A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2 by J. M. Robertson

of the predominance of rationalism in modern Europe is to be found in the literary history of the Scandinavian States and Russia. The Russian development indeed had gone far ere the modern Scandinavian literatures had well begun. Already in the first quarter of the century the poet Poushkine was an avowed heretic; and Gogol even let his art suffer from his preoccupations with the new humanitarian ideas; while the critic Biélinsky, classed by Tourguénief as the Lessing of Russia, [1873] was pronouncedly rationalistic, [1874] as was his contemporary the critic Granovsky, [1875] reputed the finest Russian stylist of his day. At this period belles lettres stood for every form of intellectual influence in Russia, [1876] and all educated thought was moulded by it. The most perfect artistic result is the fiction of the freethinker Tourguénief, [1877] the Sophocles of the modern novel. His two great contemporaries, Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, count indeed for supernaturalism; but the truly wonderful genius of the former was something apart from his philosophy, which was merely childlike; and the latter, the least masterly if the most strenuous artist of the three, made his religious converts in Russia chiefly among the uneducated, and was in any case sharply antagonistic to orthodox Christianity. It does not appear that the younger writer, Potapenko, a fine artist, is orthodox, despite his extremely sympathetic presentment of a superior priest; and the still younger Gorky is an absolute Naturalist.