Nordau, in order to prove the confusion existing in Tolstoi’s ideas, seems to take for granted that the tendency towards Pantheism, perceptible in the Russian’s reasoning, is utterly at variance with Christianity. We would simply point out that Tolstoi has his own Christianity, framed on his own interpretation of the Gospels, and not any previously existing Christianity, and is therefore at liberty to proclaim a creed which has a Pantheistic tendency without exposing himself to the reproach of being inconsequent. But we consider it more important to notice the fact that the Gospels, far from laying down any dogmas, are the record of the life of a man—divine or not divine—whose mission it was to protest against dogmas. He called God “Father,” in order to speak of universal consciousness only in its relations to man, leaving it to the doctrinaires and the philosophers to agree as best they could on the question of Pantheism or no Pantheism. Besides, the Gospels certainly emphasize the omnipresence of the Creator; and if this Pantheistic tendency had not existed among the disciples, it is not likely that St. Paul would have said, “In Him we live, we move, and have our being.” The shallow, superficial manner in which Nordau treats Tolstoi’s ethics is certainly unworthy of him, and amounts simply to a quibble. These ethics, correctly summed up, “Resist not evil, judge not, kill not,” which correspond precisely with the teachings of Christ, Nordau does not regard as ethics, but proceeds solemnly to test them as expediencies in peculiar cases, and comes to the conclusion that they are ridiculous. Must we then conclude that Nordau has no such ethics, but that he believes it right to return evil for evil,—_vendetta_ fashion,—that he objects to suffer wrong for a good cause, and that he revels in indiscriminate murder? Tolstoi’s ethics, as ethics should do, hold up the ideal for which we should strive, and as a practical test of them we must consider not the murder and plunder of one good man by a bad one, but the state which would ensue if all men conformed to them. The practical moral we ought to draw from them is not that laws and law courts should be abolished, but that laws should be framed and law courts should be managed in such a way as to favour a general acceptance of such ethics. Here again Nordau indulges in illogical reasoning, and in contradictions of himself. He takes for granted that humanity is so utterly depraved that if “the fear of the gallows did not prevent it, throat-cutting and stealing would be the most generally adopted trade.” This means that Nordau in one place in his book declares human beings are too good, too noble, too honest to need any belief in a hell, but in another place declares that they are far too depraved to do without the fear of the gallows. He forgets that good ethics have sprung from the good instincts of our race, and that crime has largely been fostered by bad laws, bad law courts, and bad institutions.