Ancient families were no longer respected, but “chins” and deserts and long service. Everybody was anxious to get some “chin,” and as it is not given to everybody to distinguish himself through some meritorious act, many tried through flattery and subserviency to the Emperor and the dignitaries to gain that which merit gave to others. By the regulations of the military service, which Peter the Great had newly introduced, the peasants began with their masters at the same stage as soldiers of the rank and file: it was not uncommon for the peasants, by the law of seniority, to reach the grade of officer long before their masters, whom, as their inferiors, they frequently beat with sticks. Noble families were so scattered in the service that often one did not come again in contact with his relatives during his whole lifetime. How could there remain any manliness and firmness in those who in their youth trembled before the rod of their superiors; who could not obtain any honours except by servility; and who, being left without the active support of their relatives, without union and protection, were left alone, at any time liable to fall into the hands of the mighty? I must praise Peter the Great for his attempts to eradicate superstition in the observances of the divine Law, for indeed superstition is not a worship of God and the Law, but rather a desecration; to ascribe to God improper acts is nothing but blasphemy. In Russia they regarded the beard as a physical attribute of God, for which reason they thought it a sin to shave it off, thus falling into the heresy of anthropomorphism. They proclaimed everywhere miracles, needlessly performed, and holy images, whose properties were rarely attested; they encouraged superstitious worship, and increased the revenues of corrupt servants of the Lord. All that Peter the Great endeavoured to abolish: he promulgated ukases for the shaving off of beards, and by means of the _Spiritual Reglement_ put a stop to false miracles and visions, as well as improper gatherings near the holy images on the crossroads. Being convinced that the divine Law demands the preservation of the human race, and not its uncalled-for destruction, he by a decision of the Synod and all the Patriarchs granted a dispensation to eat meat during the fast, in case of necessity, particularly in the service on the seas, where people are subject to scurvy; he ordered that those who, by such abstinence, of their own free will sacrificed their lives and became subject to diseases resulting therefrom, should be cast into the water. All that is very good, only the latter thing is a little too severe.