Mishel D\'herbigny

Vladimir Soloviev: a Russian Newman Mishel D\'herbigny

Publisher Marketing: ONE of the fortunes of war has been the revelation to Western eyes of a Russian mystic. It is Vladimir Soloviev. He is not only the foremost spiritual philosopher of Russia, but he is also one of the most distinguished types of the modern mind. Towards the end of his life he happened to write a book against Tolstoi, combating that writer's doctrine of the non-resistance of evil. The book has lately received two translations into English, as a statement of the philosophy of war from the Russian point of view. The subject of war, however, holds but a secondary place in the book, and indeed a very secondary place in the life of Soloviev. His great lifework was an exposition and propaganda of the claims of the Universal Church. He was a convert from Orthodoxy to Catholicism, and the one ruling passion of his life was to familiarize Russia with the idea of a Universal Church, monarchical in its constitution. This is the chief reason for calling him the Russian Newman. There were other striking similarities between the two men, although their divergencies were even more striking and more numerous. Soloviev, like Newman, was very lonely in his soul. He worked always from within-the voice of conscience was his all-impelling guide and force. His method was the personal one. He conceived in his own peculiar way a philosophy of the whole man, which was neither intellectualist, voluntarist, nor sentimentalist. With the watchword of "integralism," he stood for the due equipoise of all the faculties of man in the search for truth. He worked out for himself a method remarkably analogous to Newman's doctrine of the Native Sense, but with this important difference, that he always preserved a profound respect for the use and the value of the syllogism. Yet if, on the one hand, he was personal and subjective, it was always with a sane appreciation of the value of 0bjective evidence. Like Newman again, he took a special delight in the study of Holy Scripture and the Fathers, of Church history and the development of religion. Like Newman, too, he had an ardent love for his own country. He thought of Catholicism for Russia, and believed that if only Russia were Catholic it would mean the religious transformation of the whole world. Unlike Newman, Soloviev never became a priest. Both before and after his conversion he preferred to work as a layman. Nevertheless, he deemed that he could best follow his calling by remaining a celibate. Once, at the age of eighteen, he did think of marriage, but, by the time he had arrived at the age of twenty, he had fully resolved to lead a single life.