Towards the Spiritual Convergence of America and Russia: American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community, and the Potent Alchemy of National Characteristics

In Moscow: Slavophilism, and in Boston: Transcendentalism… [94]

It is deeply heartening and enlightening, to enter into essential aspects of the contrasting and complementary psychologies of the American and Russian people, by examining and comparing their respective intellectual and spiritual histories. The intriguing story is that, often during the same years (or very near in time) and, in all likelihood, wholly unknown to each other [95]; in each separate country, great, definitive, essential acts and deeds were done by these creative spirits, these “voices” of each of their countries.

In Moscow, in the late 1830’s, where many of Russia’s “best and brightest” individuals [96] were gathered in the cultured Elagin salon; Khomyakov, Kireyevsky and others, were, in readings and passionate discussions, articulating the fundamental ideas which were to distinguish Russia and “Russian”, from the nationalities of Western Europe which they had encountered in travel and study. These presentations and discussions were later recognized to have been a fundamental contribution to the intellectual foundations of “Slavophilism”.

While such ideas were developing in Russia; in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1837, Emerson spoke his great call, in “The American Scholar Address” — later to be described as America’s “Intellectual Declaration of Independence”. [97] One year later — and within one year’s time of Khomyakov’s and Kireyevsky’s important presentations; yet completely separate in Moscow -Emerson gave what was, essentially, an even greater summons to America. This was his “Address to the Divinity Class”, at Harvard in 1838. Truthfully, this could be described as America’s “Spiritual Declaration of Independence”. [98]

Emerson, Kireyevsky and Khomyakov attempted to voice the uniqueness and distinctiveness of their respective peoples, nations and psychologies, in contrast to Europe. Interestingly, they all reached backward into history, towards the highest conception of Man in the Spiritual and Philosophical History of Western Man [99] — from which both of their nations, peoples and cultures were, as it were, late spiritual progeny. Yet while both — during the same period of the 19th century — reached back toward the highest idea as to the “spirit and nature of Man”; they emphasized distinct aspects; they looked from different perspectives; they stressed different portions of this highest conception of Man. Their understanding of the individual and the surrounding society; the relation of an individual person to himself, to Life, Death, God, etc., are contrasting — often in the most profoundly complementary ways. In these contrasting complements, one can find some of the needed, essential ideas, for understanding the spiritual, psychological, social and cultural relations of American and Russian, and attempting to consciously address the problems of the spiritual condition of Man in our own day and time. If we listen to what they said of us, and to us; we may be able to hear, vitally, of who we are; and how we might more consciously meet — and creatively act.

Emerson’s Man, as a Sovereign State

Let us begin with Ralph Waldo Emerson [100], who, even in a recent work by a prominent historian in the U.S., is described as the “quintessential American” [101].

The life and thought of Emerson could well be described as a search for the sovereign individual; or to use Emerson’s well known phrase “the infinitude of the private man”. [102] Born as he was, about one generation after the “Declaration of Independence” and the successful American Revolution, in 1803, into a prominent New England ministerial family; by the time Emerson had reached 35 years of age, he had quit die ministry as incompatible with what he would bring to expression from his own inner life. So that, by the year 1837, when he addressed Harvard’s Phi Beta Kappa Society, [103] he had already been tested in “self-reliance”, [104] before he gave his “The American Scholar Address”, one of the greatest definitive acts in America’s intellectual and cultural history, as well as an American contribution to that of Mankind. This “Intellectual Declaration of Independence” — as a later biographer, Oliver W. Holmes, was truly to name it — was essentially surpassed, or, perhaps better said, completed, one year later, in his “Address to the Divinity Class” of Harvard’s Divinity School, on Sunday, 15 July, 1838. It was a summons for the American man — or, more precisely, “Man” — [105] in America — to cast off his spiritual subservience and inner dependence on Europe and religious tradition, and to take his stand, independently, before human society, history, God, and the entire world. Neither Europe, nor its culture and tradition, were to be rejected. They were rather to be embraced; and surpassed.

Let us consider, directly, some of what Emerson stated in these two famous addresses; using, as seems necessary and helpful, rather fulsome passages from both of these speeches. For, conditions being what they have been during the past several decades in the Soviet Union, it seems safe to assume that Emerson’s thought is not widely or well-known there; if for no other reason than the inaccessibility and sparsity of his texts in the Russian language. For Americans, it is, regrettably, also appropriate to assume — for quite different, and often less noble reasons — little close acquaintance with his thought, or its content and significance. [106]

Nearing the conclusion of Emerson’s “American Scholar Address”, he spoke the following:

Let us consider more closely, that which should be especially recognized and remembered. First of all, and most obvious, is the centrality of the individual; an independent, even isolated entity — surrounded by “barriers of natural respect”, such that “man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state”. This individual must become somewhat of a ‘center of the universe’ — “a Man”, as one could say (adhering to the most profound philosophical, psychological and historical meanings here). The “American Scholar” has an historical necessity, so says Emerson, to become such an independent, self-guided, self-governed source, entity and presence. Joining past, present and future, he must be a “university of knowledges”; independent and sovereign, not only from the surrounding society, but also from the predominance of European cultures, traditions, ideas, etc. As the United States of America had declared and accomplished its political and national independence from Britain, so must the “American Scholar” — Emerson declared — achieve an intellectual independence and sovereignty from “the courtly muses of Europe”.

Emerson called for the American Scholar, the “sovereign state” man, to reject, to surpass, indeed, to redeem “the mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects”. As Emerson wrote elsewhere: “you will hear everyday the maxims of a low prudence. You will hear that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name. ‘What is this truth you seek? What is this beauty?’ men will ask, with derision. If, nevertheless, God has called any of you to explore truth and beauty, be bold, be firm, be true.” [108] Those who are influenced by the “stars of God”, must not be overcome by the worldly, mundane, temporal “principles on which business is managed”. The higher inner life must be held as their greatest task. Indeed, those who are shone upon by the “stars of God” have the task — as many “good and great” from the history of the world have similarly had — to help in “the conversion of the world”. This can be achieved not by some party, or mass collection of people of any sort; it can only be truly done — held Emerson — beginning with “a unit”, “one character” — the Individual. This individual man in America, must stand alone, independent and sovereign, before the humanity, nature and God, and “plant[ing] himself indomitably on his own instincts”, attempt to have “the huge world…come round to him”. So he conceived the “American Scholar”.

