isting sect
divides itself up into various new ones, and these again reproduce
themselves by breaking apart, like the first organisms in which life
was manifested on the earth. Every separated portion of the parent
becomes an offspring resembling the parent, and the number of divisions
increases in proportion to the number of adherents. As in the
protozoa, multiplication commences with a mechanical rupture, and with
the passage of time and the influence of outside elements, the sects
thus born undergo visible modifications. By turns sublime or
outrageous, simple or depraved, they either aspire heavenwards or
debase the human spirit to the level of its lowest passions.

Making common use of the truths of the Gospel revelations, they include
every phase of modern social life in their desire for perfection.
Liberty, equality, wealth, property, marriage, taxes, the relation
between the State and the individual, international peace, and the
abolition of arms--all these things, even down to the very food we eat,
become the prey of their reformatory ardour.

The sects that abound in Anglo-Saxon countries do little but copy one
another in evolving new and amazing variations of Bible interpretation.
Confined within these limits, they rarely even touch upon the serious
problems that lie outside the text of the Gospels, and we might say of
them as Swift said of the religious sects of his day--"They are only
the same garments more or less embroidered."

But the Russian sects vividly reveal to us the secret dreams and
aspirations of millions of simple and honest men, who have not yet been
infected by the doctrinal diseases of false science or confused
philosophy; and further, they permit us to study the manifestation in
human life of some new and disquieting conceptions. In their depths we
may see reflected the melancholy grandeur and goodness of the national
soul, its sublime piety, and its thirst for ideal perfection, which
sometimes uplifts the humble in spirit to the dignity and
self-abnegnation of a Francis of Assisi.

The mysticism which is so deep-rooted in the Russian national
consciousness breaks out in many different forms. Not only poets and
writers, painters and musicians, philosophers and moralists, but
statesmen, socialists and anarchists are all impregnated with it--and
even financiers and economic reformers.

Tolstoi, when he became a sociologist and moralist, was an eloquent
example of the mental influenc