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 RUSSIA'S GIFT TO THE WORLD 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL 
 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF 
 PUBLISHER
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 AT LOS ANGELES

 
 RUSSIA'S GIFT 
 
 TO THE WORLD 
 
 BY 
 
 J. W. MACKAIL 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 

 
 A 
 
 I have to acknowledge information and assistance 
 received in the preparation of this pamphlet from : 
 
 Mr. J. F. Baddeley. 
 
 Dr. F. F. Blackman, F.R.S. 
 
 Mr. Granville Barker. 
 
 Professor J. B. Bury. 
 
 Sir F. W. Dyson, F.R.S., Astronomer-Royal. 
 
 Mr. H. A. L. Fisher. 
 
 Dr. \V. M. Fletcher. 
 
 Mr. Nevill Forbes. 
 
 Professor A. R. Forsyth, F.R.S. 
 
 Professor E. J. Garwood, F.R.S. 
 
 Professor J. P. Hill, F.R.S. 
 
 Professor Gilbert Murray. 
 
 Mrs. Newmarch. 
 
 Dr. D. H. Scott, Sec.R.S. 
 Mr. T. W. Shklovsky. 
 
 1 Professor E. H. Starling, F.R.S. 
 Professor Sir J. J. Thomson, F.R.S., O.M. 
 Professor A. N. Whitehead, F.R.S. 
 
 Mr. C. Hagberg Wright. 
 
 i 
 
 The statements made here have been submitted to and 
 approved by them as regards the subjects in which they have 
 expert knowledge, and their names will be a sufficient 
 guarantee of the correctness of the facts stated. To them, 
 and to others who have given help and advice, I desire to 
 express my gratitude.
 
 1 am she whose hands are strong and her eyes blinded 
 
 And lips athirst, 
 Till upon the night of nations many-minded 
 
 One bright day burst. 
 
 Swinburne, A Litany of Nations (1868). 
 
 Poor and abundant, 
 Down-trodden and almighty, 
 Art thou, our Mother Russia. 
 
 Nekrasov, Who is Happy in Russia} (1873)
 
 RUSSIA'S GIFT 
 
 TO THE WORLD 
 
 RUSSIA is, for the mass of people in England, an 
 unknown country. It is separated in many 
 ways : by distance, by language, by social 
 organisation and habits. It is at the other end 
 of Europe, so that the journey from one country 
 to the other is long, expensive, and rather laborious. 
 Not only the language, but even the alphabet is 
 different from ours, and the ways of common life 
 are in many respects strange, and take some pains 
 to understand. To these difficulties in the way of 
 intercourse has to be added, not only the national 
 English dislike of foreigners, but the alienation 
 caused by past hostility. The Crimean War, one 
 of the greatest blunders of English statesmanship, 
 drove a wedge between the two nations just when 
 they might have begun to understand one another. 
 Then there followed a long period of jealousies over 
 our Indian frontier and conflicting interests in 
 South-Eastern Europe. Twice we were on the brink 
 of war with Russia, once over Constantinople in 
 1877-78, and again over Afghanistan in 1884-85. 
 Then the Franco-Russian Alliance was formed at a 
 time when Great Britain was on uneasy and almost 
 hostile terms with France. It is only in recent 
 years that we have come to regard Russia as a neigh- 
 bour and tried -to understand the Russian nation 
 and the Russian life. 
 
 Instances of the greatness of our ignorance are 
 the common beliefs that the Russians are an Asiatic 
 race, and that they speak a barbarous language. 
 The facts are quite the contrary. The Slavs are,
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 like ourselves, pure Aryans ; they are cousins of 
 the Latins and the Celts and the Germans, and have 
 exactly the same claim as these other nations to 
 be counted European. The countries occupied by 
 them used at one time to extend all over Northern 
 Germany as far west as the Elbe, and even now 
 there are Slav peoples in large numbers in the heart 
 of Central Europe. So, too, about their language. 
 The Russian language, which is spoken (with some 
 varieties of dialect) by more than 100,000,000 people, 
 is one of the richest and noblest of human languages. 
 It provides as valuable a mental discipline as any 
 other modern language, perhaps even as Greek or 
 Latin, and it is a language in which many great 
 works of literature, as we shall see later, have been 
 written. 
 
 Not only is there great ignorance of Russia in 
 England, but, as always is the result of ignorance, 
 great misunderstanding. The popular notions about 
 Russia are not only imperfect but absurd. They 
 are derived partly from a distorted legend of the 
 Crimean War, partly from sympathy with nationali- 
 ties or causes which the Russian Government has 
 treated badly, and very largely from fiction. This 
 last is not even Russian fiction, but the fiction of 
 English or French writers who were wholly ignorant 
 of Russia. The Russian nobleman, the Russian 
 spy, the Russian conspirator, as they are popularly 
 conceived, are figures of melodrama or of comic 
 opera, not of actual life. To novel writers Russia 
 has been a happy hunting ground, where they could 
 lay on their colours as they chose and make scenes 
 as fantastic as those of the Arabian Nights. 
 
 Broadly, the impression produced by this com- 
 bined ignorance and misconception is that not of 
 a nation, still less of a nation working together 
 with others for the objects and ideals of civilisation. 
 It is of a vast, shapeless mass of barbarism tyran- 
 nised over by a small governing class which itself
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 is half barbarous. It is of a people non-European 
 in the sense in which Europe means freedom, order, 
 the conquest of nature, and the progress of humanity. 
 Russia is fancied as a clog, if not a menace, to the 
 general movement of progress affording, indeed, 
 a market for our goods and sending us in return its 
 wheat and timber and petroleum, but producing 
 nothing else of human service ; doing little or 
 nothing in thought or art, in knowledge, in organisa- 
 tion of the higher life. 
 
 Those who know something of Russia know that 
 this popular view is entirely wrong. And like all 
 great errors about the facts of life, it is actively 
 mischievous. We shall never be in good and useful 
 relations with any nation, or with any body of our 
 fellow men, until we take some pains to under- 
 stand them and to know what they really are, 
 what they think, what they create, what they seek 
 to attain. This knowledge is equally essential 
 whether we regard them as our friends or as our 
 enemies. Without understanding based on facts, 
 liking or dislike, friendliness or enmity rest on mere 
 accident or prejudice. The Russians are different 
 from us, but they are like us, and we have a great 
 deal in common. 
 
 It is equally wrong and equally foolish to mis- 
 conceive or to ignore or to despise what any nation, 
 be that nation France or Germany or Russia, has 
 done in the world and for the world. Great harm 
 was done in England for generations by our old 
 traditional dislike of France. Our ancient contempt 
 lor Germany as a nation of professors and of dreamers, 
 tied down by feudalism and pedantry, has had in 
 modern times a sharp awakening. But though we 
 understand France and Germany now better than 
 we once did, we have not yet lost the spirit of 
 insular ignorance and prejudice in which those old 
 misunderstandings arose. Now this spirit, whether 
 it be directed towards Russians or towards Prussians,
 
 8 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 is disastrous in its effects upon our whole public 
 policy, upon our own national character, and, 
 which is much more important, upon the common 
 progress and common welfare of mankind. 
 
 If we were asked, What is the place that Great 
 Britain occupies in the world ? what she has given 
 to mankind, and what is the debt which mankind 
 owes to her ? we might point to the great empire 
 gradually put together, and now held together by 
 goodwill, by a sense of common interest, of friend- 
 ship, and of kinship ; or to the achievements of 
 Great Britain in industry and commerce and inven- 
 tion, and their effect in increasing the sum of human 
 wealth and of human power over nature ; or to her 
 success in establishing, not merely as an ideal, 
 but as a thing which actually works, the habit of 
 self-government and the freedom of opinion. Or we 
 might point to those national qualities, persistent 
 through political and social changes, which are the 
 basis of daily life : we might speak with Burke of 
 the piety, integrity, good nature, and good humour 
 which underlie the English character, and claim 
 that they contribute certain elements towards a 
 standard of goodness for the whole of mankind. 
 Or once more, we might point to what Great Britain 
 has done in the things of the mind, in letters, in 
 science, and in art. 
 
 It is this last matter which is most universal in 
 its appeal to the world, and which remains per- 
 manently, after hundreds or thousands of years 
 have passed, as the greatest glory of any nation. 
 It is a source of national pride, or rather we might 
 say an impulse towards national endeavour, to 
 realise in these things of the mind the possession 
 of a great inheritance and to feel that we must be 
 worthy of it. 
 
 In this sphere of things of the mind a country is 
 known by its great names. It takes its place in 
 the world in virtue of what its great writers, artists.
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 or investigators have thought and written and done. 
 And its actual present contribution to this common 
 stock is what such men are now doing ; that is to 
 say, the worth and importance of the literature, 
 the art, and the science which it is now producing. 
 
 Thus the gift of England to the human race, the 
 debt owed to her by them, would be indicated, in 
 this way of regarding the matter, by the names of 
 Shakespeare and Milton, of Newton and Darwin, 
 of Kelvin and Lister, with hundreds of others who 
 in all the arts and sciences have won distinction 
 and benefited mankind. Such names represent 
 the gift that England has given to the world. The 
 gift she is now giving is represented by many living 
 names in all these fields. Everyone has some 
 list in his own mind of those who are now handing 
 on the lamp from one generation to another. 
 
 The perpetual task of mankind is to attack a 
 problem or a mass of problems which is ever new 
 and ever urgent. Briefly, the task may be stated 
 thus. It is concerned with production and with 
 distribution ; it is a task of creating and a task of 
 handling. In the sphere of politics, that task is 
 the creation and distribution of order, freedom, and 
 equality. In the sphere of material things it is 
 the creation and distribution of wealth, through 
 the machinery of invention, industry, commerce, 
 and social organisation. In the spiritual sphere, 
 represented by literature, art, science, and history, 
 it is the creation and distribution of truth and beauty. 
 The object of all alike is human well-being. It is 
 the last of them which is dealt with here. 
 
