ESSAYS AND OTHER WRITINGS

Supramoralism or general synthesis (universal union)

The synthesis of the two reasons (the theoretical and the practical) and of the three subjects of knowledge and action (God, man and nature, when man becomes both the instrument of divine wisdom and the rational principle of the universe) is also the synthesis of science and art within religion, which is identified with Easter, the great feast and the great deed.

Supramoralism is the duty to return life to our ancestors; it is the highest and incontrovertibly universal morality, the morality of rational and sensate beings; on the fulfilment of this duty of resuscitation depends the destiny of the human race...

Supramoralism is not only the highest Christian morality, it is Christianity itself; for it transforms dogmatics into ethics (that is, dogmas become commandments) – an ethics inseparable from knowledge and art, from science and aesthetics, all of which merge into ethics. Divine services become acts of atonement, that is to say, of resuscitation. Supramoralism is not based on the Beatitudes, which are elementary morality. It is based on the supreme commandment given before the first Easter and the last commandment given after the Resurrection by the First of the risen, as the necessary condition for continuing the task of resurrection. In essence, supramoralism is the synonym or translation of the greatest commandment, and leads us through the fulfilment of the last commandment ('Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature'), to become perfect like our Father who is in heaven; it calls for re-creation and resuscitation to liken us to the Creator, for this is what Christ prayed for in his last prayer ('that they may be one, that they too may be one in us, as Thou, Father, art in me and I in Thee'). Immediately after His resurrection, Christ indicated the way to such unity, which would endow us with the likeness of God and make us perfect like our heavenly Father, when He said, ‘Go out all over the world preaching to all nations and baptising them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.’ Baptism washes away original sin, the cause of death, and implies resurrection for the dead and immortality for the living.

Supramoralism is the problem of the two unions and the two divisions, that is, the external division into rich and poor and the internal division into learned and unlearned (the two reasons). This is solved by replacing the problem of the universal striving for wealth by the striving for a universal return to life –that is to say, by replacing our artificial life, our artificial tasks, by a natural task achieved in us by nature itself which – through us – becomes rational. Of course, owing to our urban way of life, which is extremely artificial and burdensome to all, the natural task of man, universal resurrection, must seem unnatural – one might even say very unnatural – but that does not mean that the task of universal resurrection is in fact unnatural, only that we have ourselves become too unnatural; we have distorted ourselves, our very nature. For nature, transcending its state of unconsciousness to that of consciousness, resuscitation is as necessary and natural as birth and death are for blind nature.

Nature has attained consciousness in the sons of man, the sons of deceased fathers, and this consciousness can be regarded as natural in nations living a rural way of life near the graves of their fathers; whereas in town dwellers who have, like prodigal sons, left the land and separated themselves from their fathers, the naturalness of consciousness has been lost. The greatest remoteness from naturalness, the greatest degree of artificiality, is reached by the learned; for them the God of the fathers has become the abstract god of deism, and the Son of Man an indeterminate human; there is complete freedom, but no sense or goal in life; there is division into two classes and two reasons, and a sense of rupture; yet at the same time there is a yearning for the restoration of unity. Only when the unification of the human race (namely, nature achieving consciousness, coming to an understanding of itself) is attained, will there be further progress both in this consciousness and in the control of nature itself by the human race – which is also part of nature, that part which has attained consciousness.

What will nature – which, in its present, unconscious state, is a force that procreates and kills – become when it achieves consciousness, if not a force restoring what it has destroyed in its blindness? How senseless are statements about the incommensurability of the forces of man, that is, of nature striving towards consciousness and control, and the forces of the same blind nature. And should one term 'human force' merely that of man's own hand, or include what he can achieve through nature? And are human force and human activity to be limited to what man achieves now by using the forces of nature? Why, the true, the natural task has not even begun...

An organism with its sensory and motor nerves leading to the brain centre is a model for a government of the Universe; all the heavenly bodies should be connected by two sets of conductors, one transmitting the force of feeling, the other that of motion. If such a unification of the Universe is not achieved" through us, through the generations of resurrected fathers and ancestors, and if the Universe does not achieve full self-consciousness and self-government in the likeness of God the Creator, this will not be because we are insufficiently gifted but perhaps because we are too gifted – and the most gifted are the least inclined to work for self-organisation and self-creation. Yet only this work can lead to self-consciousness and self-improvement, or adulthood, which entails living a self-determined life. To hope that a blind force would produce stronger beings with more perfect organs which would displace and oust mankind is a complete betrayal of reason. For reason would become an unnecessary appendix if it was not through reason that further improvement and the creation of organs were brought about, to replace those produced by the blind method of birth.

To carry out the natural task two unifications are necessary: an external one, which can be achieved by [the Russian] Autocracy, and an inner one to be achieved in Orthodoxy; it would be the union of all rational beings in the task of comprehending and controlling the irrational force which procreates and murders.

Supramoralism is expressed in the form of paschal questions addressed to all the living, to all sons endowed with the ability to comprehend – that is, an ability which gives the power to replace the freely given by that obtained through labour. These questions demand that all those who have been born should come to understand, and to feel, that birth means receiving, or rather taking, life from the fathers; and from this follows the consequent duty of the resuscitation of the fathers, a duty which gives immortality to the sons. These questions are raised at a time when the history of mutual extermination, committed unconsciously, becomes the history of the fulfilment of the project of resurrection unconditionally demanded by consciousness ; these questions are called 'paschal' because, when they are put into effect, they lead to the return of life and to atonement for sin and death.

Since the duty to return life is an unconditionally universal one, the paschal questions are addressed to all. Though few in number, they embrace the manifold diversity of contemporary life, and in accordance with their goal and purpose lead to the union of all. Moreover, they alone can give meaning and purpose to the already existing but uncertain longing for the countryside and for a simpler way of life.


Question I

Concerning two problems: the social (about wealth and poverty, or general enrichment) and the natural (about life and death, or the universal return to life), not merely in the theoretical sense, trying to answer the question ‘Why does the existing exist?’, but in the practical sense, demanding an answer to ’Why do the living suffer and die?’

