Date: 1913-11
Source: ru:PSS/v48

Source: PSS, Volume 48

hair. I simply cannot fathom how you can describe the “popular conception” of God as “democratic.”

The claim that philosophical idealism “always has in mind only the interests of the individual” is utterly false. Compared to Gassendi, did Descartes place greater emphasis on individual interests? Or what of Fichte and Hegel in their polemic against Feuerbach?

The assertion that “theology—indeed, ‘god‑making’—is a process of further development and accumulation of social principles within the individual and within society” is nothing short of appalling! If Russia had enjoyed freedom, the entire bourgeoisie would have hailed you as a hero for such ideas—this kind of sociology and theology, so thoroughly bourgeois in both form and character.

Well, that’s enough for now—and even this letter has dragged on far too long. Once again, I extend my warmest greetings and wish you good health.

Yours, V. I.

(Italy)

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Written in the latter half of November 1913

Sent from Kraków to Capri Island

First published in 1924

in Lenin’s Collected Works, Volume I

Printed from the manuscript