Taras Zakydalsky, The Theory of Man in the Philosophy of Skovoroda, 1965.
For Skovoroda man is essentially a creature with the capacity to think and to know the truth. This capacity distinguishes him from other creatures and makes him a self-directing, autonomous image of God. I have stressed Skovoroda's respect for the power of thought. "For Skovoroda, as for many mystically inclined thinkers, thinking in some higher order takes on an absolute ontological value that is equivalent to being."1 God's thoughts have a value equivalent to the being of the created world. Man's thought has a power analogous to God's because, first, it has the power to transform man's existence, and secondly, because it moves and directs the body. Skovoroda's recognition of the importance and power of knowledge makes his epistemology one of the most interesting and vivid parts of his philosophy. CHAPTER IV: HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND FAITH
Unfortunately, this emphasis on knowledge has led several interpreters to see in him primarily a rationalist who believed in reason, accepting it as the principal delight of man or the end of human life.2 This Aristotelian reading of Skovoroda is false. It confuses knowledge of the truth with speculative activity. For Skovoroda to be truly human is to know the highest truth about oneself and the universe, but this knowledge comprises basically the doctrines I have [80] sketched so far. The truth is elementary and accessible to all men. It is not the case that the truly human life lies only in contemplation. On the contrary, Skovoroda holds that only a small group of men is called upon to be philosophers and teachers. The truth, however, is equally open to all and is the necessary condition for happiness.
Skovoroda's epistemology is original. "His theory of knowledge belongs to the odd, strange aspects of his works."3 In approaching it we must put aside the usual expectations of any epistemology. Skovoroda does not treat the traditional problems of knowing: the relation of thought to reality, the relation of reason to faith, the process of knowing. The basic theme of his epistemology is not knowledge at all, at least not in the strict sense of the word. It is really faith. He distinguishes two types of faith, discusses their essential properties, their consequences, and their relation. The first faith holds material reality to be the ultimate. The second passes beyond material reality, without denying it, to its ground, God. The first faith reveals its inadequacy and falsity upon being applied to existence. Only the second faith is true and therefore meets all the tests of living. Skovoroda's discussion of the practical consequences of both faiths in human existence is of the greatest contemporary interest, for it is an acute criticism of faith in science. What Western philosophy is coming to recognize only in this century -- the limitations of scientific knowledge, both theoretical and applied, was stated succinctly and vividly by [81] Skovoroda two centuries ago.
Though the real problem in his epistemology is one of faith, Skovoroda treats it in a terminology that sometimes conceals this fact. He does use the term "faith" frequently and has a profound treatment of the nature of faith that cannot be mistaken for a discussion of knowledge simply, yet too often he speaks of faith in terms that are more appropriate and are usually used of speculative, purely objective knowledge. Probably this terminological confusion has been responsible partly for misunderstandings of Skovoroda's intention. To some interpreters, especially Soviet ones, Skovoroda is defending knowledge against faith.4 Shkurinov goes so far as to say that Skovoroda identifies the highest knowledge with logic, which has the capacity to go beyond mere appearances.5 Nothing could be farther from the truth. We must recognize, however, that Skovoroda's faith is not naïve or capricious. It is permeated with a rational element. He rejects superstitions. He rejects the materialistic faith because it is too naïve. Furthermore, his faith or wisdom though it owes much to the Christian faith is not identical with it. There is no discussion of Christ's incarnation or resurrection. Though these events are mentioned, they have no important place in his system. Then also his rejection of miracles adds a rationalistic flavor to his philosophy. Nevertheless, his philosophy is a faith and he admits as much. The truth he seeks is not one that answers only the requirements of reason, but the requirements [82] of the inner heart, the whole man. It is a gross misrepresentation to call Skovoroda a rationalist.
