Page:Ossendowski - The Shadow of the Gloomy East.djvu/28

13 currency to the definition of the Russian nation as one "carrying God in its soul"—"the carrier of God" (Bogonosiets). Is this definition apposite? It would be useless to discuss this question. If we admit this truth, we have to acknowledge that the Deity which abides in the soul of the Russian people is neither Yahove nor the Christian God, but only the idol of some primitive deistic thought, made of clay, wood, and stone, some Perkunas or Moloch.

Still another great writer, Theodor Dostoyevski, the anatomist of the Russian soul, endeavoured to approach the true Divinity abiding in the Russian soul by every possible metaphysical quibble, but succeeded in putting before us the Karamasovs—father and sons—and Smierdyakov, and sundry "devils," including Raskolnikov, in whose souls a European psychologist can in no wise discern his God. He will behold there the sinister, contorted features of the gods of primeval pagans, nomadic Shaman-images, and only sometimes he feels himself in the presence of a sectarian God, in whose name men killed and burned others and themselves. This divinity has been worshipped for the last three hundred years secretly in the forests of the North and Kama within ancient "Skitas" (chapels) made of cedar or larch trees, by the priests of the "old Faith," which was suppressed by the "first Antichrist," Tsar Peter I, and later by the "General of the Knights of Malta," Tsar Paul I, who himself met with a violent death.