 That the task of the human race is concerned with 
 distribution as well as creation involves a vital point 
 with regard to the arts and sciences, no less than with 
 regard to other things. This point is, how far art, 
 literature, and science are not merely the occupation 
 of a few gifted men among themselves, and confined 
 in their influence to narrow boundaries, but act
 
 io Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 vitally on the soul and life of a nation, and through 
 it on the commonwealth of the nations. For 
 Wordsworth's phrase of " joy in widest commonalty 
 spread " is true of intellectual things no less than it 
 is true of material comfort or of, a sound social 
 structure. Of truth and beauty, no less than of 
 wealth and freedom, it may be said that they are 
 not realised until they are produced, maintained, 
 and spread abroad, by the people for the people. 
 
 What follows does not profess to be a complete 
 account. It is necessarily incomplete. It does 
 not deal, for instance, with all the kinds of literature, 
 or with all the branches of physical and mental 
 science. It takes the things which are most obviously 
 important, and which are to a large extent an index 
 to the rest. It is a setting forth under these condi- 
 tions, and in a very brief summary, of what Russia 
 has contributed in letters, art, and science to the 
 progress of the world, and to the enrichment of 
 life. 
 
 I. 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 In any account of Russian literature, two kinds 
 of it have to be considered which are historically 
 separate, though the one to some extent grew out of 
 and is founded upon the other. There is the early 
 populai literature of tales, ballads, and poems 
 which grew up among the people, was handed 
 down by memory, and very often was not committed 
 to writing at all until modern times. There is also 
 the regular literature of books, which begins when 
 language has been studied as an art and reduced 
 to rules. This latter is the form which literature 
 takes in modern times. In both forms the recoi d of 
 Russia is extraordinarily rich. 
 
 From very early times, Russian as a spoken
 
 Russia's Gift to the World u 
 
 language produced a copious treasure of tales and 
 ballads, epics and songs. The old Russian fairy 
 tales now recovered and written down are of the 
 highest rank in their wealth of fancy, their freshness, 
 and beauty. The " epic songs " or " heroic songs " 
 going back to the early Middle Ages, from the 
 ioth to the 13th century, are no less important. 
 They have been collected and printed in modern 
 times by Danilev, Rybnikov, Sakharov, and many 
 others. They are not only of immense historical 
 interest, but reveal a power of imagination and 
 expression not excelled by anything produced in 
 Western Europe. To the same period belonged 
 the prose epics, nearly all now lost. One of these, 
 The Raid of Prince Igor, was rediscovered in 1795 ; 
 and both in matter and style it is a masterpiece, 
 to be set alongside of the French Chanson de Roland 
 or the great Icelandic Sagas. The production of 
 this early popular literature received a severe check 
 from the conquest of Southern Russia by the Mongols 
 (a race akin to the Huns) in the 13th century. 
 Ages of devastation followed, during which Russia 
 sank back into something approaching barbarism. 
 But the instinct for the popular epic survived, and 
 put forth fresh and vigorous growths during the 
 period which was in England that of Shakespeare 
 and Milton. 
 
 Regular Russian literature, in the modern sense 
 of the term, is hardly more than a century old. It 
 began in the result partly of the introduction of 
 Western education, partly of the rediscovery of 
 their own older literature. Both took effect when 
 the Russian Empire had been consolidated in the 
 18th century. Eomonosov, by his work on the 
 Russian language, paved the way for style and 
 composition. He was a man of immense learning, 
 and the University of Moscow was founded (1755) 
 under his influence. At first the books written 
 were in the French manner, which was then dominant
 
 12 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 in Europe. The great impulse towards a truly 
 national Russian literature was given by the national 
 war of 1812, and the first really great work which 
 that impulse produced was Karamzin's History oj 
 Russia, published in the year after Waterloo. For 
 its period it was a remarkable achievement merely 
 as history, but its chief importance was in its larger 
 aspect as literature. It established interest among 
 the educated classes in the history of their own 
 country, and it also established Russian prose as 
 a fine art, and became a classic on its literary merit. 
 About the same time there were writing a number of 
 poets who, though not of the first rank, helped 
 to do for verse what Karamzin had done for prose. 
 
 All this work was pioneering in unexplored regions. 
 It may help us to understand Russian literature 
 to think of it as like English literature starting with 
 Scott and Byron if these authors had had no pre- 
 decessors except the ballads, chronicles, and romances 
 of the Middle Ages, and if in the beginning of the 
 19th century they had had to make their language 
 as well as write in it. 
 
 The new movement rapidly bore fruit, and it 
 took shape in the works of Pushkin, the real founder 
 of modern Russian literature. He was both a poet 
 and a prose writer of the romantic school ; he 
 corresponds broadly to both Scott and Byron in 
 this country. He was much influenced by Shake- 
 speare, but his genius was quite individual and also 
 quite national. His narrative poem, Evgeny Onegin, 
 his historical tragedy, Boris Godunov, and his prose 
 stories of Russian life are all masterpieces. He 
 remains not only a founder but a model. He was 
 more of an artist than a thinker, but his writings 
 have a purity and sincerity of the highest and most 
 lasting value. Like Scott, he was a romantic who 
 did not lose touch with reality, and who gave voice 
 in his writings to the life of his nation. Through 
 him Russian literature was able to claim a place
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 13 
 
 with French and German, English and Italian, 
 among the national literatures of Europe. 
 
 That claim was established, that place secured, 
 by the three great imaginative writers of the next 
 generation. Pushkin and his contemporaries, indeed, 
 have only become known largely outside of Russia 
 in the reflected light of those successors, who com- 
 pelled the attention and won the admiration of the 
 whole world. Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, and Tolstoy 
 are by common consent among the greatest writers 
 of all ages and countries. It would be needless 
 to labour a point which no one would deny. Taken 
 together, they sum up a production comparable 
 in largeness, force, and vital truth to those of 
 Elizabethan or Victorian England. Of this great 
 trinity but few words need be said. 
 
 Turgenev is above all things a consummate artist. 
 For easy and complete mastery of his art he stands 
 at the head of all European writers of his time. 
 His early training was largely German, and after- 
 wards he lived much in France ; and so he writes 
 of Russian life from a broad European point of view, 
 and his fame became as great throughout Europe 
 as it was in his own country. Through him Europe 
 came for the first time, with a shock of surprise and 
 admiration, into contact with the Russian soul. 
 Writers so distinguished as George Sand and Flaubert 
 acknowledged him as their master. In Dmitri 
 Rudin, Fathers and Sons, and other works hardly 
 less famous, he combined truth to nature with purity 
 of outline and sense of proportion, and with complete 
 harmony between thought and expression. His 
 work is almost unequalled for perfection of style 
 and for restrained power ; Taine hardly went beyond 
 what most would admit, when he said that there 
 had been nothing like it since Sophocles. 
 
 He wrote of a life which was rapidly becoming a 
 life of the past ; in his last important work, Virgin 
 Soil, he is seen trying, in some perplexity, to keep
 
 14 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 pace with the movements of a new generation. 
 His fame is not so great now as it was thirty years 
 ago, when he had a position, somewhat like Tennyson 
 in England, of unquestioned supremacy. But the 
 strength and charm, the insight and suavity of his 
 art still remain ; and his work stands secure, not 
 only by its beauty but by its strength and truth. 
 In his self-imposed exile he remained a patriot. 
 The Russian language was to him a symbol of Russian 
 life. " When I fall into despair," he wrote, " at the 
 " sight of all that is being done at home, I cannot 
 " but believe that it is to a great people that such 
 " a language has been given." 
 
 Turgenev represents the Russia of the older time ; 
 Dostoyevsky represents, in strong contrast, the 
 growth, the unrest, and the agonies of the new 
 democracy. His scenes of life are the garret and 
 the street, with their monotony of poverty and 
 suffering. He cannot be read for amusement ; 
 his books are disquieting and distressing, but com- 
 pelling in their power and truth. The typical 
 Russian qualities of patience and humility became 
 in him a passion, almost a fever. His Crime and 
 Punishment had an effect, in Russia and throughout 
 Europe, as great as that of Richardson's Clarissa 
 a century before. They are alike in their slow 
 inevitable movement, their crushing truth, their 
 insight into the dark places of the human soul, and 
 the way in which they work out, relentlessly and 
 in cruel detail, the doctrine of expiation through 
 suffering. Later books, The Idiot, Devils, The 
 Brothers Karamazov, are no less powerful and no 
 less awful. The image of life which he places before 
 us would be horrible but for the sense throughout 
 it all of controlling and overwhelming pity. He 
 searches for the soul of goodness in evil, and so finally 
 leaves a message of dim hope. 
 
 Tolstoy was probably the most remarkable single 
 figure in the world of his time. He is the one
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 15 
 
 Russian writer whose name, and some at least of 
 whose works, are known everywhere. Turgenev 
 is a supreme artist ; Dostoyevsky rejects art in his 
 consuming passion for humanity ; with Tolstoy, 
 " art happens," he cannot help being a great artist. 
 No modern writer, hardly any one ancient or modern, 
 has approached him in two things. One of these 
 is his power of creating people and situations that 
 are not so much like life as they are life itself. The 
 other is his power of stirring thought and awakening 
 conscience by going straight to the heart of things, 
 and to the human heart itself. In his narrative, 
 one feels not only that things happened so, but that 
 they could not have happened otherwise ; it is as 
 though Nature herself took the pen and wrote for 
 him. This is the effect produced by all his work ; 
 alike in the vivid descriptive work of his earlier 
 years, like The Cossacks and Sevastopol ; or in his 
 vast historical epic of War and Peace, which paints, 
 or rather sets out in the solid, in flesh and blood, 
 a whole civilisation, and a whole generation of the 
 world's history ; or in Anna Karenina, where Russian 
 society comes to life on a large canvas ; or in his 
 autobiographic writings, like Childhood, Boyhood, 
 and Youth ; or in those exquisite short stories, like 
 What Men Live by, Master and Man, The Two 
 Pilgrims, Where Love is, there God is also, where he 
 gives us life in its simplest elements, among poor 
 peasants and artisans, and which are full of infinite 
 fragrance and beauty, of incomparable truth and 
 tenderness and power. 
 
