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 LEO TOLSTOY: A SHORT BIOGRAPHY 
 
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 TOLSTOY 
 
 AND 
 
 HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 ESSAYS 
 
 BY 
 
 AYLMER MAUDE 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 GRANT RICHARDS 
 
 48 LEICESTER SQUARE, W.C. 
 1902
 
 NOTE 
 
 Most of the essays here collected have appeared before 
 in various magazines, and when first published were sent 
 to Count Leo Tolstoy, who on different occasions wrote 
 expressing his approval of them. 
 
 Of the first essay in this book, he wrote : 
 
 "/ very much approve of it. It is admirably 
 constructed, and what is most important is 
 given." 
 
 Of An Introduction to WHAT is ART? he wrote : 
 
 "/ have read your Introduction with great 
 pleasure. You have admirably and strongly 
 expressed the fundamental thought of the 
 book." 
 
 Of Tolstoy's Theory of Art, he wrote : 
 
 " Your article . . . pleased me exceedingly, so 
 clearly and strongly is the fundamental thought 
 expressed."" 
 
 Of The Tsar's Coronation (when published in 1896 
 as Epilogue to a small book), he wrote : 
 
 " The Epilogue to Maude's book is excellent . . . 
 firm and radical, going to the last conclusions?
 
 PREFACE 
 
 IT is still difficult for English readers to discover Tolstoy's 
 opinions, or, at any rate, to understand clearly how his views 
 on different subjects fit together. Some of his works have 
 never been translated ; others have been translated from 
 sense into nonsense. Even in Russian some of his most 
 important philosophic works are still only obtainable in the 
 badly edited Geneva edition, which is full of mistakes. 
 
 Besides these external difficulties there are difficulties 
 inherent in the subjects he discusses, nor is it always easy 
 for the reader to understand from which side Tolstoy ap- 
 proaches his subject, and to make due allowance for the 
 ' personal equation.' So that most readers, however open- 
 minded and willing to understand, on reading books that 
 contain so much that runs counter both to the established 
 beliefs of our day and to the hopes of our various 'advanced ' 
 groups, must have felt, as I did, a desire to cross-examine 
 Tolstoy personally. 
 
 Being the only Englishman who, in recent years, has had 
 the advantage of intimate personal intercourse, continued 
 over a period of some years, with Tolstoy, I hardly need 
 an excuse for trying to share with others some of the results 
 he helped me to reach. 
 
 Each essay in this volume expresses, in one form or other, 
 Tolstoy's view of life ; and the main object of the book is 
 not to praise his views but to explain them. His positions, 
 not being final revelations of the truth attainable by man, 
 may and should be subjected to criticism, and to re-examina-
 
 vi PREFACE 
 
 tion from other points of view. But a necessary preliminary 
 to profitable criticism is comprehension ; and this necessary 
 preliminary having heretofore, in relation to Tolstoy's works, 
 been very frequently neglected, my first aim is clearly and 
 simply to restate certain fundamental principles with which 
 he has dealt. Seven of the essays deal directly with Tolstoy 
 and his writings, the other three utilise his teaching more 
 indirectly. 
 
 From this second edition I have omitted the article : The 
 Doukhobdrs, a Russian Exodus, not that the subject is un- 
 interesting or remote from Tolstoy, but because, before re- 
 publishing it, I wish to revise it more thoroughly than would 
 be possible without considerably delaying the issue of this 
 edition. It is replaced by the essay which comes second 
 in the present volume Tolstoy's Teaching written since 
 the publication of the first edition of this book in April 
 1901. The alterations made in the other essays have been 
 slight, and consist chiefly of corrections of mistakes kindly 
 pointed out to me by Tolstoy himself and by other friends. 
 
 GREAT BADDOW, 
 
 CHELMSFOBD.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. LEO TOLSTOY : A SHORT BIOGRAPHY ... 1 
 
 II. TOLSTOY'S TEACHING ...... 25 
 
 III. AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT is ART" . . 37 
 
 IV. TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART ..... 64 
 V. How " RESURRECTION " WAS WRITTEN . . 83 
 
 VI. INTRODUCTION TO " THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES " 98 
 VII. THE TSAR'S CORONATION . . . . .109 
 
 VIII. RIGHT AND WRONG ...... 126 
 
 IX. WAR AND PATRIOTISM . . . . .151 
 
 X. TALKS WITH TOLSTOY . . . . . .188 
 
 INDEX 215 
 
 vii
 
 TOLSTOY AND HIS 
 PROBLEMS 
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 
 
 A SHORT BIOGRAPHY 
 
 COUNT LEO TOLSTOY was bora 28th August 1828 (O.S.), at 
 a house in the country not many miles from Toiila, and about 
 130 miles south of Moscow. 
 
 He has lived most of his life in the country, preferring 
 it to town, and believing that people would be healthier 
 and happier if they lived more natural lives, in touch with 
 nature, instead of crowding together in cities. 
 
 He lost his mother when he was three, and his father 
 when he was nine years old. He remembers a boy visiting 
 his brothers and himself when he was twelve years old, and 
 bringing the news that they had found out at school that 
 there was no God, and that all that was taught about God 
 was a mere invention. 
 
 He himself went to school in Moscow, and before he was 
 grown up he had imbibed the opinion, generally current 
 among educated Russians, that 'religion' is old-fashioned 
 and superstitious, and that sensible and cultured people do 
 not require it for themselves. 
 
 After finishing school Tolstoy went to the University at
 
 2 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Kazan. There he studied Oriental languages, but he did not 
 pass the final examinations. 
 
 In one of his books Tolstoy remarks how often the cleverest 
 boy is at the bottom of the class. And this really does occur. 
 A boy of active, independent mind, who has his own problems 
 to think out, will often find it terribly hard to keep his atten- 
 tion on the lessons the master wants him to learn. The 
 fashionable society Tolstoy met at his aunt's house in Kazan 
 was another obstacle to serious study. 
 
 He then settled on his estate at Yasnaya Polyana, and 
 tried to improve the condition of the serfs. His attempts 
 were not very successful at the time, though they served 
 to prepare him for work that came later. He had much 
 to contend against in himself, and after three years he went 
 to the Caucasus to economise, in order to pay off debts made 
 at cards. Here he hunted, drank, wrote his first sketches, 
 and entered the army, in which an elder brother to whom 
 he was greatly attached was serving, and which was then 
 engaged in subduing the native tribes. 
 
 When the Crimean War began, in 1854, Tolstoy applied 
 for active service, and was transferred to the army on the 
 frontier of European Turkey, and then, soon after the siege 
 began, to an artillery regiment engaged in the defence of 
 Sevastopol. His uncle, Prince Gortchakof, was commander- 
 in-chief of the Russian army, and Tolstoy received an appoint- 
 ment to his staff. Here he obtained that first-hand knowledge 
 of war which has helped him to speak on the subject with 
 conviction. He saw war as it really is. 
 
 The men who governed Russia, France, England, Sardinia, 
 and Turkey had quarrelled about the custody of the ' Holy 
 Places ' in Palestine, and about the meaning of two lines in 
 a treaty made in 1774 between Russia and Turkey. 
 
 They stopped at home, but sent other people most of 
 them poorly paid, simple people, who knew nothing about 
 the quarrel to kill each other wholesale in order to 
 settle it.
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 3 
 
 Working men were taken from Lancashire, Yorkshire, 
 Middlesex, Essex, and all parts of England, Scotland, Wales, 
 Ireland, France, and Sardinia, and shipped, thousands of 
 miles, to join a number of poor Turkish peasants in trying 
 to kill Russian peasants. These latter had in most cases been 
 forced unwillingly to leave their homes and families, and to 
 march on foot thousands of miles to fight these people they 
 never saw before, and against whom they bore no grudge. 
 
 Some excuse had, of course, to be made for all this, and 
 in England people were told the war was " in defence of 
 oppressed nationalities." 
 
 When some 500,000 men had perished, and about 
 340,000,000 had been spent, those who governed said it 
 was time to stop. They forgot all about the "oppressed 
 nationalities," but bargained about the number and kind of 
 ships Russia might have on the Black Sea. 
 
 Fifteen years later, when France and Germany were fight- 
 ing each other, the Russian Government tore up that treaty, 
 and the other Govei-nments then said it did not matter. Later 
 still, Lord Salisbury said that in the Crimean War we "put 
 our money on the wrong horse." To have said so at the 
 time the people were killing each other would have been 
 unpatriotic. In all countries truth, on such matters, spoken 
 before it is stale, is unpatriotic. 
 
 When the war was over Count Tolstoy left the army and 
 settled in Petersburg. He was welcome to whatever advan- 
 tages the society of the capital had to offer, for not only 
 was he a nobleman and an officer, just back from the heroic 
 defence of Sevastopol, but he was then already famous 
 as a brilliant writer. He had written short sketches since 
 he was twenty-three, and while still young was recognised 
 among Russia's foremost literary men. 
 
 He had, therefore, fame, applause, and wealth and at 
 first he found these things very pleasant. But being a man 
 of unusually sincere nature, he began in the second, and still 
 more in the third, year of this kind of life, to ask himself
 
 4 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 seriously why people made such a fuss about the stories, 
 novels, or poems, that he and other literary men were pro- 
 ducing. If, said he, our work is really so valuable that it 
 is worth what is paid for it, and worth all this praise and 
 applause it must be that we are saying something of great 
 importance to the world to know. What, then, is our 
 message ? What have we to teach ? 
 
 But the more he considered the matter, the more evident 
 it was to him that the authors and artists did not themselves 
 know what they wanted to teach that, in fact, they had 
 nothing of real importance to say, and often relied upon 
 their powers of expression, v.-hen they had nothing to ex- 
 press. What one said, another contradicted, and what one 
 praised, another jeered at. 
 
