Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/516

490 Slav countries, but without promoting any effective community of civilisation. The isolation of Russia was intensified by the enmity to the Catholic Poles, and subsequently to the Protestant Germans and Swedes.

The Russians took over Byzantine theology, but did not acquire Hellenism, or acquired so much only as was implicit in the theology. When we compare Russia with the west we may say that the former knew nothing of Aristotle or of the corpus juris; Greek never played in Russia the part that Latin played in the west; there was no humanist movement, no renaissance, no independent growth of the sciences and of modern philosophy, and above all no reformation (or counter-reformation). On the other hand, in religious matters Asia from early days exercised considerable influence upon Russia, and Leont'ev's fondness for the stationary characteristics of Asiaticism was not wholly unrussian.

The slavophils extol Russia because she did not produce any counterpart to scholasticism. But Russia was not called upon to defend the doctrines of the church against classical paganism, and had no need to defend those doctrines against her own thinkers. The slavophils, therefore, are fully representative of the spirit of the Russian church when they attack logic and spurn Aristotle, and when they cling to Plato and his contemplation of eternal ideas and unchangeable verities. Altogether Russian, too, is their thought when they term scholasticism the mother of Protestantism and of rationalist notions in general, and when they wholly condemn rationalism.

Kirěevskii, Homjakov, and Solov'ev are representative exponents of Russian religious thought and feeling, and the same may be said of Leont'ev.

We saw that Russian philosophers of history lay great stress on the importance of the church. But for the Russians the church is not what it is for Catholics or Protestants. To the Russian, indeed to any member of the Orthodox church, the priest is not the teacher and guide in matters of religion, but is above all the miracle-worker, the magician. The Russian looks upon his priest as a live "good conductor" of divine grace, as a passive mediator. The Russian is a consistent passivist. Salvation comes to man without his personal collaboration, and even the priest plays no individual part here. This is why in Russia (as in the east) the monk is held in much higher esteem than the ordinary priest. Priests