One year after this “Intellectual Declaration or Independence”, in Emerson’s “Address to the Divinity Class”, to the graduating senior class of Harvard’s Divinity School, we move into a different context and atmosphere — an even more profound consideration of Man in the world. It is not one of Man standing up sovereign in America, before European traditions, ideas, society and history — a somewhat secular call for a worldly aristocracy of the mind (“Reason” [109]) in America. It is a call for men and women of Mankind to be representatives of God on earth. We move here from a high scholarship of the mind, to a spirituality of the “Soul”. The cultured and independent ennoblement called for in an “American Scholar” — when realized in Emerson’s sense — is here surpassed by a summons to the humble dignity of the enthused man and woman of God. As will be evident in the following passage, it also is a “Declaration of Independence”; but one of spirit, declaring independence from old, imported religious forms and staid church tradition and doctrine.

It needs to be understood clearly, that when Emerson used the word “Soul” in this address, it had for him a much fuller and greater meaning, than merely the ‘middle-portion’: psyche (soul), of the tripartite anthropology of man, which consisted of body, soul and spirit [110] — which can be found, for example, in Plato, St. Paul, or the Greek Church Fathers. It would be closer to Emerson’s conception, and usage, to understand by “Soul”, generally, the deepest inner core, or the highest aspect of the human being — that portion in Man, which is most closely akin to Divinity. More commonly it could be simply described as the spiritual aspect of Man. Emerson:

Herein is to be found a great call, a summons to the independent, individual spirit (“Soul”) in Man. To Ralph Waldo Emerson, the religion of “the Church” teaches that ‘God was; not is’; that events in the historical past of Mankind, are the soul’s sole hope and means of salvation. “Inspiration”, “the Bible”, “Jesus”, are past events, on which the solution and salvation of Mankind depends. All of this reveals to Emerson “the falsehood of our theology”, in which the past would predominate over Man; redemption can only be gained by a reverence and acceptance of these distant historical events and persons.

Emerson rejected this theology; as he had already similarly done, at age 29, in regard to the service of Holy Communion, in the liberal Unitarian church from which he withdrew. This withdrawal from the church was contrary not only to his family’s tradition, but also to his own personal education, which had directed him to the vocation of a minister. Going from the safe and settled vocation of a minister, Emerson, following his own inner necessity and truth, left the church, to move out, uncertainly, into the world, eventually becoming a “lay preacher to the world”. [113]

Emerson heralds the spiritual individual in America, in contrast to the religion of society, the “Soul” of Man as superior to the outer forms and practices of religion. “They think society wiser than their soul, and know not that one soul, and their soul, is wiser than the whole world…None assayeth the stem condition to be the Self of the Nation.” A passive subservience towards the religious forms of “the Church” can lead, as Emerson sees it, to a condition of humanity, where “men can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine”.

The significance, the weight of what Emerson here stated must be clearly recognized. It is a tremendous call for men and women to step out, and away, from the religious traditions, doctrines and customs which bind them back to the past (religare [114]). To reject any childlike passivity toward the past and the Church. It is a call to spiritual independence. [115] The individual must stand alone; independently recognizing the divinity, the “infinitude” of their own “Soul”.

This is certainly no small or oblique intellectual position with which Emerson challenged these divinity students. It is a call to a profoundly deeper “theology” of Man. The furor [116] which the address provoked in the surrounding society, is itself sufficient proof of its spiritually revolutionary character and challenge to America. But this “Spiritual Declaration of Independence” in America, could not be followed by some successful “revolution” in the outer, collective society; because it could only be realized inside the souls of individual men and women. Most of the religious leaders in the society around Emerson, rejected not only this ‘summons to divinity’, but the ‘theology of Man’ on which it was based. Nevertheless, to Emerson, the assertion of “the infinitude of men”, was the “True Christianity”. [117] And this idea(l) became the central theme of Emerson’s own individual life, and his vocation as “lay preacher to the world” — and included his name amongst the spiritual biographies of those in human history who have embodied this ultimate challenge: the realization of divinity in Man. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his life and teaching, brought such a “Declaration of Spiritual Independence” to voice, before the young republic of the United States of America.

Emerson did not find — though this is certainly not uncommon in history, for such a message as his — that his fellow countrymen, in any broader way, realized in themselves his intellectual or spiritual call — to themselves. Nonetheless, his summons to the mind and spirit (“Soul”) was, and still remains, one of the most profound conceptions, and injunctions, to men and women in the intellectual and spiritual history of America, and the United States of America. And while Emerson’s was not the only such voice in America, his was certainly among the greatest and clearest. Why else, in 1988, would the speech-writers of both the President of the United States and the (eventual) President of the Soviet Union, choose Emerson to add a philosophical ‘touch’ to their political worries and endeavors at their Washington Summit?

For purposes of this essay, it is appropriate to emphasize that the “self-reliance” of the individual — which was the соrе of the message of Emerson (“the quintessential American”), both to the intellect and spirit of America — is an essential, historical part of one of the primary characterizations used to describe, distinguish and define “American”. “Individuality” and “individualism” [118] are two of the most commonly employed terms used in attempting to distinguish “American” character, history and society. This is true in regard both to the individual person and the collective society — including the economic, political and cultural life, etc.

Emerson called America, intellectually, towards the life touched by “Reason”, [119] not just “Understanding”; toward the participation of the individual mind in the “Universal Mind” [120]. As he stated it, the American Scholar — “Man-Thinking”:

But the Slavophiles Said…

The idea and understanding of Man of Kireyevsky and Khomyakov is in certain ways, quite different. Consider for example, Ivan Kireyevsky’s important 1838-39 “Response to A.S. Khomyakov”, [122] selecting that well-known portion, in which he described and critiqued the character of personality and society in the European West (This is considered to be one of the first “documents” of “Slavophilism”.)

In this oft-quoted passage of Kireyevsky, it becomes immediately apparent just how deeply contrasting are the conceptions of Man to the “American Scholar” Emerson and the Russian “Slavophile” Kireyevsky. Emerson’s is an affirmation of individualism; though indeed, as I hope to have already made clear, “individuality” only in its highest, noblest sense. For Kireyevsky and Khomyakov, it is quite otherwise. They sought rather in the social being of man: the individual as an inseparable member of the community. Certainly, also to Emerson, the common, mundane condition of the isolated, ignoble individual, was as repugnant as it was to the Slavophiles. But in their search for a deep, true, noble conception and understanding of Man — individually and collectively considered — the “Slavophiles”, did not search in the direction of the “sovereign state” individual. They looked, rather, to those ideas which brought the individual human being into a wholeness of self, which was intimately bound into relationship with the community of which they were an essential member — the communal individual. [125]

These “Slavophiles” rejected the “rationalized” character of the individual western psyche, as well as the rationally organized aspects of the social order in the Western countries. They searched back — not without some illusory nostalgia — into the historical past of “Holy Russia” [126] for an understanding of the individual and social community, acceptable to their Russian souls. In the “integral personality” [127], exemplified par excellence in the idea of the “holy man”, and in the old Russian “obschina” and “mir” [128] — influenced by the Russian Orthodox conception of both — they sought to articulate the character and ideal of the Russian people as to the individual and the collective. The individual could only fully realize his life, healthfully, and in fullness and truth, by living as a physical, intellectual, psychological, and spiritual member of a community. The “obschina”, with the “mir”, was an earthly, human example; “sobornost” (for Khomyakov) was an ideal, spiritual, somewhat “otherworldly” conception, of, essentially, the same goal: community. And it was in the community, and the communal individual, that the true way of living for the human being — whether earthly-human as in the “obschina” and the “mir”, or human-divine as in “sobornost” — was to be found. (More below on these.)

