* * * * * We have, by turns, studied Merezhkovsky as a poet, a novelist, and a critic. The greatest merit of his literary personality rests in the perfect art with which he calls up the past. But Merezhkovsky is not only an artist. As we have noted, his novels have, as their end, one of the greatest contradictions of human life,--the synthesis of the voluptuous representations of the religion of classical antiquity and the moral principles of Christianity. It is, therefore, natural to ask whether he has in any way approached his goal and just where he sees the salvation of humanity, the present situation of which seems to him desperate. The answer to this question can be found in his book, "Ham Triumphant."[14] Our study of Merezhkovsky's literary character would be incomplete if the ideas of this book were not set forth. [14] In Russia, the name of the biblical Ham has become synonymous with servility and moral baseness. Merezhkovsky employs this scornful term to designate those people who are strangers to the higher tendencies of the mind and are entirely taken up with material interests. His "Ham Triumphant" is the Antichrist, whose reign, as predicted by the Apocalypse, will begin with the final victory of the bourgeoisie. In one chapter of this book, Merezhkovsky proves that the writers of western Europe and Russia (Byron and Lermontov) err in crowning this Antichrist with an aureole of proud revolutionary majesty, for, since he is the enemy of all that is divine in man, he can only be a character of shabby mediocrity and human banality, that is to say, a veritable "Ham." According to Merezhkovsky, the present evil in the world consists entirely in the moral void which results from the disappearance of the Christian ideal from the soul. The loss of this ideal was inevitable, and even productive of good, because it had been so mutilated and deformed by the Church, that Christian religion became a symbol of the reaction, and its God synonymous with executioner. Humanity will rid itself of Christianity. But nothing will replace it, unless it be the philosophy of positivism, a sort of material religion of the appetites and the senses, which gives no answer to our anguish and our mystical instincts. This philosophy presided at the formation of a miserable society, an egotistical and mediocre bourgeoisie, who have no spiritual tendencies, and are incapable of sacrificing themselves to any ideal other than that of money.