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

[1] This proverb was sent to me, in a German version, by a Swiss friend who lives near Domach, Switzerland. I have been unable to locate a source for it.

[2] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, 1968, p. 64-65.

[3] This comes from Soloviev’s poem “Ex Oriente Lux”. Translation taken from Paul M. Allen, Vladimir Soloviev: Russian Mystic, p. 188.

[4] From Walter Schubart, Russia and Western Man, (1938), p. 36-37.

That such an idea is not outdated, can be gleaned from an article of 1990 in The New York Review, by Timothy Garton Ash, “Eastern Europe: The Year of Truth”. He writes:

“…Do they [of Eastern Europe] come, as it were, like mendicants to the door, bearing only chronicles of wasted time? Or might they have, under their threadbare cloaks, some hidden treasure?

Traveling through this region over the last decade, I have found treasures: examples of great moral courage and intellectual integrity; comradeship, deep friendship, family life; time and space for serious conversation, music, literature, not disturbed by the perpetual noise of our obsessively telecommunicative world; Christian witness in its original and purest form; more broadly, qualities of relations between men and women of very different backgrounds, and once bitterly opposed faiths: an ethos of solidarity. Here the danger of sentimental idealization is acute, for the privileged visitor enjoys these benefits without paying the costs. There is no doubt that, on any quantitative or utilitarian reckoning, the costs have been higher than the benefits. Yet it would be even more wrong to pretend that these treasures were not real. They were. And for me the question of questions after 1989 is: What if any of these good things will survive liberation? Was the community only a community of fate,…” From The New York Review, vol. ХХХVII, Number 2, February 15, 1990, p. 22.

[5] The “West” (occident - where the sun sets) most often represented death, matter, termination, apocalypse, and such, in those mythologies, religions and lores, closely related to the spiritual origins and history of Western Civilization. As that clear-minded scholar Ernst Benz wrote: “the journey towards the West is a journey towards Death, and the further West, the nearer to the inexorable End”. See his “Ost und West in der Christlichen Geschichtsanschauung”, in Die Welt als Geschichte, 1 Jahrgang, 1935, vol. 6, p. 495. For considering the related ideas of the “Westward the Course of Empire”, and of translatio imperii (and -studii, and -sapientia), see Werner Goez, Translatio Imperii, 1958, and Rexmond C. Cochrane, “Bishop Berkeley and the Progress of Arts and Learning: Notes on a Literary Convention”, Huntington Library Quarterly, May 1954, Vol. ХVII, no. 3, p. 229-249.

[6] Frémont: “Called Chrysopylae (Golden Gate) on the map, on the same principle that the harbor of Byzantium (Constantinople afterwards) was called Chrysoceras (golden horn). The form of the harbor, and its advantages for commerce,…suggested the name to the Greek founders of Byzantium. The form of the entrance into the bay of San Francisco, and its advantages for commerce, (Asiatic inclusive,) suggest the name which is given to this entrance.” From Frémont’s Geographical Memoir (1848). Cited in A Companion Guide to California, by James D. Hart, Oxford University Press, 1978.)

The name “Chrysopylae” was given also, to human edifices — actual gates — in areas directly influenced by the Greek language and culture. In the ancient city of Constantinople, and structures in Kiev and Vladimir, there are “Golden Gates”; and probably others in areas touched by Orthodoxy or the Greek language and culture. Frémont had learned Greek and Latin as a young student, and read with enthusiasm, at least portions of the tales of Homer.

It is worth noting, that the use of the word “gold”, was of course intended, in all of these cases, to bring that to which the name was given, into association with all the mystique, majesty and power which belongs to gold. It is, as it were, a “royal” name.

[7] Vladivostok (“Rule the East”): “In the summer of 1859 the general-governor of eastern Siberia, N. N. Murav’ev examined the bay from the cape of Povorotnoi (the turning point) to the Korean border, on the ship “America”. The bay was given the name “Peter the Great”. The squadron entered the bay on the southern extremity of the large peninsula, which struck the sailors as its most beautiful characteristic. The harbor in this bay was then named Vladivostok.

On August 5th the corvette “Griden” came to Vladivostok under the command of lieutenant Egershel’d. The navigation officer of the corvette, Churkin, conducted an examination and inventory of the bay. They called the bay The Golden Horn, and the strait — the Eastern Bosporus.” Quoted from Vladivostok-1860-1960, (in Russian) [Vladivostok Primorskoe knijnoe izdatellctvo] 1960, p. 16,17.

[8] Henzen: “The Pacific Ocean is the Mediterranean of the future. In this future the role of Siberia, as a country lying between the ocean, south Asia, and Russia, is of extreme importance. It is understood that Siberia must extend down to the border of China.

The names of Muraviev, Putyatin, and their comrades are indelibly inscribed in history. They have built the pillars for a long bridge across the ocean. While in Europe somber funerals are being held and everybody has something to grieve about, they at one end, and the Americans at the other, are hammering together a new cradle!” Cited in David Dallin. The Rise of Russia in Asia, 1949, p. 23; [Alexander Herzen, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochinenii (Lemke ed.), DC, 399-400; XII, 275]. (See also Notes 88, 89)

[9] Benjamin Ide Wheeler, “World Cities”, an address before the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco on August 28,1916; printed in Wheeler’s The Abundant Life, p. 295-6. Earlier, in 1899, Wheeler had written: “The University [Berkeley] stands by the gates of that sea upon which the twentieth century is to see the supreme conflict between the two great world-halves. It is set to be the intellectual representative of the front rank of occidentalism, the rank that will lead the charge or bear the shock. In the Old World struggle between East and West, the Aegean was the arena and occidentalism militant faced east, orientalism west; in the new struggles occidentalism faces west, orientalism east. The arena is the Pacific.” Cited in. Loren W. Partridge, John Galen Howard Howard and the Berkeley Campus: Beaux-Arts Architecture in the “Athens of the West”, 1978, p. 21.

In the US Senate in 1852, William H. Seward spoke the following: “Even the discovery of this continent [the “new world” — Amerіса] and its islands and the organization of society and government upon them, grand and important as these events have been, were but conditional, preliminary, and ancillary to the more sublime result, now in the act of consummation — the reunion of the two civilizations, which, having parted on the plains of Asia four thousand years ago, and having traveled ever afterward in opposite directions around the world, now meet again on the coasts and islands of the Pacific Ocean.” Cited in Dan E. Clark, “Manifest Destiny and the Pacific” The Pacific Historical Review, Vol I, no. 1 (1932), p. 9.

[10] Walt Whitman’s poem is entitled “Facing West from California’s Shores”; the remainder of this poem reads so:

For starting westward from Hindustan, from the vales of Kashmere,

From Asia, from the north, from the God, the sage, and the hero,

From the south, from the flowery peninsulas and the spice islands,

Long having wander’d since, round the earth having wander’d,

Now I face home again, very pleas’d and joyous,

(But where is what I started for so long ago?

And why is it yet unfound?)

[11] “Ex Oriente Lux” is a proverbial expression of uncertain origin, meaning: “Light from the East” (orient — the east, where the sun rises [oriri, to rise]). I have been unable to locate — including with the help of prominent scholars — any study directly considering the origin and history of this Latin phrase. Perhaps it stems from the early “Middle Ages” — from the writing of some Latin Churchman (?) — when the ‘center of power’ had moved westward (into, and from the view of, the Latin world), and they, looking East, explained that the Light (of Christ and culture) had originated and come ‘from the East’. In any case, the term seems to have had a revival (?) of its use, in the 19th century.

Vladimir Soloviev seems to have located some relation of this expression to Xerxes; see studies of his poem “Ex Occidente Lux”(1890).

[12] The expression, of course, means “Light from the West”. (In a small biannual journal out of Great Britain: Shoreline, [No. 3, The Pacific Issue, 1989/90], in a short article entitled Ex Occidente Lux — Thoughts from Chrysopylae, I engaged this idea in a somewhat deeper way.) See also, especially, the lecture by Dr. Rudolf Steiner (6 Nov. 1921; Domach, Switzerland) entitled “The Sun Mystery in the Course of Human History — The Palladium”.

[13] The University of California Berkeley’s motto Fiat Lux, Let There be Light, originates from the earliest period of this institution’s history; having been adopted by the Regents of the University in 1868, and changed from the Latin version into the English, on the University Seal, in the early twentieth century. Regrettably, however, the precise origin of the motto is not, and may never be, known to history. It was adopted on the recommendation of a special “Committee on the Seal”, for which, it seems, there are no extant records or minutes. (Private letter of March 31, 1989 from University of California Archivist) Hence the historical origins of the Westward-looking University of California Berkeley’s motto can only be speculated in regard to its authors), intention, meaning, alternative mottoes, etc.

The University of California Berkeley was intimately related, as an “Athens of the West”, with the “mythology” of the Golden Gate and its position at the far edge of Western progress, looking across the Pacific to the lands, peoples and cultures of the Far East. “Berkeley” received its name via Frederick Billings, who knew Frémont. He described the name as having come as an “inspiration” from the famous poem by the philosopher George Berkeley, well-known for its final stanza:

Westward the course of empire takes its way;

The first four acts already past,

A fifth shall close the drama of the day;

Time’s noblest offspring is the last.

As Billings saw it, the University held it place and orientation, where the West faced the East over the Pacific. And it did so, as a continuance, of the “Westward Course of Empire” and civilization. In 1873 Frederick Billings wrote to the then President of the University: “The University [of California Berkeley] looks out through the Golden Gate of the Pacific to the islands of the sea and to the uttermost parts of the earth. The portrait there of this Christian philosopher [Berkeley; which he donated to the University] who could find in Plato the revelation of the New World and who prophesied so truly of the course of empire should be something more than a portrait. It should be an invocation and an inspiration of the largest, broadest and most earnest spirit of Learning and Christianity.” See William W. Fenier, The Story of the Naming of Berkeley, (1929) p. 17-18; and his Origin and Development of the University of California, 1930, Chapter XVIII. (In Volkfried Schuster, “Der Hellweg in der West-Ost Verwandlung”, of Historische Schriftenreihe, Bd. 6 (Bochum, 1984), were quoted letters in which I placed these subjects and themes, briefly, into a much deeper intellectual and broader historical context.)

[14] An examination of the origin and development of the idea of “light”, within the cultural history of Western Man, leads into very deep and essential themes; many of which are quite deeply kindred to this work — with its ultimate intent of bringing greater clarification into the mind of man, here, at this far western edge of the West, and elsewhere. The “light” needed at the far western edge of the West, is not to found in ancient sacred temples, oracular craters, or such — as was the case in the “ancient” time at the sources of Western Civilization. The light in this earthy, secular place and time, must be reborn in men and women of Man.

[15] The concept “horizontal” is used here, and throughout this work, to indicate an experience, attitude, tendency, philosophy, idea or other, which would interpret, understand, embrace or accept any and all aspects of life and world as adequately recognized by ideas and realities which are purely earthly and secular. This idea of the “horizontal” stands in contrast to that of the “vertical”; wherein is to be understood an understanding of life, world, man, and so on, which requires or includes — as an essential, vital, necessary element — an interpretation with a spiritual or religious dimension. In other words, a “vertical” interpretation requires ideas and realities which are not present in the “horizontal” world. They could be generally contrasted as “earthly” and “spiritual”. The distinction will be further clarified in the content of the essay.

[16] This will become evident in the main text section entitled “…and Spiritual Nationality” below.

[17] The first lectures look place in June of 1987 in the home of the daughters of the composer Scriabin in Moscow. While the lectures there, were presented to about 30-35 persons; other presentations were made to smaller gatherings of 7-15 people in both cities.

[18] During 1988 lectures were held in California, in Santa Cruz, Mt Shasta, and the International House of Stanford University.

[19] Readers who would like to comment may do so to the author at: sllapeyrouse@hotmail.com

[20] James Truslow Adams, “Emerson Re-Read”, in Atlantic Monthly, October, 1930, p. 491,492. The reasons for which I chose this strong quote, by this American historian and journalist, will become clear immediately below.

