CHAPTER VI

_THE LIGHT OF RUSSIA_

With regard to the Russian novelist, Count Leo Tolstoi, Nordau pursues the same mode of criticism as he employed against other writers. He also aims at the same object, firstly, to show that authors suffer from mental aberration; and, secondly, that the public who read their books do not do so on account of their literary merit, but because the readers are mentally afflicted in the same way as the authors.

To prove this against Tolstoi and his admirers is no light enterprise, and Nordau does not acquit himself of his self-imposed task without a great deal of shuffling.

He allows nothing for Tolstoi’s surroundings, the social condition of the country in which he lives, and the life he has led, but lifts him out of all that tends to interpret this ultra-Russian writer, and regards him as one who has evolved some extraordinary notions in a studio far from his native land.

He who says Russia says a great deal: for the expression denotes a vast empire, consisting of many nationalities and races, held together by a strong pressure, which seems, like the gravitation of huge heavenly bodies, to be determined by the size of the body from which it emanates. The inclusion of so many elements does not prevent Russia from remaining a great and powerful State, provided its Government soon becomes to some extent rational. The predominant nationality is made up of genuine Russians, whose characteristics are such as to render them capable of being, according to their rulers in the immediate future, an imminent danger to Europe, or a model nation to be followed by the rest of the world.

The Russian is good-tempered, patient, loyal, generous, kind-hearted, and superstitiously religious. He is extremely emotional and dangerous when aroused. His easy-going manners, his immense self-esteem, and his intense vitality render him an easy victim to the numerous temptations which aliens are not slow to hold out to him. He is straightforward and strongly averse to hypocrisy, and when he is convinced that duty demands from him that he should assist in filling a trench with his dead body for the artillery to pass over, or to throw a bomb at the Czar, he will do it without a murmur.

His passiveness, his loyalty, and long-suffering have been cruelly taken advantage of by a long succession of Governments, chiefly consisting of aliens. In Russia the most powerful bureaucracy in the world, composed chiefly of a German element, has taken possession of the power, and holds to it in a quasi-unconscious fashion, like a bull-dog unable to relax his hold.

The Government, with such legislation as exists, has gone on for centuries with scarcely any regard for the well-being of the people, and the inevitable results are slowly but surely manifesting themselves, and point to some terrible catastrophe.

The emancipation of the serfs, from which sanguine people, unacquainted with Russian circumstances, hoped so much, shook the old institutions to their very foundations, but brought only momentary relief to the suffering people. The _mir_-eaters, or village usurers, have swallowed up the land of the peasants, their cattle, and their implements, and compelled large hordes of people to move about the country in search of work. Employment is scarce and labour ill paid. The tax-collectors are as implacable and the Government officials as corrupt as ever. The tendency—to be observed all over the civilized world—of dividing humanity into two classes, the wealthy and the poor, has nowhere developed to the same extent as in Russia. The rich, comparatively few in number, are becoming extremely rich, but the great mass of the people miserably poor.

Extreme poverty, intensified by the pressure of the tax-gatherer and the inhuman methods of the money-lender, has a gnawing effect on a people living in an intensely rigorous climate, in miserable villages sparsely scattered over vast monotonous plains.

The Russians being a sentimental people, it is natural that their forlorn condition should cause them to brood over their sad lives during the long and lonely winter nights, or that they should be driven to drown their consciousness in _vodka_.

Such is the stage on which alone a character like Leo Tolstoi can become intelligible.

But it is not only the powerful influences from external circumstances which give that direction to Tolstoi’s mind which Nordau insists in interpreting as a sign of degeneracy. The mode of life and the sphere of action he has adopted, in pursuance of the large and noble traits of his character, must have been powerfully conducive to his peculiar mood and ideas. Nobody who has read his works, even if only those works Nordau holds to be of the smallest literary merit and fullest of signs of degeneracy, would ever conceive the idea that Tolstoi’s mind was weak or distorted. But if this novelist had been driven to lunacy, it would have been extremely irrational to account for his mental aberration without considering the outward circumstances that would have produced it.

