Moreover, Russia lacked the elements of historic activity necessary to enable her to play an early part in the work of modern civilization. She had no feudalism, no nobility (as we understand the term), no chivalry, no Gothic architecture, no troubadours, no knights. She lacked the intellectual impetus of mediæval courts, the sturdy exercise of scholastic disputations, the elucidations of the problems of the human race, which were propounded by the thirteenth century. She lacked the religious orders, that network which enclosed the wide edifice of Catholicism; and the military, uniting in mystic sympathy the ascetic and chivalric sentiments. She lacked the councils of the laws of modern rights; and that her lack might be in nothing lacking, she lacked even the brilliant heresies of the West, the subtle rationalists and pantheists, the Abelards and Amalrics, whose followers were brilliant ignoramuses or rank bigots roused by a question of ritual. Lastly, she lacked the sunny smile of Pallas Athene and the Graces, the Renaissance, which brightened the face of Europe at the close of the Middle Ages. And as the civilization brought at last to Russia was the product of nations possessed of all that Russia lacked, and as finally, it was imposed upon her by force, and without those gradual transitions and insensible modifications as necessary to a people as to an individual, she could not accept it in the frank and cordial manner indispensable to its beneficent action. A nation which receives a culture ready made, and not elaborated by itself, condemns itself to intellectual sterility; at most it can only hope to imitate well. And so it happened with Russia. Her development does not present the continuous bent, the gentle undulations of European history in which yesterday creates to-day, and to-day prepares for to-morrow, without an irregular or awkward halt, or ever a trace broken. In the social order of Russia primitive institutions coexist with products of our spick and span new sociology, and we see the deep waters of the past mixed with the froth of the Utopia that points out the route of the unknown future. This confusion or inharmoniousness engenders Russian dualism, the cause of her political and moral disturbances. Russia contains an ancient people, to-day an anachronism, and a society in embryo struggling to burst its bounds.