonable objections to it; it can only be opposed due to misunderstanding. It can be said, and some still say, that testing thought must be completely eliminated by tradition and absolute authority: we must obey God in whom we believe, for this one reason, that He is God; we must live as the faith handed down to us by our fathers teaches us to believe. Our faith, others add, of all faiths is the truest; obeying it is our last moral duty. Therefore, the very idea of ​​a critical attitude towards faith is considered blasphemous. “But there is nothing easier than to prove the falsity of this opinion.” There are many religions and each of them can rely on tradition: this undermines the unconditional significance of tradition. This idea is revealed in detail by Rev. Feofan. “Everyone,” he writes, must test and undoubtedly become convinced whether the faith he holds is true; and if it turns out to be untrue, find where that one true one is, which truly leads to the true God and grants undoubted eternal salvation. It is as obligatory and compulsory as snatching oneself out of the fire. The Lord did not leave Himself untestified (D. XIV, 17), as well as His only true faith; but when He allowed other faiths to exist near her on this earth; He thereby imposed on everyone the obligation not to hold on to His faith without meaning, but on indestructible grounds, for the sake of which everything else is rejected with complete conviction. By this test (and therefore a critical attitude) honor is given to faith and the true dignity of a person, a reasonable, conscious, conscientious person, is maintained” (Drawn archive no. 1891, p. 327). One of the surest signs of the sinfulness of Rev. Theophanes points out that “man has no time to know God: therefore he contains faith in the way he heard and accepted” (277). What are these basics? These are the foundations of moral consciousness. Of course, one can point to miracles, the history of religions and the church, the philosophy of dogma as the path to religious truth... But who doesn’t know that miracles can be true and false, that they can either convince or harden only depending on the moral mood of a person, as evidenced by the history of the Gospels? Who doesn’t know that church-historical and theological-philosophical issues have been discussed in science, which is not accessible to everyone, for centuries, and questions of faith and life are urgent, everyone must decide for themselves? An unconditionally authoritative solution to questions of faith and life can only be their solution on the basis of conscience; only this basis determines a person’s attitude to the external signs of religious truth, and it also guides theological opinions. All disputes between representatives of different faiths and confessions are reduced to this very basis, as brilliantly revealed by V.S. Solovyov in one of the chapters of Justification of Good: “all general arguments in favor of religious truth, he writes, come down to one main thing - ethical, asserting the moral superiority of our religion over others.” It is difficult to indicate from what religious point of view one can object to the subjective, or epistemological, primacy of ethical consciousness. If we keep in mind the fact of revealed religion, divinely revealed moral law, then we should also take into account that the revelation of the moral law is ultimately based on man’s own moral consciousness. Thus, the Old Testament legislator, giving the people of Israel the law, told them: “The commandment that I command you today is not inaccessible to you and not far away. It is not in heaven so that one can say: who would go over the sea for us and bring it to us, and let us hear it, and we would do it? but this word is very close to you: it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it” (Deut. XXX, and - 14). The revealed moral law is only the revelation of the internal law of conscience. According to John Chrysostom, “God, in the beginning creating man, gave him the natural law. God gave us conscience and made the knowledge of good and evil innate. We do not need to learn that fornication is evil and chastity is good. We know this from the beginning. And to make sure that we know this from the beginning, the legislator, later giving laws and saying: Thou shalt not kill (Deut. VII, 17), did not add that murder is evil. He only forbade sin, but did not teach about it, because conscience previously taught us this, and he spoke about it as if he already knew and understood.” The newest theologian, Bishop, also argues. Theophan “Conscience,” he writes, “by nature combined with the will of God; therefore, as soon as it is indicated to her that this is the will of God, she will immediately be inclined to do this, stand for it and force us not to violate it. However, by placing this or that matter as a duty, the Lord does not want to be limited by His will alone or by one title of omnipotence, but to each of these matters He deigned to attach other, immediate grounds, directly arising from the properties of the matter itself and its connections. These immediate foundations are the means through which the will of God is impressed in our mind and heart to the extent appropriate to the matter. Therefore, in interpreting your duties, you can, of course, limit yourself to the fact that this or that matter is the will of God; but it is more decent and more consistent with our nature to seek these immediate foundations: for through them the will of God binds us.” This is how the matter appears from the point of view of revealed religion; The primacy of morality in the field of pagan or natural religion stands out even more decisively. Pagans do not have a revealed law, and yet they naturally, by themselves, distinguish between good and evil. “When the pagans, who do not have the law, do by nature what is lawful, then, not having the law, they are a law unto themselves. They show that the work of the law is written in their hearts: as their conscience testifies, and their thoughts, now accusing, now justifying one another” (Rom. II, 14, 15). And why is it considered more pious to see morality as a product of dark religious feeling than to consider it a matter of the rational consciousness of man? After all, for faith, in the end, human reason is a gift from God, and the recognition of autonomous morality does not detract from, but magnifies, God’s Providence. So, “religion has independent ethics as its inevitable logical premise, whether it consciously emphasizes this premise or not.” In this logical light, the historical relationship between religion and morality seems extremely clear to us. Religion becomes ethical as man himself develops to moral consciousness. “At the lowest levels of religion known to us, this latter does not, strictly speaking, have ethical significance. The gods appear here as forces on which man depends, and not as models or organizers of the moral order... Only when a person in practice has clarified ethical tasks for himself and has developed an ethical sense in himself, even if this feeling is not yet distinguished from other feelings - as something completely independent - only under these preconditions can the gods acquire an ethical character. Great human goals - enlarged and idealized - become the goals of the gods. The gods become protectors and owners of the highest value with which man became acquainted in the struggle for life. What other goals or properties could people give to the gods or recognize as divine, if not those that appear as the highest in human experience itself? Man grows along with his highest goals, and in parallel with this his gods grow... The transition from natural religion to ethical religion can rightfully be called the most significant revolution in the history of religion” (Geffding). The etization of religion is a necessary condition for the later and highest transition of religion from the stage of folk spontaneous to personal creative. The ethicization of religion is a historical fact. We do not go into the historical details of this fact, i.e. We do not resolve in a purely historical way the question of what initially influenced religion on morality or morality on religion. We think that this question cannot be solved historically, and its pseudo-historical solution is always the dressing up of arbitrary opinions in historical facts. This arbitrariness appears with complete clarity when researchers of the question of the relationship between religion and morality point to Indian beliefs as evidence of the influence of religion on morality, and Greek beliefs as evidence of the opposite influence. The doubt remains in the reader's mind, why not use these examples in a completely different way. In a certain type of belief it is difficult to distinguish purely religious and purely ethical elements if they are united in the unity of spiritual life. For our part, we take the general historical fact of the ethicization of religion, which is necessarily presupposed by our thought, just as old age is necessarily presupposed by the passing of childhood. It must be recognized that moral consciousness can develop without the assistance of religion, and religion without the influence of moral consciousness cannot move from the natural state to the moral stage, therefore we recognize the ethicization of religion as the initial relationship between religion and morality. The etization of religion historically takes the form that it alone can take. When a person believes in God, he makes the whole world’s life and, in particular, his destiny dependent on Him; then he views the moral law as an expression of the divine will, as well as develops all aspects of spiritual and social life - science, medicine, art, law - on a religious basis. What Kant says about religion, defining it as the recognition of the moral law as divine, is partly applicable to this particular stage of religious consciousness. Thus, the developing ethicization of faith - in addition to changing the type of religion - makes it possible for religion to have a reverse influence on morality. In contrast to the ethicization of faith, which refers to the content of beliefs, the reverse influence of religion on morality is formal in nature. Religion - both pagan and frank - gives the moral law significant strength and, relying on the activities of prophets and religious legislators, is the best way of moral and legal education of peoples. Recognizing this moment in the historical relations of religion and morality as very important, I do not find it necessary to dwell on it for a long time, because this influence of religion on morality is not disputed by anyone. More significant results for our question should have an explanation of the fact that the union of religion with morality bears the features of a certain necessity. What I want to say with this is the following. Being related and relatively independent, each with its own value, religion and morality can enter into an alliance and again diverge on their own paths. And so, when a person has already developed to ethical self-consciousness, then the separation of religion from morality, its development in its own ways, should have a fatal significance for it. In primitive man, who has not yet developed to reasonable morality, religion is determined by natural feelings of mystical horror, helplessness, and tribal kinship; she leads him to cruel acts, forcing him to stab his own son or defeated enemies. But these actions cannot be assessed from an ethical point of view, because their cruelty is not shaded by the presence of moral consciousness, the presence of thoughts blaming one another. When ethical consciousness has developed, then the isolation of religion from morality cannot go unpunished. It is not only a regression in religion, a return to the primitiveness of religious consciousness, it inevitably appears in the form of a distortion of spiritual life. Due to the subjective homogeneity of religion and morality, the immorality of religion, while not in the least hindering the power of religious feeling, necessarily gives it a false direction. “Whoever says: I love God, but hates his brother, is a liar.” What is the falsity of such a religious trend? If there is a word that can express the complexity of this religious phenomenon without being too harsh or too weak, it is hypocrisy. To be hypocritically religious in general means to have the appearance of piety and not have its spirit. This does not necessarily mean that a person takes on the appearance of piety consciously, for some material gain from people, although at its extreme levels hypocrisy takes such a form. A hypocrite may sincerely and strongly believe, but this faith rests on self-deception. Religious hypocrisy lies in the fact that religion is shifted from its true subjective soil and placed on supports that are unusual for it. The true direction of religion, its development, in which it becomes a living force, consists in the movement from external submission to the Absolute to the internal absoluteness of the spirit. In morality, a person already achieves absoluteness, in the form of autonomy, reaches the stage of free spiritual life - free in relations with society. Although this is not religious absoluteness, it is not the freedom of sonship with God, it is still a spiritual freedom akin to religion, on which religion naturally relies, taking on an ethical form. Morality is an inevitable stage in the development of the spirit; and at the stage of ethical self-awareness, religion must be filled with moral content. If she is freed from this content, then she turns away from the path of her natural development in which her life is. Under such conditions, she must look for new content for herself, and finds it in egoism. Primitive man, like a child, knows neither selfishness nor self-sacrifice. But when a person develops to ethical autonomy, to the level of spiritual personality, then egoism is also possible, as conscious individualism - the conscious limit of individual benefits. Religious hypocrisy is egoism, or individualism, on religious grounds; it is the limitation of religion to the individual sphere 7 . That this means individually limited goods, i.e. external, this goes without saying. In a hypocritical religion, a developed individual (who has reached the point of clear self-awareness) places himself personally, in contrast to other people, in a relationship with God, seeks His protection for himself, and not for others, and limits His mercy to himself, or his own. Hypocrisy and pharisaism are one and the same. Finally, I must add that religion, moving from the path to absoluteness to the dead end of individual limitation, inevitably turns into ritual belief. Just as wealth, honor and power are a surrogate for spiritual freedom in society, so ritual faith, hope for symbolic good deeds, for conditional means of pleasing God, is a surrogate that replaces the good of religious absoluteness, hiding the thirst for spiritual faith. A person may appear to be pious in order to deceive other people - this is what is better known as hypocrisy; but he can sincerely believe in the power of rituals, sincerely expect personal benefits from piety, and this is still hypocrisy, this is historical hypocrisy, because entire societies can live by it for many centuries, and its lies are revealed by a historical look at the path of religion. So, the religion of the people at the stage of ethical consciousness must have moral content; otherwise it degenerates into hypocrisy. In the history of popular religion, hypocrisy is a more widespread phenomenon than is commonly thought. It is necessary to recognize that strong religiosity is quite possible in the presence of extreme immorality. To illustrate this phenomenon, one can recall Ivan the Terrible. That's how prof. Kovalevsky in the book Ivan the Terrible and his state of mind depicts the life of the Terrible in the Alexandrovskaya Sloboda. “Tormented by suspicion, delusions of persecution and closely related painful images of his fantasy and imagination, John sought consolation for his torments in religious rituals. He arranged his entire life and surroundings according to his morbidly religious mood. He turned his very palace into a monastery, the guardsmen into monks, and promoted himself to abbot. The abbot surrounded himself with brethren of the most evil guardsmen, 300 people. He made Vyazemsky a cellarer and Malyuta Skuratov a paracclisiarch. John dressed all these brethren in tafyas or skufeikas and black cassocks, under which were covered shiny caftans embroidered with gold and trimmed with sable. At the saddles of this brethren, during royal trips around the state, brooms and dog heads hung, as a symbol of the fact that they were called upon to take revenge on Russia, from litter and to gnaw on the royal villains. John gave this brethren, with monastic dress and animal hearts, a special monastic charter. Life in the Aleksandrovskaya Sloboda went like this: at four o’clock in the morning the tsar with the princes and Malyuta Skuratov went to the bell tower to announce the morning service. Chernetsy hurried to church. Those who did not appear were punished with eight days' imprisonment. The service lasted until six or seven o'clock in the morning. The king sang, read and prayed so zealously that traces of his bows remained on his forehead. Mass at 8 o'clock. At 10 o'clock there was a meal, during which John read edifying works. Everyone ate and drank to their fill. The last to dine was the Tsar Abbot. After dinner, the king either had soul-saving conversations with his favorites about the law, or went to the dungeons to torture some of his victims. Apparently, this last had a particularly refreshing and encouraging effect on him: after that he was cheerful, joked and was more affectionate. Vespers at 8 o'clock. At ten o'clock he went to bed, and three blind men told him fairy tales. At midnight he woke up and the day began with prayer. Often, while listening to the divine liturgy, he gave the most cruel and inhumane orders. Thus, the king lived between the altar and the dungeons, with the performers of the bloodless sacrifice and the executors of inhuman and bloodthirsty orders, often he was both abbot and executioner. a restless, fickle and fussy king, always in anxiety and excitement, he often interrupted this life by going to monasteries, hunting wild animals and persecuting his subjects in Moscow and other cities. This mixture of asceticism and strict religiosity and bloodthirsty brutality was complemented by immoral sexual unbridledness. Thus, the tsar often ordered to bring other people’s wives to him by force, having dishonored them, he handed them over to the guardsmen to be mocked, and then returned them to their husbands. Then, fearing that the husband would take revenge for this disgrace, the king ordered the husbands to be killed; in some cases, he did not disdain mockery of the disgraced husbands.” Not only that. We can observe immorality in a more direct and closer connection with religiosity - immorality for religious reasons. Man brings base passions into the very realm of religion. Who does not know the image of Torquemada, all the horrors of the Inquisition, the bloodshed of religious wars, the persecution of heretics, religious intolerance, the restriction of spiritual freedom in the name of the glory of God? “Whoever kills you will think that he is serving God,” says those who are called the salt of the earth and the light of the world. But in addition to these sharp manifestations of religious immorality, a penetrating glance will reveal much in religious teachings and in the structure of popular religious life that is explained by the heartfelt cruelty that penetrates the sphere of religion and flourishes under its cover. Of course, it would be groundless to blame religion for these manifestations of immorality, or to explain it away as religion. Such accusations can be found in feuilleton literature, with which scientific ethics has nothing in common. However, to the question: la religion, implique-t-elle inévitablement la moralité? 8 you must give a negative answer. Next. In relation to issues of public improvement, religion (as well as law, first hidden in religion, then separated from it and replaced it in this matter, taking these issues entirely upon itself) - folk religion is a conservative force, while activity belongs to personal prophecy, creative reason. Hence the clash between them. Ethical consciousness is constantly evolving, and religion should move along the same path. To the extent that it defends its exclusivity, its impenetrability, its immobility, it turns out to be entirely the realm of ritual belief, the kingdom of symbols, of dead form. Let us recall the speeches of the Old Testament prophets - not the representatives of the early “prophecy of visions”, popular spontaneous, but those who said about themselves: “I am not a prophet and not the son of a prophet,” who spoke according to their personal calling, acted in the name of the word of God, in the name of the moral law. These prophets said to the most religious of the nations: “Why do I need the multitude of your sacrifices, says the Lord. I am satisfied with the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle; and I do not want the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before My face, who demands that you trample My courts? Bear no more vain gifts; smoking is disgusting to Me; New moon and Saturdays, holiday gatherings I can’t stand: lawlessness and celebration! My soul hates your new moons and your holidays; they are a burden to Me; It's hard for me to carry them. And when you stretch out your hands, I close My eyes from you; and when you multiply your prayers, I do not hear: your hands are full of blood. Wash yourself, make yourself clean; remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; stop doing evil; learn to do good; seek the truth; save the oppressed; protect the orphan; intercede for the widow”... Woe to that nation that does not have such prophets. However, later, both in other areas and in the ethical-social area, the personal heroism of leaders is replaced by collective work. Nowadays, in the matter of public improvement, science, society, and the state are ahead of popular religion. Thus, in our country, serfdom was abolished not by religion, but by literary and government figures. Judicial and prison matters are also improving. In historical studies on these issues we will find clear indications of the attitude of religion towards them. As you know, in the old days there were even prisons at monasteries. Here is a page from the history of the Solovetsky prison: “... The monks fulfilled their sad duty as jailers not only out of fear, but also out of conscience, and .... the situation of the people given under their power was difficult: we do not see any indications of relief and mitigation, always possible from the administration in any prison. Nor is there anywhere, even in the weakest way expressed, the desire of representatives of the church to relieve themselves of a duty so unusual and contrary to the teachings of the Gospel.”