rebellious spirit having been crushed out of the generations
since, what is left but non-resistance? Yet in these latter
years a resisting spirit, nursed and suckled largely in western
Europe, has falsely made it appear that all Russia was in arms,
storming with chaotic unity at the church, the state and the
army, deluging their ancient customs with the destructive and
re-creative might of radicalism. Far and wide of the truth is
this! Let no one think the vast heart of Russia has changed!
Only the few have cast away the ancient quiet; only the few
have the modern consciousness instead of the medieval,
theocratic one; only the few are not at heart Slavophiles in
feeling and in morality.

This philosophy existed long in the national or social mind
before it was crystallized into public doctrines, and exists
even yet largely in its more primitive unworded or instinctive
form, although it was Peter the Great who unconsciously awoke
the latent and then unexpressed Slavophilic feelings and
moralities when he, like a civilizing Pied Piper, charmed the
chieftains of industry of Western Europe to follow his trail
into Muscovy, his "Empire of Little Villages," and there
regenerate them.

Therefore at about the end of the seventeenth century in
Russia, the "dumb silent centuries" gradually became articulate
in expressing their opposition to all things western. This is
the heart of Slavophilism, and no one can truly fathom the
Russian soul before understanding its philosophy. It is the
Muscovite theory of the simple life, still crying out against
the Great Peter's work and recalling the devotees of western