In their reaction to the secular “Age of Reason”, the Enlightenment in Europe, with its “rationalism” — which as they viewed it, not only isolated members of society from each other, but also dis-integrated the personality-, they sought for an idea of human wholeness and integrity which could be described as spiritual, religious. Here we have the “vertical” conception of the individual and the community. Both Kireyevsky and Khomyakov were, among other intellectual sources and cultural influences — including some directly from the West — strongly influenced by the Orthodox Christian conception of men and Man, which helped to bind their understanding (religion) into the deep past of “Holy Russia”.

Emerson, Kireyevsky and Khomyakov all rejected the mundane, common, “horizontal” life, culture and civilization of the Western European (or American, or ‘Westernized’ Russian [129].) We shall come to see how profoundly kin were, not only their reactions to the common inner and outer life of the individual and society, but also their conceptions as to the higher, spiritual being of men and Man.

Kireyevsky’s Heart and Soul

First, let us consider more fully the thought of Ivan Kireyevsky in regard to his understanding of the individual human being. (Later we shall examine Khomyakov concerning spiritual community.) Kireyevsky had traveled, for just short of one year, to Europe in 1830. Originally he had planned a broad-ranging journey there during a four year period. But, for various reasons, he visited only German-speaking Central Europe, in what would be his only trip abroad. Yet, considering the personalities whom the young Kireyevsky encountered; we would need to describe this single trip to Europe as a rich one indeed. For, during his ten and one-half months in Central Europe, he was able, by attending lectures — and sometimes in personal meetings and relations — to experience, among others: Hegel, Schleiermacher, Schelling, Savigny, Karl Ritter and Oken. This time in the West would later help to substantiate his gradual, developing articulation of the difference of the West and Russia.

Contents of his later ideas can be found clearly present, for example, in his description of Schleiermacher. In a letter written on March 30,1830 — the same day on which he had heard a lecture by Schleiermacher concerning the Resurrection of Christ — he suggested, after noting his own lack of thorough acquaintance with Schleiermacher’s thought, the following:

Here we find, even in the twenty-three year old Russian Kireyevsky, a clear conception of the distinction of heart and mind, faith and reason; one, incidentally, which was also developed in Schleiermacher’s thought on religion. This difference, of “heart” and “head”, would continue to be an essential concern of Kireyevsky, throughout his life; constituting a principle element in his contrast of Western and Russian. As he later wrote:

Generally considered, Ivan Kireyevsky returned to Russia disappointed with the Europe he had found; not only with the common middle-class way of life, and its culture, but also with some of the outstanding spirits and leading figures which he had encountered there. To him, gradually, the West came to be seen and understood, as a rationalized, ‘inorganic’, atomized, fragmented society and people. [132] The autocracy of the mental, the rational life — a secular life in fact — he considered to be one of its prime psychological characteristics. His unresolved dissatisfaction with the West eventually led him to look more deeply into Russia itself, in his search for a healthier and more complete idea of the individual, society, and life. He did not have too far to look; for, during the mid-1830’s, and with the unexpected contributions of his devoutly religious wife, Kireyevsky gradually came into a deeper contact and understanding with Russian Orthodoxy, and its comprehension of Man. His wife — not surprised or uncomprehending of Schelling’s thought, which he exposed to her (though she had no personal interest, or education, in such Western philosophers) — told him that Schelling’s ideas were to be found, in essence, in the writings of the Church Fathers, which she knew well. He came eventually to study closely the thought of the Greek Church Fathers. Therein he found an understanding of the human being which was to him immensely more profound, truthful and satisfying than most of the ideas — or “incarnations” of Man and life — which he had encountered, or learned of, in Central Europe; especially all of those secular, “Enlightenment” (“Age of Reason”) conceptions, which were to be found permeating so much of the intellectual, psychological, literary and cultural life of the West — including the United States of America. Indeed, Kireyevsky came to develop a close personal relationship with Father Makarii of Optina Pustyn monastery. They both worked on translating writings of early Christian Church Fathers: St. Isaac the Syrian and Maximus the Confessor, et al, into Russian. In the Orthodox Church, and the writings of the Greek Fathers, he came to find a comprehension of the human being, which satisfied his heart, soul, and mind, as being the deepest, fullest, truest conception of the inner and outer life of Man.

Let us consider the ideas, which answered his needs. In St Isaac the Syrian (ca. 6th century AD) and Maximus the Confessor (ca. 580-662 AD) one finds, indeed, a profound and provocative conception of the human being. Reason, the Intellect, the Mind of Man — so much heralded and influential since the beginning of the “Age of Reason” in Europe, and which Kireyevsky had experienced in its impact on the intellectual life there — was, to them, a restricted, delimited, incomplete kind, and means, of knowledge, and being.

Though they lived in extremely different times and cultures, consider how contrary in epistemological essence, are the views of these Church fathers, to that of the Western philosopher John Locke (1632-1704) for example. Locke contrasted the ambiguity he considered to be inherent in any person’s “knowledge” derived from “supernatural light”, to the certitude of knowledge gained by the “natural light” of Reason, which, he held, all men shared. About this “natural light”, “Reason”, he wrote in his well-known Essay Concerning Human Understanding: “Reason must be our last judge and guide to everything.” [133] (It is interesting and telling, to at least mention here, that Locke, through Thomas Jefferson, directly influenced both the (political) Declaration Of Independence and the United States Constitution; including the idea of man and human society on which it is based. [134]) To these two Church Fathers, in contrast, the entire human soul, especially the human heart, must be included in any attempt to achieve knowledge and Truth; or a healthy fulfillment and completion of the human being. Reason, only one important part of the human psyche, could not, by itself alone, achieve either true knowledge or human felicity. The whole, ennobled inner life of the human being must needs be employed.