... Likewise, in the area of ​​married life, this social unit, science and reason introduce new ethical principles, which religion cannot but approve. I mean those ethical principles that follow from the laws of heredity. “Both sexes,” writes the godless Darwin, should abstain from marriage if they suffer from any degree of physical or mental defect. But such desires belong to the realm of utopias and will never be even partially realized in reality until the laws of heredity become generally known. Anyone who contributes to the achievement of this goal is of great benefit to humanity." It is impossible not to mention with deepest gratitude the literary activity of our V.V. Rozanov for the benefit of the ethics of conception 9 . Compare with this voice of reason the insensitivity in this regard of the popular religious conscience, which, however, is very sensitive to the ritual minutiae surrounding the sacrament of marriage. Finally, religion without ethics is powerless. Law, like science and art, which was once absorbed in religion, now acts independently. Ethics, due to its essential connection with law, adjoins it and forms a unique ethical-social system, which contains both progressive (dynamic) and conservative (static) principles. The inner world of man remains the responsibility of religion, and religion now differs from the ethical-social system, just as an isolated individual opposes society. The question of the relationship between the individual and society, personal religious mood and social activity is not new in the literature. One can point to its brilliant solution in the corresponding chapters of the Justification of Good. V.S. Solovyov gives the example of one landowner, by whom many peasants were tortured on his estate, all the beaten and all the girls were scolded, and about whom the neighbors said: “he is a true Christian and (i.e.) - performs all Christian rituals.” Religion, which includes the highest morality, turned out to be powerless to make a person truly moral, to keep him from serfdom when serfdom reigned; on the contrary, now, with the destruction of this right, such personal atrocity has become impossible. “What an idea, limited to the subjective sphere, personal morality (religiosity?), could not do for thousands of years, it did in a few years, when it was embodied in public force and became a common cause.” A folk religion can realize the morality that it contains only through the mediation of an ethical-social system. Without this mediation, popular religion necessarily turns into ritual belief, the most sublime religious and moral sermon hangs in the air and turns out to be a voice crying in the wilderness. The hope of bringing about ethical and social improvement directly and solely through subjective religion is the most obvious utopia. The point here, of course, is not a certain degree of culture, but the very fact of cultural development, its movement. In the understanding of a people who do not have elementary legal and ethical concepts, who do not know how to maintain bodily cleanliness and external decency, in short, whose cultural development is delayed by some circumstances, in the understanding of such a people the most sublime religion degenerates into hypocritical ritual belief, in their life it turns out to be completely fruitless. True, even under these conditions, religion can give people the greatest consolation in sorrow, prepare them for suffering and death, lead them joyfully to torture and death: but for life, for ethical and social well-being, it is powerless. A poor people needs its religion, but only imaginary friends of the people and their true enemies can think that they only need religion, that they do not need the benefits of ethical and social progress. These circumstances not only logically justify, but also historically explain the later desire of ethics for complete freedom. We see original, purely human, ethical energy already in the first steps of the ethicization of religion; but then the ethical consciousness still acts half spontaneously, which explains the very fact of the union of ethics with religion. During the historical development of relations between religion and morality, we find the highest consciousness of the moral principle and its complete freedom from folk religion. Nowadays - theoretically - ethics asserts an autonomous principle; In practice, modern cultural society builds its life on the basis of an independent mind. And this flowering of autonomous morality must be recognized as a very important step in historical progress. However, now it is necessary to make a reservation. Each transition from one stage of ethical and social development to another is accompanied by extremes and distortions of the new principle. For example, the Christian doctrine of spiritual freedom was accompanied by the extremes of the antinomian movement. Likewise, the moral autonomy of modern times is accompanied by extremes of a materialistically negative attitude towards the moral law. Nowadays they readily say that besides the laws of nature and science and besides the obligation to conform to these laws there are no laws and other obligations, that a person can and should be guided only by personal and social benefit, that altruism is only reasonable egoism - in other words, that serving one’s neighbor is permissible only within the limits of personal benefit, that morality has nothing sacred in itself. This sentiment must be recognized as a fact 10 . But what follows from this?... Firstly, just as religion cannot be blamed for the immorality that is committed by people in the name of religious motives, so self-legal morality cannot be blamed for the excesses of the antinomian movement. Evil is not in religion or morality, but in man: when it manifests itself, it only changes its form in accordance with new teachings, while essentially remaining the same. Materialistic antinomianism is no worse than religious immorality. Secondly, there is no need to exaggerate the extremes of modern antinomianism and there is no need to talk about the moral degeneration of cultural humanity, awaiting its flood. Such prophecies are not new; they are found in every era. Such dismal forebodings are no novelty.Every age produces its prophecies of coming woes (Leslie Stephen). There is no doubt that, in general, the modern ethical-social system is morally higher than it has ever been before. But this is not the most important thing. Antinomian extremes only emphasize the height of the ethical movement. It would be the greatest untruth to assert that independent morality necessarily reduces to materialistic principles. No, it declares itself independent from two sides: from the religious-metaphysical and, at the same time, from the scientifically materialist. Just as we showed above in theory that defending autonomous morality does not mean taking a scientific-materialist point of view, so in reality the modern ethical movement has nothing in common with materialist tendencies and with the extremes of antinomianism; on the contrary, it is hostile to them. Finally, moral autonomy does not consist only in the negative freedom of a person from the religious law, but at the same time it manifests itself in moral energy. Only in this truthful light can we properly evaluate the autonomous ethical movement in modern cultural society. Most characteristic of this movement are the so-called ethical societies, which have recently emerged and are growing rapidly in America and Western Europe 11 . In these societies the ethical movement was fully formed. The first principle of the ethical movement is that the sacred (religious) association of people should be based solely on reverent devotion to good, since it actually manifests itself in the world, in people (devotion to the good in the world). An Ethical Society is a fellowship solely in devotion to the good in the world. Ethical brotherhood has as its goal to spread good in the world and gradually reduce the kingdom of evil. The concept of good is not associated with any particular theological beliefs or metaphysical opinions. This is exclusively that living, understandable goodness that is generated by the heart and felt by the heart - justice, family love, charity, honesty. Members are accepted into the fraternity regardless of their beliefs and opinions. We set righteousness up as an object to worship. Ethical societies are ready to admit that, in principle, Christianity is the original Ethical Society; but they are dissatisfied with the modern Christian church because it does not pay enough attention to the moral task, hiding it behind dogma and cult; dissatisfied with theology because it is limited to the recognition of absolute good outside the world, outside the human heart; dissatisfied with metaphysics for its abstract view of good. It does not go unnoticed that theological beliefs and metaphysical opinions divide people. They hope to draw all men into moral union. Freed from theology and metaphysics, ethical societies, on the other hand, become in decisive antagonism with positivism, secularism and socialism - in their positive love for morality, in their ethical energy. Hence the second principle of ethical societies - recognition of the absolute holiness and inviolability of moral duty. For them, the doing of duty is a religion. They place moral behavior above everything - above religious teachings and rituals, above all material wealth. They reject material wealth, political success and social progress without a personal moral basis. They recognize righteousness as the only way to a joyful, peaceful and inspired life (right conduct is the way, and the only way, of a joyful, peaceful, inspiring life), - not only the basis of social unity, but also inner spiritual life... We are not included in the immediate - theoretical and practical tasks of the named societies; Let's limit ourselves to their principles. From this point of view, they cannot but be called a highly gratifying phenomenon. We call the autonomous-ethical movement an important step in the history of spiritual progress. However, in explaining and justifying this movement, evaluating it from a psychological and historical point of view, we value it as a living direction of the spirit, and not as a final formula. This is essentially not the same thing. When they direct a path to a high seashore in order to bypass a swamp, then it is impossible to point out against this direction from the very beginning that it abuts the sea: as a temporary direction, it is inevitable. However, when encountering the boundless sea, it must be changed: it cannot be eternal. It is impossible to stop at moral autonomy and recognize it as unconditionally self-sufficient. What is needed from it is a new movement towards religion - towards spiritual religion; moral consciousness must be supplemented with the religious absoluteness of the spirit. The most autonomous-ethical movement has the highest value that it provides scope, or a fulcrum for free aspiration to heaven. Moral autonomy, not only unconditionally freed from religion and metaphysics, not only established exclusively on earthly principles and limited to the human domain, but also completely isolated in this domain and claiming the complete satisfaction of the spirit with earthly interests - such morality is, in typical expression, utilitarianism. Utilitarianism asserts that the most sublime demands of morality are explained and justified by considerations of benefit, social and personal. Not only that. Consistent utilitarianism recognizes morality only as a means to achieve happiness or benefit. According to the teachings of utilitarians, not only the content of morality (its principles) is created empirically and therefore conditionally; but they also conditionally represent the subjective basis of morality, depriving it of any, even subjective, absoluteness. Reason, which replaces the moral instinct and grounds morality, is, according to their teaching, nothing more than a consideration of utility, estranged from the limitations of the moment, random desires and generally subjective myopia - this is not the reason of a spiritual person, but the reason of an educator, a social guardian, a ruler. Utilitarianism faces fierce controversy from apologists for the moral nature of man. This polemic, due to its apologetic tendency, is in many respects unfair to utilitarianism and is often scholastic and petty. Morality has a utilitarian side, and with the external, so to speak, pedagogical-governmental view of morality (Bentham and Mill), utilitarianism is invulnerable 12. Considerations of benefit can serve as a support for morality; one can arm oneself against this only at the request of false etiquette, only with a superstitious attitude towards issues of conscience. Equally, there is no reason to claim that a utilitarian view of morality will lead to immorality in life. On the contrary, subsuming the laws of hygiene under asceticism and under altruism - considerations of reasonable egoism - if it does not raise the heights of morality, then in any case it will protect against extreme and gross immorality. The weakness of utilitarianism is not in the falsity of its principles, but in the fact that they are shallow, superficial, and lack subjective depth. The subjective absoluteness of ethics must be defended not because it is true, but because it is valuable; it must be looked at not from the point of view of logical truth, but from the point of view of the value of subjective creativity. It is a waste of time to compete with the aphorisms of La Rochefoucauld and prove that selflessness is possible; the very idea of ​​unselfishness is valuable in its creative power, the subjective absoluteness of ethics is valuable in its internal energy. Utilitarianism from its point of view is right, but rightness alone does not create life, does not give energy. Utilitarianism can create a cultural society, justify the highest amount of happiness, but it can neither create nor support the love of life, the internal energy of personal activity. The doctor is powerless in the face of decrepit old age, in which everything is normal, but there is no energy; he is powerless before apathy, before the spiritual depression of a young, normal, but withering organism. Utilitarianism is a moral hygiene that thinks of doing without living force; it leads society to apathy, it depresses the spirit. Is happiness, social welfare the last goal of life? This is apparently good; but how vulgar life seems if it is stretched out on this plane, if it is limited by these narrow limits. This is where the Achilles heel of utilitarianism, together with positivism, secularism, and socialism. And this weakness was felt by cultural humanity, which had gone far along the path of material progress and succeeded in the cause of social improvement. This is not enough for a person. He needs a shrine. His activities must have an absolute basis. Morality must be raised to the height of religion (morality as a religion). The ethical movement in religious terms associates itself with the name of Kant. Indeed, Kant clearly formulated the identity of morality and religion. “Religion, according to him, is the knowledge of all our duties as divine commandments” 13 “True religion,” he says in another place, “contains nothing but laws or practical principles” 14. The Englishman Emerson 15 equally resolutely identified religion and morality, whose name is also remembered by ethical societies with reverence. Adhering to them, the ethical movement developed the concept of ethical religion, in the newest sense of these words 16. In this movement, we first of all observe a desire to rise above the vulgarity of utilitarianism, a desire to elevate morality to the level of sanctity, to the height of religion; Then we see here the desire to completely limit religion to the practical area. The result is the identity of religion and morality. Ethical religion is primarily an active religion (a practical religion). She arms herself against an aesthetic, or philosophical, or theological attitude towards the spiritual world, towards good. Recognizing the absolute definitions of a perfect life, absolute, i.e. divine properties of good, she does not want to be limited to aesthetic contemplation of good, abstract thinking about it, fruitless reverence for it - she wants an active attitude towards it. Good in all its divine properties must be the good of our life: people themselves must become divine (we are to become divine). People's idea of ​​God is only the image of what we ourselves can become (all that men have gathered into the form of a God is but the image of our possible selves). But if human ideals do not open up a realm that exists outside of man, and only indicate what we ourselves should become and what we should do, then can we talk about religion? Representatives of ethical religion answer this question in the affirmative: they elevate morality to the level of religion. Morality can become religion in two ways. Religion, from the subjective side, can be defined as the highest interest of a person: everything that completely absorbs a person is his religion. If morality, if goodness becomes higher than everything for a person, dominates his thoughts, determines his feelings, guides his life, then it becomes his religion. The question of the possibility of such a religion is the question of whether a person can love goodness unselfishly and enthusiastically. Without thinking too low of people, this question must be answered in the affirmative. From the objective side, religion is a person’s attitude to what is higher than everything in the world. Morality, truly understood, puts a person in contact with the essence of things. The moral law is eternal, unchangeable, universal. He is the law of every rational being. He leads us to a higher order of things. The duty is absolute. And morality in this sense is religion; it is the only religion of a reasonable person. And this is a new religion - an ethical religion. Russia has its own representative of ethical religion - L. N. Tolstoy. His name is associated with a strong rise in ethical self-awareness. He set service to good as the highest task of man, a self-sufficient good. Serving good for him is religion, good is God for him, except good for him there is no other God. “Good is the eternal, highest goal of our life. No matter how we understand good, our life is nothing more than the desire for good, that is, for God.” In the gospel he sees only the teaching of a good life, only a system of rules for social improvement. In the newest ethical movement it is easy to notice two sides: firstly, the elevation of goodness to the height of a shrine and, secondly, the limitation of religion to the limits of goodness. The first constitutes the invincible strength of ethical religion, the second is its weak side. Good should be sacred to man; his place is in the church. But not all religion is good. Religion satisfies the special needs of the human spirit and establishes its relationship to the root cause of world life. The religious principle of ethics is the absoluteness of good. But the absoluteness of morality is a subjective absoluteness. It is quite sufficient to justify goodness, but it is not enough for the fullness of spiritual life, for the meaning of goodness. This fullness of spiritual life and the meaning of goodness are achieved when subjective absoluteness and personal goodness receive objective significance through the power of faith. Having reached the consciousness of moral autonomy, a person will not become a villain, even if he did not see the meaning in life: dying in the consciousness of the meaninglessness of life, he will not refuse to do good. But to use in the interests of good the death of a person who has come to realize the meaninglessness of life, as Guyot advises, is too little for the royal power of good. It is necessary that goodness with royal power look into the eyes of all suffering and humiliation, into the eyes of death itself - and only faith can do this. For God, who pleases Him, man can do nothing but good; Kant and other representatives of ethical religion are right in this. But faith gives a person more than the good itself: “God commands His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unjust.” Kant calls the existence of God (and the immortality of the soul) postulates of pure practical reason. In this world and in this life there is no correspondence between happiness and virtue. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize the existence of God, who can reward a virtuous person in the afterlife. Thus, according to Kant, the moral law leads to the assumption of the existence of God 17, i.e. to religion The existence of God, like the immortality of the soul and freedom, is an assumption of practical reason, a hypothesis from the point of view of good... But to point out the hypothetical nature of the existence of God means to radically undermine the possibility of faith. Is it possible to talk about religion from Kant’s point of view? Undoubtedly, his speech about religion is outrageous hypocrisy, just as Tolstoy’s religion is called hypocrisy. The object of religion is different from the scope of morality; The area of ​​faith is wider than the area of ​​goodness. The true soil on which faith grows is given by a sense of the universe, a feeling of dependence on it, a look at human life from the point of view of the universe. It is not enough to declare utilitarian morality sacred; it is necessary to introduce into it the holy principle of religious absoluteness, the principle of faith. The subjective absoluteness of autonomous morality must be complemented by the absoluteness of faith - in order to be not only the beginning of activity and the basis of social improvement, but also to create the meaning of life. In philosophy the meaning of life is learned, in religion it is created. Christianity, as a spiritual religion, is an absolute image of spiritual life - complete faith and love to the point of death. We know two types of spiritual-personal religion: Buddhism and Christianity. Buddhism has a negative-passive, contemplative character. In Buddhism, the individual reaches negative absoluteness. Cognizing the deception of existence, the Buddhist sage denies it, and in this knowledge, in this denial, he becomes above everything, he becomes a self-god. Buddhism is atheistic. Buddhism has enormous attractive power. A spiritually developed person, with weakness of faith, in the absence of faith, fatally deviates into Buddhism. Christianity is too often confused with Buddhism, replaced by it - both in practice and in theory. Christianity is an active and creative spiritual religion. Here the Logos, in the image of a human personality, creates the meaning of world and human life. Here, the basis of everything is creative experience: to love is bliss, love is strength. This creative experience serves as a revelation of world meaning. Love and create - and you will have God the Father. Christianity is deeply religious: without an all-consuming faith in God the Father, as well as without love, we will not understand a single line of the Gospel. Buddhism is to Christianity as a dream is to life, as a dream is to action. Christianity is absolute spiritual life, faith and activity. First of all, it brings absoluteness into moral life, gives an absolute expression to the moral commandment, and makes the commandment good. The objective absoluteness of spiritual life is the absoluteness of faith: Christianity is broader than morality. Having received absolute expression, the commandment ceases to be a commandment: Christianity is above morality. From the fact that the sun shines on the good and the evil, it concludes not that good and evil are indifferent, but that God is love. Because God is love, it commands us to love the good and the evil. Christianity is not immoral, but it is superior to morality. It is essentially spiritual and personal. Not individually, because the spiritual personality is absolute, namely spiritually-personally. It is intimate, internally free: it cannot be the beginning of social improvement. Christianity is an internal spiritual life, but not a system of rules for a social order. Politics, social life, courts, and family cannot be organized on the basis of the gospel; it cannot be used as the basis of culture. The commandment to hate one’s wife and parents cannot form the basis of family life; the commandment of non-judgment cannot be the beginning in the organization of courts; the commandment to disdain wealth cannot lead to economic well-being; the commandment to love your enemies does not create patriotism. A people who supposedly determine their lives solely by the gospel is a people who are exclusively given over to the power of superstition and hypocrisy. Christianity is the beginning of spiritual personal life; it is completely powerless as a code of social life. Buddhism is indifferent to culture. But Christianity presupposes a free cultural life. It presupposes a developed ethical consciousness. As an internal spiritual life, with freedom of cultural and ethical development, Christianity has enormous vital significance. From an ethical point of view, one can and should criticize any religion, but the value of religion, spiritual religion, does not lie only in the fact that morality is based on it. Spiritual religion gives absolute expression to morality, but its own value is higher than morality, and therefore spiritual-personal religion, in its deepest essence, is higher than ethical criticism. For a person who has achieved moral autonomy, only spiritual-personal religion can be valuable, and this value is completely unique. We are not satisfied with either vulgar utilitarianism or lifeless mysticism; we want an ethical religion - not in the sense that religion is exhausted by ethics, but in the sense that religion elevates morality to absoluteness, that religion is higher than morality, but not immoral, not lifeless. Autonomous morality is the greatest cultural acquisition of man, which does not need to be replaced by any mystical splendor. There is no need to stop at utilitarian morality. It is necessary to raise morality to an absolute beginning, as it is in evangelical Christianity. For a Christian there is no law, but not because immorality is open to him, but because in free love he has fulfilled every law and has become above the law. Freedom for him is higher than the moral law, but not in denying it. Morality forms the lower limit of spiritual religion. He is free while he soars above this limit, but he immediately loses his freedom as soon as he falls below it. Morality, law, and culture form the outer shell of the religious spirit, the religious personality. A religious person can only be reached through culture, law and morality; religion is a living force only under the condition of morality, law, and culture. Without ethical culture one cannot reach religion; but spiritual religion is higher than culture and morality, it is that absoluteness that lies beyond the limits of public culture, it is the deepest internal spiritual value. From the outside, one cannot see anything valuable in a person other than ethical culture, and we have the right to wish and demand that religion not appear without an ethically cultural garment. But religion is not exhausted by this shell; it is something internal that is absolutely valuable in the individual, addressed to God, which is valuable in itself and gives meaning to everything. Morality clothes religion and is embodied in law; it accepts absoluteness from religion and convention from law. Morality is primarily a human matter: it is unconditional, as man himself is autonomous, and limited, as man is limited. Ethical-religious and moral-legal are internally similar and at the same time different; they are mutually dependent and together do not represent one fruit of the other. The connection between them is not mechanically quantitative, but internally free. Without ethical culture there is no true religion, but the measure of culture is not thereby a measure of religiosity, and religiosity itself does not create culture, just as spiritual life is impossible without physical nutrition, but the measure of nutrition is not a measure of spiritual development. Hence the highest principle of spiritual life - freedom... Lately we have been talking a lot about church life. Significant shortcomings in the modern formulation of pastoral care are discovered and measures to eliminate them are proposed. On this basis, there is intense talk about the organization of an Orthodox parish, about providing for the clergy, about a seminary program. A significant drawback of this kind of measures is their palliative nature, while pastoral ministry must have fundamental foundations, it is primarily a ministry of the spirit, and in judgments about it, more than anywhere else, one must look at the root of things. They don’t want to talk about radical measures, perhaps because radical c. This area is less perceptible, since it entirely belongs to the area of ​​​​the free spirit. It is easier to talk about the publication of some law or rule, about external orders, about numerical data, than to develop the apostolic advice: “do not quench the spirit.” Therefore, they think that on issues of church life and Christian practice one can be guided by independent practical considerations, without touching on the question of the essence of Christianity, without turning to the gospel. “There is an ideal, and we are dealing with life,” they tell us. “Entering our atmosphere, heavenly rays must be refracted. The spirit must have tactile tools in order to act on the inert mass. In the interests of Christianity, it is necessary to take advantage of the services of the state, science, positive progress, material support, improvement of the form. "... Thinking this way, they forget that all aspects of Christian life must be determined by a single principle - internal, must develop from one principle - the spiritual. They say: ideal is one thing, life is another matter. But the ideal can be understood in different ways. Of course, an ideal is always a concrete image of an idea, but an idea is either an idea of ​​what reality should be and should become, or it is an idea of ​​what should be in our reality. In the first case, the ideal is opposed to reality as the future of the present, the possible of the experienced, the unprecedented of the seen - and is even presented as impossible in reality, so that the rule of life inevitably adapts ideals to the conditions of reality. In this case, practical significance belongs not to the ideal, but to the model. Ideal and reality stand on different steps of the same ladder and are separated from each other temporally and spatially. The ideal eliminates reality; reality eliminates the ideal. The victory of the ideal over reality is the victory of time and space. Now and then, here and there. An ideal cannot be directly applied to reality, just as fire burns or melts upon contact, but moves through steam. The transition from reality to ideal occurs in natural growth or improvement; it is determined by conventional rules and temporary forms, it is carried out together with the improvement of rules and forms, therefore it is a conditional-mechanical improvement. In the second sense, the idea relates to reality as the eternal to the temporal, the absolute to the conditional, the invisible to the visible, the essential to the phenomenal. Here the ideal is as much future as it is past: “before Abraham was, I am.” Here the ideal-goal coincides with the reason: “everything was created by Him and for Him. He is before all things, and through Him all things stand.” Here, the achievement of the ideal is the discovery of what has been hidden from time to time: “now glorify Me, O Thou, Father, with Thyself, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was.” Here the ideal as a task coincides with the given basis of life. Therefore, on the one hand it is said: “if your righteousness does not exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, then you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (i.e., the achievement of righteousness is a condition for entering the kingdom of God), and on the other hand it is prescribed: “seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness” (i.e., the kingdom of God is depicted as existing, so that it can be sought as a hidden treasure, and the truth appears to be its property). The Kingdom of God has existed from eternity, constitutes the real good and ethical task of the present, and is expected as the eschatological future. The ideal-reason is the beginning of life, it is hidden in it, so that life is light for man, reason is revealed in life, and at the same time, the freely achieved ideal-love gives man true eternal life. This is the spiritual ideal, the ideal of spiritual eternal life, in contrast to the ideal of natural or worldly perfection. Christianity is precisely such a spiritual ideal. The peculiarity of this ideal is that it is realized in unconditional, unlimited laws and rules, that it is the entire and exclusive property of a free creative personality. Even in the matter of realizing the spiritual ideal there is a difference between the present and the future, between the direction of the spirit and actual convention; but the whole strength lies in the fact that this external convention is never transferred to the spirit’s own aspiration, to its decisions, to the very idea of ​​the ideal, to the inner church of the “meek and silent spirit,” but awaits it only beyond the threshold of this church, only in external manifestation - the difference between the present and the future of the kingdom of God does not relate to the spirit itself, but only to the outer shell of the spirit. In its own church, in the inner good, in the free direction, in the fact that “nothing falls away,” which is eternal, in this the spirit is now the same as it will be in the future, in this its fullness knows no boundaries, its direction does not experience any deviation. Of course, no matter how hard you throw a stone, it will not fly in a straight line and will inevitably deviate towards the ground; a boat heading straight to the shore is carried downward by the current. But it is a different matter whether the boat is evaded only by the current, or whether it is deliberately directed with the current, effortlessly bringing it to the shore. In relation to the free activity of man, this difference not only has enormous significance, but it also marks the boundary between the religious and the everyday, the heavenly and the earthly. Whatever the direction of the spirit, its external manifestation will be conditional, limited, but the whole question is what this direction is. The requirements of the religious ideal are unconditional and unlimited, the religious aspiration of the spirit is precisely the aspiration towards the absolute, the religious direction is precisely the direct direction. “Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.” The religious, in contrast to the worldly, or earthly, is actually absolute, here everything is considered sub specie aeterni, sub specie absoluti. Take the area of ​​worldly, earthly aspirations of a person, and examine what he wants: you will find that he always wants something limited, singular or many, numerical, this or that, local or temporary. I want to build myself one house with twelve rooms, I want to sow one hundred acres, I want my three sons to be happy, so that one of my friends and two friends have good luck. Suppose that when I acquire one hundred dessiatines, I will want to have two hundred, when I build one house, I will want to have another dacha, and so on endlessly. But at any given moment I want something limited, every real desire is conditional. Unconditionality here destroys the very possibility of desire. On the contrary, in the religious field, striving is absolutely necessary. In religious terms, I want all people to be happy, all to be sons of God, for all creation to be freed from slavery to corruption, for God to be all in all - religious love is love to death, religious perfection is absolute perfection. Of course, this is not natural, adult perfection, the absoluteness of infinite number, infinite time; on the path of increasing numbers, quantitative improvement, natural growth, one can only come to the absoluteness of omnipotence, omniscience, to that absoluteness of the ideal, by which reality is eliminated and the desire for which inevitably shortens life, is exchanged for limited desires and replaces ideals with models. On the contrary, true religious absoluteness is the absoluteness of spiritual life, spiritual perfection. However, this is precisely the absoluteness that constitutes an integral part of religious aspiration. Every aspiration of the spirit is religious only when it is unlimited and absolute. More or less, here and there, now and then - this is earthly, this is the desire for a quantitative ideal; everything and forever is divine life. There is no place here for arithmetic calculations, calculations and considerations, adaptations and looking back: whoever takes the plow and looks back is not a worker in God’s field. To leave everything, to sell everything in order to acquire one pearl, to hate everything that is yours - this means living a divine life. In external manifestation, this divine impulse will also encounter limitation, but this limitation in no way weakens its inner strength, nor does it in the least change its own direction. Religiously, I love all people and because of this love I look after this person. Apparently, here are the same boundaries as carnal love. But this is only apparently, only in external manifestation: in the inner being, this and this love are different. Worldly love is conditional in itself, since with carnal love I love this person only because he is “this” person - my brother, my friend; on the contrary, in spiritual love there are no internal boundaries, since I love this person not as this particular person, but as one of all, since spiritual love presupposes hatred of “my own” - for it there is only an external boundary, for, loving everyone, I can actually do good only to individual representatives of humanity. “I realized,” says one of Dostoevsky’s heroes (Versilov in the Adolescent), “that my service to an idea does not at all free me, as a morally rational being, from the obligation to make at least one person practically happy during the course of my life... To make at least one being in my life happy with something, but only practically, that is, in fact, I would make it a commandment for every developed person, just as I would make it a law or duty for every peasant plant at least one tree in your life in view of the deforestation of Russia”... The same applies to other borders. All these are boundaries for the external manifestation of spiritual life, but not for its internal strength. Despite these external boundaries, the demands of the spiritual ideal are always absolute: love everyone, give everything, love to death. The poor widow's mite was a religious matter, because others contributed a lot from their abundance, but she gave all her food: the limitation of the mite was not the limit of her religious impulse - in the limitation of an external fact the religious boundlessness of her spirit was revealed. The limitations of external detection do not extend to the most spiritual ideal - and its demands are always unconditional; in this unconditionality their religious strength. "God! How many times should I forgive my brother who sins against me? up to seven times? - “I don’t tell you: until seven, but until seventy times seven.” – How much should I give from my estate? Is it a tenth part? “Anyone of you who does not renounce everything he has cannot be My disciple.” All the commandments of Christ have such an absolute character: nothing half-hearted, no arithmetic, no calculation. Not only don’t kill, but don’t even get angry; not only do not commit adultery, but do not even look at a woman with lust; don't swear at all; do not resist evil... If the commandments of the gospel have such an [unconditional] character, then obviously the completeness of their fulfillment is given not by external action, not by arithmetic, but by the spirit, its energy. The point is not how much I give - the endless arithmetic increase of the sacrifice does not bring me closer to spiritual absoluteness; it's all about how I give. In the kingdom of God there are no external values; there is only one value here - the value of the human spirit, the human personality. In the field of external culture and worldly civilization, we see external values, independent of the value of individuals - these are forms of production, forms of mutual human relations... In this area, progress is made objectively, in the sphere of these forms. External progress can be counted. There is no such objectivity in the kingdom of God, in its history. In the kingdom of God, the requirements are absolute, and they can only be realized in absolute values, and such values ​​can only be human individuals. Therefore, the kingdom of God does not come in a noticeable way; it is impossible to say: behold, it is here, or: behold, there. It is inside a person. Neither do they pour new wine into old wineskins, otherwise the skins will burst, the wine will flow out, and the skins will be lost. But new wine is poured into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” In the kingdom of God, forms do not have independent significance as an objective means for internal development. The latter takes place in the depths of the spirit, it always flows from the source of “living water”, and always has the absolute character of personal creativity. “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst; But the water that I will give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into eternal life.” Freedom of creativity, freedom of personality - this is a necessary condition for spiritual life and spiritual development. This is the freedom to possess the truth. Every Christian, like Christ, is a son of God, has within himself the spirit of God, which is the spirit of divine freedom, the spirit of free creativity. “You, brothers, are called to freedom,” the apostle solemnly assures: “do not quench the spirit!” This spiritual freedom determines the relationship of Christians to the external form of life. church) and will change the customs that Moses handed down to us,” just as the enemies accused Christ Himself in the words: “I will destroy this church made with hands, and in three days I will erect another one not made with hands.” And yet Christ Himself did not destroy the church; He cleansed it by expelling those who sold and bought from it. His business was to establish the principle of worshiping God in spirit and truth, leaving him in the heart of the "true worshipers" to freely determine their attitude towards the church. The absoluteness of Christianity can only be combined with the conventionality of historical form when both relate to different spheres: absoluteness is placed in the spirit, and form is recognized as an external convention. The question of the relationship between the absoluteness of spiritual life and the external conventionality of form only receives proper resolution when it is given to the freedom of the spirit. And this is why. Christianity is the greatest good for the one who comprehended and accepted it, for the individual, and at the same time it is a cross - a terrible requirement in relation to earthly life. After all, you need to think about what it means to be a Christian: it means to love to death, to hate yourself, to hate your father, mother, wife, children. People cannot live such a life. When Christianity is offered as a duty and an ideal to the people, they, out of a natural sense of self-preservation, seek means to protect themselves from the “all-consuming fire” of religion, from the destroying lightning of the sky - and find this means in the independent, objective value of a church symbol, religious form, good deed - in Orthodoxy, orthodoxy and ritual belief. All this is natural, reasonable and understandable. There is still no serious problem with all this. The serious problem of religious form begins from the moment the personality is eliminated by the form and free creativity is replaced by the symbol. In this case, the very foundations of spiritual religion are undermined, the form becomes an instrument of spiritual death, the symbol kills. This is the problem of our time. It is easy to see that the Christian religion, which was once life and work, has now become an empty symbol among us. There was a time when becoming a Christian meant becoming a different person, when the impurity of sin was truly washed away in the waters of baptism, when every Christian truly possessed the power of the spirit of God, when participation in the holy cup and bread was a symbol of the actual participation of Christians in the death of Christ, following His path. Christians were so different in life from non-Christians that “no one from outsiders dared to pester them, and the people glorified them.” Wherever Christians came into contact with non-Christians, whether in travel, in relations with fellow villagers, in trade, everywhere Christians stood out from the pagans. That is why, during the cruel persecution of Christians, when the latter stood in full view of everyone and their lives were closely watched, the defenders of Christianity boldly and publicly pointed out the heights of Christian life. Pagan religion demands nothing more than the shedding of blood, smoke from incense and empty libations; and ours requires prudence, a pure heart and integrity of life. The pagan religion admits to itself everyone indiscriminately, adulterers, dissolute women, shameless shameless people, thieves, robbers, poisoners, and they all pray for nothing else than to be able to commit their atrocities with impunity. We have no room for any sin. Whoever begins the sacrifice not with a clear conscience will be subject to the threats of God Himself, Who sees all the bends of the heart, Who is the irreconcilable enemy of sin, and inevitably demands truth and faith from us. Neither malice nor false prayers are inappropriate here. But the pagans are so unhappy that they cannot understand how harmful a religion is that indulges the greatest atrocities and accepts prayers infected with a bad conscience. They think that they have performed the most wicked offering when they raise their hands when they pour out a libation, as if the defilements of the spirit could be washed and cleansed by any water from streams or from the sea. Our church ideals, indeed, do not extend beyond the fact that the name of God is glorified from sea to sea with one mouth, so that uniform liturgical splendor adorns our entire land, so that church administration acts harmoniously - beyond what