 He thought little of his own art, for he was too 
 deeply concerned with life, with religion, and with 
 the salvation of mankind, to care about other things. 
 Fame came to him against his will. In his later 
 years, his house at Yasnaya Polyana became a 
 place of pilgrimage from all Europe, like Ferney 
 in the old age of Voltaire, like Weimar in the old age 
 of Goethe. He was not only an artist but a prophet,
 
 16 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 and not only an artist and a prophet but a child, 
 with the child's terrible simplicity and insight. 
 In all these qualities he is unique, but yet characteris- 
 tically Russian. 
 
 All the three were alike in their passionate love 
 of Russia, as well as in their power of interpreting 
 Russia to mankind. But their love of Russia worked 
 out differently. The patriotism of Turgenev reached 
 out towards accepting and assimilating the influences 
 of the West. That of Dostoyevsky rebelled against 
 these influences ; it was more self -confined, but more 
 intense. That of Tolstoy was not patriotism at 
 all in the ordinary sense ; his love of Russia was an 
 instinct, and he wrote of Russia because he found 
 in it a symbol of the whole of humanity. And so 
 he drew more and more from the life of the Russian 
 peasantry (who are nine-tenths of the nation), 
 because in them he found the nearest approach to 
 practical Christianity, to the attitude of little 
 children which is inculcated by the Gospel, and in 
 which he discerned the secret of life. 
 
 These three great writers tower up among a mass 4 
 of others, who, by themselves, would make Russian 
 literature remarkable. Most of them are hardly 
 known in England except among Russian scholars, 
 and it would be idle to give a long list of mere names, 
 but a few of the more outstanding poets and prose 
 authors may be mentioned. In prose we have to 
 take special note of Gogol, the novelist and play- 
 wright, who has been called the Russian Dickens ; 
 he was the founder of realism in Russian literature, 
 and his work is full of fun and humour. These 
 qualities are rather rare in Russian art, which is 
 habitually serious sometimes almost oppressively 
 so to the Western mind. In them he is akin to 
 English writers. The French critic, Prosper Merimee, 
 put this in a pointed way when he called him " one 
 of the best English humorists." With him may 
 be named Belinsky, the creator of Russian literary
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 17 
 
 criticism, who was powerful in moulding the great 
 generation of Russian writers ; Solovev, a brilliant 
 essayist and thinker ; and Yakovlev (better known 
 by his maternal name of Herzen), a Christian 
 Socialist whose influence was immense in directions 
 that he neither desired nor foresaw, and who is 
 known in literature by his brilliant Memoirs. Three 
 more have been, in part, translated into English, 
 and are better known : Chekhov, the literary 
 descendant of Turgenev, who drew Russian middle- 
 class life with great accuracy and also with a sense 
 of humour ; Gorky, " the Russian Kipling," who 
 introduced a fresh naturalism into Russian letters ; 
 and Merezhkovsky, the author of powerful works 
 of historical fiction. 
 
 In poetry likewise may be named Krylov the 
 fabulist, who, before Pushkin, gave the first impulse 
 to national self-expression ; Lermontov, a poet 
 of the school of Byron, but with a lyrical gift akin 
 to that of Shelley ; Koltsov, " the Russian Burns " ; 
 the delicate and charming lyrics of Alexis Tolstoy ; 
 and Nekrasov, the most popular in Russia of all 
 their poets. Nekrasov might be compared to Long- 
 fellow in his simplicity and direct appeal to ordinary 
 people ; but he is in the strongest contrast to Long- 
 fellow's cheerful serenity, for his poetry, in its 
 uncompromising realism, is often bitter, and nearly 
 always full of gloom. Yet this temper issued finally 
 in enthusiasm for the people and faith in their 
 ultimate victory. 
 
 At the present time, as is natural and inevitable, 
 Russian literature seems to be in a time of slack 
 water after the period of the great writers. But 
 it is full of the stirrings of fresh life. As in England, 
 there is large and eager production, manifold 
 experiment, belief in the power of literature to 
 interpret life ; and this gives hope, in both countries, 
 of a new birth and another great age.
 
 18 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 MUSIC 
 
 The development of Russian music affords a 
 close and interesting parallel to the development 
 of Russian literature. Music and song are the 
 natural gift of the Slavonic race. It was so in ancient 
 times and is so now. All travellers in Russia are 
 struck by the beauty and skill of the untaught 
 singing heard everywhere, from the mouths of 
 soldiers or workmen or peasants. This music is 
 based on a natural scale and is harmonised, when 
 sung by several voices, by a sort of popular counter- 
 point. The melodies of Russia have an unusual 
 fascination. This native music was long hindered 
 in its development by the strong ecclesiastical 
 tradition of the Russian Church, which was rootedly 
 conservative. When the scientific study of music 
 was taken up in the 18th century, the influence of 
 Italian music was dominant throughout Europe. 
 Famous Italian composers like Paisiello, Galuppi, 
 and Cimarosa paid long visits to Russia ; they were 
 in great favour at the Court, and set the fashion 
 throughout the country, so that the native music 
 fell into neglect. It was revived in the great wave 
 of patriotic enthusiasm a hundred years ago, and 
 came to its own in the work of Glinka. 
 
 Glinka was a contemporary of Pushkin, and their 
 work is intimately connected, for it represents a 
 common national development on parallel lines. 
 His genius created a national idiom for musical 
 expression. In his famous opera, A Life for the 
 Tsar (1836), he concentrated the native musical 
 substance and enlarged it to a universal human 
 appeal. This movement was continued by Dar- 
 gomyzhsky, who worked on much the same lines as 
 Wagner, but quite independently of him. It is 
 to Dargomyzhsky that we owe the famous sentence, 
 " I want the note to be the direct equivalent of the
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 19 
 
 word." Glinka and Dargomyzhsky gave between 
 them the lyrical idealism and the dramatic truth 
 which are the scope and aim of music. 
 
 In the next generation their work bore fruit in 
 the group of great Russian composers who are now 
 recognised as amongst the most important in the 
 history of the modern art. They made Russian 
 music at once national and universal. It is only 
 in recent years that their achievement has been 
 fully realised. The two Russian musicians whose 
 work is even now best known in England, Rubinstein 
 and Chaikovsky (his name is generally spelled 
 Tschaikowsky on our musical programmes and in 
 Western editions of his compositions) are the least 
 distinctively Russian. Rubinstein won his fame 
 throughout Europe less as a musician than as a 
 brilliant pianist. Chaikovsky's emotional and sub- 
 jective art is essentially Western, or rather cosmo- 
 politan, and this is so even when, as in his opera 
 of Evgeny Onegin, he takes his sources from Russian 
 literature and uses national Russian musical motifs. 
 But we have lately come to know the splendid and 
 intimately Russian music of Mussorgsky, Borodin, 
 and Rimsky-Korsakov. 
 
 It came as a revelation, and made us realise that 
 here we have a new birth which has enriched the 
 art, has given it deeper truth and fresh beauty. 
 Their motto was to make art the handmaid of 
 humanity, to " go to the people, seek truth, and the 
 true purpose of life." " To feed upon humanity," 
 Mussorgsky wrote, " is the whole problem of art." 
 In his two greatest works, Boris Godunov and 
 Khovanshchina, he realised his ideal. Alongside 
 of him, and working in the same spirit, came the 
 two others. Borodin, the author of Prince Igor, 
 was a musician with less of tragic intensity but more 
 of serene beauty. Rimsky-Korsakov was the most 
 accomplished musician of the three, and had a 
 special genius for the expression of strong colour
 
 30 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 and exuberant vitality. In his Pskovityanka, known 
 in England under the name of Ivan the Terrible, and 
 his Golden Cock, based on a prose tale of Pushkin's, 
 he gave new life to the national art over a wide range 
 of pathos and humour, profound tragedy and brilliant 
 fancy. In all these three musicians what is remark- 
 able is their intense nationality, their wide humanity, 
 and their clear, direct vision. Through their work 
 Russian music has definitely taken a place in the 
 great art of the world. 
 
 These names, and those of other distinguished 
 contemporaries, represent, so far, the golden age 
 of Russian music. But that age is being continued 
 in the generation of living musicians, among whom 
 may be mentioned the names of Rakhmaninov, 
 Glazunov, Stravinsky, and Skryabin. They are 
 continuing to produce music of a type less intimately 
 national, but of great beauty and value. As in 
 literature, however, the age of the giants has been 
 succeeded for a time by a period of temporary 
 reaction, and a certain sense of fatigue. The 
 multiplication through Russia of schools of music 
 and of orchestras has, like the diffusion of education, 
 its own dangers. But in both arts there is the 
 consciousness of great things actually achieved ; 
 there is wide study and appreciation of the masters ; 
 and there is the full realisation of both literature 
 and music as functions of national life, art by the 
 people and for the people. 
 
