This year took away two major people who occupied a prominent place in the history of our thought and our society, N. K. Mikhailovsky and B. N. Chicherin. The fate of these people is very different, strangely opposite: one was the "ruler of thoughts" of several generations of the Russian intelligentsia, and his whole life passed in noisy magazine battles; Other Never | He was not popular, little read, and the work of his strong thought took place somewhere far away, did not coincide with any of the prevailing intellectual and social currents of our mind. And yet it is possible to find something in common in these opposite people, who have never agreed on anything. Both of them were as if they were hewn out of a single piece of granite, with a firmness that inspired the greatest respect, they carried their faith through their lives, they were firmly rooted in their soil, and they sincerely despised everything that wavered and restless, everything that did not agree with their once and for all established convictions. This is a striking psychological similarity between people who are so socially opposed, but the comparison can be continued. Both Mikhailovsky and Chicherin were typical rationalists, although the former proceeded from Comte and asserted rationalist positivism, the latter from Hegel and created a whole system of rationalist idealism. Both of them, Mikhailovsky, the spokesman for the thoughts and aspirations of our democratic intelligentsia, and Chiche- | Arisco, who despised all democracy and | In the case of the supremacy of the individual, he found his pathos, which inspired every line of them, in one and the same thing: in the idea of the supremacy of the individual, in his self-value and self-purpose. Each of them in their own way

He loved freedom, but for all the opposition of philosophical foundations and social conclusions, both deceased thinkers professed a purely rationalistic individualism and were profoundly alien to the irrational individualistic aspirations and struggles of the rebellious spirit of our day.

Chicherin's strength lay in the philosophical foundation of individualism, in the remarkable philosophy of law, in the consciousness of the metaphysical nature of liberalism, taken in its ideal, suprahistorical purity. From this followed all the significance of Chicherin's legal journalism, which is why the requirements of law that came from his lips are so impressed, because he gave absolute metaphysical meaning to law. Mikhailovsky's strength lies in democratic deductions from individualism. In his brilliant journalism, he connected the needs of an intelligent person with the movement of the masses, and a whole epoch of our society has grown closely with his name. Why was Mikhailovsky so popular and Chicherin so unpopular? The answer to this question will characterize some features of Russian life.

First, about Mikhailovskoye, which is closer and dearer to us. We belong to the generation of the 1990s, which was brought forward by a powerful new social wave and entered into an irreconcilable struggle with all the old trends. The struggle was waged with the sharpness and ruthlessness of green youth, with the consciousness of growing strength, and we wholeheartedly believed that the future belonged only to us. We argued especially sharply and heatedly with a veteran of the old trend, its last major representative, N. K. Mikhailovsky. In the heat of controversy we were often unfair and even rude to this remarkable man. And we did not understand that "we were opponents, but very strange. We had the same love, but not the same. And we, like Janus, or like a double-headed eagle, looked in different directions, while the heart beat alone." We had the same love for freedom, the same heart of the Russian intelligentsia was beating, and even more closely than the common love we were bound together by one common hatred... Now our homeland is at such a historical turn that this one, common, is somehow especially felt and especially we want to lay a wreath on the grave of our enemy, friend and father, N. K. Mikhailovsky.

With the death of Mikhailovsky, a whole epoch in the history of our intelligentsia disappeared from the stage, a particle of our being, our intellectual nature, dear to us according to memories, was torn away from us. And every Russian intellectual should feel this death vividly and should reflect on N. K.'s grave on his historical past and on his duties to the future. Once, in the days of early youth, we all read Mikhailovsky, he awakened our young thoughts, posed questions, gave direction to our awakened thirst for social truth. Then we left our original teacher, outgrew him, but we are still struggling with the problems posed by him, which brought philosophy and life so closely. This is very characteristic: Mikhailovsky was never a philosopher in the way he solved various problems and because of his lack of philosophical erudition, but it was philosophical questions that troubled him all his life, and at the threshold of his consciousness there was already a rebellion against the limitations of positivism. In this he was a typical Russian intellectual, full of philosophical sentiments, but devoid of a philosophical school and bound by the prejudices of positivism. We loved and still love Mikhailovsky for that spiritual thirst which so sharply distinguishes the Russian intelligentsia from the philistinism of the European intelligentsia. Mikhailovsky and I were once divided by a different understanding of the social development of Russia and different social programs. Here the strongest passions flared up. Now much has softened, and we can more calmly assess the social merits of Mikhailovsky, a sincere and profound democrat and fighter for the individual, although we still have a negative attitude towards Narodism and accept the legacy of Marxism, but critically verified. One thing is certain: both Narodism and Marxism pale in their opposition before the great historical task of establishing law in our life. Now we would most of all reproach Mikhailovsky for not being able to give a legal formulation to the social demands of his journalism. Narodism has always sinned with a weak political sense of justice, and in the 1970s it even led to political indifference. But it should be noted with sadness that Marxists, who historically came out with completely different political sentiments, do not always underestimate the enormous independent significance of legal requirements [86].