[21] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Speech to Harvard on its 327th Commencement, on June 8,1978. Quoted from Solzhenitsyn at Harvard, ed. Ronald Berman.

[22] The expressions: “this world” and “that world”, refer, of course, to the idea of life in “this” earthly, incarnated, human world, in contrast to life in some other ‘heavenly’ or spiritual world: “that world”. The expression “this world” often alludes to the “ambiguities” and “uncertainties” — not the least of which are suffering, sickness and death — which it is viewed to bear, in comparison to “that world”, which is often thought of as a better, more lasting world, into which one passes after physical death, and wherein, so it is often conceived, are the lasting truths and realities, of which those in “this world” are but poor shadows, emanations or products. Humanity lives and struggles in “this world”, and from it dies into “that world” into which many of the religions, spiritualities, cosmologies and philosophies of humanity say the human being passes after death. When Christ said “My Kingdom is not of this world”, the profound distinction here was articulated in a way which would deeply impact and influence the spiritual, religious and intellectual history of all those cultures and civilizations affected by “Christianity”, including obviously Occidental and European Man.

[23] The reference is, of course, to Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the “suburbs” and “subdivisions” of the “real estate” which he describes. It is more than safe to say that the location, cost and value of a purchase of property in this “landscape”, is hardly a developed common vital worry and concern in most people’s pursuit of the American Dream.

[24] Here we glimpse, the relation of Wisdom (in Greek: Sophia) — rarely known in the West — to the human being.

[25] Many of those who came to the New World — named after Amerigo Vespucci — were ultimately concerned with “life in the world to come”, i.e. after death from “this world”. The Puritans, for example, brought such a concern to early North America. Their psychology of man and evaluation of life, would seem quite sour and dour, compared to the 20th century’s very contrasting predominate image of the American Dream, and contemporary common ideas as to the meaning and purpose of life. From New England’s first Puritan settlers, to the enjoyment of a “cool” and “hip” California lifestyle, is much, much more than a geographical distance.

[26] Economy comes essentially from Greek oikos, a dwelling place, and nomos, usage, law. So that eco+nomy is as much as to say “a system of laws of the dwelling, or house.” See Eric Partridge, Origins, a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 1983, pages: 176, 891, 920-1. Physical economy would apply of course to the physical world; spiritual economy would refer to the eco-nomos of the spiritual worlds.

[27] Compare this with the quotes by Russians in the section “West Needs East?” below, as well as its Notes.

[28] From the United States Constitution, the Bill of Rights, Amendment I.

[29] The idea of “The Divine Rights of Kings” derives ultimately from the early historical period of Western Civilization when the “king”, or the leader of a society, was viewed as a regent of God on earth; perhaps considered to be directly guided and/or inspired by God, or a God incarnate. This special relation of the ruler to the heavenly divine world was conceived to give the ruler a certain infallibility, wisdom and privilege, as to his rule and power. They ruled not only because they were so enjoined by God; but with divine assistance. So it was held; until the revolutions of the modern world disturbed these conceptions and social structures. Indeed, in Japan, the Emperor, who was conceived by most Japanese to have been born a God, died in January of 1989, with many people still so viewing him.

[30] Before this work is completed, it should become clearer to the understanding reader, how the truly disheartening and disturbing attrition of civic virtue, and religious morality, in our society, could — at least “in theory” — become counterbalanced by a living, spiritual inner and outer morality; present, at least, amongst our “best and brightest”.

It is the belief of this author, that this nation, founded secularly in the Enlightenment, must someday, unavoidably, overcome itself, and its own history — as must much of the “modern” world; if it is to remain a viable entity in the greater scale of time. Otherwise it shall atrophy and die; just as empires and cultures have done throughout human history. It is probably inevitable; though certainly not inviable.

Man can not live by bread alone. But some distant day must eventually reveal Mankind’s religious childhood and passivity, surpassed by a spiritual maturity and activity. The secular modern world must someday be surpassed, even if that is only through some grand catastrophe of Death. Sic transit gloria mundi - the United States of Americans too shall pass away, one way or other. It is as inevitable, and natural, in the greater scale of time, as the passing of Rome.

[31] Numerous government reports on fields of knowledge such as history, literature, English language, geography, mathematics, science, et al., have — especially during 1989 — documented these meagre conditions.

[32] Benjamin Ide Wheeler, “The Old World in the New”, in The Atlantic Monthly, (vol. 82), August, 1898, p. 145.

[33] During the time when the author was completing this portion of the essay, on the occasion of a trip to a University of California bookstore, to purchase a copy of Sophocles’ Antigone; inquiry was made of a young employee, a female undergraduate student, as to where this work could be found. Her response revealed, that she had never heard of such a work. (Presumably, she was perhaps, somewhat more familiar, with the latest “feminist” critique of some aspect or other of societal oppression — ignorance excepted!)

[34] It is perhaps impossible to determine the precise origin of the expression “American Dream”. Standard reference works suggest — often without citations — that it was (probably) used by the “Founding Fathers” of the United States republic. Others suggest its presence or precursors in Tocqueville. However that may be, it seems true to say that the expression was introduced, in the twentieth century, into the realm of broad public and intellectual discourse — with the meaning it more or less clearly bears today — by its use in a work by the historian James Truslow Adams (for which see main text below).

There are, and have been, of course, many differing views and interpretations of the idea and meaning of the “American Dream”. From the pre-Columbian search for the westward-laying mythical islands of Antillia, to the modern cry for social injustice for “inner city” dwellers (as to their disadvantage in relation to approaching the realization of the American Dream), the image of a better, richer world has had many and great differences of understanding and interpretation. As James Truslow Adams himself wrote: “That dream was not the product of a solitary thinker. It evolved from the hearts and burdened souls of many millions, who have come to us from all nations.” Cf. The Epic of America, p. 385.

Some may dispute that it is “fair” — considering the grand pluralism of the United States of America — to focus on one man’s conception of the “American Dream” — even if this individual does seem to have pivotally helped to place this expression into the collective discourse of America. It is the opinion of this author, however, that the actual contents of Adams’ thought — in relation to his “launching” of this phrase — is essential, pivotal, provocative, and necessary, for any broad-minded and deeper evaluation and understanding of the position and presence of the idea of the “American Dream” in relation to the spiritual and cultural history of the United States of America.

Even if it is impossible to say for certain, that James Truslow Adams placed this phrase before the American psyche and culture. His indisputable contribution to the idea (and use) of “American Dream”, touches, with such kinship, the deeper questions and queries as to the nature of Man in Western history, that it is important, for this reason alone, to seriously consider his thought concerning the “Dream”.

The “American Dream” is a widely-pursued conception — in the United States’ civilization — of the best, ideal life for mankind; and, in this regard, it can only be truly recognized and understood in relation to the deeper questions as to the nature, history, life and aspirations of Mankind — especially in regard to the spiritual and cultural history of Occidental Man.

[35] The biblical imagery of a “city on a hill” comes from Matthew 5:14. It was used by the Puritans. John Winthrop, Jr. wrote in 1630: “Men shall say of succeeding plantacions: the Lord make it like that of New England: for we must consider that we shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are upon us.” [Cf., for example, Page Smith’s Killing the Spirit: Higher Education in America; p. 301.]

[36] James Truslow Adams info

[37] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, 1931, p. 374-375.

[38] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, p. 377.

[39] Most major cultures of human history have had some concept of a better, purer world, either from which the people came, or towards which they may go.

[40] The pages of the critique, from which the following paragraphs come are: James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America (1931), p. 375-379.

[41] In recent times, for example, one is reminded of Ivan Boesky’s speech at University of California Berkeley where he said that “Greed, for lack of a better word, is good”. Unfortunately, as I see it, he only served two years in prison for his illegal activities which amounted to a mere $200,000,000.00!

[42] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America p. 378.

[43] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America p. 379.

[44] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America p. 380-81.

[45] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America p. 381.

[46] The Epic of America, p. 384. This description, by James Truslow Adams, of the relation of the spiritual life, to business and politics, is a subject which I am considering more closely in another essay. It is deeply kin to the idea of the “Three-Fold Social Order”, introduced by the Austrian Dr. Rudolf Steiner, into post-World War I Central Europe — when the social structure of “Old (dynastic) Europe” had collapsed, been destroyed or fundamentally damaged — in the hope of bringing new, creative ideas and impulses, into the then severely dislocated social order and civilization of the European nations, such as would lead to a spiritual renewal and re-ordering of society, wherein, especially, the spiritual life and values of Mankind would receive central evaluation, recognition and position.

[47] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America p. 385.

[48] See the first paragraph to “The Spiritual Call in the American Dream”.

[49] Strange though it may seem, it is more that fair to say, that “glamour” is an unrecognized external form of degraded magic. Consider its etymology: Glamo(u)r was vogue’d by [Sir Walter] Scott for ‘magic, a magical charm’: on the basis of grammar in the sense usually attached to [the] obsolete gram(m)arye: ‘magic, occult science’, powers often, in medieval times, attributed to the learned.” Cited from Eric Partridge, Origins, a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, p. 256.

A documentary on American-British relations indicated, unintentionally, a part of the story of “glamour”, by describing how the image of women being (physically) “glamorous” was transferred — with no conscious malintent, surely — from America to war-recovering Britain in the early 1920’s. One certainly does not need, in the twentieth century, to be “learned”, to be “glamorous”; but “glamour” certainly has a kind of power!

If a “vertical” conception of the human being is true, then it is more that a little interesting, and revealing, to consider that “glamour” — in a woman — has to do, not with an inner presence and power (not to mention purity); but rather, with an external, physical one. It is, one might say, the “grammarye” of physical, bodily attraction! And in this, it is probably kin to that power which the bewitched Kundry had over Amfortas in the stories of the Grail. The western “beauty pageant” has been recently introduced into Russia.

[50] Certainly there are people who recognize, that the American Dream realized, means more or other than “material plenty” (“a mere extension of the material basis of existence, with the multiplying of our material possessions,” Adams). But however much efforts towards the artistic, the cultured, etc., are pursued in our society; they are seldom pursued, as some crucial element and necessity of human nature, or with the idea that they are the exemplar around which our culture should orient itself.

Even if I had not used the content of the idea of the “American Dream” in this work, to call into question the reigning impulse, direction and goal of American life; the history and reality of America, its culture, life, character and people, would need, in any case, be viewed in the large historical context of the entire spiritual history of Western Man, in order to be evaluated in the deepest and broadest ways.

[51] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, p. 385.

[52] From James Truslow Adams, “Emerson Re-Read”, in Atlantic Monthly, October, 1930, p. 492.

[53] From CBS News, “60 Minutes” (transcript), Volume ХХII, Number 13 (Dec. 10.1989), “The Last Gulag”, p. 6-7.

Similarly, in his book Fear No Evil Sharansky had written:

“In the punishment cell, life was much simpler. Every day brought only one choice: good or evil, white or black, saying yes or no to the KGB. Moreover, I had all the time I needed to think about these choices, to concentrate on the most fundamental problems of existence, to test myself in fear, in hope, in belief, in love. And now, [in the West] lost in thousands of mundane choices, I suddenly realize that there’s no time to reflect on the bigger questions. How to enjoy the vivid colors of freedom without loosing the existential depth I felt in prison?” p. 422-23.

[54] From Mihajlo Mihajlov, “Mystical Experiences of the Labor Camps”, in Underground Notes, 1976, p. 171.

[55] Is not one a “happiness” of the “horizontal” life; while the other verges on the “vertical”. Consider some of the modern history of the idea and understanding of “happiness”:

“In the seventeenth — and eighteenth — century revolutions of life and thought, there are marked changes in the exploration and uses of the conceptions of happiness and pleasure…

The concept of happiness became [in contrast, for example, to the (prior) otherworldly idea of “blessedness”] increasingly attached to the growing liberalism with its secular and worldly mood, its intense individualism, its scientific orientation, and its libertarian social outlook. The secular characterized especially the concept of happiness, associating the concept with worldly success, pursuit of wealth, power, and prestige.” See “Happiness and Pleasure”, in Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. II, p. 379.