 These facts give much promise and high hopes 
 for the future. No modern music is so powerful 
 as the Russian in its appeal to elementary human 
 instincts, so large and direct, so popular in the best 
 sense of that word. Knowledge of it is now steadily 
 increasing in the west. Selected compositions and 
 songs by Russian composers are widely accessible, 
 and they are helping in England very greatly towards 
 the spread of really good and vital music.
 
 Russia's Gift: to the World 21 
 
 ART 
 
 Art is the application of beauty to life. But in 
 its current sense it is used with a more special 
 meaning to cover broadly two fields : first, that of 
 painting, sculpture, and architecture ; and secondly, 
 that of all those subsidiary arts and crafts which 
 use form and colour towards design and decoration. 
 
 In the mistress arts there is no great Russian 
 school comparable, for instance, to the Italian, 
 Dutch, English, and Flemish schools of painting, 
 to the French Gothic and Italian Renaissance 
 schools of architecture, or to the great achievements 
 of more than one western nation in sculpture. There 
 are no Russian names to set beside those of Raphael 
 and Titian and Velasquez, of Van Eyck or Memling 
 or Rembrandt, of Donatello and Michael Angelo, 
 of the architects who built Santa Sofia, Reims and 
 Chartres, the Duomo of Florence, the Abbey Church 
 of Westminster, or the Cathedral of St. Paul's. The 
 circumstances of Russia during the Middle Ages, 
 and long afterwards, did not allow of such develop- 
 ment. The country was too poor and too much 
 oppressed by foreign invasions. There has been, 
 indeed, in Russia a continuous tradition of architec- 
 ture derived from Byzantine sources, and it has 
 resulted in churches and other buildings, imposing in 
 design and gorgeous in their brilliant colouring, but 
 the Russian Church always discountenanced sculpture, 
 and strove to confine painting to a rigid convention. 
 
 In more modern times Russian artists have learned 
 and followed the art as it had been developed by 
 the masters of Western Europe. The foundation 
 of the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1757 (ten years 
 earlier than our own Royal Academy) only confirmed 
 the prevalence of academic painting. The move- 
 ment of the igth century went astray in two direc- 
 tions, either by being " art with a purpose," painting
 
 22 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 which was meant to convey some direct moral 
 lesson, or by restricting its aim to the mere clever 
 record of facts neither of which is really art at all. 
 
 There is abundant technical skill among Russian 
 art students, and there have been good Russian 
 painters : Repin, the painter of some striking 
 historical pieces ; the landscapist Shishkin, who 
 really felt and interpreted the aspects of nature 
 in Russia ; Aivazovsky, the marine painter (in the 
 Black Sea Russia possesses almost an ocean of her 
 own) ; and Vasnetsov, who has attempted to give 
 a new life and a deeper meaning to the traditional 
 religious art of his country. The work of Veresh- 
 chagin is known in Europe for its moral fervour, 
 as an arraignment and exposure of militarism, 
 more than for its artistic quality, which is neverthe- 
 less considerable. But on the whole these and other 
 Russian painters belong to a European rather than 
 to a Russian movement, and to one or another of the 
 modern schools which have little distinctive national 
 quality. And the middle classes in Russia are very 
 like our own in their sense, or rather want of sense, 
 for works of art. But among these modern schools 
 of painting the realists, the impressionists, the 
 symbolists, and all the rest one which has taken 
 special hold of the younger generation of Russian 
 painters is that of the mystics, those who feel the 
 mystery of beauty and apply their modern technique 
 to the expression of ancient faith. This is a type of 
 art which appeals to the eyes and hearts of simple 
 people as well as to the trained intelligence. 
 
 Russian sculpture, even more than Russian paint- 
 ing, is an art belonging only to the last century, 
 and subject to the cosmopolitan influences which 
 have from time to time been prevalent. But in 
 this art also, the idealised work of sculptors like 
 Kamensky and Antokolsky, and the portrait sculp- 
 ture of Elias Ginsburg, take an honourable place 
 among the productions of their period.
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 23 
 
 It is on the side of popular art that Russia has 
 enriched the common store from resources of national 
 genius. This art is the work, not of great individual 
 artists, but of a really great feeling for art diffused 
 throughout the people. This is so particularly 
 as regards the household arts, that is to say the 
 application of beauty to the things of common life. 
 In this respect Russia still retains much of what was 
 best in the Middle Ages. The native instinct here, 
 as in other countries, has been checked and sometimes 
 nearly killed by industrialisation, by the victory 
 of the factory and the machine, but it is still living, 
 and is capable of a great revival. 
 
 Much of this domestic art now finds its way to 
 this country. It consists mainly of two things, the 
 application of design and ornament to wood, and 
 their application to textiles, the former being the 
 native birth of the forest regions, the latter of the 
 agricultural flax-growing districts. Russian carving 
 is inexhaustible in design and full of vitality. The 
 figures and patterns carved by the peasantry are 
 in the fullest sense art by the people, and for the 
 people ; they are work done with pleasure and done 
 for the sake of the pleasure which it gives. Their 
 figure carving has the full mediaeval life and charm. 
 Design is lavished on the carving of the house, 
 as in boards and cornices ; of furniture, as tables, 
 chairs, cupboards, and chests ; and of objects of 
 common use, such as salt boxes, distaffs, washer- 
 women's beetles, bowls, and mugs. So, too, design 
 is applied lavishly in form and colour to common 
 woven fabrics, such as curtains and towels, shirts, 
 aprons, and belts. 
 
 The embroidery and drawn thread work of Russia 
 is remarkably fine, and in the most remote districts 
 there is a very fine tradition of work in enamelled 
 metal and in lacquer. Special note should be taken 
 of the beauty of Russian toys. For a nation's 
 toys are no slight index to its civilisation in the most
 
 24 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 human sense of the word. For beauty and imagina- 
 tion and sense of life, Russian toys are unequalled 
 in Europe ; and the same may be said of many of 
 the Russian picture-books. Nor is peasant art in 
 Russia less remarkable when applied to other sub- 
 stances, such as ornamented leather, enamelled 
 bricks and tiles, and earthenware. In' these, as 
 in their wood carving and in their fabrics, the 
 Russians delight in bright strong colour. The native 
 unsophisticated colour-sense is stronger in Russia 
 than in any other European countries. In their 
 use of reds, and also of blues and greens, they are 
 masterly. In any general revivification of popular 
 art, we must look to Russia for strong impulse and 
 for vital assistance. 
 
 The convergence of the separate arts into a single 
 organic whole was very remarkably shown in the pro- 
 ductions of the Russian Opera in London in the years 
 1913-14. Hardly less delightful in these than the 
 music and singing, and the superb acting, were the 
 architectural backgrounds, the massing and disposi- 
 tion of the performers and the harmonious glowing 
 brilliance of the costumes. Throughout the whole, 
 and giving it cumulative effect, was just this diffused 
 sense of beauty, and instinctive skill in applying it 
 harmoniously. Not only on the musical side, but 
 in its whole appeal through the senses to the intellect 
 and imagination, it was a great achievement and an 
 equally great stimulus. For the first time in its 
 history, this complex form of art was seen, under 
 the Russian genius, ceasing to be artificial and 
 becoming real. It was no longer a pretence art 
 existing for the sake of displaying the cleverness of 
 the performers, but a true art for the sake of which 
 the performers existed, and in which they were 
 doing their natural work. The same is true of the 
 art of choral dancing. Ballet, as understood and 
 practised in Europe, had been little more than a 
 soulless or corrupt display. In Russian hands it
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 25 
 
 has been made a serious art, inspired by active 
 imagination, and effecting the realisation of beauty 
 through common effort. It has been said quite 
 justly of Russian literary and dramatic masterpieces 
 that in them the hero is not so much this or that 
 individual, as the whole people ; and this holds good 
 of their art as well. It is national, and popular, in 
 the highest sense. 
 
 THE DRAMA 
 
 Dramatic production is a mixed art. It contains 
 the elements of literature, music, the rhythm of 
 speech and movement, form, colour, and decoration. 
 Of all the arts, it is probably the most powerful, 
 as it is certainly the widest, in its appeal. For it 
 affects all the senses, it gives scope to all the 
 intelligence, and through both it acts very power- 
 fully on the feelings and the imagination. The 
 Russian drama is of European importance ; and 
 quite recently a Russian movement has begun a 
 revolution in the theatre and in all the arts con- 
 nected with it. 
 
 The first Russian theatre was started as long 
 ago as 1703, and the first Russian opera-house 
 not many years later. But native Russian drama 
 begins definitely in 1831, the date of production 
 of a comedy and a tragedy, both of first-rate excel- 
 lence, Griboyedov's The Misfortune of Being Clever, 
 and Pushkin's Boris Godunov. There has been a 
 succession of dramatists ever since. Gogol's satirical 
 comedy of The Inspector-General still remains a 
 classic and a popular favourite. Both Turgenev and 
 Tolstoy wrote plays in which their genius manifests 
 itself no less than in their other writings. Ostrovsky 
 introduced modern " realistic " drama into Russia 
 a generation before it appeared in the West ; his 
 plays are still frequently produced. The production 
 of dramatic works in recent years is large ; and
 
 26 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 though there may be noted in many of them the 
 tendency to joylessness and to representation of 
 the greyer aspects of life which is so marked in our 
 own modern dramatists, their quality is often high. 
 The plays of Chekhov, produced in the Arts Theatre 
 at Moscow, mark a new stage in the development 
 of the drama through their subtlety, delicacy, and 
 truth to life. Wonderful work has been done at 
 that theatre in all branches of the dramatic art 
 during the last fifteen years. A very brief account 
 of it will be the best way of showing what Russia 
 has been doing for the world in this complex and 
 difficult art, so often turned to base uses, and so 
 great in its influence, whether for good or evil. 
 
