Excerpts

Ancient Russian, Orthodox Christian education, which lay at the foundation of the entire public and private life of Russia, which laid the foundation for the special structure of the Russian mind, striving for internal integrity of thinking, and which created the special character of the indigenous Russian morals, imbued with the constant memory of the relationship of everything temporal to the eternal and human to the Divine - this education, of which traces are still preserved among the people, was stopped in its development before it could bring lasting fruit in life or even discovering your prosperity in the mind. The surface of Russian life is dominated by borrowed education, grown from a different root. The contradiction of the fundamental principles of two educations arguing with each other is the main, if not the only, reason for all the evils and shortcomings that can be seen in the Russian land. Therefore, the reconciliation of both educations in such thinking, the basis of which would contain the very root of ancient Russian education, and the development would consist in the consciousness of all Western education and in the subordination of its conclusions to the dominant spirit of Orthodox Christian philosophy - such conciliatory thinking could be the beginning of a new mental life in Russia and - who knows? - perhaps it would find echoes in the West, among sincere thinkers impartially seeking the truth. Whose fault was it that ancient Russian education could not develop and dominate the education of the West? – Is it the fault of external historical circumstances, or the internal weakening of the spiritual life of the Russian person? The solution to this question does not concern our subject. Let us only note that the nature of enlightenment, striving for inner, spiritual integrity, is so different from logical, or sensory-experiential, or generally based on the development of the disintegrated powers of reason, that the latter, having no significant relation to the moral mood of a person, does not rise or fall from his inner height or baseness, but, having once been acquired, remains forever his property, regardless of the mood of his spirit. Spiritual enlightenment, on the contrary, is living knowledge: it is acquired through an internal striving for moral heights and integrity, and disappears along with this striving, leaving only the appearance of its form in the mind. It can be extinguished in oneself if one does not constantly maintain the fire that ignited it. For this reason, it seems impossible not to assume that although strong external reasons obviously opposed the development of original Russian education, its decline did not occur without the internal guilt of the Russian people. The desire for external formality, which we notice in the Russian schismatics, gives reason to think that in the original direction of Russian education there was some weakening even before the Petrine coup. When we remember that at the end of the 15th and at the beginning of the 16th century there were strong parties between representatives of the then educated Russia, who began to mix Christian with Byzantine, and according to the Byzantine form they wanted to determine the social life of Russia, which was then still looking for its balance; then we will understand that at this very time and, perhaps, in this very aspiration, the decline of Russian education began. For indeed, as soon as Byzantine laws began to interfere in the affairs of Russian social life, and for the future of Russia they began to take models from the past order of the Eastern Roman Empire; then in this movement of the mind the fate of Russian indigenous education was already decided. By subordinating the development of society to an alien form, Russian people thereby deprived themselves of the opportunity for living and correct growth in original enlightenment, and although they preserved the sacred truth in a pure and undistorted form, they constrained the free development of the mind in it and thus were first subjected to ignorance, then, as a result of ignorance, they submitted to the irresistible influence of someone else’s education. Although foreign enlightenment belongs almost exclusively to the higher, so-called educated class of the Russian people, and the primitive enlightenment of Russia is stored, without developing, in the morals, customs and internal mentality of the so-called common people, however, the contradiction of these two enlightenments has equally harmful consequences for both classes. Neither here nor there, there is nothing whole, homogeneous. Neither foreign education can bring even the fruits that it brings in other countries, because it cannot find roots for itself in the earth; neither indigenous education can retain its meaning, because all external life is imbued with a different meaning. In a moral sense, such a contradiction is even more harmful than in a mental one, and most of the vices of the Russian person, which are attributed to various random causes, arise solely from this basic disagreement in Russian life. The very image of the spread of external foreign education among the Russian people already determines the nature of its moral influence. For this spread is accomplished, as I have already said, not by the power of internal conviction, but by the power of external temptation, or external necessity. In the customs and morals of their fathers, Russian people see something sacred; in the customs and mores of the