 When he examined their lives, he saw that, so far from 
 being exceptionally moral and self-denying, they were a 
 more selfish and immoral set of men even than the officers 
 he had been among in the army. 
 
 In later years, when he had quite altered his views of life, 
 he wrote with very great severity of the life he led when in 
 the army and in Petersburg. This is the passage it occurs 
 in My Confession : " I cannot now think of those years with- 
 out horror, loathing, and heart-ache. I killed men in war, 
 and challenged men to duels in order to kill them; I lost 
 at cards, consumed what the peasants produced, sentenced 
 them to punishments, lived loosely, and deceived people. 
 Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, 
 murder . . . there was no crime that I did not commit ; and 
 people approved of my conduct, and my contemporaries 
 considered, and consider me, to be, comparatively speaking, 
 a moral man." 
 
 Many people forgetting Tolstoy's strenuous manner of 
 writing, and the mood in which My Confession was written 
 have concluded from these lines that as a young man he led 
 a particularly immoral life. Really, he is selecting the worst 
 incidents, and is calling them by their harshest names : war
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 5 
 
 and the income from his estate are "murder" and "robbery." 
 In this passage he is like John Bunyan and other good men 
 before him denouncing rather than describing the life he 
 lived as a young man. The simple fact is that he lived 
 among an immoral, upper-class, city society, and to some 
 extent yielded to the example of those around him ; but he 
 did so with qualms of conscience and frequent strivings after 
 better things. Judged even as harshly as he judges himself, 
 the fact remains that those among whom he lived considered 
 him to be above their average moral level. 
 
 Dissatisfied with his life, sceptical of the utility of his work 
 as a writer, convinced that he could not teach others without 
 first knowing what he had to teach, Tolstoy left Petersburg 
 and retired to an estate in the country, near the place where 
 he was born, and where he has spent most of his life. 
 
 It was the time of the great emancipation movement in 
 Russia. Tolstoy improved the condition of his serfs by com- 
 muting their personal service for a fixed annual payment, but 
 it was not possible for him to set them free until after the 
 decree of emancipation in 1861. 
 
 In the country Tolstoy attended to his estates and orga- 
 nised schools for the peasants. If he did not know enough to 
 teach the ' cultured crowd ' in Petersburg, perhaps he could 
 teach peasant children. Eventually he came to see that 
 before you can know what to teach even to a peasant child 
 you must know the purpose of human life. Otherwise 
 you may help him to ' get on,' and he may ' get on to other 
 people's backs/ and there be a nuisance even to himself. 
 
 Tolstoy twice travelled abroad, visiting Germany, France, 
 and England, and studying the educational systems, which 
 seemed to him very bad. Children born with different tastes 
 and capacities are put through the same course of lessons, 
 just as coffee beans of different sizes are ground to the same 
 grade. And this is done, not because it is best for them, 
 but because it is easiest for the teachers, and because the 
 parents lead artificial lives and neglect their own children.
 
 6 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 In spite of his dissatisfaction with literary work Tolstoy 
 continued to write but he wrote differently. Habits are 
 apt to follow from afar. A man's conduct may be influenced 
 by new thoughts and feelings, but his future conduct will result 
 both from what he was and from what he wishes to become. 
 So a billiard ball driven by a cue and meeting another ball 
 in motion, takes a new line, due partly to the push from the 
 cue and partly to the impact of the other ball. 
 
 At this period of his life, perplexed by problems he was 
 not yet able to solve, Tolstoy, who in general even up to old 
 age has possessed remarkable strength and endurance of 
 body as well as of mind, was threatened with a breakdown 
 in health a nervous prostration. He had to leave all his 
 work and go for a time to lead a merely animal existence 
 and drink a preparation of mare's milk among the wild 
 Kirghiz in Eastern Russia. 
 
 In 1862 Tolstoy married, and he and his wife, to whom he 
 has always been faithful, have lived to see the century out 
 together. Not even the fact that the Countess has not 
 agreed with many of the views her husband has expressed 
 during the last twenty years, and has been dissatisfied at 
 his readiness to part with his property, to associate with 
 ' dirty ' low - class people, and to refuse payment for his 
 literary work not even these difficulties have diminished 
 their affection for one another. Thirteen children were born 
 to them, of whom five died young. 
 
 The fact that twenty years of such a married life preceded 
 Tolstoy's change of views, and that the opinions he now 
 expresses were formed when he was still as active and 
 vigorous as most men are at half his age, should be a sufficient 
 answer to those who have so misunderstood him as to suggest 
 that, having worn himself out by a life of vice, he now cries 
 sour grapes lest others should enjoy pleasures he is obliged 
 to abandon. 
 
 For some time Tolstoy was active as a " Mediator of the 
 Peace," adjusting difficulties between the newly emancipated
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 7 
 
 serfs and their former owners. During the fourteen years 
 that followed his marriage he also wrote the long novels, 
 War and Peace, and Anna Karenina. His wife copied out War 
 and Peace no less than seven times, as he altered and improved 
 it again and again. With his work, as with his life, Tolstoy is 
 never satisfied he always wants to get a step nearer perfec- 
 tion, and is keen to note and to admit his deficiencies. 
 
 The happiness and fulness of activity of his family life 
 kept in the background for nearly fifteen years the great 
 problems that had begun to trouble him. But ultimately the 
 great question : What is the meaning of my life ? presented 
 itself more clearly and insistently than ever, and he began 
 to feel that unless he could answer it he could not live. 
 
 Was wealth the aim of his life ? 
 
 He was highly paid for his books, and he had 20,000 acrea 
 of land in the Government of Samara ; but suppose he be- 
 came twice or ten times as rich, he asked himself, would it 
 satisfy him ? And if it satisfied him was not death coming : 
 to take it all away ? The more satisfying the wealth, the more 
 terrible must death be, which would deprive him of it all. 
 
 Would family happiness the love of wife and children 
 satisfy him, and explain the purpose of life ? Many fond 
 parents stake their happiness on the well-being of an only 
 child, and make that the aim of their lives. But how un- 
 fortunate such people are ! If the child is ill, or if it is out 
 too late, how wretched they make themselves and others. 
 Clearly the love of family afforded no sufficient answer to the 
 problem : What am I here for ? Besides, there again stood 
 death threatening not only him but all those he loved. 
 How terrible that they, and he, must die and part ! 
 
 There was fame ! He was making a world-wide literary re- 
 putation which would not be destroyed by his death. He asked 
 himself whether, if he became more famous than Shakespear or 
 Moliere, that would satisfy him ? He felt that it would not. 
 An author's works outlive him, but they too will perish. 
 How many authors are read 1000 years after their death ?
 
 8 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Is not even the language we write in constantly altering and 
 becoming archaic ? Besides, what was the use of fame when 
 he was no longer here to enjoy it ? Fame would not supply 
 an explanation of life. 
 
 And as he thought more and more about the meaning of 
 life, yet failed to find the key to the puzzle, it seemed to 
 him as it seemed to Solomon, Schopenhauer, and to Buddha 
 when he first faced the problems of poverty, sickness, and 
 death, that life is an evil : a thing we must wish to be rid 
 of. " Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." " Which of us has 
 his desire, or having it is happy ? " 
 
 Was not the whole thing a gigantic and cruel joke played 
 upon us by some demoniac power as we may play with an 
 ant, defeating all its aims and destroying all it builds ? And 
 was not suicide the only way of escape ? 
 
 But though, for a time, he felt strongly drawn towards 
 suicide, he found that he went on living, and he decided to 
 ask those considered most capable of teaching, their explana- 
 tion of the purpose of life. 
 
 So he went to the scientists : the people who studied 
 nature and dealt with what they called 'facts' and 'reali- 
 ties/ and he asked them. But they had nothing to give 
 him except their latest theory of self-acting evolution. 
 Millions of years ago certain unchanging forces were acting 
 on certain immutable atoms, and a process of evolution was 
 going on, as it has gone on ever since. The sun was 
 evolved, and our world. Eventually plant life, then animal 
 life, were evolved. The antediluvian animals were evolved, 
 and when nature had done with them it wiped them out 
 and produced us. And evolution is still going on, and the sun 
 is cooling down, and ultimately our race will perish like the 
 antediluvian animals. 
 
 It is very ingenious. It seems nearer the truth than the 
 guess, attributed to Moses, that everything was made in six 
 days. But it does not answer the question that troubled 
 Tolstoy, and the reply to it is obvious. If this self-acting
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 9 
 
 process of evolution is going on let it evolute ! It will 
 wipe me out whether I try to help it or to hinder it, and 
 not me only, but all my friends, and my race, and the solar 
 system to which I belong. 
 
 The vital question to Tolstoy was : " What am I here 
 for?" And the question to which the scientists offered a 
 partial reply was, " How did I get here ? " which is quite a 
 different matter. 
 
 Tolstoy turned to the priests : the people whose special 
 business it is to guide men's conduct and tell them what 
 they should, and what they should not, believe. 
 
 But the priests satisfied him as little as the scientists. 
 For the problem that troubled him was a real problem, 
 needing all man's powers of mind to answer it ; but the 
 priests having, so to say, signed their thirty-nine articles, 
 were not free to consider it with open minds. They would 
 only think about the problems of life and death subject to 
 the proviso that they should not have to budge from those 
 points to which they were nailed down in advance. And it 
 is no more possible to think efficiently in that way than it is 
 to run well with your legs tied together. 
 
