a man's face is without a meaning. It
is to them the distinctive mark of the male countenance; to remove
it is to change, and therefore to disfigure, the divine handiwork:
it is, in short, hardly less than mutilation.[008]

The beard, like the single repetition of the Hallelujah and the
cross with eight branches, has had its martyrs. No later than last
year (1874), on the Gulf of Finland a peasant who had been drafted
for the navy obstinately refused to be shaved, and rather than
betray his religion underwent a sentence of several years for
insubordination. Scruples of this sort have led the government to
grant permission to wear the beard in the case of certain corps (for
instance, the Cossacks of the Ural) which are mainly composed of Old
Believers. Peter the Great used every means to overcome these
popular prejudices, but the beard was too much for the reformer.
Finding himself unable to shave all the recusants by force, he
bethought him of laying a tax on the wearers of long beards, but in
vain. He was similarly foiled in his attempt to lay a double tax on
the schismatic upholders of the ancient ways. He forbade them to live
in the towns; he deprived them of civil rights; he forced them to
wear a bit of red cloth on the shoulder as a distinctive badge; but
these measures only marked them out as the bravest champions of
national traditions, and increased the respect everywhere rendered
them.

Such an attitude toward civilization leaves no room for mistake as
to the social and political character of the schism. It is a popular
protest against the irruption of foreign customs. It is a reaction
against the reforms of Peter the Great, somewhat as Ultramontanism
is a reaction against the spirit of the French Revolution. The
Staroveres are the champions of ancient customs in the civil sphere
as well as in the religious. The Old Believer is emphatically the
old-fashioned Russian--the Slavophilist of the lower classes--and
hence extreme to the point of absurdity. His revolt against
authority has more resemblance to that of La Vendee than to that of
the Jacobins. Like a conscript obstinately refusing to join his
regiment, he holds back from all part and lot in the changes of
modern Russia; and in this light the schism is the feature which
above all others assimilates Russia to the East.

And just as the East has bound itself fast to externals, so the
Raskolnik praises his fossilism to the skies, and would gladly run
the