incoming education, he sees only what is tempting or profitable, or simply forcibly unreasonable. Therefore, he usually succumbs to education against conscience, as an evil that he has not found the strength to resist. By accepting other people's morals and customs, he does not change his way of thinking, but he betrays him. At first he gets carried away or gives in, then he creates a way of thinking that is consistent with his way of life. Therefore, in order to become educated, he first needs to become more or less an apostate from his inner convictions. What consequences such a beginning of education should have on the moral character of the people is easy to guess in absentia. True, to this day, thank God, the Russian people have not yet lost their pure faith and many precious qualities that are born from this faith; but, unfortunately, one cannot help but admit that he has already lost one of the necessary foundations of social virtue: respect for the sanctity of truth. Here we have touched on a subject about which a person who has any love for his fatherland can hardly speak indifferently. For if there is any evil in Russia, if there is any disorder in its social relations, if there are any reasons at all for Russian people to suffer, then all of them have their first root in disrespect for the holiness of truth. Yes, unfortunately, it is easy for a Russian person to lie. He considers lying to be a generally accepted sin, inevitable, almost not shameful, some kind of external sin arising from the need for external relationships, which he views as some kind of unreasonable force. Therefore, without hesitation, he is ready to give his life for his conviction, to endure all hardships in order not to stain his conscience, and at the same time he lies for a penny of profit, lies for a glass of wine, lies out of fear, lies for profit, lies for no profit. His concepts have developed so surprisingly over the last century and a half. He does not value his outer word at all. His word is not him, it is his thing, which he owns by right of Roman property, that is, he can use and destroy it, without answering to anyone. He doesn’t even value his oath. In the square of every city you can see the kalachniks, who go every trade ten times a day to swear that they did not see the fight that happened before their eyes. With every purchase of land, with every takeover, all the district neighbors gather to swear an oath, without knowing what and not being interested in finding out. - And this is the absence of truth among the very people whom the ancient travelers praised for their love of truth, who valued the oath so much that even in a just cause they were more likely to renounce their claim than to take an oath! Meanwhile, having lost the truthfulness of the word, how can a person hope to see the structure of truth in his social relations? Until he develops unconditional respect for the truth of the word, what kind of external supervision can protect society from those abuses that only society itself can notice, evaluate and correct? But this absence of truth, thanks to God, has not yet penetrated into the very depths of the soul of the Russian person; There are still areas of life where the holiness of truth and fidelity to the word remained sacred for him. On this part of his heart, which has survived the infection, the possibility of his future rebirth is established. Many paths open to thought along which a Russian person can go towards a rebirth into the former harmony of life. All of them, with greater or lesser probability, can lead to the desired goal, for the achievement of this goal is still possible as long as the strength of the Russian spirit has not yet been lost, as long as the faith in it has not yet extinguished, as long as the dominant state of its spirit still bears the stamp of the former integrity of being. But one thing is certain and undeniable: the harm that foreign education produces in the mental and moral development of the Russian people cannot be eliminated by forcible removal from this education or from its source - European science. Because, firstly, this removal is impossible. No quarantines will stop thoughts and can only give it the power and tempting of mystery. Secondly, even if it were possible to stop the entry of new thoughts, it would be even more harmful for Russian education, for in Russia there are already so many previously entered concepts of the West that the new ones could only weaken the harm of the previous ones, decomposing and explaining, and bringing them to their abstract foundation, with which they must either fall or remain. For at the present time the entire development of the European mind, consciously, is disintegrating to its last beginning, which itself is aware of its unsatisfactoriness. Meanwhile, remaining not finished and not conscious, but only requiring application and embodiment, the former concepts of the West could be all the more harmful in Russia because they would lose their opposition in their own development. If Russia had not recognized Schelling and Hegel, then how would the dominance of Voltaire and the encyclopedists over Russian education have been destroyed? But, finally, even if it were possible to completely expel Western education from Russia, then short-term ignorance would again expose it to the even stronger influence of foreign enlightenment. Russia would again return to that era of Peter's transformation, when the introduction of everything Western, just because it