 The scientists put the wrong question ; the priests accepted 
 the real question, but were not free to seek the truth, the 
 whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 
 
 Moreover, the greatest and most obvious evil Tolstoy had 
 seen in his life, was that pre-arranged, systematic, and whole- 
 sale method of murder called war. And he saw that the 
 priests, with very few exceptions, not only did nothing to 
 prevent such wholesale murder, but they even went, as 
 chaplains, with the soldiers, to teach them Christianity with- 
 out telling them it was wrong to fight ; and they blessed 
 ships of war, and prayed God to scatter our enemies, to con- 
 found their politics and to frustrate their knavish tricks. 
 They would even say this kind of thing without knowing 
 who the ' enemies ' were. So long as they are not we, they 
 must be bad and deserve to be ' confounded.'
 
 10 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Nor was this all. Professing a religion of love, they 
 harassed and persecuted those who professed any other forms 
 of religious belief. In the way the different churches con- 
 demned each other, and struggled one against another, there 
 was much that shocked him. Tolstoy tried hard to make 
 himself think as the priests thought, but he was unable to 
 do so. 
 
 Then he thought that perhaps if people could not tell him 
 in words what the object of life is, he might find it out by 
 watching their actions. And first he began to consider the 
 lives of those of his own society : people of the middle and 
 upper classes. He noticed among them people of different 
 types. 
 
 First, there were those who led an animal life. Many of 
 these were women, or healthy young men, full of physical 
 life. The problem that troubled him no more troubled them 
 than it troubles the ox or the ass. They evidently had not 
 yet come to the stage of development to which life, thought, 
 and experience had brought him, but he could not turn back 
 and live as they lived. 
 
 Next came those who, though capable of thinking or 
 serious things, were so occupied with their business, pro- 
 fessional, literary, or governmental work, that they had 
 no time to think about fundamental problems. One had 
 his newspaper to get out each morning by five o'clock. 
 Another had his diplomatic negotiations to pursue. A third 
 was projecting a railway. They could not stop and think. 
 They were so busy getting a living that they never asked 
 why they li ved ? 
 
 Another large set of people, some of them thoughtful 
 and conscientious people were hypnotised by authority. 
 Instead of thinking with their own heads and asking them- 
 selves the purpose of life, they accepted an answer given 
 them by some one else : by some Church, or Pope, or book, 
 or newspaper, or Emperor, or Minister. Many people are 
 hypnotised by one or other of the Churches, and still more
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 11 
 
 are hypnotised by patriotism and loyalty to their own country 
 and their own rulers. In all nations Russia, England, 
 France, Germany, America, China and everywhere else 
 people may be found who know that it is not good to boast 
 about their own qualities or to extol their own families, but 
 who consider it a virtue to pretend that their nation is better 
 than all other nations, and that their rulers, when they 
 quarrel and fight with other rulers, are always in the right. 
 People hypnotised in this way cease to think seriously about 
 right or wrong, and, where their patriotism is concerned, 
 are quite ready to accept the authority of any one who to 
 them typifies their Church or their country. However 
 absurd such a state of mind may be, it keeps many people 
 absorbed and occupied. How many people in France eagerly 
 asserted the guilt of Dreyfus on the authority of General 
 Mercier, and how many people in England were ready to 
 fight and die rather than to agree to arbitration with the 
 Transvaal after Chamberlain told them that arbitration was 
 out of the question ! 
 
 There were a fourth set of people, who seemed to Tolstoy 
 the most contemptible of all. These were the epicureans : 
 people who saw the emptiness and purposelessness of their 
 lives, but said, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die." Belonging to the well-to-do classes and being materi- 
 ally better off than common people, they relied on this 
 advantage and tried to snatch as much pleasure from life 
 as they could. 
 
 None of these people could show Tolstoy the purpose of 
 his life. He began to despair, and was more and more 
 inclined to think suicide the best course open to a brave 
 and sincere man. 
 
 But there were the peasants for whom he had always felt 
 great sympathy, and who lived all around him. How was it 
 that they poor, ignorant, heavily-taxed, compelled to serve 
 in the army, and obliged to produce food, clothing and 
 houses, not only for themselves but for all their superiors
 
 12 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 how was it that they, on the whole, seemed to know the 
 meaning of life ? They did not commit suicide, but bore 
 their hard lot patiently, and when death came met it with 
 tranquillity. The more he thought about it, the more he 
 saw that these country peasants, tilling the soil and producing 
 those necessaries of life without which we should all starve, 
 were living a comparatively good and natural life, doing 
 what was obviously useful, and that they were nearer to a 
 true understanding of life than the priests or the scribes. 
 And he talked of these things with some of the best of such 
 men, and found that, even if many of them could not express 
 themselves clearly in words, they had firm ground under 
 their feet. Some of them, too, were remarkably clear in 
 thought and speech, free from superstition, and able to go 
 to the roots of the matter. But to break free from the 
 superstitions of science, and the prejudices of the 'cultured 
 crowd ' to which he belonged, was no easy matter even for 
 Tolstoy, nor was it quickly accomplished. 
 
 When the peasants spoke to him of " serving God " and 
 "not living for oneself," it perplexed him. What is this 
 " God " ? How can I know whether he, or it, really exists ? 
 But the question : What is the meaning of my life ? de- 
 manded an answer, and the peasants, by example as well 
 as by words, helped him towards that answer. 
 
 He studied the sacred books of the East : the scriptures 
 of the Chinese, of the Buddhists, and of the Mahommedans ; 
 but it was in the Gospels, to which the peasants referred 
 him, that he found the meaning and purpose of life best 
 and most clearly expressed. The fundamental truths con- 
 cerning life and death and our relation to the unseen, are 
 the same in all the great religious books of the East or of 
 the West, but, for himself at least, Tolstoy found in the 
 Gospels (though they contain many blunders, perversions 
 and superstitions) the best, most helpful, and clearest ex- 
 pression of those truths. 
 
 He had always admired many passages in the Gospels, but
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 13 
 
 had also found much that perplexed him. He now re-read 
 them in the following way : the only way, he says, in which 
 any sacred books can be profitably studied. 
 
 He first read them carefully through to see what they con- 
 tained that was perfectly clear and simple, and that quite 
 agreed with his own experience of life and accorded with 
 his reason and conscience. Having found (and even marked 
 in the margin with blue pencil) this core that had been ex- 
 pressed so plainly and strongly that it was easy to grasp, he 
 read the four little books again several times over, and found 
 that much that at first seemed obscure or perplexing, was 
 quite reasonable and helpful when read by the light of what 
 he had already seen to be the main message of the books. 
 Much still remained unintelligible, and therefore of no use to 
 him. This must be so in books dealing with great questions, 
 that were written down long ago, in languages not ours, by 
 people not highly educated and who were superstitious. 
 
 For instance, if one reads that Jesus walked on the water, 
 that Mahommed's coffin hung between heaven and earth, or 
 that a star entered the side of Buddha's mother before he 
 was born, one may wonder how the statement got into the 
 book, and be perplexed and baffled by it rather than helped ; 
 but it need not hinder the effect of what one has understood 
 and recognised as true. 
 
 Reading the Gospels in this way, Tolstoy reached a view 
 of life that answered his question, and that has enabled him 
 to walk surefootedly, knowing the aim and purpose of his 
 life and ready to meet death calmly when it comes. 
 
 Each one of us has a reason and a conscience that come to 
 us from somewhere : we did not make them ourselves. They 
 oblige us to differentiate between good and evil ; we must 
 approve of some things and disapprove of others. We are 
 all alike in this respect, all members of one family, and in 
 this way sons of one Father. In each of us, dormant or 
 active, there is a higher and better nature, a spiritual nature, 
 a spark of the divine. If we open our hearts and mind we
 
 14 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 can discern good from evil in relation to our own conduct : 
 the law is " very near unto you, in your heart and in your 
 mouth." The purpose of our life on earth should be to 
 serve, not our lower, animal nature but the power to which 
 our higher nature recognises its kinship. Jesus boldly 
 identifies himself with his higher nature, speaks of himself, 
 and of us, as Sons of the Father, and bids us be perfect as 
 our Father in heaven is perfect. 
 
 This then is the answer to the question : What is the 
 meaning and purpose of my life ? There is a Power enabling 
 me to discern what is good, and I am in touch with that 
 Power ; my reason and conscience flow from it, and the pur- 
 pose of my conscious life is to do its will, i.e. to do good. 
 
 Nor do the Gospels leave us without telling us how to 
 apply this teaching to practical life. The Sermon on the 
 Mount (Matthew, chaps, v. vi. and vii.) had always attracted 
 Tolstoy, but much of it had also perplexed him, especially 
 the text : " Resist not him that is evil ; but whosoever 
 smiteth thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other also." 
 It seemed to him unreasonable, and shocked all the preju- 
 dices of aristocratic, family and personal ' honour ' in which 
 he had been brought up. But as long as he rejected and 
 tried to explain away that saying, he could get no coherent 
 sense out of the teaching of Jesus or out of the story of 
 his life. 
 
 As soon as he admitted to himself that perhaps Jesus 
 meant that saying seriously, it was as though he had found 
 the key to a puzzle ; the teaching and the example fitted 
 together and formed one complete and admirable whole. He 
 then saw that Jesus in these chapters is very definitely sum- 
 ming up his practical advice : pointing out, five times over, 
 what had been taught by " them of old times," and each time 
 following it by the words, " but I say unto you," and giving 
 an extension, or even a flat contradiction, to the old precept. 
 
 Here are the five commandments of Christ, an acceptance 
 of which, or even a comprehension of, and an attempt to follow
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 15 
 
 which, would alter the whole course of men's lives in our 
 society. 
 