The world-view of Locke is so very different from that of either of these two Fathers of the Church, that it seems perhaps rather odd to contrast their views of “Reason” [135]. For central example, the “light” which the Fathers sought was not Locke’s “natural light”; their goal was the inner “supernatural light”, and all the experience of the divine, which Locke could only so tenuously and skeptically consider. But in fact, the profound and complete contrast, present, in these “philosophies of life”, makes abundantly clear the difference of a “horizontal” and “vertical” comprehension of Man, life and world. Thomas Jefferson could easily embrace Locke; but not Kireyevsky, or the Greek Church Fathers.

In his well-known short essay entitled “The Philosophy of I. Kireyevsky”, [136] Henry Lanz writes of St Isaac, that “in his work on The Contempt of the World, [St. Isaac] maintains that wisdom [sapientia] is only attainable by a concentration of all the mental forces, and has its location, not in the intellect but in the heart (cor)”, [137] the centre of the human psyche. [138] In the same study, Maximus the Confessor is described as holding that “Reason…is merely the organ of knowledge, whereas the organ of wisdom is the whole soul. The true personal unity is the only element in which absolute truth can live and move.” [139] If perhaps the West is rather more interested in knowledge (scientia [140]) than wisdom (sapiential); this would only further substantiate the differences of the Enlightenment philosophies of Man, which would tend to locate the “centre” of the human being inside of the skull, in the mind, in (natural) “Reason”; and religious anthropologies of Man which would locate such “centre” in the heart and soul.

Such ideas, which Kireyevsky wished to introduce to die Russian world around him — by helping to translate and publish them in Russian — contributed substantially towards his understanding and articulation of the human being. Thus, from this ancient source, as also from the personal relations Kireyevsky developed with Father Filaret of Novospasskii Monastery of Moscow and Father Makarii of Optina Pustyn, there was a strong influence of the Christian Orthodox conception of life and Mankind, which contributed to Kireyevsky’s “Slavophilism”. Even in his 1838-39 “Reply to Khomyakov” — a fundamental ‘document’ of Slavophilism — reference was made to St Isaac.

In 1852, for example, in a letter from Kireyevsky to Father Makarii, he wrote of the Greek Fathers in general:

In order to achieve this “inner integrity of mind”, Kireyevsky, concurred with the deeper Orthodox view that faith (in Greek: pistis; in Latin: fides) must be added, as a real vital presence in the human soul, to yield “believing reason”. In an oft-cited passage, he describes it so:

Here we have Kireyevsky, attempting to bring to expression a psychology of man with which he compared Russia, itself seen as fortunately permeated by Christian Orthodoxy, and the West, which had become lost (spiritually, psychologically, and socially) in the worldly rationalism which he and other Russians had experienced and recognized in Europe. His unflattering portrayal of the Weston psychology, in 1838-39 — which should be compared to the consideration of the state of Man in the introductory portion of Emerson’s American Scholar Address — was stated so:

And as he saw Europe:

Kireyevsky — and others [145] — held that Russia bore this “new spiritual force”, the needed faith, which the West so deeply required for its inner and outer life. Here is articulated, again, the missionary responsibility of Holy Russia towards what they saw as the fallen, troubled, spiritually-lost West. Russia, in its uniqueness, must help redeem the West.

Kireyevsky did not simply reject the West [146]; indeed, he revered it in many ways. But he did not feel that Western Man, Western society or Western civilization was a healthy example for Russia to try to follow. (Here he differed strongly, of course, from the so-called “Westerners” in Russia.) Russia must pursue its own unique historical direction of development. As a culture and civilization — with its own traditions, customs, moral order, its own history, and individual and social-psychology; it must look to itself for answers to the problems and conditions of man and civilization. Russia can learn, selectively, to benefit from ways in the West; but it must try to avoid the decay and degradation present in Western culture, morality and society, which they saw to be due to the lack of those very social principles which they claimed to find prevalent in their own culture and history (e.g. the traditional, communal “mir”).

The Slavophile image of society was deeply imbued with the Christian Orthodoxy of the East, from both the Second and Third Romes. [147] This “vertical”-veridical comprehension of Man, society and life — one they held to permeate the best of the traditions, history and life of the people of Russia — contributed much towards distinguishing Russia from the West. In holding such a religious interpretive position, as an essential aspect of their idea of Russia’s uniqueness, the Slavophiles could not but find deep social malaise in the growing secularity in the life of the West.

It is important to recognize — especially in regard to the arguments in this work — that when Kireyevsky, and others with views similar to his, sought to define their uniqueness; they looked especially towards a tradition, a heritage of religion, which was itself much older than even the Slavic settlement of that region eventually called “Russia”. In turning toward the religious, the Orthodox life of “Holy Russia” — in attempting to define their distinctiveness from Europe — they were not embracing some merely racial, ethnic or national characteristics. They were reaching, for self-definition, into a religious, “vertical” comprehension of human existence; one which was far older than even their own peoples’ historical existence. In this sense they were — and so it was seen by some of them-, as “Holy Russia”, as Orthodox Russia, the special bearer of this profound religious tradition. By defining themselves with these ideas, which reached back beyond themselves into the deepest spiritual sources and heritage of Occidental Man, they were thereby binding their own souls, history, and future destiny, to that of all the other societies, civilizations and cultures whose spiritual traditions sourced in the same religion of Man as in Christianity. In this way they were (and are) relatives, kinsmen, to the secular heirs of Medieval Christendom, which faced them in the peoples and cultures of the nineteenth century West.

To the degree that “vertical” answers are sought — as they are in this work — in this hyper-“horizontal” age, we must consider how Russia, the peoples and nations of Europe, and the Americas, are kindred, spiritually, to this deep, common heritage of Man in Christianity.

