And now another aim has been substituted for the paramount one of patriotism. Mammon has superseded the latter, and the strength of the individual is cultivated and devoted to withstanding the pressure of life, and to getting a start in the great race to worship at the feet of the demon of cupidity. But again, while devoting their own lives and worse—the lives of their neighbours—to this worship, they yet professed to be Christians or members of other religions. They tried to worship two gods—Mammon on six days of the week and the other divinity on Sunday, or any day set apart for his service. But still, in most cases, it was not the divine instinct of search for the divine in their hearts, but a fear of wrath to come. It really was a pharisaical idea of “hedging,” to use a term of racing slang, with reference to the race of life. The end of it was that Mammon received the real worship of their hearts, and the other god only lip-service. Thus in the end hypocrisy became almost as paramount as Mammon. Time still passed on, and man almost lost sight of any idea of an offended and avenging deity, and any germ of spirituality was very nearly dead from want of cultivation. The material needs held him in complete sway, and the spread of physical science helped him mightily. Losing sight of all the subtler side of nature, he immersed himself in gross matter, and utilitarianism was the watchword and rallying cry. In all this change the age of mechanical inventions took no small part. Man can hardly be blamed as an individual nor as a whole. It is part of the great law of evolution, and the working out of the law of the survival of the fittest. It may be asked what this has to do with the subject of the article; but in justification it is averred that a picture is most clearly seen by its contrast. Perhaps the best definition of a Theosophist, is that given by the Alchemist, Thomas Vaughan: “A Theosophist is one who gives you a theory of the works of God, which has not a revelation, but an inspiration of his own for basis.” “A man once abandoning the old pathway of routine and entering on the solitary pathway of independent thought—Godward—he is a Theosophist, an original thinker, a seeker after the Eternal Truth, with an inspiration of his own to solve the Eternal problems.” Such a one as this is the subject of the article. Count Tolstoi, the Russian novelist, is a true Theosophist, and his words and actions in contradiction and illustration of the foregoing, are taken from an interview with him by Mr. George Kennan (_Century_, June 1887). The interview first describes the surroundings amidst which Count Tolstoi lives, and gives also a description of the Count’s appearance. Apparently the first thing which impressed Mr. Kennan was the sight of “a wealthy Russian noble, and the greatest of living novelists, shaking hands upon terms of perfect equality with a poor, ragged, and not over clean droshky driver,” who had been engaged in the streets.