The religion of Logos and Sophia : from the writings of Dimitrije Mitrinović on Christianity

summed up in his phrase “Our view has been from the centre, towards the future. For the sake of radical and immediate action only.’

In all he said and wrote Mitrinovi¢ spoke directly to his hearers or readers in a practical context. Though his mind was exceptional in its penetration and comprehensiveness, he never spoke for the sake of theory only and he always started from direct and immediate experience. This can be well illustrated—and our subject introduced—by extracts from an article in ‘Purpose’ in 1929 compiled from notes of one of his lectures.

“The ideal of truth is not a superhuman force or standard above mankind, to which we must look up like copyists, or shallow students of philosophy. We cannot look upon the eternal ideas and make a photograph of them, a sketch of them.

“The world itself is its own standard. Mankind is the standard of mankind. There is no Being, no principle, no force, no system, which is above human reason and which dictates the laws of human reason. In short, there is no truth written in the infinite skies. There gleam no eyes of Jehovah, no absolute impartial eye, which looks upon the Universe and dictates what truth is. What we call dialectics, reason, cause and effect; the sense of senses, the meaning of meanings, the understanding of understandings; all these things are the same thing, and that thing is a human person.

“The human race is the container of truth. Apart from human insight, apart from human sense of justice—the correlated communal agreement of mankind—there is no truth. Suppose there were truth in another universe, suppose that truth existed in some other sphere; if it so existed and if it were different from our own truth, we could not understand it nor use it nor know it. And if it were the same as our truth: well, anyhow, that same we have already got. This fact, this objectivity of subjectivity, this divinity of mankind, this fact that justice is immanent in the relation of personalities to personalities, this is the one saving grace, the one helpful notion which can lead us out of the present breakdown of civilisation, with its cruel confusion of culture, its human debility, and the consequent dire straits in which we find ourselves. And at such a moment it behoves us all to gather together and discuss what can be done to bring about agreement as to what is truth and who is the God.

2