risk of petrifying society in its inherited shape. With him, as
with the child or the Oriental, wisdom and science belong to the
infancy of civilization, and the maxims of antiquity leave nothing
to be learnt. Under both aspects the Old Believer is reactionary,
opposed to the very principle of progress--the hero of routine and a
martyr to prejudice. His gaze turns naturally to the past, and if
reform ever enters his mind, he dreams of a return to the good old
times of yore. Even his struggle against authority is based on the
old idea of sovereignty: his political motto, as well as that of
most of the people, is, "No emperor, but a czar!" The czar was one
day pointed out to a Raskolnik conscript. "That is no czar," he
said: "he wears a moustache, a uniform and a sword, like all the
rest of the officers. He is nothing but a general." These
worshipers of the past, with their devotion to ceremonial, think of
the czar only as a long-bearded man in a flowing robe, such as they
see in the ancient images. The Old Believers are the exaggerated
representatives of the spirit of stagnation which everywhere
confronts the Russian government. Nothing gives a clearer conception
of the obstacles still in the way of reforms which elsewhere would
be matters of course (as, for instance, the substitution of the
Gregorian for the Julian calendar) than the resistance which other
measures have already encountered.

In principle the Raskol is conservative, not to say reactionary, but
its attitude toward the Church and the State, and the habits
engendered by two centuries of opposition and persecution, give it a
revolutionary, or even an anarchical, character. A secret tie unites
all the branches of public authority, and the rejection of one leads
to the rejection of another. As has been said by an eminent
historian of Russia, the refusal to submit to a single form of
authority brings into activity a disposition to rid one's self of
all social and moral ties. The Hussite revolt against Rome speedily
results in the Taborite revolt against society: Luther calls the
Anabaptists into being. The same phenomenon is repeated in Russia,
in England and in Scotland. Once carried away by the spirit of
revolt, an irresistible tendency sweeps the schism on in the
direction of civil liberty; and both in theory and in practice some
of these sects have reached the most unbridled license. Hence, by
one of those contrasts which are so common in Russia, the Rask