"Great men!" exclaimed the Roman world on their dying beds.
"Great men!" exclaimed rejuvenated Western Europe in the nineteenth century. History consists of great men. The very aim of history is to produce great men.
"No," answered Holy Russia, who kept silent for a thousand years. The ideal of the great man is the fast ideal of the childhood of mankind, of the youthful Pagan world. We are grown up in the Christian spirit; we can no longer live in the childish illusions and dreams of great men. We see them as they are. There has never existed and does not yet exist a great man. No one great man ever existed.
On this point Tolstoi and the Holy Synod were in agreement with each other and with the common spirit of the Russian people. They all agreed with their whole heart in the denial of the Greco-Roman worship of great men, which worship was everywhere revived in modern Europe in poetry, philosophy, politics, art and even in theology. For eighteen hundred years Western Europe was the spokesman of the Christian world and Russia kept silent. When, after eighteen hundred years, Russia came to the world, her answer was a decisive No. But that was not all she had to say. She had also to say a decisive Yes.
No and Yes. There is in the Slav religious conscience a No and a Yes.
No—for a great man; Yes—for a saintly man.
No—for pride; Yes—for humility.
No—for individualism; Yes—for panhumanism.
No—for longing after pleasure; Yes—for longing after suffering.