WALKS AND TALKS WITH TOLSTOI-MARCH, 1894 85 



selves to any spy who might happen to be among their 

 servants. 



Still worse, no one, unless a member of the diplomatic 

 corps or specially privileged, is allowed to read such 

 books or newspapers as he chooses, so that even this ac 

 cess to the thoughts of others is denied to the very men 

 who most need it. 



Like so many other men of genius in Russia, then, and 

 Russia is fertile in such, Tolstoi has had little opportu 

 nity to take part in any real discussion of leading topics ; 

 and the result is that his opinions have been developed 

 without modification by any rational interchange of 

 thought with other men. Under such circumstances any 

 man, no matter how noble or gifted, having given birth to 

 striking ideas, coddles and pets them until they become the 

 full-grown, spoiled children of his brain. He can at last 

 see neither spot nor blemish in them, and comes virtually 

 to believe himself infallible. This characteristic I found 

 in several other Russians of marked ability. Each had 

 developed his theories for himself until he had become in 

 fatuated with them, and despised everything differing 

 from them. 



This is a main cause why sundry ghastly creeds, doc 

 trines, and sects religious, social, political, and philo 

 sophichave been developed in Russia. One of these 

 religious creeds favors the murder of new-born children 

 in order to save their souls; another enjoins ghastly bod 

 ily mutilations for a similar purpose; others still would 

 plunge the world in flames and blood for the difference 

 of a phrase in a creed, or a vowel in a name, or a finger 

 more or less in making the sign of the cross, or for this 

 garment in a ritual, or that gesture in a ceremony. 



In social creeds they have developed nihilism, which 

 virtually assumes the right of an individual to sit in judg 

 ment upon the whole human race and condemn to death 

 every other human being who may differ in opinion or 

 position from this self -constituted judge. 



In political creeds they have conceived the monarch as 



