Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/234

208 tristic articles to liberal periodicals. After his conversion he renounced these activities, and condemned them even more severely than Tolstoi had done in his own case, for Leont'ev lamented that his early writings had been modelled upon the pagan, devilish, and utterly immoral works of George Sand, and that in point of style he had imitated Turgenev.

Nevertheless, after his conversion he wrote sketches of Christian life in Turkey (which were commended by Tolstoi among others), a number of short stories, a novel, and literary critiques.

Leont'ev unreservedly accepted ecclesiastical Orthodoxy and its doctrines. What he understood by Orthodoxy was Byzantinism, the primitive Greek ecclesiasticism which had given the law to the Russian church. Byzantinism was for him the peculiar Byzantine culture. Its system and its principle were characterised politically by autocracy conjoined with aristocracy; in the religious field, by true Christianity in contrast with the western church and the sects; and in the moral sphere, by refraining from putting the high value upon human individuality which was the dominant feature of Teutonic feudalism, so that in the Byzantine system earthly happiness and mundane life were renounced from the outlook of a rigorous Christian ideal, one contemning the world. Further, Byzantinism rejected the hope of general welfare for the people, its essential idea being sharply contrasted with the idea of universal humanitarianism, universal equality, universal freedom, universal perfectionment, and universal satisfaction. Artistically and aesthetically, Byzantinism had secured plain expression in its architecture and other works.

Such was the conception of Christianity formulated by Leont'ev in the year 1876. In his writings he continued to expound and defend the principles of the monkish religion to which he had come to adhere during his residence on Mount Athos, and to apply these principles to contemporary conditions, above all in opposition to the reforming and revolutionary trends of literature and politics.

Leont'ev's "true Christianity" is the Christianity of