is symbols and form. Our church administration, consistory and clerical, is not designed for the needs of the living soul; our confession is limited to textbooks and is not connected with life; Our ritual worship in the popular understanding is shrouded in the darkness of superstition and even idolatry. And all this is considered normal. Here is a picture recently conveyed on the pages of one of the spiritual magazines. “Ten or twelve years ago, a local archpastor toured the Kuznetsk district. In one Mordovian village, he wanted to know how firm the Mordovians were in the Orthodox faith. He went into the headman’s house and was just about to pray when he noticed that there were no icons at all in the front corner. Not only in comparison with the heterodox, but even in comparison with the pagans, Christians today stand out for their immorality. Now we are waging a war in the Far East. We are losing. But our military failures may soon give way to our victories 19. It is much more regrettable that we, Orthodox, are inferior to the pagans in ethical culture. Here is what the Orthodox Bishop of the Far East, Innokenty (Pereyaslavsky), recently wrote: “Very sad phenomena in the social life of Manchuria explain many of the victims suffered by Russia in the Far East. Living in the mountains Far away, I was surprised and grieved in my soul at the carelessness and unrestrained revelry that reigned there on the eve of the military events. It seemed that for a Russian resident of a distant outskirts there was nothing terrible, and he could meet his advancing enemy without trepidation. But the first fatal blows from deadly weapons plunged everyone into indescribable horror: everyone lost their heads, everyone ran... It is true that the church still has many children. But there is an even stronger and more terrible evil, which is approaching Russia like a hopeless cloud, before which both superstition and sectarianism fade. This is the religious indifference of the people remaining within the church fence. Those who have a keen eye and are attentive to the people resolutely declare their “complete indifference to all spiritual interests. The religious question does not exist at all - and not at all because the peasant firmly adheres to Orthodoxy, but because he has no interest in spiritual issues." The serious question is not how to change the seminary program, but whether the seminary stencil can prepare workers in the field of Christ at all, whether the consistory form, which begins with the number on the petition of the protege and ends with the number of the resolution, which does not give room for a single living moment of human relations between the elector and the elected, can catch the fishers of God. Archim. Pavel in one of his letters to prof. N.I. Subbotin wrote: “The late Bishop Innocent, Metropolitan of Moscow, once told me: when I was young, I had the fear of God in me, and when I entered the sciences, studied at the seminary, I lost the fear of God, and only later, when I left the seminary, I began to fear God again.” Compare with this the relevant lines from the diary of Archpriest. Putyatina. The famous Bishop Porfiry wrote: “Our clergy is a caste and, like a caste, has innate vices. If brilliant talents appear among him, their strength is weakened by a narrow education and the direction of souls in one direction, towards the bell towers. The Kingdom of God is the kingdom of individuals, absolutely valuable, spiritually free. Only those marked with the seal of God, led by the spirit of God, can be active in God’s field. To have room for such figures is all we can desire from our order. Now, like yesterday, like yesterday, there must be a time for heroes, people of their own initiative and internal energy. The heroes of the kingdom of God are prophets. Kings and priests were usually in alliance, but the prophets, fearlessly proclaiming the word of God, did not know any human connections - their formidable speech was directed equally to the people and to their priests and kings: “Hear, O priests, and give ear, O house of Israel, and incline your ear, O house of the king, for judgment will be upon you.” The judgment was for the priests along with the people, because “they feed on the sins of my people, said the Lord, and their souls strive for their iniquity. And whatever happens to the people, so will it to the priest.” And the fate of the king was in the fate of the people. In Jewish history, however, along with true prophets there were false prophets. But false prophecy was always exposed by true prophets, while the priesthood found no accusers among itself. Prophecy in itself, in its very reality, has the spring of its eternal renewal. The possibility of false prophecy with the freedom of the prophetic spirit is not dangerous for the religious life of the people, because it is always overcome by the own powers of prophecy; legalistic formalism is dangerous, which does not provide any room for the discovery of the prophetic spirit. The time of intense prophetic service in Jewish history was a time of high religious life of the people, although these were difficult days politically and gloomy for the Jerusalem temple. The beginning of the death of the Jewish people was laid in the difficulties that the prophetic spirit found for itself in the theocratic system - it was laid in those days about which it is said: “the wise man is silent in this time; for this is an evil time.” He did not boast of human glory, He is with the one who has spirit and freedom He is with the one who calls all the nations To the spiritual world, to the Lord's church! .... The question is: does the “primary and dominant position of the Orthodox Church in the state” contain a sufficient basis for its free life? In addition to the freedom to “practice their faith and worship according to its rituals,” people of other faiths and heterodoxes also enjoy the freedom to convert to Orthodoxy; members of the Orthodox Church do not have the freedom to leave Orthodoxy, and this deficiency turns out to be fatal for Orthodoxy - that sore spot from which Orthodoxy is internally weaker than heterodoxy and other faiths, with all its external splendor. Due to the lack of freedom of expression, in the depths of Orthodoxy there are many members who have lost their church faith, and therefore the entire life of Orthodoxy is covered in the darkness of sheer hypocrisy. Since ancient times, the strength of the church has been its purity. In the life of the first Christian community, the most remarkable thing, as we know, was that all its members were “with one accord together - all the believers were together and had everything in common” (Acts II, i. 44); but this unanimity of the members of Christian society was possible only because “no one from outsiders dared to pester them” (V, 13). This is a feature that is usually not paid enough attention to. The Christian community saw in itself the bearer of divine glory, its representative, according to the word of Christ: “so let your light shine before people, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father” (Matthew V, 16). Looking at itself so highly, the church could only give place to sincere believers and did not allow anything “extraneous” into itself. It is easy to reconcile these two directions in the activities of church authorities in relation to Christians by name, because the first and most essential point of this reconciliation is given in the freedom to leave the church: this is the minimum severity of church authorities and the extreme limit of leniency. If, on the one hand, the church must cast out all hypocrisy from its midst, and on the other hand, it must be lenient towards the weak, then in any case, complete freedom to leave the church should be given to all those who do not want to be its members - in any case, there is no reason to forcibly detain in the church those whose conscience does not allow them to stay in it, and thereby artificially maintain hypocrisy. The whole strength is that staying in the bosom of the church is not accompanied by any material benefits and leaving it is not surrounded by any external obstacles. The elder brother of the parable is the image of historical Israel, who boasted of his descent from Abraham, knowledge of the law and loyalty to Jehovah, considered himself healthy and had no need for a doctor, who, with his legalistic self-righteousness, closed the path to the kingdom of Christ for himself; the younger brother is an image of publicans and sinners who preceded the righteous of Israel on the way to the kingdom of God. These images retain all their instructiveness for us Christians. If natural righteousness did not save Israel and the kingdom of God went to natural sinners (Gal. II. 15), then how much less can there be natural Christians. Fiunt non nascuntur christiani. Every Christian is born spiritually, that is, he becomes a Christian freely and consciously - and without such a spiritual birth there is no Christian. Therefore, every “natural Christian” must sooner or later be set free by the church, under the exclusive guidance of his own mind, must test his ways, and only in this case can he come to Christ freely and consciously. If we want to prepare a slave for ourselves, then we will educate him to be an automaton, and most of all we will try to suppress in him the signs of love of freedom and free-thinking. But when raising a son, we act differently: at the first opportunity, we let him test his own strength, apply his intelligence to work, show nobility of character, risk, enterprise, self-confidence - we cultivate in him a love of freedom, independent initiative. “Obey,” we say to the slave; “Act yourself,” we tell our son. This is the strength that nothing can replace enterprise, personal initiative, activity, freedom - no substitutes, and these qualities are cultivated only in freedom. Who doesn’t know the drama of a despot father who would like to see a free leader in his son, but sees in him a timid, crafty, downtrodden creature? His mistake is that he does not give freedom to those whom he would like to see free... And that a Christian is a son and not a slave is the main dogma of Christianity. What is valuable in a Christian for God “can only be what he himself does, what he himself brings to God: a person becomes a Christian when he gives place to Christ in his heart, lives by Him, loves Him. “A person can repay everything he receives from God only with his heart. He has everything of God, only “his heart” - and only his heart, and only he himself can repay God. And if he gives up everything he has, if he gives up his body to be burned, but keeps his heart to himself, closes it, does not open it to divine love, then he is nothing to God. This is the whole strength of a person, which makes him valuable in himself, a precious pearl, in comparison with which the whole world is nothing: he can only love himself. Forcibly open a flower and it will wither; you have to wait for it to reveal itself to the sun. You cannot force a person to love: he will do everything under pressure, he will perform all the rituals, he will confess with his lips, he will show all obedience, he will only close his heart, and the more tightly you put pressure on him. He can only love freely. If you want,. Discussions about freedom of conscience will only stand on solid ground when it is understood that the religious freedom of members of the Orthodox Church is beneficial not only for each of them, but also for the church itself. She will only become free and actively alive when she gives freedom to her children. And this is both in relation to the legal position of the church in the state, and in relation to living activities. Caring for a son requires incomparably more attention and effort from a teacher than training a slave. And the freedom of the members of the church would shake up its entire being, would strain its forces, now dormant, would call forth in it figures who are now hiding. There has been a lot of talk lately about ways to awaken life in the church and its leaders, to revive the parish, and to interest the clergy. For this purpose there is one direct means - freedom of conscience. The practice of hunting stuffed bears and lions will not teach a person courage, resourcefulness and dexterity; all this opens and develops only when confronted with real danger. It's the same in church. Now the pastors are dozing in trust in the police protection of the church gates and consider it unnecessary to teach the flock. Freedom of conscience and the need to raise spiritual children would immediately set before them serious tasks, which all mercenaries would be afraid of, but which would call lovers of work to the field of Christ. Free children need to be given real knowledge, they need to be instructed so that they are able to give an account of their own hope and consciously relate to every teaching. Such tasks would put living life where we now see a clerical form, would establish living reality in the place of dead symbols. Nowadays the conscience of the Orthodox is shackled by the idea that he cannot help but be Orthodox. This thought drills into his soul, deprives his religious life of sincerity, and clips his wings. Nowadays, between the shepherds and the flock there lies an impassable abyss, which is created by the unceasing suspicion in the souls of the flock that the word and deed of the shepherds are not sincere, that they are in the service of the state. It's time to remove these shackles from your conscience and dispel this fog of suspicion with the light of freedom of conscience. At the same time, I in no way equate the freedom of carnal, or pagan, life with immorality and licentiousness. Carnal life, in all the fullness of its development, has ethical foundations. “The pagans, according to the apostle, having no law, by nature do what is lawful; they are a law unto themselves, the work of the law is written in their hearts.” It would be a mistake to attribute to morality an exclusively divine origin and heavenly character; on the contrary, it has a utilitarian side, an earthly character. The joy of carnal love in itself is not only not immoral, but it also constitutes the natural foundation of morality: it creates shame, like the tension of sexual love, the family, nation, state develops from it, the union of parents and children, the connection of a person with the past and the future, the courage of the head of the family, the devotion of its members to a common cause, patriotism are established on it, artistic development, mutual helpfulness are adjacent to it, and in it are the roots of all scientific and cultural progress. – Married life cannot flourish on the basis of the Gospel, because the Gospel requires the husband to “leave his wife and hate her,” and married life requires carnal love, carnal passion. G. Merezhkovsky speaks about the “Christian sanctity of marriage”; but this is because in the place of Christ’s gospel he puts a “new” gospel, looks not at the one eternal historical Christ, but “mystically contemplates the new face” of the coming Christ. – Patriotism can be reconciled with the gospel only with the help of hypocrisy and sophistry, since the starting point of the gospel is the fight against national limitations in the field of religion. True Christianity cannot fuel patriotic feelings. – Finally, Christian Science,” “Christian art” are empty words. The gospel has no direct points of contact with science and art. Science and art are better the freer and more humane they are. Forgetting this truth poses a hopeless dilemma: either deny worldly life in the name of the gospel, or lower the gospel and adapt it to the needs of life. Tolstoy took the first path. He deeply understands the Christian law, at least more deeply than the defenders of the so-called new Christianity. His mistake is that in the gospel he sees not only the content of personal and spiritual life, but also the norm of social improvement, the basis of earthly prosperity. With this view of the meaning of the gospel, Tolstoy's conclusions are consistent. If the gospel is absolute, then, when directly applied to carnal, worldly life, it denies all its forms. For the sake of the gospel, one must reject science, art, the state, marriage: all this cannot tolerate evangelical absolutism. Tolstoy does not stop at the fact that without these forms and types of natural life, the latter turns into a ghost. Tolstoy's opponents, with whom he, despite all his powerlessness, powerfully fights, go exactly the opposite way. Embracing the fullness of the natural life of man in the sphere of Christianity, defending Christian marriage, Christian justice, the Christian state, Christian art, and at the same time recognizing the impossibility of absolute content in the forms of natural life, they lower the evangelical requirements, apply the gospel to the level of the needs of social improvement, derive from Christianity the rules about the obedience of slaves to masters and authorities, about the submission of a wife to her husband, create Christian socialism, etc. This is an adaptation. is achieved by introducing into Evangelical Christianity the remnants of Jewish morality and scraps of everyday pagan wisdom. Thus, the Jewish decalogue and forms of pagan religion are accepted into the system of Christianity. The contradiction that arises, for example. between the commandment about hatred of father and mother and the commandment: “honor father and mother,” is eliminated by the hypothesis of evangelical advice, not generally binding, voluntary, to which the whole essence of the gospel boils down. Of course, at the same time as the gospel declines, adapting to life, and natural life, being drawn into a sphere alien to it, is somehow pressed down, a kind of timidity is created in natural movements, joy is darkened. There can be only one way out of this dilemma: since the gospel cannot define the carnal life, it must be given complete freedom. This freedom must be insisted on in the interests of the gospel itself. The Gospel does not care about the content of worldly life; only human souls are dear to it. However, souls can be won to the gospel only if they grow up in the sphere of free carnal life, in the warmth and joy of carnal passions, if they develop strong and free personalities, if they are first enriched with all the riches of worldly life. Only in the fullness and freedom of carnal life can there be a fulcrum for the heavenly impulses of the spirit. If it is said: “hate your father, mother, wife, children, give away your property, sacrifice your life”; then, obviously, this gospel has power only for those who know the warmth of carnal love, the joys of family life, who worked on acquiring property, who loved their people, and enjoyed honor and glory. The sacrifice of life for God is a real sacrifice on the part of the one who has life - rich, joyful, strong. One can be purchased for God who has first purchased himself for himself. On the contrary, whoever did not love with worldly love, did not know worldly sweets and sorrows, for that person the words of the Gospel sound sluggish, weak, like the echo of a distant chant in which you cannot understand the words, like a dream that you do not remember. If it were possible to instill the gospel in someone from childhood, from the first days of consciousness, to raise him in true Christianity, then he would grow up to be a pathetic freak, good for no one and for nothing - that lukewarmness that is said in Scripture would degenerate from him: “You are neither cold nor hot; Oh, that you were cold or hot! But because you are warm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.” So, in the interests of the gospel, as well as in the interests of earthly development, carnal well-being, beauty and rationality of life, one must desire religious freedom for the flesh. Now the question is: how is the freedom of the Christian spirit combined with the freedom of the flesh? How does the Christian spirit relate to the kingdom of the flesh? Christianity is in the absoluteness of goodness, in the combination of ethics with faith, in spiritual believing love - and therefore the Christian attitude towards nature and the flesh begins only from the moment from which the natural attitude becomes an attitude towards man, towards the person. The natural attitude of a Christian does not, for this reason alone, inevitably become ascetic and does not create an escape from the world. The Christian spirit manifests itself in real love for living people, and not in abstract contemplative religiosity. Anyone who says that he loves God, but does not love his brother, is a liar from a Christian point of view. And whoever says that he loves his brother, but loves in word or tongue, and not in deed and truth, is also a liar. The Gospel proceeds from the fact that life is good - not holy and not sinful, but good. The blessing is sunshine, health, the joys of family life, friendly communication. And to love according to the gospel means to give people, first of all, this good of life, up to and including a cup of cold water. A true Christian mourns with the sick and prisoners, and rejoices with those who rejoice - he rejoices in the joy of his family and serves it with all the fullness of feeling. Christ creates wine for the joy of those getting married and blesses children with love: how can this be forgotten by Christianity? Christ's elect are chosen from the world and sent into the world to serve people. It serves, but not to rule the world, not to impose one’s inner good on it, as a duty, as a law, as a form. “Who made Me to judge or divide you”? Christ said to one of the people who asked Him to divide the inheritance between him and his brother. Thus, in the words of Christ, His chosen ones can say to the world: “Who made us marry or divorce you? who put us in charge of your carnal life? Christianity is not defiled by the flesh, and at the same time, it is not in the flesh, not in its boundaries, not in its forms. Christianity lies in that and only in that which is above the flesh, only in spiritual absolute love, only in the absolute striving of the spirit towards divine perfection. Christianity is about loving all people, in order to hate your own, in order to lay down your life for people. Christianity is in that inspired impulse, in that calling that puts a person above the boundaries of the flesh. Speaking about the participation of a Christian in the flesh and his participation in the flesh, we do not want to say that the spirituality and absoluteness of Christianity can be somehow lowered, but we want to say that the absoluteness of the Christian religion cannot create a special kind of life (supposedly ascetic). For God's work, a Christian must hate everything that is his own, abandon his mother and father, wife and children, despise all worldly goods - this, and only this, is Christianity. But until he felt his election, until he realized the definite work of God, which he could not fulfill within carnal boundaries, until then his only opportunity to live as a human being was to follow the laws of the flesh. To leave its boundaries without a calling, that is, without a joyful and all-encompassing consciousness of the divine task that does not fit within these boundaries, means idolatry before the form. Mutatis mutandis one can say about Christian inspiration what a poet says about poetic inspiration. To