It should be borne in mind that the problem of wealth merely refers to industrial toys and entertainments, and not to the essentials, the needed; the solution of this problem is unthinkable without the radical elimination of crop failures and famines, of epidemics and sickness in general (the sanitary and food problem); therefore the problem of essentials is part of that concerning the general return of life. 'Whilst there is death, there will be poverty.' What is more precious – gold, which is at the source of mutual extermination, or the dust of the fathers, as a means towards the reunification of the sons? What should have priority? The solution of the problem of wealth and poverty (the social problem), or the solution of the problem of life and death (the natural problem)? What is more important – social disasters (artificial pauperism) or common natural disasters (natural pauperism)? Is wealth a good thing and poverty evil, or is life, eternal life, the true good, and death the true evil? And what should be our task?

The problem of poverty and illusory wealth is also a problem of the two classes or estates (the poor and the rich), an insoluble one. However, the problem of life and death is the problem of the common calling which unites rich and poor in the Common Task of returning life, and this life – earned by labour – will be inalienable and eternal. So the first paschal question is how to replace the problem of poverty and wealth by that of death and life, which is the same for rich and for poor. The object of the problem is the whole of nature, namely, the blind force that procreates and kills; its solution requires the union of the two forms of knowledge and of the two classes – the learned and the unlearned – so that it becomes for both an object of knowledge and action. Only the substitution of the problem of life and death (natural pauperism) for that of poverty and wealth (artificial pauperism) can provide so vast a subject for study and action (the whole of nature) that it can unite the two reasons in the Common Task of understanding and governing the blind force that procreates and kills. And in this task of understanding and governing lies the fulfilment of God's will. So the first paschal question becomes a project whose purpose is to make everybody the subject and everything the object of knowledge and action.

The problem of wealth and poverty becomes identified with that of universal happiness, which is impossible in the face of death, while the problem of death and life should be identified with that of complete and universal salvation, instead of an incomplete and partial salvation whereby some (the sinners) are condemned to eternal suffering and the others (the righteous) to an eternal contemplation of this suffering. Replacing the problem of poverty and wealth by that of death and life does not exclude the problem of adequate nutrition, that is, of the basic needs, because wealth as excess and poverty as malnutrition and deprivation conducive to death are part of the problem of death, while the problem of nourishment as a precondition for work and life falls within the problem of life, of sustaining life in the living and returning life to those who have lost it; it is the food and sanitary problem.

As mentioned earlier, the problem of wealth is one of industrial toys and entertainment, as testified by those exhibitions where one constantly hears the enthusiastic exclamation, 'It's like a little toy!' The problem of wealth and poverty is, so to speak, a problem for minors, because apart from being insoluble it does not remove the problem of death, and this deprives wealth of its value. Therefore after an era characterised by the pursuit of wealth comes an era of renunciation, of asceticism. However, neither general enrichment nor general impoverishment (asceticism) can be the goal of life, nor can they give meaning to it, since neither is able to remove the problem of death – so beautifully expressed in the Indian legend about the king who surrounded his son with every possible luxury and tried to conceal from him the existence of illness, old age and death. Only a universal return to life can give meaning and purpose to life. The possibility of achieving this purpose cannot be proved or disproved by words alone – only action can provide proof.


Question II

Concerning two dead religions and a living one:

1. The inner, hypocritical, inactive, lifeless religion – 'ideolatry', deism, which does not demand any union or impose any action, and humanism, which actually postulates disunion under the guise of freedom.
2. The external, ritualistic and similarly lifeless or dead religion (idolatry).
3. The sole living, active religion for which the problem of life and death is a religious problem, that of resurrection ; when every Friday asks, 'Why do the living suffer ?', each Saturday asks, 'Why do the living die?' and every Sunday, 'Why do the dead not come to life again ? Why are those in their tombs not resurrected?'

1 am the God of thy fathers, the God not of the dead but of the living', and 'thou (son of man) shalt have no other gods' (that is, thou shalt not worship the dead god of deism, nor the lifeless god of humanism). Nature is not God and God is not in (blind and fallen) nature. God is with us. The rational force should govern the blind one, not the reverse. The rational force will govern when amongst us, rational beings, there shall be no discord, that is, when God is with us. 'Thou madest him (man) to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet' (Ps.8:6). 'Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him' (Heb.2:8).

The God of the fathers – not the dead but the living – created man in his likeness, and the living sons, the sons of the deceased fathers for whom the fathers are dead, incontrovertily dead; dead for ever, are evidently not in the likeness of God. Likeness to God is attainable only by re-creating life, by actual re-creation. A living religion is simply the 'religionisation', that is to say, the making into a religion, of the problem of life and death, of the return of life, of resurrection. Rural paganism is a living religion which not only buries the grain and sows the dead, but believes that its ring-dances symbolising the course of the sun bring it back from winter to summer,* and the life-giving force of this heavenly body revives the grain and resurrects the dead – resurrects them at least in the imagination of the people. Nor can the living Christian faith consider the sons of the deceased fathers other than as the instruments of the God of the fathers, His instruments in the task of returning life to the fathers; that is what religion should be.

*Khorovod from Khor or Khors, the name of the sun-god among the ancient Slavs, and vod, the root of the verb vodit', to lead. Hence also Khorosan — the land of the sun.

The greater the place in life accorded to wealth, to enrichment, the less room is left for religion, and the more it becomes lifeless, abstract, internalised, personal and idle, demanding no action – to put it briefly, a mere ghost... The art of concealing death is a characteristic feature of a dead religion: in fact, it constitutes the negation of religion. Indeed, the art of concealing death makes any religion a dead one. So what should be our faith and where should our duty lie? In lifeless deism, requiring no action and imposing no divine duty, or in the abstract indeterminism of humanism? Or should we seek for a cause, a duty to the God of our fathers (not dead but living) and to the sons of the fathers, both dead and dying (not yet dead), the 'morituri'? Must we, the sons of deceased fathers, be the instruments of God's will that they and we should live, or shall we remain for ever the opponents of the divine will, failing to unite in this common task and continuing to oust our fathers and exterminate each other as we do today?


Question III

Concerning the two types of relations of rational beings to the irrational force: the present one (exploiting and exhausting nature), or as it should be (regulating and re-creating it).