Adam, in America and Russia

It is quite interesting, and very meaningful, to recognize that, Emerson in America, and Kireyevsky in Russia, in their attempts to come to a deeper understanding of Man in their respective countries, both reached back (even during the same years of the 1830’s) into the early sources of their common spiritual heritage, and embraced and applied those ideas to express their own conceptions of Man. In Emerson’s famous “American Scholar Address” for example, in the introduction, he stated significantly:

When one reads this description by Emerson of men of Man, one cannot but be readily reminded of the critique by Kireyevsky, Khomyakov and others, of the fragmented, disunified character of Western societies. Much of the modern history of the West was a seemingly almost deliberate move away from the “vertical”-religious world-view and society of Christendom, toward a more “horizontal”, earthly secularity. Emerson’s rejection of a life lived in exhaustive concern with the “horizontal”: “that the first duty is to get land and money, place and name”, is one of many pleas, by great personalities since the Renaissance, to maintain a sense of the spiritual amidst “modern”, mundane life. Emerson, Kireyevsky, Khomyakov, and many others, in various times and cultures, believed that the loss of a higher spiritual life in the individual, and the “vertical” dimension in society, could not but lead to an illness of the soul and a dissolution of society. The human being — individually and collectively seen — is such that he must have a higher meaning, a greater sense of existence. The absence of such, in the mind, heart or soul of a society, cannot but lead to ill. As Emerson stated it:

The essential, pivotal question is: What is Man? What is the true inner identity of Man? A “risen ape”; a “fallen angel”; a tabula rasa; a reincarnating spiritual entelechy caught amidst an inner war of good and evil? If there is no creative God, heaven or ‘afterlife’; if there are in fact no “wings to heaven”; no other continuance or existence for man beyond that of the temporary, singular life which inevitably ends in some oblivion of death; if all the mythologies, religions and cosmologies, which reveal a deeply woven spiritual-earthly multifabric to life, are unreal fantasy; then indeed some “horizontal”, earthly identity of Man — perhaps some Darwinian, of even Deist, conception — is more than less adequate as scientific knowledge. (Humanism, no matter how noble, is still defeated by death.) But it was a “vertical”, a spiritual dimension, which Emerson and the Slavophiles asserted. Indeed, to them all, this idea of the “vertical”-veridical dimension of life, was the central axis round which all the life of Man, inner and outer, individual and societal, personal and historical, earthly and spiritual, was to be understood and evaluated.

Those who reject such a “vertical” evaluation of life — then or now — will of course, in essence, need to reject such philosophers as these, as fantasts; от, as the word is sometimes used, “idealists”. Both America and Russia, and all of Mankind — past, present and future — have souls that reject such “otherworldly” speculation as false and illusory. But the message of all three, Emerson, Kireyevsky and Khomyakov, was an expression of Man’s ultimate spiritual identity, and a call to its fuller realization — in the individual, the society, in temporal and material-earthly existence. [150]

This call, and the world-view on which it is based for its substantiation and truth, is no less a question and challenge now, than when these three outstanding individuals themselves restated this deep perennial summons. If the “vertical” is fantasy, then this essay itself, is merely a fruitless, pitiful dalliance of mind — not to mention a fair amount of other material in the intellectual and spiritual history of Occidental Man — including of course, the thought, work and lives of Emerson, Kireyevsky and Khomyakov.

It is of great significance and meaning that Emerson uses the “old fable… that there is One Man”. For by doing so he brings the question of the identity of Man in America (and the American Scholar as “Man-Thinking” [151] in America) into direct association with the deepest spiritual traditions and heritage of Occidental Man, of which the Russians are also progeny. Emerson, also, embraces an idea of Man in America which is far older, grander and deeper than America itself. It is not the American Man which Emerson heralds; it is the American Man. So that, this “quintessential American”, this author of America’s “Intellectual and Spiritual Declarations of Independence”, solicits for his use and meaning, an idea of Man which far surpasses in time and heritage, any temporary, historical, lesser conceptions of “American”. [152] This is inherent in the two addresses of Emerson, from which citations above were made.

But we must understand more fully what Ralph Waldo Emerson meant when he thought of the inner constitution of this “One Man”.

The fundamental idea of Man which Emerson, and Kireyevsky and Khomyakov embraced — it also constitutes the core anthropology of Orthodox Christianity — was that Man was a potential God, a small god incarnate. Men and women of Mankind could participate in divinity; they could bring, as it has been described, “the spark of God”, within their selves, into bright realization. This is clearly and unambiguously expressed in the Orthodox Christian doctrine of deification, apotheosis. In Kireyevsky and Khomyakov, the idea of Man was basically influenced — if not principally determined — by this Orthodox anthropology. It is an idea which constitutes, essentially, the highest spiritual idea, and ideal, of Man in the history of the Occident It is the idea of Man “made in the image and likeness of God”. [153] This great idea, this tremendous ideal — which sources ultimately, in the historical record for Occidental Man, in the “wisdom of man” of Zarathustra [154] — constitutes the intellectual and spiritual core of Emerson’s summons to Man in America. The ideal of Man to Ralph Waldo Emerson was not based on the Deist anthropology of Jefferson [155]; it sources, ultimately, in what could be called the anthroposophy of Zarathustra. [156]

While the idea of divinity in man is, of course, not historically unique to Emerson; it was uncommon enough, in the America of Emerson’s time, to have brought about much controversy in the society around him, into which it was spoken. In Russia, on the contrary, in “Holy Russia”, the idea of deification, was central to the teachings of the Orthodox Church; so that for this reason, Kireyevsky and Khomyakov were able, essentially, to embrace — from their own perspectives — this religious tradition and its teachings. As is written in a current, popular (English-language) study of the Orthodox Church:

Behind this doctrine of deification, there lies the idea of man “made according to the image and likeness of God”.

For Maximus the Confessor, for example, whom Kireyevsky helped to translate into Russian for the nineteenth century, this too was the ultimate goal of man: to regain the likeness of God (Khomyakov we shall consider in the coming section.)

For Emerson the situation was quite different. In the Protestant Calvinism, which pervaded, to various degrees, the doctrines of the various churches of New England — as well as the habituated customs and moral feelings, and the general social, cultural and intellectual world in which Emerson lived — the belief was less or more clearly and consciously present, that die Fall of Man (the “First Adam”) had irreparably damaged the “image of God” in Man. Individually and collectively — it was held — man could do little to repair this damaged divinity within. Hence, essentially, only through the past historical life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ — plus the grace of God — could men and women of Mankind be “saved”. Concerning Calvinism:

Emerson could neither accept this, nor similar, modified conceptions of Man — Unitarian or otherwise — which surrounded him in the religious and intellectual life of New England. [160] His was much closer, in certain ways, to the Orthodox, rather than to the Calvinist image of Man. As was expressed in the long quote [161] in an earlier section, in Emerson’s “Address to the Divinity Class”: it was such ‘false theology’, which brought souls to the point that they “can scarcely be convinced there is in them anything divine”. As one could say it: Emerson did not accept the idea of the irreparable damage to the image of God in Man. Emerson made plain, to the Harvard Divinity School class, his thoughts of the relation of God to Man:

To Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jesus Christ was not Man’s soul’s sole salvation, but an example to the “Soul” (spirit) of Man; not some distant, omnipotent, savior divinity (e.g. “Apollo”), impossibly far beyond man’s highest capacities and deepest potentials. He was a brother to man. [163] Emerson was not as enamored as Calvin as to the effects of sin. To Emerson there was no need of an intercessor between the “Soul” of Man and God — no need for a “Holy Father”, Savior, Lord, priest or pastoral authority, to guide the individual soul. That individual which is sovereign, must be the spiritual guide of their own selves:

So that, indeed, Emerson’s “Divinity School Address” — which brought him, in the newspapers, accusations of “infidelity, pantheism, and atheism” — was a “Spiritual Declaration of Independence” from the overlordship of religious “forms”, doctrines, and the ‘visible’, historical Church. This is unambiguously stated in his contrast of the “Church with the Soul”. Man in America — at least in its best representatives — must not be spiritually dependent and governed; should not accept being bound by the religion of the earthly, traditional Church. Man, for Emerson, can and should realize God in himself, by himself, in America. “…God is, not was…” spoke Emerson. Hence, apotheosis is, for Emerson, the greatest possibility, the greatest potential in the inner life of Mankind — also in America. However rarely realized this may be, this was his greatest calling.

