The variety of fresh feelings flowing from religious perception is endless, and they are all new, for religious perception is nothing else than the first indication of that which is coming into existence, viz. the new relation of man to the world around him. But the feelings flowing from the desire for enjoyment are, on the contrary, not only limited, but were long ago experienced and expressed. And therefore the lack of belief of the upper classes of Europe has left them with an art fed on the poorest subject-matter. The impoverishment of the subject-matter of upper-class art was further increased by the fact that, ceasing to be religious, it ceased also to be popular, and this again diminished the range of feelings which it transmitted. For the range of feelings experienced by the powerful and the rich, who have no experience of labour for the support of life, is far poorer, more limited, and more insignificant than the range of feelings natural to working people. People of our circle, æstheticians, usually think and say just the contrary of this. I remember how Gontchareff, the author, a very clever and educated man but a thorough townsman and an æsthetician, said to me that after Tourgenieff’s _Memoirs of a Sportsman_ there was nothing left to write about in peasant life. It was all used up. The life of working people seemed to him so simple that Tourgenieff’s peasant stories had used up all there was to describe. The life of our wealthy people, with their love affairs and dissatisfaction with themselves, seemed to him full of inexhaustible subject-matter. One hero kissed his lady on her palm, another on her elbow, and a third somewhere else. One man is discontented through idleness, and another because people don’t love him. And Gontchareff thought that in this sphere there is no end of variety. And this opinion—that the life of working people is poor in subject-matter, but that our life, the life of the idle, is full of interest—is shared by very many people in our society. The life of a labouring man, with its endlessly varied forms of labour, and the dangers connected with this labour on sea and underground; his migrations, the intercourse with his employers, overseers, and companions and with men of other religions and other nationalities; his struggles with nature and with wild beasts, the associations with domestic animals, the work in the forest, on the steppe, in the field, the garden, the orchard; his intercourse with wife and children, not only as with people near and dear to him, but as with co-workers and helpers in labour, replacing him in time of need; his concern in all economic questions, not as matters of display or discussion, but as problems of life for himself and his family; his pride in self-suppression and service to others, his pleasures of refreshment; and with all these interests permeated by a religious attitude towards these occurrences—all this to us, who have not these interests and