p I fully believe that the soul of Mr. Minsky finds itself constricted "between the monkey and the burdock”. How could it be otherwise? He holds such a world-outlook that it compels him to look down on both the “burdock” and the “monkey”. He is a dualist. He writes: "In himself each individual represents not a monad as Leibniz taught, but a complex biune dyad, i.e., an indissoluble Xinity of two separate and indivisible elements—spirit and body, or, more correctly, a whole system of such dyads, just as a large crystal is composed of small crystals of the same form."  [404•* 

p This is the most indubitable dualism, except that it is veiled in pseudo-monistic terminology. It is this dualism alone which opens the door for Mr. Minsky to his religion of the future, although on this door is written “spirit”, and not “body”. As a religious man, Mr. Minsky sees the world from the angle of animism. Indeed, only a man holding this view could repeat after Mr. Minsky the following deathbed prayer.

p “In this grievous hour of death, in departing for all eternity from the light of the sun and from all I held dear on earth, I thank Thee, 0 God, that out of Thy love for me Thou didst sacrifice Thyself. As I look back on my short life, its forgotten joys and memorable sufferings, I see that there was no life, just as now there is no death. Only Thou alone didst live and die, and I, in the measure of the power Thou didst grant me, reflect Thy life, 405 as I now reflect Thy death. I thank Thee, Lord, that Thou didst let me witness Thy unity".  [405•* 

p Mr. Minsky asserts that "science investigates causes, and religion aims”. Having created himself a God in the way prescribed by animism, that is to say, in the final analysis, in his own image and likeness, the question quite naturally comes up of the aims God is supposed to have pursued when creating the world and man. Spinoza drew attention to this aspect of the matter a long time ago. He then elucidated in excellent fashion that many prejudices depend "upon this one prejudice by which men commonly suppose that all natural things act like themselves with an end in view, and ... assert with assurance that God directs all things to a certain end (for they say that God made all things for man, and man that he might worship him)".  [405•** 

p Once having established definite aims for the activity of the phantom he has created, man may then conveniently devise whatever he pleases. Then it is no trouble to convince oneself that there is "no death" as Mr. Minsky asserts, and so forth.

p It is remarkable, though, that the modern religious seekings revolve predominantly around the question of personal immortality. Hegel once remarked that in the world of antiquity, the question of life beyond the grave attained exceptional importance when, with the decline of the ancient city-states, all the old social ties were dissolved and man found himself morally isolated. We are faced with something of the kind today. Bourgeois individualism, pushed to the extreme, has reached the point where man seizes upon the question of his personal immortality as the primary question of being. If Maurice Barres is right, if “ego” is the sole reality, the question as to whether this “ego” is destined to have eternal existence or not truly becomes the question of all questions.  [405•***  And since, if we are to believe the same Barres, the universe is nothing but a fresco which, badly or well, is drawn by 406 our “ego”, it is quite natural to see to it that the fresco proves to be as “entertaining” as possible. In view of this, one need not be surprised either by Mr. Merezhkovsky’s “devil”, or Mr. Minsky’s “dyad” or anything else.  [406•* 

p “The question of immortality, like that of God,” says Mr. Merezhkovsky, "is one of the main themes of Russian literature from Lermontov to L. Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. But no matter how thoroughly the question is gone into, no matter how its solution wavers between yes and no, it still remains a question.”   [406•**  I quite understand that Mr. Merezhkovsky saw in the question of immortality one of the main themes of Russian literature. But I do not understand at all how he overlooked the fact that Russian literature has provided at least one circumstantial reply to this question. This reply came ... from Zinaida Hippius; it is not very long, so I shall quote it in full.

p EVENING

p July thunder has clattered on its ways
And frowning clouds disperse in scudding haze;
The azure, dimmed, shines out anew
On sodden woodland path as we drive through.
Pale gloom descends upon the earth,
From chinks of cloud peeps out new moon at birth.
Our steed moves on with lessening pace,
The fine reins trembling like shimmering lace.
Time is still: thunderless lightning thins
The clouds of lulling darkness.
Lightly the undulating wind does start
Urging the vagrant leaves caress my heart.
From wheels on forest path no sound is heard’,
Branches heavy droop as tho’ their fate demurred.
From field and meadow rises vapour fine.
Now, as ne’er before, I sense that I am Thine,
0 dear and orderly Naturel
In Thee I live and I shall die with Thee,
My soul resigned and passing free.  [406•*** 

p Here there is one note that does not ring true—even very untrue. What does this mean: "I shall die with Thee"? That when I 407 die, Nature dies with me? But that is wrong. Nature does not live within me, but I within Nature, or, to put it more correctly, Nature lives in me only as a consequence of my living in her, that I am one of her countless parts. So when this part dies, that is to say, decomposes, yielding place to other combinations, Nature will as before continue her eternal existence. But for all that, Mme Z. Hippius notes with extreme delicacy the sense of freedom growing out of the sense of unity of Nature and man, despite the idea of the inevitability of death. This feeling is directly opposed to the feeling of slavish dependence on Nature which, in Mr. Merezhkovsky’s opinion, must possess every soul that does not lean upon the crutch of religious consciousness. It is quite astonishing that this poem, “Evening”, could come from the pen of a writer capable of appealing to the number thirteen:

p The first creator willed that Thou,
Thirteen, art necessary now.
By worldly law Thou dost portend
To bring the world to direst end.  [407•* 

The sense of freedom, generated by the consciousness of the unity and kinship of man and Nature and in no way weakened by thoughts of death, is the most glorious and gratifying possible. But it has nothing in common with the “boredom” which seizes upon Messrs Minsky and Merezhkovsky every time they recall their brother the “burdock” and their sister "the monkey”. This sense is in no way afraid of the "burdock immortality" which so frightens Mr. Merezhkovsky. Moreover, it is based on the instinctive consciousness of that immortality, so distasteful to Mr. Merezhkovsky. Whoever has this sense will not be afraid of death, while where it is absent that person will not get rid of his thoughts of death by conjuring up all sorts of “dyads” or "religions of the future".