Towards the Spiritual Convergence of America and Russia: American Mind and Russian Soul, American Individuality and Russian Community, and the Potent Alchemy of National Characteristics [Stephen Ludger Lapeyrouse] (fb2) читать постранично, страница - 44

humanity…Everywhere in these days men have ceased to understand that the true security is to be found in social solidarity rather than in isolated individual effort. But this terrible individualism must inevitably have an end, and all will suddenly understand how unnaturally they are separated from one another.” See Part 2, Book VI, 1 (d).

(обратно) [171] The mythical limits, westward, of the ancient world: the Straits of Gibraltar as they are known today. Images of the Pillars of Hercules, seem to have contributed to the now well-known symbol of the United States dollar sign.

(обратно) [172] From “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 60.

(обратно) [173] “Address to the Divinity Class”, Ralph Waldo Emerson: Essays and Journals, ed. Lewis Mumford, p. 57.

(обратно) [174] It was during this same summer, that a special gathering took place in Concord, Massachusetts, of Dr. Hiram K. Jones (a Neo-Platonist), Emerson, Bronson Alcott, F. B. Sanborn, et al, which led to the foundation and beginning of the Concord School of Philosophy the next summer.

(обратно) [175] From The Brothers Karamazov, Part Two, Book VI, 2, (g). Dostoyevsky’s “vertical” comprehension of “thoughts” can be interestingly compared to that of Thomas Jefferson. As Jefferson’s idea concerning this was described in M. Curti’s Human Nature in American Thought: “thinking was ‘an action’ of a ‘particular organization of matter’ rather than an intangible supersensation or manifestation of the supernatural through mystical intuition or insight” (p. 81).

(обратно) [176] This idea should be contrasted with that of Khomyakov which will be considered below. McCosh’s idea of this union would occur through mutual understanding and respect — an intellectual union. Khomyakov's human union occurs through love and common faith.

(обратно) [177] From “The Concord School of Philosophy”, Harper’s Weekly, Volume XXVI, No. 1889(7), 1882. It is not completely clear, in this article about the Concord School, whether all the material quoted is McCosh’s own words, a restatement of them, or a description by the anonymous author of this article. However this may be, the essential meaning and significance, in regard to my argument here, remains the same.

(обратно) [178] “The Concord School of Philosophy”, Austin Warren, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 2 (1929) p. 202, et al.

(обратно) [179] “The Concord School of Philosophy”, Austin Warren, The New England Quarterly, Vol. 2 (1929).

(обратно) [180] Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. wrote recently, in his The Cycles of American History, of Solzhenitsyn; “…Solzhenitsyn’s faith is suffused…by the otherworldly mysticism of the Russian Church — a mysticism that reflected the political absolutism of Russian society. By Russian religious standards, earthly happiness is nothing compared to the divine judgement…

He comes, moreover, as a messenger of God. ‘Truth eludes us,’ he said at Harvard, ‘if we do not concentrate with total attention on its pursuit.’ He has concentrated with total attention and does not doubt that the truth is his. But the notion of absolute truth is hard for Americans to take. If absolute truth exists, it is certainly not confided intact to frail and sinful mortals.

If prophecy is one Christian virtue [which it is not, except in a secular sense of the word; it is properly, a gift; ed.], humility is another. Knowing the crimes committed in the name of a single Truth, Americans prefer to keep their ears open to a multitude of competing lower-case truths. Ours has been a nation of skepticism, experiment, accommodation, self-criticism, piecemeal but constant reform — а collection of traits repugnant to the authoritarian and messianic personality, but perhaps not too bad for all that” (p. 116-7)

There is very much here for contemplation and insight.

(обратно) [181] However this certainly was true for some portions of the intelligentsia, e.g. Marxists, nihilists, materialists.

(обратно) [182] Not only did Ivan Karamazov’s mind break from what could well be diagnosed as a “Westen”-induced “brain fever”; but did Dimitri Karamazov, indeed, escape to America, rather than go to Siberia; he would surely have found, even the best and brightest at the Concord School of Philosophy, inadequate to his and Grushenka’s Russian souls.

(обратно) [183] Quote from Stuart R. Tompkins, “Vekhi and the Russian Intelligentsia”, Canadian Slavonic Papers, II (1957), p. 18.

(обратно) [184] Russia was what could be called a “vertically” oriented society, until the attempt was made, in the Bolshevik Revolution, to force Russia into a radical “horizontality”, which is a radical opposite of Hesychasm, for example.

America was and is much more of a horizontal nation, even in its intellectual, spiritual, religious and cultural life. Emerson’s Intellectual and Spiritual “Declarations of Independence” attempted to give a conception which would open up a “vertical” in the “horizontal”.

(обратно) [185] Citation from J. Flanagan, “Emerson and Communism”, The New England Quarterly, 1937, p. 261; [From “New England Reformers”].

(обратно) [186] From Rudolf Steiner, Lectures on the Apocalypse of St John, lecture of 24 June, 1908, Nürnberg.

(обратно) [187] A rather pathetic, and (at least, to date, still) bizarre indication of the conditions and attitude of presumptive reverence to the “head”, and the earthly mind, is revealed by a “medical procedure” in which people — with the requisite funds and desire — can undergo. People may have their entire bodies frozen, in such a deep freeze, that when in the future years — as stipulated in the contract which they sign with their ‘personal Cyrogenic specialist’- conditions of medical discovery and technology have reached the stage where life can be prolonged, or perhaps a special disease they have can be cured, they wish to be revived. (This could be decades into the future.) Some of these “patients”, as they are called, have only had their brains ‘saved’ for some future revival, later in time, on earth — presumably in some brain-vacated body! These clients are called “neuro-patients”. Their brains, with the protective skull included, are frozen for some possible future life. (Even to Timothy Leary, whose aging eyes reveal how many chemically-induced journeys he has made out of his mind (brain/skull), the idea of such preservation, to continue life as much and long as possible, seems very desirable. At present, he still graces California and America, in full, unfrozen body, with his wisdom and life experience, by a life on earth in his aging body. Noteworthy, that someone, who so often