This summons by Emerson, to the “Soul” in the West, is deeply kin to, yet nevertheless distinct from, the spiritual tasks as seen by Kireyevsky and Khomyakov. “Deification” was the goal of all three — Kireyevsky’s “integral personality” is ultimately derived from the idea of the fallen and restored “image of God” in Man: “restoring the essential personality in its primeval indivisibility”. Yet, while all three reached back into their common spiritual heritage, towards the idea of Adam, the Primal Man, the Cosmic Anthropos, the “One Man” [166]; in order to articulate their own comprehensions of Man. Still, one can readily sense, in Emerson’s writing and thought, the broad waters of the Atlantic, as well as the lands of Europe, which lie between the sunrise lands of Occidental Man in the eastern Mediterranean, and his New World’s Massachusetts. The spiritual sources and original thoughts of “those Eastern men”, of the Ancient Near East’s lands and cultures, are much nearer to the Russians Kireyevsky and Khomyakov, not only geographically and historically, but also, of course, via the Wisdom of the Eastern Orthodox tradition. So that it seems — to this writer and others — as if, in some ways, the fogs and waters of the Atlantic Ocean, had somehow softened and diffused the articulation and expression of Emerson’s ideas-from his sunrise coast of the New World, America. America is much further spiritually West of the wisdoms of the Ancient Near East, than Russia. The Third Rome of Philotheos is in Moscow [167] not Boston.

Emerson, Kireyevsky and Holy Russia

It is interesting, that both Kireyevsky and Emerson journeyed to Europe, partly to help themselves in a time of personal trouble and pain of heart For Emerson this was due to the early death of his young (first) wife; for Kireyevsky, it was from an unsatisfactory dissolution of a first love relationship. For both men, their journey was a rich experience; though they traveled in different regions of Europe. Emerson did not visit Central Europe on this trip; rather Italy, France and England. During his ten-month journey in Europe, Emerson, like Kireyevsky, experienced much of the Old World’s depth — and dearth. He conversed, likewise, with leading personalities; in his case: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carlyle and William Wordsworth. As Kireyevsky left Central Europe more reconciled to his own Russia, Emerson returned to America in a renewed resignation to his own life journey, in the New World.

On board a ship on the Atlantic Ocean, in September of 1833, Emerson — three years after Kireyevsky’s journey to Central Europe — was returning from his first pilgrimage there. He wrote in his private journal, during the turbulent one-month sea voyage returning to America: “Back again to myself. — A man contains all that is needful to his government within himself. He is made a law unto himself. All real good or evil that can befall him must be from himself…The purpose of life seems to be to acquaint a man with himself.” [168] Two years later — with similar meaning — on March 23, 1835, Emerson wrote in his journal: “Alone is wisdom. Alone is happiness. Society nowadays makes us low-spirited, hopeless. Alone is heaven.” [169]

“Alone is heaven”. It would be difficult to find a more succinct summary of Emerson’s conception of spiritual individualism. [170] Such an understanding and summons of Man remained the essential core of Emerson’s philosophy until the quiet end of his life. The point to recognize here, is that Emerson returned from the Old World to the New World — and to the young United States of America — more reconciled to his own individual self. Kireyevsky, coming from Czarist, post-Decembrist Russia, had seen the “present” in Central Europe, and returned to develop a renewed recognition and appraisal of Old Holy Russia’s past — and potent future. Emerson had come from the “future”, the New World of America, through the ne plus ultra of the Pillars of Hercules, [171] and reviewed parts of the West’s own historical past in the Old World: Malta, Sicily, Rome (Pope Gregory XVI in the Sistine Chapel), Florence, Padua, Venice, Geneva, Paris, London, Edinburgh, Liverpool; thence returning to New York. He returned, reinvigorated, to embrace his own life in America, in his own “present”. The “past” [in Europe] was for Emerson instructive and informative, but essentially lifeless; the “present” to Kireyevsky was educational, but deadening; returning to a Russia whose deep past of traditions, customs and lore he soon came to herald. Emerson’s individualism could stand in the American “present” and live into the future; Kireyevsky’s rejection of Europe’s “present” with its psychic and social isolation, had him look into the past, towards the community, traditions and heritage of Old Holy Russia — and its potency for the future.

It is helpful, in order to understand Emerson’s thought — and much of America’s spiritual history — to consider in what other directions Emerson might have turned, during his lifetime, in the United States of America during the nineteenth-century, to come to a personal resolution with the deeper questions of meaning in life. New England, while it had some of the oldest transplanted customs, ideas and traditions from the Old World to the New, was not itself the revered, old sourceful site for most of them. Of course, the New World had its own story; but its intellectual life was essentially transported from the Old World ‘in the minds’ of the settlers and colonists — it was not one deep with its own philosophic age. The bulk of the religious ideas by which the colonists to the New World lived, had come from distant lands, from Jerusalem to Canterbury. The New World was religiously dependent on the Old; such traditions as it had, were, in the main, importations into a “strange new world”; they were not inherent to it.