the sacred sacrifice Apollo, The soul tastes a cold sleep, And among the insignificant children of the world, Perhaps he is the most insignificant of all. But only a divine verb It will touch sensitive ears, He yearns for the amusements of the world, He runs, wild and harsh, And full of sounds and confusion, On the shores of desert waves. Oh, of course, there is a lot to change here as it applies to the Christian. Christian inspiration does not drive a person into the wilderness, but encourages him to lay down his life for his friends. And the carnal life of a Christian is, in any case, a chaste life. And perhaps, finally, the alternation of Christian inspiration and everyday vanity, the one thing necessary and concern for many things is not repeated so often: Christian inspiration embraces life more completely and irrevocably than poetic inspiration. But still, a hint is given here of the scheme of the relationship of the flesh to the religious spirit. I will not dwell at length on the question of a Christian’s personal relationship to the flesh. The flesh and Christianity diverge the more objectively they are considered: Christianity has no direct relation to forms of life, cannot create a code of social life, there cannot be a Christian marriage, a Christian state. But the flesh and Christianity come into closer contact, the more intimate a person’s relationship with them - they come into contact in the only relation of Christian, ethically active love for the flesh. And so - our topic is not to depict this intimate relationship, but to establish the relationship of Christianity to the forms of natural life, to reveal the concept of evangelical freedom. But they don't stop there. Merezhkovsky, referring to the fullness of pagan or carnal life, says that the flesh is equal to the spirit, equal to holy - both the spirit is holy and the flesh is holy, voluptuousness is holy. Divine, spiritual, this is the upper sky, the heavenly abyss; carnal, human, this is the lower heaven, the lower abyss - there and here there is one absoluteness. “So, paganism is not as the opposite of Christianity, or the other half of the world denied by it, but as a necessary half of Christianity itself; the teaching of Christ, not as the greatest separation, but as a union of these two halves, two poles, two sexes of the world; what seemed to be “Christianity” and what still seems to be “anti-Christianity” are not two, but one; the sky above and the sky below, day and night - not two, but one.” The heavenly earth and the earthly sky: if you surrender to the heavenly to the end, you will reach the earth; If you completely immerse yourself in earthly things, you will reach heaven. “Good and evil principles are equal; both paths unite at the end, the God-Man and the Man-God are one and the same.” Merezhkovsky looks religiously at the flesh, at the human; He sees the gospel itself not in preaching about the divine alone, but equally divine and human; he points out the polarity in the very teaching of Christ, Christianity for him is a combination of these opposites. Like him, Rozanov, who focuses his attention primarily on the field, on marriage, sees in the field, in marriage, not only the human, but also the divine; he rises to the religion of marriage. In his view, “the family wants to occupy the apartments that are still occupied by the virgin state, αγαμι - by it, they want crowns, scepters, “lives” and “powers” ​​and “keys of the kingdom of heaven” that were not previously given to them. The whole debate is about the keys: is it possible for someone with a family, fertile, happy, cheerful, without despondency and melancholy in oneself, without reproaching oneself, but nevertheless become a dear and sweet being to God? This is the whole point of the dispute: about the basic Christian mood. For 2000 years it was rather suffocating, melancholy, sad, complaining, mourning; in general - tragic. There are no smiles, laughter is criminal, pleasure is condemned; and what is most passionately condemned is the sweetest, male-female, “love”, union. Now I take it, take the sweetest thing and, looking at it, I say in bewilderment: what’s not true here? The truth is in cunning, arrogance, power, and stinginess. And this, from which such a wonderful creature is born, like a child, so innocent, I think it is more holy than sinful... Interest is good - capital is good. These defenders of the holy flesh declare themselves resolute opponents of church (i.e., historically Christian) asceticism - and it seems to me that in their view everything is exhausted by this historical antithesis, that they do not reach the height of the Gospel teaching, to the Gospel problem. On the other hand, their usual opponents go completely against them, content with defending what they reject. But it is necessary and important to consider the issue exclusively from the Gospel point of view, exclusively on the essence of the relationship between spirit and flesh. It would be desirable, first of all, to eliminate from the scope of discussion everything that is not essential for the gospel, for the Christian spirit, and everything that is not essential for the flesh, everything that is historically temporary. The Gospel problem of the relationship between spirit and flesh is the problem of the relationship of the divine to the human; this relationship is far from the same as the ascetic relationship of spirit and flesh. Let, just as in each of the higher religions the purity of the primary source is reduced in the folk-historical phenomenon, so in Christianity the evangelical relationship between the divine and the human is replaced by ascetic ideals in the concept of the people - this is so understandable. But in any case, there is no reason to consider the ascetic problem to exhaust the evangelical problem. “Historical Christianity,” says Merezhkovsky, strengthened one of the two mystical poles of holiness to the detriment of the other - namely, the negative pole to the detriment of the positive - the holiness of the spirit to the detriment of the holiness of the flesh; the spirit was understood as something not polar opposite to the flesh, but as something completely negating the flesh, as incorporeal. For historical Christianity, the incorporeal is spiritual and at the same time pure, good, holy, divine, and the carnal is unclean, evil, sinful, devilish... Isn’t the teaching of Christ indicated a way out of this contradiction? Doesn’t this teaching affirm the this-worldly polar opposite of the other-worldly mystical unity of Spirit and Flesh? Doesn’t Christ affirm the equivalence, the equal holiness of the Spirit and the Flesh?” Thus, Merezhkovsky, solving the ascetic problem differently from how it is solved in historical Christianity, thinks in the same way as his opponents that the gospel is exhausted by this problem. He does not realize that the essence of the matter is not in this or that solution to the ascetic problem, but in the replacement of the Gospel problem with an ascetic one and, conversely, in the return from the latter to the former. In decisive antagonism to asceticism, he reaches aesthetic absolutism, absolute aesthetics beyond good and evil, and thinks that this is the gospel point of view. He does not notice that in essence he remains on the same level as the opponents he exposes, and inevitably comes to the same confusion of two principles. In the same way, Rozanov, strictly speaking, works on an ethical-cultural issue, but not on a religious issue. Whatever he wants in relation to marriage can be achieved along the way by a few church-state laws. And what cannot be achieved by a change in legislation cannot be achieved at all through it. All religion cannot be reduced to the issue of marriage. Tolstoy says that religion is about destroying marriage, Rozanov says that it is about improving marriage. Both of them do not reach religion either. It is easy to understand that the theologian opponents of Merezhkovsky and Rozanov are usually content with developing only an ascetic question. And this mutual reduction of the essential to the historical-temporal is noticeable both in the general formulation of the question and in particulars. Eg. Rozanov categorically states that “prostitution and infanticide are the fruits of asceticism.” But who does not know that prostitution and infanticide exist on a large scale where asceticism has not been heard of, that savages know this evil, that infanticide is at least explained by economic conditions? Rozanov and Merezhkovsky put this evil at the expense of the church, while their opponents associate all evil with the essence of paganism. “Mental foolishness, moral filth are an inevitable part of the human... Can Christianity bless the Greek orgies and Roman feasts in which the flesh triumphed over the spirit? Can Christianity bless art that serves self-love or sensuality? Can Christianity bless that apotheosis of sensuality, which we find in Boccaccio’s Decameron?”... But Christian asceticism is not limited to the fight against these extremes? On the other hand, are these extremes essentially and inevitably connected with paganism? Doesn’t paganism itself know the means to combat them? Isn’t the essence of the matter to know to what extent salvation is in culture itself, and where does the area of ​​religious salvation begin? To put it briefly, isn’t it better, when deciding the question of the relationship between spirit and flesh, to keep in mind what is essential in Christianity and what is essential in paganism? Now we are actually talking about the flesh, about the holiness of the flesh. Let us consider the flesh essentially, i.e. Let's mean the best in the flesh, the normal. We pose the following question: does the flesh have Christian holiness? That is, firstly, is the Christian consciousness satisfied with the flesh and, secondly, does the flesh within its own boundaries give place to absoluteness? These questions must be answered in the negative. The facts of life give a negative answer. From this point of view, let's look first of all at the family - at a normal, well-organized family. So, what is family love for the Christian consciousness? “In this wonderful place (i.e., in marriage), writes Rozanov, God miraculously arranged the harmony of personal egoism with the interests of the whole. The more selfish a family is, the more closed in on itself, the more cut off from the world it is: and the more warmth it gathers, the main living condition for children, future fellow citizens of the fatherland. The more selfish a husband is, the more demanding he is of his wife: the more strictly he guards her fidelity, like a wife, and her devotion to children, like a mother. Again, from the husband’s selfishness, the interest of society, of which such a wife and mother is an excellent member, benefits. The wife is selfish - she keeps her husband at home: then the economy, surplus, all parts of the nation's property grow. Thus, here, the more someone demands for himself, the more he gives to everyone. A wonderful organism, a magical instrument!” Yes, this is truly a magical instrument with which animal egoism is miraculously transformed into a sacrifice to God, with which everyday boundaries are raised to the heights of religion - warmth, fatherland, husband, wife, public interest, economy, surplus, profitable purchase, sale, the twentieth... This is the religion of the landowner Levin, whom Rozanov repeatedly recalls with unfailing love. “My whole life,” Tolstoy says about himself, was concentrated in the family, in the wife, in the children, and therefore in worries about increasing the means of living. The desire for improvement has been replaced by a direct desire to ensure that I have the best possible life with my family.” At this time, Levin-Tolstoy acquired one estate after another, set up a stud farm, and especially admired his pigs. “Before, when he (Levin) tried to do something that would do good for everyone, for humanity, for Russia, for the whole village, he noticed that the thoughts about it were pleasant, but the activity itself was always awkward, there was no complete confidence that the work was necessary, and the activity itself, which at first seemed so great, became smaller and smaller, came to naught: now that, after his marriage, he began to limit himself more and more to life for himself - although he no longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary, saw that it was progressing much better than before, and that it was getting bigger and bigger. Now, as if against his will, he was digging deeper and deeper into the ground, like a rogue, so that he could no longer get out without opening a furrow. “It was undoubtedly necessary for the family to live the way our fathers and grandfathers were used to living, that is, in the same educational conditions and raising children in the same conditions.” It was as necessary as having lunch when you feel hungry; and for this, just as you need to prepare dinner, it was necessary to drive the economic machine in Pokrovsky so that there would be income. "... At the same time, the non-believer Levin found, or it seemed to him that he had found faith. This is the religion that everyone has turned away from indignantly. Turgenev wrote: “Levin is an egoist to the core.” Dostoevsky spoke of Levin's "gloomy isolation and gloomy isolation." “Kitty,” Dostoevsky expresses Levin’s thoughts, “Kitty is cheerful and ate with appetite today; the boy was washed in the bath and he began to recognize me: why should I care what was happening there in the other hemisphere; There is no and cannot be a direct feeling for the oppression of the Slavs, because I don’t feel anything.” Of course, there cannot be any other judgment about such a religion. “All this is poetry and women’s tales - all this is the good of your neighbor,” said Nikolai Rostov. I need our children not to go out of their way; I need to arrange our fortune while I am alive; that's all." Tolstoy subsequently rejected this ideal. “One sedately led within the limits of decency, the luxurious life of a decent, so-called virtuous family, which, however, eats up as many working days as would be enough to feed thousands of people living in poverty next to this family, corrupts people more than thousands of frantic orgies of rude merchants, officers, workers indulging in drunkenness and debauchery.” And not only with his words, but with his fate, Tolstoy showed that the family is the border for Christian freedom. When Tolstoy wanted to distribute his estate in a Christian manner, he met a decisive obstacle in the words of his wife: “I cannot let my children go out into the world when no one wants to do the same.” “This,” notes Merezhkovsky, is the main, seemingly irrefutable, argument of the prince of this world, which lulls us into our pagan abomination and as a result of which Christianity, for almost twenty centuries now, has failed: if one person cannot change all this, then let everything remain the same. This is the middle vulgarity on which the world stands, at least our democratic-philistine world, and which makes for it “the weak web of property” an iron chain.” Elsewhere, the same author writes: “what an abyss of animal egoism in that family instinct, which is praised above all principles and beliefs by modern bourgeois morality.” Here is a sharp split in the depths of new Christianity itself. For Merezhkovsky, Rozanov’s religion is philistinism. True, this does not prevent Merezhkovsky from having a different view of the bourgeois family. “If,” he says, in addition to the holiness of the spirit, we recognize the holiness of the flesh, in addition to the Christian, the equally eternal pagan holiness; then family and farming are not philistinism; it is immeasurably deeper and more primitive; This is the eternal voice of nature, the irresistible feeling of life, which forces the beast to make a lair, the bird to make a nest, and the person to light the fire of the family hearth. This is the making of a nest, submissive to the will of nature, magnificent house-building.” We will not talk about whether Merezhkovsky succeeds in achieving reconciliation. In any case, even in his last words there is hidden the idea that Rozanov’s religion, the religion of the family, does not have proper Christian holiness. The family is natural, aesthetically beautiful, has its joys and its sorrows, with which it is justified; it harmoniously combines personal egoism with the common good. But when the divine, absolute consciousness awakens in a person, can the family then satisfy him? Is it possible to squeeze this consciousness within the boundaries of your family? To establish the religious inviolability of the interests of one's family does not this mean to banish from human life every thought about the sacred, about the heavenly? Didn’t Rozanov himself once write that “in private or family life, every person reveals a weak degree of mental activity?” You can, and what’s more, you should even treat your family religiously, but doesn’t this mean erasing the attractive power of “your own”? Religious holiness can be brought into family relationships only when holiness has a heavenly universal basis... Rozanov admires the strength of family life in Judaism; therefore he places Judaism above Christianity. But the family in Judaism is inextricably linked with the national limitations of religion, with national conceit, with scribes and Pharisaism, with that system that could not bear man. The Jews were waiting for first places in the kingdom of the Messiah, royal crowns and thrones of judges, they were waiting for the shame of all the pagans at their feet - and they could not bear the Messiah, Who preached God the Father of all people. National exclusivity led to exclusivity, pharisaism, and within the national life of the Jews themselves - extreme contempt of the chosen for the common people - everything that is so contrary to Christianity. “The more the Jewish people loved God, the less they loved people. That in God all the nations of the earth have their father, who in his mercy cares for the lost as much as for the faithful, grieves for them and seeks their salvation - this idea was completely alien to the Jews... For us, O Lord, You created this age, but about the other nations descended from Adam, You said that they are nothing, but like saliva, and You likened all their multitude to drops dripping from a vessel (3 Esdras VI)... What a terrifying coldness emanates from these words, what a strange alienation from all people is heard here! Apart from their own people, all other tribes of the earth are not only neglected, but almost forgotten. In world history and in world literature, words of such contempt as these have probably never been spoken... Two thousand years ago, a new history and a new civilization were laid - the one in which we live, think and strive... The historical and religious significance of the Jewish people has ended.”... Rozanov, of course, remembers who said these words (Religion and Culture). But now he says differently. Now he sings hymns to Judaism, he wants to return the dominion of the Jewish religion to the world. At least he would remember that in history all sorts of restorations and revivals are unsuccessful, there is no complete return in history. The Christian consciousness cannot be satisfied with Jewish narrow-mindedness. Absolute, religious consciousness cannot tolerate carnal limitations. The line separating evangelical absolutism from one-sided asceticism is not as rough as is commonly thought; the truth is not in the antithesis of asceticism, not in recognizing it as false, but in recognizing it as a symbol that hides the truth of the Gospel. Evangelical absolutism is that absolute religious consciousness outgrows carnal limitations and cannot be poured into it, like new wine into old wineskins. Embracing this gospel truth, one-sided asceticism begins not with the cause, but with the effect, with the end: subsuming the abandonment of the family under the category of perfection and duty, looking at this as a means of achieving inner sanctity, it prescribes the abandonment of the family without the availability of spiritual good. According to the gospel, as a result of internal abundance and God's calling, the boundaries of the family are torn apart by themselves, the living spring of universal love flows through the edges of the family, one's own worldly goods are neglected for the sake of the inner good; but here the effect is put in the place of the cause, they begin with the fact that there is an end, duty replaces the good, the most external fact - celibacy is considered perfection. Here are all the characteristic features of any frozen form in the field of religion. They conveniently crawl under this frozen form and use it to cover up the most vulgar deception, hypocrisy, parasites, playing on popular superstitions, and deception of the people. But still, the trouble is not in the idea of ​​evangelical absolutism, but in the fact that the symbol takes the place of the spirit - and through this symbol it is necessary to break through to the springs of living water. For the gospel, carnal life is natural life, which in itself is neither holy nor sinful. In accordance with the gospel, one desires not a return to Judaism, but religious freedom of carnal life. The Gospel God is in love to death, in love for everyone, but not in the flesh, not in the family. The evangelical religion is a religion of spirit and love, but not a religion of family and flesh. The last thing I would like to say is anything offensive to the idea that Rozanov defends; the last thing I would want to do is belittle the cultural significance of his literary activity. That family is the most tender and beautiful thing in human life, that it gives a person the deepest happiness, has beauty in itself and requires the most heartfelt attention - this is beyond doubt; but this does not yet give grounds to attribute religious holiness to the family. I think that, on the one hand, it would be sad if all religion was limited to the family, just as if there was no sun in the sky and all the light was limited to one home; that, on the other hand, for the family to flourish, it needs only religious freedom, natural space, that it can feed on its own. “He who loves his wife (and children) loves himself”: this is a completely sufficient natural basis for family warmth. But religion, the Christian religion, goes beyond the family; The sun cannot be outshone by a modest family hearth. “If you love (only) those who love you, what is your reward (what is religion in that)? Don't publicans do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what special (divine, Christian) are you doing? Don’t the pagans do the same?” In comparison with religious absoluteness, family and national life is natural life and nothing more. Instead of the cult of the family, the culture of the family, the culture of the flesh, is more consistent with the essence of the matter. Rozanov's practically religious dreams are completely fruitless. A good family in itself has too much warmth, natural selfishness, for loving one’s flesh, loving those who love is so natural: what can the religious rites of the mikvah and the like give such a family? And where a family is corroded by difficult social conditions and unbridled brutal instincts, where a drunken husband tortures his wife and sells his children, what can the religion of the family do there? What can dreams about a family’s religion do? Is it possible to create a religion with such dreams? One can agree that the use of Christianity as a folk religion weakens family ties, but this logically leads to freedom of spiritual-personal religion and to religious freedom of the flesh, and in no way to the replacement of spiritual religion with the religion of the family. To talk about the religion of the family - unless it is a rhetorical figure - means approaching the same soulless symbolism from the other end. So, criticism of the religion of the family leads us to the conclusion that in the family there is no religious mysticism for us, that it cannot be a form of absolute religious life. But here we come to the religion of Merezhkovsky, who decisively asserts that the flesh can and should have its own absoluteness, that just as there is heavenly absoluteness, the upper heaven, so there is carnal absoluteness, the lower heaven, that just as endless heavenly love leads to earthly love, so the carnal path, traveled to the end, leads to heaven. Now we will look at the endless avenue of flesh stretching into the sky, as Merezhkovsky points out. The infinity of the flesh, according to Merezhkovsky, is primarily manifested in carnal love, transgressing the boundaries of the family, as we see in Anna Karenina. “Only once in all his enormous creativity did L. Tolstoy touch these seemingly forever inaccessible limits, where the supernatural borders on the natural, appearing no longer in it, but behind it, through it. This instant touch of L. Tolstoy to other worlds is found in Anna Karenina.” After leaving her husband, Anna Karenina thought: “It’s not my fault that God made me such that I need to love and live. I cannot repent that I breathe, that I love.” “These are the words crying to heaven; “This is the truth of a sinful wife,” exclaims Merezhkovsky. Are Rozanov and Merezhkovsky talking about the same thing? “Do you know what is called fornication and who is a harlot? asks Rozanov. – As one might assume, it is completely the opposite of what is called by this name in our country. A not very attentive reader could not help but be struck by the words flashing everywhere in the prophets: “harlots have no offspring,” “adultery is punished (by God) by infertility.” Ap. Paul, a zealous Jew before converting to Christianity, contrasts fornication with childbearing... The impossibility of mating and fertilization and resorting to other methods of sexual irritation is, in fact, fornication, adultery, prohibited in the VII commandment... This trunk of adultery (impossibility of mating) has leaves near it: and all male-female relationships leading to infertility or decreased fertility are also called fornication, and it can be committed just as much after formal marriage as outside of it.”