[56] From Mihajlo Mihajlov, “Mystical Experiences of the Labor Camps”, in Underground Notes, 1976, p. 178-179. (In the course of preparing this work for publication, it occurred to me how kindred is such an ‘inflicted’ experience, to chosen eremitic monasticism.)

[57] While these words were being written, the battle for Bucharest, and the bloody civil war in Rumania was occurring. The football games seems to have been considered more important to be broadcast in America on television; but on one of the brief, hourly radio news reports, a story was reported, of a woman who — while crying uncontrollably because of the death of her fifteen year old son in the civil war — said that such sacrifice was necessary, if Rumania is finally to be free of the totalitarian regime. This bespeaks a painfully real, spiritual sense of the cost of “freedom”.

The people of Eastern Europe, who Solzhenitsyn included in his Harvard speech (see page 15), are now in a new move towards “freedom”; freedom in the social, political, economic and practical-material realities of life. Let us hope that the best people of these countries, maintain a clear, vital sense of inner freedom; as the realities of their outer lives, cultures and civilizations change. (I hope that I am among a host of “Westerners”, who are sincerely waiting to see what will develop, grow and emanate from this suffered East.)

On 16 January 1989 a documentary was broadcast on television entitled “Czechoslovakia; the Long wait for Spring”. Upon that program a woman described the condition of the younger generation as being one of “inner exile” — from their own lives and country. With the dramatic changes which have occurred “behind the Iron Curtain” in and since 1989, let us see what shall become of such “inner exiles” when they come home, to their own lives! And let us clearly listen to what they have to say!

Certainly the West has truths of life to learn from Eastern and Central Europe; if it interested to listen. I do not wish to imply, by my focus on prison experience, that this is the only source of those unique realities which the European East can give to the West. But those sensitive Westerners who have truly experienced the people in these lands, often have found the richness in their inner and relational lives.

[58] If Americans — in the nation which describes itself as the leader of the “Free World” — do not, in and with their freedom, choose to deepen their lives, so as to be able to face the “Gorgons of evil, disaster and death”; it is this author’s opinion that, either it shall continue to send spiritual children “to heaven”; or that perhaps indeed the “Gorgons” will indeed someday “freeze our unlined…[faces] into eternal stone”!

Americans “must”, in tremendous freedom, choose to face the “Gorgons”, which many others in the world have had as a fate inflicted on to them.

Free deeds vs. fated acts; outer freedom vs inner freedom; outer greatness vs. inner greatness; there is more than a little, being expressed about the inner psychology of these two worlds, in these few words.

[59] “CBS Evening News with Dan Rather”, November 29, 1989, was broadcasting from Rome, where President Gorbachof had traveled to meet with the Pope, and then to meet with President Bush in Malta. These words were spoken by CBS News Moscow Bureau Chief Barry Petersen to Anchorman Dan Rath.

[60] These words of Nicolas Berdyaev will serve here to “document” the subtle but actual fact of the Russian soul. Though there are more that enough un-“penetrating minds of the West”, and literate “Westernized” Russians, that this will probably be disputed, the quotation by the earlier United States Ambassador to the USSR George Kennan (see pages 50-1) is a contrasting but complementary view of “Russian”.

[61] The unique “Russian Soul” is a somewhat elusive reality; the contours of which are far from simple to articulate. And it does not exist, with the same fullness and nobility, in all. But any sensitive Westerner, who has somewhat more deeply experienced well-meaning, soulful Russians, will have been unable to miss its unusual, thought-provoking, heart-touching presence.

I have deliberately selected to stress the character of “Russian Soul”, in this essay, by capitalizing “Soul”, in those contexts where it either is being considered as an entity in itself — for so distinct I believe it is -, or I would like especially to emphasize it grander, nobler character, separate from those persons who may “have it”. While it has not always possible, according to context, to maintain such a distinction, I have generally not capitalized it use, when it’s meaning and significance or use is more restricted and limited — especially when it is use in relation to persons. See also Note 60.

[62] There will certainly come a time when even the ideological remnants of Marx and Lenin shall be overcome en toto. Socialism, of course, did not begin, nor does it completely fall, with them.

“Philosophy” came to mean “Marxist-Leninist Theory” in the Soviet Union — at least until perestroika. But philosophy, in a land so spiritually bound to the being and idea of Sophia, must eventually become true philo-sophia. It is symptomatic of such conditions in the USSR, that a work entitled What is Philosophy? — published in 1985 — attempted to explain the origin of the word “philosophy” in the following manner: “The word ‘philosophy’ is made up of two Greek words: σοφία- love, and φιλία- wisdom and so means love of wisdom.” See G. Kirilenko, L. Korschunova, What is Philosophy?, 1985, Progress Publishers, p. 6-7.

[63] The Uspenski-Sobor was held by the monk, Philotheos of Pskov, to be the “Third Rome”. Both the Church of Rome, the “first” Rome, and the Hagia Sophia of Constantinople — established by Constantine the Great as the New (Second) Rome; i.e. the center of political and spiritual power — had, to the views of the Russian division of the Orthodox Christian Church, fallen into heresy. And like the woman who fled into the wilderness in Revelations 12; Philotheos saw the Russian Church, having fled into the Wilderness from heresy, as the last refuge of the true, pure Christian faith.

The relation of Sophia (Zoe) Paleologos, niece of the last reigning Byzantine emperor, to the Italian architect Fioravanti, who, after having viewed the churches of Novgorod, Suzdal and Vladimir in Russia, designed and built the Uspenski-Sobor inside the Moscow Kremlin, is an important link here. This also established a mythical, historical link of the Second to the Third Rome (via the “First Rome”!). The non-political aspect of the idea of the “Third Rome” is seldom, in my opinion, sufficiently stressed, or recognized, in the numerous studies and articles which have been done on this subject. The political (“horizontal”) sense of this idea is considered to the detriment of the spiritual aspect, which itself relates deeply and profoundly to the relation of the “Sophia” in regard to Russia’s religious, cultural and intellectual past, as well as to its spiritual future. (See Note 66 below.)

Immediately proceeding the visit of the President of the United States (Reagan) to Moscow, and the Millennial celebrations of Christianity in Russia, in 1988, I had lectured to small, private audiences in Moscow and Leningrad on this theme of the Uspenski-Sobor, the Third Rome and the Sophia. When CBS (one of the major national television networks in the USA) began its special coverage of this historic visit, the “anchor man”, Dan Rather, began their week’s special broadcasts from Moscow, from Cathedral Square inside of the Moscow Kremlin. Dan Rather introduced the program by announcing that he was speaking from “the Third Rome”. Regrettably, of the many millions who saw this evening news of May 27, 1988, it is safe to say that extremely few had any idea, or notion, that very deep realities and issues were being, unintentionally, indicated by these words which he spoke.

During the Moscow Summit “the First Lady”, Nancy Reagan, was given a tour of the Uspenski-Sobor by Raisa Gorbachof. It is interesting to consider, that it was the idea and theme of an Icon of the Vladimirskaya, which Mrs. Gorbachof described to Mrs. Reagan, and which was shown on national television in America, and reported in The New York Times. In the photograph in The New York Times, these two “representatives” of the women of their respective countries, are pictured with a “backdrop” of the Uspenski-Sobor’s main entrance door, the Virgin Assumed to Heaven — surrounded by stars — is between them. The symbolic association indicated here — most likely unintentionally — gives much meaning for pondering. Nancy Reagan seems to have annoyed Raisa Gorbachof by her question as to whether this Cathedral was a functioning church. The answer was no; and remained so, till October 13, 1989 when the first service was held since the Bolshevik Revolution, commemorating the 400th Jubilee of the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. (Cf. The New York Times, October 14, 1989, p. 3.)

[64] The Cathedral of the Assumption of the Virgin, perhaps the most important church of pre-revolutionary Russia — and here not considering its themes and religious meanings — is not only a place of burial for Metropolitans and Patriarchs, but was the setting for the coronation of Grand Princes, Tsars and Emperors. The sacred act of “crowning” was originally felt to be a recognition and bestowal of wisdom and divine guidance, onto the head of the religious body or political state, that they might rule wisely and fairly, with divine inspiration and guidance.

Not intending to be macabre — rather just factual — it is worth considering that the physical brain of the “great leader”, entombed in the Mausoleum on Red Square, was removed for the study and examination of his great, wise mind. The contrast here, is worth noting; it bespeaks the profound contrast of a spiritual and a very earthly, physical view of man, and his inner life.

[65] See Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Part I, Bk IIІ, Chapter 3.

[66] There exists a significant amount of written material on this elusive subject, dispersed in articles throughout many publications and languages. In regard to the special relation of the Sophia, to Russian religious and spiritual history, see, for example, Vladimir N. Iljin, “Die Lehre von Sophia, der Weisheit Gottes, in der neuesten russischen Theologie”, in West-Ostliche Weg, 1929; and L. Zander, “Die Weisheit Gottes im russischen Glauben and Denken”, in Kerygma und Dogma, Jahrgang 2, Heft 1 (1956), p. 29-53. For the Sophia in relation to Central and Western Europe, see Emst Benz, “Sophia-Visionen des Westens”, in The Ecumenical World of Orthodox Civilization, vol. III, Russia and Orthodoxy, ed. A. Вlane, p. 121-138; and Sigismund von Gleich, Die Inspirationsquellen der Anthroposophie, Kap. V: “Der Sophia-Impuls”, p. 27-32 [Mellinger Verlag Stuttgart; 1953,1981].

[67] Though I have been unable to locate a particular citation source for this phrase, I am certain that I have seen it included in some study or other of Russian history or character. It basically refers to alleged Asiatic/Oriental aspects of Russian character, history, social-political order, etc. The oven flourishing of interest and involvement in religion in the USSR — with the “liberalization” which began in the mid to late 1980’s — supports my alteration of the original expression.

[68] The Slavophile Ivan Kireyevsky wrote, in 1852, at the conclusion of his important “On the Nature of European Culture and its Relation to the Culture of Russia”: “For, if ever I were to see in a dream that some external feature of our former life [Russia’s former culture and civilization], long since outgrown, had suddenly been revived and, in its former shape, become part of our present existence, I would not rejoice at such a vision. On the contrary, I would be frightened. For such an intrusion of the past into the new, the dead into the living, would be tantamount to transferring a wheel from one machine into another, of a different type and size: in such a case, either the wheel or the machine must break.” Quoted in Russian Intellectual History, ed M. Raeff, p. 207.

[69] See 1 Corinthians 15:44.

[70] Religion: “Probably deriving from, certainly very closely akin to Latin religare (stem relig-), to bind again, hence, intensive, to bind strongly, is religio (stem relig-), a binding back, or very strongly,…to one’s faith or ethic,…” From Origins, a Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, by Eric Partridge, p. 354.

[71] As was reported in the San Jose Mercury News (California), on June 27, 1989: “A week before his death, his daughter asked how he was feeling, ‘Well, I’m not sure how I feel because I’ve never died before…’” Prince Vasili Romanov’s mother was the Grand Duchess Xenia, the sister of Nicholas П, his father was Grand Duke Alexander, the czar’s cousin. “His grandparents were Czar Alexander III and Empress Marie Fedorovna. His great-uncles were the kings of England, Greece and Denmark.”

[72] Even in what was, in many ways, the spiritual core of Old Holy Russia, in the monasteries and hermitages, where the Orthodox emphasis on the heart over the mind, pure tradition, unconditional obedience, the denigration of the worldly ‘ego’, et al, are strongly held; there must be a new kind of spiritual awakening. As this chapter makes clear, I would suggest that this would be in the direction of an awakening of an active, conscious, independent mind in pursuit of truth, to supplement the heart’s quest of God.

[73] See Note 140.

