nations are more radical and revolutionary than Protestant. This was shown to be a historical fact, and we saw that it was explicable from the educative influence exercised by the respective churches. Not by chance, then, was it possible for me to point to Paine, Englishman and Quaker, as exemplar of a democratic revolutionary. The French, on the other hand, produced the revolutionary type of which Blanqui was the cardinal instance, and in this matter the Russians are more akin to the French than to the Protestant English, Americans, Scandinavians, and Germans. Bakunin the Russian, is the counterpart of Blanqui the Frenchman.[1]
Bakunin grew to manhood in Orthodox, absolutist Russia, whereas Marx and Engels were reared in Prussia, which though absolutist is Protestant; the distinction is conspicuous in the two great adversaries. A Protestant, qua Protestant, is positivistically "disillusioned," as Herzen and all the Russians desired to be but were not. To a German Protestant, Feuerbach and Vogt with their materialism and atheism are not so stimulating and exciting as they are to a Russian. The Protestant has the great ecclesiastical revolution behind him; he grows up in a comparatively rationalistic church and gains experience in its administration; he has become habituated to philosophising; the transition from theology to science is not so sudden and unbridged as in the Russian Orthodox church, which has still faith in revelation, is still mystically inclined, and is still so theurgical as to regard theological demonstration (and even scholastic demonstration) of its doctrines and institutions as superfluous, and is satisfied to guide the faithful by its absolute and reputedly divine authority. This is why Feuerbach, this is why philosophy and science in general, affect so differently from the Protestant the Russian who has hitherto been firm in his faith[2] The effect upon Roman Catholics was somewhat similar, but Roman Catholicism has to a considerably greater extent than Orthodoxy taken to
- ↑ The radical lust for revolution is conspicuous in the life of Blanqui, and has given its peculiar connotation to the term Blanquism. Born in 1805, he died in 1881, when seventy-six years of age. Between 1827 and 1870, a period of forty-three years, he took part in thirteen risings, was condemned to death several times, and spent thirty-seven years in prison, although he was pardoned more than once.
- ↑ Marx was of Jewish birth. When he was six years of age the whole family was converted to Protestantism. Mosaism is even more "positivistic" than Protestantism.
