Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 1.pdf/322

296 Panslavism notwithstanding, the number of Slav nations and tongues was increased by the universal nationalist movements which followed the eighteenth century, and which resulted in a separation between the written tongues of the Hungarian Slovaks and of the Czechs, and which led also to a nationalist movement among the Ruthenians, who detached themselves from the Great Russians. A like process of national and linguistic differentiation was manifested also among the Slovenes who, had political conditions been different, might without much difficulty have undergone linguistic assimilation with the Croats. A similar differentiation is manifest in the evolution of the Croats and the Serbs, but here one and the same nation has undergone differentiation owing to religious and political dissimilarities, and owing to the varying influences of diverse cultural and geographical conditions.

The nature and evolution of the national renaissance of the Slav peoples was theoretically formulated in a number of programs wherein the matter was considered from the outlook of the philosophy of history and from that of the philosophy of nationality. It was natural that in drafting these programs people should be influenced by the historico-philosophical movement that originated in the eighteenth century and was stimulated by the great revolution. Just as in Russia at this date a philosophy of history and a philosophy of nationality came into existence, so do we find that at the same epoch there were attempts to found such philosophies among the other Slav peoples.

Side by side with the growth of the philosophies of history and of nationality there originated a Slavistic movement for the historical study of the Russian and other Slav tongues and civilisations; this movement was analogous with the Romance and Teutonist movements, and was partly influenced by the last-named (by the works of Grimm and similar writers).

FTER these general observations, passing now to the individual programs of the Slav nations in the matter of the philosophy of history and of the philosophy of nationality, we must begin with the Czechs. The Czechs were the first theorists of the national renaissance of their own and of other Slav peoples. In their peculiar