[74] One could say that the East and the West must exchange the best which each bears, with the other. The materialism of person, culture, society, history, nature, philosophy, etc., of “Marx, Engels and Co.” — even if adapted by Lenin or Stalin, or whichever so-called “Great Leader” — was profoundly far from being the best which the West could have given to Russia; or Russia taken. While the ideal of communal brotherhood, in itself, is great and noble; the twentieth-century’s history, and a terrible amount of human suffering and death, have revealed how realistic and beneficial such an ideal was — when it became an imposed ideology — for states and peoples to try to organize, live and grow by. An earthly, enforced “communism”, has been an unmitigated disaster for those cultures and peoples who have suffered it.

Each culture, in so far as it can learn and well gain from that of another nation, should strive to discern and embrace, only the most pure and noble which another nation bears. For in that such of each nation, sufficiently verges on the most essentially human — because it exists in relation to the purest humanity of that one nation and people — it thereby may be most potent of use, help, inspiration, reflection or creation, when embraced by some other “nationality”. This could be pictorially described — from the perspective of an individual human being, of some nationality — as an attempt to locate, view and orient one’s self, in regard to the constellations of the brightest clearest stars surrounding one, in other nation’s culture.

In regard to the spiritual life of Russia, for example, consider these thoughts of cultural combination:

“Wisdom is by no means the same as intellectual development, and under the influence of their archangel the Russian people were in a certain sense intellectually held back. It is not their task to evolve clearly defined concepts but to ascend to the spiritual from depth of feeling. Clear concepts must come as a gift from the thinking of the West and that of Central Europe, trained for centuries in natural science. As the West has gained an understanding of nature, it must also learn to place the realm of spirit before humanity in clear pictures.

This is the only way for East and West to unite so that they can join hands as brothers. Vladimir Soloviev longed for such a union, and in his Paris lectures he appealed to the West to seek a synthesis of its best elements with eastern Christianity. Otherwise demonic forces of both East and West would unite and disaster would follow disaster.” From Maria Schindler, Europe: a Cosmic Picture, New Knowledge Books, Sussex, England, 1975, p. 143.

Karl Marx and V. Soloviev took very different concepts from their independent work in the British Museum.

[75] Walter Schubart: “The West has endowed humanity with the most refined forms of technological development, of organization of government, and of systems of transport and communications, but it has robbed the human race of its soul. It is Russia’s task to give back to mankind its soul.” From Walter Schubart, Russia and Western Man, (1938), p. 36.

[76] Alexander Kucherov, “Alexander Herzen’s Parallel between the United States and Russia”, in Essays in Russian and Soviet History, ed. J.S. Curtiss, p. 46-7.

[77] Ernst Benz, Die Russische Kirche, p. 110.

[78] It was the 27th of May 1989, on National Public Radio.

[79] It hardly needs to be stated that not all people, even those who love Russia, would agree with this contention. To say it another way; both Andrei Sakharov and Alexander Solzhenitsyn are Russians, but they represent, contrastingly, secular and spiritual aspects of Russian character.

[80] Nicolas Berdyaev: “Russia has never been able to accept humanistic culture as a whole, with its rationalistic consciousness, its formalized logic and formal law, its religious neutrality, and its secular middle-of-the-road tendency. Russia has never completely left the Middle Ages and the sacral epoch.”

“The Russian people cannot create a middle-of-the-road humanistic realm. They do not want a state based on law in the European sense of the word. They want either the kingdom of God and a brotherhood in Christ, or a comradeship in Antichrist who is the king of this world. In the Russian people there has always been a unique detachment that is unknown to the peoples of the West…The peoples of the west are chained by their very virtues to an earthly life and its blessings, while the Russian people by their virtues stand detached from this earth and direct themselves to Heaven.” Cited in V.V. Zenkovsky, Russian Thinkers and Europe (translation), p. 184.

[81] Cited in American Appraisals of Soviet Russia, 1917-1977, p. 342-343. It merits more than a little meditation, that George Kennan who vitally helped define the USA’s post-World War II idea of “containment” (“X”) of communism; freely stated, in a television interview, his deep love of Russian people and culture. He even mused on the question, as to whether, in some way or other, ‘in some other life’; he had not previously had relation to certain places in Russia, which touched his soul with such depth as to bring such wonderings.

[82] It will perhaps quickly offend those who disagree; and easily console those who concur, to bring a quote by Solzhenitsyn, on the West: “Since I came to the West, it is interesting what I have noticed…in our society the relationships between people — this may surprise you — are warmer, more sincere, more unselfish than here [in the West]…partly because everyone in the West is free to arrange his own life. And with the decline of the religious principles on which Western society was founded, this leads to intensified activity by each person in his own behalf. In their tense struggle and competition people sometimes busy themselves too much with material matters, think too much about their narrow interests than about everybody, about society.” Quotation from Dale E. Peterson, “Solzhenitsyn’s Image of America: The Survival of a Slavophile Idea”, in Massachusetts Review, Spring, 1978, p. 164.

[83] Rom Walter Schubart, Russia and Western Man, 1938, p. 35-36.

[84] From George Kennan, “Understanding the Russians”, (1969), in American Appraisals of Soviet Russia, 1917-1977, p. 344.

[85] Herder, Franz von Baader, Ernst von Lasaulx, Vladimir Soloviev, et al.

[86] See J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur, Letters form an American Farmer, (originally published 1782); Letter XI: “I received yesterday a letter from Philadelphia, by which I understand thee art a Russian; what motives can possibly have induced thee to quit thy native country and to come so far in quest of knowledge or pleasure? Verily it is a great compliment thee payest to this our young province, to think that anything it exhibiteth may be worthy thy attention” “I have been most amply repaid for the trouble of the passage. I view the present Americans as the seed of future nations, which will replenish this boundless continent; the Russians may be in some respects compared to you; we likewise are a new people, new, I mean, in knowledge, arts and improvements. Who knows what revolutions Russia and America may one day bring about; we are perhaps nearer neighbors than we imagine.” (p. 189) “…in the neighborhood of our towns, there are indeed some intelligent farmers who prosecute their rural schemes with attention, but we should be too numerous, too happy, too powerful a people if it were possible or the whole Russian empire to be cultivated like the province of Pennsylvania. Our lands are so unequally divided and so few of our farmers are possessors of the soil they till that they cannot execute plans of husbandry with the same vigour as you do who hold yours, as it were, from the Master of Nature, unencumbered and free. Oh, America!” explained I, “thou knowest not as yet the whole extent of thy happiness: the foundation of thy civil polity must lead thee in a few years to a degree of population and power which Europe little thinks of!” (p. 192; Penguin American Library, 1981)

[87] Cf. Democracy in America, Vol. I, Vintage Books, p. 452. There are many editions of this work, in a host of languages. It was originally published in French, in Paris in 1835; this was followed quickly by an English translation. It would be interesting to know the precise origins of Tocqueville’s thoughts here; as it would be to compare his work to that of the Marquis de Custin on Russia.

[88] Herzen: “Incidentally, there was no need for the gift of prophecy…We had only to look objectively at the whole world. America and Russia were the first to meet our eyes: Both countries abound in gifts, forces, flexibility, and a spirit of organization, and in persistence which knows no bounds; both are poor in their past; both began their march by breaking with tradition; both expanded across unbounded valleys seeking for frontiers; both countries advanced from opposite sides across immense spaces marking their way with cities, towns, villages, colonies, reaching the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, this “Mediterranean of the Future” as we once called it and as it was — to our great satisfaction — frequently referred to by American journals.” Cited in Max Laserson “Herzen on Russia and America”, in The American Impact on Russia, ch. XI, p. 219.

[89] “Alexander Herzen’s Parallel between the United States and Russia”, by Alexander Kucherov, in Essays in Russian and Soviet History, ed. J. S. Curtiss, p. 47; [Herzen, “Pis’ma k puteshestvenniku”s, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii i pisem, ХVIII, 107-8.].

Herzen essentially concurred with Tocqueville in his description of the future conjunction of America and Russia. But, in addition to comparing and contrasting the two nations in greater depth, he also “located” the region of their meeting. As Herzen had written earlier in the “Bell”(Kolokol) in his article entitled “America and Siberia” (commenting on an American article — from Philadelphia — which directly considered the historical relation of California and the Amur region [far eastern “Russia”]): “both countries, advanced from opposite sides across immense spaces, marking their way with cities, towns, villages, colonies, reaching the Pacific Ocean, this “Mediterranean of the Future” as we called it and as it was — to our great satisfaction — frequently referred to by American journals.” (Cf. December 1, 1858 issue of Kolokol (Bell). Cited in Max Laserson, “Herzen on Russia and America”, in The American Impact on Russia, p. 216, 219.) As he described it in a letter to Giuseppe Mazzini (February, 1857), he looked forward to the time when ships flying the US flag would anchor in Siberian harbors.(Cf. Kucherov, p. 47.)

[90] For one crucial example: The divisions of Europe, which began after Charlemagne, eventually lead to the fratricidal “World Wars” in Europe.

[91] In no way does this work intend to be exclusive of other nations and cultures. The relation of the Russians, to, not only the United States of America, but also to Western, Central and Eastern Europe, is especially to be considered. For a serious recent consideration of this question — from a spiritual perspective which merits much more profound audience and consideration than it has received — of East, West and Middle-Europe — including other possibilities as to the impact which “Germany” might have had on European history, beginning in the nineteenth century, see Christoph Strawe, Der Umbruch in der Sowjetunion — Mitteleuropäische Perspektiven, 1988; especially e.g., p. 18, footnote 24.

[92] I do not in any way wish to imply that this combination shall lead to some easy “utopian” solution of the problems of both nations and peoples; for impure human nature shall remain. Still, perhaps the complementary relation, could help towards “balance” in some vital, resolutive ways.

[93] Michael S. Gorbachof spoke the following, at the Washington Summit, on Dec. 8,1987: “We can be proud of planting this sapling which may one day grow into a mighty tree of peace; but it is probably still too early to bestow laurels upon each other. As the great American poet and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson said; ‘The reward of a thing well done, is to have done it’.” Cf. The New York Times, Dec. 9, 1987.

[94] Basic information on the “philosophies” and histories of “Slavophilism” and “Transcendentalism” can, of course, be found in any standard reference work. These labels apply to persons and ideas, which looked at their respective cultures and peoples during the nineteenth century, and attempted to give voice to a “national philosophy” which was, in the noblest sense, characteristic of each. Some of the crucial ideas of each, will constitute the substance of this work; though the reader would do well to additionally acquaint themselves with the general ideas and perspective which belong to each.

It is noteworthy, that, independently, they began, developed, flourished and declined during the same general period of the nineteenth century. And that the “best and brightest” of America and Russia, were either direct participants and contributors, or otherwise involved or affected by these philosophical directions.

Emerson called Transcendentalism, Idealism; and stressed the central role which individual intuition held in the higher life of those who might be called Transcendentalists. (In such way they participated in the “transcendent”. See, for example, “New England Transcendentalism”, in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, [Paul Edwards, editor], vol. 5, p. 479.

[95] This author has been unable to discover whether Kireyevsky or Khomyakov had any direct, or indirect, knowledge of any of Emerson’s writings. It seems somewhat more possible, historically, that they might have had some knowledge of his work; rather than that he would have known of theirs. Emerson’s Nature was published in 1836. His first series of Essays were published in 1841. A bibliography of American literature in Russia, in the nineteenth-century, indicates that Emerson’s first appearance in Russian translation was in 1847. (For Kireyevsky’s very critical opinion of general conditions in the USA, see Note 132.)

[96] Some of the more well-known personalities who participated in the Elagin salon, at one time or other, were Gogol (where he read Dead Souls), Chaadayev, Herzen, Aksakov, Samarin, possibly Lermontov, et al. Cf. Peter К. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, A Study in Ideas, Volume II: I. V. Kireevskij, p. 88-89.

[97] So described by Oliver W. Holmes in his biography of Emerson: Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1885.

[98] So described by Oliver W. Holmes in his biography of Emerson: Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1885.

[99] See section “Adam, in America and Russia” in main text.

