B652 <=> B654 (BTG XXXIV Russia, p. 653)

“Of course to no one of them does the thought even enter his head that these Americans importing this ‘good-for-nothing’ root are indeed, though in a subjective sense, ‘mad,’ yet in an objective sense they are merely, as they themselves express it, ‘daylight robbers’ of the beings of this Russia.

“Well, my boy; in the same way a mass of other good customs as well as moral habits, adopted in the course of centuries by these Russian beings and already well fixed in the process of their ordinary existence during the last two centuries when these Russians became the object of influence of the European beings, began gradually to disappear, and instead of them new customs and new moral habits were formed among them, which they have at the present time, such as the usage of ‘kissing a lady’s hand,’ ‘being polite only with young ladies,’ ‘looking at a wife before her husband with the left eye,’ and so on and so forth.

“It is necessary to emphasize with an impulse of regret, that at the present time the same continues to proceed in the process of the ordinary existence of the beings of all communities there, on whatever continent it may be.

“I hope, my boy, that by now you may approximately picture to yourself and be satisfied about the question arising in your being, why, namely, in spite of the fact that there among those unfortunate favorites of yours, their species have risen and existed so long a time, could not those automatic being-usages and ‘instinctive habits’ have, by now, been formed, by which their existence although even with the absence of objective consciousness, might flow more or less tolerably.