Such a fair answer would be appropriate and convincing even if the opponent in his infatuation understood only material benefit as a benefit and demanded "chimney pots" from poetry; For in that case it would not be difficult to explain that, although good feelings in themselves are not sufficient to supply all men with the necessary household utensils, yet without such feelings there could be no question of such a useful enterprise, for lack of internal motives for it, and then only a continuous war for pots would be possible, and not a just distribution of them for the common good.

If the advocates of "art for art's sake" understood by this only that artistic creation is a special activity of the human spirit, satisfying a special need and having its own domain, they would certainly be right, but then they would have no need to raise a reaction in the name of a truth against which no one would seriously argue. But they go much further; they do not confine themselves to a just assertion of the specific feature of art or the independence of the means by which it operates, but deny any essential connection between it and other human activities and the necessary subordination of it to the general life goals of mankind, considering it to be something closed in itself and unconditionally self-sufficient; instead of legitimate autonomy for the artistic field, they preach aesthetic separatism. But even if art were just as necessary for the whole of mankind as breathing is for the individual, then breathing also essentially depends on the circulation of the blood, on the activity of the nerves and muscles, and it is subordinated to the life of the whole; and the most beautiful lungs will not revive it when other essential organs are affected. The life of the whole does not exclude, but, on the contrary, requires and presupposes the relative independence of the parts and their functions, but no particular function in its own isolation can and cannot be absolutely self-sufficient.

The following subtle distinction, made by some, is also useless for the supporters of aesthetic separatism. Let us assume, they say, that in general life art is connected with other activities and all of them together are subordinated to the final goal of historical development; but this connection and this goal, being beyond the limits of our consciousness, are realized by themselves, apart from us, and consequently cannot determine our attitude to this or that human activity; Hence the conclusion: let the artist be only an artist, think only about the aesthetically beautiful, about the beauty of form, let there be nothing important in the world for him except this form.

Such a reasoning, which is intended to extol art, is in fact deeply demeaning to him—it makes him resemble the work of a factory worker who has to make only certain wheels of a clockwork all his life, and does not care for the whole mechanism. Of course, service to a pseudo-artistic form is much more pleasant than factory work, but for a rational consciousness pleasure alone is not enough.

And on what is this conviction based in the fatal unconsciousness of the historical process, in the unconditional unknowability of its goal? If we demand a definite and adequate conception of the final state of mankind, of the concrete and real, then, of course, it is inaccessible to anyone, and not so much because of the limitations of the human mind, but because the very concept of the absolutely final state, as the conclusion of a temporary process, contains logical difficulties which can hardly be eliminated. But such an impossible idea of an inconceivable object is not necessary. For a conscious participation in the historical process, a general conception of its direction is quite sufficient, it is sufficient to have an ideal idea of that marginal magnitude, mathematically speaking, to which the variable magnitudes of human progress are undoubtedly and continuously approaching, although in the nature of things they can never coincide with it. And of this ideal limit, towards which history is really moving, everyone, including the aesthetic separatist, can get a perfectly clear idea, if only he turns for guidance not to preconceived opinions and bad instincts, but to those conclusions from historical facts for which reason vouches and conscience testifies.

In spite of all the vacillations and zigzags of progress, in spite of the present intensification of militarism, nationalism, anti-Semitism, dynamism, etc., etc., there still remains no doubt that the resultant of history proceeds from cannibalism to philanthropy, from lawlessness to justice, and from the hostile disunity of private groups to general solidarity. To prove this would be to expound a comparative course of universal history. But for conscientious pessimists, confused by the retrograde phenomena of the present epoch, it will suffice to recall that these very phenomena clearly show the irrevocable power of the general historical movement.

Here are two examples from completely different fields, but leading to the same morality. A talented writer [95] appeared in Germany (unfortunately, he turned out to be mentally ill), who began to preach that compassion is a low feeling, unworthy of a self-respecting person; that morality is good only for slave natures; that there is no humanity, but there are masters and slaves, demigods and half-beasts, that everything is allowed to the former, and the latter are obliged to serve as tools for the former, and so on. These ideas, in which the subjects of the Pharaohs of Egypt and the kings of Assyria once believed and lived, ideas for which Beganzin in Dahomey and Lobingula in the land of Matabel are still struggling with their last strength, they were received in our Europe as something extraordinary, original and fresh, and as such everywhere had a grand succes de surprise. Does this prove that we have managed not only to experience, but even to forget what our ancestors lived, so that their worldview has acquired the charm of novelty for us? And that such a never-before-seen resurrection of dead ideas is not at all frightening to the living, is evident from one factual consideration: in addition to the two classes of men mentioned by Nietzsche, the proud masters and the humble slaves, a third has developed everywhere, the unhumble slaves, i.e., those who have ceased to be slaves, and, thanks to the spread of printing and a host of other inevitable and inevitable evils, This third class (which is not limited to one tiers-état) has grown so large that it has almost absorbed the other two. These people have no intention of voluntarily returning to humility and slavish obedience, and there is no one and nothing to force them, at least until the coming of the Antichrist and his prophet with false signs and miracles; And this last disguised reaction of Dahomey ideals will last only a short time.

