d their primitive moral habitat--that is to say, so
long as external circumstances do not force them out of their accustomed
traditional groove. The Noblesse were long ago violently forced out of
their old groove by the reforming Tsars, and since that time they have
been so constantly driven hither and thither by foreign influences that
they have never been able to form a new one. Thus they easily enter upon
any new path which seems to them profitable or attractive. The great
mass of the people, on the contrary, too heavy to be thus lifted out of
the guiding influence of custom and tradition, are still animated with a
strongly conservative spirit.

In confirmation of this view I may mention two facts which have often
attracted my attention. The first is that the Molokanye--a primitive
Evangelical sect of which I shall speak at length in the next
chapter--succumb gradually to German influence; by becoming heretics in
religion they free themselves from one of the strongest bonds attaching
them to the past, and soon become heretics in things secular. The second
fact is that even the Orthodox peasant, when placed by circumstances in
some new sphere of activity, readily adopts whatever seems profitable.
Take, for example, the peasants who abandon agriculture and embark in
industrial enterprises; finding themselves, as it were, in a new world,
in which their old traditional notions are totally inapplicable, they
have no hesitation in adopting foreign ideas and foreign inventions. And
when once they have chosen this new path, they are much more "go-ahead"
than the Germans. Freed alike from the trammels of hereditary
conceptions and from the prudence which experience generates, they often
give a loose rein to their impulsive character, and enter freely on the
wildest speculations.

The marked contrast presented by a German colony and a Russian village
in close proximity with each other is often used to illustrate the
superiority of the Teutonic over the Slavonic race, and in order to make
the contrast more striking, the Mennonite colonies are generally taken
as the representatives of the Germans. Without entering here on the
general question, I must say that this method of argumentation is
scarcely fair. The Mennonites, who formerly lived in the neighbourhood
of Danzig and emigrated from Prussia in order to escape the military
conscription, brought with them to their new home a large store of
useful technical knowledge and a c