Tolstoi’s sympathies were roused, as those of every noble-minded man would have been roused, by the miserable existence of a people who possess all the elements of a great nation. In Russia no such ways are open to the reformer as in free States. There is no Parliament, no organized political parties, no free Press. A political career is out of the question, except in the form of a consistent toadying of those in power, and of a blind obedience to those who crush the people. Any opposition to Government, or even proffered suggestions, would lead to exile in Siberia, and abruptly cut short any man’s activity. Tolstoi had therefore only two courses open to him: either to expatriate himself and to thunder forth in a foreign Press against the abuses of the Russian Government, unheard and unheeded by his own censor-ridden compatriots or to adopt the line of action he did.

In the cities, where the alien element prevails, and where the scum of the Russian nation congregates, he would be out of contact with his people. His emotional nature would have revolted against the police tyranny and spying rampant in the cities, and he would soon have been landed in the clutches of the authorities. He therefore elected to live among the peasants as one of them, convinced both by his feelings and his reason that he would thus directly benefit his surroundings by his example and form that leaven by which the whole mass might in time be leavened; while his writings simultaneously appealed to those of his countrymen who read books, and those who, outside Russia, sympathize with the Russian people.

We do not pretend to know Tolstoi’s secret thoughts and his ultimate hopes, but we believe it possible that he may, without being an irrational enthusiast, or even a dreamer, have reckoned on his writings and opinions reaching the highest personages in the Russian empire through being read by all the upper classes of the world. He may have hoped that, after establishing his reputation throughout the literary world, and after having become the pride of his own nation, he would one day dare to speak such words to the rulers of all the Russians as might save him and his nation.

Whatever may have been his expectations, there can be little doubt that he has met with dire disappointment, not so much in his personal career as in his hopes for his fellow-countrymen.

To the framers of paper constitutions and to theoretical revolutionists, it may seem easy to introduce a new form of Government and to regenerate a nation, but, to one who, like Tolstoi, is in close contact with the masses to be regenerated, who has daily experienced all the frailty of the material he has to work with, who alone tries to swim against overwhelming currents,—to him, the uplifting of a nation or a race is a herculean task impossible to approach with the clap-trap of the modern agitator.

Tolstoi, finding that it is the _morale_ of the people he has to work upon, that it is in the religious tendencies of his fellow-men that their strength lies, concludes, with the full consent of his emotional being, that religious conceptions, different from the Russian orthodox Church and from the western university theology, must be the foundation on which he has to build. What therefore is more rational than that he should plunge into religious speculation, and thus expose himself to the mistake of adopting religious views which are prompted as much by the needs of the situation, the circumstances, his own and his people’s characteristics, as by logical deductions. Greater men than he—Moses, Mahomet, and others—had done so before him.

Besides, as the postulates he starts from do not spring from exact knowledge, but from faith and emotion—as all religious postulates necessarily must do,—and as these, his postulates, are diametrically opposed to those which Nordau would pre-suppose, Tolstoi’s conclusions must be the opposite of his; but to differ from Nordau is to be degenerate.

It is no wonder then that Tolstoi’s books should be more than novels. He had a higher purpose in view than gathering in royalties and entertaining his readers. His books are jam with a considerable amount of powder in them. If, despite this, they have been widely read throughout the world, ordinary minds would conclude that in creating them their author has accomplished tasks which alone a mind of a high order could hope to perform. Our alienist, determined to come to no such conclusion, supposes that all those who read Tolstoi’s works are degenerates, and that the large sale of his books is consequently a confirmation of Tolstoi’s degeneracy.

Would Nordau apply the same kind of reasoning with regard to the sale of his own works? He would probably; but instead of starting with the supposition that contemporary readers of books are incipient lunatics, he would very likely take for granted that the readers who approve of his works are highly intelligent, and that the great sale they have attained proves the soundness of his own mind.

In support of his view, Nordau, who fairly acknowledges the great qualities of Tolstoi as a writer of fiction, has the audacity to assert that it is not this great quality of his works that has secured him his world-wide fame, but that it is due to his mysticism, which a degenerate race prefers to a literary and moral value. The only semblance of proof he gives for this view is that Tolstoi’s best works have not contributed to his reputation so much as the _Kreutzer Sonata_, “an inferior creation, which in the public opinion of the western nations placed him in the first rank of living authors.” But who has decided that the _Kreutzer Sonata_ is inferior to Tolstoi’s other works? Only Nordau, whose opinion runs counter to the “western nations.” If therefore there is any value in Nordau’s argument it rests entirely on the astounding fact that the “western nations” are all degenerate and Nordau alone is sane.

