[243.] N. N. Miklukha-Maklai (1847–1887), a well-known Russian traveller, living many years among the Tuzemts of New Guinea and other islands. In his letter to Miklukha-Maklai in the middle of the eighties, Tolstoi wrote that he considered him remarkable, not for what every one else considered him remarkable, but that “he could find manifestations of humanity among the wildest men on the globe.”
[244.] Such a type was afterwards portrayed by Tolstoi in his story The Forged Coupon, under the name of the housekeeper, Vasili. (See Posthumous Literary Works of L. N. Tolstoi, issued by A. L. Tolstoi, Volume I.)
[245.] Every group of people is always inferior to the elements which compose it.
[246.] The work by M. O. Menshikov, Concerning Holy Love and Sex Love, was printed in Knizhki Nedieli in 1897, No. 11. In Chapters IV and V of this work, Menshikov wrote about the struggle of the two principles: The many-gods and the One-God; Tolstoi was probably pleased with the following lines: “The great teaching about One-God wiped out, together with the idols, the very conception of separate gods; the gods disappeared but their elements—the passions—remained, until now the overwhelming majority of Christians who profess by word in the One-God, in reality bow to a plurality.... (Italics made by the author.) Notwithstanding the thousand year rule of the Gospels, we, in an overwhelming majority are more sincerely idolaters than Christians—of course without suspecting it.... Nihilist, Godless, paganized, the contemporary generation accepts as an undoubted law, that the development of man consists in enlarging the number of needs and refining them to the point of a cult. Is this not a new plurality of gods, an idolatry?”
[247.] In his book, What Is Art?
[248.] St. John, Chapter XIV, Verse 2.
[249.] Chapter I, Verse 24, St. Paul to the Colossians.
[250.] See letter of Count L. N. Tolstoi to his Wife, March, 1913, page 535 (No. 583) and page 537 (No. 585).
[251.] See letter of Count L. N. Tolstoi to his Wife, March, 1913, pages 536–537.