"Idealism" was suspected or directly accused of being reactionary, of being double reactionary, from the scientific-educational and socio-political point of view. It is around these two points -- the relation of "idealism" to science and its relation to freedom -- that I shall concentrate my answer. From our religious-philosophical point of view, do we need scientific enlightenment and liberating progress? This is what seems to arouse great doubts, and our intelligentsia treats science and politics with religious reverence.

We will not talk about the first point for a long time, this is a very elementary, simple and almost boring question. No one has ever thought of encroaching on science. "Idealists" always sharply distinguish the field of scientific knowledge from philosophy and religion, and some of them may even be too positivists in science. The power and significance of science are absolutely irrefutable, its necessity is proved by every step of our life. And we limit the competence of science only when it interferes in something that is not its own business, when it tries to solve philosophical and religious questions. But we would also have a negative attitude towards the philosophical or religious solution of scientific questions. Another question is what role we ascribe to science, scientific enlightenment in human culture, in the course of world history. Here we must say bluntly that we assign to science a subordinate, servant role, that the point of view of rationalistic enlightenment is profoundly alien to us and to the last degree repugnant. We declare an irreconcilable struggle against rationalist culture, which distorts the spiritual nature of man, this quasi scientific complacency, this limited and stupid rejection of everything irrational and super-rational. More ingenious and profound critics could find a very firm basis of principle for polemics against us, but the elementary misunderstanding that we deny science, that we are representatives of reaction against science, does not deserve even a serious objection. Yes, reactions, but not against science, but against rationalism, against the encroachments of positivism on the fullness and integrity of human nature.

I am ready to welcome Mach's theory of scientific knowledge, because it cleanses science of all metaphysical pretensions and makes it more modest, more scientific. This does not in the least oblige me to agree with Mach's limited philosophy, quite the opposite. The more scientific and positive science is, the more philosophical, metaphysical philosophy will be, and the more religious will be religion. Scientific arguments against philosophy and religion are logically inadmissible, this is not only a mistake of rationalistic consciousness, but also an indicator of a very low intellectual culture. All this can be summed up: we revere science no less than our critics, we need it and are aware of its power at every step, but we are enemies of rationalist enlightenment and place our pathos in those aspects of the human spirit that are beyond the control of science, outside purely logical verification. And now I turn to another, much more important question.

One perplexity connected with "idealism" deserves the most careful consideration. Here we would have to deal with the most repulsive argument and the most dangerous, if it were not a complete misunderstanding. I have in mind the usual and widespread opinion that "idealism" recognises internal, metaphysical freedom and is incapable of passing to external, social freedom, that it turns away from the earth, from the struggle which is being waged with such bloody efforts for a better earthly future, in a word, that "idealism" becomes its back to emancipatory social progress.

