Theological studies are neither possible nor necessary for everyone; the study of philosophy is not accessible to everyone. Constant and special exercise in that inner attention that cleanses and gathers the mind towards its higher unity is also not possible for everyone. It is possible and necessary, however, for everyone to bind the direction of their life with their fundamental conviction of faith, to harmonize with it their main occupation and every particular matter, in order that every action might be an expression of the one striving, that every thought might seek a single foundation, every step lead to a single goal. Without this, human life will not have any meaning, the mind will be a counting machine, the heart a collection of soulless strings through which whistles an inadvertent wind; no action will have a moral character, and there will be no human beings, properly speaking. For human beings are their faith.
— Ivan Kireevsky, “Fragments” in On Spiritual Unity : A Slavophile Reader. Trans. Boris Jakim and Robert Bird (Hudson, NY: Lindisfarne Books, 1998), 286.
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