heme of reform upon a
phase of blind absolutism; and in Russia there has never been anything
else to which the faintest tradition could, after ages of error, go back
as to a parting of ways.

In Europe the old monarchical principle stands justified in its
historical struggle with the growth of political liberty by the evolution
of the idea of nationality as we see it concreted at the present time; by
the inception of that wider solidarity grouping together around the
standard of monarchical power these larger, agglomerations of mankind.
This service of unification, creating close-knit communities possessing
the ability, the will, and the power to pursue a common ideal, has
prepared the ground for the advent of a still larger understanding: for
the solidarity of Europeanism, which must be the next step towards the
advent of Concord and Justice; an advent that, however delayed by the
fatal worship of force and the errors of national selfishness, has been,
and remains, the only possible goal of our progress.

The conceptions of legality, of larger patriotism, of national duties and
aspirations have grown under the shadow of the old monarchies of Europe,
which were the creations of historical necessity. There were seeds of
wisdom in their very mistakes and abuses. They had a past and a future;
they were human. But under the shadow of Russian autocracy nothing could
grow. Russian autocracy succeeded to nothing; it had no historical past,
and it cannot hope for a historical future. It can only end. By no
industry of investigation, by no fantastic stretch of benevolence, can it
be presented as a phase of development through which a Society, a State,
must pass on the way to the full consciousness of its destiny. It lies
outside the stream of progress. This despotism has been utterly
un-European. Neither has it been Asiatic in its nature. Oriental
despotisms belong to the history of mankind; they have left their trace
on our minds and our imagination by their splendour, by their culture, by
their art, by the exploits of great conquerors. The record of their rise
and decay has an intellectual value; they are in their origins and their
course the manifestations of human needs, the instruments of racial
temperament, of catastrophic force, of faith and fanaticism. The Russian
autocracy as we see it now is a thing apart. It is impossible to assign
to it any rational origin in the vices, the misfortunes, the necessities,