WE ARE NOT ALONE IN THIS WORLD.
That is the principal feeling of the Slav soul: we are neither alone in this world nor destined for it. Whether I wander in the streets of London or stand in the green fields outside, I have always the same feeling of human loneliness and helplessness on one side, and the company of some overwhelming and invisible powers on the other. I say the feeling and not thought, because I feel they touch me and I am unhappy because I cannot touch them. They seem to be like shadows, and still I am sure they are greater realities than I am. My life is dependent on theirs and their lives are connected with, but not dependent on, my life. My being is quite transparent to these higher intelligences, while their beings I can feel only in the most lucid moments of my life. The dreamy nature around me is pervaded by them, and my own life, I feel, is pervaded by them also. In some way they disindividualise me, but on the other hand they give me strength, light and inspiration.
What is the number of these powers surrounding us? "Many," answered Paganism. "One only," answered Judaism and Islam. "One in Trinity," answered Christianity.
So—Christianity is a viá media between limitless Polytheism and absolute Monotheism. Professor Haeckel of Jena, in his hatred of Christianity, instanced Mohammedanism as a better religion and scornfully called the Christian religion "Polytheism." The definition is not altogether untrue. Paganism was not wholly false. The Christian dogma of the Trinity in relation to this world symbolically means unity in multitude. This dogma expresses a principle, an idea, rather than a number. As we cannot define God's being chemically, historically, psychologically, etc., how can we hope to define Him mathematically? God is beyond numbers; He is beyond scientific research; beyond all expression. One in three, that is half-way to Polytheism and to Monotheism. One in three gives the substance of God's life and binds Him to His own work, the created world.
God's own life is dramatic internally, and externally (in relation to the world). That is the real meaning of the dogma of the Trinity. God is somehow one, and yet not one; rather He is a pluralistic unity. He can take part in the human drama and still remain the God of the Universe. He can suffer and still remain perfect. He can be omnipresent in the world and still not be wholly immersed in it. "I cannot understand it; it is a mystery to me," exclaimed Tolstoi. Certainly he could not understand it; who could? We cannot understand our own beings. Modern biology discovered that a human body consists of millions and millions of corpuscles, minute organic cells which live their life and go their way unconscious of the human person formed by themselves. New discoveries may open up new problems, but the ancient mysteries about everything in the world continue to be omnipresent. How could we have more knowledge about God except some few glances, some imperfect allusions, some symbolical combinations?
However, lacking a clear and perfect understanding, we still feel that we are not alone in the world. God is all round us like the atmosphere that we breathe. The more we try to escape from this atmosphere, the closer it seems to pervade us. Tolstoi felt this as strongly as the most orthodox Fathers of the Church. Yet his doctrines on God, vague and pantheistic as they are, slow to ascribe to God any traditional qualities and trying in vain to invent new ones—his doctrines on God are less comprehensible than the dogma of the Trinity—less comprehensible, less applicable, and unfruitful.
Not Napoleon, but God; not London, but God. Tolstoi analysed Napoleon's life and character, and found that he was no better or greater than thousands of other men who followed him. Why should London be called great? Yes, perhaps it can be called great compared with anything on earth, except God. I say, except God, because after a thousand years, i.e., after one God's day, God will be surely the same, and London? Will it be in existence a thousand years hence? Who knows? Walking in the streets of London I look round me and see nothing great except God.
The famous Russian literature from Gogol to Dostojevsky is the finest psychological analysis of men. The result of this analysis was: there exists no great man. No one is great: neither Shakespeare nor Napoleon, neither Peter the Great nor Kutuzov, neither the Russian landlords nor the Czar himself, neither Prince Bolkonsky nor Raskolnikov, neither Nero nor St. Paul, neither Beaconsfield nor Osman Pasha, neither Pope nor Patriarch, neither Dalai-Lama nor Sheik-ul-Islam. How could they be great since they must sleep, and eat, and be sick and disappointed, and despair, and die? A review was made by the Russian authors—a review of ancient and modern great men—and a verdict arrived at. For a thousand years Christian Russia kept silent and listened to the hymns to the ancient and modern great men, to the heroes whom they worshipped. She listened to the hymns and worship of the great men while she begrudged praise to the good and saintly and suffering men. Russia is called "Holy," not because she pretends to be holy, but because her ideal is holiness—not greatness but holiness. She first made use of the word in the nineteenth century. The poet Pushkin first used it, and he used it in the customary way, like Lord Byron, or Goethe, praising the great men, although still alluding here and there to the true Russian ideal—to the good and saintly man. But he spoke not in order to say a new, an original word to the world, but only to break the silence and to attract the attention of the world to Russia. He was the first of a series of preachers. He was listened to and applauded, but he said nothing new. After him followed the preachers: Gogol, Tolstoi, Goncharov, Tchehov, Turgeniev, Dostojevsky, and many others, like a choir, in which three voices are still the strongest and most expressive: Gogol, Tolstoi, Dostojevsky. What did they say?
They held a grand review of the souls, of the ancient and modern souls, and found that there exists no great man among them. That was their verdict. In all their writings they tried to show in the clearest manner, and to the smallest detail, that there is no great man in the world. They analysed everyone who was mentioned and adored by worldly society or by tradition as a great man, and proved that he was not a great man at all. It was very courageous indeed to speak like that in a world which was accustomed from the beginning, in the pagan as in the Christian epoch, to adore greatness, to divinise great men, to imitate and to worship heroes. It was still more courageous to speak like that in the nineteenth century, when the worship of great men found so many advocates, when the name of the demi-god Napoleon filled every corner of the earth; when German philosophy, poetry and music emphasised personality and individuality when the whole continental theology followed the way of Cæsar and interpreted Christianity as a teaching and promotion of individualism in human life. Yea, it happened in the time when Carlyle, fascinated by German theories, ended the matter and pressed the whole world's history into some few biographies. Carlyle's "Heroes and Hero-Worship"—curiously enough—was published about the same time as Tolstoi's "War and Peace." Two antipodes! Dostojevsky's "Brothers Caramazov" was published nearly at the same time as Nietzsche's "Zarathustra" with its message of the Superman. Again two antipodes! You will in vain try to find such contrasts in the world as the Russian and Germano-Carlylean literature. Petronius and Seneca could read and understand very well Goethe and Carlyle, but they could not read and understand Tolstoi and Dostojevsky, nor could they understand the Christianity of their own time.