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        [Peter Chaadayev was a remarkable thinker, who has a very important position in the history of Russian thought. He was a friend of the Decembrists, though not one of them. Living remote from society and absorbed principally in religious meditation, he wrote a number of striking letters to a lady, which, without his knowledge or consent, were published in 1836 by Nadezhdin, Editor of the Moscow Telescope. Russian thinkers of very various tendencies were now ardently seeking some explanation of the place and mission of their country in the world. These letters were a ruthless exposure of the poverty of Russia's contribution to history, and the absence of any definite morale. They excited the most acute interest. The Emperor Nicholas, on his imperial authority, declared Chaadayev to be mad, and he replied in a letter entitled L'apologie d'un Fou. This article, which forms part of a thesis about to be published in the Institut d'Etudes Slaves at Paris, analyses the attitude of Chaadayev to his contemporaries the Slavophils.-B. P.]

        FROM the time when " the storm " broke over Chaadayev, it is most interesting to study the evolution which his teaching underwent under the influence of his Slavophil friends — above all, under that of the double conflict which to the end of his life he waged both against the utopian Chauvinism of the nationalist philosophy of history, and against the aspirations of the out and out Westernisers. It is curious that " the storm," which has just been mentioned, and which ought, logically, to have modified, not of course his philosophy of history, but at least his appreciation of the actual moment and of the immediate possibilities for Russia, did not produce any effect till much later. In fact, whatever Gerschensohn thinks of the question,[1] we shall find in the famous Apologie d'un Fou hardly an idea which we did not already know, and the retractations which some have found in it, go no further than those which we have already met in his letters.
        In this Apologie, which is at the same time a confession of faith, we again find, sometimes in a more emphatic form, the severe judgments on the national past of Russia; and if at the same time we find expressed there the hope of a brilliant future
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made possible by her very defects, we are well aware that such had already for a long time been the intimate thought of Chaadayev.
        In effect, the history of peoples is not only a series of successive facts, it is also a series of connected ideas. That is exactly the history which we do not possess."
        "With the lives of peoples, it is much the same as with those of individuals. All men have lived, but it is only the man of genius or the man placed in certain peculiar conditions that has a real history." Russia has come to occupy a fifth part of the earth, but what is the significance of that fact ? From the point of view of history she is null. It is only a geographical fact and no more. The history of mankind will note it in its annals, will turn over the page, and that is all. Let us have no more pseudo-patriotic illusions and utopias. "Love of one's country is a very fine thing, but there is something better, love of truth."
        But "the truth is that we have never yet considered our history from the philosophical point of view… that is why we find all these strange imaginations, all these utopias of the past, all these dreams of an impossible future, that to-day torment patriotic minds. German scholars discovered our annalists fifty years ago, Karamzin later recounted in his sonorous style the deeds and achievements of our princes," and it is on these poor relics of an insignificant and empty past that a Chauvinism which consents to be blind would wish to found an impossible and deceptive philosophy of history."
        Our fanatical Slavs may be able from time-to time in their divers researches to exhume objects of curiosity for our museums or our libraries; but I think one may doubt whether they will ever contrive to draw from our historic soil anything to fill the void in our souls, anything to give more body to the mistiness of our minds." And to "fanatical Slavs" Chaadayev addresses this apostrophe, that still vibrates with the feeling which had dictated his letters of Necropolis. "Do not imagine that you have ever lived the life of historic nations when, buried in your immense tomb, you have only been living the life of fossils."[2]
        And let it not be said that Russia is only attached in some quite superficial or external way to the civilisation and the destinies of the West, and that her lack of tradition and of a history of the European kind is largely made good by quite another kind of tradition and hiistory, by those of the East, to which Russia belongs by her native and ancient civilisation. Russia has
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nothing in common with the real East. "We are situated in the East of Europe; that is true, but for all that, we have never formed part of the East. The East possesses a history that has nothing in common with that of our country." Indeed "East" and "West" are not geographical conceptions; on the contrary, they express two essential types of human civilisation.