was not Russian, was already considered a good thing for Russia, because it entailed education. And what would come of this? All the fruits of Russia's one and a half century apprenticeship would be destroyed in order for it to begin the same course of study again. One of the most direct ways to eliminate the harm from foreign education, which contradicts the spirit of Christian enlightenment, would, of course, be to subordinate the entire meaning of Western education to the dominance of Orthodox Christian convictions by developing the laws of original thinking. For we have seen that Christian wisdom is understood differently by the Orthodox Church than how it is understood by the Roman Church or the Protestant confessions. The difficulties that Christian thinking has encountered in the West cannot apply to Orthodox thinking. The development of this original Orthodox thinking does not require special genius. On the contrary, genius, which necessarily presupposes originality, could even harm the completeness of truth. The development of this thinking should be a common task of all believers and thinkers who are familiar with the writings of St. Fathers and with Western education. The data are ready for it: on the one hand, Western thinking, by the force of its own development, has reached the consciousness of its inconsistency and requires a new beginning, which it does not yet know; on the other hand, the deep, living and pure wisdom of St. Fathers, representing the embryo of this highest philosophical principle. Its simple development, corresponding to the modern state of science and in accordance with the requirements and questions of modern reason, would constitute itself, without any ingenious discoveries, that new science of thinking, which should destroy the painful contradiction between mind and faith, between internal convictions and external life. But the wisdom of St. The Fathers represent only the embryo of this future philosophy, which is required by the entire totality of modern Russian education - a living and clear embryo, but still in need of development and not yet constituting the science of philosophy itself. For philosophy is not a basic conviction, but a mental development of the relationship that exists between this basic conviction and modern education. Only from such development does it receive the power to communicate its direction to all other sciences, being together their first foundation and last result. To think that we already have a ready-made philosophy, contained in St. Fathers, it was extremely wrong. Our philosophy must still be created, and created, as I said, not by one person, but to grow in sight, with the sympathetic assistance of a general like-mindedness. Perhaps, for this reason, good Providence allowed the Russian people to move through ignorance to the subordination of foreign education, so that in the struggle against foreign elements, Orthodox enlightenment would finally take possession of the entire mental development of the modern world, inherited from the entire previous mental life of mankind, and so that, enriched by worldly wisdom, the Christian truth would reveal its dominance over the relative truths of the human mind all the more fully and solemnly. For, despite the apparent predominance of foreign education, despite the harm that it brought to the moral character of the people, shaking the sense of truth in one class, shaking both truth and justice in another - despite all the evil it caused, it still remained in Russia, there are still undoubted guarantees of a revival in its former Orthodox integrity. These pledges are the living faith of the people in St. The Orthodox Church, the memory of his former history and clearly surviving traces of the former internal integrity of his existence, preserved in the usual and natural mood of his spirit - in this not yet silenced echo of his former life, brought up within a homogeneous social composition, thoroughly imbued with the Orthodox teaching of the Church. Thus, carefully and calmly examining the attitude of Western philosophy to the Russian Enlightenment, it seems, without self-delusion, we can say that the time for a complete and general revolution in Russian thinking is not far off. For when we realize how the unsatisfactoriness of Western philosophy requires a new beginning, which it does not find in the entire volume of Western enlightenment; how this highest principle of knowledge is kept within the Orthodox Church; how life-giving for the mind and science could be the development of thought in accordance with this highest principle; how the very wealth of modern external knowledge could serve as an incentive for this development and its support in the human mind; how unconstrained it would be for everything that is true in the natural acquisitions of the human mind - how life-giving for everything that requires life - how satisfactorily it could answer all the questions of the mind and heart that require and cannot find a solution; - when we realize all this, it not only seems doubtful to us whether it will develop soon, but it is surprising that this new self-consciousness of the mind, so urgently required by the entire totality of our mental and moral education, has not yet developed in us. The possibility of such knowledge is so close to the mind of every educated and believing person that, it would seem, one random spark of thought is enough to ignite the fire of an unquenchable desire for this new and life-giving thinking, which