Page:Russian Realities and Problems - ed. James Duff (1917).djvu/89

 so far as the latter aimed at overcoming the dogmas of the reformers by adopting as its own the strongest points in the reforming movement, meant—and this constitutes their importance from the point of view of economic history—the wide spread of certain religious ideas in their direct application to daily life; and these ideas took firm hold of the masses of the people. Now these ideas as applied to morals and manners have to a large extent become detached from their roots in religion, have become quite profane, if one cares to use the term, and have been, so to speak, secularised by bourgeois morality. This has been the case least of all, I think, with the Anglo-Saxon race. I regard it as a great happiness for Great Britain that in this country more than in any other country of Western Europe religion has retained its power over the mind of the nation.

In Russia the Church exercised no influence in such a direction and in such a sense. The Church has in Russia played a very important part in the development of Russian culture, but such work she has hitherto accomplished only to a quite insignificant extent. The deeply permeating religious education which serves, so to speak, as a subconscious primary foundation for economic culture, and which has been so important a factor in the economic development of the West (in Russia this statement would include Finland and the Baltic Provinces; Poland shared Russia's fate in this respect), is lacking in the present economic equipment of the peoples of Russia. You will understand now