 (1) "Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, 
 Thou shalt not kill ; and whosoever shall kill shall be in 
 danger of the judgment : but I say unto you, that every one 
 who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the 
 judgment." 
 
 In the Russian version, as in our Authorised Version, the 
 words, " without a cause," have been inserted after the word 
 angry. This, of course, makes nonsense of the whole pas- 
 sage, for no one ever is angry without supposing that he 
 has some cause. Going to the best Greek sources, Tolstoy 
 detected this interpolation (which has been corrected in our 
 Revised Version), and he found other passages in which the 
 current translations obscure Christ's teaching : as for instance 
 the popular libel on Jesus which represents him as having 
 flogged people in the Temple with a scourge ! 
 
 This, then, is the first of these great guiding rules : Do not 
 be angry. 
 
 Some people will say, We do not accept Christ's authority 
 why should we not be angry ? 
 
 But test it any way you like : by experience, by the 
 advice of other great teachers, or by the example of the best 
 men and women in their best moods, and you will find that 
 the advice is good. 
 
 Try it experimentally, and you will find that even for your 
 physical nature it is the best advice. If under certain cir- 
 cumstances say, if dinner is not ready when you want it 
 you allow yourself to get very angry, you will secrete bile, 
 which is bad fos-you. But if under precisely similar circum- 
 stances you keep your temper, you won't secrete bile. It 
 will be better for you. 
 
 But, finally, one may say, " I cannot help being angry, it 
 is my nature ; I am made so." Very well ; there is no 
 danger of your not doing what you must do ; but religion 
 and philosophy exist in order to help us to think and feel
 
 16 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 rightly, and to guide us in so far as our animal nature allows 
 us to be guided. If you can't abstain from anger altogether, 
 abstain from it as much as you can. 
 
 (2) "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not 
 commit adultery : but I say unto you, that every one that 
 looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery 
 with her already in his heart." 
 
 This second great rule of conduct is : Do not lust. 
 
 It is not generally accepted as good advice. In all our 
 towns things exist certain ways of dressing, ways of dancing, 
 some entertainments, pictures, and theatrical posters which 
 would not exist if everybody understood that lust is a bad 
 thing, spoiling our lives. 
 
 Being animals we probably cannot help lusting, but the 
 fact that we are imperfect does not prevent the advice from 
 being good. Lust as little as you can, if you cannot be 
 perfectly pure. 
 
 (3) " Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old 
 time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto 
 the Lord thine oaths : but I say unto you, Swear not at 
 all. . . . But let your speech be, Yea, yea ; Nay, nay." 
 
 How absurd ! says some one. Here are five great com- 
 mandments to guide us in life the first is : " Don't be 
 angry," the second is : " Don't lust." These are really 
 broad, sweeping rules of conduct but the third is : " Don't 
 say damn." What is the particular harm, or importance, of 
 using a few swear-words ? 
 
 But that, of course, is not at all the meaning of the com- 
 mandment. It, too, is a broad, sweeping rule, and it means : 
 Do not give away the control of your future actions. You have a 
 reason and a conscience to guide you, but if you set them aside 
 and swear allegiance elsewhere to Tsar, Emperor, Kaiser, 
 King, Queen, President or General they may some day 
 tell you to commit the most awful crimes ; perhaps even to
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 17 
 
 kill your fellow-men. What are you going to do then ? To 
 break your oath ? or commit a crime you never would have 
 dreamt of committing had you not first taken an oath ? 
 
 The present Emperor of Germany, Wilhelm II., once 
 addressed some naval recruits just after they had taken the 
 oath of allegiance to him. (The oath had been administered 
 by a paid minister of Jesus Christ, on the book which says 
 " Swear not at all.") Wilhelm II. reminded them that they 
 had taken the oath, and that if he called them out to shoot their 
 own fathers they must now obey ! 
 
 The whole organised and premeditated system of whole- 
 sale murder called war, is based and built up in all lands (in 
 England and Russia to-day as in the Roman Empire when 
 Jesus lived) on this practice of inducing people to entrust 
 their consciences to the keeping of others. 
 
 But it is the fourth commandment that people most object 
 to. In England, as in Russia, it is as yet hardly even begin- 
 ning to be understood. 
 
 (4) " Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, 
 and a tooth for a tooth : but I say unto you, Resist not him 
 that is evil ; but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, 
 turn to him the other also." 
 
 That means, do not injure those who act in a way you 
 disapprove of. 
 
 There are two different and opposite ways of trying to 
 promote the triumph of good over evil. One way is the way 
 followed by the best men, from Buddha in India and Jesus 
 in Palestine, down to William Lloyd Garrison in America and 
 Leo Tolstoy in Russia. It is to seek to see the truth of 
 things clearly, to speak it out fearlessly, and to try to act up 
 to it, leaving it to influence other people as the rain and 
 the sunshine influence the plants. Men who live that way 
 influence others ; and their influence spreads from land to 
 land, and from age to age. 
 
 B
 
 18 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Think of the men who have done most good in the world, 
 and you will find that this has been their principle. 
 
 But there is another plan, much more often tried, and still 
 approved of by most people. It consists in making up one's 
 mind what other people should do, and then, if necessary, 
 using physical violence to make them do it. 
 
 For instance, we may think that the Boers ought to let 
 everybody vote for the election of their upper house and 
 chief ruler, and (instead of beginning by trying the experi- 
 ment at home) we may send out 300,000 men to kill Boers 
 until they leave it to us to decide whether they shall have 
 any votes at all. 
 
 People who act like that Ahab, Attila, Caesar, Napoleon, 
 Bismarck, or Joseph Chamberlain influence people as long 
 as they can reach them, and even longer ; but the influence 
 that lives after them and that spreads furthest, is to a very 
 great extent a bad influence, inflaming men's hearts with 
 anger, with bitter patriotism, and with malice. 
 
 These two lines of conduct are contrary the one to the 
 other. You cannot persuade a man while he thinks you wish 
 to hit or coerce him. 
 
 The last commandment is the most sweeping of all, and 
 especially re-enforces the 1st, 3rd, and 4th. 
 
 (5) " Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbour and hate thine enemy ; but I say unto you, Love 
 your enemies . . . that ye may be sons of your Father which 
 is in heaven : for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the 
 good, and sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye 
 love them that love you . . . what do ye more than others ? 
 Do not even the Gentiles (Foreigners : Boers, Turks, etc.) 
 the same ? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly 
 Father is perfect." 
 
 The meaning of these five commandments, backed as they 
 are by the example of Jesus and the drift and substance of 
 his most emphatic teaching, is too plain to be misunderstood.
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 19 
 
 It is becoming more and more difficult for the commentators 
 and the expositors to obscure it, though to many of them the 
 words apply : " Ye have made void the word of God because 
 of your traditions." What Jesus meant us to do, the direction 
 in which he pointed us, and the example he set us, are unmis- 
 takable. But, we are told, ' it is impracticable ! ' 'It must 
 be wrong because it is not what we are doing.' ' It is impos- 
 sible that Jesus can have pointed men to a morality higher 
 than ours ! ' 
 
 There it is ! As long as we, men or nations, are self-satis- 
 fied like the Pharisee who thanked God he was not as other 
 men are we cannot progress. " They that are whole need 
 no physician." Religion and philosophy can be of use only 
 to those who will admit their imperfections and willingly 
 seek guidance. 
 
 ' But it is impossible for us to cease killing men wholesale 
 at the command of our rulers, or to cease hanging men who 
 kill in retail without being told to. We must go on injuring 
 one another, or evil will be sure to come of it.' If so, then 
 let us throw away Christ's religion, for it leads us astray, and 
 let us find a better religion instead. The trouble is that the 
 best of the other religious teachers (such as Buddha) said the 
 same thing! And we can hardly admit openly that we are 
 still worshipping Mars or Mammon. 
 
 The only other way is for us to be humble and honest 
 about the matter and confess : " I begin to see the truth of 
 this teaching. It points to perfection above the level we 
 have reached ; but if I am not good enough to apply it alto- 
 gether, I will apply it as far as I can, and will at least not 
 deny it, or pervert it, or try by sophistry to debase it to my 
 own level." 
 
 After reaching this view of life (about the year 1880 or a 
 little earlier), Tolstoy saw that much he had formerly con- 
 sidered good was bad, and much he had thought bad was 
 good.
 
 20 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 If the aim of life is to co-operate with our Father in doing 
 good, we should not seek to acquire as much property as pos- 
 sible for ourselves, but should seek to give as much to others, 
 and to take as little from others, as we can. 
 
 Instead of wanting the most expensive and luxurious food 
 for ourselves, we should seek the cheapest and simplest food 
 that will keep us in health. 
 
 Instead of wishing to be better dressed than our neigh- 
 bours, and wanting to have a shiny black chimney-pot hat to 
 show that we are superior to common folk, we should wish to 
 wear nothing that will separate us from the other children of 
 our Father. 
 
 Instead of seeking the most refined and pleasant work for 
 ourselves, and trying to put the rough, disagreeable work on 
 those weaker, less able, less fortunate, or less pushing and 
 selfish than ourselves, we should, on the contrary, make it a 
 point of honour to do our share of what is disagreeable and 
 ill-paid. 
 
 Economically speaking, what I take from my brethren 
 should go to my debit, only what service I do them should 
 go to the credit of my account. 
 