Faith for Skovoroda is the most important and necessary knowledge for man. It reveals to man his own ultimate nature and the nature of reality. It answers his most burning questions and shows the way to real happiness. Faith does not overcome merely the perplexity of reason, it satisfies the most profound desires of our nature. The truth then is also the ultimate good, that which satisfies permanently both reason and will. Both reason and will are functions of the inner heart and cannot be separated without perverting man's nature. What is the good of one must also be the good for the other. Any truth that does not answer these demands must be partial and inadequate: "in truth alone does true sweetness lie and it alone gives life to our heart that directs our body.… It is evident that life is alive when our thought loves truth."6
It becomes clearer why the truth for Skovoroda is both objective and subjective, is satisfying both to reason and will, if it is remembered that like the Stoics, he identifies thought and desire. Desire for Skovoroda is thought striving for its good, for truth:
Its ceaseless striving is this desire. The fire dies out, the river stops flowing, but immortal and non-elemental thought, carrying on its back coarse corruption like a dead chasuble, definitely does not consent to arrest its motion (whether it is in a body or outside [83] a body) even for a moment and continues its flight of aspiration with lightning speed through unlimited eternity.… What is it seeking? It seeks its sweet rest.7This conception of thought as an aspiration for ultimate truth is essential to Skovoroda's epistemology and ethics. It implies that there is more to thought than simply grasping and object, for inherent in thought is an aspiration for the ultimate object, the absolute truth. In other words thought strives to grasp the divine idea in all things and through this idea to discover God. It seems that thought bears in itself a hidden standard of truth by which it judges its objects. If the objects fall short of revealing their relation to God, thought remains restless and continues its search. As long as it cannot perceive the full truth it can find no peace nor happiness. In anticipation of the discussion of self-knowledge let me remark that if thought bears in itself without being aware of it the criterion of truth, then truth can be found most easily by thought turning back upon itself and bringing its inherent notion of truth to light. The truth, however, is not easily found. Errors and false starts necessarily precede its discovery.If the truth satisfies man's deepest desires, it can only be seen by a heart that is willing to see it. It is not difficult to know the truth but "where is he who is willing to learn."8 In giving man this freedom to see or ignore the truth God lowers himself to our level. He "begs judgment upon Himself from us."9 Faith then [84] is not a matter of logic and reasoning alone. An explanation of the truth is not enough for the possession of it. Each individual must open his heart to the truth in order to see it. He must appropriate it and make it his own in such a way as to alter his whole view of himself and the world. This type of perception necessarily affects all our actions. A faith without good works is no faith at all; it is hypocrisy:
It is one thing to believe that God exists, and another thing to believe in God, to love and depend on Him and to live according to God.… Thus the true Christian is not one who believes that there is a God but one who follows Him, loves Him, and has founded his home of happiness on God's love.10It becomes evident here that Skovoroda's doctrines on the nature of reality and men will necessarily lead to an ethics. To know the truth means also to live according to the truth.The act of faith is a free act and lies within the responsibility of the individual. Yet, like most Christian philosophers, Skovoroda recognizes the action of divine grace in this act. The most man can accomplish by his own powers is to desire to see the truth, to desire to believe. The truth is a gratuitous gift from God. Only "if God's spirit breathes on your heart, then you will properly see that which you have not seen from your birth."11 "God alone illuminates the truth for us."12 This is why the act of faith is always possible, unexpected, and unforeseeable. It comes "like lightening, and only a point in time is needed for the acquisition of faith."13 This is certainly a far cry from rationalism! [85]
So far I have discussed the relation of faith to the whole nature of man. I have stressed throughout that faith is more than mere speculation, that it involves the will and desires. It would be a mistake, however, to disparage Skovoroda's notion of faith and with it the whole of his philosophy as merely wishful thinking, or as a pragmatism that accepts as true only what leads to happiness. The primary fact about faith, a fact that Skovoroda stresses more than any other, is that faith is a seeing:
Faith sees what your vain eye cannot see.… Faith sees through vain appearances and is dependent on what is the head, the power, and the foundation in vanity and what never dies.14Unless one sees, one cannot believe: "and as you did not perceive it you could not believe it."15 There are evidently two aspects of the act of faith, aspects that can be distinguished but not separated: an act of seeing the truth and an act of appropriating the truth. Really to see the truth means, of course, to accept it as my truth, just as a real commitment to a truth is unthinkable without the act of seeing something as true. We in no way make or produce the truth in the act of faith, but rather surrender to it. The will makes this seeing possible not by producing the object but simply by not obstructing our view, by submitting to the light of truth. The moment of seeing is primary in faith according to Skovoroda:How could one fall in love with what is unknown? Hay does not burn without contact with fire. The heart does not love without seeing beauty.… Where wisdom perceives, there love burns.16The false faith may be defined as the conviction that material objects are ultimate reality, that there is nothing beyond the appearances. This faith is not simply the acceptance of sense knowledge as the highest form of knowledge. It is not a blindness to the scientific laws governing the changes of appearances. On the contrary, the materialistic faith accepts the knowledge that all material sciences furnish and proclaims it to be ultimate knowledge. Even if you know all the laws of motion, "even if you had measured all the Copernican worlds, but had not discovered the plan that sustains their whole external appearance [i.e., God's ideas] nothing would come of it."17 It is not enough that we know the eternal and unchanging laws to know the ultimate truth. Mathematics certainly reveals eternal truths. The essential property of eternal truth is not so much its immobility and eternity as its unveiling of God. All truths that do not contain a clear reference to God are only partial and of a lower order. To believe in the sciences as possessing the ultimate truth is to be in error.