must harmonize faith and reason, fill the void that bifurcates two worlds that require union, establish spiritual truth in the mind of a person by its visible dominance over natural truth, and elevate natural truth with its correctness. relationship to the spiritual, and finally connect both truths into one living thought; for there is one truth, like one human mind, created to strive towards the One God. The religious wisdom of the believer will accept the instructions of the Holy Fathers as the first data for his understanding, especially since these instructions cannot be guessed by abstract thinking. For the truths they express were obtained by them from immediate inner experience and are transmitted to us, not as a logical conclusion, which our mind could draw, but as the news of an eyewitness about the country in which he was. If believing philosophy does not find ready answers to all the questions of the mind in the writings of the Holy Fathers, then, based on the truths expressed by them and on its supreme conviction, it will seek, in the combination of these two indications, a direct path to the understanding of other objects of knowledge. And in any case, the way of thinking of the mind of a believer will be different from the mind that seeks conviction or relies on abstract conviction. This feature, in addition to the firmness of the root truth, will consist of the data that the mind receives from holy thinkers, enlightened by higher vision, and that desire for inner integrity, which does not allow the mind to accept dead truth as living, and finally, that extreme conscientiousness with which sincere faith distinguishes the eternal and Divine truth from that which can be (obtained) by the opinion of a person or a people or time. Objective: Developing social self-awareness. True beliefs are beneficial and strong only in their totality. Good forces do not grow alone. The rye will die out between the weeds. The disintegration of the unity of the knowledge of God into various attractions to private goods and into contradictory signs of private truths. The word should not be a box in which a thought is contained, but a conductor that transmits it to others; not a basement where the treasures of the mind and knowledge are stored, but a door through which they are carried out. And the strange law of these treasures: the more of them are taken outside, the more of them remain in storage. The giving hand will not become scarce. The Word, like the transparent body of the spirit, must correspond to all its movements. Therefore, it must constantly change its color, in accordance with the constantly changing cohesion and resolution of thoughts. In its iridescent sense, every breath of the mind should tremble and respond. It must breathe the freedom of inner life. Therefore, a word, ossified in school formulas, cannot express the spirit, just as a corpse does not express life. However, while changing in its shades, it should not change in its internal composition. For abstract thinking alone, the essential is generally inaccessible. Only materiality can touch the essential. Abstract thinking deals only with the boundaries and relationships of concepts. The laws of mind and matter, which constitute its content, do not themselves have significance, but are only a set of relations. For what is essential in the world is only a rationally free person. She alone has an original meaning. Everything else is only relative. But for rational thinking, a living personality decomposes into abstract laws of self-development, or is a product of extraneous principles, and in both cases loses its real meaning. Therefore, abstract thinking, touching on objects of faith, in appearance can be very similar to its teaching; but in essence it has a completely different meaning, precisely because it lacks the sense of essentiality, which arises from the internal development of the sense of the integral personality. In very many systems of rational philosophy we see that dogmas about the unity of the Divine, about His omnipotence, about His wisdom, about His spirituality and omnipresence, even about His trinity, are possible and accessible to the mind of an unbeliever. He can even admit and explain all miracles accepted by faith, bringing them under some special formula. But all this has no religious significance, only because rational thinking cannot accommodate the consciousness of the living personality of the Divine and its living relationship to the personality of man. Consciousness about the relationship of the living Divine personality to the human personality serves as the basis for faith, or, more correctly, faith is that very consciousness, more or less clear, more or less immediate. It does not constitute purely human knowledge, does not constitute a special concept in the mind or heart, does not fit into any one cognitive ability, does not relate to the logical mind alone, or the feeling of the heart, or the inspiration of conscience; but it embraces the entire integrity of a person, and appears only in moments of this integrity and in proportion to its fullness. Therefore, the main character of believing thinking is the desire to gather all the individual parts of the soul into one force, to find that inner center of being, where reason and will, and feeling, and conscience, and the beautiful, and the true, and the amazing, and the desirable, and the just, and the merciful, and the entire volume of the mind merges into one living unity, and thus the