Our critics operate very arbitrarily and to the highest degree uncritically with the concepts of "freedom," "personality," "progress," etc., only because it is so easy for them to triumphantly contradict us because they do not and cannot give themselves a philosophical account of their own thoughts and expressions, and appeal to the rather vulgar feelings of their audience. On all sides I hear indignant and mocking voices that deprive us of the right to demand external freedom, to thirst for it. In your opinion, everyone is fine as it is, each person is inwardly free and no violence can humiliate his lofty spirit. In this way, "idealism" is deprived of the right to recognize the meaning of world history, whereas it arose most of all from the need to recognize this meaning, to see it. And we see this meaning first of all in liberation, in self-liberation and liberation of the world. At the basis of the religious-philosophical teaching I would put the idea of freedom and the idea of personality, inseparably linked with it, and only then can the struggle for liberating social progress be sanctioned and comprehended. What is personality, what is freedom? Our positivistic critics know that freedom is a beautiful and alluring thing, that it is necessary to fight for the individual, they know even more that we have no freedom, and the individual is oppressed and crushed. All these are good feelings, but positivism of all kinds and shades is powerless to substantiate the ideas of personality and freedom and to lead to a philosophy of liberation, to a liberating worldview and mood. Personality and freedom must be not only the goal and result of the struggle, but also the subject of the struggle, which is what the positivists do not think enough about. Personality cannot be a product of impersonal nature, social environment, historical process; Freedom cannot be the product of necessity, natural development, it cannot be ordered and ordered. The world-historical process can be liberating only because in the very nature of the world there is creative freedom, a principle that opposes cohesion and oppressive necessity. A person can rebel against what lies outside of him, oppressive, only in the name of his own inner nature, only as an inwardly free being possessing creative energy. Otherwise, what would have risen up, who would have fought? The human personality, this metaphysical spirit, inwardly free, can be bound, enslaved, and oppressed; it has absolute value, but its dignity can be desecrated. But only a free being can fight oppression and enslavement, and not a piece of matter, not an accidental drop in the ocean of natural necessity. They do not want to understand this. The freedom-loving positivists have a very strange dilemma: only a creature that is not free by nature, only an accidental fragment of the natural and social environment, can and wants to fight for freedom, while a creature that is free by nature, a concrete spirit, a personality, is reconciled to slavery, oppression and lawlessness. And again: those who see the meaning of the world and historical process in liberation must deny the meaning of the struggle for freedom, while those who deny any meaning to world and historical development, who see in it only the necessary process of nature, must recognize the meaning of the struggle for freedom. Here we meet with some terrible misunderstanding. This misunderstanding can be summarized as follows: the free have nothing to strive for freedom, only the unfree can strive for freedom.

This judgment may seem logical if one does not delve into the content of the concepts used here. For us, freedom is the creative force of individual spiritual substance, it is the creation from within, from the depths of human nature, the authoritative self-determination of the individual. The concept of personality, human individuality, is inconceivable without freedom, as an internal determination of its nature. The creative acts of the individual are free, but he is bound by the creative acts of other personalities and by his belonging to the world as a whole, so the individual encounters at every step a "necessity" that takes the form of oppression and enslavement [93]. Therefore, the inner spiritual freedom of the human person can and should be opposed to imposed necessity, oppression, enslavement, i.e., external unfreedom. Winning freedom for himself and for others, the inwardly free person fulfills his destiny in the world, puts his creative stamp on it, defends his right to be determined only by his freedom, his inner creative power, which collides with the bound and imposed world. And that unfree object, which the positivists call man, cannot oppose itself to anything, to any external oppression, to any lack of freedom, it is not able to introduce any creative and opposing principle into this bound, slavish world. Only a free being, a spiritual being whose roots lie in the bottomless depths of being, can strive for ultimate freedom, be able to fight for it, while an unfree piece of nature would remain in slavery until the end of time.

No, Messrs. positive critics, we will not yield to you freedoms and personalities, this is our monopoly, not yours.

And it is not fitting for the positivists to talk too much about freedom, it would be more appropriate for them to talk about the common good, about the organization of life, about the inevitable onset of new social forms, etc. It is time for us to finally reveal our cards and clarify our real differences, which are very important not only philosophically, but also socially, in the understanding of the meaning and purpose of world history.

There are two ways, one is the path of philanthropy, which wants to make people happy, to arrange and calm them, to build a comfortable building for their neighbors, in which they will forget about their irrational and tragic freedom, renounce their rights to the absolute, super-universal truth. This is the path of the Grand Inquisitor, it leads to an anthill in which there will be neither freedom nor personality. The other is the path of love of God, which desires to liberate people, places truth and superhuman values above well-being and the order of life. This is the way of the One Who came with the words of infinite freedom and was a reminder that God, freedom and truth are higher than the good and peace of people. And you need to choose the humane path of well-being or the God-loving path of freedom. And the contrast between these two paths must be sharpened to the last degree. Then there can be an open and honest struggle, a struggle between the two opposite principles of world history, the transcendent principle of freedom and the immanent principle of contentment, God and the "prince of this world." It is very difficult to conform this profound opposition to the social affairs of our day, but if we try to do so, then "freedom," "personality," and the understanding of the meaning of world history will be on our side, and not on the side of small inquisitors; we will turn out to be more conscious fighters for freedom, and liberation will be more in line with our religious-philosophical teaching.