The present exploitation, exhaustion and utilisation of nature oblige us to ask: what for ? And it turns out to be for the production of toys and trifles, for entertainment and fun. This should not arouse our anger; we must remember that we deal with minors, even though they may be called professors, lawyers, and the like. Not 'with blind nature should our life be at one', but with our own kin, in order that rational beings may govern the irrational force.

Contrary to Schopenhauer's 'world as will and representation', it should be 'world as slavery and the project of liberation from enslavement', from dependence, from subordination to a blind force; for us the world has no will, and for beings endowed with feeling and capable of action and not mere contemplation, the world is not solely a representation but a project of liberation from bondage. The expression 'the world as will and representation' could be justifiably replaced by the expression 'the world as lust', for lust procreates and kills, giving birth to sons and destroying the fathers. For us the world is not a representation but a project, moreover one that does not oppose lust (the opposite of lust is asceticism) but transforms the procreating force into a re-creating one, the lethal into a vivifying. Then the world can no longer remain a representation but becomes a project of the restoration of the predecessors by the offspring, that is, a project of resuscitation. That is how it should be, but at the present time the world is as it is – lust and representation.

These are the two attitudes of rational beings to the irrational force:

1. The theoretical or illusory domination of nature entails a theoretical superiority of the rational beings over the natural force, but in practice accepts dependence on and subservience to the irrational force. The superiority over the irrational force is not put into effect, and this leads to complete submission. Similarly inactive – in other words, wrong – is the attitude of those who limit themselves to laboratory experiments and their application to manufacturing industry, to the exploitation and utilisation of natural resources.

2. Only the regulation of natural processes, that is, of the blind force, is the right attitude of a rational being to the irrational force. Regulation means the transformation of a procreating and annihilating force into one that restores and vivifies. Regulation is not self-indulgence (that is to say, not subjection to arbitrary caprice) and not self-will (exploitation), but the endowing of nature with will and reason. Man will govern nature when discord among people ends, when they bring into the world not selfishness but good will and, consequently, become instruments of God's will. Man as a rational being has but one enemy – the blind force of nature – and even that enemy will become an eternal friend when discord ceases among people, when they unite in order to understand and govern the blind force of nature, which  punishes us for our ignorance as it punished Martinique this year (1902) for the scientists' incorrect understanding of the volcanic processes.

So what should be the attitude of rational beings living not in discord but in concord, of beings both rational and sensitive to bereavement? What should be their attitude to an irrational force which is both life-giving and lethal? Is it right for a rational being endowed with willpower and already possessing not only natural innate gifts but the fruits of his labour, created by himself, to submit to a blind, spontaneous force? What indeed should be the common task of rational, sensate beings? Is it merely to exploit and utilise nature and exhaust it (exhaust its freely given, freely procreated gifts), or else to regulate nature, by transforming the freely given into the fruits of labour, the procreated into the created, the being born into the restored, the lethal into the vivifying? For a rational being to obey nature means to govern it because in the rational being nature has acquired a leader and a governor; whereas for submission, subservience, servility and ignorance, nature, as already said, imposes the death penalty, and this year has sentenced to death over 40,000 people for poor progress in the study of volcanic forces. For man as the consciousness of nature, the natural problem, the problem of nature as a force which procreates and kills, constitutes his natural task because it solves the problem of hunger, epidemics and sickness in general – that is, of old age and death. Both believers and unbelievers can unite in this natural task, and by uniting and carrying out the task they will attain oneness of mind. In taking part in this task the believers will not oppose God's will, but carry it into effect, while for unbelievers it will be their liberation from enslavement to the blind force, and submission to the will of God, instead of that persistent denial of divine will on which philosophy squanders its powers.


Question IV

Concerning the two reasons (the theoretical and the practical) and the two classes (the learned, the intelligentsia; and the unlearned, the people); and concerning philosophy as an infantile babbling of humanity, or thought without action, and the sole true reason that unites everybody in common knowledge and in the government of the blind, irrational force by regulation; resulting eventually in the knowledge and ever-expanding government of all the worlds, of all world systems, till the ultimate spiritualisation of the universe, regulated by the resurrected generations, comes to pass. This will be in its cosmic fullness what – in a much shortened form – each being goes through in its prenatal state.

Know thyself (in other words, do not believe your fathers, that is, tradition; do not believe the testimony of others or of your brothers; know only thyself, says the demon (of Delphi, or Socrates).

I know, therefore I exist, answers Descartes, and Fichte comments:

I – the knowing – am the existing; all the rest is only what I know, namely, my mental image and, therefore, non-existing.

Hence, Love thyself with all thy soul and all thy heart, conclude Stirner and Nietzsche, find thyself in thyself, be the only one and recognise nothing except thyself.

Or Know yourselves in the fathers and the fathers in yourselves, and you will be a brotherhood of sons. Then condemnation (critique) will be replaced by atonement – an atonement not in words only but in action, in resuscitation – and then we will become truly the disciples of Christ.

The two reasons The contemplative (theoretical) reason sees both God and the deceased fathers as mental images, and each other as things, not as thinking beings. It recognises the regulation of nature (cosmology), yet only in the field of knowledge (representation), not in reality. The practical reason that does not transform thought into action but leaves it as imagery – that is superstition. Neither the critique of pure reason nor that of practical reason explains the basic causes for the division into two reasons and two classes (the learned and the unlearned), those basic causes which result in two ignorances.

The two classes One of them admits being benighted and the other (philosophers and intellectuals) does not recognise the possibility of actual (objective) knowledge; the result is two forms of ignorance, the inevitable consequence of a divided reason. The theoretical reason is incapable of distinguishing between hallucination and reality, while the practical remains passive and submissive to the lethal force, and even transforms its life-giving force into sterile lust (deliberately childless marriages), which leads to the extinction of the race and makes eternal life impossible.

The one reason is that 'true' reason to which all are called so that none should perish but all should unite in the task of 'the sons of man', so that all be one.

When the theoretical reason which studies death and life, and the practical one which returns life and thus defeats death (in the task of universal resuscitation), together carry out the wilt of the Son, who gave the commandment for all to come together, and the will of the Holy Spirit, who acts (and not

only speaks) within those who unite, then in working on the Common Task they will learn to make a reality of ‘the hoped for’; the task will unite faith with reason, for such is the true natural relationship of the two reasons; it is the relationship as it should be, but fails to be at the present time. Now the theoretical reason divorced from the practical – that of the people, the believers (Christians and peasants) – replaces the problem of life and death with the urban problem of wealth and poverty, making it a problem either of general enrichment or of impoverishment, thus condemning the human race to remain perennial minors.

