contemporary, that he himself was a great writer of the Russian land. But this he did not express aloud. He only said, "I can no longer----" He praised a strict school of literary and general education. To the last he tried to preserve his bearing of a giant with silvery locks. And we were gratified. The same persons who are indignant at Gogol's correspondence, quote Turgenev's letter with reverence. The attitude is everything. Turgenev knew how to pose passably well, and this is ascribed to him as his greatest merit. _Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur_. But Gogol and Turgenev felt substantially the same. Had Turgenev burnt his own manuscripts and talked of himself instead of Tolstoy, before death, he would have been accounted mad. Moralists would have reproached him for his display of extreme egoism.... And Philosophy? Philosophy seems to be getting rid of certain prejudices. At the moment when men are least likely to play the hypocrite and lie to themselves Turgenev and Gogol placed their personal fate higher than the destinies of Russian literature. Does not this betray a "secret" to us? Ought we not to see in absolute egoism an inalienable and great, yes, very great quality of human nature? Psychology, ignoring the threats of morality, has led us to a new knowledge. Yet still, in spite of the instances we have given, the mass of people will, as usual, see nothing but malice in every attempt to reveal the human impulses that underlie "lofty" motives. To be merely men seems humiliating to men. So now malice will also be detected in my interpretation of Turgenev's letter, no matter what assurance I offer to the contrary. 3