 This enterprise has brought about a revolution 
 in the methods of acting and staging, and what is 
 even more important, it seems to have brought 
 about a revolution in the attitude of the public 
 towards the theatre. It was started by two men, 
 Stanislavsky and Danchenko. Their first achieve- 
 ment was the " discovery " of Chekhov. His play, 
 The Seagull, had been coldly received at Petrograd. 
 Stanislavsky, bringing his sympathetic understand- 
 ing to bear upon this essentially new thing in drama, 
 re-staged it in Moscow. The combination of his 
 art and Chekhov's, the interpretation and creation so 
 brilliantly blended, seem to have achieved at a 
 stroke that perfection which is still the distinguishing 
 mark of the Arts Theatre's work. Other theatres 
 have their own virtues, courage, invention, strength, 
 resource. But as the acted drama has to work 
 in that most fallible and unaccountable medium, 
 the human actor, the margin of error and failure, 
 even in the best performances, must be enormous. 
 In the Moscow Arts Theatre this difficulty seems to 
 be conquered. To Stanislavsky acting is a serious 
 art. He works out its principles; he instructs his 
 company and his pupils, not in its tricks, but in its 
 ethics. He does not try to produce so many plays
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 27 
 
 in the year, or such and such a play by a certain 
 date. Work is put into preparation ; when he is 
 satisfied with it it is given to the public ; if he is 
 not satisfied the public never sees it at all. 
 
 Though there is no particular virtue in taking a 
 long time over anything if you can get the same result 
 in a short time, it is a great virtue, and is the unique 
 distinction of this theatre, that the artistic achieve- 
 ment is put first, and, until that has been accom- 
 plished, other considerations nowhere. Chekhov's 
 later and maturer dramatic work, The Three Sisters, 
 Uncle Vanya, and The Cherry Orchard, has all been 
 written for and produced at this theatre. Both the 
 plays and their stage-interpretation are typically 
 Russian, but they supply a model for all theatrical 
 work. When you watch a performance there you 
 hardly ask whether such and such an actor is doing the 
 thing well or not. You accept without question that 
 this is what the man or woman was like, that this is 
 how they lived and breathed, quite unconsciously. 
 
 Almost as remarkable as the company is the 
 audience. Their manners are perfect ; they seldom 
 applaud, and if anyone attempted to interrupt the 
 play by doing so he would probably be requested 
 to leave. They seem never to arrive late, and if 
 they do they have to stop outside. Nor is there 
 any of that air of the theatre being a place where 
 disreputable people on one side of the curtain are 
 paid to tickle the senses of idle merry-makers on 
 the other. To the Russian public the theatre takes 
 its place quite simply and sensibly among all the 
 other arts. 
 
 " For seven years," one is told, " the Arts Theatre 
 did not pay its way, and those who cared gave money 
 freely that it might continue its work without 
 lowering its ideals. Now it is always full, and the 
 people concerned make a respectable living out of 
 it. Beyond that no one seems to associate its 
 success with money-making at all."
 
 28 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 II. 
 
 So far we have been speaking of Russian art and 
 letters, and in doing so it has been kept in view 
 that these are Russian in the fullest sense ; that is, 
 that they are not only produced by writers and 
 artists who happened to be Russians, but represent 
 the character and the creative instinct of a nation. 
 When we turn from the arts to the sciences this does 
 not hold good quite so fully. For science is a matter 
 more largely of pure intellect, and not so much 
 of temperament or character. It is, in its nature, 
 less local or national than art. But in the applica- 
 tion of science, and in the method of handling 
 the same material, national genius comes out ; 
 and there are nations, too, which seem to have a 
 special capacity for certain sciences ; thus the French 
 have what may be almost called a national genius for 
 mathematics. Also science, at its highest, is a matter 
 not merely of intellect, but of imaginative power. 
 
 Thus while science is in some sense international, 
 yet the greatness of any country in science can be 
 measured, partly by the number of great scientists 
 which it has produced, partly by the energy which 
 it puts into the pursuit of knowledge, and partly 
 by its success in organising the co-operation of 
 research and in diffusing intellectual interest widely. 
 One source of greatness in any nation is its belief 
 in knowledge ; one claim to distinction is the amount 
 of knowledge it has contributed to the common 
 stock ; one title of honour for it is the roll of its great 
 scientific names. Newton and Darwin are part 
 of the glory of England ; Humboldt and Virchow 
 of Germany ; Laplace, Lavoisier, Pasteur, of France. 
 Russia also has its organised study of science, its 
 co-operative energy in the pursuit of scientific 
 truth, and its great scientific names, some of them 
 in the front rank of the whole world.
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 29 
 
 The gift of Russia to the world in the sphere of 
 science has developed during the last fifty years. 
 Although the Imperial Academy of Science in Petro- 
 grad was founded as far back as 1725, Russian 
 work in science hardly made itself felt before the 
 middle of the 19th century. From this time, 
 however, Russian scientific men have more than 
 played their part in the peaceful competition among 
 nations for the advancement of knowledge. Nor 
 have they confined themselves to what we may call 
 the spade work of science the careful investigation 
 of phenomena and the amassing of new facts. 
 From the commencement of their activity they have 
 produced men who could act as pioneers in the 
 opening up of new lines of thought, and could show 
 the way of attack into new realms of the unknown. 
 
 One cannot help being struck with a marked 
 similarity between the history of science in Russia 
 and that in our own country. Whereas in central 
 Europe scientific advance has been largely effected 
 by the organised activity of numerous bodies of 
 workers carrying out with docility the instructions of 
 their learned chiefs, our glory in England is the 
 possession of a constant succession of great men, 
 working alone for the most part, but each by his 
 originality diverting and directing the streams of 
 thought and work not merely of such pupils as he 
 might attract to himself, but of the whole world of 
 science. So it is, too, in Russia, where among others 
 of only less distinction than theirs, three men, 
 Mendeleyev, Mechnikov, and Pavlov, have won 
 world-wide fame, and are in the front rank of modern 
 achievement. It may be that the intellectual 
 barrier between Russia and Western Europe, raised 
 by geographical remoteness and differences of 
 language, confines our vision to the giants of the 
 intellectual forest. But the broad fact is clear that 
 Russia at the present time, as England in the past, 
 while she possesses organised schools of science,
 
 30 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 is especially fortunate in the production of great 
 men of science. 
 
 It is impossible to give, in a few pages and in 
 popular language, any adequate idea of the contribu- 
 tions of Russia to the advancement of science. 
 But an attempt may be made to indicate something 
 of what she has done in various fields, and to single 
 out some of those names which have become as 
 familiar to scientific men in this country as they 
 are in their native land. 
 
 MATHEMATICS 
 
 In Mathematics, " the mother of the sciences," 
 Russian mathematicians have produced remarkable 
 work, particularly in fields of mathematical research 
 which involve subjects of general philosophic interest. 
 The two names which stand highest are those of 
 Lobachevsky and Minkovsky. These two investiga- 
 tors illustrate the type of bold originality which marks 
 the Russian intellect. The former was the discoverer 
 of the new non-Euclidean geometry which has 
 revolutionised the science. When the Greeks made 
 geometry into an exact science they founded it on 
 certain axioms on which the whole of the reasoning 
 rests. It was believed for centuries that no alterna- 
 tive set of axioms as to space was possible, and that 
 accordingly in these we possessed an example of 
 a priori knowledge about the external world. Lobach- 
 evsky showed that there was an alternative set of 
 axioms inconsistent with those of Euclid, and that 
 a possible system of geometrical truths results from 
 them ; and further, that experience only can decide 
 which set is true for the physical universe. His 
 work was the beginning of a revolution, not only in 
 geometry, but in the philosophy of space. 
 
 Minkovsky is almost of equal importance in a 
 later stage of the same revolution. The most recent 
 speculations concerning matter and physical pheno-
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 31 
 
 mena, such as light, have led up to the theory that 
 all physical phenomena are ultimately electrical, 
 and to the modern theory of electrons, by which 
 all matter is reduced to electricity. This means, 
 among other things, that events are contemporaneous 
 only as regards a single observer, and that another 
 observer may see them in a different order, and this 
 again leads directly to a philosophic question of the 
 highest importance, " What is time ? " just as the 
 other had done to the question, " What is space ? " 
 In the discussion of the abstract problems which 
 arise in this inquiry Minkovsky's work is the most 
 brilliant which has been done. 
 
 Besides these important names, among many 
 others in the science of mathematics are those of 
 Imsheretsky, who did work on differential equations 
 in regions previously untouched in W 7 estern Europe, 
 of Sonin and Lyapunov in analysis, of Markov in 
 the theory of numbers, and of Nekrasov in theo- 
 retical dynamics. Nor should it be forgotten that, 
 a few years ago, scientific Europe was stirred with 
 interest by the revelation of the remarkable genius 
 of a Russian woman mathematician, Sonya Kova- 
 levskaya. 
 
 PHYSICAL SCIENCE 
 
 There are few branches of Physics which are not 
 indebted to Russia for results of primary import- 
 ance. Lebedev is a physicist of the first rank. 
 To him we owe the detection, by means of most 
 difficult and ingenious experiments, of the minute 
 pressure exerted by light upon a reflecting surface. 
 This research was a triumph of experimental skill 
 and ingenuity/ The confirmation by it of what 
 had been predicted on theoretical grounds is a result 
 of fundamental importance in electro-magnetic 
 science, and has opened up a new line of research 
 both in physics and in astronomy. As regards 
 another equally important property of light, that of
 
 32 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 producing well marked and most interesting electrical 
 effects, the researches of Stoletov are of unsurpassed 
 importance. The work of Colley on electric waves, 
 of Borgmann on discharge through gases, of Egorov 
 on spectroscopy, of Umov on light, to mention 
 but a few of the names of Russian workers, shows 
 with what vigour the science of physics is being 
 pursued ; and this conclusion is confirmed by the 
 large numbers of able and enthusiastic young Russian 
 physicists who are now at the beginning of their 
 careers. Some English physicists have had special 
 opportunity of appreciating the excellent work they 
 have done in our own laboratories. It is significant 
 of the place which Russia holds in the diffusion 
 as well as the advancement of science, that the best 
 text-book on physics produced in any country is 
 that of a Russian, Hvolson ; it has been translated 
 into most European languages. It is remarkable alike 
 for its completeness, its breadth of view, and its sug- 
 gestiveness, and has been a great help and stimulus 
 to workers and students throughout the world. 
 
