The only surprising thing about this is that he should never have noticed that the army is prayed for, essentially in the same sense, at every church service.  After the petitions for the Emperor and the imperial family, the liturgy proceeds, “And we pray for the army, that Thou wilt assist Them [that is, the Imperial family and its army], and subdue all foes and enemies under Their feet.”  Perhaps these familiar words came home to him with special force on that particular day, as familiar words sometimes do.  Possibly it was a special prayer.  In any case, the prayer was strictly logical.  If you have an army, pray for it; and the only prayer that can be offered is, obviously, not for its defeat.  That would be tantamount to praying for the enemy; which might be Scriptural, in one way, but would be neither natural, popular, nor further removed from objections of murder than the other.

But Count Tolstoy was logical, also, in another way.  Once started on this train of thought, most worldly institutions of the present day, beginning with the army, appeared to him opposed to the teaching of Christ, on which point no rational man will differ from him.  As to the possibility of living the life of Christ, or even the advisability of trying it, at this period of the world, that is quite another matter.

It is not necessary for me to recapitulate here that which all the world knows already,—­the minute details of his belief in personal property, labor, the renunciation of art and science, and so forth.  We discussed them.  But I neglected my opportunities to worry him with demands for his catechism, which his visitors delight in grinding out of him as though from a machine, when the reading public must be sufficiently informed on that score already.  I have endeavored to set down only the special illustrations of his doctrines, out of the rich mass of his conversation.

Those who have perused attentively his earlier works will have perceived that there is really very little that is absolutely new in these doctrines.  They are so strictly the development of ideas which are an integral part of him, through heredity, environment, and personal bias, that the only surprise would be that he should not have ended in this way.  Community of goods, mutual help, and kindred doctrines are the national birthright of every Russian, often bartered, it is true.  But long residence in the country among the peasants who do not preach these doctrines, but simply practice them, naturally affected the thoughtful student of humanity though he was of a different rank.  He began to announce his theories to the world, and found followers, as teachers of these views generally do,—­a proof that they satisfy an instinct in the human breast.  Solitary country life anywhere is productive of such views.

Disciples, or “adepts,” began to make pilgrimages to the prophet.  There is a characteristic, a highly characteristic history of one such who came and established himself in the village at the count’s park gate.