I shall dwell on one central point of Mikhailovsky's literary activity, on what I have called his pathos, on the idea of personality, on his individualism. Here we will see at once both our kinship with Mikhailovsky and our profound difference with him, perhaps greater than that which is created by public programs, since we are talking here about the most holy of holies. Mikhailovsky's philosophical position was truly tragic and hopeless. He waged an idealist struggle for personality, opposed human individuality not only to nature, but also to society. We are ready to welcome this with all our hearts. But what is personality, from where does it draw strength to oppose its individuality to the environment?

Alas! For the positivist, personality is only a biological concept, for the rationalist personality has no individuality. Mikhailovsky's "personality" is a biological abstraction, it is a kind of impersonal biological normality (the maximum of the physiological division of labor within the individual). Mikhailovsky instinctively protested against the claims of Darwinism, he guessed the fundamental sin of naturalistic evolutionism—the ignorance of what adapts and develops, the inability to introduce this inner creative activity into the process of development. But this is self-deception. Personality with its inherent creative energy, if we take the standpoint of positivism and naturalism, is completely decomposed into a social and natural environment, individuality turns out to be an accidental play of biological and social forces. There is nothing to defend, nothing to oppose to the outside world. The most terrible test of any positivism (not only in its extreme naturalistic form, but with all its psychological corrections and with all the refinement of modern criticism) is the utter impossibility from this point of view not only to substantiate the idea of personality, but even to state it. It is impossible to find the stable center that forms the unity of the personality, it is impossible to find the bearer of all mental states and creative acts. Philosophically conscious individualism is completely incompatible with positivism, and individualistic moods and impulses must be recognized as a psychological refutation of positivism, a challenge to it. The philosophical theory of personality presupposes the existence of a timeless and extra-spatial concrete spirit, which cannot be deduced from "nature" and society and cannot be deducible into the simplest moments. Only a real individual spirit, free and possessing creative energy, and not a temporary socio-biological formation, not a fragment of the process of nature and not an accidental play of sensations, can rebel against the external world and oppose its absolute rights to it. Mikhailovsky had an undeniable inclination towards metaphysical individualism, but the spiritual atmosphere in which he grew up did not allow him to break with the traditions and prejudices of positivism. But he was also an undoubted rationalist, and here an abyss forms between us.

I shall return to the rationalist doctrine of personality when I speak of Chicherin, but a few words must also be said about Mikhailovsky's rationalism. Mikhailovsky, like any rationalist, defended the impersonal, colorless, abstract, general personality all his life, defended a biological abstraction devoid of individuality, and this was the irony of fate over the "fighter for individuality." Like every rationalist, he did not take human nature in its mystical, supra-rational integrity and fullness, he took it abstractly, rationalistically dissected it, and thus killed the living, immediate life that touches us with the mystery of the world. The fullness of the experiences of the human personality is inaccessible to the rationalist, and only this fullness brings us into contact with "other worlds," and only here do we find our individuality, essentially irrational, unique in its originality.

Rationalism is too afraid of everything dark, mysterious, problematic in a human being, everything that can prevent him from settling down successfully, lining up human personalities in rows, and rationing everything and everything. For us, the human personality is not a biological or ethical-epistemological abstraction, but a living, concrete individual spirit, in its superrational fullness in contact with the inner being of the world. Rationalism always deals with a secondary, rationalized, abstractly dissected consciousness, and for it the path to primary, living consciousness, experiencing the fullness of being, is closed. That is why rationalism, which appears under the guise of empiricism, recognizes only conditional, rational experience enclosed in a spatio-temporal prison, an experience enclosed by the high walls of the categories of reason. And he is afraid to look directly into the eyes of transcendental, mystical experience, tearing apart all boundaries and destroying all walls. In our national spirit there are the makings of a philosophy of super-rationalism, super-rationality, and this is reflected in our rebelliousness, which does not fit into any framework, in our longing and longing for new, "other worlds"2. The foundations of true individualism are contained in the philosophy and religion of Christianity. Only Christianity placed love and freedom above any law and gave absolute meaning and significance to the fate of the individual person. And we would like to find it again, cleansed of historical distortions. And it seems to me that we have great philosophical rights to declare a "struggle for individuality"3', since we do not humiliate the individual by abstract rational leveling. Mikhailovsky will be forgiven for his rationalism for democracy, for his stubborn and tireless thought about the people. But Chicherin was not forgiven anything.

