ciple; in other cases they were content to reject theology and ecclesiastical religion.
Then came the reaction against eighteenth-century rationalism; romanticism arose, with its insistence upon imagination and the life of feeling. Liberals, too, were involuntarily swept away by the current, and many a liberal became a person of motley views, half rationalist and half romanticist.
Romanticism effected the restoration and established the sway of reaction, and liberalism, underwent an analogous evolution. Despite his rationalism, the liberal began to support the church in the social and political spheres, for the altar upholds the throne and the bourgeoisie, and the church dominates the masses. It became a liberal doctrine that religion must be preserved for the people. The liberal, the aristocrat of culture, might retain his private opinions, but religion was absolutely essential for the folk!
In Russia the attitude of liberalism towards religion was similar to that adopted in Europe. The more radical among the liberals were opposed to religion on principle, whilst the less radical declared against ecclesiastical religion and adopted, more or less, the creed of Rousseau and his Savoyard vicar (Radiščev, Granovskii); the earlier slavophils went so far, at any rate, as to idealise ecclesiastical religion. When socialism began to develop side by side with liberalism, the left wing of the liberals adopted the socialists' negative outlook upon religion and the church, whilst the liberal centre and right wing evaded any discussion of the principles of religion. We may recall that Solov'ev published his later views in the chief liberal organ. But at this stage it remained a matter of course for the liberals that they should fight theocratic ideas and theocratic policy.
The significant beginning of the constitutionalist era was the issue of the patent of toleration, The war with Japan, entered into with such high hopes in February 1904, soon proved disastrous. Pleve was assassinated; the zemstvos began to stir, and the liberals made common cause with the revolutionaries; in November 1904 Svjatopolk-Mirskii was appointed to succeed Pleve, and thoughts were entertained of summoning a zemskii sobor. On December 25th the ukase to the senate was issued demanding "provisional suggestions for the perfectionment of political institutions"; a committee of high officials was thereupon appointed, and this body dis-
