scientific text-books and philosophical magazines they absorbed
and experienced thousands of years ago, when they offered human
sacrifice in black and cruel forests and cried to their gods in
the dark. Their agnosticism is perhaps merely paganism; their
paganism, as in old times, is merely devilworship. Certainly,
Schopenhauer could hardly have written his hideous essay on women
except in a country which had once been full of slavery and the
service of fiends. It may be that these moderns are tricking us
altogether, and are hiding in their current scientific jargon
things that they knew before science or civilisation were. They
say that they are determinists; but the truth is, probably, that
they are still worshipping the Norns. They say that they
describe scenes which are sickening and dehumanising in the name
of art or in the name of truth; but it may be that they do it in
the name of some deity indescribable, whom they propitiated with
blood and terror before the beginning of history.

This hypothesis, like the hypothesis mentioned before it, is
highly disputable, and is at best a suggestion. But there is one
broad truth in the matter which may in any case be considered as
established. A country like Russia has far more inherent
capacity for producing revolution in revolutionists than any
country of the type of England or America. Communities highly
civilised and largely urban tend to a thing which is now called
evolution, the most cautious and the most conservative of all
social influences. The loyal Russian obeys the Czar because he
remembers the Czar and the Czar's importance. The disloyal
Russian frets against the Czar because he also remembers the
Czar, and makes a note of the necessity of knifing him. But the
loyal Englishman obeys the upper classes because he has forgotten