The sciences in themselves, however, are not false if they do not make the claim to absolute knowledge -- in fact to the enlightened mind that knows God they are a source of further revelations of God. Skovoroda has no contempt for [87] the sciences, but on the contrary he willingly recognizes their value:
I do not disparage the sciences but praise the lowest handicraft. One thing is worthy of reproach -- that in pinning our hopes on them we neglect the supreme science.18Only the elevation of the sciences to a faith is objectionable. In their place they are good and useful. In a remarkable passage he praises the great achievements of science and points out the shortcoming that casts suspicion on science's claims to absoluteness:We have measured the sea, land, air and heavens and have disturbed the belly of the earth to reach its metals, traced the planets, searched the mountains, rivers, cities on the moon, discovered countless worlds, built incomprehensible machines, filled abysses, blocked and redirected the flow of rivers. Daily we raise new questions and create wild inventions.… Good heavens, what is there we don't know how or can't do! And yet, to our misfortune, something great seems to be lacking in all this: we only Know that something is lacking, but what it is we have no idea.19In this feeling of dissatisfaction lies the first hint that we must search elsewhere for the truth.What is the basic reason for this inadequacy of the sciences? Why cannot the sciences, or rather our faith in the material world as opposed to our faith in God, possibly satisfy man? The basic reason must be sought in the ontological structure of man. The inner heart, the true man in each of us is by its nature eternal and the very image of God. Since the heart is the source of thought it is natural that thought seeks an object that is proportional to the heart in value and being. What else can satisfy the heart? Surely not something inferior to it. The heart or the [88] heart's thought seeks an object that is eternal and an idea of God whether that object be itself or another being. In both cases the heart will immediately recognize through God's idea God himself. Ultimately then our thoughts are seeking Absolute Being and nothing less:
What does it [thought] seek? It seeks its sweet peace; its peace lies not in stopping and extending itself like a dead body -- this is unbecoming and odd to its nature -- but the very opposite: like a traveler it seeks in the dead elements its own likeness, and by base distractions it does not quench but only intensifies its thirst, and thus rises all the more swiftly from corrupt material nature to its very own and unbegotten beginning … and this is to enter the peace of God.20Here we have the whole story of the heart's search for God. It should be noticed that Skovoroda takes the initial error of the heart searching among corruptible elements for its own likeness to be a necessary step to the discovery of truth.In more concrete terms there are two ways in which the faith in science fails man. Its first shortcoming lies in the fact that material objects cannot satisfy our desires. Those objects are unstable, corruptible, and vanishing. They are either consumed in the process of our using them and then we must worry about finding other objects to replace them or else they are slightly more stable and remain useful to us for a long time. But even the more permanent objects do not relieve us from worry, because they too are perishable. The anticipation of their disappearance, then, disquiets our mind. The faith in matter, the "love of shadows is the mother of hunger."21 [89]
The second way in which this faith fails us receives much attention in Skovoroda's works. Believing that there is only material reality, we of course see ourselves as mere material objects. We recognize, no doubt, that we are somewhat different from other objects by the exercise of thought, but we attribute this activity to the outer heart. We do not know our inner heart and therefore we cannot know that we are immortal. We see ourselves as perishable in the same way as all appearances are perishable. Our death is unavoidable and must completely annihilate us. In the light of this fact how can anyone be happy? Even if all our wishes were fulfilled, without the assurance of our immortality we could have no peace. The fear of death would poison every moment of our lives:
Oh, how utterly distressing is our condition if completely everything is corruptible and without eternity, if besides the appearance there is nothing secret in it, in which our being could rest as on a stable foundation, if every being and every living man is only vanity.22If death is the ultimate fact then our values, hopes and strivings are absurd. Life becomes meaningless and intolerable to man's spirit.The disappointment, sorrow, and despair to which the materialistic faith leads is a necessary condition for finding a higher faith. The unhappy result to which this faith leads us teaches us to surrender our love of material goods and to seek a higher good. This surrender is a necessary first step towards enlightenment from God because we cannot receive the true faith while loving things.23 "Man is given [90] two wills and the evil will was given to him so that through suffering he might learn to recognize the truth."24 Skovoroda even while recognizing the freedom involved in the act of faith remains optimistic. False choices and evil tend to work against themselves, and by bringing only misery to the agent they drive him towards the truth and the good. The scales are weighed on the side of God.