To establish a correct, adequate relationship between the two reasons, priority should be given to practical reason, that of the common people who believe in resurrection and in participating in the task of resurrection. Indeed, the people believe that they participate in this task as the instruments of the will of the God of the fathers and, in their paganism, ascribe to their ring-dances the power of bringing back the sun from winter to summer, of returning the buried grain and bringing back to life the bodies of their fathers sown in the earth; or else the people attribute a similar effect to the sole power of prayer, because they do not know of any work or endeavour which would enable them to influence nature in cases of drought, flood and other disasters. The people, who live close to nature and are completely dependent on it, will not give up their superstitions and superstitious activities, whatever they are told, unless they are shown effective means of governing those forces on which they are dependent today. The task of theoretical reason should consist in the discovery of such means, and not in the denial of a rational cause of all being and a rational purpose for existence. Therefore, to allocate pride of place to theoretical reason is usurpation, a betrayal of its begetter – the practical reason from which theoretical reason originated in the first place, just as the town developed from the village and town dwellers from villagers. Therefore the return of theoretical reason to the practical, in other words, to the village, will be an expression of repentance for this-betrayal and usurpation.

In distancing themselves from the countryside, the town dwellers have forgotten the fathers and the God of the fathers; God has become for them an unattainable ideal, an idea, and the question has even arisen of how this idea of God originated. Town dwellers have begun to ask how this idea of a god ever entered their heads. Upon returning to the countryside, they are bound to repent the oblivion of the fathers and of the God of their fathers; they will come to understand that one can speak of the sins of desertion, of forgetting and of alienation, but not about the origin of the idea of God, which always existed and arose with consciousness...

When separated, the theoretical and practical reasons are two forms of ignorance, of darkness, but when theoretical reason unites with the practical, believing, peasant Christian reason, together they will shine with double radiance; there will be none of the former mutual accusations by the believers of the unbelievers of gloomy doubt, nor of the believers by the unbelievers of obscurantism and retrograde fanaticism. It should be noted that in accusing the believers of obscurantism the unbelievers do not consider their own light as true, since they admit themselves that their knowledge, that of theoretical reason, is merely subjective.


Question V

Concerning the two passions: sexual sensuousness and a child's love for its parents or, what amounts to the same, universal enmity and universal love.

‘There is no eternal hate – to eliminate temporary hate is our task’.
‘Become as little children’.

The two passions are sexual sensuousness and the ensuing asceticism as a rejection of sensuousness, and the one feeling of universal love for the parents, which is inseparable from the one reason.

Has hostility no cause, or are there real causes for the unbrotherly relations between people and the lack of kinship between blind nature and rational beings ? And how can kinship be restored?

The attraction of external beauty for the sensuous force is a ploy to mislead individuals for the sake of preserving the species; attraction which neither sees nor wishes to see in the sensuous force also a lethal force fails to see the connection between birth and death, and leads to industrialism which serves to excite the sexual instinct. To protect itself industrialism creates militarism and exacerbates wealth and poverty, and the two latter engender socialism and the problems arising from the pursuit of wealth.

A sentient but not sensuous force arises in the souls of children. With the onset of old age and the death of the parents, it is transformed into one of compassion, of co-dying; it unites all sons and daughters in knowledge and government, that is, in the regulation of nature; it becomes a mighty force re-creating those who have died. As the generations come back to life, this regulation gradually expands to all the worlds. Out of the child's love, the son's and particularly the daughter's love, arises universal love, which develops and is strengthened by participation in the filial task common to all and close to the hearts of all.


Question VI

Concerning the two wills and the two moralities.

    1. The two wills: the will to procreate, that is to say, will in the sense of lust or the denial of lust (asceticism), life for oneself (egotism) and life for others (altruism), and the will to resuscitate and live with all the living for the raising of the dead.

'Know thyself, for the kingdom of the world is at hand.'
'Repent, those who know only themselves, for the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of all, is at hand.'

In contradistinction to the one will to procreate and its negation, asceticism, the one will to resuscitate is inseparable from the one reason and the one passion.

    2.The two moralities. What is preferable: the morality of disunion, that is, the freedom of the individual expressed in the struggle for an illusory personal dignity and illusory goodsl among sons who have forgotten their fathers and replaced love for the fathers by lust ; or the morality of union, the morality of sons conscious of their loss, sensitive to theiri orphanhood and finding their happiness in the task of fulfilling! their duty towards their fathers?

The will to procreate, as lust, engenders wealth and leads the? human race to demoralisation (of which the Universal Exhibition is a striking expression), whereas the will tOi resuscitate, when the problem of returning life is seen as the purpose of conscious beings, moralises all the worlds of the Universe, because then all the worlds that are moved by insensate forces will be governed by the brotherly feelings of all the resurrected generations. This involves both their moralisation and their rationalisation, because then the worlds of the Universe will no longer be moved by blind insensate forces but will be governed by the feelings and reason of the resurrected generations.


Question VII

Concerning the two styles, the two ways of life, or rather the one rural life (that is, that of the sons who have not deserted the graves of their fathers), the immature form of which is nomadism and the obsolescent one the urban, the civilised.

The fact that the urban, industrial way of life gives pride of place to luxury industry, which is even termed scientific industry, shows that all industry and technology are doomed to serve the sexual instinct; this is deeply humiliating and shameful for the human intellect, and highlights the close affinity of humans to animals as well as the increasing moral degradation of the city. It can be said that all urban culture is the worship, the divinisation, the cult, of woman.

What path to choose? The urban cult of things and of woman, of the splendour of putrefaction, or the countryside and the dust of the fathers? Will we choose the countryside, in the hope that it will attain a state when the dust of the fathers will no longer be transformed into food for their offspring but into the blood and flesh of the fathers, so that they become alive for us, beings of flesh, as they are alive for God? Will we choose the cult of graveyards, of the deceased awaiting revival, or the Universal Exhibition, the fruit of industrialisation – an institution which has already reached maturity and is becoming obsolescent, an institution allegedly hostile but in fact friendly to militarism, which is displacing graveyards, churches and universities, which scorns the museum (where the relics of the ancestors are preserved) – in brief, an institution which admits life only in itself?

