MODERN EVIDENCE
733
with reality. Well, the dream was but a dream and such it remains;
we were phantoms and will die as phantoms, yet we were not at
fault and have nothing to blame ourselves for.
The Universal isolated from the particular and individual
exists in pure thought alone; in vital, concrete, visible reality the
Universal is but a lifeless masturbatory dream. Man is a grand
word, a grand cause, but not man in general, only man as French–
man, German, Englishman or Russian. Yet are we truly Russians?
No, society looks upon us as diseased growths on its body, and we
in tum regard society as a dungheap. Society is right, and we are
even more in the right.... Without purpose no activity is possi–
ble, arid without interests there is no purpose, and without activity
no life; and it is the substance of social life which is the source of
all three-interests, purpose and activity. Is that correct, logical,
clear? We are men without a country-no, worse by far, we are
men whose country is a phantom, and no wonder we are phantoms
ourselves, that our friendship, our loves, and our doings and striv–
ings are phantoms too. Botkin, you loved and your love came to
nothing. It is likewise the story of my love. Stankevitch
S
was of
a higher caliber than either of us, and that was his story too. No,
we were not made for love, to be husbands and fathers of fami–
lies. . .. There are people whose lives, lacking content, cannot take
on form; we, on the other hand, are men with ample life-content
for which society provides no given, settled forms. Outside our
circle I have met excellent men of greater actuality than ourselves;
but nowhere have I come upon men with such an insatiable thirst
for life, with such enormous demands on it, and with such capaci–
ties for self-sacrifice for the sake of an idea. That is the cause of
our appeal and of the disturbance our presence effects. . . . Look–
ing for a way out, we threw ourselves with fervor into the alluring
sphere of German philosophical contemplation, fancying that we
could create a charming inner world full of light and warmth clos–
ing us off from the external environment. We did not understand
that this contemplative subjectivism and inwardness comprised the
objective interest of the German national character, that it
is
for
the Germans what sociality
is
for the French. Reality roused us and
opened our eyes, but for what? . . .
Social solidarity or death! That is my motto. What is it to me
