Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/310

284 Doubtless in ecclesiastical and religious matters the various Orthodox nations are closely associated. Community of custom has in many respects been diffused owing to ecclesiastical community, just as we find that among the peoples of the west their ecclesiastical community is responsible for many similarities. But the slavophils would have done well to analyse these differences and resemblances with more precision, for they would thus have secured clearer and more definite ideas concerning both east and west.

It may be briefly pointed out that there is no historical or sociological warrant, for Homjakov's contrast between agriculturists and conquerors. The history of all the Slavs, above all the history of the Russians, affords striking proof that the idyll of the "dovelike nature" of the ancient and of the modern Slavs must be completely discredited. It was time in Homjakov's day for this idyll to be decently buried.

I cannot but call to mind Hegel's characterisation of the Germans and their national talent for the reformation, which to Hegel seemed to embody true Christianity just as to the slavophils Orthodoxy seemed to embody it. Hegel declared that the other nations were aiming at secular dominion, at conquests and at discoveries. Luther, the simple German monk, sought and found perfection in the realm of the spirit. In Hegel's view pure Christianity as a folk-religion made its first appearance among the Teutons. The Greeks and the Romans could neither adopt nor realise the pure teaching of Christ; the Teutons were the first to be capable of true Christian piety, and in them (in Hegel's view) was first manifest the most beautiful and the most heartfelt devotion. Medieval Catholicism was of value only in so far as it was established by the mingled Romance and Teutonic people, but solely through the reformation did the German essence and pure Christianity first attain full development.

In medieval Catholicism and among the Latins its founders, Hegel discovered a cleavage such as the slavophils discovered between Catholics and Protestants, hut in Hegel's view this was due to the mingling of Romance and Teutonic national elements.

Hegel, I may add, likewise considers that the Slavs were primarily agriculturists, but his deduction is that among the Slavs, therefore, the institution of slavery was retained by the landowning aristocracy. Hegel, just like Čaadaev, attributes