 Tolstoy became a strict vegetarian, eating only the sim- 
 plest food and avoiding stimulants. He ceased to smoke. 
 He dressed in the simplest and cheapest manner. Attaching 
 great importance to manual labour, he was careful to take a 
 share of the housework : lighting his own fire and carrying 
 water. He also learned boot-making. Especially he enjoyed 
 labouring with the peasants in the fields, and found that hard 
 as the work was he enjoyed it, and, strange to say, could do 
 better mental work when he only allowed himself a few hours 
 a day for it than he had been able to do when he gave him- 
 self up entirely to literary work. Instead of writing chiefly 
 novels and stories for the well-to-do and idle classes, he 
 devoted his wonderful powers principally to clearing up those
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 21 
 
 perplexing problems of human conduct which seem to block 
 the path of progress. 
 
 Besides some stories (especially short stories for the people, 
 and some folk-stories which he wrote down in order that 
 they may reach those who are not accustomed to go to the 
 peasants for instruction), many essays and letters on impor- 
 tant questions, and a drama and a comedy, his chief works 
 during the last twenty years have been these thirteen 
 books : 
 
 (1) My Confession. 
 
 (2) A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, never yet translated. 
 
 (3) The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated, of which 
 two parts out of three have been (not very well) translated. 
 
 (4) What I Believe, sometimes called My Religion. 
 
 (5) The Gospel in Brief, a summary of The Four Gospels, 
 and better suited for the general reader than the larger 
 work. 
 
 (6) What then must rve do ? Sometimes called What 
 to do ? 
 
 (7) On Life, also called Life: a book not carefully 
 finished, and not easy to read in the original. The existing 
 English translation makes nonsense of it in many places, 
 but a new one has now (1902) been announced by the Free 
 Age Press. 
 
 (8) The Kreutzer Sonata : a story treating of the sex-question. 
 It should be read with the Afterword, explaining Tolstoy's 
 views on the subject. 
 
 (9) The Kingdom of God is Within You. 
 
 (10) The Christian Teaching: a brief summary of Tolstoy's 
 understanding of Christ's teaching. He considers that this 
 book still needs revision, but it will be found useful by those 
 who have understood the works numbered 1, 4, 5 and 6 in 
 this list. 
 
 (11) What is Art ? In Tolstoy's opinion the best con- 
 structed of his books. The profound outcome of fifteen years' 
 consideration of the problem.
 
 22 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 (12) Resurrection, a novel begun about 1894, laid aside in 
 favour of what seemed more important work, and completely 
 re-written and published in 1899, for the benefit of the 
 Doukhob6rs. 
 
 (13) What is Religion, and what is its Essence ? (Feb. 1902.) 
 
 The subjects that occupied him were the most important 
 subjects of human knowledge, those which should be (though 
 to-day they are not) emphatically called Science : the kind of 
 science that occupied " Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, Con- 
 fucius, Mencius, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, and all those who 
 have taught men to live a moral life." He examined " the re- 
 sults of good and bad actions/' considered the "reasonableness 
 or unreasonableness of human institutions and beliefs," " how 
 human life should be lived in order to obtain the greatest 
 well-being for each," and "what one may and should, and 
 what one cannot and should not believe ; how to subdue one's 
 passions, and how to acquire the habit of virtue." 
 
 When Tolstoy began to write boldly and plainly about 
 these things, he quite expected to be persecuted. The 
 Russian Government, however, has considered it wiser not 
 to touch him personally, but to content itself with prohibiting 
 some of his books, mutilating others, and banishing several 
 of those who helped him. Under the auspices of the Holy 
 Synod, books were published denouncing him and his views 
 (an advertisement for which, as he remarked, Pears' Soap 
 would have paid thousands of pounds), his correspondence 
 was tampered with, spies were set to watch him and his 
 friends, and finally he was excommunicated, in a somewhat 
 half-hearted fashion which suggested that the authorities were 
 ashamed of their action. 
 
 These external matters, however, did not trouble him so 
 much as did a spiritual conflict. Indeed, at one time, im- 
 prisonment would have come as a relief, solving his difficulty. 
 The case was this : He wished to act in complete consistency 
 with the views he had expressed, but he could not do this
 
 LEO TOLSTOY 23 
 
 could not, for instance, give away his property without 
 making his wife or some of his children angry, and without 
 the risk of their even appealing to the authorities to restrain 
 him. This perplexed him very much ; but he felt that he 
 could not do good by doing harm. No external rule, such 
 as that people should give all they have to the poor, would 
 justify him in creating anger and bitterness in the hearts of 
 those nearest to him. So, eventually, he handed over his 
 property to his wife and his family, and continued to live in 
 a good house with servants as before ; meekly bearing the 
 reproach that he was 'inconsistent,' and contenting himself 
 with living as simply and frugally as possible. 
 
 At the time of the great famine in 1891-1892, circum- 
 stances seemed to compel him to undertake the great work 
 of organising and directing the distribution of relief to the 
 starving peasants. Large sums of money passed through his 
 hands, and all Europe and America applauded him. But he 
 himself felt that such activity, of collecting and distributing 
 money, " making a pipe of oneself," was not the best work 
 of which he was capable. It did not satisfy him. It is not 
 by what we get others to do for pay, but rather by what we 
 do with our own brains, hearts and muscles, that we can best 
 serve God and man. 
 
 Since 1895 he has again braved the Russian Government 
 by giving publicity to the facts it was trying to conceal about 
 the persecution of the Doukhobors in the Caucasus. To aid 
 these men, who refused military service on principle, he 
 broke his rule of taking no money for his writings, and sold 
 the first right of publication in Russia of Resurrection. But 
 of this act, too, he now repents. Whether for himself or for 
 others, he has found that the attempt to get property, money 
 or goods, is apt to be a hindrance to, rather than a means of 
 forwarding, the service of God and man. 
 
 Tolstoy is no faultless and infallible prophet whose works 
 should be swallowed as bibliolaters swallow the Bible ; but 
 he is a man of extraordinary capacity, sincerity and self-
 
 24 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 sacrifice, who has for more than twenty years striven to make 
 absolutely plain to all, the solution of some of the most vital 
 problems of existence. What he has said, is part, and no 
 small part, of that truth which shall set men free. It is of 
 interest and importance to all who will hear it, especially to 
 the common folk who do most of the rough work and get 
 least of the praise or pay. But, in England and elsewhere, 
 his message is only beginning to reach those who most 
 need it, and has been greatly misunderstood. Many of the 
 ' cultured crowd ' who write and talk about him as a genius, 
 twist his views beyond all recognition. They enter not in 
 themselves, neither suffer they them that are entering in, 
 to enter. 
 
 The work he has set himself to co-operate in is not the 
 expansion of an Empire, nor is it the establishment of a 
 Church ; for man's perception of truth is progressive, and 
 again and again finds itself hampered by forms and dogmas 
 of State and Church. Sooner or later we must break such 
 outward forms, as the chicken breaks its shell when the 
 time comes. The work to which Tolstoy has set himself 
 is a work to which each of us is also called : it is the estab- 
 lishment on earth of the Kingdom of God, that is, of Truth 
 and Good. 
 
 First published in pamphlet form (as The Teaching of Tolttoy), July 
 1900, by Albert Broadbent, Manchester.
 
 TOLSTOY'S TEACHING 
 
 FROM his boyhood upwards, both when he listened to the 
 still, small voice within, and when he observed things out- 
 side himself, Tolstoy felt, though not always with equal 
 clearness, that life has a meaning and that man has power 
 to progress towards what is good. The intervals of doubt 
 and hesitation through which he passed, served to clarify 
 and shape his certainty that morality is in the nature of 
 things. Beginning with his earliest stories, and through all 
 his writings, the reader may notice how Tolstoy's strenuous 
 observation of things around him, and especially of what 
 went on in his own consciousness, led him towards an under- 
 standing of life different from that of people whose creed is 
 a matter of geography, and who have not worked at it them- 
 selves. He could not be content with a second-hand belief 
 prepared and expressed for him by professional expounders. 
 
 In trying to give a brief outline of his present views, it 
 will be convenient to confine the survey to works written 
 since Anna Karenina was finished say since 1878. And no 
 more will here be attempted than to mention the chief 
 subjects he has written about during the last twenty-five 
 years, and to give a rough sketch of certain main conclusions 
 he has reached, as well as of his reasons for adopting them. 
 
 In My Confession (1879) 1 Tolstoy tells how he tried to 
 grasp the meaning of his life, and how unsatisfactory he 
 found the conventional answers. A law of his being obliged 
 him to approve and disapprove of things : to discriminate 
 between good and evil, and to follow after that which is 
 
 1 The dates given are not those of publication, but show when the 
 book (or the main part of the book) was written. 
 
 26
 
 26 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 good. But what is Goodness ? Where can help or guidance 
 for our lives be found ? The results reached in My Confession 
 were riot final, but led on to what followed. Tolstoy could 
 not brush away the claims of the Church without considera- 
 tion ; still less could he, as a truth-respecting man, profess 
 to believe what he saw no sufficient grounds for believing. 
 So, taking an authoritative text-book of the Eastern Church, 
 he sought the bases of doctrines and dogmas such as those 
 of the Trinity, the Sacraments, the scheme of Redemption, 
 the miraculous Conception and Resurrection, and the claim 
 of the Churches to authority over man's reason. His con- 
 clusion is expressed in A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology 
 (1880-81), which says that not only are such doctrines false 
 and harmful, but that they are fraudulent, and that the 
 original purpose of the fraud can be detected. The dogmas 
 bolster up the Church ; and ' the Church/ when we come 
 to practical business, means " power in the hands of certain 
 people." By inducing people to surrender their reason, and 
 to believe what is untrue, the rulers and officials of the 
 Churches obtained for themselves advantages and authority. 
 When the Church, in the time of Constantine, allied itself 
 with the State (which uses violence and causes men to be 
 killed), it abandoned the religion Christ believed in, and 
 substituted Churchianity for Christianity. 
 
