In spite
of this, when the Russian peasant hears of persecutions of Jews, he
says with the indifference of an Oriental:
"No one sues or beats an innocent man."
Who ought to know better than the Russian peasant that in "Holy
Russia" the innocent are too often tried and beaten? But his
conception of right and wrong has been confused from time immemorial,
the sense of injustice is undeveloped in his dark mind, dimmed by
centuries of Tartardom, boyardom, and the horrors of serfdom.
The village has a dislike for restless people, even when that
restlessness is expressed in an aspiration for a better life. We
Russians are intensely Oriental by nature, we love quiet and
immobility, and a rebel, even if he be a Job, delights us in but an
abstract way. Lost in the depth of a winter six months long, and wrapt
in misty dreams, we love beautiful fairy-tales, but the desire for a
beautiful life is undeveloped in us. And when on the plane of our lazy
thought something new and disquieting makes its appearance,--instead
of accepting and sympathetically scanning it, we hasten to drive it
into a dark corner of our mind and bury it there, lest it disturb us
in our customary vegetative existence, amidst impotent hopes and grey
dreams.
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