ave a great mission to fulfil. Our name is already inscribed on
the tablets of victory, and now we have to inscribe our spirit in the
history of the human mind. A higher kind of victory--the victory of
Science, Art and Faith--awaits us on the ruins of tottering Europe!"*

* These words were written by Prince Odoefski.

This conclusion was supported by arguments drawn from history--or,
at least, what was believed to be history. The European world was
represented as being composed of two hemispheres--the Eastern or
Graeco-Slavonic on the one hand, and the Western, or Roman Catholic
and Protestant, on the other. These two hemispheres, it was said, are
distinguished from each other by many fundamental characteristics. In
both of them Christianity formed originally the basis of civilisation,
but in the West it became distorted and gave a false direction to the
intellectual development. By placing the logical reason of the learned
above the conscience of the whole Church, Roman Catholicism produced
Protestantism, which proclaimed the right of private judgment and
consequently became split up into innumerable sects. The dry, logical
spirit which was thus fostered created a purely intellectual, one-sided
philosophy, which must end in pure scepticism, by blinding men to those
great truths which lie above the sphere of reasoning and logic. The
Graeco-Slavonic world, on the contrary, having accepted Christianity
not from Rome, but from Byzantium, received pure orthodoxy and true
enlightenment, and was thus saved alike from Papal tyranny and from
Protestant free-thinking. Hence the Eastern Christians have preserved
faithfully not only the ancient dogmas, but also the ancient spirit of
Christianity--that spirit of pious humility, resignation, and brotherly
love which Christ taught by precept and example. If they have not yet a
philosophy, they will create one, and it will far surpass all previous
systems; for in the writings of the Greek Fathers are to be found the
germs of a broader, a deeper, and a truer philosophy than the dry,
meagre rationalism of the West--a philosophy founded not on the logical
faculty alone, but on the broader basis of human nature as a whole.

The fundamental characteristics of the Graeco-Slavonic world--so runs
the Slavophil theory--have been displayed in the history of Russia.
Throughout Western Christendom the principal of individual judgment and
reckless individual egotism have exhausted the socia