 He next proceeded to a strenuous examination of the 
 Gospels. If the claims of the Church needed consideration 
 before they could be honestly accepted or rejected, equally 
 was this the case with the collection of Hebrew and Greek 
 literature called the Bible. 
 
 The best of the books of the Old Testament appear 
 to Tolstoy to rank with the greatest works of Chinese, 
 Indian, or Greek philosophy or religion. The Epistles of 
 St. Paul do not rank so high in his esteem, but the four 
 little booklets called the Gospels he has found more helpful 
 and convincing than anything else in literature. The under- 
 standing of life they have helped him to reach is explained in
 
 TOLSTOY'S TEACHING 27 
 
 T/ie Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated (1880-82) ; The 
 Gospel in Brief (1883); My Religion (or What I Believe] 
 (1883-4); and The Christian Teaching (written later, put on 
 one side, and published in 1898 without final revision). 
 
 Briefly (and by no means completely) summarised, the 
 conclusions arrived at in these books were these : 
 
 We have reason and conscience (" the light which lighteth 
 every man ") to guide us forward. We did not originate 
 these for ourselves, but owe them to some Source outside our- 
 selves. The clue to the perplexities of life is, that life is not 
 our own to do as we like with, but we owe allegiance to what 
 has been called "Our Father in Heaven," from whom (or 
 from whence) proceeds the guidance we possess. Try to 
 define God as He, She, or It ; as three persons, or as thirty- 
 three persons ; as being the creator of the material universe 
 (and therefore responsible for all that is amiss in it) and 
 we land ourselves in hopeless perplexities. But if we keep 
 closely to what we know and have ourselves experienced, we 
 may be as sure as Socrates was that we are in touch with 
 the Eternal Goodness. We know not how to speak of this 
 power within us and outside us, except to say that it is Love : 
 God is Love. 
 
 The practical application of Christ's teaching to life, 
 Tolstoy found given with special clearness in the Sermon 
 on the Mount, from which he extracted five precepts already 
 referred to in the preceding essay : 
 
 (1) Do not be angry. 
 
 (2) Do not lust. 
 
 (3) Do not bind yourself by oaths. 
 
 (4) " Resist not him that is evil." 
 
 (5) Be good to the just and the unjust. 
 
 In a leaflet, How to read the Gospels (1896), Tolstoy tells us: 
 "A great teacher is great just because he is able to 
 
 express the truth so that it can neither be hidden nor 
 
 obscured, but is as plain as daylight
 
 28 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 " And, indeed, the truth is there for all who will, with a 
 sincere wish to know the truth, read the Gospels without pre- 
 judice, and, above all, without supposing that the Gospels contain 
 some special sort of wisdom beyond human reason. 
 
 "The Gospels, as is known to all who have studied their 
 origin, far from being infallible expressions of Divine truth, 
 are the work of innumerable minds and hands, and contain 
 many errors. Therefore the Gospels can, in no case, be 
 taken as a production of the Holy Ghost, as Churchmen 
 assert. Were that so, God would have revealed the Gospels 
 as he is said to have revealed the Commandments on Mount 
 Sinai ; or he would have transmitted the complete book to 
 man as the Mormons declare was the case with their Holy 
 Scriptures. But we know how these works were written and 
 collected, and how they were corrected and translated ; and 
 therefore not only can we not accept them as infallible 
 revelations, but we must, if we respect truth, correct the 
 errors we find in them. Read them, putting aside all fore- 
 gone conclusions ; read them with the sole desire to under- 
 stand what is said there. But, just because the Gospels are 
 holy books, read them considerately, reasonably, and with 
 discernment, and not haphazard or mechanically, as though 
 all the words were of equal weight. 
 
 " To understand any book one must first choose out the 
 parts that are quite clear, dividing them from what is obscure 
 or confused. And from what is clear we must form our 
 idea of the drift and spirit of the whole work. Then, on the 
 basis of what we have understood, we may proceed to make 
 out what is confused or not quite intelligible. This is how 
 we read all kinds of books. And it is particularly necessary 
 thus to read the Gospels, which have passed through a multi- 
 plicity of compilations, translations and transcriptions, and 
 were composed eighteen centuries ago by men who were 
 not highly educated and were superstitious. 
 
 "Very likely, in selecting what is fully comprehensible 
 from what is not, people will not all choose the same passages.
 
 TOLSTOY'S TEACHING 29 
 
 What is comprehensible to one may seem obscure to another. 
 But all will certainly agree in what is most important, and 
 these are things which will be found quite intelligible to every 
 one. It is just this just what is fully comprehensible to 
 all men that constitutes the essence of Christ's teaching." 
 
 In reading the Bible, or listening to the claims of the 
 Churches, one must discriminate between faith and credulity. 
 We must not accept as a virtue, faith of the kind defined 
 by the schoolboy who said : " Faith is believing what you 
 know to be untrue." Credulity is believing things you have 
 no sufficient reason to suppose true, and is not a virtue but 
 a fault. Faith is holding faithfully to what our reason and 
 conscience enable us to perceive of the reality of things. We 
 must not fear to trust our own judgment. The justification 
 for thinking with our own heads is that we have no one else's 
 to think with. 
 
 Tolstoy's acceptance of the advice : " Ye have heard that 
 it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth ; but 
 I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil : but whosoever 
 smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also," is 
 explained in the works above mentioned, and yet more fully in 
 The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893). It means that we 
 should injure no one, but should influence one another, not 
 by physical force (nor even by unkindly compulsion stopping 
 short of violence), but by appeals to man's higher nature : his 
 sympathy, affection, reason, and respect for truth. It has 
 been said in reply to this, that even if the text bears such 
 a meaning, and even if the advice accords with the main 
 drift of Christ's teaching and example, yet the advice is 
 nevertheless unsound, for experience has shown that the use 
 of violence to destroy or injure bad men is beneficial. And 
 Tolstoy would admit that if the arrangements of society 
 Governments based on violence, wars, executions, protection 
 of property by force, etc. are satisfactory to man's highest 
 aspirations, then the precept quoted is a foolish one. His 
 position may be elucidated by taking a parallel case :
 
 30 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 We are advised to shun lies and to be truthful. This, 
 he would say, is a valid precept, and needful because it is 
 sometimes difficult to know how to speak, and we all need 
 guidance for our conduct. Yet cases arise in which a man 
 may not see his way to speak the truth. A feeble old man 
 asks me about his daughter's conduct. If I tell him how 
 she has behaved it may bring his grey hairs with sorrow 
 to the grave. Am I not justified in telling a lie? And 
 does not it follow that truth is not better than falsehood ? 
 And that we can have no principle to guide us in choosing 
 between veracity and mendacity ? In regard to all such 
 sophistries Tolstoy replies that our reason and conscience, 
 faithfully used, are sufficient to enable us to discern prin- 
 ciples for the guidance of our conduct ; though we, and the 
 society in which we live, may be far from living up to the 
 principles so discerned. Truth, for instance, is better than 
 falsehood. And the two being opposites, you cannot culti- 
 vate your character towards both sincerity and duplicity at 
 the same time. Circumstances may arise in which it seems 
 to you better to lie. But we never really foreknow the 
 ultimate consequences of any action, and in such a case it is 
 not wise to say " I did right to lie," but rather, " Owing to 
 my limitations I did not see my way to escape lying." Truth 
 remains desirable though men may be mendacious. 
 
 To Tolstoy the case of violent coercion versus gentle per- 
 suasion is similar. Violence is employed in our society, and 
 we may, in this or that case, not have the wisdom or faith- 
 fulness to abstain from using it. Yet violence and gentle- 
 ness are opposites and we can neither progress in two 
 directions at once nor remain safely without guidance. If 
 it is wrong to believe that the use of violence among men is 
 an evil causing incalculable suffering, then it is time some 
 one told us how much violence to use. We need a general 
 principle which will serve us when we are perplexed. 
 
 With the economic problem Tolstoy deals in What then 
 must we do ? (1885), a trenchant sequel to which, The Slavery
 
 TOLSTOY'S TEACHING 31 
 
 of our Times, appeared in 1900. He quite rejects 'charity 
 organisation/ money-collecting activities, and the belief that 
 expenditure (including charitable expenditure : entertain- 
 ments, bazaars, balls, etc.) can supply the need of the poor. 
 People are fed, clothed, and sheltered by the results of 
 labour. Economically speaking, what a man produces, or 
 what service he renders to others, goes to his credit ; what 
 he consumes (were it but a crust of dry bread) goes to his 
 debit. The more a man takes for himself, and the less he 
 produces for others, the more of a burden he is to society. 
 And the fact that what he consumes was left him by his 
 father or given him by a friend does not alter the case. 
 
 Examining the fact that now, as in former ages, some 
 people are able to consume much while they produce little, 
 and others, while producing much, can hardly keep for 
 themselves the necessaries of life, Tolstoy came to investi- 
 gate the use of money, and arrived at the conclusion that 
 the organisation and justification of violence in the hands 
 of certain people called ' Government ' who by the use of 
 force maintain taxation, the private ownership of land and 
 property, and the monetary system have reproduced in the 
 modern world the essential evil of ancient slavery. In both 
 cases the many labour, not under natural, healthy, and free 
 conditions but under conditions imposed by those who own 
 the slaves, control the Government, or have the money, the 
 land, or the property. 
 