essential personality of man is restored in its pristine indivisibility. It is not the form of thought that comes before the mind that produces this concentration of forces in it; but from mental integrity comes the meaning that gives real understanding of thought. This striving for mental integrity, as a necessary condition for understanding the highest truth, has always been an integral part of Christian philosophy. From the time of the Apostles to our times, it has been his exclusive property. But since the fall of the Western Church it has remained predominantly in the Orthodox Church. Other Christian confessions, although they do not reject its legality, do not consider it a necessary condition for understanding Divine truth. According to Roman theologians and philosophers, it seems that it was enough that the authority of Divine truths was once recognized so that further understanding and development of these truths could already be accomplished through abstract logical thinking. Perhaps, due to their special predilection for Aristotle, their theological works have the character of a logical presentation. The very process of thinking was accomplished by an external cordon of concepts. They sought to provide a logical justification for the dogma of faith. In this logical presentation, from the abstract rational understanding of dogmas, moral demands were also heard, as an abstract conclusion. A strange birth of the living from the dead! A wise demand for power in the name of a thought that itself does not have it! Separated from other cognitive forces, logical thinking constitutes the natural character of a mind that has fallen away from its integrity. The entire order of things that has arisen as a result of this divided state of man automatically draws his thinking towards this logical separation. That is why faith exceeds natural reason, because it has fallen below its primal level. Therefore, it is not necessary for him to rise to the primitive unity in order to be imbued with faith. Theological studies are not possible for everyone, not necessary for everyone; The pursuit of philosophy is not accessible to everyone; It is not possible for everyone to constantly and specially exercise that inner attention which purifies and gathers the mind to a higher unity; but for everyone it is possible and necessary to connect the direction of his life with his fundamental conviction of faith, to agree with it the main occupation and each special task, so that every action is an expression of one aspiration, every thought seeks one foundation, every step leads to one goal. Without this, a person’s life will not have any meaning, his mind will be a calculating machine, his heart will be a collection of soulless strings in which a random wind whistles; no action will have a moral character, and there will not actually be a person. For a person is his faith. And there is no such undeveloped consciousness that would not be able to penetrate the basic conviction of the Christian faith. For there is no mind so dull that it cannot understand its own insignificance and the need for a higher revelation; There is no such a limited heart that cannot understand the possibility of another love, higher than that which earthly objects arouse in it; there is no conscience that does not feel the invisible existence of a higher moral order; There is no such weak will that could not decide on complete self-sacrifice for the highest love of his heart. And faith is made up of such forces. It is a living need for redemption and unconditional gratitude for it. This is his whole essence. From here all subsequent development of the believing mind and life receives its light and meaning. Spiritual communion of every Christian with the fullness of the entire Church. He knows that throughout the world there is the same struggle that takes place in his inner self-consciousness, the struggle between light and darkness, between the desire for the highest harmony and wholeness of being, and remaining in natural discord and disunity, between the free will of man, which creates a spiritual personality, and submission to external drives, turning him into an instrument of alien forces; between generous self-sacrifice and fearful selfishness, in a word, between the cause of redemption and freedom and the violent power of the natural, disordered order of things. No matter how little this consciousness is developed, he knows that in the internal structure of his soul he does not act alone, and not for himself alone; that he is doing the common work of the entire Church, the entire human race, for which redemption has been accomplished and of which he is only a certain part. Only together with the entire Church and in living communion with her can he be saved. Every moral victory in the mystery of one Christian soul is already a spiritual triumph for the entire Christian world. Each spiritual force created within one person invisibly attracts and moves the forces of the entire moral world. For just as in the physical world the heavenly bodies are attracted to each other without any material mediation, so in the spiritual world each spiritual person, even without visible action, by his mere presence at a moral height, raises and attracts to himself everything akin to human souls. But in the physical world each being lives and is supported only by the destruction of others; in the spiritual world, the creation of each person creates everyone, and everyone breathes the life of everyone. At