And just as the East has bound itself fast to externals, so the Raskolnik praises his fossilism to the skies, and would gladly run the risk of petrifying society in its inherited shape. With him, as with the child or the Oriental, wisdom and science belong to the infancy of civilization, and the maxims of antiquity leave nothing to be learnt. Under both aspects the Old Believer is reactionary, opposed to the very principle of progress--the hero of routine and a martyr to prejudice. His gaze turns naturally to the past, and if reform ever enters his mind, he dreams of a return to the good old times of yore. Even his struggle against authority is based on the old idea of sovereignty: his political motto, as well as that of most of the people, is, "No emperor, but a czar!" The czar was one day pointed out to a Raskolnik conscript. "That is no czar," he said: "he wears a moustache, a uniform and a sword, like all the rest of the officers. He is nothing but a general." These worshipers of the past, with their devotion to ceremonial, think of the czar only as a long-bearded man in a flowing robe, such as they see in the ancient images. The Old Believers are the exaggerated representatives of the spirit of stagnation which everywhere confronts the Russian government. Nothing gives a clearer conception of the obstacles still in the way of reforms which elsewhere would be matters of course (as, for instance, the substitution of the Gregorian for the Julian calendar) than the resistance which other measures have already encountered.