1915] on The Russian Idea 419 



The first day I was in Vladikavkaz an old tatterdemalion standing 

 by the bridge over the Terek came forward to embrace me and wel- 

 come me in the name of God. I had never met him before ; I 

 knew no one in the town. When I left Vladikavkaz last, to make 

 my long and possibly dangerous Central Asian tramp, the most 

 mysterious of my friends brought me a beautiful little copy of a 

 painting of Martha and Mary to keep me from harm. And one 

 night, months later, in a remote Moslem town on the fringe of the 

 desert, I had a strange experience of adventure and terror when, as 

 it seems to me, I was literally saved by looking at the picture. The 

 giving of it was love towards destiny, hospitality of Ithe heart. 



It might be thought, however, that the Russian love stopped short 

 with the honest, the religious, the seeking — that as long as a man 

 could give a decent explanation of himself and his mode of life the 

 Russian was on his side. But that would be to miss the real saliency 

 of this love. The Russian loves the dishonest, the criminal, the 

 despicable, the unpleasantly strange, the man who can give no ex- 

 planation of himself, as much as she loves the other, even a little 

 more than she loves the other ; she has a " weakness " for the 

 prodigal. Half her novels are expressive of love towards " criminals." 



In English novels the plot is so adjusted that the author has 

 scope to make a thorough out-and-out condemnation of the villain. 

 He has a few pages where he lays himself out to show how inex- 

 cusable the villain's conduct was, what an abject scoundrel, what a 

 disgraceful creature he is. The condition on which you may describe 

 sin is that you condemn the sinner. In life also, as well as in litera- 

 ture, we are condemnatory ; we love to pass judgment on others. 

 How different in Russian literature ! You find no condemnatory 

 spirit there. The author's whole passion is to defend and explain 

 the criminal, to evoke the tender sympathy of the reader. He makes 

 you feel how strange, how pathetic, is man's destiny, how sordid his 

 life compared with his spirit. Over the portal of Russian Hfe and 

 literature you might find the motto, " Neither do I condemn thee." 

 Russia feels that "however mean, however ugly and strange a man's 

 life may seem, it is nevertheless a part of his great pilgrimage. He 

 has got to go through it, he is learning something thereby, fulfilling 

 something sacred thereby. This is exemplified very remarkably in 

 Russia's legal system where, for instance, there is no capital punish- 

 ment except under martial law. A man commits a murder, but he is 

 not therefore condemned and hanged and turned over to God ; he 

 gets merely a dozen years in Siberia, and he goes on with his life. 



Dostoieffsky, when he was in Siberia with forgers and murderers 

 and highwaymen, was much concerned to seek out the gold in their 

 character ; and he remarks how a violent and dangerous man will 

 even shed tears at the sight of a child suffering. " Murderers are 

 much more simple than we take them to be," says he in another 

 place, " so are we all." 