all times there have been and are people imbued with the highest light and the power of faith. From them, like rays from the stars, the true teaching of faith spreads throughout the Christian world. In the history of the Church one can see the often visible ways of this light, how it penetrates from places illuminated by the highest teaching into countries where it was obscured by the will of man; how this light went out in places that were first of all sanctified by it, and how it is rekindled, brought from other countries that previously lay in darkness. For the grace of truth never fails in the kingdom of God. Spiritual Hierarchy. - Jacob's Ladder. – Living truths are not those that constitute dead capital in a person’s mind, which lie on the surface of his mind and can be acquired by external teaching, but those that ignite the soul, which can burn and go out, which give life to life, which are preserved in the secret of the heart and, by their nature, cannot be obvious and common to everyone; for, expressed in words, they remain unnoticed; when expressed in deeds, they remain incomprehensible to those who have not experienced their direct touch. For this reason, the writings of the Holy Fathers are especially precious for every Christian. They talk about the country they visited. The relation of faith to reason, or what degree of knowledge constitutes faith? Various relations of internal self-consciousness to the knowledge of God. The consciousness of the all-pervading coherence and unity of the universe precedes the concept of a single cause of existence and arouses the rational consciousness of the unity of the Creator. The immeasurability, harmony and wisdom of the universe guide the mind to the consciousness of the omnipotence and wisdom of the Creator. But unity, omnipotence, wisdom and all other concepts of the Divinity of the first cause, which the mind can extract from the contemplation of the external universe, do not yet inspire it with that consciousness of the living and personal self-essence of the Creator, which gives substance to our mental relations to Him, shifting the innermost movement of our thoughts and feelings towards Him from the sphere of speculative abstraction into the sphere of living, responsible activity. This consciousness, which completely changes the character of our God-thought, and which we cannot extract directly from contemplation of the external universe alone, arises in our soul when independent and steady contemplation of the internal and moral world is added to the contemplation of the external world, revealing to the vision of the mind the side of the highest vitality in the highest considerations of the mind. Faith is not a trust in someone else’s assurance, but a real event of inner life, through which a person enters into significant communication with Divine things (with the higher world, with heaven, with the Divine). The main reason for a person’s delusion is that he does not know what he loves and what he wants. The need for happiness, the need for love, the need for harmony, the need for truth, the need for sympathy, the need for tenderness, the need for activity, the need for self-forgetfulness, the need for self-understanding - all these legitimate and essential needs of the human heart come from one common root of life, to which few bring their self-awareness. Justice, truth, is rarer than love, because it is more difficult, costs more sacrifices and is less enjoyable. We would gladly double our donations if only our responsibilities would be reduced. How often one meets a man who is generous and at the same time unjust, charitable and ungrateful, generous and stingy, wasteful on what he should not spend, and stingy on what he is obliged to give; devoted at whim, harsh with those who have a right to his devotion, hated, perhaps, in the circle where Providence has placed him, and worthy of love and wonder as soon as he emerges from it; a hunter in matters of philanthropy and a fugitive from the ranks of duties, and imagining that he can pay for the violation of the most essential, closest duties with an arbitrary and often useless donation. Not labors, not sacrifices, not dangers, he is disgusted by the correctness of order. It is easier for him to be exalted than to be honest. But I won’t say; It is easier for him to be merciful than just, for the mercy of the unjust is not mercy. In good and evil everything is connected. Good is one, just as truth is one. Justice is to mercy as the trunk of a tree is to its top. Thinking, separated from the heart's aspiration, is also entertainment for the soul, like unconscious gaiety. The deeper such thinking is, the more important it seems, the more frivolous it actually makes a person. Therefore, serious and powerful study of science also belongs to the number of means of entertainment, a means of dispersing oneself, of getting rid of oneself. This imaginary seriousness, imaginary efficiency accelerates the true one. Secular pleasures do not work so successfully and not so quickly. A feeling of restoration (healing) of our inner unity and harmony. To believe is to receive from the heart the testimony that God Himself gave to His Son. Faith is the gaze of the heart towards God. Justice, morality, the spirit of the people, the dignity of man, the sanctity of the rule of law can only be recognized in conjunction with the consciousness of the eternal religious relations of man. The world of free will has its truth in the world of eternal morality.