Nordau, like most German bookworms, evidently believes that references to an authority, however obscure, are enough to prove any assertion. He has manifestly worked with any number of “conversations-lexicons” and encyclopedias about him, in quest of some printed confirmation of the extraordinary opinion that the _Kreutzer Sonata_ is a poor book, and that the preceding works of Tolstoi alone contain those grand qualities which Nordau recognises. He finds that Franz Bornmüller, an author of a biographical dictionary, said in 1882 of Tolstoi: “He possesses no ordinary talent for fiction, but one devoid of due artistic finish, and which is influenced by a certain one-sidedness in his views of life and history.”

It should be noticed that Nordau gives this quotation in order to show that Tolstoi had not attained any European fame in 1882, that is, before the _Kreutzer Sonata_ was written; but with that amazing want of logic characterizing his whole work, he does not see that this Franz Bornmüller thinks very little of the early works of Tolstoi. He consequently differs from Nordau, and shows every sign of sharing the opinion of the “western nations.”

Nordau makes a sharp distinction between Tolstoi’s novels as such and the philosophy they enforce. He is thereby enabled to give some plausibility to the sophistical assertion that it is not Tolstoi’s novels, but his philosophy, which brought him popularity. This philosophy, which is supposed to prove that Tolstoi’s mind is not sound, Nordau sums up in the following way: “The individual is nothing, the species is everything, the individual lives in order to do his fellow-creatures good; thought and inquiry are great evils; science is perdition; faith is salvation.” Among these items there is only one which differs from the views of the bulk of humanity—from that ordinary common-sense which Nordau so often takes as a standard of sanity, even in the superstitious peasant. We refer to the item in which he says that thought and inquiry are great evils. Nowhere in Tolstoi’s writings can such a nonsensical phrase be found. It is one of those little touches that Nordau so dexterously applies, or which his prejudice causes him to apply, in order to strengthen his case in his readers’, or perhaps in his own, eyes. He appears to ignore such works as _My Confession_, _My Faith_, _A Short Exposition of the Gospel_, and _About my Life_, all works built up by elaborate thoughts. The whole life of Tolstoi has been one of “thought and inquiry,” and all his literary work is an invitation to think and to inquire. Tolstoi objects only to such thought and inquiry as vainly attempt to carry the methods of inductive science into spheres where the observation of our senses is of no avail, and where their failure tempts us to believe in the non-existence of that all-important portion of the universe into which faith alone can penetrate.

That Tolstoi should distrust science, after the presumptuous attitude which scientists have taken up, will surprise nobody who has read what we have said about this bankruptcy of science. Many scientists, including Nordau, have in their gratuitous attacks on religion so recklessly mixed up scientific fact with scientific speculation, that they must blame themselves if people use the term “science” when it would be more correct to employ that of “unscientific speculations.”

That a thinker, who is at the same time the instructor of the ignorant masses, should look upon faith as a means of salvation, is not new, and cannot be considered as a sign of mental aberration; for millions of sane common-sense men have for thousands of years held this opinion. Even if we apply the word salvation exclusively to society in general, to the race, or to one nation, leaving out any references to individual salvation in another world, faith of some kind is the only source from which it could spring. Scientists of Nordau’s type seem unable to understand that science means the knowledge of absolute facts which, while quite capable of undermining and destroying the foundations on which a more or less primitive religion rests, cannot possibly come into collision with faith in the widest sense of the term. When a scientist and a religionist differ about things which have not come under scientific inquiry—such as the final aim of the scheme of humanity, for example—the dispute is not between science and faith, but between two different faiths. Science therefore cannot regulate our conduct, determine our views, or save a nation. This alone can be done by faith, be it based on science, on tradition, or emotion. A great scientific knowledge might be degraded into an excuse for, and a means of, an irresponsible, selfish, and wicked life; or it might ennoble the mind, intensify the sense of responsibility, and serve as the means of rendering great services to humanity. All depends on the faith of the scientist.

The end of what we may call the era of scientific atheism, now at hand, presents most deplorable results, as we have already pointed out, of removing the only foundations of a moral balance available to those who have not had any opportunity of drawing from scientific studies that strength of character, and those noble aspirations to be met with in scientists who have a genuine faith—a faith in their science and in humanity, if in nothing else. Tolstoi, who, like every thinking man of our time, had seen the disastrous effects which scientific atheism had produced, cannot possibly be regarded as of weak intellect because he rejected scientific superstition and proclaimed faith as the true basis of conduct and character.