        The world was at all times divided into two parts, the East and the West. That is not only a geographical division. It is also an order of things that follows from the very nature of the intelligent being. They are two principles which answer to two dynamic forces of nature, two ideas that embrace the whole economy of the human race. It is in concentration, in self-absorption, in introspection, that the human mind formed itself in the East; it is in expansion outwards, in a radiation in every direction, in a struggle against all obstacles, that it developed in the West.
        But "as we have not gathered the traditions of the West, so we have also not shared in those of the East, nor inherited them"; and the proof, if we need one, is that "Peter the Great found nothing in front of him but a blank sheet of paper, and with his strong hand traced on it the words, Europe and West; from that time we were of Europe and of the West."
        Russia belongs neither to the West nor to the East. It is simply a country in the north, a country which was till then outside the great world civilisations, and that is why it has never till now had a truly historical past. This is a fact which we have to accept, because "the past is no longer in our power," but it is not at all a reason for despair; for "the future is ours," or at least it can be ours if we really wish, if we follow the road which Peter the Great has traced for Russia.
        The work and the example of Peter the Great are henceforward the only path of safety, and "if one really loves one's country, one could not fail to be painfully affected by this apostasy of our most advanced minds against the things which were our glory… our greatness." In fact, contrary to what one habitually believes, contrary to the opinion expressed by Chaadayev himself, Peter the Great never wished to Westernise his country through and through. If he "handed over to us the West wholesale as the centuries had produced it," if he "gave us all its history for our history, all its future for our future," that does not mean that he meant us to copy with servility the institutions, manners, and the whole civilisation of Europe, with all its weaknesses and all its faults; on the contrary, he meant us to
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make our own choice. It is curious to notice how Chaadayev, seizing for his own use the arguments of Krayevsky-Odoyevsky aimed really against himself, tries to cover himself by the great name of Peter, and loftily proclaims that he loves his country in the same way that Peter did:
        "Believe me, more than any of you I cherish my country, I am ambitious for its glory, I know how to appreciate the eminent qualities of my nation… I love my country as Peter the Great has taught me to love it."
        But like Chaadayev himself, Peter the Great loved neither the present nor the past of Russia. He only saw in her the bases on which he would build a future, and the same features which have prevented Russia from having a past worthy of the name were found to be favourable for the realisation of this glorious future.
        "The most profound feature of our historical physiognomy is the absence of spontaneity in our social development… Every important fact in our history is a fact that has been imposed on it; every new idea is almost always an imported idea." That is why, whilst "a great part of the world is oppressed by its traditions, by its memories… there is not for us such a thing as irrevocable necessity… Put face to face with the old civilis-ation of Europe, the last expression of all previous civilisations, there was no point in our stifling ourselves in our history, in dragging ourselves, like the peoples of the West, across the chaos of national prejudices by the narrow paths of local ideas, in the hackneyed rut of native tradition." It is a quite new path that Russia has freely to mark out for herself. " I think that if we have come after the others, it is that we may do better than the others, that we may not fall into their mistakes, their errors, their superstitions. In my opinion it would be a strange misconception of the part which it falls to us to play, if we were to reduce ourselves to a clumsy repetition of all the long series of follies committed by nations less favoured than ourselves, to begin again all the calamities which they have suffered. I find that this position of ours is a very fortunate one, provided we know how to appreciate it; that we have here a fine privilege in being able to contemplate and judge the world from the full stature of a thought that is freed of the frenzied passions, the pitiable inter-ests which elsewhere disturbed man's view and biased his judgment." In short, while everywhere else the power of traditions, of habits of mind, hampers the free march of thought, " among us there are none of these passionate interests, these opinions ready made, these prejudices fully formed; we arrive as virgin
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minds in front of each new idea. In our institutions, which are the spontaneous work of our princes, or the feeble vestiges of an order of things which was worked out by their all-powerful plough… there is nothing to hinder the immediate realisation of all the blessings which Providence destines for humanity. It is enough that a sovereign will should declare itself among us, for all opinions to be wiped out, for all minds to open to the new thought that is offered to them."[3] That is why also "we are allowed to aspire to a yet wider field of prosperity than any that can be dreamed by the most ardent ministers of progress; to reach these definite results, we only need a single sovereign act of that supreme will which contains all the wills of the nation, which expresses all its aspirations, which more than once already has opened new paths to it, has stretched new horizons before its eyes, and caused new enlightenment to sink into its intelligence."[4]
        One sees clearly that, with one or two exceptions, Chaadayev is maintaining his former principles; he holds to his fighting position, and in spite of his many points of contact with them, in spite of his suceptibility to their influence, it is the Slavs, the fanatical Slavs, that remain, and will henceforth remain, his principal opponents.[5]
        We have already insisted on the importance of the connections between Chaadayev and the Slavophils. We think we ought to do so again, for we think it is by these relations, by the direct influence of the ideas of these friendly enemies, as well as by their inverse influence by reaction, that we can explain the curious evolution that has so far been too little studied, the evolution backward, if one may so call it, which from this point the doctrine of this thinker follows.