Rural life as it is now, although superior to the two others (the nomadic and the urban), is not yet a perfect life. Rural life will achieve the conditions necessary to attain perfection, will become capable of perfection, only when town dwellers return to the graves of their fathers and nomads become settled – that is to say, when no one deserts the tombs of the ancestors, when cemeteries become centres for the gathering together of sons, when, united in their filial task, they become brothers. The conditions for attaining perfection will be acquired only when the problem of the two types of people is solved – those who are the sons of deceased fathers, who remember and pray for them, and those who have forgotten their fathers, the prodigals for whom the highest title is 'man', man in general, complete man and finally superman (the most abstract philosophical definition, which contains nothing definite; when we see the solution to problems of the peasants, who retain the cult of their fathers, and the town dwellers, with their cult of woman and sexual passion in its various manifestations; when it is recognised that the truly loftiest definition is son of man, for it epitomises the duty of all sons, as one son, to all the fathers as one father, that is, the duty of resuscitation, the duty of rational beings, united in the image of the Triune Being in whom is revealed for us the prime cause of immortality and man's guilt, which has brought death on us.


Question VIII

Concerning science as it is and as it should be, class science on science based on universal observations and experimentation on conclusions drawn from observations carried out every where, always and by all, on experiments carried out by nature itself; the experience of the regulation of meteorological, volcanic or plutonic and cosmic phenomena, and not experiments carried out in academic and industrial laboratories; conclusions drawn from the experimentation carried out by all the living together, over the whole earth as a single unit seen as the cemetery of innumerable generations, gradually returning to life and joining those who learn and govern in expanding control from one planet, our Earth, to others, to the solar system as a whole and eventually to other systems, to all the Universe.

Is present-day science adequate? Is the university an obsolete institution? For it is a slave to industrialism, unaware that the latter produces merely toys and trifles and recognises nothing higher than the goods it provides. The university is 'the enemy of throne and altar', the enemy of 'autocracy, orthodoxy and nationality'; it sets itself up as judge over ancestors, prophets, Christ and even God himself; it is the enemy of all authority, exciting sons against fathers, ranking discord above unity, leading to monism and solipsism, enjoining everyone to consider himself as the only one and transforming the whole world into a representation. Such are the principles basic to the university and its existence. This makes it into an obsolescent institution where the voice of the professors is drowned in the clamour of demands from student-pupils on strike.

Can a class science be called true science whilst it is based on observations carried out here and there, sometimes and by some people, and on deductions limited to laboratory experiments and applied to industrial activities? Or should it be based on deductions from observations carried out everywhere, always and by everybody, and be applied to the regulation and government of the blind, insensate force of nature? Has pure science, university science, the right to remain indifferent to human disasters? In other words, must it be knowledge just for the sake of knowledge, a knowledge of  why the existing exists and not why the living suffers and dies?! And is not applied science criminal in creating objects of contention – industrial toys – and arming those contending for these toys with ever more destructive and pain-producing weapons, which powerfully contribute to making the Earth into a cemetery?

Science, as it is, could merge all branches of knowledge in astronomy, or else in history. If all knowledge is merged in astronomy, history becomes a minor chapter of zoology; whereas if all branches of knowledge are brought together in history, astronomy becomes just a short page in the history of human thought. However, science as it should be, in order to be true and active, must open up to history, that is, to the generations who were confined to, suffered and died within our small planet; and history must open up to them, as a field of activity, all the Universe and all the heavenly worlds.


Question IX

Concerning art as it is, that is, a game or the creation of dead likenesses, and art as it should be, that is, art as re-creation, through the labour of all, of the life that has passed away – real, authentic life.

Humanity is not a product of nature, but a creation of God mediated by ourselves, and including the resurrected generations for the rational government of the universe.

Art as it should be, how it was and what it has become.

Must art, for the sons of deceased fathers, be limited to the creation of dead semblances of what has passed away, or else simulations of the Universe symbolically represented in church buildings? Or should it be the actual creation of the past and of the Universe, a task both divine and human? Has not this second purpose of art been obvious from its very inception? For it began with the rising up of the living to a vertical posture and the raising of the fallen, the dead; indeed, if living man, having adopted a vertical posture, looked up to heaven, the dead were symbolically raised by the erection of memorials. Later, art sought to re-create earth and heaven in church architecture, and only latterly did it fall to the level of the Universal Exhibition, where sons who had forgotten their fathers gathered what merely serves to stimulate sexual selection.

All arts can be combined in the German way as in opera or the theatre, or, as we assume, in the Slav or the Russian way, in architecture at its loftiest – in the church and its services. The church building is a representation of the Universe, infinitely superior because of the idea embodied in it; for the church is a projection of the world as it should be. The church, is a representation of heaven, of the heavenly vault, and on its |walls are representations of deceased generations as if already risen. On iconostases such as the one in Moscow's Cathedral; of the Assumption and in other temples, we see, however j much compressed, a picture of all history beginning with. Adam, then the forefathers who lived before and after the flood, kings, prophets, the Forerunner, Christ, the apostles and so on to the end of time. During the divine service these celestial beings join in worship with clergy and congregation, so that both the living and the dead constitute one church.

However, church buildings are representations of the world according to the Ptolemaic world view, and so long as this was accepted there was no contradiction between knowledge and art. When the Ptolemaic world view was superseded by that of Copernicus, there arose a contradiction between art and knowledge because art had remained Ptolemaic and knowledge had become Copernican. The Ptolemaic world view as expressed in art, in church buildings and services was a pseudopatrification in heaven, whereas the Copernican should lead to real patrification – resuscitation – and this will solve the contradiction between knowledge and art.

Could the museum, that repository of relics of the past, be the institution to carry out this task? It is still immature, and uncertain to what purpose it preserves the obsolete, and has not yet asked, ’Will these bones come to life?’ Nor does it yet understand its closeness to the church of the God of the fathers, or that it is the complete opposite of industrialism and militarism. Nor does it notice its enemies either in the university itself, the devotee of the blind force of nature which kills the fathers, or in the master of the university, industrialism, which openly despises the museum and, though less openly, the university itself.