Emerson did not find the vitality and immediacy, which his soul sought, amidst his New England surroundings. The United States of America was, by the time of Emerson’s maturation, safely established in its political independence from the Old World. However, Emerson was not satisfied. He thirsted for more spiritual content to ensoul the inherited religious forms; enthusiasm to inspire pastoral exegesis; originality and presence to enliven accumulated doctrine. Such he did not find around him. What he experienced in the pulpits of the churches — there where spiritual truth and moral challenge should have most been spoken — he described in a rather devastating, but caring critique, of contemporary “preaching”:

Emerson asks the students of Harvard’s divinity class concerning the religious life around them:

Emerson could not find the answers to these questions, in his New England surroundings; thus he turned to reliance on his own self, and the “Soul” of the individual. But a full response to Emerson’s questions could have been found — even during the time when he asked them — In Russia. Where, despite the partial subservience of Church to State, there was present the deep heritage of a spiritual conception of Man which we have considered above. Such plaintive questions as Emerson asked in America, could not have been so queried in Orthodox Russia. For the spiritual life which he solicited, could be found in Russia; at least, for example, in the lives and wisdom of the elders (starzi) of the monasteries of Holy Russia. Admittedly, it is doubtful that Emerson, the American, would have been contented with any sort of reclusive monasticism, any withdrawal from the world, into a cloistered, quiet, holy life devoted to God. Even a pursuit of deification would, in so far as it was a retirement from the life and activity — and sovereignty — of man and human society, not have been one which Emerson, as an American, could affirm without qualification. Emerson’s “Man” should not retire from the complexities and secularity of life and world to seek God; rather he should actively restore, and represent, God in life, and in the world of Man. Could Emerson, as Emerson, somehow have lived in Holy Russia, rather than New England, during the time of his life, he would certainly have had differing challenges to issue towards its religious life and traditions, not the least of which might have been to provoke it from “otherworldliness” and ‘God-reliance’. But that the religious life of Holy Russia, with its deep lineage back into Constantinople, Mt Athos, etc., was yet a living source of spiritual presence and wisdom, can be recognized by considering one single monastery: Optina Pustyn. For not only did Ivan Kireyevsky, his brother Peter, and Khomyakov, have close relations there during their lives; but also such leading spirits as Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Vladimir Soloviev, N. F. Fedorov, and others of creativity and learning, had personal relations to this monastery — and its elders — which were vital to their inner lives. While these leading personalities of nineteenth century Russia held meaningful relations to the spiritual and religious heritage present in this and other monasteries, New England had no such “Optina Pustyn”, with its elders.

Crosses over Concord’s “Hillside Chapel” and the Optina Pustyn Monastery

Dostoyevsky journeyed to Optina Pustyn in June of 1878, [174] with the young Vladimir Soloviev, to visit the Staretz Ambrose Grenkov, to seek reconciliation in his life, with the deeply disturbing death of a young son (Alyosha). In America, perhaps the nearest equivalent to this journey by two of the ‘deepest and truest’ of Russia, was the gathering of many of America’s best (e.g. Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Hiram K. Jones, William T. Harris, and others) at the Concord School of Philosophy. A clear recognition of the difference of mentality and atmosphere of the Optina Pustyn Monastery and the summer gatherings at the Concord School of Philosophy would contribute profoundly towards understanding the difference and direction of the intellectual and spiritual life of Russia and America.

Consider, for example, how profoundly differing are the comprehensions as to the purpose and meaning of Mankind, in quotes pertaining to the inner life of the Optina Pustyn monastery and the Concord School of Philosophy. In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoyevsky partially renders in literature, his experience and understanding of this monastery, with its wise elders and holy life. “Father Zossima” (modeled partially cm Grenkov/Amvrosi) says of man:

“The philosophers say that we cannot understand the reality of things on earth.” Here we have a philosophy of life and man, reminiscent, because related, to the European culture of Christendom, during the so-called “Middle Ages”. This is, unquestionably, a “vertical” comprehension of life and man.

Compare this understanding of the meaning and purpose of life, and the mood and atmosphere of such thoughts, borne and held in the Optina Pustyn, to a well-written public recounting of the purpose of the Concord School of Philosophy from 1882:

It should be understood that this interpretation of the ultimate meaning and purpose of the Concord School, and of philosophy in America — as was held by Princeton University President McCosh — would have been considered too prosaic and mundane by some of the other active participants of the school (including e.g. Emerson; Hiram K. Jones, a Christian Platonist, who helped found the school; Bronson Alcott, who lectured on mysticism, and on whose property the school gatherings were held). Yet such ideas, and description, could easily be spoken, and agreed to, by many, as a clear and accurate account of the substance and purpose of the “school”- and the character and purpose of philosophy.

A diversity, a pluralism of ideas, perspectives and “systems” were heard during the decade-long existence of the Concord School of Philosophy. These gatherings, for “instruction by conference and conversation in literature and the higher (i.e. idealistic) philosophy” (as the first circular described it), began their first session in July of 1879. It lasted five weeks, during which time were heard lectures and discussions on “Christian Theism, Speculative Philosophy, Platonic Philosophy, Political Philosophy”, et al. [178] During the decade of its existence, the Concord School of Philosophy saw many significant and notable personalties from the intellectual world of America and elsewhere, and considered a wide range of subjects and themes. In addition to the persons already mentioned, the ten summers saw, as participants: Louisa May Alcott, William H. Channing, Frederick Hedge, Julia Ward Howe, George Howison of Berkeley, William James, Miss Elizabeth Peabody, Alexander Wilder (occultist, theosophist, friend of H.P. Blavatsky, and H.S. Olcott); Presidents of the Universities of Wisconsin, Michigan, Yale, et al; plus many professors from diverse colleges and universities. Other topics included Aristotle, “American Philosophy”, Dante, Dramatic poetry, “Fate and Freedom”, Fichte, Goethe, Hegel, Kant, Marlowe, Milton, Neo-Platonism, Nirvana, “Pantheism and Modern Science”, Schelling, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Scottish Philosophy, Shakespeare, “Space and Time”, Spencer and many others. [179]

Yet, however learned and noble were the goals and activities of the founders and participants of the Concord School during the years from 1879-1889, the school’s inner life was one primarily characterizable as a pluralism of the mind; of that very mental life which Kireyevsky and other Russians had reacted to in Europe. It was predominately, in content, character, method and goal, an intellectual discussion; a comparison of ideas and “systems”; a contrasting of points of view; a “republic of philosophy, a federation of thought”. This is especially apparent when considered in relation to the “vertical”-veridical inwardness, the holiness, depth and purity, pursued by the genuine holy men in Russia’s monasteries — those spiritual sources toward whom Kireyevsky, Dostoyevsky, and many others, had turned for understanding, solace and wisdom. What is the most complete development of the human being? To this question, quite different answers would come from American and Russian “philosophy”.

The “Hillside Chapel”, built for the Concord School of Philosophy during the same year that Dostoyevsky was completing The Brothers Karamazov (1880, the year before his death), was topped by a small cross, on its simple wooden structure. But the inner life beneath it, was predominately one of the mind; especially in comparison to that of those deeply religious, seeking souls, beneath the Russian Crosses and Icons of Optina Pustyn Monastery. Yet still, it must be firmly recognized; many of the best, creative spirits of each country, sought spiritual sustenance, understanding, knowledge and wisdom, in that source which was their nations’ own. However profoundly different, in content, character and spirit, these two spiritual sources and styles were from each other, in themselves; each seemed, to most of those who participated in them, in each of their respective lands, more than less an inherent, natural, ennobled (and ennobling), complete and whole pursuit of the best and highest of the inner life of Man.