[100] The reader shall notice, that there is, in this essay, somewhat more use and development of the thought of Ralph Waldo Emerson, than of the Slavophiles; and this for a couple of reasons. First, I write from an American perspective; with a greater feeling, familiarity and understanding of how Emerson stands in America’s intellectual, cultural and spiritual history. Russian readers will, I believe, be more familiar with the thoughts and ideas of their own history’s Slavophiles — certainly than many Americans. But, as they will most often be less familiar with Emerson; I am thus able to more substantially introduce him to them.

On the other hand — and regrettably — Emerson, and his call, is not well or clearly known amongst Americans (who might have used their enormous “freedom” to know this important figure from their nations own history a bit more intimately). Hence, the use and stress of Emerson is helpful to both nations; with, I believe, enough developed contrast, in regard to the Slavophiles, to allow their thought to stand with sufficient substance, distinction and clarity, beside his.

[101] Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Cycles of American History, 1986, p. x.

[102] Emerson: “In all my lectures, I have taught one doctrine, namely, the infinitude of the private man.” Citation from Russel B. Nye, “The Search for the Individual: 1750-1850”, in Centennial Review, v. V, no. 1, Winter, 1961, p. 14. It is interesting to note that, at least in regard to the recent Soviet period of Russian history, the word “private” apparently has no ready, immediate counterpart, in current Russian language. Is this somehow valid for the individual person’s psyche, as well as for social conditions?

[103] Attending this famous address were the President of Harvard University Josiah Quincy, Henry David Thoreau, James Russell Lowell, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Oliver W. Holmes, and more than two hundred other members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society, plus many undergraduate students.

[104] “Self-Reliance” is the title of an essay which Emerson published in 1841 in Essays (First Series). It became one of his most well-known and oft-quoted.

[105] See also “Adam, in America and Russia” in main text; especially pages 75-6. and Note 151.

[106] See Note 100.

[107] From “The American Scholar”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, 1968, p. 47.

[108] Citation from Oliver W. Holmes’, R. W. Emerson, p. 104 [R.W. Emerson, Complete Works, I, p. 186]

[109] See Note 120: for Kireyevsky’s view, Note 205.

[110] A very interesting and insightful lecture which deeply considers the tripartite conception of man (consisting of body, soul and spirit), was given in Berlin on 27 March, 1917 (amidst a lecture series) by the Austrian Dr. Rudolf Steiner — Goethe Scholar, Philosopher and Seer. Therein he spoke the following: “When we recognize that Western Christianity had of necessity to dethrone the spirit, innumerable questions of conscience and of epistemology are resolved. And this development led to the eighth Ecumenical Council of 869. This council laid down a dogma according to which it was contrary to Christianity to speak of man as consisting of body, soul and spirit, but truly Christian to speak of man as consisting of body and soul alone. The actual wording may not have been quite so explicit, but was later interpreted in this way. At first the Council simply stated that man possessed an intellectual soul and a spiritual soul. This formula was coined to avoid any reference to the spirit as a special entity, for the avowed object was to suppress all knowledge to the spirit.” See Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha, Rudolf Steiner Press, London, p. 25; and Otto Willmann, Geschichte des Idealismus, (1896), Bd. 2, p. 111.

This essay should make clear that this conception of the “spirit” in man — be it termed nous, nous poieticus, pneuma, spiritus, Vernunft, “Reason” or other — is pivotal for the thought of Emerson, Kireyevsky and Khomyakov (Cf. Note 120: and for these men, Notes 140, 205, and pages 100-1), and all those in human history who have held to a “vertical”-spiritual view of man, life and history. The distinction between the life and persons of “psyche”, and those of “pneuma” (cf. St Paul for example), is critical and essential. Herein, it seems to this author, rests the crucial differences between “religion” and “spirituality”.

[111] Cf. Notes 154, 156.

[112] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, 1968, p. 61-2.

[113] See e. g. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People, vol. 2, p. 284.

[114] Cf. Note 70.

[115] “From the mid-18th century to the mid-19th in American thought, therefore, the accepted version of the individual’s power to grasp and interpret God’s truth underwent a complete change — from Calvin’s dependence on the Bible and emphasis on the sovereignty of God, to deism’s grant to man of equal sovereignty in a universe of reason, to Channing’s transfer of sovereignty from Bible and church to man, and finally to the self-reliance of Emerson, Parker, and Thoreau. The line of thought moved from Mather’s distrust of man, to Jefferson’s qualified confidence in him, to Emerson’s and Jackson’s deep and abiding faith in his capacity to find and act upon divine truth. It was a long journey from John Cotton’s struggle with man’s inward dark angel, to Edward’s reluctant submission to God’s rule, to Emerson’s proud, confident “Know Thyself! Every heart vibrates to that iron string!” The 19th century’s deification of human nature reached its climax in the essays of the Sage of Concord. The American Scholar Address deified the Individual in art and intellect; The Divinity School Address exalted the Individual in religion; Self-Reliance granted each man the right and duty to find his own moral and ethical guides.” From “The Search for the Individual: 1750-1850”, Russel B. Nye, in Centennial Renew, Vol. V, no. 1, Winter, 1961, p. 13-14.

[116] Emerson wrote to Thomas Carlyle, on October 17,1838, concerning the reception of his address to the Divinity College: “The publication of my Address to the Divinity College…has been the occasion of an outcry in all our leading local newspapers against my ‘infidelity, pantheism, and atheism.’ The writers warn all and sundry against me, and against whatever is supposed to be related to my connection of opinion &c., against Transcendentalism, Goethe, and Cartyle (sic). I am heartily sorry to see this last aspect of the storm in our washbowl.” Cf. Waldo Emerson, A Biography, by Gay Wallen, 1981, p. 322.

[117] Below I compare Emerson’s concept of “True Christianity” with Khomyakov’s. See page 102.

[118] The concept of “Individualism” was directly contributed to, in its modern sense, by Tocqueville in his Democracy in America. “It was in America that “individualism” came to specify a whole set of social ideals and acquired immense ideological significance: it expressed the operative ideals of late nineteenth — and early twentieth — century America (and continues to play a major ideological role), advancing a set of universal claims seen as incompatible with the parallel claims of the socialism and communism of the Old World. It referred, not to the sources of social dissolution or the painful transition to a future harmonious social order, but to the actual or imminent realization of the final stage of human progress, an order of equal individual rights, limited government, laissez-faire, natural justice, and equality of opportunity, and individual freedom, self-development, and dignity. Naturally, interpretations of it varied widely.” From “Types of Individualism”, in The Dictionary of the History of Ideas, vol. II, p. 596.

[119] Cf. e.g.: “A Soviet View of Emerson”, in New England Quarterly, XIX, June 1946, p. 239; [Translated by Sidney L. Jackson from Istoria Filosofii, ІII, 498-504, Moscow, 1943]. This is, generally, a skeptical, Marxist view of Emerson’s Transcendentalism.

[120] “The scholar’s first duty, he [Emerson] pointed out, is integrity of his own mind, which, as Emerson had always preached, is but an extension of the Divine Mind.” Gay W. Allen, Waldo Emerson: A Biography, 1981, p. 301.

Since the earliest period of Occidental thought, there has been present, the idea of Man as having two major, important, and more or less distinct, portions of the “mind” (to select one term). It was held, from the very origins of the “intellectual” life of Western Man, that the highest aspect of the inner mental life could in some way participate in the mind of “God”, the Intelligence of the Cosmos, the thoughts of angels, or similar. Thus, it often occurred, that the mind of Man was conceived to have at least two main “parts”, faculties, capacities, aspects… The “highest” part or aspect of the mind or spirit in man, was essentially and inherently believed to be able to participate in “divine thought” or somewhat similar. The lower portion was more applicable and related to the mundane world. This distinction — a pivotal and vital one for the philosophical, religious and psychological history of Western Man — maintained itself well into modern intellectual history and terminology. What was once distinguished, for example, as the difference between nous patheticus and nous poieticus in Greek, between intellectus possibilis and intellectus agens in Latin; still attempts to distinguish itself in the modern languages as, in German, “Vernunft” and “Verstand”, in English “Reason” and “Understanding”, and in Russian, razum and razsudok. The main distinction between them — not unlike that in Augustine’s differentiation of sapientia (wisdom) and scientia [see Note 140] — is that the higher “part” relates “vertically”, to some immortal, divine world above earthly existence; the other relates to, and is appropriate to, the mundane realities of life. (See also main text pages 79-80, on Calvin, in this regard.)

[121] From “The American Scholar”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, 1968, p. 41.

[122] I want to stress, here, that at this time, ca. 1838-39, the American Emerson and the Russian Kireyevsky, would certainly have had no knowledge whatsoever of each others’ lives, thoughts and activities. So that, it must be recognized, how, curiously, at almost the exact same time, these individuals, in their respective countries and lives, brought to voice, a distinct yet kindred articulation, of their respective countries’ highest aspirations and character!

[123] Compare this characteristic Slavophile idea of Kireyevsky, to this essential quote of Emerson: “Another sign of our times,… is the new importance given to the single person. Everything that tends to insulate the individual — to surround him with barriers of natural respect, so that each man may feel the world is his, and man shall treat with man as a sovereign state with a sovereign state — tends to true union as well as greatness.” See fuller quotation in the main text section “Emerson, and Man as a Sovereign State” above.

[124] It was written in ‘38, spoken in ‘39. Cf. Peter K. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, A Study in Ideas, Volume II: I. V. Kireevskij, p. 81,222 [Kireevskij Socinenija, I, p. 192-3].

[125] “Kireevskij’s new orientation was perhaps best exemplified in his contrast of the Western individualistic point of view, which he deplored, with the communal principle in Russian economic, political and social life.” Peter K. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, A Study in Ideas, Volume II: I. V. Kireevskij, p. 81-82.

[126] On “Holy Russia”, see, for example, Alexander V. Soloviev, Holy Russia, The History of a Religious-Social Idea, The Hague 1959; and M. Chemiavsky, “Holy Russia”: A Study in the History of an Idea”, in American Historical Review, vol. 63 (1957-58) p. 617-637. This latter article also briefly considers the Third Rome idea; touching many of the deeper spirits of Russia on this theme, e.g. Khomyakov, Dostoyevsky,V. Soloviev, Berdyaev, et al.

[127] Cf. Andrzej Walicki, “The Image of Personality”, in “Personality and Society in the Ideology of the Russian Slavophiles”, in California Slavic Studies, vol. II (1963), p. 13-18.

[128] “In ancient Russia the basic social unit was the village commune (obshchina), which was founded on the common use of land, mutual agreement, and community of custom, and which was governed by the mir — a council of elders who settled disputes in accordance with hallowed traditions and were guided by the principle of unanimity rather than the mechanical majority of a ballot. Society was held together by what was primarily a moral bond — a bond of convictions — that united the entire land of Rus’ into one great mir, a nationwide community of faith, land and custom.” See Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, p. 96.

[129] Khomyakov considered “Westernized” Russians to be “colonizers in their own country.” See Andrzej Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, p. 99.

[130] Peter K. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, A Study in Ideas, Volume II: I. V. Kireevskij, II, p. 42.

[131] Cited in Zenkovsky, History of Russian Philosophy, p. 218.

[132] Kireyevsky held, at least at one time during his life, a very critical, extreme comprehension of life in the USA. In 1845 he wrote: “What a brilliant fate seemed to belong to the United States of America, built on such a rational base, after such an auspicious beginning! — And what came of it? Only the external forms of society developed and, deprived of the inner source of life, they crushed man under a surface mechanism. The literature of the United States, according to the accounts of the most impartial judges, serves as a clear expression of this situation. An enormous factory of inept verse…; a total insensitivity to everything artistic; a blatant contempt of all thinking not conducive to material gain; petty personalities without general principles;…”

“an obvious disrespect of all moral principles, so that it is evident that underlying all this mental activity is the most petty life, cut off from everything that raises the heart above personal gain, sunk in the business of egoism and recognizing as its highest aim material comfort and all its subsidiary aspects”. Quotation from Dale E. Peterson, “Solzhenitsyn’s Image of America: The Survival of a Slavophile Idea”, in Massachusetts Review, Spring, 1978, p. 148-49. [See in Polnoe Sobranie sochinenii I. V. Kireevskogo, I, 113-116]. (This full quotation of Kireyevsky, from 1845, reveals no awareness of anything creative or spiritual in American literature or life. It is certainly historically possible that Kireyevsky could have heard, or read, of Emerson; but I have found no indication that he did. It would probably be interesting to know the history of Emerson’s writings in the Russian and Slavic world in general.)

