Learned men (true, it is those whose learning is misdirected) are using all the power of erudition to prove that mankind lives like a herd of kettle, that man is guided by economic considerations alone and that his intellect is given him merely for amusement. But governments well know what it is that rules the world, consequently – guided by the instinct of self-preservation – they are undoubtedly chiefly concerned about the manifestation of spiritual forces; upon which forces depend their existence or their ruin. And this is precisely the reason why all the energies of the Russian Government were and still continue to be, exerted to render the Doukhobors harmless, to isolate them, to banish them beyond the frontier.

Two Wars (August 15, 1898)

Leo Tolstoy