evolution has not gone so far, but the trend and aim of evolution are already so far discernible that we can in all seriousness now speak of "humanity as a whole."
Inasmuch as Solov'ev so decisively rejects subjectivism, he can only regard morality as organised morality. The individual, the individual consciousness does not exist in isolation, but as a member of church and state; the philosophical principles of ethics and religion are abstractions derived from a study of the concrete state and the concrete church, abstractions from the study of the members of these extant organisations.
Solov'ev distinguishes three leading social organisations, the economic, the political, and the ecclesiastical. The economic order reposes upon the division of labour (Solov'ev inclines here towards the views of Mihailovskii), and aims at the organisation of labour; the positive sciences and the methods of technique belong to this domain. The state is the political organisation of the workers, and in this field art and philosophy are active. The church, finally, is the spiritual society, the manifestation of mysticism and theology the organisation of spiritual love; the state does not need love, but only law, or justice, the latter being recognised by Solov'ev as merely a formal principle. Law is for him the attainable minimum of morality; law is distinguished from morality by the former's appeal to the coercive powers of the state. Solov'ev does not recognise that there is any right to inflict capital punishment or to impose sentences of lifelong imprisonment; but, differing from Tolstoi, he regards war as permissible.
Solov'ev defends human rights (though not equal rights, and rejects political privileges. The privilege of one, is realised in oriental despotisms; the privilege of a few, in classical aristocracies; and finally the privilege of many, in democracy.
Solov'ev rejects socialism on account of its economic materialism, saying that the socialist order would be a social ant-hill (Dostoevskii was fond of this phrase). The social question he contends, will be readily and spontaneously solved from the religious outlook. Coming to practical details, Solov'ev is at one with the narodniki in contending that land should be assigned to every family.[1]
According to Solov'ev the church with its doctrines and mystagogy must permeate political and economic society, the
- ↑ In opposition to Voroncov, Solov'ev defends agrarian reform; he favours latifundia, upon which intensive agriculture could be carried on.
