and they should bear in mind the awakening of an Asiatic consciousness.
In truth the question of numbers must be taken into serious account. In 1789 the population of France exceeded that of any other European state, and in part at least the power of the France of that day is explicable upon this ground. In millions the actual populations were: France, 26; Turkey, 23; Austria, 19; British Isles, 15; Prussia, 6; Poland, 9; European Russia, 20; Russia in Asia, 5.
The growth of population in Russia has been exceedingly rapid. At the time of Peter's death the populations under Russian rule numbered barely 15,000,000; at the opening of the nineteenth century they were 38,000,000; in 1900 they were 135,000,000; to-day they are 170,000,000.
Through the natural growth of population changes occur in the relative greatness of states and nations. France, formerly a great power, threatens to drop into the second rank, whilst other powers, whose inhabitants multiply, grow stronger. The philosophical statistician must turn his attention to the problem of the greater and the lesser nations and to their political and national destiny.[1]
§ 69.
SLAVOPHIL messianism is not identical with national chauvinism and national panslavism.
If we are to understand the messianist movement thoroughly and to explain its literary origins, we must look back into the time when in their Moscow circle the slavophils were developing their views in conflict with the westernisers. This was during the second half of the reign of Alexander I and during the reign of Nicholas I. In Europe and in Russia it was the epoch of restoration and of reaction after the revolution, the epoch of
- ↑ It will be interesting in this connection, in view of Haxthausen's relationships with the slavophils, to recall that writer's contributions to Slav philosophy of history. The Czechs, he said, were too petty a folk to play a notable political rôle Their place and task among the Slavs was that of intermediators. The Poles he considered could not form an independent state, but they might preserve their national peculiarities (It was all to the good that the Germans too, did not compose a homogeneous state. As for the Russians, their mission in the world, said Haxthausen, was to intermediate between Asia and Europe. He considered panslavism of value as an expression of reciprocal Slav sympathies.)