The failure of the faith in material being to satisfy the human heart prepares the heart for the acceptance of the true faith. This faith sees beyond mere appearances to which the former faith was attached. It breaks through the level of the apparent. It is a leap into a new realm of being hitherto unknown. This sudden leap does not destroy anything but the commitment to the absoluteness of visible objects. It does not abolish our sense knowledge or our sciences, but merely assigns them to their proper place. True faith then widens the scope of our knowledge from one realm to two realms of being. To see reality dually is wisdom. Skovoroda applies the popular definition of a dunce as one who "can't count to two"25 to those who cannot get beyond the one-dimensional vision of reality that belongs to false faith. The true faith doubles everything.
The discussion of the true faith must begin with an exposition of Skovoroda's doctrine of self-knowledge, because self-knowledge is the beginning of all wisdom. It is the [91] necessary and sufficient condition for the knowledge of God:
You do not see me because you do not know yourself … nor can you stand before me until you do know yourself well. He who knows himself, he alone can sing out: "God is with me."26It is also the condition for the knowledge of the truth about the world:Who can know the plan in the vast matter of earth and heaven glued to its eternal symmetry if he could not first discern it in his own empty flesh?27The ontology of man explains how this is possible. The inner man being the image of God by turning its thoughts upon itself perceives God's image and is thus led immediately to God Himself. In the same act of self-knowledge thought perceives the dual structure of man and thus becomes aware of the dualism in the material macrocosm.Why is it easier to discover the truth in ourselves than in the world or even in the Bible? Why if we fail to find God in ourselves must we fail to know Him? The reason may lie in the fact that we are closer to ourselves than we are to things because we have a double sensuous perception of ourselves. One type of self-perception is similar to the sense perception we have of all material objects, but besides this we have another mode of self-perception -- self-consciousness. By this mode we perceive our psychic phenomena, but only our own psyche. Thus, self-perception offers a greater range of appearances of different quality from which to rise to a vision of the hidden truth beneath them. The precise way in which the observation of our psychic life becomes a decisive factor on the road to faith is twofold. First, it is only [92] through self-consciousness that restlessness and dissatisfaction due to the false faith get a hold upon our attention. If man turns his attention away from himself and suppresses his unhappiness without God by occupying himself with external things, then surely he cannot find God. Secondly, the psychic appearances are of a different nature than external appearances. They are closer in quality to the invisible, unextended divine idea or spirit in us. They are not to be identified with the spirit, for then the truth could be known by simple introspection and would be just as obvious to the materialist as to the true believer. It is easier, however, to form a conception of the spirit from the observation a subjective phenomena than from sensible phenomena.
The act of self-knowledge in which we discover our own true nature is a leap beyond all appearances. It is a genuine act of faith:
we penetrate into the very center of our heart and soul, and passing all transitory and sinking thoughts and the extreme externality of our flesh, leaving all storms and darkness at his [the true man's] feet, we rise by the mentioned stairway … to our life and head, to the true man.28Chyzhevskyi treats this act of self-knowledge as an act of recalling29 thus Platonizing Skovoroda's doctrine more than admissible. I have found only one passage in which Skovoroda mentions memory as the "heart's eye that sees through creatures."30 I think it is imprudent to reject Skovoroda's extensively developed doctrine of faith as true insight for a Platonic doctrine of reminiscences on such slight evidence.The act of self-knowledge is a "truly blessed, even holy self-love."31 To see one's self is to fall in love with oneself. Thus faith is the supreme act of self-love. This holy egotism is not selfish, however, for the man we fall in love with is really God's image in us. In loving this image, we love God, we accept his idea of us, his intentions and purposes for us. The supreme act of self-love is also the supreme act of humility before God.