[133] Cited in Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Bd. 5, “Licht”, s. 286; (Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, ch. XIX, sec. 14].

[134] Jefferson’s “enlightened” view of the “vertical” in Christianity can be recognized by considering thoughts in the introduction to a recent edition of Jefferson’s own published extracts from the Bible. “Jefferson came of age at a critical point in the religious history of the Western world. By the middle of the eighteenth century the Enlightenment was in full swing in Europe and America. The Enlightenment was a highly complex movement but in general it represented a decisive shift, at least among the educated elite, from a predominately theological to a fundamentally secular world view…enlightened thinkers scorned metaphysical and theological speculation as useless and concentrated instead on the rational investigation of nature and society,… The rationalistic spirit that animated the Enlightenment brought it into conflict with organized Christianity, whose emphasis on the value of supernatural revelation, tradition and ecclesiastical authority was rejected by those who insisted that religion, like all other institutions, had to be justified instead on the twin grounds of reasonableness and social utility.”(p. 4-5) “Having rejected the dogma of the Trinity as a logical absurdity that could not be reconciled with human reason, Jefferson then subjected the rest of Christianity to the test of rational analysis and concluded that its basic doctrines were simply unacceptable to an enlightened man living in the eighteenth century.”(p. 5.) As Jefferson himself wrote: “the immaculate conception of Jesus, his deification, the creation of the world by him, his miraculous powers, his resurrection and visible ascension, his corporeal presence in the Eucharist, the Trinity, original sin, atonement, regeneration, election, orders of hierarchy, &c,” are “artificial systems, invented by Ultra-Christian sects, unauthorized by any single word ever uttered by [Jesus]” Jefferson’s Extracts from the Gospels, ed. D.W. Adams, p. 4-5,41-42.

[135] These two Church Fathers lived in a very different time, mind and culture than Locke. It could perhaps be said, that they lived in a time of the setting sun of the sacral sapiential and gnostic traditions of the “Ancient Near East”. Locke lived more in the bight day time of the “natural light” of Reason; the “supernatural light”, which he considered, belonged to an earlier, almost forgotten day. There is more than a temporal or geographical “night” between St Isaac or Maximus and Locke; there is also an inner psychological, perhaps even a spiritual night. One which such persons as are labeled “Romantics” often sought, in thought feeling, intuition, and etc., to penetrate to, with the hopes of reviewing the earlier day’s light. (Confer section Ex Occident Lux…).

[136] See Henry Lanz “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, Vol. IV, No. 12, March 1926, p. 594-604.

[137] From Henry Lanz, “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, Vol. IV, No. 12, March 1926, p. 602.

It was in Russia that I, for the first time, heard the expression: “think with the heart”, in such a way that it seemed to have a reality beyond mere intellectual or poetic intent and content.

[138] Cf. Andrzej Walicki, The Slavophile Controversy, p, 153.

[139] Henry Lanz “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, Vol. IV, No. 12; March, 1926, p. 603.

It is quite interesting and important to note, for those more familiar with the deeper currents of Russian, European and American intellectual and spiritual history, that, in Kireyevsky’s turning toward Maximus the Confessor, he was, as it were, looking in the direction of the Sophia. For Maximus held the deeper Christian conception of the androgynous, Sophianic Man. Emerson, in his own studies, and from his own perspective, engaged such ideas via Boehme and Swedenborg. (For more on the Sophia, see Notes 66; and 191, 215.)

[140] It is worth noting, especially considering the strong, almost “religious” presence of Science in the modern and contemporary world, that the root of the term “science” is from the Latin scire, to know; Latin scientia. It is a kind of knowledge. Yet, that “science” was not always considered the highest kind of human knowledge, can be found clearly stated in this quote by St Augustine, in which he contrasts science and wisdom. He wrote: “If therefore this is the right distinction between wisdom (sapientia) and knowledge (scientia), that the intellectual cognition of eternal things pertains to wisdom (sapientia), but the rational cognition of temporal things to knowledge (scientia), it is not difficult to judge which is to be esteemed more and which less.” Cited in An Augustine Synthesis, ed. Erich Przywara, 1958, p. 70; [Cf. De Trinitate, XV, 25].

(Both the words “conscience” and “conscious” are closely related to each other, and have scire as their main root. Cf. Eric Partridge, Origins.)

Emerson was certainly aware of the distinction here. In his extensive journals — in the months before he came to give his address to the divinity school (and wherein can be found many written notes which came to be included in this address) — he wrote the following: “God is pure Intellect. Where it becomes one with Truth. Or is it bipolar there also & to be called Reason subjectively, Truth objectively?…As it enters our lower sphere, the Vision, that high power which perceives the excellence of Truth & Justice — is called Reason; the perception of the relations of the apparent world is called Common Sense, and we apply the term Understanding to the activity of the mind upon the apparent objects, comparing, reasoning, constructing.” See Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Merton M. Sealts, vol. 5, Journal С ([256], Dec. 18, 1837) p. 446. (Compare with Khomyakov and Kireyevsky in section “Self-Reliance and Sobornost,” pages 101-2, and Note 205.)

[141] From Henry Lanz, “The Philosophy of Ivan Kireyevsky”, in Slavonic Review, IV, No. 12; March, 1926, p. 603-4 [Kireyevsky Works, vol. I, p. 201].

It is more than a little fruitful and insightful to recognize, that a “modern scientist” is not considered to need (much other) than a rather full, long and complex mental, intellectual and informational training, to be a quite capable “scientist”. There is certainly nothing fundamental and inherent, to being a scientist as such, which would preclude that the private, personal and inner soul life, for example, be as undeveloped, unrefined, awkward and immature, as a 14 year old adolescent. It is certainly not necessary, that a “scientist” have an inner nobility or stature; they need only be intellectually trained.

[142] Quotation from V.V. Zenkovsky, History of Russian Philosophy, p. 216; [I. V. Kireevskij, Polnoe sobranie socinij (1911) vol. I, p. 275].

[143] Peter K. Christoff, An Introduction to Nineteenth-Century Russian Slavophilism, A Study in Ideas, Volume II: I. V. Kireevskij, p. 222; [Kireevskij, Socinenija, I, p. 210-211]. (Compare this critique of the western individual’s psychology, to Emerson’s of (American) society, in the section “Adam, in America and Russia” in the main text below.)

[144] I must apologize to the reader, but I am unable to relocate the exact position and source of this citation.

[145] For example: Dostoyevsky, V. Soloviev, Berdyaev, Solzhenitsyn.

Dostoyevsky, in his famous Pushkin Memorial Address: “[the goal of Russia is to]…bring final reconciliation to European contradictions, give solace within our all-human, all-uniting Russian soul, to European anguish, accept all our brothers with fraternal love, and finally, perhaps, proclaim the tidings of a great general harmony, and of a final fraternal agreement of all peoples according to the commandments of Christ’s gospel.” Quotation from Russian Thinkers and Europe, p. 169.

[146] Kireyevsky: “My only wish is that those principles of life which are preserved in the doctrine of the Holy Orthodox Church should become part and parcel of thee beliefs of all estates and strata of our society; that these lofty principles, in dominating European culture, should not force it out but rather engulf it in their fullness, thus giving it a higher meaning and bringing it to its ultimate development; and that the integrity of being which we observe in the ancient should be preserved forever in our present and future Orthodox Russia.” Quotation in Russian Intellectual History, ed. M. Raeff, p. 207.

[147] Constantinople was considered the Second Rome, even by its founder, Constantine the Great. It was only with the fall of Constantinople in 1453, that the concept of Moscow as the Third Rome could flourish. See also Note 63. [The ‘reflections’ of Constantinople on “the Mediterranean of the Future”, the Pacific Ocean, was briefly alluded to in the introduction of work. See Note 8.]

It is important to note, that the Slavophiles tended to embrace their own Russian Orthodox Christianity; not the Catholic or Protestant divisions, which were considered heretical, in one way or other, to the “pure” Orthodox faith.

[148] From “The American Scholar”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 31-32.

[149] From the “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 61.

[150] It could be said of Emerson, that his is a call for a striving towards a “verticality of the mind”, whereas Kireyevsky, Khomyakov, et al, present one which is rather a “verticality of the heart, or soul”.

[151] While the etymology of “man” is still disputed by scholars, a serious theory derives it from the Indo-European root of sanskrit man-, to think; Greek, menos, mind, spirit; Latin mens, mind, mental; English mind. See Note 120.

[152] See section “…and Spiritual Nationality.”

[153] Cf. Genesis 1:26-31, 2:7-9.

[154] The tremendous spiritual contributions and influences of this great, enigmatic, mythic figure, on the Old and New Testaments — and much else of the spiritual, philosophical, religious and intellectual history of not only Occidental man — are recognized, if debated, delimited and disputed, by serious scholars of Occidental Spiritual History. While much current interpretive opinion can refute, avoid, ignore, deny, calumny, etc., just about anything conceivable; the mystery and influence of Zarathustra, moves on through time, even into the current fascination with Siberian Shamanism, and the problem of atomic science.

[155] It should be clear that the philosophical foundation of the American Revolution, with its Declaration of Independence, is based on a much more secular, “horizontal” understanding of man, nature and God, than Emerson’s “Spiritual Declaration of Independence”, with its “vertical” conception of the relation of Man to God. Emerson’s “United States Constitution” is ‘Self-Reliant’ Man. (Emerson spoke of the “moral constitution of man”. See Note 163) Hence, Emerson, here, is much closer to the Slavophiles than to Jefferson.

[156] F. B. Sanborn, who was involved with the Concord School of Philosophy (cf. main text below) from its inception — he also edited a book of lectures, given at Concord: The Life and Genius of Goethe (1886) — wrote of Emerson, that he was “Persian rather than Greek, English or American. He was allied to the great Zorvester [Zoroaster-Zarathustra]… He was Oriental both in activity and repose.” Similarly Dr. William T. Harris, founder of the Journal of Speculative Philosophy, and co-founder of the Concord School, wrote of Emerson, that he “had done more than any other man to light up the past and the philosophy of the Orient beyond Judea.” See “The Concord School of Philosophy”, Austin Warren, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 2., 1929; p. 215. Cf. also Mansur Ekhtiar, Emerson and Persia, 1976.

[157] “The first and greatest of the startsi [elders] of the 19th century was Saint Seraphim of Sarov (1759-1833)…”; quoted from Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church, p. 130.

[158] Cf. Timothy Ware, The Orthodox Church; Part 2, chapter 11: “God and Man”, (section 5: “Partakers of the Divine Nature”).

[159] From The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, (ed. Paul Edwards) Vol. 2, p. 8.

[160] See Note 115.

[161] See “Emerson, and Man as a Sovereign State” in main text pages 62-3.

[162] From the “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 53-54.

[163] It seems likely that Emerson’s thought, here, will be as well received and popular today, as it was during his own time today. But let us nevertheless make absolutely clear the distinctions. “…I regret one thing omitted in my late Course of Lectures [another set of lectures]; that I did not state with distinctness & conspicuously the great error of modern Society in respect to religion & say, You can never come to any peace or power until you put your whole reliance in the moral constitution of man & not at all in a historical Christianity. (The unbelief of man) The Belief in Christianity that now prevails is the Unbelief of men. They will have Christ for a lord & not for a brother. Christ preache(d)s the greatness of Man but we hear only the greatness of Christ.” From The Journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed., Edward Waldo Emerson, 1909; vol 5, Journal С; see March 5, 1838, p. 459.