 In astronomy Russia has taken an important 
 place ever since Peter the Great built the Observatory 
 at Petrograd, the most magnificent and the best 
 equipped which then existed in Europe. The best 
 observations of the transit of Venus in 1761 were made 
 by Russian astronomers, who were distributed for 
 this purpose all over the Empire. In the 19th 
 century other observatories were founded ; the 
 centrai one, at Pulkovo, has been for eighty years 
 one of the greatest observatories ip the world, and 
 of fundamental importance to science. In modern 
 times particularly, high respect and gratitude are 
 felt by astronomers to many of their Russian col- 
 leagues. We may note specially in the advances 
 made by astronomical science the researches of 
 Glasenapp and Kovalsky on double stars, of the 
 Ceraskis on variable stars, and of Belopolsky in 
 spectroscopic analysis.
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 33 
 
 Geographical exploration and research have been 
 pursued actively in Russia since the 17th century,! 
 and with this there has been a steady progress oil 
 geographical science. The Russian Imperial Geo- 
 graphical Society was founded in 1845, and has 
 established branches in all of the outlying parts of 
 the Empire, in the Caucasus, in Siberia, and in 
 Turkestan. " No similar scientific body," an expert 
 authority states, " can show a better record." 
 Russian geographers have not only explored their 
 own empire, but have taken part in the exploration 
 of all the less known regions of the earth, and like- 
 wise of the ocean and its depths. The scant justice 
 done to Russia in this matter is due to foreign 
 ignorance and to the modesty of the Russian geo- 
 graphers themselves. In all the branches of geo- 
 graphical science map-making, with all the mathe- 
 matical work which it involves, physical geography, 
 ethnology and anthropology, and the collection and 
 classification of statistics their work is large and ex- 
 cellent. Their names are familiar to their scientific col- 
 leagues throughout the world, but are not widely known 
 among the public, and would only be strange here. 
 
 It is not surprising that Russia, with its varied 
 geographical features and its mineral wealth, should 
 have at an early date given particular attention 
 to the scientific study of the earth's crust, which 
 forms the subject of geology. Even at the end of 
 the 18th century geological museums and schools 
 of mining had been founded, and at the present 
 time the many geological publications issued in 
 Russia are now a necessary part of every geological 
 library. The names of Chernyshev, Nikitin, Pavlov, 
 Lagusen, and Federov are well known to all students 
 of the science for their admirable work in strati- 
 graphical geology, and in palaeontology. 
 
 The contributions of Russia are equally great 
 to the kindred science of geodesy, which deals with 
 the size and shape of the earth, and to seismology,
 
 34 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 or the theory of earthquakes. -To no one. does this 
 new science owe more than to Prince Golitsyn, whose 
 researches have extended over many years. By the 
 seismograph of his invention the study of the tremors 
 in the earth can be pursued with a certainty and 
 precision far in advance of anything possible with 
 the older forms of instrument. Unrivalled opportuni- 
 ties for the study of the phenomena of earthquakes 
 are afforded by the provision of a score of earthquake 
 stations in different parts of the Russian Empire. 
 
 Among chemists far and away the greatest name 
 of modern times is that of Mendeleyev. By the 
 publication in 1869 of his well-known periodic law 
 of the elements he changed the whole current of 
 thought in the chemical world. In this classical 
 paper not only did he point out that the then known 
 elements were related one to another, but he was 
 able by the discovery of gaps in his scheme to predict 
 the existence and the properties of unknown elements 
 predictions which have been crowned with success 
 by later discoveries. The name of Mendeleyev will 
 be for ever enrolled with those of Boyle, Lavoisier, 
 and Dalton as one of the founders of chemistry. 
 
 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE 
 
 In the Biological Sciences the Russian savants 
 have achieved a leading position in many branches. 
 Among zoologists Kovalevsky must be ranked with 
 our Francis Balfour as one of the founders of the new 
 science of embryology. His work, with that of 
 Mechnikov, Salensky, Korotnev, and others, finds 
 its place in every zoological text-book. The work 
 of Mechnikov has attained a reputation which extends 
 far outside the immediate circle of zoologists, and 
 has become familiar in some of its aspects to every 
 educated person. His study of the mechanisms of 
 self-protection in the lower animals led him to 
 grasp the essential nature of the process of inflamma-
 
 Russia's Gift: to the World 35 
 
 tion in the higher animals, and to become one of 
 the founders of the modern doctrine of immunity. 
 For the last thirty years, at the Pasteur Institute 
 in Paris, to which he transferred his work from 
 Odessa, he has devoted his whole attention to re- 
 search into the mechanisms of defence employed 
 by the higher organisms against infection, and his 
 work on this subject has formed one of the chief 
 sources of inspiration to bacteriologists and physicians 
 in all countries. 
 
 The zoologist Danilevsky must be regarded as a 
 pioneer in our knowledge of the protozoal parasites 
 of the blood, which have acquired so much import- 
 ance since they have been shown to be the cause 
 of such diseases as malaria, sleeping sickness, 
 and syphilis. Mention may also be made of the 
 excellent work of Bekhterev, Dogiel, Kulchitsky, 
 Maximov, and others on the microscopic structure 
 of the body. 
 
 In physiology Russia may boast of possessing the 
 greatest of living physiologists, Pavlov, who was 
 one of the earliest to receive the Nobel Prize. By 
 the application of Lister's discoveries to physio- 
 logical technique, he was enabled to throw so much 
 light on the processes of digestion in the higher 
 animals that there is very little of our present know- 
 ledge of the subject which we do not owe to him or 
 to his pupils. During the last ten years he has 
 transferred his attentions to the investigations of 
 the functions of the brain. Here again the employ- 
 ment of a new and original method promises to 
 initiate a new era in the study of mental processes. 
 
 In botany Russia has produced a series of brilliant 
 workers, among whom Russov in plant-anatomy, 
 Famintsyn, Navashin, and Belayev in embryology 
 and cytology, should be specially mentioned. It is, 
 however, the plant physiologists, Timiryazev and 
 Palladin, whose work has probably had the widest 
 influence on their scientific contemporaries ; while
 
 36 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 among the younger plant physiologists Lepeshkin 
 is regarded by botanists in this country as one of 
 the most original of the present day. 
 
 One of the most important problems both of the 
 theory of plant life, and of practical agriculture 
 and the economics of production, is that of the direct 
 utilisation of atmospheric nitrogen for plant-nutri- 
 tion, so that nitrogenous manures may be dispensed 
 with. Many soils possess the power of fixing the 
 free nitrogen of the air. But how they did so was 
 a complete mystery until the researches of Vino- 
 gradsky explained how it was effected by organisms 
 at work in the soil. In concert with other Russian 
 investigators, Vinogradsky also solved the puzzle 
 of the mode of life of these nitrifying bacteria. This 
 work revealed an entirely unexpected type of physio- 
 logical life. The research was a model of scientific 
 investigation, and is indeed one of the most brilliant 
 pieces of experimentation in the history of science. 
 
 It is worth recording that Timiryazev, besides his 
 work as a scientific investigator and discoverer, 
 has also been a great populariser of science. He did 
 distinguished service not only to the growth of the 
 scientific spirit, but to general culture among the 
 Russian nation, by bringing before them the work 
 and teaching of Darwin. He made science attractive 
 by his gift of exposition and his enthusiasm. His 
 treatise on the physiology of plants for general 
 readers was the first work of the kind brought out 
 in any country ; it has gone through many editions 
 in Russia, and has been translated into English. 
 
 The achievements of Russian workers in what we 
 may term the applied sciences, including medicine 
 and surgery, have been purposely omitted. But 
 the record of great men who have sprung up in Russia 
 during the short space of half a century is a striking 
 indication of the reserves of intellectual power 
 possessed by their nation, and points to still greater 
 achievements for humanity in the future.
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 37 
 
 III. 
 
 Intermediate between the arts of life on the one 
 hand and the pure or applied sciences on the other, 
 are those studies which, while they are concerned 
 with knowledge, not with creation, yet differ from 
 " science " in the usual sense of the word inasmuch 
 as they deal not with the laws and facts of nature, 
 but with those of the moral and mental world and 
 the course of human events. This field includes 
 history, philosophy, economics, and other kindred 
 studies. In it the contribution of Russia to the world 
 is large and is rapidly growing. 
 