        It is from the Slavophils, we cannot doubt, that he has learned to recognise the religious value of Orthodoxy; it is under their influence that, in formal contradiction with his previous convictions, he has come to consider it even superior to Catholicism
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in the matter of dogmatic purity and of fidelity to the primitive inspiration of Christianity. It is certainly from Kireyevsky that he borrows the idea that Catholicism, thanks precisely to the importance of the part which it has played in " the education of the human race," thanks to its essentially social character, has already exhausted its creative force; the social and political forms in which it realised itself have been emptied of the spirit which vivified them. Now something new is needed, a Christianity that is purely spiritual.
        It is thus that Chaadayev wrote in 1837 to his constant friend and confidant, Nicholas Turgenev: " Political Christianity has had its time; it has no longer any sense in our epoch; it was necessary in the epoch when the new society was forming and the new law of social life was developing. And that is why I think Western Christianity has completely fulfilled the task that devolved on Christianity in general, and above all in the West, where were to be found the principles necessary for the formation of a new social world; but to-day it is quite different. The great work is accomplished; the society is created; it has received the law. The instruments for unlimited perfectioning have been given to man; man has entered the period of his maturity. It is thus that the reins of government of the world had naturally to fall from the hands of the Roman Pontiff; political Christianity has had to give place to a Christianity that is purely spiritual, and in the place where the powers of earth have reigned so long… there is nothing left but the symbol of the unity of thought, a sublime lesson and monument of ancient times. In a word, to-day Christianity must be nothing less than this supreme idea of the epoch which contains in it all the ideas of all the epochs past and to come, and in consequence must only act on the community indirectly by the presence of thought, and not of matter. More than ever it must live in the region of the spirit, and from thence must illuminate the world. And that is where it must find its definite expression."
        It is clear that in the mind of Chaadayev, the ascetic, purely internal Christianity of the Eastern Church brings him nearer to this definite expression. But it is no more the total sum of Christianity than Catholicism: it is not this religion of the spirit, this mystical religion superior to confessional forms, that is the religion of Chaadayev. As he was never really Catholic, so he has never been "converted" to Orthodoxy as was the case with Kireyevsky, and that is why he has never wished to obscure either the religious value of Roman Catholicism, or even its rela-
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tive superiority as a social formation. Catholicism and Orthodoxy were for him the two forms of realisation of the Christian spirit, to both of which he felt himself superior. "My religion," he had written to Turgenev as early as 1831, " is not precisely that of the theologians, and you will perhaps tell me that it is not that of the peoples either, but I will tell you that it is the religion that is at the bottom of men's minds… and which . . . will some day become the definite cult and the entire life of humanity; but which meanwhile does not clash with popular beliefs, but on the contrary adopts them in its wide charity, while all the time passing further. If I had found a religion ready-made around me, when I was seeking one, I should certainly have taken it; but not having found one, I was compelled to join the communion of the Fenelons, the Pascals, the Leibniz and the Bacons. In view of this, you were wrong in describing me as a true Catholic."
