ABSTRACT
Secular culture bears the ineradicable stamp of romanticism; it combines scientific, social, and other ideas with socio-political dreams. culture always creates a leading class, in which the creative energies and aspirations of the epoch are crystallized. In the representatives of this leading class, a specific psychology is gradually built up, one which differs deeply and essentially from that of ecclesiasticism. In Russia the departure from an integral ecclesiasticism and the creation of a new mode of secular life began as early as the end of the fifteenth century. Ecclesiastical law may fail to coincide with divine law; in such a case the state power should limit the law of the Church for the sake of decency. The very concept of sin reduces to that of acts 'harmful to man'. An appeal to the principles of natural law was an essential element in the new ideology.
