It extends to all classes. The very children are
affected by it as soon as they begin to think.
The political value of such a sentiment consists in this, that it is
based on profound resemblances. Therefore one can build on it as if it
were a material fact. For the same reason it would be unsafe to
disregard it if one proposed to build solidly. The Poles, whom
superficial or ill-informed theorists are trying to force into the social
and psychological formula of Slavonism, are in truth not Slavonic at all.
In temperament, in feeling, in mind, and even in unreason, they are
Western, with an absolute comprehension of all Western modes of thought,
even of those which are remote from their historical experience.
That element of racial unity which may be called Polonism, remained
compressed between Prussian Germanism on one side and the Russian
Slavonism on the other. For Germanism it feels nothing but hatred. But
between Polonism and Slavonism there is not so much hatred as a complete
and ineradicable incompatibility.
No political work of reconstructing Poland either as a matter of justice
or expediency could be sound which would leave the new creation in
dependence to Germanism or to Slavonism.
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