... “What is fornication? Merezhkovsky also asks. – This is a frightened, driven into the darkest corner of the soul and body, and here is the decaying floor; this is a flame that is extinguished, but cannot be extinguished, and which, smoldering, turns into fumes.” Anna, as Vronsky's mistress, can least of all be called a harlot; on the contrary, in her sexual passion manifests itself in an aura of holiness. There is “holy voluptuousness” in it. “He wants,” Dolly said about Vronsky, “he wants your children to have a name. - What kind of children are they? – Anna said without looking at Dolly and squinting. - He can be calm, I won’t have any more children... It won’t happen because I don’t want it. – N'est ce pas immoral? said Dolly. - Why? Think about it, I have a choice of two: either to be pregnant, that is, sick, or to be a friend, a comrade of my husband,” Anna said in a deliberately superficial and frivolous tone... “For you, for others,” she continued, “there may still be doubt; but for me... You understand, I’m not a wife; he loves me as long as he loves me. So, how can I support his love? With this? She stretched out her white hands in front of her stomach." Anna tried to “entangle Vronsky in love nets.” For this purpose, she was not ashamed of her relationship with Veslovsky, about which she spoke: je fais des passions (to “tickle Alexei”)... Anna for Merezhkovsky is a holy bacchante. Are Rozanov and Merezhkovsky talking about the same thing? Do their ideals coincide? Is there an impassable chasm in the depths of the new “Christianity”? They say the diametrically opposite. If they recommend each other and pretend that they defend the same ideals, then this is a clear deception of readers. What, in fact, would Rozanov and Merezhkovsky come to an understanding with each other instead of fooling readers? It would be worth the effort. In reality, they have nothing in common except hatred of Christianity - they have nothing in common in positive ideals. If we agree that church-historical Christianity is Skoptism, then Merezhkovsky’s religion is Khlystyism, and nothing more. His ideal is Khlyst zeal. Rozanov has Judaism; Merezhkovsky has Khlystyism. And Merezhkovsky’s methods in interpreting the Holy Scriptures are completely Khlystovian, according to the principle “it’s rolling, it’s rolling.” He sectarianly despises the historical understanding of the gospel, the words of Christ. “A new earth and a new sky: this means there will be a heavenly earth and an earthly sky.” In the words of Christ: “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser,” Merezhkovsky feels the delights of orgy fun, likening Christ to Dionysus. “I and the Father are one” means for Merezhkovsky: the God-Man and the Man-God are one, spirit and flesh are one, etc. What is surprising if Merezhkovsky does not hesitate in the face of the difficulty of world problems and solemnly declares: “either we or no one.” These are the same techniques used by Merezhkovsky in the artistic criticism of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Who is to blame for the death of Anna Karenina? There is nothing easier for Merezhkovsky to answer this question: the “clergy” are to blame, Christianity is to blame. “Anna dies not through her own fault, not through the fault of her husband, lover, not even through the fault of her class, society, state, people; she dies as one of the countless victims for the religious error of the whole world in the matter of sex, for the nineteen-century adultery of all European humanity.” The fact is that Anna “knew in advance that the help of religion was possible only under the condition of renouncing what was the meaning of life for her.” So, Merezhkovsky concludes, the pagan goddess Aphrodite, an earthly, kind goddess, almost as humble as the sinner herself, would help her. But the greatest of all world religions - Christianity - turns out to be either completely helpless, or helping only under the condition of renunciation of the meaning of human life, under the condition of impossible repentance for the fact that a person breathes and loves. Christianity is on the side of the indissolubility of Anna’s marriage with the “half-dead” Karenin, and not on the side of her fiery love for Vronsky. Neither eunuchs nor the dead have anything to do with such Christianity. I do not think that Christianity is about the indissolubility of marriage, since it does not lie in the boundaries of marriage; but there is no doubt that it has nothing to do with Anna’s sexual passion for Vronsky. This is quite understandable and is not at all humiliating for Christianity. Christianity is a religion of absolute life, and in sexual passion, even if it crosses the boundaries of the family, there cannot be absoluteness. That there is no absoluteness in this passion, but, on the contrary, leads to a dead end, Christianity is not to blame for this. Blaming him for this is at least strange. Anna understands her death this way: “My love is becoming more and more passionate and selfish, but his (Vronsky’s) is fading away and extinguishing, and that’s why we are drifting apart. And this cannot be helped. I have everything in him alone, and I demand that he give himself more and more to me. And he wants to leave me more and more. We met halfway until the connection, and then uncontrollably diverged in different directions. And this cannot be changed... If only I could be anything other than a mistress, passionately loving only his caresses; but I cannot and do not want to be anything else. And with this desire I arouse disgust in him, and he arouses anger in me, and it cannot be otherwise.” This is the dead end of sexual passion, which they are trying to elevate to the pedestal of absoluteness. And Christianity cannot be squeezed into this dead end; it doesn’t fit here, it’s cramped and stuffy here. Anna’s passion is even for Vronsky - “gloomy, difficult love.” Then the torment for Anna Karenina was that she loved both Vronsky and Seryozha. She loved Seryozha, her son from her marriage to Karenin, just as much as she loved Vronsky. “When she thought about her son and his relationship with the mother who abandoned his father, she became scared.” Meanwhile, Vronsky and Seryozha instinctively hated each other - and this was painful for Anna. “I love only these two creatures, and one excludes the other,” she said. I can't connect them, and that's all I need. And if this is not the case, then it doesn’t matter. It’s all the same”... This tragedy is not as easy to solve as it seems to Merezhkovsky... In order to spontaneously surrender to Vronsky, Anna had to take her mother away from her son. This is not enough. Through her firstborn she was connected with her husband, the father of her son. Merezhkovsky cannot find words strong enough to condemn this ministerial machine, a man without a heart who strangled his wife for several years. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a person with less masculine virtues than Karenin. He is as insignificant as a husband as the old pawnbroker killed by Raskolnikov was insignificant as a person. But this parallel says a lot. Karenin was insignificant, but still he was his wife’s husband. It would not be worth talking about him if it weren’t for one circumstance - the fact that Anna gave birth to Seryozha, a beautiful boy whose “eyes are exactly the same” as his father’s. Anna loved her son from Karenin and did not love her daughter from Vronsky... But Merezhkovsky assures us that clergy and church asceticism are to blame for Karenina’s misfortunes. Well, what does asceticism have to do with it?... The limit here is in the sphere of the flesh itself. Anna “held cleave to her husband and became one flesh with him.” “A man leaves his father and mother and cleaves to his wife, and the two become one flesh; so that they are no longer two, but one flesh. What God has joined together, let no man separate.” After all, this is not a church-legal law, but a law of nature, a law of the flesh. And the seal of this law is for Anna Seryozha. Tolstoy decisively speaks out for the indissolubility of what God combined - for the indissolubility of the first connection between man and woman. Dostoevsky solves the question in the same way, saying in Pushkin’s speech: “Imagine that you yourself are erecting the building of human destiny with the goal of ultimately making people happy, finally giving them peace and quiet. And now, imagine also that for this it is necessary and inevitable to torture just one human being, moreover, even if it is not such a worthy, funny creature even from a different perspective, not some Shakespeare, but just an honest old man, the husband of a young wife, in whose love he blindly believes, although he does not know her heart at all, respects her, is proud of her, is happy with her and is at peace. And now you just need to disgrace him, dishonor him and torture him, and build your building on the tears of this dishonored man! Would you agree to be the architect of such a building on this condition? Here's the question. And can you even admit for a moment the idea that the people for whom this building was built would agree to accept such happiness from you, if its foundation is based on suffering, let’s say, albeit of an insignificant being, but mercilessly and unjustly tortured, and, having accepted this happiness, remain happy forever? Tell me, could Tatyana have decided differently, with her lofty soul, with her heart that has suffered so much?... Here is a tragedy, it is happening, and it is impossible to cross the limit, it’s too late, and now Tatyana sends Onegin away.” This is where Dostoevsky and Tolstoy come into contact, and not where he thinks. Merezhkovsky. Merezhkovsky does not stop at the freedom of the flesh from the family form; he indicates the religious power of the flesh in its indignation against the actual moral and social laws, in the indignation of the individual against the idea of ​​God, in its self-will. “The cruel, destructive power of love turns... on the lovers themselves. While caressing Anna, Vronsky felt what a murderer should feel. “I will exterminate you!” says Versilov to Katerina Nikolaevna. “Such violent wild love,” explains Dostoevsky, acts like a fit, like a loop, like a disease, and - as soon as it has achieved satisfaction - the veil immediately falls, and the opposite feeling appears - disgust and hatred, the desire to destroy, crush.” In a fit of just such passion, Rogozhin destroyed Nastasya Filippovna. This is Pushkin’s Cleopatra: “Tell me, who among you will buy my night at the cost of his life?” - in the words of Dostoevsky, “a spider devouring its male”... Yes, in voluptuousness (I, says Merezhkovsky, of course understand this word here in the deepest mystical sense) there is something inhuman, as if brutal... This brutality in the human grows to the superhuman, to the divine, the man-beast to the God-Beast... In the depths of the floor, the brutal comes into contact with the human, the devilish with the divine.” Voluptuous, cruel and self-willed - this is ideal for Merezhkovsky. The Svidrigailovs and Stavrogins are his favorite heroes. Again, what a contrast to Rozanov. “Usually,” writes the latter, it is customary to think that sensuality is cruel; but look more closely, sharply, more attentively, and you will see the strange phenomenon that the most heartless people in life, completely cold to all suffering, inexorable in the face of tears, unmoved by cries, are precisely people poor in sensuality and terribly rich “belle vertue”. These latter, with all their calm and quietness, are the true horror of life, its beginning mineralization: for even if you are wasted in tears before them, bleeding, they will never change the frozen smile, “to the whole world” smile, on their lips. This must be experienced and this is experienced in the burning and fatal moments of life. In ancient Greece there was a strange, in our opinion, painful saying: “if you have a eunuch, kill him, if not, buy him and kill him.” The ancient world knew this breed of people well; He experienced it well on his own skin: and all the bile and indignation towards this type of people poured out in him in the above proverb.” What a difference: for Rozanov, sexuality is the basis of tenderness and pity - he notices the feelings of “alms”, universality in the customs of the Babylonians, which Herodotus reports (“Something from Hoary Antiquity”); on the contrary, Merezhkovsky has the same beginning in the traits of bloodthirstiness and extreme individualism. And Rozanov needs to take Merezhkovsky into account: the latter brings into the kingdom of the flesh an absoluteness that crosses all boundaries, i.e. he shows what the flesh should be if one recognizes religious holiness for it. After all, this is true, both psychologically and historically: Rozanov himself speaks of the “terrifying cold and alienation” that are brought up by the religion of the family and the people 22... The need to introduce into the boundaries of carnal life the principles of extreme immorality and ultimate self-will in order to give it the appearance of religious holiness shows that essentially religious holiness cannot be a property of the flesh, that the effort to raise it to religious significance puts a person in a hopeless dead end. Merezhkovsky's reasoning about two abysses, about two infinities, about the lower sky reflecting the upper sky, about the fact that infinity is not only in the sky, in the divine, but also in the earth, in the human, are a vivid example of abstract, scholastic dialectics, of the Hegelian kind. The absolute can only be in the divine; human, earthly - essentially finite, limited. Carnal life is inevitably a conditional life, and unconditionality can be achieved by a person only in Christian, absolute love. It is impossible to combine absolute consciousness with carnal spontaneity. “Uncle Eroshka,” says Merezhkovsky, has God the Father, but he still does not have Christ, no Son of God, no Word-Logos, no consciousness. It was almost this, this hair separating the unconscious, dumb, blind religious element from the religious consciousness, sight, word, that L. Tolstoy could not overcome with any effort.” Merezhkovsky lovingly dwells on Dostoevsky's heroes - Stavrogin, Versilov, Ivan and Dmitry Karamazov - on their ability to find a coincidence of beauty and the sameness of pleasure in both poles, on the indifference for them to voluptuous brutality and spiritual achievement, on the combination in them of the strength of carnal life and spiritual strength. But still, the critic is not completely satisfied with these heroes: each of them, one way or another, does not reach the last ideal “by a hair’s breadth” or “by a step”. And this constantly repeated “one step” or “a hair’s breadth” when applied to Stavrogin, Prince Myshkin, Versilov, Dmitry Karamazov, Raskolnikov... gives the impression of a man who is unsuccessfully, but stubbornly looking for a treasure where there is none. In particular, the critic writes about Stavrogin: “he perishes not because he believes in the equality of good and evil, God and the Devil, but because he does not believe or does not believe enough in both God and the Devil. His mistake was not that he followed two paths to a single truth; His only mistake is that he did not complete either path; if he had done this, he would have seen that the two paths unite at the end, that the God-Man and the Man-God are one and the same. this is not enough, he requires faith in himself in that which he cannot express either in word or in image, which the reader cannot imagine or understand... Such a philosophy gives the reader the impression of Khlyst’s zeal, or ventriloquism, this is some kind of sick philosophy... Isn’t it clear that a person cannot follow two paths to the end, he can only stagger a little back and forth, that the reason for Stavrogin’s death is in the very bifurcation of the path? “I,” says Stavrogin, can wish to do good and feel pleasure from it; Next to me I wish for evil and I also feel pleasure. But both feelings are always too small, and they never happen very much. My desires are not too strong.” Pyotr Verkhovensky, this monkey of Stavrogin, went his way to the end. Why does Merezhkovsky dislike him so much? After all, this is his true hero... However, Merezhkovsky is trying to embody his theory in his own images. Among his “Resurrected Gods” is Pope Alexander VI Borgia. As if, looking at him, one could say: “in man there is a god and a beast, bound together.” In it, it was as if one could observe “a carefree reconciliation between God and the Beast.” I will not deny that in the life of this monstrous pope the brutal path was passed to the end, but when did he embark on the divine path? He lived as a pagan, but his Christianity never went beyond the narrow boundaries of church and liturgical symbols. It would be more accurate to call his Christianity blasphemy rather than faith. Here we come to where we started. They erect into principle a kingdom of religious symbols that hide the truth from us. Big words eventually lead to the most everyday symbolism, from which we choke. At the other end, apparently, we encounter familiar features of our native ritual belief. The religion of the flesh is a religion of beauty, an aesthetic religion, aestheticism. The question of the relationship between spirit and flesh turns into the question of aesthetic religion, into the question of the relationship of religion and morality to beauty. The question of the relationship of religion and morality to beauty is of great interest today in view of the religious significance attributed to beauty. “Beauty will save the world,” Dostoevsky said to us. In the West, the religious meaning of beauty is understood and expressed systematically in the concept of aesthetic religion. The literature on this issue and on the issue of beauty and art in general, as is known, amazes the reader with the extreme uncertainty of views on the essence of the subject. Not to mention the fact that there is no agreement between different authors, they usually write about the religious and ethical attitude of aesthetics without an exact definition of what the authors actually mean by beauty and art. And first of all, you need to know that beauty is not the only object of art, as is commonly thought. Talking about art and its meaning does not necessarily mean talking about beauty. We need to talk about art and beauty separately. I don’t think of offering readers a new understanding, a new theory of art - no, in defining art I follow L.N. Tolstoy in the article What is art? I will not talk about the merits of this article. I will only note that this is the only view of art that makes it possible to establish a certain ethical attitude towards art. This is the only work that allows every person to maintain the autonomy of rational and moral judgment about objects of art, gives him freedom from the deafening chatter of everyone posing as bearers of special revelation on matters of art, gives him self-control among the discord of aesthetic schools that mutually deny each other, gives everyone the opportunity to have their own judgment about trends in art. In order, writes L.N. Tolstoy, to accurately define art, one must first of all stop looking at it as a means of pleasure, and consider art as one of the conditions of human life. Looking at art in this way, we cannot help but see that art is one of the means of communication between people. Just as the word, which conveys the thoughts and experiences of people, serves as a means of unifying people, so does art. The peculiarity of this means of communication, which distinguishes it from communication through words, is that with words one person conveys his thoughts to another, but through art people convey their feelings to each other. Feelings are very diverse, very strong and very weak, very significant and very insignificant, very bad and very good, if only they infect the reader, viewer, listener, and constitute an object of art. As soon as the spectators-listeners are infected with the same feeling that the writer experienced, this is art. To evoke in oneself a once-experienced feeling and, having evoked it in oneself, through movements, lines, colors, sounds, images, expressed in words, to convey this feeling so that others experience the same feeling - this is the activity of art. Art is a human activity, consisting in the fact that one person consciously, through certain external signs, conveys to others the feelings he experiences, and other people become infected with these feelings