        "The two Churches," he writes in 1845 to Comte de Circourt, "are the two poles of the Christian sphere " (we see here Schelling's idea of the two poles). But as to the value of each of these poles, it seems that more and more, while he recognises the dogmatic purity of Orthodoxy, Chaadayev is again giving his sympathies to the West. The violent criticism which the Slavophils make of the Western confessions seems by its very exaggeration to have provoked this reaction; it is thus that in 1844, giving an account of young Samarin's Thesis to a friend, whom unfortunately we cannot identify, he writes that the young Doctor ought to have been told " that to find in the Catholic's sermon an absence of living sympathy with the mass of his congregation is so ridiculous that one does not really know what to reply; that the difference which he has lately invented between the Orthodox and Catholic Churches is perfectly untrue, that the Orthodox Church exacts and has exacted external submission as much as the Catholic, that the Catholic Church does not at all content itself with external or formal obedience, but only, owing to its practical good sense, has a better understanding than the other Confessions of human nature and of the necessary link between the external and the internal, between the material and the spiritual, between form and essence; that the idea of this union is directly deduced from that doctrine of the gospel which, so to speak, formally deifies the human body in the body of Christ, mysteriously united to it, and predicts the resurrection of the body… One ought to add to all this that the Western Church has not developed at all as a State, but as a kingdom, and that it is ridiculous to make this a reproach, for the whole object of Chris-
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tianity consists precisely in the formation of a single kingdom which would comprise all others; and that it is incomprehensible how the symbolic idea of unity in the person of the Pope, which for the matter of that the Catholic Church does not recognise, could separate humanity from the Church… that finally the preponderance of form in Catholicism is only a pitiable fantasy of Protestantism which, with its negative and obtuse thought, could not understand that it is only by a profound and rational union of the form with the thought that one could preserve the form and the thought of Christianity in the midst of that tremendous struggle of forces and ideas of every kind gathered on the soil of Europe that makes up the modern history of thinking mankind." One sees clearly that for the most part these are old ideas of Chaadayev, reborn with an altogether new vigour. But really we have here to do with a far more important modification of his thought. Chaadayev, as we have seen above, has adopted the Slavophil point of view as to the absolute preponderance of the "principle" of Christianity in the formation of the national character of the Russian people. But while the Slavophils, or at least Kireyevsky, deduce from the national or ethnical ductility and malleability of the Russian Slavs, and from the absolutely pure character of oriental Christianity, a perfect realisation of the Christian civilisation in ancient Russia, Chaadayev on the contrary makes these two historical causes responsible for the present state of Russia and for her past. Thus it is no longer, as he wrote in his letters, the absence or weakness of the Christian influence, but on the contrary its preponderance that explains the lack of civilisation in Russia. Thenceforth it appears that the autonomous life of the Western peoples (the barbarous element) and the influence of the classical inheritance have not only contributed to the development of civilisation in general, but that these two elements have been indispensable to the formation of the Church itself, that they alone have given it the possibility of developing the social principles which certainly were implicitly contained in Christianity as such, but which could not become explicit and realise themselves without the counteraction of paganism and classicism.[6] Alone, Christianity would have produced in the West what it has produced at Byzantium and in Russia — an abdication by the people of its existence
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and its freedom, a Christian Caliphate, and slavery as a consequence of the preponderance of ascetic Christianity, and at the same time of the subjection of the Church to the temporal power. Chaadayev returns to his old idea, and to Russia as continuator and heiress of Cesaro-papist and Philetist Byzantium he opposes the independence and the power of the Church of the West. One need not ask to which he gives his preference.
