Isaiah Berlin - Russian Thinkers

societies-to the gratuitous sacrifice of the flesh and blood of live

human beings upon the altar of idealised abstractions.

Herzen is revolted by the central substance of what was being

preached by some of the best and purest-hearted men of his time,

particularly by socialists and utilitarians, namely, that vast suffering

in the present must be undergone for the sake of an ineffable felicity

in the future, that thousands of innocent men may be forced to die

that millions might be happy-battle cries that were common even in

those days, and of which a great deal more has been heard since. The

notion that there is a splendid future in store for humanity, that it is

guaranteed by history, and that it justifies the most appalling cruelties

in the present-this familiar piece of political eschatology, based on

belief in inevitable progress, seemed to him a fatal doctrine directed

against human life.

The profoundest and most sustained -and the most brilliantly

written-of all Herzen's statements on this topic is to be found in

the volume of essays which he called From tht Othtr Short, and wrote

as a memorial to his disillusionment with the European revolutions of

1 848 and 1 849. This great polemical masterpiece is Herzen's profession of faith and his political testament. Its tone and content are well conveyed in the characteristic (and celebrated) passage in which

he declares that one generation must not be condemned to the role of

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being a mere means to the welfare of its remote descendants, which

is in any case none too certain. A distant goal is a cheat and a deception.

Real goals must be closer than that- 'at the very least the labourer's

wage or pleasure in work performed'. The end of each generation is

itself-each life has its own unique experience; the fulfilment of its

wants creates new needs, claims, new forms of life. Nature, he

declares (perhaps under the influence of Schiller), is careless of human

beings and their needs, and crushes them heedlessly. Has history a

plan, a libretto? If it did 'it would lose all interest, become . . . boring,

ludicrous'. There are no timetables, no cosmic patterns; there is only

the ' Row of life', passion, will, improvisation; sometimes roads exist,

sometimes not; where there is no road 'genius will blast a path'.

But what if someone were to ask, 'Supposing all this is suddenly

brought to an end? Supposing a comet strikes us and brings to an end

life on earth? Will history not be meaningless? Will all this talk suddenly

end in nothing? Will it not be a cruel mockery of all our efforts, all

our blood and sweat and tears, if it all ends in some sudden, unexplained

brute fashion with some mysterious, totally unexplained event?' Herzen

replies that to think in these terms is a great vulgarity, the vulgarity

of mere numbers. The death of a single human being is no less absurd

and unintelligible than the death of the entire human race; it is a

mystery we accept; merely to multiply it enormously and ask 'Supposing millions of human beings die?' does not make it more mysterious or more frightening.

In nature, as in the souls of men, there slumber endless possibilities

and forces, and in suitable conditions . . . they develop, and will

develop furiously. They may fill a world, or they may fall by the

roadside. They may take a new direction. They may stop. They

may collapse . . . Nature is perfectly indifferent to what happens . . .

[But then, you may ask,] what is all this for? The life of people

becomes a pointless game . . . Men build something with pebbles

and sand only to see it all collapse again; and human creatures

crawl out from underneath the ruins and again start clearing spaces

and build huts of moss and planks and broken capitals and, after

centuries of endless labour, it all collapses again. Not in vain did

Shakespeare say that history was a tedious tale told by an idiot . . .

. . . [To this I reply that] you are like . . . those very sensitive people

who shed a tear whenever they recollect that 'man is born but to

die'. To look at the end and not at the action itself is a cardinal

error. Of what use to the Rower is its bright magnificent bloom?

Or this intoxicating scent, since it will only pass away? . . . None

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at all. But nature i s not so miserly. She does not disdain what is

transient, what is only in the present. At every point she achieves all

she can achieve . . . Who will find fault with nature because flowers

bloom in the morning and die at night, because she has not

given the rose or the lily the hardness of flint? And this miserable

pedestrian principle wt wish to transfer to the world of history . . .

Life has no obligation to realise the fantasies and ideas [of civilisation] . . . Life loves novelty . . .

• . . History seldom repeats itself, it uses every accident, simultaneously knocks at a thousand doors . . . doors which may open . . . who knows?

And again :

Human beings have an instinctive passion to preserve anything they

like. Man is born and therefore wishes to live for ever. Man falls in

love and wishes to be loved, and loved for ever as in the very first

moment of his avowal . . . but life . . . gives no guarantees. Life

does not ensure existence, nor pleasure; she does not answer for

their continuance . . . Every historical moment is full and is

beautiful, is self-contained in its own fashion. Every year has its

own spring and its own summer, its own winter and autumn, its

own storms and fair weather. Every period is new, fresh, filled

with its own hopes and carries within itself its own joys and

sorrows. The present belongs to it. But human beings are not

content with this, they must needs own the future too . . .

What is the purpose of the song the singer sings? . . . If you look

beyond your pleasure in it for something else, for some other goal,

the moment will come when the singer stops and then you will

only have memories and vain regrets . . . because, instead of listening, you were waiting for something else . . . You are confused by categories that are not fitted to catch the flow of life. What is this

goal for which you [he means Mazzini and the liberals and the

socialists] are seeking-is it a programme? An order? Who conceived it? To whom was the order given? Is it something inevitable?

or not? If it is, are we simply puppets? . . . Are we morally free or

are we wheels within a machine?; I would rather think of life, and

therefore of history, as a goal attained, not as a means to something

else.

And:

We think that the purpose of the child is to grow up because it does

grow up. But its purpose is to play, to enjoy itself, to be a child.

If we merely look to the end of the process, the purpose of all life

is death.

ALEXAN D E R H E RZEN

This is Herzen's central political and social thesis, and it enters

henceforth into the stream of Russian radical thought as an antidote

to the exaggerated utilitarianism of which its adversaries have so often

accused it. The purpose of the singer is the song, and the purpose of