and experience them. Art is not, as metaphysicians say, a manifestation of some mysterious idea, beauty, God; it is not, as aesthetic physiologists say, a game in which a person releases excess accumulated energy; is not a manifestation of emotions by external signs; is not the production of pleasant objects - the main thing is not pleasure, but is a means of communication between people, necessary for life and for the movement towards the good of the individual and humanity, uniting them in the same feelings.” This is a brilliant definition of art, simple and clear. From here, it is easy to determine the meaning of art. Art is inevitable in human life; it forms a necessary factor in social development. “How, thanks to a person’s ability to understand thoughts expressed in words, every person can learn everything that all of humanity has done for him in the field of thought, can in the present, thanks to the ability to understand other people’s thoughts, become a participant in the activities of other people and he himself, thanks to this ability, can transmit the thoughts learned from others and his own that arose in him to his contemporaries and descendants; so exactly, and thanks to a person’s ability to be infected through art with the feelings of other people, everything that humanity has experienced before him becomes available to him in the field of feeling, the feelings experienced by his contemporaries, the feelings experienced by other people thousands of years ago become accessible to him, and it becomes possible to transfer his feelings to other people. If people did not have the ability to perceive all those thoughts conveyed in words that were changed by previously living people, and to convey their thoughts to others, people would be like animals. If it were not for another human ability - to become infected by art, people would hardly have been even more savage and, most importantly, disunited and hostile. And therefore the activity of art is a very important activity, just as important as the activity of speech.” However, this meaning of art, no matter how important it is, has a formal, general cultural character, and allows for the assessment of one or another direction of art according to the content of those feelings that are expressed in art, according to their inner dignity or unworthiness. Besides the fact that art can be true or untrue (that is, whether it conveys feelings contagiously), it can also be good or bad. Since art is only a means of communication between people in feelings, it cannot escape its assessment from the point of view of the purpose of life, the good of humanity. The mere fact that a feeling is expressed in art does not make it unconditionally good. Strictly speaking, this assessment does not relate to art, but to society; it is an assessment of society’s relationship to art. Art cannot be blamed for the feelings that are expressed in it, but this or that society can abuse art, i.e. use it for pure pleasure. This happens due to the fact that beauty becomes the subject of art exclusively or predominantly. It is clear that in this case the very love of art, coinciding with the love of pleasure, is base. With this in mind, Schiller rightly said about the theater: “Before the public is formed for its theater, the theater is unlikely to form an audience for itself.” The same point of view on art was developed by Ruskin, whom aesthetics led to ethics. In his Lectures on Art, Ruskin defines the purpose of art as follows: “The highest purpose of art is to give us a true image of a noble human being; it has never achieved more, and it should not be satisfied with less.” “Beautiful art,” he says further, has and can have only three tasks: strengthening the religious feeling of people, improving their morality and providing them with material benefits... No matter how beautiful, wondrous and fascinating art may be in itself, it will still be low and will sink even lower if it does not reflect one of its main goals - the desire to either express the truth or decorate a useful object. What has been said about art is quite similar to what can be said about the ability to speak, about science and other factors of cultural development. However, we talk about art only for the clarity of our reasoning, only to point out the prejudice - to consider beauty exclusively associated with art. The direct subject of our discussions is not art, but beauty. Beauty can be expressed in art, but just as art expresses not just beauty, but every feeling, so beauty is not limited to the boundaries of art. In the literature on the issue, the evolutionary-utilitarian and physiological basis of beauty is sufficiently explained. Beauty almost coincides with benefit and differs from it in that benefit relates to the area of ​​necessity, and beauty - to the tone of life, to its mood - useful is what supports life, beautiful is what makes life more intense, full, which elevates the feeling of life. It is useful that it nourishes; it is beautiful, which, while nourishing, pleasantly excites, acting in an uplifting tone not only on the sense of taste and on the stomach, but also on vision, touch, etc. Beauty is in light, in harmony, in harmony, in symmetry, in a harmonious combination of internal and external, one and many, etc. Why? Because light is not only necessary for life, but also enhances the feeling of life; harmony and symmetry are perceived with the least amount of energy... Since this side of beauty is too well known and comprehensively developed in many works, we will not dwell on it for long. Let us make only a brief remark about the relation of this beauty to morality. There is undoubtedly an element of the aesthetic in the moral. Gross vices - drunkenness, gluttony, theft, deceit - equally offend both moral and aesthetic feelings. Courage, truthfulness, and loyalty are as in harmony with the consciousness of duty as with the demands of beauty. We are pleased to know a person who is truthful and faithful, not only because we could rely on such a person if we had to deal with him, but also because it is easier for us to perceive and carry the image of such a person, it is easier to foresee and anticipate his actions, with him we have less anxiety. Likewise, moral activity gives oneself a variety of aesthetic satisfaction. In view of this, the first steps of moral progress coincide with aesthetic development. However, there is no need to exaggerate the moral significance of beauty. Beauty only partly coincides with morality; entering as an element into the realm of morality, it transcends its boundaries and is noticed in phenomena not only indifferent in moral terms, but also downright immoral. Gluttony, drunkenness, debauchery are unaesthetic in an unpretentious form; but a rich feast, a grandiose revelry, debauchery with songs and dances - most likely constitute an object of aesthetic pleasure and even aesthetic creativity! My friend, hurry up for happiness Petty greed is as immoral as it is unaesthetic; but the greed of the stingy knight, praised by the poet, can least of all cause aesthetic disgust. Killing in a duel, in war, does not become moral, being in an aesthetically monumental shell. Even suicide can be beautiful. Hedda Gabler - the personification of beauty in the immoral - does not prevent the suicide of the man who loved her, and only demands from him “to do it so that there is beauty in it.... only so that there is beauty.” She wished he would shoot himself in the church. Having learned about his suicide, she first of all asks about the details. They tell her (deceivingly) that he shot himself in the chest. - “So it’s not in the church? - No, in the chest. “Yes, yes, it’s good in the chest too.” “Then she finds out the truth, that the bullet hit him not in the chest, but in the stomach,” and then with disgust she sees this as “ridiculous and vulgar.” Finally, Gedda shoots herself in the church and dies beautifully. The lower stages of morality coincide with beauty; to achieve its highest degrees, one must rise above aesthetics. But physiological beauty does not constitute all beauty; not all beauty is in harmony, in symmetry, in the combination of colors and sounds, in measure and balance, in self-control and order. In addition to physiological beauty, there is also mystical beauty, and it is precisely this – mystical, and not physiological, beauty that is actually human beauty; it has a religious significance, raising a person to the heights of “other worlds.” Utilitarian beauty affects the external senses, mystical beauty affects the soul. The feeling of mystical beauty is a cosmic feeling that takes a person beyond the boundaries of his individuality. Living reality, with its worries, with its struggle for existence, closes a person in a certain circle, numbers him, like a certain point among other homogeneous points. But it happens that suddenly some unknown wave will pick you up, the wind breathing from no one knows where and where it is going will blow around you, lift you up and carry you away. When surrounded by murderous worries Everything disgusts us, and life is like a pile of stones, It lies on us - suddenly, God knows from where, It brings joy to our souls, The past will envelop and embrace us And the terrible load will be lifted in a minute. It happens as if a person’s wings grow, pick him up and carry him into an unattainable distance, opening wide horizons before him. To understand and appreciate this phenomenon, you need to keep in mind that man is a sphinx: his head is human, but his whole body is like that of an animal. His consciousness is a bright point fluctuating against the broad background of the unconscious; this point is a knot from which endless threads diverge, already elusive and unknown. With his unconscious basis he is embedded in nature, immersed in its depths - and who knows where the boundaries of this kinship are, how far these threads go from his heart? Undoubtedly, he is akin to animals, animal feelings are swarming in his chest, in his belly; he is akin to the elements - and what’s more, this kinship leads to the very depths of the raw mother earth and to the endless distance of a twinkling star. And is it not from this broad basis that the highest human thoughts arise - the thought of a single cosmos, of the beauty of life united everywhere? Native to animals and the elements, man is distinguished from them by his consciousness; in it, elemental waves hit the threshold of clear consciousness. And everything that brings the element to human consciousness, that destroys the boundaries of everyday vanity, shakes the cosmic foundation in it, all this gives a feeling of mystical beauty, every such phenomenon is a mystically beautiful phenomenon. The power of beauty is that it lifts a person above the narrow boundaries of everyday hustle and bustle. Beauty is most of all the opposite of the noise of the market and the worries of the day. Mystical beauty is the beauty of the night. The day woke up. Light, wide And everything that the eye can see They will only come to us at night. In motion, in the brilliance of life Grace does not come from above: You can’t be in involuntary confusion To contemplate the beauty of heaven, It is impossible with the vastness of creation Looking for kinship in the child, And the night and darkness of solitude - Beauty is primarily “unsolved night.” The darkness of the night is like an exposure of nature, giving a person the opportunity to immerse himself in its bosom, to lose himself in it, to feel his affinity with it. Spring and night covered the valley, The soul runs into sleepless darkness And she clearly heard the verb Spontaneous life, detached. Conducts his conversation with his soul And it blows directly onto her with His eternal stream. As if by the will of the all-seeing Looking into the face of sleeping nature And understand the worldwide dream. The special beauty of the night is the stars; and this beauty is in the feeling of kinship with endless distance, in the feeling of threads that go from the heart into the abyss of the sky. I stood motionless for a long time Peering into the distant stars. – The nakedness of the night is not only in its darkness, but also in its sounds, infinitely varied, indefinite, elusive. O moonless night!.. I stand like a lover, I stand and listen, enchanted by you... What music under your robe!.. The mysterious shine of the moon, the distant thunder of a waterfall, the unclear outlines of the peaks - what is the beauty of this picture? The fact is that It’s easy for the soul; I don’t hear the shackles of earthly existence, There is no place for fear or hope - What will happen in the future, what happened before - I don't care - and what about me Always pulled like a chain to the ground, Everything disappeared with the anxiety of the day, Everything was drowned in the moonlight. Everything in which one can see the movement of a natural element, the life of nature, its thoughts, what excites the same element in a person’s heart, what awakens his past—there is beauty in all of this. There is beauty in the storm, in its howls and groans. What are you howling about, night wind, Why are you complaining so madly? What does your strange voice mean? Either dull and plaintive, or noisy? You talk about incomprehensible torment, And you whine and explode in it And longs to merge with the infinite... Oh, don’t wake up the sleeping storms: Chaos is stirring beneath them!.. Just as a storm and thunderstorm are beautiful, making one feel the boundlessness of the world and the insignificance of human affairs and worries, making a person feel his kinship with the elements of the world, awakening the same elements in him, so beautiful is the sea - the boundless water element. And its foamy stormy waves awaken unaccountable courage in the heart, awaken the elemental forces of the soul - and its excitement is akin to the human soul. The wave breaks and splashes and splashes Salty moisture in my eyes; I sit motionless on a stone - full Soul with unaccountable courage. Shafts upon shafts, surf and rebound, And foam covered their ridges... Oh sea, who should I challenge to battle? Experience the resurrected power? My heart felt that life was good, You, the waves, opened up the grief, The soul woke up from thunder and splashing - The beauty of the sea is that it makes the mind feel its own bottomless depths of the soul. That we have such depth in our hearts, Where even thought does not penetrate, From where, as from the seabed, And vaguely repeats something, The forest, with its mysterious darkness, with its elemental noise, with its absorbing grandeur - the forest is the same as the sea, also an element, has the same beauty, awakens in us the same feeling of disappearing in the bosom of nature. The sun lowers its rays into a plumb line Open your arms to me, Dense, spreading forest, So that in the face and in the hot chest Your sigh flowed like a cold wave, So that I too can breathe sweetly, - Let me touch you with my lips and eyes At the roots I have the key to water! So that I too disappear in this sea, Drowned in that fragrant shadow, What spread your lush canopy - Dense, spreading forest! Of the seasons, spring is mystically beautiful. Winter drives a person into its den, torments him with questions about a piece of bread, about the necessary warmth. Spring is the revival of nature, its awakening, the awakening in it of that life that beats with the pulse in man himself. The beauty of spring is in this harmony of the inner pulse with the beat of life in nature, in this unity of man with it, in this immersion in it. No matter how oppressive the hand of fate is, No matter how much deception torments people, No matter how the wrinkles roam the brow, And the heart, no matter how full of wounds, No matter how severe the tests What can resist breathing? Spring - she doesn’t know about you, About you, about grief and evil; her gaze shines with immortality, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Game and sacrifice of private life, Come, reject the deception of feelings And rush, cheerful, autocratic, Come - with a stream of his ethereal Wash the suffering chest And the life of the divine-universal Although for a moment be involved! There is a lot of beauty in life - it is spilled everywhere! Beauty is in the cry of the cranes, making us stop, forget about our worries, carry our hearts into the unattainable distance, feel something distant and dear in it. Beauty is the singing of a nightingale, the murmuring of a stream, the excitement of a field... Beauty is in song. But the sounds make my heart melt Beauty is in music that intoxicates, although it is a rough beauty bordering on narcotic intoxication... Beauty is in the passion that embraces the heart, inspires the soul, allows a person to look into the abyss of his Heart, reveals to him his own depth. To my soul, full of insignificant vanity, Like a stormy whirlwind, passion burst in unexpectedly, The raid crushed the elegant flowers in it And she swept away the garden, decorated with vanity. Conditions are small rubbish, a spinning pillar, Life-giving force took away from thought And a current of warm tears, like blessed rain, She watered my devastated soul... Of the passions, the most mystically beautiful, the one that most gives a person the bliss of self-forgetfulness is love, male-female, erotic love. The beauty of love is that it not only shocks the entire nervous system, but also captures the entire soul, inspires it and inspires it. The beauty of love is in its spontaneity: it is primarily an excitement in the soul of natural life, it primarily introduces a person into the mystery of nature, makes the whole world close to him. “Throughout my entire life,” says the author of the article. Beauty in nature and its meaning - a lonely growing or whimsically moving individual is secluded from all others, free from their influence and not connected with them; but at one moment of its existence, the first and most important - when it is born, it adjoins directly the sea of ​​organic life, spilled over the earth and already lasting for millennia; and in the brief moments of her subsequent existence - when she gives birth, she unites with that life that will remain on earth after she herself becomes a handful of dust. Thus, in the act of birth, the entire organic world is united, so disconnected in the rest of its existence, which is always individual. Through it the individual joins the whole and in it it takes on all the indelible features of its constitution, both physical and spiritual. In an intangible way, through this act, the whole throws over the emerging individual being a network of limits, as it were, from which it will never escape, within which it will accomplish everything, will desire everything, and achieve everything. Thus, organic life, uninterrupted over a distance of thousands of years and connected throughout the entire earth, seems to pulsate in individual existence, and the fate of each individual, from birth to death, is only a single beat of this great life, its blow, received and transmitted, a necessary, although vanishing, moment in the stream of eternity.” Finally, beauty in creativity - not only in poetic creativity, as poets think, not in artistic creativity only, but in all creativity - philosophical, scientific, religious, in all revelation. Beauty comes in many forms, and there is a correspondence and connection between all types of beauty. The beauty of creativity primarily falls during the time of love, during the time of spring; the storms of nature find a response in the storms of passions.... Just as all revelations of mystical beauty coincide, so in the same way all mystical beauty can be revealed in the forms and conditions of utilitarian beauty. This is the basis for the possibility of artistic transmission, along with all kinds of feelings, of mystical beauty. In this case, the mystical-aesthetic emotion and the utilitarian-aesthetic sensation, uniting in one aesthetic phenomenon, are separated in the perceiving subjects. In the same music one may perceive a sensation that promotes digestion, while in another it shakes the whole being; At one time we go into the forest to calm our nerves, and at another time we look for inspiration there... The physiological perception of beauty and the mystical attitude towards it alternate in our soul, like the ebb and flow of the tide, according to the centripetal and centrifugal direction, or mood, of subjective life. Mystical beauty has too different values ​​in religious and moral terms. Mystical beauty has a deep positive meaning in religious terms. She is religious. Complete mystical beauty exists for a person under the condition of his religious merging with nature, if such merging is possible. Mystical beauty is the cradle of religion. Initially, religion coincides with cosmic feeling, religious inspiration with aesthetic emotion. We find indications of this even in the history of the Jewish religion. So the central phenomenon of the Jewish religion - prophetic inspiration stood in connection with aesthetic inspiration. Behold, “a company of prophets descending from on high, and before them was a psalter, and a tympanum, and a pipe, and a harp, and they prophesied.” The prophet calls the harpist - “and when the harpist played the harp, then the hand of the Lord touched him.” When they carried the ark of the Lord under David, “David galloped with all his might before the Lord... So David and the whole house of Israel carried the ark of the Lord with shouts and the sound of trumpets.” The dervish of Persia, Jellal-Eddin-Rumi, wrote the verse: “Whoever has experienced the power of dancing is in God.” Abyssinian Christians still perform divine services with singing and dancing. Pagan religions are essentially based on cosmic inspiration. This is precisely the essence of pantheism and polytheism. The pagan god is the god of natural ecstasy, cosmic delight, the god of carnal love, the god of revitalizing light and warmth, the god of dancing and singing, the god of abusive inspiration, the god of the beginning of the family and the people. The pantheism of pagan religion is far from the same as the philosophical concept of pantheism: religious pantheism in the recognition of natural inspiration as divine, in the religious fusion of man with nature. Religious pantheism, unlike philosophical pantheism, easily coexists with anthropomorphism, with the personification of God. But all the power lies in the fact that this is the personification of natural forces - all the power lies in the fact that pantheism seeks communion with God in cosmic delight, in natural ecstasy, in merging with nature. The cult of pagan religion in its original purity and spontaneity is most far from symbolism; it consisted of one or another natural inspiration - in a sacrificial feast, in aromatic incense, in dancing and dancing, in intense voluptuousness and bloodthirstiness. In particular, the Greek religion seems to be predominantly a religion of beauty. And this is undoubtedly true, but this service to beauty should not be understood frivolously and superficially. In the life of the Greek, two aspects of beauty were distinguished - daytime beauty, cheerful, measured, prudent, cheerful, the kingdom of Apollo, and elemental beauty, tragic, voluptuous and bloodthirsty, the beauty of Dionysus. This latter, in the mysterious mysteries, opened the way for man into the bosom of nature, gave him super-personal communication with God, and brought him to divine life. It should also be mentioned that the thirst for the miraculous, characteristic of all pagan religions, is psychologically based on the same experience of natural inspiration, cosmic inspiration, when a person becomes different, comprehends secrets and performs actions that are inaccessible to him in the waking state. This experience is the experience of divine power, giving rise to and nourishing faith in divine omnipotence. Mystical beauty is religious and is actually a pantheistic religion. But we must keep in mind that this pantheism, according to the law of polarity, naturally turns into individualism. Giving a person communication with the universe, beauty at the same time separates a person and places him at the center of everything. The cult of beauty is essentially an individualistic cult, a cult of egoistic power and personal pleasure. While petty egoism is protected by everyday prudence, strong individualism is nourished by beauty and passion. Being drawn into nature, he absorbs its elements and develops its power within himself. This is the cult of beauty at the stage of Nietzscheanism, the cult of individual strength and passion, erected on the ruins of philistine prudence. This is how pantheism turns into human-divinity. But this is not the last step in the development of the religion of beauty. If the strength of an individual is in passion, then the strength of passion is in the moment, which is content with itself and does not want to know about yesterday or tomorrow. Individualism degenerates into the deification of individual mood, instant passion. This is later aestheticism or decadence. Here the religion of beauty reaches its final limits in its own way, becomes atheism - and what’s more, it loses all stability, all meaning, all human energy. But even before reaching the final limit in its own way, the religion of beauty yields to the power of ethical consciousness. As a moral subject, as a person, a person feels alone in nature. Nature is indifferent to good and evil, indifferent to what is dear to humans. her beauty is “indifferent beauty.” From an ethical point of view, this is ugly beauty. But their beauty is ugly I soon comprehended the mystery - And I'm bored with their incoherent The ugly thing is that nature is completely impassive to everything that fills human life, to his joys and sufferings, to his efforts and struggles. It awakened so many dreams In my inexperienced soul!... