Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

German philistines and pedants. In Ltttn-s from Franct and Italy,

From the Othn- Short, Lttttrs to an Old Comrade, in Opm Lettn-s to

Michelet, W. Linton, Mazzini, and, of course, throughout My Past and

Thoughts, he enunciated his own ethical and philosophical beliefs. Of

these, the most important were: that nature obeys no plan, that history

follows no libretto; that no single key, no formula can, in principle,

86

H E RZEN AND BAK U N I N ON L I B E RTY

solve the problems of individuals or societies; that general solutions

are not solutions, universal ends are never real ends, that every age

has its own texture and its own questions, that short cuts and generalisations are no substitute for experience; that liberty-of actual individuals, in specific times and places- is an absolute value; that a minimum area

of free action is a moral necessity for all men, not to be suppressed in

the name of abstractions or general principles so freely bandied by the

great thinkers of this or any age, such as eternal salvation, or history,

or humanity, or progress, still less the state or the Church or the

proletariat-great names invoked to justify acts of detestable cruelty

and despotism, magic formulas designed to stifie the voices of human

feeling and conscience. This liberal attitude had an affinity with the

thin but not yet dead tradition of western libertarianism, of which

elements persisted even in Germany- in Kant, in Wilhelm von

Humboldt, in the early works of Schiller and of Fichte-surviving in

France and French Switzerland among the Id�ologues and in the

views of Benjamin Constant, Tocqueville and Sismondi; and remained

a hardy growth in England among the utilitarian radicals.

Like the early liberals of western Europe, Herzen delighted in

independence, variety, the free play of individual temperament. He

desired the richest possible development of personal characteristics,

valued spontaneity, directness, distinction, pride, 'paS.sion, sincerity, the

style and colour of free individuals; he detested conformism, cowardice,

submission to the tyranny of brute force or pressure of opinion,

arbitrary violence, and anxious submissiveness; he hated the worship

of power, blind reverence for the past, for institutions, for mysteries

or myths; the humiliation of the weak by the strong, sectarianism,

philistinism, the resentment and envy of majorities, the brutal arrogance of minorities. He desired social justice, economic efficiency, political stability, but these must always remain secondary to the

need for protecting human dignity, the upholding of civilised values,

the protection of individuals from aggression, the preservation of

sensibility and genius from individual or institutional bullying. Any

society which, for whatever reason, failed to prevent such invasions

of liberty, and opened the door to the possibility of insult by one side,

and grovelling by the other, he condemned outright and rejected with

all its works-all the social or economic advantages which it might,

quite genuinely, offer. He rejected it with the same moral fury as that

with which I van Karamazov spurned the promise of eternal happiness

bought at the cost of the torture of one innocent child; but the

87

R U SS IAN T H I NK E R S

arguments which Herzen employed i n defence of his pOsition, and

the description of the enemy whom he picked out for pillory and

destruction, were set forth in language which both in tone and substance had little in common with either the theological or the liberal eloquence of his age.

As an acute and prophetic observer of his times he is comparable,

perhaps, to Marx and Tocqueville; as a moralist he is more interesting

and original than either.

I I I

Man, it is commonly asserted, desires liberty. Moreover, human beings

are said to have rights, in virtue of which they claim a certain degree

of freedom of action. These formulas taken by themselves strike

Herzen as hollow. They must be given some concrete meaning, but

even then-if they are taken as hypotheses about what people actually

believe- they are untrue; not borne out by history; for the masses have

seldom desired freedom :

The masses want to stay the hand which impudently snatches from

them the bread which they have earned . . . They are indifferent

to individual freedom, liberty of speech; the masses love authority.

They are still blinded by the arrogant glitter of power, they are

offended by those who stand alone. By equality they understand

equality of oppression . . . they want a social government to rule

for their benefit, and not, like the present one, against it. But to

govern themselves doesn't enter their heads.1

On this topic there has been altogether too much 'romanticism for the

heart' and 'idealism for the mind'2- too much craving for verbal

magic, too much desire to substitute words for things. With the result

that bloody struggles have been fought and many innocent human

beings slaughtered and the most horrible crimes condoned in the name

of empty abstractions:

There is no nation in the world . . . which has shed so much blood

for freedom as the French, and there is no people which understands it less, seeks to realise it less . . . on the streets, in the courts, in their homes . . . The French are the most abstract and religious

people in the world; the fanaticism of ideas with them goes hand in

hand with lack of respect for persons, with contempt for their

1 'From the Other Shore': VI 1 24-.

I ibid.: VI 1 2].

88

H E R Z E N AND BAK U N I N ON L I B E RTY

neighbours-the French turn everything into an idol, and then woe

to him who does not bow the knee to the idol of the day. Frenchmen fight like heroes for freedom and without a thought drag you to jail if you don't agree with their opinions . . . The despotic sa/us

populi and the bloody and inquisitorial pereat mundus et fiat justitia

are engraved equally in the consciousness of royalists and democrats

. . . read George Sand, Pierre Leroux, Louis Blanc, Micheret, you will meet everywhere Christianity and romanticism adapted to our own morality; everywhere dualism, abstraction, abstract

duty, enforced virtues and official and rhetorical morality without

any relation to real life.1

Ultimately, Herzen goes on to say, this is heartless frivolity, the

sacrifice of human beings to mere words which inRame the passions,

and which, upon being pressed for their meaning, turn out to refer

to nothing, a kind of political gaminerie which 'excited and fascinated

Europe', but also plunged it into inhuman and unnecessary slaughter.

'Dualism' is for Herzen a confusion of words with facts, the construction of theories employing abstract terms which are not founded in discovered real needs, of political programmes deduced from abstract

principles unrelated to real situations. These formulas grow into

terrible weapons in the hands of fanatical doctrinaires who seek to

bind them upon human beings, if need be, by violent vivisection, for

the sake of some absolute ideal, for which the sanction lies in some

uncriticised and uncriticisable vision- metaphysical, religious, aesthetic,

at any rate, unconcerned with the actual needs of actual persons -in

the name of which the revolutionary leaders kill and torture with a

quiet conscience, because they know that this and this alone is- must

be-the solution to all social and political and personal ills. And he

develops this thesis along lines made familiar to us by Tocqueville

and other critics of democracy, by pointing out that the masses detest

talent, wish everyone to think as they do, and are bitterly suspicious

of independence of thought and conduct:

The submission of the individual to society-to the people-to

humanity- to the idea-is a continuation of human sacrifice . . . the

crucifixion of the innocent for the guilty . . . The individual who

is the true, real monad of society, has always been sacrificed to some

general concept, some collective noun, some banner or other. What

the purpose of . . . the sacrifice was . . . was never so much as asked. 2

1 'Letters from France and Italy', tenth letter: V l7 s-6.

I 'From the Other Shore': VI u s-6.

89

R U S S IAN T H I N K E R S

Since these abstractions-history, progress, the safety of the people,

social equality-have all been cruel altars upon which innocents have

been offered up without a qualm, they are deserving of notice. Herzen

examines them in turn.

If history has an inexorable direction, a rational structure, and a

purpose (perhaps a beneficial one), we must adjust ourselves to it or

perish. But what is this rational purpose? Herzen cannot discern it;

he sees no sense in history, only the story of 'hereditary, chronic

madness':

It seems unnecessary to cite examples, there are millions of them.

Open any history you like and what is striking . . . is that instead

of real interests everything is governed by imaginary interests,

fantasies. Look at the kind of causes in which blood is shed, in

which people bear extreme sufferings; look at what is praised and

what is blamed, and you will be convinced of a truth which at first

seems sad-of a truth which on second thoughts is full of comfort,

that all this is the result of a deranged intellect. Wherever you look

in the ancient world, you will find madness almost as widespread

as it is in our own. Here is Curti us throwing himself into a pit to

save the city. There a father is sacrificing his daughter to obtain a

fair wind, and he has found an old idiot to slaughter the poor girl

for him, and this lunatic has not been locked up, has not been taken

to a madhouse, but has been recognised as the high priest. Here

the King of Persia orders the sea to be flogged, and understands the

absurdity of his act as little as his enemies the Athenians, who

wanted to cure the intellect and the understanding of human

beings with hemlock. What frightful fever was it that made the

emperors persecute Christianity? . . .

And after the Christians were torn and tortured by wild beasts,

they themselves, in their turn, began to persecute and torture

one another more furiously than they themselves had been persecuted. How many innocent Germans and Frenchmen perished just so, for no reason at all, while their demented judges thought

they were merely doing their duty, and slept peacefully not many.

steps from the place where the heretics were being roasted to death.1

'History is the autobiography of a madman.'1 This might have been