[164] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. L. Mumford, p. 55. [A “wen” is a benign tumor on the skin.]

[165] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 64-65. It will be — if ever — a very different America, when such an ideal, is the highest, most central and revered goal, for individuals and the society of America. Such would be a “vertical”, spiritual leadership. This would come when America is a “vertical” society, not an exclusively “horizontal” one. Such would bring about the most profound realization of the “American Dream” imaginable.

[166] There exists a vast amount of literature on this idea of Anthropos, the “Cosmic Man”, especially as a crucial component of the conception of Man in the Ancient Near East, itself the womb, the sunrise lands (orient), of the West (occident).

[167] See Note 63.

[168] Quoted in Bliss Perry, The American Mind, 1912, p. 210.

[169] Quoted in Bliss Perry, The American Mind, 1912, p. 210.

[170] Compare this idea of Emerson, with thoughts on “heaven” articulated by “the mysterious visitor”, in The Brothers Karamazov, when he is talking to “Father Zossima” (when he was a younger man). “For everyone strives to keep his individuality, everyone wants to secure the greatest possible fullness of life for himself. But meantime all his efforts result not in attaining fullness of life but self-destruction, for instead of self-realization he ends by arriving at complete solitude. All mankind in our age is split up into units…he [man] is accustomed to rely upon himself alone and to cut himself off from the whole; he has trained himself not to believe in the help of others, in men and in humanity…Everywhere in these days men have ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another.” See Part 2, Book VI, 1 (d).

[171] The mythical limits, westward, of the ancient world: the Straits of Gibraltar as they are known today. Images of the Pillars of Hercules, seem to have contributed to the now well-known symbol of the United States dollar sign.

[172] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 60.

[173] “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 57.

[174] It was during this same summer, that a special gathering took place in Concord, Massachusetts, of Dr. Hiram K. Jones (a Neo-Platonist), Emerson, Bronson Alcott, F. B. Sanborn, et al, which led to the foundation and beginning of the Concord School of Philosophy the next summer.

[175] From The Brothers Karamazov, Part Two, Book VI, 2, (g). Dostoyevsky’s “vertical” comprehension of “thoughts” can be interestingly compared to that of Thomas Jefferson. As Jefferson’s idea concerning this was described in M. Curti’s Human Nature in American Thought: “thinking was ‘an action’ of a ‘particular organization of matter’ rather than an intangible supersensation or manifestation of the supernatural through mystical intuition or insight” (p. 81).

[176] This idea should be contrasted with that of Khomyakov which will be considered below. McCosh’s idea of this union would occur through mutual understanding and respect — an intellectual union. Khomyakov’s human union occurs through love and common faith.

[177] From “The Concord School of Philosophy”, Harper’s Weekly, Volume XXVI, No. 1889(7), 1882. It is not completely clear, in this article about the Concord School, whether all the material quoted is McCosh’s own words, a restatement of them, or a description by the anonymous author of this article. However this may be, the essential meaning and significance, in regard to my argument here, remains the same.

[178] “The Concord School of Philosophy”, Austin Warren, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 2 (1929) p. 202, et al.

[179] “The Concord School of Philosophy”, Austin Warren, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 2 (1929).

[180] Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote recently, in his The Cycles of American History, of Solzhenitsyn: “…Solzhenitsyn’s faith is suffused…by the otherworldly mysticism of the Russian Church — a mysticism that reflected the political absolutism of Russian society. By Russian religious standards, earthly happiness is nothing compared to the divine judgement…

He comes, moreover, as a messenger of God. ‘Truth eludes us,’ he said at Harvard, ‘if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.’ He has concentrated with total attention and does not doubt that the truth is his. But the notion of absolute truth is hard for Americans to take. If absolute truth exists, it is certainly not confided intact to frail and sinful mortals.

If prophecy is one Christian virtue [which it is not, except in a secular sense of the word; it is properly, a gift; ed.], humility is another. Knowing the crimes committed in the name of a single Truth, Americans prefer to keep their ears open to a multitude of competing lower-case truths. Ours has been a nation of skepticism, experiment, accommodation, self-criticism, piecemeal but constant reform — а collection of traits repugnant to the authoritarian and messianic personality, but perhaps not too bad for all that” (p. 116-7)

There is very much here for contemplation and insight.

[181] However this certainly was true for some portions of the intelligentsia, e.g. Marxists, nihilists, materialists.

[182] Not only did Ivan Karamazov’s mind break from what could well be diagnosed as a “Westen”-induced “brain fever”; but did Dimitri Karamazov, indeed, escape to America, rather than go to Siberia; he would surely have found, even the best and brightest at the Concord School of Philosophy, inadequate to his and Grushenka’s Russian souls.

[183] Quote from Stuart R. Tompkins, “Vekhi and the Russian Intelligentsia”, Canadian Slavonic Papers, II (1957), p. 18.

[184] Russia was what could be called a “vertically” oriented society, until the attempt was made, in the Bolshevik Revolution, to force Russia into a radical “horizontality”, which is a radical opposite of Hesychasm, for example.

America was and is much more of a horizontal nation, even in its intellectual, spiritual, religious and cultural life. Emerson’s Intellectual and Spiritual “Declarations of Independence” attempted to give a conception which would open up a “vertical” in the “horizontal”.

[185] Citation from J. Flanagan, “Emerson and Communism”, The New England Quarterly, 1937, p. 261; [From “New England Reformers”].

[186] From Rudolf Steiner, Lectures on the Apocalypse of St John, lecture of 24 June, 1908, Nürnberg.

[187] A rather pathetic, and (at least, to date, still) bizarre indication of the conditions and attitude of presumptive reverence to the “head”, and the earthly mind, is revealed by a “medical procedure” in which people — with the requisite funds and desire — can undergo. People may have their entire bodies frozen, in such a deep freeze, that when in the future years — as stipulated in the contract which they sign with their ‘personal Cyrogenic specialist’- conditions of medical discovery and technology have reached the stage where life can be prolonged, or perhaps a special disease they have can be cured, they wish to be revived. (This could be decades into the future.) Some of these “patients”, as they are called, have only had their brains ‘saved’ for some future revival, later in time, on earth — presumably in some brain-vacated body! These clients are called “neuro-patients”. Their brains, with the protective skull included, are frozen for some possible future life. (Even to Timothy Leary, whose aging eyes reveal how many chemically-induced journeys he has made out of his mind (brain/skull), the idea of such preservation, to continue life as much and long as possible, seems very desirable. At present, he still graces California and America, in full, unfrozen body, with his wisdom and life experience, by a life on earth in his aging body. Noteworthy, that someone, who so often sought to escape out of the normal, rational mind, should be interested in remaining so incarnated.!) It would probably, rarely, if ever, occur to an American, to have their heart “frozen”, instead of the brain, for some future revival. (Presumably, it did not occur to those who preserved Lenin’s body, to extract and study the great man’s heart!) Most all of this presumes a profound, almost religious “horizontality”.

[188] Francis Bacon, who accepted and utilized the “mythology” of the “Fall of Adam”, held that science was a way by which man could restore his ordained, pre-Fall “dominion” over nature. He held that, though man had also lost his purity of morality and “being” in “The Fall”; that it was not necessary for man, to regain his lost purity, in order to restore his rightful, God-given dominion over nature. It seems quite likely — especially looking at the degraded condition into which man’s science and technology has brought nature — that he was profoundly erred in this opinion; and that here we may look for a deep essential portion of the story of the oft-spoken disjunction, of man’s scientific (scire) and technological (techne) knowledge as having advanced further than his moral development. But my thesis here, is that this “disjunction” is deeper than commonly reasoned. Cf. William Leiss, The Domination of Nature, 1972, p. 48-57. and see Note 141.

[189] A deep and interesting consideration of the biographical and “theoretical” relation of Vladimir Solovyov, to believe and faith, can be found in Heinz Mosmann, Wladimir Solowjoff und ‘die werdende Vernunft der Wahrheit’, Keime zu einer Philosophie des Geistselbst, Verlag Freies Geistesleben (Stuttgart), 1984.

[190] I would appreciate some thoughts by my readers on this point…

[191] The presence of a deep inner “belief, of a vital, living “faith” (Greek pistis), in the fallen human soul, towards the heavenly world, may be one of the necessary elements in coming into a spiritual relationship with the Sophia. See Sigismund von Gleich, Die Inspirationsquellen der Anthroposophie, Kap. V: “Der Sophia-Impuls”, p. 27-32.

[192] See Andrzej Walicki, “Personality and Society in the Ideology of the Russian Slavophiles”, in California Slavic Studies, vol. II.(1963), p. 7-13, wherein he considers the basic sociological distinction of “society” and “community”, in relation to the Slavophiles.

[193] See Note 128.

[194] Cited in A. Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, p. 102-3. [AS. Khomyakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, (4th ed., Moscow, 1914) vol… I, p. 161]

[195] Cited in V. V. Zenkovskii, Russian Thinkers and Europe, p. 55.

[196] Cited in V. V. Zenkovskii, Russian Thinkers and Europe, p. 54.

[197] Cited in A. Walicki, A History of Russian Thought, p. 103 [A.S. Khomyakov, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, (4th ed., Moscow, 1914) Vol. I, p. 283]

[198] See Ernesto Buonaiuti, “Ecclesia Spiritualis” in Spirit and Nature, Bollingen, XXX, p. 213-250. In this article can be read much which has deep sympathy to the contents and direction of this essay. Meaningful associations can be found to the ideas of a “city on a hill”, Zoroastrian influence, the ecclesia camalis, St Paul, gnosis, metanoia, et al.

[199] “Philadelphia” comes from the Greek for “brotherly love”. During one of the earlier summits between President Reagan and Gorbachof, a gift of a glass bowl, named “Philadelphia Bowl”, was given from the USA to the USSR.

[200] Cf. Nicholas V. Riasanovsky, “Khomiakov on Sobornost”, in Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought, ed E. J. Simmons, p. 194-6.

[201] Fran “Self-Reliance”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 90.

[202] From “Self-Reliance”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 91-92.

[203] From “Self-Reliance”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 99-100.

[204] The evaluation of the religious, traditional past is here characteristically contrasting to the Slavophiles.

[205] Cited in V. V. Zenkovskii, Russian Thinkers and Europe, p. 54. Kireyevsky held to a similar “psychology” of the highest in man. “The nature of the reason…which is experienced in the highest development of inner spiritual intuition is wholly different in kind from that of the reason which limits itself to the development of external life.” Cited in Zenkovsky, History of Russian Philosophy, p. 218, [Cf. Note 120, and especially Note 140 wherein Emerson is considered.]

[206] See Note 140.

[207] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, in Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 62.

[208] For the larger context of the quote, see section “Emerson, and Man as a Sovereign State” in the main text above.

[209] Andrzej Walicki, “Personality and Society in the Ideology of the Russian Slavophiles”, in California Slavic Studies, vol. II. (1963), p. 3.

[210] Nation is derived from natio. “Latin natio, originally a birth, hence a creature’s entire offspring at one time, hence a clan’s offspring, hence a people’s, hence that people itself.” See Eric Partridge, Origins, p. 428. Consider also the idea of the ecclesia spiritualis.

[211] The New Jerusalem

[212] And in this they are kin to all those nations, peoples and cultures which have a common spiritual heritage; though it must be admitted, that those men and women of Mankind, who Saint Paul described as those of “psyche”, shall relate to these ideas differently — in whatever culture — than those of “pneuma”.

Similar thoughts to these can be found in the material (cited above) concerning the ecclesia spiritualis, from which a quote:

“But regardless of these distinctions in nomenclature, we can, without the least violence to the historical facts, recognize many forms of ecclesia spiritualis not only in the Orphic-Pythagorean communities but also in all other communities built on mystical religions. They all reveal the characteristic traits of that ecclesia spiritualis which has been the great historical reality throughout the centuries.

