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There is also the strongly developed realistic tendency
which has deprived the Russian of all metaphysical
qualities, and led him, as a rule, to take interest in only
two groups of sciences—the physical and social.
The form of government in Russia is not now of the
kind to give free scope for any sort of originality. And
while independent thought in political affairs is not
allowed any outlet, and is almost equally debarred from
full and free expression in literature on account of the
censor, there is no obstacle to singularity, individual
peculiarity, and absurdity, which not infrequently becomes
merged into mysticism, a Slavic peculiarity, but one which
with the Russians is wonderfully united to realism.
Gogol comes to us a representative of the past, and
Tolstoï of the present time. It is this mysticism which
is outwardly shown in the numerous sects which are
found in Russia. The membership of the sects amounts
to fourteen or fifteen millions, divided among some fifty
or sixty different moral and religious systems.
The trait, however, which struck me personally more
strongly than any other, and one which I met with in the
most developed and also, so far as I could judge, the most
typical individuals, was what they themselves called une
large franchise, a broad and proud frankness.
Nowhere else are men and women occupying the most
advanced places in culture heard expressing themselves
so openly and without reserve. They not only give
utterance to their ideas and thoughts without hesitation,
but they not infrequently expose traits of their own
lives, traits which they must see may be judged
differently, without any fear of losing anything in the opinion
of others. Behind this transparency, which especially
surprises us in the women, there lies: “Such am I; I
appear as I am—too broadly and largely constituted to
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