are the pillars of society; the good old times must be rehabilitated. Gogol, too, points to the futility of his contemporaries, and teaches a return to the past. Still more modern writers, led by Turgenev, extolled the mužik and village life.
Philosophers and historians had shown that a nation with unimpaired energies must assume the leadership. We, said the Russians, are such a nation. It was true that Hegel and others did not believe that the Teutons were decadent, and it was to the Teutons that they looked for the desired salvation, while the Latin races, and the French in particular, were jettisoned by Hegel. Had not Herder, the great German philosopher of history, prophesied the most splendid future for the Russians? Had not Voltaire, the oracle of cultured Europe, done the same?
It was, indeed, difficult to believe that the Russians were entitled to drive the coach of history merely because they were barbarians. Doubt might arise, moreover, whether the Russians were really as young and fresh as was suggested; it was long since the days of St. Vladimir, and the analogy with the German barbarians and the decadent Romans was not altogether easy to apply. Still, Hegel had suggested a way out of this difficulty. If the reformation was to furnish the Germans with enduring capacity for the leadership of civilisation, surely the Russians were still more competent, for they had a purer form of Christianity, whilst philosophers, poets, artists, and politicians were abandoning Protestantism. Such men, indeed, were turning towards Catholicism; even Alexander I was inclined to look to the pope for help; and Čaadaev sang the pope's praises. Puškin and Gogol defended Orthodox Old Russia, and Uvarov was a tower of strength.
Had not Russia conquered Napoleon and the decadent Frenchmen, thus affording proof of her energy? Was not Russia respected and admired throughout Europe? Why, Napoleon himself had prophesied that Europe would be Cossack in fifty years. The Russian mužik was the Messiah longed for by Rousseau. During the eighteenth century European men of letters had discovered Teutonic folk-poesy and folk-art, but at the same epoch the Old Russian folk-songs had been collected, whilst new epics, admired by all Europe, were coming to light (The Lay of Igor's Raid).
French and German socialists had shown that the masses must effect social reform, but Haxthausen, a German, expressly declared that in the mir the Russians had long possessed the