 On Life (1887) reminds us that besides what we perceive 
 objectively (i.e. all that can be known by the senses) we have 
 also a subjective consciousness of the moral law within us. 
 We must distinguish between our lower nature as animals, 
 and that higher nature which leads a Socrates to sacri- 
 fice physical existence for the sake of goodness. This is 
 the root of religion. Within our animal personality the 
 spirit matures, as the chicken grows within the shell. To 
 transfer our interest from the lower to the higher nature is 
 to be born again, to lay hold of eternal life. The things
 
 32 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 which, at first, seem to us most real are evidently perishable ; 
 they disappoint and deceive us. But death and physical 
 destruction are no disaster to a Socrates, nor do they 
 threaten that which to him is important. We should shift 
 our centre of gravity from that in us which is temporary to 
 that which is permanent. " He that would save his life shall 
 lose it." Tolstoy makes no assertion of a personal future 
 life, nor even of the transmigration of souls (which seems so 
 plausible). For we should be very careful to discriminate 
 between conjectures and knowledge. We should in this 
 matter, as in mathematics, confine ourselves strictly to what 
 is ' necessary and sufficient ' ; and the ( necessary and sufficient ' 
 is the recognition that though we live, as animals, in a tem- 
 porary and elusive world in which no permanent success is 
 possible, yet we have also a spiritual nature dealing with 
 goodness, and there is no reason to suppose that goodness 
 disappoints, or that the Divine spark within us, which 
 responds to it, is less eternal than goodness itself. Life is 
 always in the present ; here and now we must find out 
 whether it is the material or the spiritual that to our per- 
 ception is the more permanent and real. 
 
 The year 1889 saw the publication of the much-misunder- 
 stood Kreutzer Sonata. What then mtist we do ? had ended 
 with an appeal to mothers to fulfil their duty of bearing and 
 rearing children, and by setting an example of unselfish 
 devotion to duty to be the saviours of society. Reconsider- 
 ing the relations of the sexes subsequently, Tolstoy with- 
 out abandoning his opinion that married people who have 
 conjugal relations should, as the natural result of physical 
 intimacy, have children came to the further conclusion that 
 chastity, like gentleness and truthfulness, is a virtue of 
 universal application. And by chastity he means complete 
 purity in thought, word, and deed, and the absence of all 
 carnal desire. 
 
 The Kreutzer Sonata should be read with the Afterword, 
 which explains its intention. By putting his views into the
 
 TOLSTOY'S TEACHING S3 
 
 mouth of a man who had murdered his wife out of jealousy 
 and had been acquitted on the ground of insanity, Tolstoy 
 was enabled to express them with extreme force and trench- 
 ancy. The side he wished to express being the one usually 
 burked, he preferred to put it in this aggressive fashion. 
 Though, of course, he had not ceased to know that sexual 
 relations (like war and commerce) have played, and are 
 playing, their part in the education of mankind, he felt no 
 need to re-state the side which has been put forward in the 
 literature of all ages and countries^ and even in some of his 
 own previous writings. On the contrary, he felt that a 
 desire which is already far too strong is being continually 
 strengthened by works of art, and he set himself strenuously, 
 and even fiercely, to evoke those deep instincts of our nature 
 which, whether in Buddhist monk, in Catholic nun, or in 
 Puritan censure of worldly art, have never ceased to protest 
 against the belief that sexual pleasure is morally good. 
 
 The fundamental thought of the Kreutzer Sonata is this : 
 Mankind needs guidance in its sexual relations as on all 
 other matters of human conduct. The definite regulations 
 of the Mosaic, Mahommedan, or Church-Christian law, like the 
 regulations of monkish celibacy, etc., can at best apply only 
 to certain times and places. The authority behind such 
 regulations gradually breaks down, and if we trust only to 
 them we are finally left face to face with the problems of 
 life without guidance for our conduct. But guidance exists. 
 Chastity is a virtue. Aim towards it. At every stage of 
 progress, from the time reason awakes and you feel a need 
 to choose your path whether you are boy or girl, man or 
 woman, married or single choose the thoughts, feelings, and 
 acts which bring you nearest to chastity. You need not be 
 afraid of progressing too rapidly, or of defeating the ends of 
 God by becoming perfect too soon ! If you are entirely 
 satisfied with the life you are living you will ask for no 
 guidance. Philosophy and religion are required only for 
 people whose lives are not already perfect ! The funda- 
 
 c
 
 34 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 mental feeling the book seeks to convey is that sexual 
 relations (however inevitable and natural they may be to 
 man's animal self), from the moment a reasonable being 
 deliberately seeks them as a means of pleasure, become re- 
 volting to our higher nature. They are instinctively carried 
 on in secret, nor can we even imagine to ourselves the love 
 affairs of a Christ. 
 
 The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893) has already been 
 referred to as dealing specially with ' non-resistance ' and 
 war. The most resolute upholder of himself as an example 
 of non-resistant principles you have ever met, may ultimately 
 have punched another man's head in anger. But the truth 
 of a principle is not invalidated by human limitations. A 
 straight line may be desirable and conceivable though no 
 man ever drew one. It is well to know whether the line 
 you have to draw is meant to be straight, whether your utter- 
 ance should be truthful, and whether your conduct to your 
 neighbour near at hand, or to the nation beyond the seas, 
 ought to be loving, gentle, and kindly. 
 
 All this time, while the urgent need of elucidating, for 
 himself and others, the great problems of religion, economics, 
 and philosophy, had kept Tolstoy from making any prolonged 
 excursions into the realms o art, the questions : " What is 
 Art ? Is it important ? Wherein does its importance lie ? " 
 had pursued him, and the answer had been slowly shaping 
 itself in his mind. What is Art? being specially treated of 
 in the next essays, we need not here do more than pause to 
 notice the intimate connection between Tolstoy's theory of 
 art, and the principle of non-resistance which figures so largely 
 in his interpretation of the Gospels and in his social and 
 economic studies. 
 
 So great is the influence men can, without any violence, 
 exert on one another by means of art, that : " Through the 
 influence of real art, aided by science, guided by religion, 
 that peaceful co-operation of man which is now obtained by 
 external means by our law courts, police, charitable institu-
 
 TOLSTOY'S TEACHING 35 
 
 tions, factory inspection, etc. should be obtained by man's 
 free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set 
 aside." 
 
 Following this came Resurrection (1899)> the only long 
 work of fiction written by Tolstoy during the last twenty 
 years, and one faithfully reflecting his mature opinions on 
 all the great problems of life. That this book conveying, 
 as it does, feelings (on such subjects as army service, legal 
 proceedings, church services, marriage, etc.) which run counter 
 to those that have grown up and become general in con- 
 nection with our established order of society should, never- 
 theless, have had a great success in many lands, is an instance 
 of the power which literary art exerts among us to-day. 
 And when we remember how small a part a single book on 
 its first appearance can exercise of that cumulative influence 
 which has sometimes been wielded by art : for instance, by 
 Homer's art among the Greeks, or that of their scriptures 
 (a large part of which are artistic) among the Jews ; when, 
 moreover, we bear in mind Tolstoy's assurance that art has 
 never yet done nearly all it is capable of accomplishing for 
 the benefit of humanity we begin to see how great a part 
 art may play in shaping the future of mankind. 
 
 Without, here, mentioning in detail Tolstoy's numerous 
 articles and essays dealing with the use of stimulants, with 
 vegetarianism, patriotism, manual labour, the famine, the 
 Doukhob6rs, and many other subjects, one may say, in 
 general, that they all show his profound conviction that the 
 primary guidance for our life lies not in what is outside us 
 and reaches us through our senses (as is generally implicitly 
 or explicitly affirmed among materialists, church people, 
 worldly people, and spiritualists), but that the essential thing 
 is to " know thyself," or, as George Fox said, to hearken to 
 the 'inward voice.' 
 
 Those who wish to get at the spirit of Tolstoy's teaching 
 should read his works in the way he says all books should be 
 read. " One must first choose out the parts that are quite
 
 36 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 clear, dividing them from what is obscure or confused. And 
 from what is clear we must form our idea of the drift and 
 spirit of the whole work." And the clearness to be looked 
 for is, he would add, the clearness which comes from corre- 
 spondence with the best the reader is himself able to feel 
 and to perceive. 
 
 Tolstoy does not claim to set an example of right living. 
 Man's reason can always reach beyond his present attain- 
 ment. The Pharisee may be satisfied with himself, but the 
 sincere and thoughtful man is ever conscious of his own 
 shortcomings. Neither does Tolstoy claim any authority for 
 his teaching except what it derives from its appeal to man's 
 reason and conscience. There is no tenet of his he would 
 wish accepted without examination. In this sense his teach- 
 ing is truly catholic. Its appeal lies to all who possess a 
 reason and a conscience, and he would wish it to be verified, 
 and where necessary corrected, by the thought and experi- 
 ence of all who follow after truth and seek for goodness. 
 
 The above is a revision of an article published in the ' Tolstoy 
 Number' of Literature, 31st August 1901.
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO 
 "WHAT IS ART?" 
 
 WHAT thoughtful man has not been perplexed by problems 
 relating to art ? 
 
 An estimable and charming Russian lady I knew, felt so 
 strongly the charm of the music and ritual of the services 
 of the Russo-Greek Church that she wished the peasants, in 
 whom she was interested, to retain their blind faith, though 
 she herself disbelieved the Church doctrines. "Their lives 
 are so poor and bare, they have so little art, so little poetry 
 and colour in their lives let them at least enjoy what they 
 have ; it would be cruel to undeceive them," said she. 
 
 A false and antiquated view of life is supported by means 
 of art, and is inseparably linked to some manifestations of 
 art which we enjoy and prize. If the false view of life be 
 destroyed this art will cease to appear valuable. Is it better 
 to screen the error for the sake of preserving the art ? Or 
 should the art be sacrificed for the sake of truthfulness ? 
 
