Page:Phelps - Essays on Russian Novelists.djvu/48

Rh awful sacrifice of her daily life is the great modern illustration of Love. Christ again is crucified. When the refined, cultivated, philosophical student Raskolnikov stoops to this ignorant girl and kisses her feet, he says, "I did not bow down to you individually, but to suffering Humanity in your person." That phrase gives us an insight into the Russian national character.

The immediate result of all this suffering as set forth in the lives and in the books of the great Russians, is Sympathy -- pity and sympathy for Humanity. Thousands are purified and ennobled by these sublime pictures of woe. And one of the most remarkable of contemporary Russian novels -- Andreev's The Seven Who Were Hanged, a book bearing on every page the stamp of indubitable genius -- radiates a sympathy and pity that are almost divine.

This growth of Love and Sympathy in the Russian national character is to me the sign of greatest promise in their future, both as a nation of men and women, and as a contributor to the world's great works of literary art. If anything can dispel the black clouds in their dreary sky, it will be this wonderful emotional power. The political changes, the Trans-Siberian railway, their industrial and agricultural progress, -- all these are as nothing compared with the immense advance that