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THE SPIRIT OF RUSSIA

social ideas. Hence the defects in all that he has to say concerning the relationships between state and nation, between nation and church, and so on. In Hegel’s writings (and it is equally true of the writings of Schelling and of those of their predecessors), the philosophy of history is still uncritical.

The same defect is characteristic of the slavophil philosophy of history. All the slavophil writers employ the words state, nation, folk, society, church, and humanity, as if they were dealing with terms to which clearly defined notions were attached, whereas in truth, though the concepts in question are in general use, their interpretation is anything but cler and unambiguous.

§ 59a.

HOMJAKOV was more nationalist than Kirěevskii. In the year 1847 he accepted the interpretation of the name slavophil in a nationalist sense, admitting that he loved the Slavs. To the Russians the other Slavs were the "most immediate neighbours," and this was especially true of the Orthodox southern Slavs. The domestic life and the simple habits of the Slavs gave him a homelike feeling, and he often boasted of the Slavs that their manners and customs had come down unchanged out of the primeval age. Homjakov classified nations as agriculturists and conquerors respectively, thinking here rather of natural qualities than of economic institutions. The Slavs, he said, had ever been and still were agriculturists by taste and were consequently peaceful, whereas the Teutons and the Romans were conquerors. It was their inborn love of peace which had enabled the Slavs to make true Christianity so speedily their own, and to preserve for themselves this Christianity of love and humility, whereas western Christianity, after the schism at any rate, became a religion of conquest and subjugation.

Homjakov visited the Slav countries; in Prague he made the acquaintance of Hanka; and at first hand he studied the Poles, the Bulgars, and the Serbs. But his views contained numerous hazy and uncritical elements. In his nationalist enthusiasm he adopted the national dress without troubling himself about the question whether this costume was not more or less Tatar in origin. In general terms it may be said that Homjakov and his colleagues were little concerned about