        The very beautiful letter to Comte de Circourt gives us the definite expression of this new position of Chaadayev. To the idea of a native development of a "germ" of superior civilisation, which the Slavophil followers of Schelling are compelled to assume if they wish to affirm or even merely to hope for the possibility of a true growth of civilisation in Russia, to the romantic utopia which sees the realisation of this in the past, Chaadayev opposes the non-spontaneous character of the people, and his doctrine of liberty. It is for these two reasons that the evolution of Russia can only be accomplished under the influence of an impulse come from outside.
        "In my view," he writes, "[7] progress is still impossible with us without appeal to the tribunal of Europe. Not that we do not ourselves possess the germ of possible development, but it is certain that the initiative of our movements still belongs to foreign ideas, and I add that it has always belonged to them — a singular phenomenon of history of which perhaps there are not many examples in the story of peoples. And firstly, all our intellectuality is evidently the fruit of the religious principle, but this principle does not belong to any people in particular. It is then a foreign principle for us as for other peoples of the world.
        "But it has everywhere undergone national and local influences, while with us the Christian idea remains such as it was imported from Byzantium: that is to say, such as it happened to be at a certain time, as formulated by the force of things; an important fact, of which our Church justly boasts, but which does not the less characterise the peculiar character of our nation. It is under the action of this single idea that our society develops." Then it is not any longer "over there" in Europe that Christianity has "done everything." On the contrary it is here, it is in Russia that it has played a preponderant part, before the bases of civilisation had developed under the influence of national and classical elements. And these elements, whose importance thenceforward becomes not only positive but even decisive, had been lacking in Russia; its people had nothing of their own.
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        "This facility for undergoing impulses which are given to us, for bending to ideas which are imposed on us either from outside or by our masters, is… an essential feature of our temperament — native or acquired, it does not matter. We must neither blush for it, nor deny it. We must try to understand it, and that not by some kind of ethnographic theory such as is very much in fashion in our days, but quite simply by a frank and sincere conception of our history… We are the product of the religious principle and that is certain, but it is not everything. We must not forget that this principle is only really fertile when it is profoundly independent of the temporal power, when the central good from whence it exerts its action over peoples is situated in a region inaccessible to the powers, of this earth . . . Unfortunately it has been otherwise in our country. In spite of the profound veneration which our princes have shown for the clergy and for the dogmas of Christianity, the spiritual power, with us, has been far from enjoying the fullness of its natural rights in society." But we have seen, and we shall again see, that this submission of the Church to the temporal power is in the last analysis explained exactly by the ascetic character of oriental Christianity, by its indifference to all that is passing outside it. It is the active, practical and social character of Catholicism that has allowed it to conquer and safeguard its independence, and even at a certain epoch to triumph over the temporal power.
        "This triumph (of the spiritual power over the temporal) has, I know, found few to approve of it among your thinkers. But we, as disinterested witnesses in the matter, can appreciate better than you. As faithful continuators of Byzantium, we well know the meaning of a spiritual power delivered into the hands of the powers of this earth. On one side a clergy animated by a profound spirit of independence, aspiring to raise the spiritual power above that of force; on the other, a Church that has submitted itself to the material power and tries to rise to a species of Christian Caliphate. There is the heritage which we received from Byzantium, with the integrity of the dogma and its primitive purity. This purity is doubtless a great blessing, and one which must console us for what is otherwise lacking in our spiritual regime. But as we are only speaking here of our social development, you will agree that the religious system of the West was much more favourable to that kind of development than what fell to our lot. We must always remember one thing, namely; that there was hardly in our society any other moral principle except the religious idea. It is then to it alone that our nation owes its
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historical education; to it must be attributed everything that we have, the good as well as the evil… Evidently this docility in submitting to the different directions which had been given us is a necessary consequence of a religious system devoid of liberty, where moral thought has preserved nothing of its dignity but the appearance, where it is only honoured on condition of keeping quiet, where it exercises no authority except so far as the political power allows, and where it is constantly compressed in its ministers, in its movements, and in its spirit."[8]
        Thus it is not at all in the West but in Russia that there weighs with terrible heaviness an unhappy tradition of sin, of the heaviest kind of sin, that against the spirit ; it is not for Europe, it is for her, for Russia, to repent, to show her contrition if she wishes to take her place among Christian nations, for it is only this repentance that can allow her to free herself, to reconquer herself, to find in herself the forces required for really playing a part in the world.