Justice demands that Chicherin be recognized as one of the strongest Russian minds. His knowledge and the scope of his interests were unusually extensive. But no one liked him, there was something unpleasant in his Writer's individuality, something binding, not liberating. It was an administrative mind, it gave orders and did not tolerate disobedience, there was something too doctric in this mind, and something too rational in nature. Chicherin loved order terribly, and everything found a place in his system, everything turned out to be justified and enrolled in a certain category. Read his Science and Religion (this is Chicherin's main philosophical work, representing a whole philosophical system), and you will be unpleasantly struck by the fact that the religious problem is treated in such a rational way, that God turns out to be the god of order and order, that the most decisive idealism does not lead to new worlds, that in the old, old world everything remains in the same place. His religion is a preservative, not a liberating force. And it preserves the old economic, family, state and other foundations of life. The birth of new forms of life is out of the question. Chicherin is a very versatile and strong mind, but he always lacked creativity, and he defended that form of Hegelianism which considers the truth to be discovered once and for all. And it was somehow dreary and stifling to live in this rationalistic prison of canticized Hegelianism, and then all searches ceased. Rationalist logic took everything into its own hands and created an iron discipline; irrational moods, for which all kinds of abysses open, are not allowed. And it was a slander against the living God.

Modern idealists were told that they had to put Chicherin in their genealogy. And to a certain extent, of course, this is true. We did not invent metaphysical idealism, and thanks to Chicherin that he defended it in the most difficult epoch for this trend. But there is also a big difference. Chicherin never strove for new moods, for the creation of a new, transformed man. He created only a system of rational ideas for the establishment of a strong order of life, unshakable knowledge, morality, the state, the family, etc. This man never understood tragedy, did not allow it, and therefore he is a stranger to us. Chicherin was essentially a conservative and was always a stranger to the alcoholisms that are dearest to us.

Chicherin's strongest point is his philosophy of law, here we must give a high assessment of his work. Chicherin was a brilliant defender of the theory of natural law, and the latest idealist trends in the philosophy of law should honor him as their most important predecessor. Positivism triumphed, and every talk of natural law evoked only a condescending smile, and Chicherin courageously defended this old and eternal idea, to which human thought has returned again, and which lies at the foundation of all social philosophy. Mikhailovsky was not in a position to defend the rights of the individual philosophically; in the end, in contradiction to his individualism, he had to deduce them from society, from the whole, outside the individual, which was present and valued his rights. This is the lot of all positivism; A person does not have absolute significance and rights inherent in his nature, he receives everything from the outside, everything in him is evaluated according to the interests of a collective unit external to him. A fighter for individuality, Mikhailovsky could not liberate the individual from slavery to external nature and society, he did not see that inner metaphysical essence of the personality, which alone can be recognized as unconditionally and infinitely valuable and opposed to any external violence.

Chicherin occupies a much more fortified position. For him, the human personality was a metaphysical being, not deducible from the natural and social environment. The rights of the individual are rooted not in the dictates of society and not in the accidental gifts of historical development, but in the metaphysical timeless nature of man, they are its direct expression. The demands of law are the voice of reason, absolute, universal Reason. Man is a morally rational, free being, and his metaphysical freedom is the source of his rights, which must be recognized and crystallized in society. Chicherin's definition of law as freedom is the only true and most profound definition. And the point is only to draw all the consistent conclusions from this. Chicherin understood the metaphysical nature of law and the deep inner connection between political freedom and metaphysical freedom. Idealistic legal consciousness was deeply embedded in him, and respect for the individual, for his rights and freedom, constituted the pathos of his life, his religion. Chicherin was our only theoretician of liberalism, and only he understood the deepest ideal foundations of liberalism. Where the dignity of the individual has not yet been recognized, where freedom is subjected to desecration, and subjective rights have not yet crystallized in objective law, such a thinker and publicist should be especially revered, his merits should be recognized by all. Why is Chicherin so little known, why did he never control the hearts, did not control the thoughts of our intelligentsia, which yearns with its whole being for freedom and law?

Chicherin was an implacable enemy of democracy all his life. His brilliant and profound works are filled with the most vicious outbursts against the social movement, with the crudest incomprehension of it. It is unpleasant to read those passages in the Philosophy of Law which deal with socialism, it is difficult to see how bourgeois narrow-mindedness distorts the thought of such an outstanding thinker. This great logical and ethical sin could not and should not have forgiven Chicherin. Historical conditions developed in such a way that bourgeois liberalism could not succeed in our country. Our emancipatory aspirations were painted not only in a democratic color, but also had a more or less social character. And it is impossible to find access to wide circles of the Russian intelligentsia if we repeat the historical betrayal of the principles of liberalism, which was committed in Europe by liberal social forces. For a long time we have absorbed a feeling of hatred and contempt for bourgeois society, and this fundamentally just instinct has often led us to distort the historical perspective in politics. We did not know how to be real politicians and therefore were unable to appreciate the great political significance of Chicherin's journalistic activity. Only now is the immediate force of life pushing us onto a more realistic path and forcing us to recognize the complexity and variety of methods of struggle, the inevitability of various kinds of temporary agreements and temporary cooperation of different social forces. And now more than ever it is necessary to smash the prejudices of the two opposite sides: the one that considers the very nature of liberalism to be bourgeois, and the one that draws bourgeois conclusions from the principles of liberalism for the sake of its own class self-interest.