shows good mechanical ability and inventiveness, but does not—with exceptions of course—make a good business man; not because of inability, but through indifference to money making as such and distaste for the tactics that are usually involved. When it comes to development of or participation in an industry, however, the case is much different. But the business part of industry often remains unsympathetic, and it is on this account that it is found so often left to the Jew, the Armenian, the German and others, who live among and of the Slav. Modern education in a degree is changing these conditions, but they are evidently too basic to be wholly altered by such means.
The Slav is essentially thrifty, but not always very provident, and does not enjoy planning far ahead for the future.
In their civic life, since the earliest known times the Slavs of all branches were essentially democratic and patriarchal. Their attitude toward a centralized government is not the same as among their neighbors; they do not readily submit to any save freely chosen or freely approved authority. Their cherished ideal of power has always been, however, the national assembly rather than the nobility, or king, though their history shows many instances of a strong devotion to capable leaders. Their own nobility was very simple, consisting only of the “Kniazi”, a term meaning “priests” and doubtless signifying the ancient spiritual and later spiritual-temporal leaders. The position of the women among the Slavs was always one corresponding to their individual mental endowment, without social or religious restrictions. One of the first rulers of Bohemia was the famous “kniežna” (“priestess”) Libuša, who with the husband chosen for her at her request by the assembly of the people, founded in the ninth century the house of Přemysl.
The Slav in general is naturally pious. Of old, he developed a relatively high class naturalistic religion of his own, with a single mighty thunder-God in the heavens, and a host of minor deities and spirits, a few bad but most good and poetically conceived, peopling the air, groves, lakes and rivers. Under non-Slav influences he accepted the Christian religion, but to this day there are many traces of the old. And it is characteristic that in accepting a new religion the Russian, for instance, chose on the basis not of dogma, but on that of the beauty and inspiring character of the ceremonials.[1] The majority of the Slavs remain fatihful to the Greek Church to this day. The Poles alone voluntarily accepted Catholicism, which became closely identified with their state institutions, and remains almost exclusively their faith to this day. On the more culturally advanced Čechs the Roman Church was imposed first by circumstances and then by force. They, however, strove early against its failings and originated a reformation which in the early half of the XVth century shook Europe. Today the tenets of dogma have lost much of their power among Slavs in general. The ideal component of faith, however, is and will remain a part of the Slav nature, which finds no happiness in materialism. It is unsatisfying materialism which during the last two or three generations has led, in Russia, to the pessimism which became so marked in many of her writers.
The Slav differs also more or less from other Europeans in his art, poetry, music, and humor. In art, regrettably, he had too much of foreign masters and examples and follows these in a large measure, obscuring his own individuality; still the latter is not effaced, and comes out especially in the native arts, and perhaps in caricature. His poetry is especially epic, dramatic, didactical, light rather than heavy. His music is folk music, and dance, descriptive or martial music, joyous, melodious, stimulating or satisfying, without classicism, Wagnerian roughness, sombreness, rag-time or eastern hypnotic monotony and repetition. The Slav humor is essentially a happy, critical, or especially satyrical natural humor, quite unlike most of the habitual humor of the Anglo-Saxon; and perhaps no nation is better endowed with this quality. Regrettably the highest class of this humor involves subtleties of language which are intranslatable into non-Slav tongues; a disadvantage that is shared by much of the best Slavic literature.
There are other mental qualities of the Slav, such as on one hand his well-known bravery in battle, the proverbial modesty of his women, his linguistic facilities, etc., and on the other some weaknesses, but all these except the last mentioned, he shares
- ↑ See Nestor’s Chronicle.
