Political Evolution. 67 



Such a western expansion might be greatly aided if, 

 carrying out the idea of a former sovereign, it united it- 

 self to the Roman Church, and made itself the agent of 

 the most powerful religious feelings and of all the theo- 

 cratic reactionary tendencies latent in western Europe. 

 It does not even seem impossible that a Roman pontiff 

 effectively restored to his civil princedom by such Rus- 

 sian agency might inaugurate, by a papal consecration 

 in the eternal city, yet a fresh dynasty of " Holy Roman 

 emperors," a Sclavonic series succeeding to the suppressed 

 German line, as the Germans succeeded in the person of 

 Charlemagne to the first line of Caesars. 



Nevertheless, such a transformation would be so great 

 a reversal of the course which history has now pursued 

 for six hundred years, that it can only be regarded as a 

 remotely possible solution of the problem offered to us 

 by the peculiar social and political divergence of Russia 

 from the rest of Europe. 



Again : if the expectation of continued social evolution 

 in the path now so long followed be disappointed, and if 

 Christian theocracy, but slightly modified from what has 

 before existed, be restored, Christianity can of course have 

 nothing to fear from such a change from subordination 

 to supremacy. We may here, therefore, neglect all possi- 

 bilities of reaction in a theocratic direction, since the 

 subject of our inquiry concerns the probable result of the 

 continued progress of resurging paganism, on the hy- 



