A hope quickly destroyed: the China of Lao-Tse and Confucius was decrying its bygone wisdom, as Japan had already done in order to imitate Europe.[2] The persecuted Doukhobors had migrated to Canada, and there, to the scandal of Tolstoy, they immediately reverted to the property system.[3] The Gourians were scarcely delivered from the yoke of the State when they began to destroy those who did not think as they did; and the Russian troops were called out to put matters in order. The very Jews, "whose native country had hitherto been the fairest a man could desire--the Book,"[4] were attacked by the malady of Zionism, that movement of false nationalism, "which is flesh of the flesh of contemporary Europeanism, or rather its rickety child."[5] Tolstoy was saddened, but not discouraged. He had faith in God and in the future. "All would be perfect if one could grow a forest in the wink of an eye. Unhappily, this is impossible; we must wait until the seed germinates, until the shoots push up, the leaves come, and then the stem which finally becomes a tree."[6] But many trees are needed to make a forest; and Tolstoy was alone; glorious, but alone. Men wrote to him from all parts of the world; from Mohamedan countries, from China and Japan, where _Resurrection_ was translated, and where his ideas upon "the restitution of the land to the people" were being propagated.[7] The American papers interviewed viewed him; the French consulted him on matters of art, or the separation of Church and State.[8] But he had not three hundred disciples, and he knew it. Moreover, he did not take pains to make them. He repulsed the attempts of his friends to form groups of Tolstoyans. "We must not go in search of one another, but we must all seek God.... You say: 'Together it is easier.'--What? To labour, to reap, yes. But to draw near to God--one can only do so in isolation.... I see the world as an enormous temple in which the light falls from on high and precisely in the middle. To become united we must all go towards the light. Then all of us, come together from all directions, will find ourselves in the company of men we did not look for; in that is the joy."[9] How many have found themselves together under the ray which falls from the dome? What matter! It is enough to be one and alone if one is with God. "As only a burning object can communicate fire to other objects, so only the true faith and life of a man can communicate themselves to other men and to spread the truth."[10] Perhaps; but to what point was this isolated faith able to assure Tolstoy of happiness? How far he was, in his latter days, from the voluntary calm of a Goethe! One would almost say that he avoided it, fled from it, hated it.