The Religious Spirit of the Slavs | Page 2

their
simple life without towns and without all urban complications. Life can
again be made a normal and happy one as God wills, if we only return
to the primitive simplicity of the peasants.
The Holy Synod was not opposed to the happiness of men, but they did
not believe either that happiness is attainable in this world or that it is
the aim of our life on earth. Did it not occur quite in the beginning of
the world's history that there lived on earth two brothers, Cain and Abel,
two farmers, without any burden of culture, and with all the Tolstoian
simplicity of life? Yet is it not reported that one killed the other?
Life is a drama, a tragic drama even, and not at all a metaphysical
immobility or a quasi-mobility, or even an eternal circulus viciosus.
There are three stages of human life: the first stage before the sin, in
God-like naïveté, the second in sin, and the third after the
atonement, life in perfection, when there will be "a new earth and a

new heaven." We are in the middle stage, where life means sin and
atonement, therefore in the most tragic stage. Life in the first and third
stages may consist entirely in contemplation, but the life which we are
actually living consists of deeds, of sins and virtues, i.e., of the struggle
between good and evil, of suffering and purification, of a tragic
heroism, of atonement.

DREAMS ABOUT THE REALITY.
It was not until the decline of the glorious Byzantine Empire that the
Slavs embraced Christianity. For nine hundred years the Greeks were
the principal representatives, protectors, elaborators and explorers of
Christianity. When the Greeks visited the Slav country with their divine
message, the Slavs were heathens. Their heathenism was like a
confusing dream. Nature stood before them with its contradictory
forces. The primitive Slavs regarded all the forces of Nature encircling
a human creature as being alive and stronger than this creature. All the
forces, whether friendly or unfriendly to man, are man like,
anthropomorphic, and none of them are indifferent to human life and
doings. The practical conclusion come to was: men must give sacrifices
to both of them, to the good and to the evil; to the good in order to
encourage them to be more good, to the evil in order to induce them to
be less evil. It was necessary to pray equally to the good as to the evil
gods. The best worship was the best balance between the good and bad
spirits; not to offend any of them, but to be reconciled with all of them!
Skilful diplomacy was indeed needed in worshipping all the terrible,
invisible representatives of the forces of Nature seemingly fighting
around man and because of man. And men are too weak to take their
part decisively in one or other fighting camp. Everything useful or
beautiful for men was regarded as being possessed by a good god or
spirit. Everything dangerous and unfriendly was considered to be
possessed by an evil god or spirit. The supreme god Perun, supreme
because the strongest, was considered as acting equally for good and
for evil. The curious fact is that the supreme divinity in every pagan
theology was imagined to be acting equally strongly for good and for
evil, as Zeus Jupiter, Wothan. You cannot call Zeus or Jupiter or

Wothan or Perun a good god, but only a mighty god. With Christianity
came into the world, including the Slav world, decisiveness, and every
confusion disappeared. The Slavs learned to know that they could not
serve two masters, but only one, and that they had not to balance
between good and evil but to go straightway on the side of good.

Reality as a Dream.
The Byzantine Emperors promised to the Serbs peace and land in their
Empire in the Balkans if they accepted the Christian faith. And the
Serbs accepted the Christian faith. The Emperors Basil and Constantine
agreed to give their sister in marriage to Vladimir, King of Kieff, if he
would embrace the Christian faith. And King Vladimir embraced the
Christian faith. These may be considered very petty motives! Yet this
was not the price to tie the mighty idol Perun on a horse's tail and to
carry him into the water of Dnieper. The principal motive was the
striking reality of the Christian foundation. The Christian message was
like a dream ("We have been in Heaven," reported the Russian
delegates, returning from Saint Sophia)--the Slavs loved dreams and
poetry very much; but the Christian faith was stated to be a reality, and
the Slavs, as men the world over, considered reality as more solid than
any dream. Instead of a nightmare of youthful dreams, as the Slav
pagan theology was,