        "The time of our true enfranchisement from the influence of foreign ideas will only date from that day when we completely understand the paths which we have traversed, when the confession of all the errors, all the faults, of our past shall escape from our lips despite ourselves, when from the depth of our being shall be heard the cry of repentarce and of sorrow, of which the whole world will be filled. Then we shall naturally take our place among the peoples destined to act among mankind not only as a ram or a hammer, but as ideas. And do not think that this moment is far from us. Even among that same new school which claims to reestablish the past, more than one clear mind, more than one sincere soul has already been led to own the sin of our fathers."
        "I do not know if you will share my opinion, but it seems to me that all our history explains itself very well on these lines, the story of a people simple and kindly, a people whose first steps on its social progress were marked by this notorious abdication in favour of a foreign people, so naively recounted by our annalists. This people, I say, embraces the sublime doctrines of the Gospel in their primitive expression, that is to say, before the move-
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ment of Christian society had given them their social character; those doctrines continue to be its genius, but it could not and was not meant to manifest itself till a given time. It is clear that on this people alone the moral idea of Christianity was bound to produce its most direct effect: to give emphasis in it to the ascetic element, to the exclusion of all the other principles which it contained, principles of development, of progress, and of a future. The Christian dogma emanating from the Supreme Mind could not develop or perfect itself, but it is susceptible to a mass of applications called forth by the life of nations. We know of the great phenomena, of the immense results to which the life of the Western peoples give birth when combined with Christianity. But that is because this life itself, filled with all sorts of fertile elements, was not at all petrified by a narrow spiritualism; it found protection, sympathy, liberty, where our life met only with rigour and subjection to the interest of the Prince. We went on then from abdication to abdication. All our social history is only a series of faults of this kind… the gradual enslavement of our rural populations, that in a way sums up the whole spirit of our history (which is only the rigorous and logical deduction of it)… Everywhere slavery had the same origin, namely, conquest. With us nothing of the kind. It is one part of the nation that found itself one fine day the slave of the other by the very nature of things, by the effect of an imperious need of the country, by the inevitable march of society, without abuse on one side and without protest on the other. Notice that this unique process was consummated at the time when the Church had the greatest power, during the period of the Patriarchate, that memorable period when for a moment one saw the Head of the Church share the throne with the Prince."
        Slavery, the symptom and last consequence of this abdication of oneself, of this humility pushed too far, there, according to Chaadayev, is the crime, the principal sin of Russia.[9] There practically is the abomination in which she lives, and which she must get rid of as soon as possible — and in face of this positive crime, Chaadayev sees only the pseudo-patriotic claim of the Shevyrevs[10] and Pogodins, an insensate and criminal pride of nation and of race, also imported, which the Slavophils seek to propagate; and Chaadayev adds: " The comparison between our
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historical life and that of other peoples, which is so often reproduced in our days, shows us at each step how we differ from them. Later, we shall know whether a people is allowed to separate itself thus from the rest of the world, whether we are really part of historic humanity when we have nothing to supply to it, except some pages of geography."
        Such were the opinions of Chaadayev in the last years of his life. More and more pessimistic, more and more reduced to despair by the growing success of official, or officious nationalism, by the Chauvinism to which the adepts of the Slavophil movement were more and more inclined, he writes in I846 to Prince Vyazemsky: [11]
        "It is enough to look around us to see at once how this national vanity which till now was foreign to us, has rudely disfigured our best minds, with what self-contentment they strut about, since they have completed their imaginary exploit, since they have discovered this new world of intelligence and of spirit. It certainly seems that the traditions of wise antiquity are not very deeply anchored in our souls; is it long since, obeying the imperious will of a great man, we have abdicated them in front of the whole world, and here we are denying them again, obeying some national sentiment brought to us from God knows where.