Nordau finds traces of degeneracy in Tolstoi’s question, “Wherefore am I alive?” and in the manner in which Tolstoi finds a reply to that question. It seems however that Nordau too has asked, himself that question, for in his book _Degeneration_ (page 149) he replies to it in a close, well-reasoned, passage, which deserves to be read to its full extent. We shall quote only a part of it in order to compare the reply he himself obtains with the reply obtained, by Tolstoi. After having shown that the aim of a man’s life is necessarily involved in the greater question—the aim of the universe—and that such an aim cannot exist objectively in time or space, he says: “But if it is not objective, if it does not exist in time and space, it must, in order to be conceivable, exist somewhere, virtually, as idea, as a plan and design. But that which contains a design, a thought, a plan, we name consciousness; and consciousness that can conceive a plan of the universe, and for its realization designedly uses the forces of nature, is synonymous, with God. If a man however believes in a God, he loses at once the right to raise the question, ‘Wherefore am I alive?’ since it is in that case an insolent presumption, an effort of small, weak man to look over God’s shoulder, to spy out God’s plan, to aspire to the height of omniscience. But neither is it in such a case necessary, since a God without the highest wisdom cannot be conceived; and if He has devised a plan for the world, this is certain to be perfect, all its parts are in harmony, and the aim to which every co-operator, from the smallest to the greatest, will devote himself is the best conceivable. Thus man can live in complete rest and confidence in the impulses and forces implanted in him by God, because he, in every case, fulfils a high and worthy destiny by co-operating in a, to him, unknown Divine plan of the world.”

We here notice his words: “that which contains a design, a thought, a plan, we name consciousness.” Now, nobody knows better than the scientists that so far all scientific discovery has revealed plan, method, and purpose, in the smallest thing and the smallest phenomena in the universe. Is it then necessary to be degenerate to believe in a self-conscious Providence? John Stuart Mill observes that the fact that we find in nature, especially in human and animal bodies, physical and mechanical problems solved in the same way as engineers had solved them long before they knew of such solutions in nature, points not only to the existence of an intelligent Creator, but to a similarity of His intelligence to that of human beings.

According to the passage from Nordau, then, the planning in nature proves a conscious force, a conscious force is synonymous with God, and the man who believes in God can live in complete rest in his faith. Tolstoi obtained a reply to his question in a manner which he describes in the following words:

“It was quite the same to me whether Jesus was God or not God; whether the Holy Ghost proceeded from the one or the other. It was likely neither necessary nor important for me to know how, when, and by whom the Gospels, or any one of the parables were composed, and whether they could be ascribed to Christ or not. What to me was important was that the light which for eighteen hundred years was the light of the world is that light still; but what name was to be given to the source of this light, or what were its component parts, and by whom it was lighted, was quite indifferent to me.”

The difference in the two replies is one of words only. If therefore Nordau acknowledged that a sensible man could ask such a question, and if the reply of Nordau we have just quoted is recognised by him as his own opinion, he and Tolstoi would stand very much in the same category. But Nordau does not think that a perfectly sane mind would ask such a question; and if it was asked, he has another reply. This reply is however far from being so clear as the other. “If,” he says, “on the other hand, there is no belief in a God, it is also impossible to form a conception of the aim, for then the aim existing in consciousness only as an idea, in the absence of a universal consciousness, has no locus for existence; there is no place for it in nature.” From this it ought to follow that, if a man does not believe in God, there is no God, and consequently there can be no aim. He then proceeds to argue that, if there be no aim, it is useless to ask the question, “Wherefore am I alive?” but that we can ask the question, “Why do we live?” His reply to this is characteristic: “We live in obedience to the mechanical law of causality, which requires no plan and no universal consciousness.”

It is curious to behold how Nordau cannot perceive that his question, “Why do we live?” implies the question, “Whence the mechanical law of causality?” and that his reply is simply, “We live because we live.” Once he has accepted this self-delusion as a solid foundation, his reasoning again becomes rational, and does not bear on the point before us. The most astounding part of it is that Nordau considers Tolstoi, and all others whose instinct, whose emotion, and whose immutable reasoning point to a cause behind Nordau’s home-made mechanical law of causality, as thereby showing signs of mental degeneration.

