The tragic death of the monk Rasputin made a deep impression upon the civilised world, and truth was lost to view amid the innumerable legends that grew up around his life and activities. One leading question dominated all discussions:--How could an individual so lacking in refinement and culture influence the life of a great nation, and become in indirect fashion one of the main factors in the struggle against the Central Powers? Through what miracle did he succeed in making any impression upon the thought and conduct of a social order infinitely superior to himself? Psychologists are fascinated by the career of this adventurer who ploughed so deep a furrow in the field of European history; but in seeking to detach the monk from his background, we run the risk of entirely failing to comprehend the mystery of his influence, itself the product of a complex and little understood environment. The misery of the Russian people, combined with their lack of education, contributed largely towards it, for the desire to escape from material suffering drove them to adopt the weirdest systems of salvation for the sake of deliverance and forgetfulness. The perception of the ideal is often very acute among the uneducated. They accept greedily every new "message" that is offered them, but alas, they do not readily distinguish the true from the false, or the genuine saint from the impostor. The orthodox clergy of the old Russian regime, recruited under deplorable conditions, attained but rarely the moral and intellectual eminence necessary to inspire their flock with feelings of love and confidence; while, on the other hand, the false prophets and their followers, vigorously persecuted by official religion, easily gained for themselves the overwhelming attraction of martyrdom. Far from lessening the numbers of those who deserted the established church, persecution only increased them, and inflamed the zeal of its victims, so that they clung more passionately than ever to the new dogmas and their hunted exponents. These sects and doctrines, though originating among the peasantry, did not fail to spread even to the large towns, and waves of collective hysteria, comparable to the dances of death of the Middle Ages, swept away in their train all the hypersensitives and neurotics that abound in the modern world. Even the highest ranks of Russian society did not escape the contagion. We shall deal in these pages with the most recent and interesting sects, and with those that are least known, or perhaps not known at all. Beginning with the doctrines of melancholia, of tenderness, of suffering, of exalted pietism, and of social despair--which, whether spontaneous or inspired, demoniac or divine, undoubtedly embody many of the mysterious aspirations of the human soul--we shall find ourselves in a strange and moving world, peopled by those who accomplish, as a matter of course, acts of faith, courage and endurance, foreign to the experience of most of us.