        "We have always been modest people, humble in spirit. That is how we have been educated by our Church, our only school-mistress. Woe to us if we abandon her wise teaching. It is to her that we owe our best national qualities, our greatness, all that distinguishes us from other peoples, and shapes our destinies. Unfortunately this new movement of our minds leans exactly to this side . . . Our ways are not the same as those along which other peoples move; in time we shall certainly attain all those blessings for which the human race is striving; perhaps even, led by our holy faith, we shall be the first to see the goal which God has set to humanity. The meaning of our part in the world is still so profoundly hidden in the mysteries of Providence that it would be senseless to exalt ourselves before our elder brothers. They are not better than us, but they have more experience."
        We will not now speak of the criticisms — masterpieces of irony and penetration — which he makes of the writings of Homyakov and of Shevyrev. To conclude this study, we wish to quote two beautiful letters, two confessions of faith of this noble spirit: "I have loved my country in my own way. That is all, and it costs me more than I could tell you to pass for one who is
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unfaithful to Russia. Enough of sacrifices ! Now that my task is fulfilled, that I have said almost all that I had to say, nothing henceforward prevents me from giving myself up to that natural feeling for my country which I have too long suppressed in my bosom. The truth is that like so many others before me, I had thought that, Russia finding herself in the presence of an immense civilisation, her part could not be other than that of seeking to appropriate this civilisation in all possible ways; that in the unique position which has been created for us, we could not continue our old history step by step, conquered as we were already to this new history of the world which has hurled us towards all imaginable developments. I was wrong, perhaps, but still it was very natural, you will agree… New studies, new researches, have made us realise many things which formerly we did not know, and to-day it is evident that we are too little like the rest of the world to be able to follow with success the same paths that it has taken. If then it is true that we have diverged from our natural path, we must before all else re-discover it, that is certain; but once this path is discovered, what have we to do ? Time will tell us … It is clear… that our divergence from our path has had but little success…" But the return did not succeed any better than the divergence, and disheartened no longer only by the pseudo-historical inventions of the patriots (of which, however, some were really historical discoveries), and by the debauch of the coarsest Chauvinism which accompanied the Crimean War,[12] but also by the realities which the war brought out in all their ugliness, he writes in 1854 full of a noble and legitimate indignation:
        "No, a thousand times, no. It is not thus that we loved our country in our youth. We wished its welfare, we desired that it should have good institutions, we even sometimes went so far as to wish for it rather more liberty if that could be; we knew that it was great and powerful, full of a future; but we did not think either that it was the most powerful or the most fortunate country in the world. We were far from imagining that Russia represented some kind of abstract principle comprising the definite solution of the social problem, that she of herself constituted a whole world apart, which was the direct and legitimate heir of the glorious Eastern empire, as of its titles and virtues, that she had a special mission of absorbing all the Slav peoples in her
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breast, and by this means of working the regeneration of the human race. Above all, we did not think that Europe was on the point of falling back into barbarism, and that we were called to save civilisation with those few rags of that same civilisation which had formerly served to save us from our ancient torpor. We treated Europe with civility, nay, even with respect, for we knew that she had taught us many things, and among others, our own history. When it came to us by chance to triumph over her, like Peter the Great we said: Gentlemen, it is to you that we owe it,[13] and then one fine day we reached Paris,[14] and they gave us the welcome that you know of, forgetting for the moment that we were really only young parvenus, and that we had put nothing into the common stock of nations, not even a poor little solar system like the Poles, our subjects, not even some miserable algebra like the Arabs, those infidels whose absurd and barbarous religion we are now combating. They treated us well because they found that we had the manners of decently brought-up people, because we were polite and modest, as was fitting for new-comers without any other title to public esteem except the advan-tages of their stature. You have changed all that, so be it! But let me, I beg you, love my country in the way of Peter the Great, of Catherine, and of Alexander. The time is not far off, I hope, when we shall find perhaps that that patriotism is well worth any other." A. KOYRE. (Tr. B. P.)