What is revealed to us in this act of self-knowledge? The true man in each one of us has a certain common content without ceasing to be unique. The most universal facts about our essence uncovered by self-knowledge are that the self is immortal, immaterial and the foundation and director of the body. The fear of death is abolished and the demands of the body are subordinated to those of the true self. Next, one finds in his essence those designs and purposes of God which apply equally to all men; namely, the ten commandments. This law deals with man's relation to God and his relation to other men. God has meant man to be a social being and has written the laws essential to social life upon his heart. The content of the heart that is unique and particular in each man is his divinely chosen vocation in life. In a word, then, all the information necessary for a happy life is written in the heart and is disclosed by faith. Not only are we thus assured of our immortality but we are also [94] given definite instruction as to our obligations towards God, other men, and ourselves. With this act of knowledge we begin a new life, a life of happiness and conformity to God's will for us:
And this is to enter happily into harmony with God when man, not following his own quirks or another's advice, but by penetrating into himself and listening to the living call of the Holy Spirit inside, follows the Spirit's secret nod, taking up and enduring in that duty for which he was born into the world and to which he was assigned by God Himself.32I now turn to a detailed consideration of the transformation brought about in man's existence by the act of faith.
The act of faith is the pivotal point of one's life. Skovoroda at times overemphasizes its meaning: "to be more exact before the second birth we have no heart"33 His intention is clear -- it is to treat this act as the beginning of a new, purified, "holy"34 existence. The discovery of one's true nature transforms every aspect of life:
So you saw in yourself only earth and dust. And you were till now earth and dust. In brief, you did not exist because earth, dust, shadow, and nothingness are one.35andWhat is eternal life, after all, if not to know God? This is what it means to be a live, eternal, and incorruptible man and to be transformed into God.36These and many other passages assign to faith a power to create new being, to transform man's substance from shadow into eternal and perfect being, into God. This power is analogous to God's, but cannot be literally the same; it [95] cannot literally be the power to create eternal being or to resurrect. From the discussion of man's ontological structure it is obvious that every man in order to exist temporally must be at the same time an eternal true man. The non-believer as well as the believer cannot exist without being immortal objectively, though it is possible to live without being aware of one's immortality. Thus, not only is a real self-recreation beyond the powers of man, it is also unnecessary.One can view the second birth as a moral rebirth, as a radical reform of one's way of living and acting. This change would be observable to others. Certainly this is an element in the transformation but in Skovoroda's eyes the visible is not the principal element.
To understand what Skovoroda means and why he speaks of the transformation brought about by faith as a metaphysical event, a second creation37, we must recall his principle that one is what one loves. But what one loves depends on what one sees. The transformation, then, consists of a new subjective estimate of ourselves, an adoption of a new scale of values and goals, a falling in love with new objects. Hitherto we knew ourselves only as corruptible temporal beings. Our good lay only in material possessions. To ourselves we were no more than animals.38 "Not to know oneself is word for word the same thing as to lose oneself." The transformation is more than moral -- it is ontological in the sense that we not only become aware of and adopt a new set [96] of moral standards, but we become new beings in our own eyes. If we do not know our true nature we are in a predicament similar to the man who has a hidden treasure in his house. As long as he knows nothing about it, "it is precisely as if it were not."39 Only when the objective truth becomes our truth does it have a radical effect on us, does it alter our whole existence.
The act of faith transforms our life in two ways. First, by revealing to us the ethical wisdom that is necessary for a godly life it initiates the truly ethical life. Because we fall in love with God for the first time here, we accept and carry out his will not grudgingly but willingly. If we fear to transgress his laws, it is not because we tremble before his punishment, but because we love God. Skovoroda is not so naïve as to think that the act of faith is an automatic solution to all our problems. It does not inaugurate immediately a perfect moral life. Life continues to be a struggle and a search for happiness. The believer is constantly warring against temptations, selfishness, and the crude appetites of the outer heart. What is new is that the believer knows where his happiness lies. His struggle is now purposeful. His sufferings cease to be painful in the sense that they become meaningful. There is progress in this life towards God and complete happiness through the repeated acts of submission to God's will. The road to peace has many stages but it begins with the act of faith. Faith at the outset bestows a kind of peace because it gives [97] direction to life and promises perfect peace. The ethical life is like the climbing of a mountain:
The unsetting light enlightens the dark abyss of our thoughts to let us see where our high and stable peace is located; it alone awakens our heart for the climb up the mountain of peace.40Chyzhevskyi interprets the second birth not as an act of faith but as a mystical experience.41 It is this experience, not perfect happiness, that is the summit of the mountain and can only be achieved through self-humiliation and rigorous self-discipline. The rebirth, then, comes at the end, not the beginning of the ethical life. I am convinced, however, that this is not what Skovoroda had in mind. Chyzhevskyi's error becomes even more apparent when he interprets the first act of vision, which inspires men to set out on the climb, as a "theoretical"42 recognition that God exists. Now, the act of faith in Skovoroda is anything but a theoretical recognition. The truth of the matter is that ethics is not a preliminary to absolute knowledge, but the consequence of it, and that the only union with God mentioned by Skovoroda is the act of faith, not mystical experience.
