Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/220

 of South-Slavonian communities. Meanwhile Kotlyarevsky, a pupil of Bodyansky, produced a learned work on the funeral rites of the ancient Slavonians, and explained the antiquities and ancient laws of the Pomeranian and Baltic tribes; while Leontovich compared Slavonic institutions and made valuable investigations concerning the history of Lithuanian law.

These examples prove the growing independence of Russian thought in the domain of universal history; and they can be, of course, supplemented by illustrations of what was done, during the same period, for the knowledge of Russia's past: Russian scholars became aware that "general human knowledge cannot be realized by a nation without self-knowledge," which is the chief factor of progress, and many of them turned their minds to the study of Russian history.

This idea was not easy of access to historians like Karamsin, who was much more interested in the fortunes of the Russian monarchy than in the history of the Russian nation; but it was one of the leading principles of Solovyev's great work. Solovyev at one time attended the lectures of Ritter and was a disciple of Guizot and an adherent of Ewers; but he was able to preserve his independence. He examined the geographical conditions of Russian life and gave a detailed survey of its "organic development," that is, of the gradual transformation of ancient patriarchal institutions into the Russian State of the 18th century.

This treatment provoked criticism from the Slavophiles. Kiryeevsky, Homyakov and Aksakov, accepting to some extent the principles of Schelling and Hegel, expressed their conviction that human and