im, and said, "Truth and divinity dwell in your own
conscience. Neither drink nor marry. Those among you who are already
married should live as brothers and sisters."

Women were held in high esteem by the "sons of God," being venerated as
"mothers or nieces of the Saviour."

CHAPTER VII

THE TOLSTOYANS

The numerous admirers of Count Tolstoi will find in his writings some
derivations, whether conscious or unconscious, from the principles
elaborated by many of the Russian sects. The doctrine of
non-resistance, or inaction, the abolition of the army, vegetarianism,
the defiance of law, and of dogmatic Christianity, together with many
other conceptions which either scandalised or enraptured his readers,
were already widespread among the Russian peasantry; though Tolstoi was
able to give them new forms of expression and an original, if
disquieting, philosophic basis.

But even as the products of the earth which we consume return to earth
again, so do ideas and doctrines ever return to the source from which
they sprang. A great reformer usually gathers his ideas from his
environment, until, transformed by the workings of his brain, they
react once more upon those to whom they actually owed their origin.

Renan has traced very accurately the evolution of a religious leader,
and Tolstoi passed through all its logical phases, only stopping short
of the martyrdom necessary ere he could enter the ranks of the prophets.

Imbued with the hopes and dreams that flourished all around him, he
began, at a ripe age and in full possession of his faculties, to
express his philosophy in poetic and alluring parables, the hostility
of the government having only served to fire his enthusiasms and
embitter his individual opinions. After first declaring that the
masters of men are their equals, he taught later on that they are their
persecutors, and finally, in old age, arrived at the conclusion that
all who rule or direct others are simply criminals!

"You are not at all obliged to fulfil your duties," he wrote, in the
_Life and Death of Drojine_, 1895, dedicated to a Tolstoyan martyr.
"You could, if you wished, find another occupation, so that you would
no longer have to tyrannise over men. . . . You men of power, emperors
and kings, you are not Christians, and it is time you renounced the
name as well as the moral code upon which you depend in order to
dominate others."

It would be difficult to give a complete list ei