 HISTORY 
 
 Russian work in history has been seriously 
 hampered in the past by the despotic tradition of 
 Russian government. For the result has been that 
 the best historical students have preferred, for the 
 sake of safety, to deal principally with subjects 
 lying outside the sphere of recent political history. 
 The two chief national histories, by Karamzin 
 and Solovev, fall short of the highest standards 
 of scholarly execution, as that is now understood, 
 but the former is memorable for the effect it had both 
 towards enlarging the sphere of Russian literature and 
 towards creating in the nation a consciousness of its 
 own past. The historical work of Solovev, though 
 great, has its value rather in the application of ideas 
 to history than in the extent and accuracy of its 
 research. But in their own history, original work 
 of first-rate quality, displaying both accuracy and 
 mastery of material, has been produced on particular 
 periods, as, for instance, in Bilbasov's Catherine II., 
 of which the merits and importance have been 
 universally recognised outside Russia, and in the 
 acute studies of Platonov on the 16th and 
 early 17th century. Bogdanovich and several 
 
 -II27
 
 38 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 others have done a great deal of work of the first 
 quality on the Napoleonic period and the national 
 war of 1812. What has been done by Russian 
 historians on subjects external to Russia, where 
 they can work with freedom, shows them to be 
 capable of the greatest achievements. 
 
 Byzantine history is intimately connected with 
 that of Russia, and the Russians have made it 
 peculiarly their own. In the field of Byzantine 
 history, philology, archaeology, and art Russians 
 have done so much work of capital importance 
 that no serious student of these subjects can afford 
 to be unacquainted with Russian. The leading 
 Byzantinists, of Petrograd or Moscow, Kiev or 
 Kazan, are thoroughly sound scholars, accurate and 
 acute, trained in modern methods, and masters 
 of that difficult but indispensable art, the investiga- 
 tion and appraisement of the sources from which 
 our knowledge of past history is ultimately derived. 
 The names of Vasilevsky, Vasilev, Uspensky, Regel, 
 Shestakov, Kulakovsky, are as familiar to all 
 European students of Byzantine civilisation as, say, 
 the names of Stubbs, Maitland, Bemont, Round, 
 Vinogradov, to students of English institutions. 
 
 To English historical studies, Russians, and one 
 Russian in particular, have made contributions 
 of unexampled value. Vinogradov has made little 
 less than a revolution in English history. It was he 
 who first inspired F. W. Maitland to begin his 
 historical work. It was he who, by a combination 
 of good luck and genius, identified Bracton's Note- 
 book, one of the most precious documents which 
 have descended to us from our own national past. 
 His long series of studies on the social life of the 
 Middle Ages is the most important and original 
 contribution which any foreigner, not excepting 
 Pauli or Ranke, has made to English history. A 
 pupil of Vinogradov's, Savin, has given us a most 
 important and thorough study of the economic
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 39 
 
 consequences of the dissolution of the English 
 monasteries in the 16th century. So, too, one of 
 the best accounts of the condition of rural France 
 before the Revolution is by a Russian historian. 
 The circumstances of their own history, and their 
 actual experience of the life of the Russian village 
 commune, give Russians a peculiar advantage in 
 dealing with the rural life and agrarian problems 
 of past ages. 
 
 But more generally, for historians in the west of 
 Europe it is becoming more and more necessary 
 to know Russian, and the archives of the Russian 
 Historical Society are now an indispensable part of 
 any historian's library. The modern generation 
 of Russian historians have fully mastered the scien- 
 tific method, and are ready to develop a great 
 national school. Scholarship is here reinforced by 
 national character ; for a nation that can produce 
 such a book as Tolstoy's War and Peace has shown 
 evidence of the highest natural gift of historical 
 imagination. 
 
 PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIOLOGY 
 
 In the field of abstract thought, Russia has not 
 founded great schools, nor is it known by great 
 names like those of Kant and Hegel, of Locke and 
 Hume ; yet the Russian genius has here also made 
 important contributions : Chomiakov and Aksakov 
 developed a philosophy of Russian history, and in 
 psychology, the researches of Bekhterev, among 
 others, have obtained wide recognition. The Russian 
 names which stand highest in this field are those of 
 Solovev, Lavrov, and Mikhailovsky. 
 
 Solovev has been already mentioned as a dis- 
 tinguished historian, and was also a critic and poet. 
 He was a brilliant writer, as well as an original 
 thinker who was in many respects in advance of 
 his time. His vein of religious thought, with its
 
 40 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 tendency towards mysticism, is characteristically 
 Russian. In him, as in other writers, may be noted 
 a tendency of the Russian nature to make philosophic 
 thought concrete, to give it an immediate social 
 or religious bearing, and to apply it directly to the 
 problems of life. Thus Mikhailovsky is notable for 
 his work in opposing and confuting that doctrine 
 of the " struggle for existence," as applied to the 
 moral world, on which Treitschke built his famous 
 theories. The teaching of these thinkers insists 
 before all things on duty ; it defines progress as 
 the increase of human happiness, and patriotism 
 as the desire for this progress ; and it affirms that 
 the happiness of a people cannot be founded on the 
 unhappiness of any other people. 
 
 The study of economics and sociology is one into 
 which the educated class in Russia has, for three- 
 quarters of a century or more, thrown itself with the 
 utmost eagerness. It has been urged to this both 
 by social environment and by natural bent. For 
 the Russian mind is singularly quick and receptive, 
 and its courage in following out arguments to their 
 logical conclusion is even greater than that of the 
 French, and perhaps only equalled by that of the 
 ancient Greeks ; and the conditions of a country 
 which has changed so swiftly, and in which economic 
 and social questions have presented themselves 
 on so large a scale, have led to a wide study of social 
 and economic problems. 
 
 Russians have devoured and assimilated all the 
 theories and systems of the West, independent of 
 the country of their origin those of Comte, Herbert 
 Spencer, or Marx ; and they have added to them 
 many of their own. They have also made, and are 
 making, large contributions to the collection and 
 systematisation of facts. Plechanov has a European 
 reputation as a writer on sociology. Chuprov, 
 Struve, Ttigan-Baranovsky are among the names 
 familiar to economic students. There is a whole
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 41 
 
 library of Russian works on the economics of agri- 
 culture ; another on the economics of credit and 
 finance ; and a third on wages, co-operation, and 
 the labour question. In these studies, indeed, Russia 
 holds one of the foremost places. 
 
 These are facts. They are, as has been said, 
 professedly incomplete ; they do not even in rapid 
 summary cover the whole ground ; but they do not 
 go beyond, rather they fall short of, what can be 
 tested and verified. Every reader can draw from 
 them his own conclusions. But the broad facts 
 ought to be known, and they must be taken into 
 account if we are to understand what Russia is 
 and what our relations to Russia, our feelings 
 towards Russia, ought to be. They are not set 
 forth here to prove a theory, or to support a political 
 alliance. Still less are they set forth to place Russia 
 in an artificial light. The object of stating them 
 is to remove an artificial darkness. 
 
 This statement therefore does not touch on the 
 political side of the Russian question and its bearing 
 upon our relations with the Russian Government 
 and people. It does not, indeed, desire to conceal 
 or to minimise the faults of the Russian Govern- 
 ment towards its own people or towards subject races 
 and nationalities. In these matters, as in many 
 more, Russia is at a stage which other countries 
 have gone through, and which others again possibly 
 have not yet reached, for who knows the ways of 
 the world, how God will bring them about ? When 
 we think of the dark history of England a hundred 
 years ago, with its widespread distress and bitter 
 discontent met by high-handed repression, with its 
 dispersals of peaceful meetings by armed force, 
 with its savage political prosecutions, and its 
 sentences of death or exile on political reformers, 
 or when we look back still further to the darker 
 pages in the history of our rule of Ireland, we may
 
 42 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 still remember that in those very times England 
 stood high in the world, not only through the fame 
 of her writers and thinkers and artists and men of 
 science, but as a mother of freedom. She was full 
 of faults, and was doing great and good work in 
 spite of them. 
 
 Nevertheless these facts show one thing clearly, 
 and suggest another. 
 
 What they show is, that the gift of Russia to the 
 world is great. In 1836 a Russian author said 
 despairingly that " we have given nothing to the 
 world ; we must begin over again." They began 
 over again. They have done what deserves admira- 
 tion and gratitude, what helps other nations and 
 gives them hope. 
 
 What they suggest, and what is borne out the 
 more one takes pains to know more of them, is an 
 affinity, not less marked because of certain strong 
 contrasts, between the Russian nation and our own. 
 
 The idea of nationality is one of the most potent 
 in modern life. When we ask, What is a nation ? 
 the answer is that it is not a matter of blood, for 
 nearly all nations consist of mixed races, nor is it a 
 matter of language, which is often an accident. 
 In most nations different languages are spoken, 
 and there are separate nations, like the United States 
 and ourselves, which speak the same language. 
 Nationality lies in the consciousness of kinship and 
 of mutual understanding, in the same habits of 
 thought and life, in common memories of the past, 
 and in common hopes for the future. Each nation 
 has in this sense an individuality ; each nation is 
 a person, a member of the family of nations. It is 
 of the essence of the family that each member of 
 it is different from the others. Each has a different 
 sphere of work and of duty, and each can help or, if 
 unhappily it should be so, each can hinder the rest. 
 
 Through ignorance and through prejudice, this 
 kinship has not been properly realised. The failure
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 43 
 
 to realise it has made friendship with Russia not 
 quite popular in England, and subject to an uneasy 
 suspicion. It may help to dispel this uncomfort- 
 able feeling when we understand that the Russians 
 are not only a united nation, not only a race of strong, 
 simple, and profoundly religious people, but that 
 they seek after and have produced for themselves 
 and for us large treasures of truth and beauty. 
 
 ^here is a stimulus to friendship in differences 
 as well as in likenesses, where each friend supplies 
 the defect of the other ; and thus the outstanding 
 differences no less than the essential affinities of 
 Russia and England are worth thinking over. Russia 
 is really one of the younger nations. She is more of 
 a child than England or France or Germany. Like 
 a child, she is overflowing with understanding and 
 sympathy, but she is not what grown-up people call 
 practical. The Russian character is very sensitive, 
 and with its sensitiveness there is a certain lack of 
 hard fibre. According to universal testimony the 
 Russian nature is humane and kindly beyond that 
 of most Western nations. It has cultivated, by 
 native instinct, and under the pressure of historical 
 circumstances, the virtues of patience and resigna- 
 tion to a degree which amounts to a weakness, if a 
 beautiful weakness. Like a child, it bears no 
 grudge, but it is easily discouraged, because it has 
 not yet " found itself." There is in Russian 
 character a lack of initiative and of the virtue (if it 
 be a virtue) known as " hustle." 
 
