The great schism weakened Byzantium from the cultural outlook, but did not lead to any decay of religion. From Byzantium Russia received true Christianity and therewith the foundations of true civilisation. Unlike the nations which accepted Roman Christianity, the Russians had no civilisation prior to their conversion, and were therefore able to adopt Christianity more readily and to maintain it in greater purity. They cherished, not only Christian doctrine, but also Christian morals and the genuinely Christian character. The Russian is typically contrasted with the Latin; the Russian's Christian humility is the very opposite of the Latin's ostentatious pride. Kirěevskii is, indeed, forced to admit that in latter days the man of the people, the mužik, has alone preserved true Christianity; and he further concedes that Russia also took a false step in her development, mistaking the form for the substance. The substance of Christianity, the meaning of Christian doctrine, finds expression in outward form, in ritual. Deceived by the intimate association between substance and form, the Russian has mistaken the form for the substance, and thus Old Russian culture and Russian social life became encumbered with formalism. In this domain of form there actually resulted a kind of schism, the sixteenth-century raskol.
Kirěevskii was even inclined to explain the reforms of Peter as an offshoot of Russian formalism. Russia, in her devotion to form, adopted the formalistic system of the Romanised west. Yet Kirěevskii, rejecting Peter's reforms and rejecting the civilisation of the west, himself reproduces Peter's error; he even commits the original sin of Rome, and endeavours to provide a philosophical foundation for the true religion of the Orthodox cast. "What sort of a religion would the religion be which was incompatible with reason?" This is the question he addresses to those men of the west who jettison philosophy in order to save religion.
Thus in the end Kirěevskii comes to the view that German philosophy may constitute a transitional stage on the way to an independent Russian philosophy. Western philosophy, he considers, has attained its climax, has found its definitive form, in German idealism, and is incapable of further development. The understanding must recognize this, and must resolve upon a change of outlook; the cold analysis of the critical understanding, which since Roman days has been the leading power in the west, must be replaced by a return to
