Some of the best intellects of Russia, after
struggling in vain against the spell, ended by throwing themselves at the
feet of that hopeless despotism as a giddy man leaps into an abyss. An
attentive survey of Russia's literature, of her Church, of her
administration and the cross-currents of her thought, must end in the
verdict that the Russia of to-day has not the right to give her voice on
a single question touching the future of humanity, because from the very
inception of her being the brutal destruction of dignity, of truth, of
rectitude, of all that is faithful in human nature has been made the
imperative condition of her existence. The great governmental secret of
that imperium which Prince Bismarck had the insight and the courage to
call _Le Neant_, has been the extirpation of every intellectual hope. To
pronounce in the face of such a past the word Evolution, which is
precisely the expression of the highest intellectual hope, is a gruesome
pleasantry. There can be no evolution out of a grave. Another word of
less scientific sound has been very much pronounced of late in connection
with Russia's future, a word of more vague import, a word of dread as
much as of hope--Revolution.
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