Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/182

 French and English influences were less organized: they made way into Russia chiefly through personal intercourse and literature, and were of somewhat later origin. These connections grew conspicuous in the times of the French encyclopédistes, Voltaire, Diderot and others; and the Frenchmen drew the growing attention of Russian readers to Locke and Hume and their followers.

From that time Russian cultured classes became familiar with some of the ideas of Montesquieu and Rousseau, Mably and Raynal, Helvétius and Holbach; and somewhat later they became aware of the theories of Adam Smith, Blackstone and Bentham. It is clear that German influence was relatively much more exclusive in Russia in the first half of the 18th century than later on. A comparison between two enlightened Russian critics and historians of those times, Tatishchev and Shcherbatov, is enough to prove this. Tatishchev borrowed much from German sources, Shcherbatov was fairly well acquainted with French literature and had some idea even of English, though he could not read it in the original.

By degrees French and English influences encountered the influence of Germany and thus preserved Russian scholars from complete subjection to German thought: this is conspicuous, for instance, in the Philosophical Propositions of Kozelsky and in works of somewhat later origin.

Many of these were conceived under the influence