 Yet Russians are capable of doing, as well as of 
 suffering, anything when their heart is in it. It 
 should be borne in mind, too, that among the 
 educated class of Russia, who have been open to 
 foreign influence, the intellectual and moral diseases 
 of Western Europe have taken with extreme violence. 
 This has been the weakness of their educated class. 
 Much of what makes Russia unsympathetic to us 
 is due to this exceedingly academic or book-ridden
 
 44 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 class, who have been fed on Western literature of the 
 most extreme type in religion, politics, and morals. 
 They talk the loudest, but it would be a mistake 
 to think that theirs is the real voice of Russia. 
 
 Both England and Russia are in the throes of 
 a social and industrial revolution. But they are 
 at different stages of it. This is why it is so useful 
 to think of modern Russia by comparison with 
 the England of a hundred years ago ; for in both 
 we have a time of deep ferment and discontent 
 throughout the whole nation among those who have 
 lost their old anchorage, both as regards thought 
 and as regards the structure of social life. The first 
 Duma, from which so much was hoped, was wrecked, 
 not on what we should call questions of politics in 
 the ordinary sense, that is to say, on questions of 
 government, but on the question of land tenure. 
 We should remember, in our own history, the 
 machinery riots, the Chartist movement, and the 
 disappointment which followed the extravagant 
 hopes raised by the first Reform Act. 
 
 Both England and Russia have a strong sense 
 of patriotism, a deep love of their own country, 
 and a sense of national and imperial unity. Both 
 are at bottom pious, simple, kindly, and lovers of 
 peace. Even in the old Russian epic poems and 
 tales the heroes are defenders, not conquerors, 
 and the life of the agriculturist, rather than of the 
 warrior, is glorified. Both are possessed by a waken- 
 ing thirst for knowledge. The desire for knowledge 
 is spreading in Russia with great rapidity. It will 
 be immensely accelerated by the two great reforms 
 of recent years the enlarged freedom given to the 
 press (it is still very incomplete, but the principle 
 has been conceded), and the system of universal 
 education (the bodies corresponding to our County 
 Councils providing the schools, and the State paying 
 the salaries of teachers), which has been framed 
 and has begun to be carried into effect. But even
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 45 
 
 now a fact like this is very significant. In the year 
 1912 a firm of publishers in Moscow sold no less than 
 6,000,000 of little books or tracts for working men 
 and women in town and country. They were sold 
 at a price which brought them within the reach of 
 the poorest classes. Most of them cost a farthing ; 
 the more expensive ran up to as high a figure as 
 twopence halfpenny. Besides being extremely 
 cheap, they were extremely simple ; their matter 
 consisted on the one hand of Bible stories, tales, 
 and tracts inculcating the love of children and of 
 animals ; on the other hand of practical advice 
 on matters of daily life, on manuring, fruit growing, 
 household management, and the like. And among 
 these little books many were translations from the 
 English. This, too, shows how the two nations 
 can give and do give mutual help to one another ; 
 for Tolstoy's beautiful short stories and tracts 
 are also widely read, though not so widely as they 
 deserve to be, in our own country. 
 
 English books are great favourites in Russia, 
 and they are becoming more so now that they can 
 be more freely read since the relaxation of the censor- 
 ship with its many absurdities in working. Russians 
 seem to understand the English way of looking at 
 things more easily and more completely than an}- 
 other Continental nation does. Dickens is a special 
 favourite with them. Tolstoy cites Dickens as an 
 example of what he considers the highest art, 
 " flowing from love to God and man/' They find 
 in him what they want, and also he gives what, 
 on the whole, they themselves lack in two matters. 
 They find in him the abounding sense of fun which 
 is rare in the more dreamy and resigned Russian 
 temperament, and they find in him also the force of 
 will, the driving power, which made him not only 
 fight against injustice but bring about actual 
 reforms. It is interesting to compare Pomyalovsky's 
 descriptions of the misery of his school life with those
 
 4 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 of Dickens, but where the Russian suffered and 
 despaired the Englishman suffered and acted. The 
 reforms wrought, for instance, in our police courts, 
 in our boarding schools, and in our educational 
 system are directly due in a very large measure to 
 the effect produced by Oliver Twist and Nicholas 
 Nickleby and Hard Times. 
 
 The craze for foreign things which went so far to 
 spoil the early efforts of the Russian people towards 
 growth and self-realisation began to give place, about 
 the middle of last century, to the notion of a regenera- 
 tive mission. They were seized by the idea that they 
 were an elect nation which should reconcile the failure 
 of other nations and be a constructive power for 
 the whole world. This was the idea which lay 
 at the base of the Slavophil movement, and gave 
 it the moral force which lay behind it as a merely 
 racial or political movement. It was in pointed 
 opposition to the Western notion, not yet extinct, 
 that Russia was a blank sheet. 
 
 After the fall of Constantinople in 1453, Russia 
 regarded herself as the inheritor of the Roman 
 Empire. Moscow was the " third Rome." Homy- 
 akov, some sixty or seventy years ago, expanded 
 this doctrine into one which has been since then 
 one of the great motives or generative ideas in the 
 world, that of a historical continuity by which 
 the world-mission of Greece had passed to Russia 
 through Byzantium. He emphasised the simplicity 
 and love of peace which characterised Russian life. 
 He claimed that " if there be a brotherhood of 
 nations, moral supremacy does not belong to Ger- 
 many, with her military and aristocratic ideals, 
 but to the plebeian and agricultural Slavs." In the 
 Russian character he discerned what he found to be 
 a " fountain of living water " only held back by the 
 national apathy and timidity. This feeling is 
 expressed in his celebrated prayer for Russia, 
 written in the album of the musician Glinka :
 
 Russia's Gift to the World 47 
 
 I* Do not grant her selfish peace, 
 Do not send her blind arrogance ; 
 The spirit of death, the spirit of doubt, 
 Let them be extinguished in the spiritual life." 
 
 As a theory based on actual facts, this doctrine 
 of continuity between Greece and Russia would not 
 be accepted by historians. But it is a doctrine 
 which has been of the greatest importance, like other 
 unverified doctrines or theories, in its influence, 
 through the minds of those who accepted it, upon the 
 course of modern history. And the regenerative 
 mission of Russia may well pass from a dream into 
 a fact when the self-regeneration which we now see 
 in progress has been really effected. 
 
 The ideals of mankind as they were defined by 
 the French Revolution are liberty, equality, and 
 fraternity. It has been said, and said with great 
 truth, that of the three, liberty has been fought 
 for and won in England, but equality and fraternity 
 are much more fully attained in Russia. They have 
 not got liberty, at least in the political sense of the 
 word, because they have not greatly desired it. 
 Is not the converse true of ourselves, that we have 
 not got equality and fraternity, because we have 
 not greatly desired them ? 
 
 But the lack of discipline which is noted by 
 observers of Russian life really comes of a sort of 
 excess of individual liberty in matters apart from 
 politics. The general Russian attitude with regard 
 to government is very much like that of Dr. Johnson 
 in our own country. " I would not give half-a- 
 guinea to live under one form of government 
 rather than another " ; " All governments are alike"; 
 " Political liberty is good only so far as it produces 
 private liberty." These are bold paradoxes ; but 
 like all Johnson's sweeping sayings, they have a basis 
 of strong common sense. And in these sayings 
 there is at least so much truth as this, that the failure 
 of the Russian political reformers was because
 
 48 Russia's Gift to the World 
 
 they were quite out of touch with the Russian 
 people, both the agricultural peasant and the in- 
 dustrial working man. Love is the most potent 
 spring of action, and the reformers did not arouse the 
 love of the people by their own love for the people. 
 
 It must be clear from the facts which have been 
 here summarised that talk such as may sometimes 
 be heard even in England, of " the barbarous 
 East at the gates of Europe " and the danger of an 
 " avalanche of multitudinous savagery," is either 
 wilful falsehood or ignorance so gross as to be equally 
 dangerous. Ignorance is mischievous as well as 
 foolish. Falsehood is a deeper evil than absence 
 of political freedom. The English nation by instinct, 
 tradition, and moral sense loves freedom ; but it 
 also desires knowledge and loves truth. 
 
 The last century has witnessed more than one 
 national regeneration. The regeneration of Ger- 
 many, which began little more than a century ago, 
 bore fruit in the German Empire, in the achievements 
 of Germany in science, thought, and literature, 
 and in the consciousness throughout all the German 
 people of a high position and of a great future. The 
 regeneration of Italy, slowly wrought out through 
 crushing difficulties and multiplied failures by the 
 genius of men like Cavour, Mazzini, Garibaldi, 
 supported by a spirit working among the whole 
 Italian nation, has restored Italy to the place which 
 for many centuries she had lost, and made her now 
 one of the great civilised nations of the world. The 
 regeneration of France under the third Republic 
 may be judged not only from the growth among the 
 French people of science, of industry, and of social 
 reform, but still more from the steady and resolved 
 patriotism with which they are facing the present 
 crisis. The regeneration of Russia is the last and 
 greatest of all. Russia started later in the race, but 
 she is now in the full movement of a common pro- 
 gress. She is taking our gifts, and giving her own. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain by Hatell. Watsnn & Vimy, Ld . London and AyUtlrury.- 151560S
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below 
 
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