Nordau, in order to prove the confusion existing in Tolstoi’s ideas, seems to take for granted that the tendency towards Pantheism, perceptible in the Russian’s reasoning, is utterly at variance with Christianity. We would simply point out that Tolstoi has his own Christianity, framed on his own interpretation of the Gospels, and not any previously existing Christianity, and is therefore at liberty to proclaim a creed which has a Pantheistic tendency without exposing himself to the reproach of being inconsequent. But we consider it more important to notice the fact that the Gospels, far from laying down any dogmas, are the record of the life of a man—divine or not divine—whose mission it was to protest against dogmas. He called God “Father,” in order to speak of universal consciousness only in its relations to man, leaving it to the doctrinaires and the philosophers to agree as best they could on the question of Pantheism or no Pantheism. Besides, the Gospels certainly emphasize the omnipresence of the Creator; and if this Pantheistic tendency had not existed among the disciples, it is not likely that St. Paul would have said, “In Him we live, we move, and have our being.”

The shallow, superficial manner in which Nordau treats Tolstoi’s ethics is certainly unworthy of him, and amounts simply to a quibble. These ethics, correctly summed up, “Resist not evil, judge not, kill not,” which correspond precisely with the teachings of Christ, Nordau does not regard as ethics, but proceeds solemnly to test them as expediencies in peculiar cases, and comes to the conclusion that they are ridiculous.

Must we then conclude that Nordau has no such ethics, but that he believes it right to return evil for evil,—_vendetta_ fashion,—that he objects to suffer wrong for a good cause, and that he revels in indiscriminate murder? Tolstoi’s ethics, as ethics should do, hold up the ideal for which we should strive, and as a practical test of them we must consider not the murder and plunder of one good man by a bad one, but the state which would ensue if all men conformed to them. The practical moral we ought to draw from them is not that laws and law courts should be abolished, but that laws should be framed and law courts should be managed in such a way as to favour a general acceptance of such ethics. Here again Nordau indulges in illogical reasoning, and in contradictions of himself. He takes for granted that humanity is so utterly depraved that if “the fear of the gallows did not prevent it, throat-cutting and stealing would be the most generally adopted trade.” This means that Nordau in one place in his book declares human beings are too good, too noble, too honest to need any belief in a hell, but in another place declares that they are far too depraved to do without the fear of the gallows. He forgets that good ethics have sprung from the good instincts of our race, and that crime has largely been fostered by bad laws, bad law courts, and bad institutions.

In one of his stories, entitled _From the Diary of Nechljudow_, Tolstoi’s hero, Prince Nechljudow, is a most eccentric character, created probably for the purpose of showing the absurdity of indiscriminate charity and other impulsive actions of the erratics of our day. Nordau gives an account of one of the instances in which the Prince’s selfish way of practising charity is forcibly brought out. He evidently does this in order that the Prince’s action should be accepted as an illustration of what Tolstoi means by charity. This is both absurd and unjust. It amounts to an identification of the author with the character he represents—a way of insinuating degeneracy in authors who simply hold it up in their characters as a warning. To thus mix up authors with their characters is a mistake frequently committed by unintelligent readers, but it is surprising to find that with Nordau it is an habitual method.

With regard to the character Pozdnyscheff, Nordau does the same thing. He takes for granted that the opinions expressed by this character are those of the author. The passages he extracts from _Short Expositions_, in which Tolstoi’s own opinions are expressed, in no wise justify such a supposition.

Nordau’s explanation of the enormous success Tolstoi’s books have achieved is that it is due to general degeneration among the upper classes throughout the world. If he could personally meet the hundreds of thousands of English people who have read Tolstoi’s works, he would be able to form an idea of the immensity of his mistake. He would find that the majority of these people belong to a middle class, consisting of persons who are not overworked and who indulge in none of the vices of the continental aristocracies. Their muscles and their nerves have been strengthened and fortified by a healthy education, and by a love of bodily exercise, sport and even danger, and by a moral life. They live in a country where the authorities have found that to proscribe any licentious book is to promote its sale, and where consequently there is hardly any check upon morbid literature. Yet there is not a country where less of it is circulated than in England. It is true that these readers of Tolstoi have not attained to that height of intellectual development which would permit them to accept Nordau’s “mechanical causality” as a satisfying explanation of the universe; but, on the other hand, it would be difficult to find a people so religiously inclined, and yet so free from superstition and fanaticism.

