“Adieu, my dear Sophie, I love you.”

The personal isolation he craved was never to be his; but the isolation of spirit essential to leadership, whether of thought or action, grew year by year, so that in his own household he was veritably “in it but not of it.”

At times his loneliness weighed upon him, as when he wrote:  “You would find it difficult to imagine how isolated I am, to what an extent my true self is despised by those who surround me.”  But he must, none the less, have realised, as all prophets and seers have done, that solitariness of soul and freedom from the petty complexities of social life are necessary to the mystic whose constant endeavour is to simplify and to winnow, the transient from the eternal.

Notwithstanding the isolation of his inner life he remained—­or it might more accurately be said he became—­the most accessible of men.

Appeals for guidance came to him from all parts of the world—­America, France, China, Japan—­while Yasnaya Polyana was the frequent resort of those needing advice, sympathy, or practical assistance.  None appealed to him in vain; at the same time, he was exceedingly chary of explicit rules of conduct.  It might be said of Tolstoy that he became a spiritual leader in spite of himself, so averse was he from assuming authority.  His aim was ever to teach his followers themselves to hear the inward monitory voice, and to obey it of their own accord.  “To know the meaning of Life, you must first know the meaning of Love,” he would say; “and then see that you do what love bids you.”  His distrust of “epidemic ideas” extended to religious communities and congregations.

“We must not go to meet each other, but go each of us to God.  You say it is easier to go all together?  Why yes, to dig or to mow.  But one can only draw near to God in isolation . . .  I picture the world to myself as a vast temple, in which the light falls from above in the very centre.  To meet together all must go towards the light.  There we shall find ourselves, gathered from many quarters, united with men we did not expect to see; therein is joy.”

The humility which had so completely supplanted his youthful arrogance, and which made him shrink from impelling others to follow in his steps, endued him also with the teachableness of a child towards those whom he accepted as his spiritual mentors.  It was a peasant nonconformist writer, Soutaev, who by conversing with him on the revelations of the Gospels helped him to regain his childhood’s faith, and incidentally brought him into closer relations with religious, but otherwise untaught, men of the people.  He saw how instead of railing against fate after the manner of their social superiors, they endured sickness and misfortune with a calm confidence that all was by the will of God, as it must be and should be.  From his peasant teachers he drew the watchwords Faith, Love, and Labour, and by their light he established