Question X

Concerning faith and knowledge, or Easter as a feast and the act of resuscitation. In Christianity art and knowledge are reunited in Easter, and even in paganism the ancestor cult can bring religion to perfection, reality and implementation. Religion as a symbiosis of knowledge and action is the cult of the dead, or the Easter of suffering and resurrection. Religion is the universal prayer of all the living in the face of suffering and death, a prayer for the return of life to all the deceased. To carry this out is the duty and task of all those at prayer, and in it lies the fulfilment of truth, good, beauty and the magnificence of incorruptibility. The suffering and risen Christ is the prototype of all human sons of man. Two weeks in the year are devoted to Him, but the other fifty are only the repetition of these two.

Must faith and knowledge always be opposed and hostile to each other, or should they unite, and if so how? Will this problem be solved in the city, which is increasingly dominated by the fourth estate, a class solely concerned with utilitarianism and secularism, a class which considers maximum enjoyment and minimum work as the greatest good and rejects as rubbish anything, even science, that fails to promote this goal directly?! Or can the solution be found in the countryside, where everything that has been squeezed out of the city will come together in order to enter into direct, immediate relations with the land (that is, the dust of the fathers) and the sky – the force that kills and vivifies – and transform it into a-governable entity? In the task of governing the blind force, which is also the task of resuscitation, all knowledge and art will serve as tools in the great cause; and only in this way can faith and knowledge be united.

Easter begins with the creation of man by God, mediated by man himself. It is expressed in the rising up of the sons (vertical posture) and in the restoration (in upright memorial stones) of the deceased fathers; it is expressed in the spring ring-dances symbolising the course of the sun on All Saints' Day, [celebrated by the orthodox on the ninth day after Easter] performed at cemeteries, symbolising the return of the sun from winter to summer to bestow life...

The celebration of Easter, which has practically disappeared in the West, especially the far West, is kept in Russia, and above all in the Kremlin, in the vicinity of the graves of those who gathered and united the sons for the purpose of resurrecting the fathers. And when unbrotherliness ceases, the Kremlin, the citadel which defended the ashes of the fathers, will change its purpose from guarding to reviving those ashes. The Coronation, which entrusts Him who stands for all the fathers with the common task of resuscitation, would have no meaning if it took place elsewhere than in the Kremlin. The Coronation would be even more meaningful if it took place on Easter Day. The manifesto of 12 August 1898, the 'manifesto on disarmament', as it is called,1 could take on its full meaning only on Easter Day, which replaces the day of retribution, judgement and punishment by universal pardon, amnesty. The well known homily of John Chrysostom, read usually at the end of Easter matins, is an amnesty. The same is expressed by the kiss of peace exchanged among parishioners, which shows that all wrongs and offences are forgotten. At its place of origin, Old Jerusalem, and its copy, the monastery of New Jerusalem, built by Patriarch Nikon, Easter is particularly tangible and palpable and in these places it is ever present, constant, all the year round; there the identification of Easter and Orthodoxy is particularly evident and comprehensible.  2

1.This is a reference to the First Hague Peace Conference convened on the initiative of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia in 1899. Its wide scope was eventually reduced to the setting up of what has hecome the Hague International Court of Justice; see note 1 to 'Disarmament', p. 144, and Appendix IV.

2.The Voskresensky Monastery (the Monastery of the Resurrection), some forty kilometres from Moscow, was built in the 1650s by Patriarch Nikon. It was known as the New Jerusalem because its main church was a copy of that of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

The sons who venerate their fathers have not only preserved and defended the dust of their fathers with the utmost valour, but have seen their fathers in heaven and their churches represented in heaven – that is, the world as it appears to our senses. However, when the scholars rejected the Ptolemaic world view, which made patrification possible, and rejoiced that all was dead, that there was no heaven and that patrification was impossible, it became apparent that the Copernican view required, as proof, actual patrification, that is to say, the regulation of all the worlds by past generations not born but re-created, because any proposition (and the Copernican view was and remains a proposition), unless substantiated by tangible proof, ceases to be a hypothesis and becomes superstition. How can the Copernican world view be tangibly proven, if we do not acquire the faculty to live beyond the Earth, all over the Universe? Without the ability not only to visit but also to inhabit all heavenly bodies, we cannot be convinced that they are as posited by the Copernican view and not as they appear to our senses.

The ability to live all over the Universe, enabling the human race to colonise all the worlds, will give us the power to unite all the worlds of the Universe into an artistic whole, a work of art, the innumerable artists of which, in the image of the Triune Creator, will be the entire human race, the totality of the risen and re-created generations inspired by God, by the Holy Spirit, who will no longer speak through certain individuals, the prophets, but will act through all the sons of man in their ethical or brotherly (supramoral) totality, through the sons of man attaining divine perfection ('Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect') in the cause, the work of restoring the world to the sublime incorruptibility it had before the Fall. Then, united, science and art will become ethics and aesthetics; they will become a natural universal technology of their work of art – the cosmos. United, science and art will become an ethico-aesthetic theurgy, no longer mystical but real.

If the church building in Ptolemaic art was a reflection of the Universe as it appears to our external senses, if this insignificantly small building inspired by inner feeling, by its profound meaning, was spiritually incomparably greater than the Universe, then in Copernican art the inner and outer expressions must achieve complete congruity. This is what man was created for ; herein lies the answer to the question regarding sense and purpose, about which rational beings, sons forgetful of their fathers and who have lost faith in the God of their father, have never ceased to ponder and torment themselves.

Our ancient Russia did not forget her fathers, nor did she lose faith in the God of the fathers. Yet we look upon her as the Jews did upon Galilee, on Nazareth, expecting no good to come therefrom, nothing outstanding intellectually or morally. Our ancient Russia never doubted that the answer to the question ‘What has man been created for?’ is that humans were created to be the heavenly powers replacing the fallen angels, God's divine instruments for governing the Universe and restoring it to the incorruptible magnificence it had before the Fall.



Question XI

Concerning minority and the coming of age.

