Our Christianity, he tells us, is sick to death; it has become so entangled with paganism and rationalism that it is hardly worth while calling Christianity at all; indeed we find in some modern writers--Nietzsche and others--the frankest paganism, calling Christianity a "slave-morality," and declaring it unworthy of the free. Tolstoy declares that Christianity is not founded on rationalism but is divinely inspired; he is original only so far as he insists that this divine inspiration occurs not in any Church or tradition, but in a man's own heart; like the seventeenth-century Puritans, he accepts the Bible as his guide, but he rejects the Old Testament and relies entirely upon the New. And Tolstoy's influence is so profound because he announces the dissatisfaction which, secret and overt, is assailing us on all sides; we are, none of us, really satisfied with our civilisation as it stands, we all desire a better one, and Tolstoy's is the most powerful and eloquent amid those voices which are summoning us to emerge from the dwelling which has grown too narrow and to build a new. This is why Tolstoy, the preacher of non-resistance and peace, is really one of the most powerful of revolutionaries. And, paradoxical as it may sound, he is also one of the most powerful of individualists. {91} It might be imagined, at the first glance, that Tolstoy stands at the opposite pole from such a writer as Ibsen--Ibsen the uncompromising individualist, who preaches self-realisation at all costs, and breaks furiously through our so-called "duties," and Tolstoy who preaches self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, and humility. But, when we look closer, we see that there is a unity underlying all seeming differences; both men are profoundly dissatisfied with the "ideals" of present-day Europe; they insist that all values must be revalued, that all the old "duties" must be questioned, and rejected if they will not stand the test of the new morality. And who is to be the supreme arbiter? Both Tolstoy and Ibsen answer: "The man's own soul." No one would trample on the old "duties" more thoroughly than Tolstoy; he insists that his countrymen must renounce all they have previously held most sacred, their "duty" to the Czar, their "duty" to the State, to their oaths, even in the last resort to their families; for, like Ibsen, he finds the "family snare" one of the worst and deadliest. Both Ibsen and Tolstoy are quite agreed that, when a man is sure of himself, he should, if need be, stand alone against the world. Tolstoy is, indeed, one of the strongest of individualists, and, as the terrified Greek Church saw when it excommunicated him, his doctrine of "peaceful anarchy" is the most tremendous solvent for society's hierarchy that has ever been conceived by the mind of man. We may sum up briefly the leading channels in which the influence of Tolstoy runs.