Thomas Garrigue Masaryk: Philosopher in Action

THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK: PHILOSOPHER IN ACTION s. HARRISON THOMSON I T HERE is no man in the history of our modern civilization who better exemplifies the ideal of Plato's philosopher-king . than Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, first President· of the Czechoslovak Republic". So cautious a judge of personalities as George Bernard Shaw remarked of him that he was the only man capable of being the President of a United States of Europe. He has been called the wisest and greatest European of· this century and there are few if any who dispute that judgment. Yet he came from one of the smaller and almost unknown peoples of Europe. The greater powers offer their statesmen a broader field on which to display their talents, and we are accustomed to accept the size of their role as an index of the excellence of performer and performance. But size is not quality, and history ultimately judges quality. Fifth-century Greece was small, even in its.own day, but it produced men and ideas, a society, and a culture we humbly envy and respect today. And so, I venture to say, will this one man-the founder and head of a small state which is sometimes called an "artificial" state, without a sea coast, at the mercy of stronger neighbours for centuries-come to be regarded as the leading mind and character of a whole epoch. And it is more than likely .that his renown.·will increase with thepassing of time. Masaryk has been-the subject of dozens of full-size biographies, by Czechs, Slovaks, Germans, Yugoslavs, Russians, Poles, Frenchmen, Britons, and Americans. I should judge that several thousand articles, in many languages, have been published on numerous aspects of his life and thought. Perusing such a bibliography of works about him, one cannot but be struck by the suggestive fact that one man has been able to challenge the interest and admiration, and of course sometimes the sharp opposition, of so many learned men. The very simplicity of his origins might provide a key to his greatness. His father was a Slovak coachman on one of the royal estates in Moravia, and his mother was a Moravian of equally humble family. In later life Masaryk gave almost all the credit for his ambition to learn to hi~ mother. He went as far as the family poverty would allow in local schools, was apprenticed at thirteen to a locksmith and at fourteen to a blacksmith. He was not satisfied and by sheer detennination found ways and means to attend and graduate from the University of Vienna, then the leading centre of learning in the vast Austro-Hungarian Empire. He wrote his doctoral thesis in 1876 on "Plato on Immortality"-which he later burnt, a fitting fate for many ·doctoral theses. He had already read voraciously in German, English, French, and Russian literature and philosophy, and was, without being conscious of it, preparing himself for his later and worldwide work. The next year he met Miss Charlotte Garrigue, an American 328 I I l THOMAS GARRIGUE MASARYK 329 study.ing music in Leipzig. ··Their marriage in 1878 was to be of great importance for his development. Her fine mind and noble spirit opened new vistas to him, particularly through her understanding of the best in the American and English literary and philosophical tradition. As he stUTIS it up, "my marriage completed my education." For several years thereafter he was Instructor (Dozent) at the University of Vienna, living on a very narrow margin. It was.in this period of his life that he published a serious study on Suicide as a Social Phenomenon of Modern Civilization. It aroused considerable discussion and was variously misunderstood. He. was frequently accused, in the midst of some of the bitter polemics in which he became involved, and particularly by the conservative clergy, of advocating suicide. Nothing could have been farther from his mind, nor more typical of the wilful misunderstandings to which his analytical and scientific approach to important questions exposed him. In the meantime, in Prague, then only the provincial capital of Bohemia, the Czech nationalists had wrung a concession from the Ministry of Education, and the University of...