house-servants and waiters, however, who are so ready to take part in the war, their love of fighting is nothing but common love of stealing. The Europeans have rioted and plundered shamefully in China. The people of the lower classes suffer from these things, and thus all their evil instincts are awakened." I told the count of the officially arranged patriotic demonstrations in St. Petersburg, of which I had been a witness, and in which alcohol had played its part. "Yes, intoxication!" said the count; "they need that to make people forget that killing, robbery, and plunder are sins. If people only came to their senses they could no longer do these things; for nineteen hundred years of Christianity, however falsified, leave their trail in the consciousness of man, and make it impossible for him to rage like the heathen. But everything is done to suppress religion. Our upper classes have already completely lost religious consciousness. They either say 'Away with this nonsense!' and become gross materialists, or they remain orthodox and do not themselves know what they believe--stupid stuff about the world's being created in six days and lasting only six thousand years. This trash, which is taught the people as religion--that is to say, belief in the schools--is just as much a means of hindering religion as a superficial knowledge of science. Yet religion alone can free us from our evils, from war and violence, and bring men together again. Religion is at present in a latent condition in every one, and needs only to be developed. And this religion is the same for all, for the native religious consciousness is quite the same in all men. But the churches prevent this unity, and bury this religious consciousness under forms and dogmas which produce a sort of stupefaction instead of satisfying the religious hunger." I repeated the amusing remark of the Cossack colonel of Tula, that Tolstoï was a great man, only that it was a pity that he was an atheist. The poet laughed, with something like pain in the laugh. "There is always a certain amount of truth in which people believe, only it is misunderstood. To that good Cossack faith and orthodoxy are identical. My own sister, who is in a convent, laments that her brother asserts that the Gospel is the worst book that has ever been written. The truth is that I made this assertion about the legends of the saints, but it is misquoted. The authorities know what I think of the Gospel. They have even struck out of the Sermon on the Mount two verses which I put into an alphabet for the people." "Who struck them out?" I asked. "The censor, to be sure. An orthodox Christian censorship strikes out of the Sermon on the Mount two verses which do not suit it. This is called Christianity."