Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/309

Rh the critical question whether Slav manners and customs were, after all, as primitive as the slavophils were in the habit of assuming. In any case, what does the acceptance of this aristocratic genealogical tree prove as to the excellency of Slav customs? The national character may evolve, may change, may improve or deteriorate; but the slavophils were impervious to such considerations.

A further question arises how far the individual Slavic peoples are essentially identical in character and in other respects, for it must not be taken as a matter of course that the Slavs are as homogeneous as Homjakov assumes. The assumption requires critical examination. ln point of civilisation the existence of marked differences is indisputable. Homjakov himself separates the Poles from the other Slavs. The Poles, having adopted Catholicism and other institutions from the conquering nations of the west took the side of the Germans against the Slavs. Homjakov does not discuss the question of Czech and Croat Catholicism. Kirěevskii approved the Czechs and Hussitism in that he considered them to have preserved reminiscences of Orthodoxy. To the Moravian brethren he even ascribed the Orthodox doctrine of the trinity.

More precise acquaintanceship with ecclesiastical history could not fail to destroy this illusion, although the later slavophils endeavoured to associate the Czech reformation far more directly with the eastern church. They had little success here, although the Slav apostles Cyril and Methodius had diffused Byzantine doctrines throughout Moravia. Homjakov when he speaks of Slavs thinks chiefly of Orthodox Slavs, holding that the Slavs (including the Russians) possessed the qualities rendering possible their conversion to Christianity and the maintenance of true Christianity. It is difficult to understand how Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and their successors could fail to take into account that in addition to the Slavs, the Byzantines and other eastern peoples adopted Orthodox Christianity. Are the Greeks (Byzantines) more akin in essence to the Slavs than the Romans, the Latin peoples, or the Germans? Do the Armenians resemble the Russians (Slavs) more closely in character than the Germans or, say, the Abyssinians, a people concerning whose Christianity Čaadaev had more accurate ideas than have the latest founders of the Abyssinio-Russian religious community?