The contrast here is strong and pronounced, and since it can lead into deeper insight and broader understanding in regard to the history, reality and distinctiveness of American Mind and Russian Soul, let us consider more fully the two quotes above. Comparing the idea and philosophy of Man in each, will contribute much toward comprehending the difference of the predominately “horizontal” character of American mental life, and the “vertiсаl”-tending Russian soulful search for spirit.

The quote above, from The Brothers Karamazov, comes from “Alyosha Karamazov’s manuscript” of Father Zossima’s words. As the elder Zossima bespoke it: man’s true home is not on this earth; it is, rather, in the “higher heavenly world”. Indeed, even for the very inner life of man, “the roots of our thoughts and feelings are not here but in other worlds”, and mankind can never come to a full understanding or peace with life in this earth, for “much is hidden from us”, and it will only be understood in the life “hereafter”, where man will be able to behold and understand from the “other worlds”. Here clearly, is a “vertical”, perhaps one could say, “theo-centric” comprehension of life and mankind. One that is in dramatic contrast to that one so well described by Princeton University President McCosh, regarding the Concord School’s life and purpose, as well as the role of philosophy in America.

In President McCosh’s description, there is no glimpse or sense of any other life — than that in this world. His entire conception stands without any conception of the presence or necessity of any life “hereafter”; of any divine, higher, inner life of man; or of any “Eternal Judge” above. All of his ideas exist, comfortably inbounded, within the “horizontal”; it is anthropo-centric, not theocentric; mundane, not otherworldly. With no Creator God considered in attempting to understand the meaning of life (“what we are about”), or the purpose and goal of human civilization and development (“what is the value of our civilization, and toward what ideals are we working”); some position to balance and contrast the “genius of materialism” must be held. And this is found in the assertion of “the supremacy of the mind”. A theocentric “old monarchy” of philosophy being presumably too severe and tyrannical [180] for a “republic of philosophy, a federation of thought”; and the “influence of Mill, Spencer, and Darwin, and the ‘genius of materialism’” being, presumably, too anarchic, undignified and immoral; it is to the “personality, mind, the soul, the main thing for which all exists”, that one should look for a center and source in relation to which to understand life and human existence. It is not that the mind of Man has already simply made sense of life and this world; and is satisfied. The questions of life, and the necessity of their pursuit, are recognized and acknowledged. Man must, in order not to “drift blindly”, “seek through philosophy [read intellectual understanding] the one central principle on which the world, the universe, rests”. But, in the conception of man here assumed, this can be done only by and through “the original undimmed source of all philosophies, viz., the mind itself”.

Clearly here, the answers to the ultimate questions of life, world, and man, are to be sought for, in, and by way of, the mind of Man; no conception of a “precious mystic sense of our living bond with the other world” enters into such a “horizontal” anthropology. Even though McCosh, a Scottish Philosopher, cites Emerson as to the centrality of the “personality”, his thought hardly allows sufficient ‘height’ to include this Transcendentalisms idea of the “Soul”, with its relation to the higher life of spirit The “vertical” in Emerson’s conception of Man, is indeed a spiritual escape from the confines of an intellectual “horizontally” of this world; but Emerson’s mind was, and is, less common in America that McCosh’s. McCosh’s description of the inner content and purpose of philosophy, and the Concord School, is typical of an almost unconscious assumption, and tendency, in the intellectual life in America, that the thinking mind, is able, of itself, to fully understand the world, ascertain meaning in human existence, and give order and direction to human endeavor.

Transcension of Mind, Catharsis of Soul

The idea of an intellectual “republic of philosophy, a federation of thought”, and a “horizontal” interpretation of the world, is very typical and characteristic of the intellectual, spiritual and cultural life of the USA — and much of the West. This is, predominately, a life and realization of the Mind of Man, living in the earthly, material world, which is here in nourishment Emerson’s summons, for the aristocratic “American Scholar”, and the dignified humility of a “newborn bard of the Holy Ghost”, is one clear voice of articulation, which calls individuals in America, to strive to escape from both the limitations and confines of the rational mind, and any exclusive and ignoble interests in the mundane world. This is certainly a call to “inner greatness”; and one of which James Truslow Adams was well aware. It is a call seen from within the American character, culture, nation and people — towards the highest spiritual achievements of Man in America. Without some such awe-filling central challenge and core, for the inner life (both of the heart and mind) of the individual, the society and the culture — around which they may orient themselves, with, at least, a humble agnostic reverence towards the ultimate, great questions and mysteries of life — a people and civilization shall surely dissipate into some essentially meaningless, earthliness of body, mind and soul. Such is a real spiritual dis-ease.

Of Russia, in the late nineteenth century, on the contrary, one could not say that there was present, among its creative, spiritually-tending individuals, the unconscious presumption, or strong, pervasive tendency, to imagine, that the mind of man, by itself alone, was adequate either for the inner life, or for an understanding of life and world [181]. The Brothers Karamazov — In so far as it was (and is?) a work which is essentially characteristic of Russia, and Russian inner life — Is a good example, which makes abundantly clear the impossibility of any such interpretation. Indeed, the battle between the secular, agnostic mind of the West, and a struggle in the human depths of the Russian Soul for a true morality, is one of the central themes of this work [182]. The struggle in the human soul is between the most noble and the most base impulses. In this inner struggle, the human soul may degrade or ascend. The ideal of man, for Kireyevsky and Khomyakov, bore their call for the purification, the catharsis of the soul unto spirit.

Not only did the Orthodox peasantry in pre-revolutionary Russia orient themselves around the “vertical”. The best spirits of Russia, called her to struggle upwards, to rise towards the greatest spiritual heights of which she was potent. But as we near the year 2000 A.D., if the Russian Soul was indeed “broken in two” by the vehement atheism of the Bolsheviks; then it must needs be maided by the Russians themselves. The reestablishment of a spiritual “center”, a “vertical”, in “post-communist” Russia, must — If it shall ever be — be a conscious and deliberate spiritual re-creation. If the recent decades of suffering of the Russian people has brought them, to willing some real individual and collective repentance, then perhaps the “old call” to Old Russia, upwards to spirit, shall now be heard anew. The introduction to the Vekhi essays of 1909, demand thoughtful reflection, in regard to such questions:

We must seek to learn, from the search for Man, by the ‘best brightest and truest’ of both America and Russia. [184]