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.