ious parties--what were they doing but
struggling to re-establish external laws, external governments,
officials, and authorities under different forms and different names? In
the Liberal movements of the day he took no part, and he had little
influence upon the course of revolution. He formed no party; no band of
rebels followed the orders of the rebel-in-chief; among all the groups
of the first Duma there was no Tolstoyan group, nor could there have
been any. When we touch government, he would say, we touch the devil,
and it is only by admitting compromise or corruption that men seek to
maintain or readjust the power of officials over body and soul. "It
seems to me," he wrote to the Russian Liberals in 1896,

"It seems to me now specially important to do what is
right quietly and persistently, not only without asking permission
from Government, but consciously avoiding participation
in it.... What can a Government do with a man who
will not publicly lie with uplifted hand, or will not send his
children to a school he thinks bad, or will not learn to kill
people, or will not take part in idolatry, or in coronations,
deputations, and addresses, or who says and writes what he
thinks and feels?... It is only necessary for all these good,
enlightened, and honest people whose strength is now wasted
in Revolutionary, Socialistic, or Liberal activity (harmful to
themselves and to their cause) to begin to act thus, and a nucleus
of honest, enlightened, and moral people would form around
them, united in the same thoughts and the same feelings.
Public opinion--the only power which subdues Governments--would
become evident, demanding freedom of speech, freedom
of conscience, justice, and humanity."

From a distance, the bustling politicians and reformers of happier lands
might regard this quietism or wise passiveness as a mere counsel of
despair, suitable enough as a shelter in the storm of Russia's tyranny,
but having little significance for Western men of affairs. Yet even so
they had not silenced the voice of this persistent rebel; for he rose in
equal rebellion against the ideals, methods, and standards of European
cities. Wealth, commerce, industrial development, inventions, luxuries,
and all the complexity of civilisation were of no more account to him
than the toys of kings and the tag-rag of the churches. Other rebels had
preached the gospel of pleasure to the poor, and had themselves a