30 NARODPhilosophy at Wilno after only one year's tenure. His lectures, which coincided
with those of Lelewel on Polish History, had found a strong rapport with the
political enterprises of his students, and alarmed the Russian authorities. His
one work of stature, Die Philosophic in ihrem Verhaltniss zum Leben ganzer
Volker und einzelner Menschen (182.2), continued to be read long after he took
to farming his estates. In it, he raised intuition to the same prominence which
Wronski gave to intelligence, and used it to prove the existence of God and the
indestructibility of the soul. His brand of Romantic metaphysics added little to
the work of his German predecessors, but his fervour and manner of exposition
effectively translated their outlook into Polish terms. The third figure, Andrzej
Towianski (1799-1878), born in Wilno, appeared in Paris in the 1840s, and in
the guise of a mystic-prophet attracted a considerable following. Having organ-
ized one of the Adventist sects fashionable in intellectual emigre circles, he is
best remembered in Polish history as the mentor of Mickiewicz's later years.
August Cieszkowski (1814-94) was the most original of all. A Hegelian by train-
ing, and a contemporary of Karl Marx at the University of Berlin, he consciously
directed his philosophical inquiries towards social and political ends. Firmly
believing in the divine mission of the Catholic Church and of the Polish nation,
he stressed the irrational factors in the sources of knowledge, and recognized the
will as the essence of human existence. In his Prolegomena zur Historisophie
(1838) and Gott und Palingenesie (1842), he argued that Utopias should be
designed f or implementation, and predicted an 'Era of the Holy Spirit' - a
Catholic version of Wronski's intellectual Utopia. During his stay in Paris in the
1840s he seems to have exercised a strong influence both on Proudhon, who
acknowledged his debt, and on Marx, who did not. Certainly, as a left-Hegelian
philosopher who turned metaphysics to the service of social action, he must be
regarded as one of the precursors of Marxism.^29 Having spent the middle
decades of his career in practical pursuits, as collaborator of the first agricultural
Credit Bank in France, and then as a Posnanian deputy in the Prussian parlia-
ment, he began to compose his chief work, Ojcze Nasz (Our Father), published
posthumously in 1900. This enormous undertaking, inspired by the text: Thy
Kingdom Come', stands as a monument of European Messianism. It argued that
radical politics were not incompatible with Catholic belief, and need not neces-
sarily be associated with violent methods. In this way, the philosophy of insur-
rectionary Nationalism developed many complex trends and variations, which
in the hands of numerous disciples and continuators, such as Bronislaw
Trentowski at Freiburg and Jozef Kremer at Cracow, amassed a resilient body
of ideas which could weather the storms of political adversity.^30
The strength of the Insurrectionary Tradition, therefore, bore no relation to
the numbers of its adherents or to the outcome of its political programme. It
reflected not the support of the masses, but the intense dedication of its devo-
tees, whose obstinate temper, conspiratorial habits, and unfailing guardianship
of the Romantic approach to Literature and History was effectively transmitted
from generation to generation. The mechanism of this transmission owed a