Be perfect as God your Father is perfect, God the Father of the living, not of the dead. Where should we look for models of living? In the world of the animals, of blind nature, or in a world that is superior to the human race? Should the model for our society be an organism and the blind evolution of life, or should the model for our unity-in-pluralism be the Divine Trinity, within which unity is not a yoke and independence not discord? Would not then Divine creativeness, replacing our present destruction of life, serve us as a model for its re-creation?

The problem of minority and the coming of age is one of crisis, and this crisis is a necessary consequence of our minority. An amnesty is the precondition of our coming of age, an amnesty to eliminate the Last Judgement, world war, catastrophe and the end of the world.

Wealth, and the craving for industrial toys, doom mankind to perennial minority, make of a son and brother a citizen needing constant supervision and the threat of punishment, and lead to diplomatic intrigues and military adventurism. Does not minority consist in submission to blind evolution, leading to the revolt of sons against fathers and conflict among brothers, that is, to depatrification and defraternisation, and eventually to degeneration and extinction? Does not adulthood consist in all becoming brothers for the re-creation of the parents, the victims of struggle and progress? And will this not be made manifest by the transfiguration of the Kremlin from a fortress protecting the dust of the fathers and a church for funerals into a centre for extra-ecclesiastical liturgy or resuscitation?

The human race, persisting in its infantilism, a state of discord, failing to unite in order to study the blind force and submitting to its will in a natural way, drifts towards degeneration and extinction. In a supernatural way it can only expect transcendental resurrection, achieved not by us but by an external force and even contrary to our will; this would be a Last Judgement resurrection of wrath, condemning some (the sinners) to eternal suffering and others (the righteous) to the contemplation of this suffering. We who venerate God, Who wants all men to be saved, to come to true wisdom so that none shall perish, cannot but find such an end extremely sad, extremely distressing. Therefore we dare to think that the prophecy of the Last Judgement is conditional, like that of the prophet Jonah and like all prophecies, because every prophecy has an educational purpose – the purpose of reforming those to whom it is addressed; it cannot sentence to irrevocable perdition those who have not even been born yet. If that were the case, what sense, what purpose, could such a prophecy have, and could it accord with the will of a God who, as already stated, wishes all to be saved, all to come to true reason and none to perish?

Jonah was rebuked for his disappointment when his prophecy did not come true, and his disappointment was held against him; we dare to think the author of the Apocalypse, who was also the apostle of love, would thank the Lord for his prophecy failing to be fulfilled.



Question XII

Concerning despotism (bondage) and constitutions (self-will), or overt domination (despotism) and covert yoke (constitution), and autocracy, when power over humans is replaced by power over the blind force, which leads to adulthood, true pacification and good will – good will being the essence of autocracy.*

*Fedorov held the view that in a constitutional monarchy or republic different political parties fight for the sectional interests of their electors, turning parliamentary debates into institutionalised discord which was not conducive to brotherhood. Similarly, brotherhood could not be enforced by a despot upon unwilling subjects.

Render to God what is God's and to Caesar what is Caesar's is the scriptural law under pagan power. The people exist not for the Tsar, nor the Tsar for the people, hut the Tsar and the people together are the executors of God's cause, the all-human cause – such is the scriptural law of a Christian Orthodox power. It is the solution to the antinomies of God and Caesar, the spiritual and the secular, and the solution of the two reasons.

Constitution means entertainment in Austria, a boxing match in Italy, 'a game not worth the candle' in France, and idle verbiage everywhere, whereas autocracy means sonship and fatherhood ; it means the task of sons directed by him who stands in place of the fathers and forefathers, anointed by the God of the fathers (living, not dead) for the protection of the land (the dust of the fathers) from those who fail to recognise the brotherhood of sons ; autocracy is the task of the sons which becomes, with the full union of those sons, the return of life to the dust of the fathers – that is to say, struggle not against members of our own species but against the dark force which procreates and destroys life.

Will not the fulfilment of the task of autocracy put an end to all divisions – division in religion, division into two reasons, into two classes (the learned and the unlearned) – and will this not put an end to the division of power, the power of God and of Caesar, so that Caesar becomes an instrument of God? The Tsar together with the people will become the executor of God's cause; the problem of life and death will replace that of wealth and poverty; the moral will supersede the legal, economic and social; the obligatory will be replaced by the voluntary, and the poverty of the human being – his natural poverty, not to mention his artificial poverty – will become a wealth indestructible and the life of all, for all and with all, a treasure to which we should devote our minds, hearts and will.

The paschal question is the question of whether humans will remain perennial minors or achieve true adulthood. Will the human race remain at the first stage of nature's transition from blindness to consciousness, which, at the present time, it has reached through us, or will it achieve full consciousness and the government of all the worlds by resuscitated generations?

To abdicate the task of resuscitation leaves the human race only the choice between constitutional debating and despotism. To retain Easter as a feast only and the liturgy as a church service, an expression of an as yet incomplete love for the fathers which does not entail actual resuscitation, or, by abdicating completely brotherhood and filial love, to indulge on the graves of the fathers in bestial orgies followed by savage mutual extermination; to retain the art of dead likenesses or to annihilate any true likenesses; not merely to censure parents for giving life to their offspring without their consent, but to curse one's procreators; to retain academic class science or, rejecting all knowledge, to descend into the hopeless darkness of obscurantism; to remain in the perennial city of brides and bridegrooms, surrounded by toys and trifles, indulging in pleasures and entertainments, or else, rejecting not only fathers and forebears but even progeny, sons (artificially childless marriages), in order to indulge in boundless lechery; to retain will as either lust or mortification of the flesh; to retain sensuousness or to be satisfied by mere grieving for the dead or – the last and greatest evil – to plunge into nirvana, the product of total evil negation – such are the fruits of abdicating the task of resuscitation.

Quite different are the good tidings of Christianity. Just as Buddhism is contrary to Christianity, so the hoped-for future promised by Christianity is the opposite of nirvana. In contradistinction to the Buddhist nirvana, which is nonexistence, supramoralism demands from rational beings the fullest development of existence – of all that was, is and can be. Rational beings are in possession of the present, of all that is, and resurrect all that was, transfigured, made perfect. Supramoralism postulates paradise, the Kingdom of God, not in the world beyond but here and now; it demands the transfiguration of this earthly reality, a transfiguration which extends to all heavenly bodies and brings us close to the unknown world beyond. Paradise, or the Kingdom of God, is not only within us; it is not only a mental and spiritual kingdom, but a visible, tangible one, perceptible to our organs as developed by psychophysiological regulation (by the control of spiritual and bodily phenomena), organs capable of sensing not just the growing of the grass but the motion of atoms and molecules throughout the Universe, thus making possible the restoration of life and the transfiguration of the entire Universe.