These are the communities and conclaves of men who recognize a solidarity unrelated to race, to nation, land, blood, politics, class, or caste; who, on the contrary, find the basis of their solidarity in a common belief in transcendental values and in their of in divine grace…”

“Today the ecclesia spiritualis needs for its foundation no geographically limited units, no official groups organized in accordance with ecclesiastical articles and rules. The ecclesia spiritualis comes into being when here and there, of their own free will but no less firmly and effectively, all those band together who have become aware that future salvation does not depend on the mechanical development of our industry and technology, or on any fixed regulation of our economic and social life, but solely on the revival of a world of mysterious values, which evade all empirical judgment, and reveal themselves only to faith and hope.” (See Ernesto Buonaiuti, “Ecclesia Spiritualis” in Spirit and Nature, Bollingen, XXX, p. 225, 245.) These “mysterious values” are much more closely akin to the “vertical”, and a vertically-sourcing morality, based on inner virtue, than the “horizontal”-secular criterion of “inalienable rights of man”, “universal human values”, or such. The later is a necessary secular equivalent of the former.

[213] From James Truslow Adams, “Emerson Re-Read”, in Atlantic Monthly, October, 1930, p. 487.

[214] Quotation in Paul M. Allen, Vladimir Soloviev: Russian Mystic, p. 189.

[215] Among which are the wisdom, the Sophia of the prophetic seer Zarathustra (See Note 154.) The history of the “Sophia” can be traced back, looking at one aspect of this theme — that of spiritual psychology of the human being -, as far as the “daena” of the essential Zarathustran conception. (On this nascent concept of “daena” see, for example, H. S. Nyberg, “Die Religionen des Alten Iran”, in Mitteil, der Vorderasiat.-Aegypt. Gesellschaft, Bd. 43, (1938), p. 114-120.) [In my lectures in Russia, and California, during 1987 and 1988, which were the original presentation of many of the ideas and insights of this essay, I went into much greater depth of consideration concerning the question and theme of the Sophia. The audience for this story was much more subtle, profound and deep in Russia, than in this West of the West. And it is a deep and important spiritual characterization of the West, that the idea and theme of the Sophia is so little, and poorly, known — even in communities of those in California who conceive themselves to be deeply involved in “spirituality”.]

[216] For an interesting introduction to the idea of the philosophia perennis, see for example, Charles B. Schmitt, “Perennial Philosophy: From Agostino Steuco to Leibniz”, in the Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. XXVII, no. 4, 1966; and Karl H. Dannenfeldt, “The Pseudo-Zoroastrian Oracles in the Renaissance”, in Studies in the Renaissance, vol. IV (1957).

[217] Political, economic, social, cultural and religious “convergence” shall surely be more popular, possible and pursued. Such are obvious dynamics of relation in a increasingly interactive, interdependent world. But are, for example, American plutocratic economic structures, corrupted political power, inadequate and insensitive social bureaucracies; IBM computers; ‘God-Almighty’ dollars; MacDonald gamburgers and management techniques; Billy Joel rock concerts (or worse), and “historical Christianity” (Emerson), all — and the best — that the USA can offer to the body, soul and spirit of Russia?

[218] See the fuller quote in “The Statue of Liberty’s Inner Light”, page 113.

[219] The fuller dialogue between “the mysterious visitor” and Father Zossima as a young man goes:

“And we are all responsible for all, apart from our own sins. You were quite right in thinking that. And it is wonderful how you could comprehend it in all its significance at once. And in truth, so soon as men understand that the Kingdom of Heaven will be for them not a dream, but a living reality.”

“And when?” I [The young “Father Zossima”] cried out to him bitterly. “When will that come to pass? Will it ever come to pass? Is it not simply a dream?”

“Then you don’t believe it?” he said. “You preach it and don’t believe it yourself. Believe me, this dream, as you call it, will come to pass without doubt. It will come, but not now, for every process has its law. It’s a spiritual, psychological process. To transform the world, to recreate it afresh, men must turn into another path psychologically. Until you have become really, in actual fact, a brother to everyone, brotherhood will not come to pass. No sort of scientific teaching, no kind of common interest, will ever teach men to share property and privileges with equal consideration for all.” The Brothers Karamazov, Part Two, Book VI, 1. (d).

[220] There is much appropriate talk in our society of the need for a renewal of “social values” — that neutered word for morality, which, presumably, was generally neutralized from our daily language, due to its direct associations with once-established religions of differing kinds. In a secular nation, with a legally-protected pluralism of ideas about “the ultimate questions of life;” some agreement must be had — some social common ground — about social morality. Though we have, indeed, our generic national “God”, in whom we trust; the cornucopia of views which fills this word, were they to be clearly and loudly voiced in their distinctiveness, might well lead us into some grand, anarchic, modern ‘holy wars’ of religion.

The name “God” can certainly be intimidating, even to those who have a diversity of religious views, or generally no religious views at all. But it is not necessarily adequate, to base a social morality, on a God which meets all of our societies human projections. Every society which we would call “civilized” — in some real sense or other, must have “law and order” to some minimal degree at least. But even a real “social morality” — ”social values” — which may or may not derive from a religious basis, does not necessarily engage the heart and soul of man. In other words, an outer social morality, while it is certainly essential for a sane, tolerable life in society, and may well be adequate and satisfactory for a society’s order, does not necessarily mean that there is morality present in the society. For there is outer morality — which can be like a sort of social law — and there is inner morality. If social renewal is based on outer social morality, this does not mean that the “dark side” of men and man — which reveals itself so dramatically in the current “immorality” of our civilization, which is so disturbing and shocking — is truly tamed. And the question is whether the attempt to revive outer social morality can ever really succeed. Laws can be instituted, prisons can be enumerated, police can be enhanced; calls for new values can be made by the leaders of our secular, political, intellectual and religious establishments. But these are all outer acts, not too different than trying to cage and control a wild beast. Such an animal can be made docile and governable; perhaps the wild beast can even be completely “tamed”. But if we control the latent and manifest “beast in man” by placing him in a “cage” of laws and punishments, social enculturation and pressure; are we not in essence treating the beast in man in the same way that we treat a wild animal? Certainly there are plenty of people, be they in religion, politics, psychology or anthropology, who have such a view of the reality of the inner life of the human being. Wild, dangerous animals — let there be no question — must be controlled; tamed, one way or other; but is this the reality for man as well? The call for a renewal of “social values” is as necessary for our civilizational order and social life, as it has been — in its preponderate content — inadequate to the reality of the problem. The beast — any period of human history, not only our bloody own, will show — must be controlled. But it is little more than “taming a wild animal”, the way man and his beast have been addressed concerning this problem. The only real, and lasting taming of the beast in man, must occur in the inner life, the heart and soul of man. If our best “role models”, our great or leading men and women, do not speak of this inner self-control? If all our talk, thought and worry focuses on the outer morality of society, and does not deeply address the true problem of inner morality; will the problem be solved in a way which recognizes and realizes man as greater than the beasts which we keep in physical, metal cages. Man, has an inner beast, which we allow, to freely walk the streets; that is, until some (outer) law is “broken”. But it is clearly impossible to govern all persons’ acts by laws, police and prisons, etc. Society rests upon a basis of presumed benevolent moral action by the majority. The problem is that the self-governance or social control of the beast in men and women of Man, seems to be inadequate to the task. Outer social morality is not adequate to the problem — though it is certainly necessary. The beast inside of man — even in the most “polite” of us — must be tamed by the individuals own self. It is manifestly inadequate to imagine that it is acceptable to allow an inner beast — wild and untamed — to roam loose and uncontrolled, inside of the private being of man; for the wild inner animal too obviously often escapes control…

If we do not recognize and teach, that the inner beast in man must ultimately be self-trained and tamed, we shall never come into a real lasting control of the wild beasts in man which roams our streets. The call for a renewal of “social values” is inadequate (as well as necessary — conditions being so bad) and superficial. It is based on an inadequate, and even shallow optimism as to the nature of the human being; and it does not go to the heart of the problem. For the problem is with the beast in man. How is he to be controlled? Is he to be governed by some political leader’s call for a renewal of “social values” (the very expression looks at men and women of mankind form the outside, on a mass social scale: it does not address itself to the inner life); or are we to be controlled by fear of our generic “God”, who blesses everything from our dollars to our football games? The beast in men and women of man — (homo sapiens) the allegedly thinking creature, presumably wiser than beasts — must be called to governance by the individual’s own self. This is a morality worthy of that creature which conceives itself distinguished in wisdom from the instinctual animals. We cannot avoid (conditions being what they are) a tremendous call for outer morality, but if we continue to ignore or deemphasize the necessity of an inner morality, we are naive to be surprised and frightened by anything but regular outbreaks of the wild and untamed beasts in men and women of man, out of the inner life, into our society. If “God” must put fear into the souls of our immoral and ungoverned, then we had better find a more intimidating God than the one in whom we currently imagine ourselves to have placed our trust. If man is to be treated as more than a wild animal needing caging; then we must start calling for a renewal of inner morality. This task of taming the inner beast in man is itself a great, arduous responsibility; but it is the core on which all social morality rests. And, in all of our leaders, be they political, social, literary or religious, this task is equally burdensome; for it is inherent in the human being as such. If we would have a renewal of social values in our troubled society and civilization, it must ultimately and essentially transpire inside the heart and soul of each of all of us — from the inner life of our nation’s political leaders, down to the dwellers of our “inner cities”. Ultimately the problem of “values” has to do with morality; and outer moral activity must be based on inner morality: the tamed, self-governed, ennobled beast in man.

[221] “No man is an Island, entire of it self; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.” John Donne, Devotions, Meditation 7: “For Whom the Bell Tolls.” This was cited also by President Gorbachof in his speech to the United Nations.

[222] Emerson: “See two sincere men conversing together. They deport themselves as if self-existent. Are they not for the time two Gods? For every true man is as if he should say, I speak for the Universe…” Cited in W.A. Clebsch, American Religious Thought, p. 101, [Emerson: Journals and Miscell. Notebooks: 4: 309].

[223] Cited in R. J. Wilson, “The Plight of the Transcendent Individual”, in In Quest of Community: Social Philosophy in the United States, 1860-1920, p. 13; [See Emerson’s essay “Solitude and Society”].

[224] Cited in R. J. Wilson, “The Plight of the Transcendent Individual”, in In Quest of Community: Social Philosophy in the United States, 1860-1920; p. 13.

[225] From The Pushkin Speech, June 6, 1880. See The Dream of a Queer Fellow, and The Pushkin Speech, translated by S. Koteliansky and J. Middleton Murry, p. 57-58. In The Brothers Karamazov, in the thoughts on love, by “Father Zossima” (Part Two, Book VI, 2) can be found one of the deepest literary renderings, of a superlative “religion of love” (Emerson), as conceived in the Russian Christian world.

[226] Ivan Kireyevsky, citation position uncertain.

[227] We have considered this question of the striving to achieve “the good life” in the “horizontal”, in America, in relation to the common conception of the American Dream. You might could say that America is distracted from higher “vertical” pursuits by an over-abundance of “material plenty” in the “horizontal”; whereas Russia and the USSR are, understandably fixated here, due to sparsity. Such conditions, alone, would bring about differing developments of individual and collective psychology.

[228] See Note 212.

[229] From Rudolf Steiner, Lectures on the Apocalypse of St John, lecture of 24 June, 1908, Nürnberg.

[230] James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America, p. 380.

[231] Citation from Oliver W. Holmes, R. W. Emerson, p. 104 [R.W. Emerson, Complete Works, I, p. 186]

[232] Nicholas Berdyaev, “Russia and the Moden World Era”, in The Russian Review, 1948, p. 14

[233] In Central Europe, Goethe, for a great example, pointed a way for a higher, inner life for Man.

[234] In a real way, one could view such an alchemical blending, in the individual and the community — and in the intellectual-spiritual understanding of both — as a reunion of the differing, severed Evagrian and (Pseudo-?) Macarian conceptions of Man’s relation to Divinity and Deification, i.e. in the Mind and Heart of Man!