Some of them may like Rossetti’s pictures, and many of them Burne Jones’s, but as a rule they have an equal admiration for Raphael, Tintoretto, Correggio, and others. They cannot be classed among the mystics on that account. As few of them write books, they cannot be called graphomaniacs. Nor do they show any signs of being egomaniacs. Nor have they any physical stigmata of degenerates. The heads of this class are generally beautifully shaped, and the ears of the women are by all foreigners who visit this country proclaimed to be the finest and daintiest ears in the world. Personal beauty among this class is decidedly on the increase; for each generation seems to be better-looking, and the youngest is generally the most beautiful. The latter fact, we may mention, is no doubt due to the increasing tendency of the upper and middle classes in England to beautify their homes and to surround themselves with exquisite objects, as well as to a more intellectual education, pastimes, pleasures, and arts.

Why then must these readers of Tolstoi’s works be classed as degenerate?

It is not denied that in England there are people who exhibit signs of mental degeneration, but they are to be found more in literary and political circles than in the close ranks of the upper and middle classes. We would not undertake to class them under the headings established by the alienist, and it would be difficult even for Nordau to do so. Perhaps they are not sufficiently advanced in degeneracy to be so classed. Such signs as they exhibit are some of them as old as the hills, and others are clearly the manifestations of that intellectual and moral daze which generally follows on the destruction of the religious foundations of belief involved in the acceptance of belief in scientific atheism. But the most prevalent form of degeneracy is that which is palpably the result of financial depression, felt not only in financial but artistic and literary circles. For reasons which we leave to the economists to explain, England’s commerce and agriculture seem to have come to a dead-lock. The result seems to be diminished incomes all round. Many artists, _littérateurs_, and politicians are at their wits’ end how to make an income, and there can be little doubt that this has fostered a certain amount of demoralization. Extraordinary attempts are made to produce sensational pictures, to write eccentric poetry, to send forth books that will shock, and to treat of risky subjects on the stage. Politicians are obliged to make politics a profession, and, as popularity is indispensable to it as a profitable profession, they worship majorities. Any one who is acquainted with London cannot doubt for a moment that these forms of demoralization spring entirely from a necessity of making a living. Artists, authors, and politicians of this class are no more inclined to lunacy than the vast class of people who do distasteful work, as well as those who have to appear before the public in dangerous but not much esteemed performances. If the financial depression is destined to disappear, there can be little doubt that the majority of these signs of demoralization will also disappear.

There are in this country, as everywhere else, real degenerates, people who have weakened their brains and moral faculties by drink, debauch, overwork, or persons who have inherited mental debility. There are also among us, we regret to say, an alarming number of destitute people who have been driven into mental derangement by those terrible pangs that misery inflicts. But all these degenerates care as little for Tolstoi’s novels as they do for Rossetti’s or Burne Jones’s pictures.

Though English circumstances are vastly different from continental, there can be no doubt that the causes which have rendered Tolstoi’s novels popular are the same here as in other countries. The scientific atheists have introduced into literature a materialist, selfish, sceptical, pessimistic, and cynical tone which was tolerated by the public for a long time. On the continent they had Zola and his wretched imitators, whose books found their way among us, while England has produced a crop of neurotic storytellers, playwrights, and versifiers, made up for the most part of masculine women and effeminate men, who have exploited to the utmost the atheistic vein.

The noble spirit which atheism was to bring to the front somehow did not take to literature, and the reading classes of the world began to miss those pure joys which reading used to afford them. The books of the day offended their religious feelings, their sense of decency, their loftiest conceptions of the world, and their self-esteem, without amusing them. The whole literature of fiction had become stilted, and the morbid and pessimistic authors departed so widely from nature and evinced so many signs of utter insincerity that the reading world longed to be face to face with a man who spoke his innermost thoughts. The world was therefore ready for a new departure in literature.

What wonder then that Tolstoi’s works were well received. They bore witness to consummate ability, a close study of human nature. They presented a true picture of social Russia. They afforded an insight into the Russian mind. His readers experienced the intellectual treat offered by few books,—that of feeling the presence of a master-mind, and of following the thoughts of a thoroughly sincere writer, free from the cheap ready-made materialist philosophy—a man who devotes both his life and his work, with almost superhuman energy, to the regeneration of his race.