The second example of how reactionary phenomena testify to true progress is the character of present-day militarism: with such enormous armaments and such an extreme intensification of national rivalry and enmity, such an unprecedented hesitation to start a war! Everyone involuntarily feels and understands that with the present all-round coherence between the various parts of mankind it will be impossible to localize an armed conflict, and that the unprecedented enormity of forces in terms of the number of troops and the lethality of weapons will present war in all its horror, never before seen, and will make it morally and materially impossible to repeat it. So, one of two things: either, in spite of all the militarism, the war will not begin, or if it does, it will be the last. Militarism will eat war. Armed political strife between nations will inevitably cease, just as their constant strife between separate regions and cities within countries has ceased.

Local history shows how here or there the land gathered around the leaders of the people in difficult, intricate, and often crooked ways, and how little by little the national consciousness grew and developed. But universal history also shows us how the whole earth, the whole of humanity, gathers around the invisible but powerful center of Christian culture in even more difficult and complex ways, and how, in spite of all obstacles, the consciousness of universal unity and solidarity is growing and strengthening. This analogy between the national and the world "gathering of the earth" could be carried still further, but I confine myself to the obvious and indisputable features.

Thus, history (and consequently the entire world process) has a goal that we undoubtedly know, a goal that is all-embracing and at the same time sufficiently definite for us to be able to participate consciously in its achievement; For with regard to every idea, every feeling, and every human deed, it is always possible to decide by reason and conscience whether it agrees with or contradicts the ideal of universal solidarity, whether it is directed towards the realization of true all-unity[99] or contradicts it. And if so, where is the right for any human activity to separate itself from the general movement, to withdraw into itself, to declare itself its own and only goal? And in particular, where are the rights of aesthetic separatism? No: art is not for art, but for the realization of that fullness of life which necessarily includes a special element of art, beauty, but does not include it as something separate and self-sufficient, but in an essential and internal connection with the rest of the content of life.

To reject the fantastic alienation of beauty and art from the general movement of world life, to recognize that artistic activity does not have in itself any special higher object, but only in its own way, by its own means, serves the common life goal of mankind – this is the first step towards true positive aesthetics. This step in Russian literature was taken about forty years ago by the author of an aesthetic treatise, which (together with other, less important, but also not devoid of interest studies by the same writer) has been very conveniently reprinted just now, in view of the revival of aesthetic separatism in our country. In order to point out the positive significance and merit of this old, but not obsolete, treatise, I do not at all close my eyes either to its many particular shortcomings, or to the general incompleteness of the view it represents. At one time, many were sure that the author of "The Aesthetic Relations of Art to Reality" had the last word in this field [100]. I am so far from such a thought that I assert just the opposite: he did not say the last, but only the first word of true aesthetics. But I consider it unjust to demand of the one who has done something that he should do everything, and I think that the inevitable insufficiency of the first step will of itself be eliminated when further steps are taken.

II

If our author subordinates art to reality, it is certainly not in the sense in which other contemporary writers have declared that "boots are more important than Shakespeare." He only asserts that the beauty of real life is higher than the beauty of the creations of artistic fantasy. At the same time, he defends the reality of beauty against Hegelian aesthetics, for which the beautiful "is only a phantom" stemming from the lack of penetration of the gaze, not enlightened by philosophical thought, before which the apparent fullness of the manifestation of the idea in a single object (i.e., beauty) disappears, so that "the higher the development of thought, the more the beautiful disappears before it, and, finally, for fully developed thinking there is only the true. but there is no beauty"[102].

In contrast to this view, our author recognizes beauty as an essential property of real objects, and insists on its actual reality, not only for man, but also in nature and for nature. "Understanding beauty as the fullness of life, we will have to admit that the striving for life, which permeates the whole of nature, is at the same time the striving for the production of beauty. If we are to see in nature in general not ends but only results, and therefore cannot call beauty the goal of nature, we cannot but call it the essential result to the production of which the forces of nature are directed. The unintentional, unconscious nature of this trend does not in the least interfere with its reality, just as the unconsciousness of the geometrical tendency in the bee, the unconsciousness of symmetry in the vegetative force, does not in the least interfere with the correctness of the hexagonal structure of the cells of the honeycomb, the symmetry of the two halves of the leaf.