Hence arises her impenetrability to
whatever is true in Western thought. Western thought, when it crosses
her frontier, falls under the spell of her autocracy and becomes a
noxious parody of itself. Hence the contradictions, the riddles of her
national life, which are looked upon with such curiosity by the rest of
the world. The curse had entered her very soul; autocracy, and nothing
else in the world, has moulded her institutions, and with the poison of
slavery drugged the national temperament into the apathy of a hopeless
fatalism. It seems to have gone into the blood, tainting every mental
activity in its source by a half-mystical, insensate, fascinating
assertion of purity and holiness. The Government of Holy Russia,
arrogating to itself the supreme power to torment and slaughter the
bodies of its subjects like a God-sent scourge, has been most cruel to
those whom it allowed to live under the shadow of its dispensation. The
worst crime against humanity of that system we behold now crouching at
bay behind vast heaps of mangled corpses is the ruthless destruction of
innumerable minds. The greatest horror of the world--madness--walked
faithfully in its train.
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