The position of "idealism" at the historical moment through which Russia is now passing is very difficult and responsible. We see the deep spiritual underpinnings of the social ferment that engulfed Russian society in all its strata, and we are very acutely aware that it is a question of the very existence of a great people, of whether we follow the path of creativity and consequently freedom or the path of negation, the extinguishing of the spirit and slavery. The organization of all creative, liberating social forces without distinction of their final religious-philosophical worldview and even their social interests is the slogan of the time. We call to action organized social forces in the name of a distant, incomprehensible for too many kingdom of freedom. I see the difficulty and responsibility of the situation in the fact that we cannot and must not give up the end in the name of the means, give up the right to the fullness of our spiritual experiences and aspirations, cannot and will not want to borrow anything from the theory and practice of the Grand Inquisitor, who with one hand opened the doors to human happiness, and with the other closed the doors to freedom forever. We need relative, external, social freedom for absolute, internal, mystical freedom. We need social guarantees of the inalienable rights of the individual, not for the well-being of life, but for the revelation of religious truth, which we are now prevented from revealing from two opposite sides. The hour is near when political objections to religious-philosophical searches and assertions will finally lose all meaning and significance, when all the shameful wretchedness of these objections will finally be revealed. This will be the hour of social renewal of our homeland, its liberation. We must be ready for this historical change, not only as social beings, but also as those sent from another world, and we must not cede our original freedom either to those in power or to those who conquer power.

And now I move on to the affairs of "this world". There is one more accusation to be answered, far from the ultimate philosophical questions, but perhaps the most important of all. The accusation that the "idealists" are reactionary now seems to have been removed, and sensible people have no doubts about our practical "liberalism" (in the broad sense of the word), but another accusation remains valid, namely, the accusation of "liberalism" (in the narrower sense), of the betrayal of the working classes, which have always been the centre of our attention, in a word, of social bourgeoisness.

The insinuations of the narrow-minded supporters and lovers of the theory of class psychology do not move us much, but we must very energetically object to the perplexities and misunderstandings that can very easily arise in this field. In the article on Mikhailovsky and Chicherin I tried to establish my view of the relationship between liberalism and socialism. Now I will try to detail it. In principle, the writer of these lines does not differ in his social perspectives from those who imagine themselves to be our opponents, but this does not yet determine our real attitude to the grouping of social trends existing in Russia.

The social trend which in recent years has appropriated to itself the monopoly of defending the interests of the working masses has fallen into a rather nasty kind of utopianism and has shown great political short-sightedness. At one time Narodism believed that Russia could leapfrog over the capitalist epoch, did not know how to appreciate the enormous importance of individual rights, and was afraid of freedom because it was supposedly giving the people over to the power of the bourgeoisie. It was both utopian and reactionary, both socially and politically. Marxism vehemently opposed this utopian reactionary. The so-called "economism" represented a bias towards exclusive economic realism and corresponded to a still weak sense of justice. But the most remarkable thing is that it is precisely among those who have set themselves the aim of fighting "economism" that a very original process of Narodnik degeneration of Marxism is taking place. They also want to skip over something, they also underestimate the independent importance of legal guarantees, and the next stage of our historical development disappears from their perspective. Here we are dealing with an undoubted revival of utopianism and even a kind of reactionary movement on radical grounds, since the working masses are constantly opposed to those legal requirements which constitute the historical national task of the time. Even from a strictly Marxist class point of view, it can be recognized that there are historical moments when the most diverse social groups fulfill one common task and go beyond their class interests. And we are now inspired not by a definite, social and state system, historically limited and in reality bourgeois, but by the inalienable rights of the individual, which constitute absolute, supra-class and supra-historical goods.

And we ardently defend the unity of our emancipatory social movement, and we think that the deepest social furrows cannot destroy this unity in the face of the common task. I do not think that subjective unity can correspond to this objective unity, no, that would be a utopian dream, but conscious historical co-operation is at any rate possible and must exist, since life is stronger than doctrines.