by German theories, ended the matter and pressed the whole world’s history into some few biographies.  Carlyle’s “Heroes and Hero-Worship”—­curiously enough—­was published about the same time as Tolstoi’s “War and Peace.”  Two antipodes!  Dostojevsky’s “Brothers Caramazov” was published nearly at the same time as Nietzsche’s “Zarathustra” with its message of the Superman.  Again two antipodes!  You will in vain try to find such contrasts in the world as the Russian and Germano-Carlylean literature.  Petronius and Seneca could read and understand very well Goethe and Carlyle, but they could not read and understand Tolstoi and Dostojevsky, nor could they understand the Christianity of their own time.

“Great men!” exclaimed the Roman world on their dying beds.

“Great men!” exclaimed rejuvenated Western Europe in the nineteenth century.  History consists of great men.  The very aim of history is to produce great men.

“No,” answered Holy Russia, who kept silent for a thousand years.  The ideal of the great man is the fast ideal of the childhood of mankind, of the youthful Pagan world.  We are grown up in the Christian spirit; we can no longer live in the childish illusions and dreams of great men.  We see them as they are.  There has never existed and does not yet exist a great man.  No one great man ever existed.

On this point Tolstoi and the Holy Synod were in agreement with each other and with the common spirit of the Russian people.  They all agreed with their whole heart in the denial of the Greco-Roman worship of great men, which worship was everywhere revived in modern Europe in poetry, philosophy, politics, art and even in theology.  For eighteen hundred years Western Europe was the spokesman of the Christian world and Russia kept silent.  When, after eighteen hundred years, Russia came to the world, her answer was a decisive No.  But that was not all she had to say.  She had also to say a decisive Yes.

PANHUMANISM.

No and Yes.  There is in the Slav religious conscience a No and a Yes.

No—­for a great man; Yes—­for a saintly man.

No—­for pride; Yes—­for humility.

No—­for individualism; Yes—­for panhumanism.

No—­for longing after pleasure; Yes—­for longing after suffering.

History has proved that a great man is impossible and, even more, undesirable, and that a saintly man is both possible and desirable.  It is proved also that a so-called great man meant a great danger for mankind; a saintly man never could be dangerous.  We do not need great men at all, we need good and saintly men.  We ought not to seek after greatness, but after goodness and saintliness.  Greatness is no real virtue, but goodness and saintliness are virtues.  Greatness is only an illusion, but goodness and saintliness are realities.  Christianity came to impress these realities on the human conscience and to sweep illusions away.