It has not been the business of
monarchies to be adaptive from within. With the mission of uniting and
consolidating the particular ambitions and interests of feudalism in
favour of a larger conception of a State, of giving self-consciousness,
force and nationality to the scattered energies of thought and action,
they were fated to lag behind the march of ideas they had themselves set
in motion in a direction they could neither understand nor approve. Yet,
for all that, the thrones still remain, and what is more significant,
perhaps, some of the dynasties, too, have survived. The revolutions of
European States have never been in the nature of absolute protests _en
masse_ against the monarchical principle; they were the uprising of the
people against the oppressive degeneration of legality. But there never
has been any legality in Russia; she is a negation of that as of
everything else that has its root in reason or conscience. The ground of
every revolution had to be intellectually prepared. A revolution is a
short cut in the rational development of national needs in response to
the growth of world-wide ideals.
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