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gone are the unclear aspirations It annoys me that it’s so dispassionate She looks at the unhappy world, Where lies and evil oppress everywhere, Where are so many weak and persecuted, Where so many invisible tears flow, And the prayers of the sorrowful are heard. But the completely moral ugliness of mystical beauty is recognized in a spiritual storm, in passion, when it has a personality as its object. Passion is ruthless and bloodthirsty; burning the chest in which it burns, she demands the sacrifice of a loved one. Oh, how murderously we love, As in the violent blindness of passions We are most likely to destroy, We are told: in the fact that passion breaks the foundations of morality, its elemental sanctity is known. “In both voluptuousness and storm there is something elemental, terrible and cheerful, icy and burning, but there is nothing humanly evil or good. Both in the heart and in the elements the will of the One who called the elements and the heart out of non-existence is accomplished. And if elemental forces accumulate in the air and finally burst into a storm, then this is His holy will; and if the thunderous forces of the sex accumulate in the same way and, finally, burst into passion, then that is His holy will... Striking at the strongholds of moral laws, passion shatters, apparently, the most immutable historical boundaries, because it wants everything new and new, limitless, supernatural, superhistorical. reason - and reason, meeting passion, even defeated, shoots off its wings, deprives it of the feeling of innocence - its last justification. "Sin? Where is the sin? Uncle Eroshka said to Olenin. - Is it a sin to look at a good girl? Is it a sin to walk with her? Is it a sin to love her? Is this how it is for you? No, my father, this is not a sin, but salvation. God made you, God made the girl too. He did everything... That’s why it was made, so that it could be loved and rejoiced at. God did everything for the joy of man. There is no sin in anything. At least take an example from the beast.” It is beautiful, elementally beautiful, wild and beautiful. But this wild passion does not stand alone, like a shining point in the darkness; it is woven into the system of a living man-beast and his various relationships. Eroshka’s love for the girl is intertwined with “love for freedom, idleness, robbery and war.” This diverse in appearance, but united in essence, brutal love is inserted into the appropriate frame. “People live as nature lives; they die, are born, copulate, are born again, fight, drink, eat, rejoice and die again, and they have no other conditions, except for those unchangeable ones that nature has laid down for the sun, grass, animals, trees.” And so, when a new link, moral consciousness, creeps into this system, it involuntarily breaks, it precisely loses its beauty, its innocence. “To make her a girl would be terrible,” Uncle Eroshka’s friend Olenin said about Maryana. - It would be murder. Now, what if I could become a Cossack, Lukashka, steal herds, get drunk on chikhir, burst into song, kill people and drunkenly climb into her window for the night, without thinking about who I am? and why me? “Then things would be different, then I could be happy.” In Fruits of Enlightenment, valet Fyodor Ivanovich says about the maid Tanya: “A tender girl, good. But just think how many of them disappear! Only if you miss once, she’s gone from hand to hand... Then you won’t find her in the mud.” Enjoying Anna’s love, Vronsky “felt what a murderer should feel when he sees the body he has deprived of life.” He really turned out to be Anna’s killer and he had to see her dead body, “shamelessly stretched out, bloody,” he had to read on her face “a frozen, strange, pitiful expression on her lips and a terrible expression in her stopped, unclosed eyes, as if in words reprimanding him” in words... And for Anna - why did love for Vronsky turn out to be fatal? She was surrounded by Betsy, Stiva Oblonsky, Liza Merkalova - depraved, but playing with depravity. Why does none of them feel responsible for sexual promiscuity and only Anna is the one who fulfills the strict law: “Vengeance is mine, and I will repay”?.. “You see,” Betsy told Anna, one and the same thing can be looked at tragically and made torment out of it, and “looked at simply and even cheerfully.” For everyone it was simple and even fun, but for Anna it was tragic - why?.. In Anna’s life there was one moment - ethically high to the point of extraordinary - the reconciliation of her husband with Vronsky... When, after that, she again surrendered to Vronsky, she felt “something terrible in this after everything that had happened”... When the elemental beauty and power of passion are sung to us, we can look at these hymns only as a sermon, and not as a picture of its actual power. Elemental passion is not God, but an idol - powerless before moral consciousness. The highest bliss of innocence, the inner joy of the one “who does not condemn himself in what he chooses” and “does everything without complaining and doubting” - this bliss cannot be created artificially, by preaching. That is why the God of beauty for moral consciousness is nothing more than an idol. Moral consciousness seeks another God, “unknown” to paganism - the Heavenly Father. Here is the turning point from naturalistic pantheism to ethical theism. Theism does not mean that God appears to be personal, but that the kingdom of God is not a natural kingdom, but a human kingdom, supranatural. The God of theism is actually the human God, the Heavenly Father of people. The Kingdom of God is the kingdom of good. Christianity cannot make the slightest concession towards aesthetic religion, towards aestheticism. Nietzscheanism in philosophy and decadence, or aestheticism, in art are diametrically opposed to Christianity. For the Christian consciousness, Nietzscheanism and aestheticism are equally far from morality and from God. We already understand this. “Decadentism,” one critic of aestheticism rightly writes, “is a decline, or, more accurately, a conscious falling away... from former shrines, from the former God, from morality—a falling away into that which is opposite to God, into aesthetics, into evil, demonically charming beauty. If a person begins to fall away from his inner divine principle, he can only go further and further along the path of his personal beginning.” “The isolated self,” writes another critic, “breaks not only with people, but also with God. Morality and religion, the imperatives of moral duty and conscience, it throws off itself like unnecessary chains, like outdated dry branches blocking the path to the vast expanse of capricious changes in individual moods... In the depths of its pagan cult of the man-god, more precisely - the superman, even more precisely - the god of the individual moment - the decadent movement is an essentially anti-Christian movement, and even where in its highest manifestations it rises above the world of aesthetic narcissism with its isolated essence into the sphere of “the intimate sensation of our living connection with another world”, into the sphere of mystical feelings, it is most often given over to the completely indefinite, to a cloudy, blurry prayer to mystery. Everything otherworldly, otherworldly, noumenal, every insight into “other worlds” passionately inspires supporters of the “new art”... On this basis, a kind of often crude fetishism of mystery is created, the worship of noumenal idols, the blasphemous deification of every secret, every abyss, every dark depth. Like naturalistic pantheism, which idolizes all nature, all life, prays to everything in nature, every manifestation of life, this mystical pantheism idolizes every breath of mystery, everything mystical, prays to every hidden, unknown essence. Briefly put, aesthetic atheism is not a reconciliation of Christianity with nature, but a denial of Christianity, a betrayal of it. “In order to save religious knowledge and make it acceptable,” writes one of the representatives of relaxed aestheticism, “it is necessary to take away all heaviness from religious truth, throw out the ballast of commands from it, make it light as ether. The words of Christ: My yoke is easy and My burden is light - should be even lighter for our time. Religious morality is generally alien to any yoke or burden, even the slightest. This is joy, given freely to everyone who wants to accept it, pure light without shadows, one right without duties, eternity and immortality without merit, God’s selfless sacrifice for us, without requiring us to sacrifice in favor of God.” This is how aestheticism reveals itself with arms and legs. After all, this is paralysis of the heart, paralysis of moral energy. He needs children's fairy tales that quietly lull his soul; he needs houses of cards on the sand, scattered by a light wind. And the sad thing is that they want to squeeze every vulgar thought into the framework of the gospel, to overshadow it with the sign of Christianity. They do not have the strength to follow Christ and do not have the courage to declare themselves against Christ; have enough impudence [to mix elements alien to Christianity into it. Christianity is cheerful, firm and decisive. “Everyone who hears my words and does them will be likened to a wise man who built his house on the rock.”... Christianity is a personal-spiritual religion. It is not spontaneous, but human. Christianity is the kingdom of God and man. Christianity is the realm of Logos, the creativity of ethical reason. The superstitions of religious mysticism - gnostic, cult and elemental-aesthetic - are most alien to him. This is the bright area of ​​the autonomous mind. And yet rationalism is a caricature of the spiritual understanding of religion. Christian love, like believing love, is not an abstract idea, but a living all-encompassing feeling. Christianity is not simply the abolition of spontaneity in the field of religion, but it is the rebirth of the elemental spirit of God into the free spirit of Christ. A Christian has the spirit of God within him - and this is precisely the spirit of believing love. Spiritual religion is adjacent to ethical reason. And what distinguishes it from morality is faith. That there is duty in morality, here is believing love, absorbing the weight of duty, overcoming morality - not in denying it, but in the spirit of love, joyful, creative. Religion simultaneously gives absolute expression to the commandments, brings good out of the narrow subjective area into the vastness of the kingdom of the Heavenly Father, and, finally, brings an upsurge of inspiration - the power of the Spirit of God - into the life of the ethical mind. Is beauty possible in the sphere of the human mind? Aesthetics answers this question in the affirmative. All movements of the heart, writes Guyot in Problems of Modern Aesthetics, whatever they may be, in our time become more rational and more philosophical. This subtle penetration of feelings by reason is one of the main reasons for moral and aesthetic progress. What leads to progress is the fact that the sense experiences more and more increasing difficulty in finding pleasure where the mind remains unsatisfied: in order to fully enjoy, we need to think. An intelligent person will therefore treat pleasures that are too crude and completely animal with contempt, for example. purely physical love, not surrounded or covered up by various kinds of moral, religious or philosophical ideas. More reasonable pleasures, on the contrary, receive increasing importance. So, as the field of understanding expands, new types of pleasure or pain are created, and the poet puts them into shape. The idea not only does not obscure the living image, but often contributes to its emergence; science constantly establishes new relationships between objects, opening up the most unexpected perspectives even for the eye: the writer’s palette is enriched as his thoughts are enriched. Just as in primitive times the mind apparently arose from the ability to feel, in the same way, through reverse evolution, more subtle feelings are generated by the mind. On the issue of religion, one can speak more decisively than aesthetics does: here spiritual love is united with the power of faith. So, spiritual religion is a bright, rational-human, or rather, divine-human, and not elemental, realm; however, the spirit of God also operates in it - the spirit of free love. Without this assumption, Christianity is an incomprehensible mystery. Christian love, as an ideal and duty, as a commandment, is completely incomprehensible, unthinkable, and impossible. Christian love is a spiritual gift, possessing all the power of passion, containing within itself all the rapture of mystical beauty. This is the only way to understand spiritual love on the solid basis of Christian primary sources and church history. Modern rumors about Christianity, both hiding behind the church fence and heard in the wild, all these objections to the gospel that it is impossible to love everyone, and the like, are all, first of all, the fruit of ignorance in relation to Christian primary sources and Christian experience. Likewise, the personal question: “Am I a Christian?” there is a question: “What kind of spirit am I?” And in resolving this issue there must be sincerity: whoever does not have the spirit of Christ, who does not experience the bliss of self-denial, the delight of spiritual love, is not a Christian, no matter how abstractly beautiful or universally binding Christianity may seem to him. This is not a sermon, but the result of studying the facts of Christian experience. If we have the right to set a moral limit for any religion, then we are obliged to understand religion aesthetically. All the rapture of beauty, without which life is petty and routinely lukewarm, is given to the Christian in the rapture of love; the beauty of spiritual love is the only beauty that, connecting a person with God and people, does not destroy his free, autonomous personality, but gives it full content. This is intelligent beauty. Christian love, as spiritual, as a believer, truly unites the morality of duty and the beauty of free life, reason and nature - in the kingdom of the Heavenly Father. But it is not the aesthetic union of reason with nature that gives birth to Christianity, but religious faith, acting through love, creates the kingdom of spiritual beauty. This makes a huge difference. Religious love - αγαπη, elemental madness - ερως. Both have spirit in themselves, have beauty in themselves. But it is precisely spontaneously that they are different and unmerged; they are separated by the border of moral consciousness. Their merging, “the feeling of beauty in both poles,” is a painful phenomenon. The God-man and the man-god are incompatible. Between the pantheistic-Buddhist immersion in nature and the rational-creative planting of the kingdom of the Heavenly Father, only a connection of polar change, the alternation of night and day, is possible, but not a combination, which will always be a mixture, contrary to hermaphroditism. During this transition, spiritual energy is transformed and, since Christianity is love to death and faith is limitless, that is, in essence, it captures the entire spirit, there is no longer any energy left for the erotic element. Christianity gives man complete and true freedom from the elements. Before the idea of ​​the absolute sky, the earth is only the kingdom of chaste nature, before the abyss of the human sky - there is only the morally human. Between elemental beauty and spiritual beauty lies the world of everyday vanity with its Pharisee-hypocritical religion; from its stuffiness the only way out is into the kingdom of beauty, for a rational and ethical creature - into the kingdom of spiritual beauty. Ich kann bestätigen, wie sich beim russischen Bauern oder niederen Priester., eine Kraft des schlichten Gottvertrauens, eine Zartheit der sittlichen Empfindung und eine thatkräftige Bruderliebe findet, die ihren Ursprung aus dem Evangelium nicht verleugnet. Ibid. S. 151. L'abbé De Broglie La morale sans Dieu. Ses principles et ses conséquences pp. 144–159 (ch. PI la morale indépendante). The same point of view (keine Sittlichkeit ohne Gott) is taken by G. Gutberiet in his study Ethik und Relgion Grundlegung der religiösen und Kritik der unabhängigen Sittlichkeit. G. Geffding, Philosophy of Religion, pp. 152–153. S. Coignet La mords indépendants dans son principe st dans son objet pp. 2–4. This is the general point of view of evolutionism. In particular, one can point to M. Berthelot's book Science et morale, which is a response to Brunetiere's famous article on the bankruptcy of science (Science et religion). Berthelot opposes experimental science to any mysticism, and claims that only it grounds true morality and indicates “rules of behavior based on inexorable laws established by experience” (p. 34). Berthelot leaves us in no doubt about how he understands the role of science in relation to morality when he writes: C'est la science qui établit les seules bases inébranlables de la morale, en constatant comment celle-ci est fondée sur les sentiments instinctifs de la nature humaine, précisés et agrandis par révolution incessante de nos connaissances et le Développement héréditaire de nos aptitudes. But such a science, for which man is an external object, cannot substantiate morality, because, explaining the origin of the moral instinct, it weakens it (as Guyot revealed in his criticism of Darwinism). Reason can only substantiate morality, regardless of its origin, if it substantiates it internally, logically, in itself, autonomously. In essence, this is asserted, inconsistently, and Berthelot himself, when in another place, distinguishing two sources of knowledge - external and internal, speaks of the latter: dans le monde interne, celui de la conscience, l'homme apparaît seul: son esprit, son sentiment deviennent la mesure des choses... l'homme trouve la morale en lui-même (pp. 22–27). One could also call M, Buisson La religion, la morale et la science; leur conflit dans l'éducation contemporaine; but this book belongs more to the field of politics (journalism) than to the field of science. Cp. E. Caird The evolution of religion, vol. 1 (3 ed). p. 233–234. Religious individualism can rise to the point of popular exclusivity, as we see in the Jewish religion. It should be noted that this folk exclusivity, which gives the widest place to individualism, is different from the primitive tribal feeling; it becomes possible under the condition of the high development of monotheism. At first, the Jews also recognized themselves as a tribe among other tribes; this consciousness only later developed into Pharisaism due to the intensity of monotheism. See W. R, Smith Lectures on the religion of the semites. Ε. Thirion Morale et religion, p 20. I especially remember In the world of the unclear and unresolved (1901) p. 139 ff. See E. Tavernier La morale et l’esprit laïque, where the author carefully collected many pearls of unbridled “worldly” morality. Particularly interesting is Ch. VIII: Morale socialiste (V. Malon La morale sociale; M. J. Guesde Essai de catéchisme socialiste, etc.) See the book Ethics and religion, edited by the society of ethical propagandists (Lond. 1900) - a collection of articles written by or founders or influential friends of ethical societies. Let us name some of these articles: Ethics and Religion (J. R, Seeley); Ethical Religion (W.M.S alter); The Scope and Limits of the Work of an Ethical Society (H. Sidgwick); The Aims and Methods of an Ethical Society (H. Sidgwick); The Aims of Ethical Societies (L. Stephen); The Ethical Movement Defined (S. Coit); The Position of an Ethical Society (J. H. Muirhead). Of course, minor shortcomings of one or another system do not count. Religion ist (subjectiv betrachtet) das Erkenntnis aller unserer Pflichten als göttlicher Gebote. Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (ed. Kirchmann). S. 183. Emerson The Sovereignty of Ethics, etc. Salter Ethical Religion; Sullivan Morality as a Religion; Ethics and Religion. Edited by the society of ethicalpropagandists. See Critique of Practical Reason. From an ecclesiastical point of view, this means that the church is a living union of the regenerate - according to the principle: where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them, and not an institution. But we do not touch on the question of the church. It was written at the height of the Russo-Japanese War. From the article on freedom of conscience intended in the first edition, which at one time was not published due to independent circumstances. Written during the Russo-Japanese War. You can read a lot of instructive things about the combination of “madness” and bloodthirstiness from Ivanov. Hellenic religion of the suffering god. You might be interested in: