Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

which was the sacred tongue of humanity if only because it embodied

the prejudices and superstitions of previous ages-beliefs which had

stood the test of history and experience-alone able to form a wall

strong enough to keep out the terrible acids of atheism, liberalism,

and freedom of thought. Above all he regarded natural science and

secular literature as dangerous commodities in the hands of those

not completely indoctrinated against them, a heady wine which

would dangerously excite, and in the end destroy, any society not

used to it.

Tolstoy all his life fought against open obscurantism and artificial

repression of the desire for knowledge; his harshest words were

directed against those Russian statesmen and publicists in the last

1 Yet Tolstoy, too, says that millions of men kill each other, knowing

that it is physically and morally evil, because it is 'necessary'; because in

doing so, men 'ful.6.lled . . . an elemental, zoological law'. This is pure

Maistre, and very remote from Stendhal or Rousseau.

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quarter of the nineteenth century- Pobedonostsev and his friends and

minions-who practised precisely these maxims of the great Catholic

reactionary. The author of War and Ptace plainly hated the Jesuits,

and particularly detested their success in converting Russian ladies of

fashion during Alexander's reign-the final events in the life of Pierre's

worthless wife, Helene, might almost have been founded upon

Maistre's activities as a missionary to the aristocracy of St Petersburg:

indeed, there is every reason to think that the Jesuits were expelled

from Russia, and Maistre himself was virtually recalled, when his

interference was deemed too overt and too successful by the Emperor

himself.

Nothing, therefore, would have shocked and irritated Tolstoy so

much as to be told that he had a great deal in common with this

apostle of darkness, this defender of ignorance and serfdom. N evertheless, of all writers on social questions, Maistre's tone most nearly resembles that of Tolstoy. Both preserve the same sardonic, almost

cynical, disbelief in the improvement of society by rational means, by

the enactment of good laws or the propagation of scientific knowledge.

Both speak with the same angry irony of every fashionable explanation,

every social nostrum, particularly of the ordering and planning of

society in accordance with some man-made formula. In Maistre

openly, and in Tolstoy less obviously, there is a deeply sceptical attitude

towards all experts and all techniques, all high-minded professions of

secular faith and efforts at social improvement by well-meaning but,

alas, idealistic persons; there is the same distaste for anyone who deals

in ideas, who believes in abstract principles: and both are deeply

affected by Voltaire's temper, and bitterly reject his views. Both

ultimately appeal to some elemental source concealed in the souls of

men, Maistre even while denouncing Rousseau as a false prophet,

Tolstoy with his more ambiguous attitude towards him. Both above

all reject the concept of individual political liberty: of civil rights

guaranteed by some impersonal system of justice. Maistre, because he

regarded any desire for personal freedom-whether political or economic or social or cultural or religious-as wilful indiscipline and stupid insubordination, and supported tradition in its most darkly i!"rational

and repressive forms, because it alone provided the energy which gave

life, continuity, and safe anchorage to social institutions; Tolstoy

rejected political reform because he believed that ultimate regeneration

could come only from within, and that the inner life was only lived

truly in the untouched depths of the mass of the people.

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V I

But there is a larger and more important parallel between Tolstoy's

interpretation of history and the ideas of Maistre, and it raises issues

of fundamental principle concerning knowledge of the past. One of

the most striking elements common to the thought of these dissimilar,

and indeed antagonistic, pmuurs, is their preoccupation with the

'inexorable' character-the 'march'-of events. Both Tolstoy and

Maistre think of what occurs as a thick, opaque, inextricably complex

web of events, objects, characteristics, connected and divided by

literally innumerable unidentifiable links-and gaps and sudden discontinuities too, visible and invisible. It is a view of reality which makes all clear, logical and scientific constructions- the well defined,

symmetrical patterns of human reason-seem smooth, thin, empty,

'abstract' and totally ineffective as means either of description or of

analysis of anything that lives, or has ever lived. Maistre attributes

this to the incurable impotence of human powers of observation and

of reasoning, at least when they function without the aid of the superhuman sources of knowledge-faith, revelation, tradition, above all the mystical vision of the great saints and doctors of the Church, their

unanalysable, special sense of reality to which natural science, free

criticism and the secular spirit are fatal. The wisest of the Greeks,

many among the great Romans, and after them the dominant ecclesiastics and statesmen of the Middle Ages, Maistre tells us, possessed this insight; from it flowed their power, their dignity and their success.

The natural enemies of this spirit are cleverness and specialisation :

hence the contempt so rightly shown for, in the Roman world, experts

and technicians-the Gratculus uuritns-the remote but unmistakable

ancestors of the sharp, wizened figures of the modern Alexandrian

Age-the terriblf' Eighteenth Century-all the lcrivasurit tt avocasstrit

- the miserable crew of scribblers and attorneys, with the predatory,

sordid, grinning figure of Voltaire at their head, destructive and selfdestructive, because blind and deaf to the true Word of God. Only the Church t:nderstands the 'inner' rhythms, the 'deeper' currents of

the world, the silent march of things; non in commotiont Dominus; not

in noisy democratic !llanifestos nor in the rattle of constitutional

formulas, nor in revolutionary violence, but in the eternal natural

order, governed by 'natural' law. Only those who understand it know

what can and what cannot be achieved, what should and what should

not be attempted. They and they alone hold the key to secular success

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as well as to spiritual salvation. Omniscience belongs only to God. But

only by immersing ourselves in His Word- His theological or metaphysical principles, embodied at their lowest in instincts and ancient superstitions which are but primitive ways, tested by time, of divining

and obeying His laws-whereas reasoning is an effort to substitute

one's own arbitrary rules-dare we hope for wisdom. Practical wisdom

is to a large degree knowledge of the inevitable: of what, given our

world order, could not but happen; and conversely, of how things

cannot be, or could not have been, done; of why some schemes must,

cannot help but, end in failure, although for this no demonstrative or

scientific reason can be given. The rare capacity for seeing this we

righdy call a 'sense of reality'-it is a sense of what fits with what, of

what cannot exist with what; and it goes by many names: insight,