The second way in which faith transforms our lives lies in the fact that it introduces eternal life into temporal life. We become assured of our immortality. The fear of death is overcome but it is overcome only because death [98] ceases to be real. It becomes a mere shedding of our outward appearance. With the act of faith, not with death, does our eternal life begin:
By coming to know him in a wink of the eye we become transformed into him and all our mortality is consumed by his life.43Faith is victory over death.I think now we are prepared to make an evaluation of Skovoroda's epistemology and the "speculative" part of his philosophy; that is, his metaphysics and his theory of man. First several outstanding characteristics of his concept of knowledge must be pointed out. It is Skovoroda's profound insight that knowledge is a human enterprise. It is the function of the whole man and involves all his spiritual powers. There is no such thing as purely objective knowledge, at least not in respect to ultimate knowledge. The most speculative and abstract disciplines such as logic and mathematics are also the least relevant to human existence. Real knowledge and especially metaphysics is always more than mere speculation. It is a faith, an expression of the whole personality of the thinker, of his hopes as well as his insight. Metaphysics, then, is a systematic rational account of one's attitude towards oneself and reality. What one is has a bearing on what one knows. In a sense Skovoroda may be called a critical philosopher for he is sharply aware of the nature of his own philosophy. [99] But for him, as for Berdyaev, the humanization of truth is not a scandal. The inextricable involvement of the truth with the knower is a sign of its potency and loftiness. No concept of knowledge could be less rationalistic.
On the other hand, Skovoroda is far from completely subjectivizing and relativizing truth. It is not a projection of the knower's desires. Like St. Augustine, Skovoroda defends the suprahuman nature of truth. It is a God-given light that illuminates him. Man surrenders to truth; he allows it to illuminate him. The most he can do is to desire to know and to remove obstacles to the revelation of truth, obstacles such as preconceived notions and habits of thought. Truth is always a gift of Grace.
One last point must be made about Skovoroda's notion of knowledge and that is that true knowledge always has practical consequences. It affects the quality of man's existence, his attitude to life and to his work, his relation to himself and to others, and lastly his actions and observable behavior. In ultimate knowledge speculative thought is inseparable from practical thought. Knowledge in this sense is truly the whole life of man.
In the light of this discussion it becomes evident that to deny the title of real philosophy to Skovoroda's thought would be a grave error. His metaphysics and theory of man, as he himself admits, is not purely speculative knowledge. It is a faith but it is a faith in the same sense [100] that all philosophies are faith whether their authors admit this or not. No truth is completely given and self-evident. Every truth is a creation as much as it is a discovery. The positivist just as the mystic commits himself to what he sees without his truth being obvious to everyone else. If Skovoroda differs from other philosophers, it is only in this respect that he acknowledges his truth to be his (without truth ceasing to be objective) and does not use objectivity as a screen behind which to conceal himself. The admission of his personal participation in the revelation of truth, which is the content of his epistemology, is evidence of Skovoroda's intellectual honesty and moral integrity. [101]
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CHAPTER IV: FOOTNOTES 1. G. P. Bobrinskoi, Starik Grigorii Skovoroda: zhizn i uchenie (Old Gregory Skovoroda: His Life and Teaching) (Paris: Imp. de Navarre, 1929), p. 39.
2. F. Kudrinskii, "Filosof bez sistemy" (Philosopher without a System), Kievskaia starina, LX (Kiev, 1898), p. 272, and F. A. Zelenogorskii, "Filosofiya Grigoriya Savvicha Skovorody, ukrainskogo filosofa XVIII stolettiya" (The Philosophy of Gregory Savvich Skovoroda, the Ukrainian Philosopher of the 18th Century), Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii, XXIII (Moscow, 1894), p, 222.
3. D. Chyzhevskyi, Filosofiya H. S. Skovorody (The Philosophy of H. S. Skovoroda) (Warsaw: Shevchenko Scientific Society Inc., 1934), p. 130.
4. "Vydatnyi ukrainskyi filosof i pysmennyk" (A Famous Ukrainian Philosopher and Writer), printed as an introduction to Tvory (Works), I, p. xxii. Also see P. S. Shkurinov, Mirosozertsanie G. S. Skovorody (The World Outlook of G. S. Skovoroda) (Moscow: Moscow Univ. Press, 1962), p. 42.
5. Shkurinov, op. cit., p. 49.
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