Therefore the Kingdom of God, or paradise, is the product of all the forces, all the abilities of all the people in their totality; the result of positive, not negative, virtues. Such is the paradise of adults. It can only be the product of humans themselves, the result of a fullness of knowledge, a depth of feeling and the might of willpower. Paradise can be created only by the people themselves in fulfilment of God's will, not by individuals but by the power of all humans in their totality. Moreover, it cannot consist in inactivity, in eternal rest, which is nirvana; perfection lies in life and activity. ‘My Father has never ceased working, and I too must be at work’ – this is perfection. There can be no paradise for the imperfect or for minors. Therefore all attempts to depict such a paradise by Dante, Milton, Chenavard1 and many others have been quite fruitless. To describe a paradise not created by humans and without their participation, simply bestowed on them as a reward, is rightly considered to be a thankless task. Perfection, adulthood, is paradise, just as the state of minority expressed in bestial orgies, brutal mutual extermination and boundless, insatiable lechery is hell indeed.

1.Paul Joseph Chenavard (1808-95) was a French painter. In 1848 the French Republican government commissioned him to paint murals in the Paris Pantheon representing the history of humanity and including symbols and legends of all religions. Five mosaics on the floor of the building were to depict hell, purgatory, paradise, the Elysian fields and palingenesis. This grandiose scheme foundered with the establishment of the Second Empire under Napoleon III, who returned the Pantheon to the Roman Catholic Church in 1852. However, Chenavard's sketches had been described by his friend, the writer Theophile Gautier, in a series of articles (La Presse, 5-11 September 1848) later included in his L'Art moderne, Paris, 1852. Fedorov wrote a scathing analysis of their symbolism, completely rejecting Chenavard's syncretic religion: FOD, pp. 541-9, 585-8.

The first shortcoming of Dante's paradise, this paradise for minors, for those who consider immortality and bliss to be theirs by birthright and not as the result of work, is that this paradise is not created by them; it exists already, it has been created for but not by them. This negation of work, this contempt for it as shown by Byron's Cain, an aristocrat like his author, prove his immaturity and childishness. Yet bliss resides first and foremost in the work of creation, and the regulation of the meteorological process is the first stage of the celestial task – the creation of paradise.

The second shortcoming of Dante's paradise – its vice, even – consists in his transporting into heaven humanity with all its present moral limitations; consequently contempla-tives, regarded as creators of such a paradisiac life, are placed at the highest of the planetary heavens. Yet contemplation, because it is mere contemplation, cannot find room in a real paradise, for its wings are illusory, mental; they cannot raise it up into paradise. Only contemplation which becomes action could create paradise and transform its imaginary into bodily wings.

All the heavenly space and heavenly bodies will become accessible to man only when he is able to re-create himself from primordial substances, atoms and molecules, because only then will he be able to live in any environment, take on any form and visit all generations in all the worlds, from the most ancient to the most recent, the most remote as well as the nearest. Governed by all the resurrected generations, these worlds will be, in their wholeness, the creative work of all generations in their totality, as if of a single artist.

Dante's paradise as depicted by him is a kingdom of pagan virtues – these do not create their paradise and hence cannot dwell therein. The Roman eagle, that is to say, the Western Emperor, arbitrarily elevated to that rank by the Pope, has also given birth to the present-day German Black Tsar, as he might be described, in contradistinction to the Russian White Tsar. The Roman eagle, which introduced discord into Christendom, has risen to the heaven of Mercury but has not cleansed himself of that ambition and lust for power which are able to create a state but neither a paradise nor a paradisiac society in which, instead of legal and economic relations, there is only kinship. Solely the Emperor of the undivided Empire, leading his army to confront not humans but the dark, blind force, can enter with his comrades-in-arms into the paradise they will be creating.

Theology has risen as high as the sun but has remained a discourse about God – the word, not the act, of God; only divine action (not mystical theurgy), only our transforming ourselves into instruments of the Divine work, will transfigure all suns, all heavenly worlds, into the Kingdom of God, paradise. Negative virginity is not yet a celestial virtue; chastity is not yet active wisdom; not to beget is not yet liberation from death – resurrection. It is essential that unconscious procreation be replaced by the task of resuscitation. Placing virgins on Venus could be interpreted as a bitter irony, because Earth itself is not yet free from the power of Venus, and negative virginity cannot liberate from this power. A similar irony can be seen in Dante's placing of warriors and crusaders under the protection of the pagan god Mars. Contrary to the opinion of some Roman Catholics, war cannot create paradise; war merely destroys and exterminates, and only the transformation of instruments of destruction into instruments of salvation can create paradise. The warriors on Mars could also be transformed on Earth into an army for salvation from hunger, disease and death – in other words, even on earth they could free themselves from the power of Mars, the god of war. Nor was there any point in sending lawyers to Jupiter, considering the great demand for them on Earth, a demand which is on the increase; indeed, the Earth groans under their yoke, and even recently lawyers who took part in the Peace Conference aborted it by transforming it into a court of arbitration. To transport to heaven the shortcomings of this Earth, which consist of the failure to live by moral law and therefore to need juridical laws, does not create paradise, and we must thank God that all this is not reality, but merely the dreams of a poet.

But the greatest sin of Dante, the poet of paradise for minors, is committed when he reaches the highest level of his paradise and sees the Holy Trinity as eternal light, that is, as dormant (inactive) knowledge that understands only itself, knows only itself, loves only itself. Thus Dante replaces the Holy Trinity – a model of unanimity and harmony – by self-love; thus heaven turns out to be no better than Earth.

Dante's paradise is based on Ptolemaic superstition, but the Copernican world view has not yet emerged from superstition either, because so far it has been an intellectual concept only; so long as we cannot govern the motion of the Earth we cannot be certain of the reality of this motion – we merely assume it. Of course, we can believe that the Earth is a tiny star and the sun a large star, but we merely believe it, for we cannot actually see it and consequently we do not know.