It will be seen therefore that the people were not irrelevant in confounding nihilism with a religions sect. As far as our rationalist age will admit, the nihilist dissenter resembles the great heretics of the Middle Ages; he has traces of the Millenarian, of Sakya Muni, and of the German pantheists; and he has the blind faith, the hazy transports, the dogmatical and absolute affirmation of the persecuted religious sects, and of esoteric and subterranean beliefs. He adores a divinity without feelings, deaf and primitive, and this adoration is the corner-stone of the nihilist temple. The _mujik_ sublimated by Russian literature is the god of nihilism. IV. Going to the People. Here is a passage from Tikomirov's book to illustrate this aspect of Russian revolution:-- "Where is there any sociological theory that can explain the crusade taken up in 1873 by thousands of young men and women determined to _go to the people_? The word crusade is appropriate. Our youths left the bosom of their families; our maidens abandoned the worldly pleasures of life. Nobody thought of his own welfare; the great cause absorbed all attention, and the nervous tension was such that many were able to endure, without injury to health, unusual and dreadful privations. They gave up their past life and all their property, and if any vacillated in offering his fortune to the cause, he was looked upon with pity and contempt. Some renounced official positions and gave all their means, even to thousands of rubles; others, like Prince Krapotkine, from being _savants_, diplomats and opulent, became humble artisans. The prince took to painting doors and windows. Rich heiresses sought occupation as factory operatives, even some who had reigned as belles in aristocratic salons. It was as though, exiled from other classes of society, they found, in turning to the people, their souls' true country." Do not these words almost seem to describe the beginnings of Christianity in Rome? The idol takes no notice of his fanatical adorers, nor perhaps does he understand them any better than the peasant-woman of Toboso understood the amorous suit with which Don Quixote wooed her malformed and dishevelled person. The Russian peasant cannot make anything of theories and apotheoses evolved from an intellectual condition amounting to rapturous frenzy. "Oh that I might die," exclaims a devout nihilist, "and that my blood like a drop of hot lead could burn and arouse the people!" This thirst for martyrdom is common, but above all is the anxiety to be amalgamated with the people, to know them, and if possible to infuse them with the enthusiasm they feel themselves.