 Again and again in history a dominant Church has utilised 
 art to maintain its sway over men. Reformers (early Chris- 
 tians, Mahommedans, Puritans, and others) have perceived 
 that art bound people to the old faith, and have been angry 
 with art. They diligently chipped the noses from statues 
 and images, and were wroth with ceremonies, decorations, 
 stained-glass windows, and processions. They were even ready 
 to banish art altogether, for, besides the superstitions it upheld, 
 they saw that it depraved and perverted men by dramas, drink- 
 ing-songs, novels, pictures, and dances of a kind that awakened 
 man's lower nature. Yet art always reasserted her sway, 
 
 37
 
 38 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 and to-day we are told by many that art has nothing to do 
 with morality that art should be followed for art's sake. 
 
 I went one day, with a lady artist, to the Bodkin Art 
 Gallery, in Moscow. In one of the rooms, on a table, lay 
 a book of coloured pictures, issued in Paris and supplied, 
 I believe, to private subscribers only. The pictures were 
 admirably executed, but represented scenes in the private 
 cabinets of a restaurant. Sexual indulgence was the chief 
 subject of each picture : women extravagantly dressed and 
 partly undressed ; women exposing their legs and breasts 
 to men in evening dress ; men and women taking liberties 
 with each other, or dancing the can-can, etc., etc. My com- 
 panion the artist, a maiden lady of irreproachable conduct 
 and reputation, began deliberately to look at these pictures. 
 I could not let my attention dwell on them without ill 
 effects. Such things had a certain attraction for me and 
 tended to make me restless and nervous. I ventured to 
 suggest that the subject-matter of the pictures was objection- 
 able. But my companion (who prided herself on being 
 an artist) remarked, with conscious superiority, that from 
 an artist's point of view the subject was of no consequence. 
 The pictures being very well executed were artistic, and 
 therefore worthy of attention and study. Morality had 
 nothing to do with art. 
 
 Here again is a problem. One remembers Plato's advice 
 not to let our thoughts run upon women, for if we do we 
 shall think clearly about nothing else, and one knows that 
 to neglect this advice is to lose tranquillity of mind ; but then 
 one does not wish to be considered narrow, ascetic, or in- 
 artistic, nor to lose artistic pleasures which those around 
 us esteem so highly. 
 
 Again, the newspapers not long ago printed proposals to 
 construct a Wagner Opera House, to cost, if I recollect 
 rightly, .100,000 about as much as a hundred labourers 
 may earn by fifteen or twenty years' hard work. The 
 writers thought it would be a good thing if such an Opera
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 39 
 
 House were erected and endowed. But I had a talk lately 
 with a man who, till his health failed him, had worked 
 as a builder in London. He told me that when he was 
 younger he had been very fond of theatre-going, but later, 
 when he thought things over and considered that in almost 
 every number of his weekly paper he read of cases of people 
 whose death was hastened by lack of good food, he felt 
 it was not right that so much labour should be spent on 
 theatres. 
 
 In reply to this view it is urged that food for the mind 
 is as important as food for the body. As the labouring classes 
 work to produce food and necessaries for themselves and for 
 the cultured, so some of the cultured class produce plays 
 and operas. It is a division of labour. But this again 
 invites the rejoinder that, sure enough, the labourers produce 
 food for themselves and also food that the cultured class 
 accept and consume ; but that the artists seem too often 
 to produce their spiritual food for the cultured only at any 
 rate, a singularly small share seems to reach the country 
 labourers who work to supply the bodily food ! Even were 
 the division of labour shown to be a fair one, the division 
 of products seems remarkably one-sided. 
 
 Once again : How is it that often when a new work is 
 produced, neither the critics, the artists, the publishers, nor 
 the public, seem to know whether it is valuable or worth- 
 less ? Some of the most famous books in English literature 
 could, at first, hardly find a publisher, or were savagely 
 derided by leading critics ; while other works once acclaimed 
 as masterpieces are now laughed at or utterly forgotten. A 
 play which nobody now reads was once passed off as a newly- 
 discovered masterpiece of Shakespear's, and was produced 
 at a leading London theatre. Are the critics playing blind- 
 man's buff? Are they relying on each other ? Is each 
 following his own whim and fancy ? Or do they possess a 
 criterion nevev revealed to those outside the profession ? 
 
 Such are a few of the many problems relating to art which
 
 40 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 present themselves to us all, and it is the purpose of Tolstoy's 
 W/iat is Art? to enable us to reach such a comprehension of 
 art, and of the position art should occupy in our lives, as will 
 enable us to answer such questions. 
 
 The task is one of enormous difficulty. Under the cloak 
 of ' Art ' so much selfish amusement and self-indulgence tries 
 to justify itself, and so many mercenary interests are con- 
 cerned in preventing the light from shining in upon the 
 subject, that the clamour raised by this book can only be 
 compared to that raised by the silversmiths of Ephesus when 
 they shouted, " Great is Diana of the Ephesians ! " for about 
 the space of two hours. 
 
 Elaborate theories blocked the path with subtle sophistries 
 or ponderous pseudo-erudition. Merely to master these and 
 expose them was by itself a colossal labour, necessary in 
 order to clear the road for a statement of any fresh view. 
 To have accomplished this work of exposure in a few chap- 
 ters is a wonderful achievement. To have done it without 
 making the book intolerably dry is more wonderful still. In 
 Chapter III. (where a rapid summary of some sixty esthetic 
 writers is given) even Tolstoy's powers fail to make the sub- 
 ject interesting except to the specialist, and he has to plead 
 with his readers " not to be overcome by dulness, but to read 
 these extracts through." 
 
 Among the writers mentioned, English readers miss the 
 names of John Ruskin and William Morris, especially as 
 much that Tolstoy says is in accord with their views. 
 
 Of Ruskin Tolstoy has a very high opinion. I have heard 
 him say, " I don't know why you English make such a fuss 
 about Gladstone you have a much greater man in Ruskin." 
 As a stylist, too, Tolstoy spoke of him with high commenda- 
 tion. Ruskin, however, though he has written on art with 
 profound insight, and has said many things with which 
 Tolstoy fully agrees, as well as some things he dissents from, 
 has, I think, nowhere so systematised and summarised his 
 view that it can be readily quoted in the concise way which
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 41 
 
 has enabled Tolstoy to indicate his points of essential agree- 
 ment with Home (Lord Kames), Veron, and Kant. Even 
 the attempt to summarise Kant's esthetic philosophy in a 
 dozen lines will hardly be of much service, except to readers 
 who have already some acquaintance with the subject. For 
 those to whom the distinction between ~ subjective ' and ' ob- 
 jective ' perceptions is fresh, a dozen pages would be none 
 too much. And to summarise Ruskiii would be perhaps 
 more difficult than to condense Kant. 1 
 
 As to William Morris, we are reminded of his dictum 
 that art is the workman's expression of joy in his work, by 
 Tolstoy's " As soon as the author is not producing art for his 
 
 1 I leave this as it stood in the first edition, but since it was written 
 I have heard from Tolstoy twice on the subject. First, my friend 
 Paul Boulanger wrote from Yasnaya Polydna (24th June 1901, O.S.), 
 during Tolstoy's illness as follows : 
 
 " You ask -why Leo NikoUyevitch did not mention Buskin in What 
 is Art? He asks me to reply that he did not do so: first, because 
 Ruskin attributes a special moral importance to beauty in art ; and, 
 secondly, because all his writings, rich as they are in depth of thought ( 
 are yet not bound together by any one ruling idea." 
 
 After Tolstoy's recovery, a letter (undated) reached me on 17th 
 August 1901, in which he wrote : 
 
 ' ' I have forgotten what I wrote you about Ruskin, and fear it 
 was not correct. I have lately read an excellent book about him, 
 Rutkin et la Bible, I think by Brunhes. Ruskin's chief limitation was 
 that he could never quite free himself from the Church-Christian 
 outlook upon life. At the time he commenced his work on social 
 questions, when he wrote Unto thit Last, he freed himself from the 
 dogmatic tradition, but a cloudy Church-Christian understanding of 
 the demands of life which made it possible for him to unite ethical 
 with esthetical ideals remained with him to the end and weakened 
 his message. It was also weakened by the artificiality, and conse- 
 quent obscurity, of his poetic style. Do not imagine that I deny the 
 work of this great man, who has quite rightly been called a prophet. 
 I always was charmed and am charmed by him, but I point out 
 spots which exist even on the sun. He is specially good when a wise 
 writer, in accord with him, makes extracts from him, as is done in 
 Ruskin et la Bible (which read), but to read all Ruskin consecutively, 
 as I did, greatly weakens his effect."
 
 42 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 own satisfaction does not himself feel what he wishes to 
 express a resistance immediately springs up" (p. 154); 
 and again, " In such transmission to others of the feelings 
 that have arisen in him, he (the artist) will find his happi- 
 ness " (p. 195). Tolstoy sweeps over a far wider range of 
 thought, but he and Morris are not opposed. Morris was 
 emphasising part of what Tolstoy is implying. 
 
 But to return to the difficulties of Tolstoy's task. There 
 is one, not yet mentioned, lurking in the hearts of most of 
 us. We have enjoyed works of 'art.' We have been in- 
 terested by the information conveyed in a novel, or we have 
 been thrilled by an unexpected ' effect ' ; have admired the 
 exactitude with which real life has been reproduced, or 
 have had our feelings touched by allusions to, or imitations 
 of, works old German legends, Greek myths, or Hebrew 
 poetry which moved us long ago, as they moved genera- 
 tions before us. And we thought all this was ' art.' Not 
 clearly understanding what art is and wherein its importance 
 lies, we were not only attached to these things, but attributed 
 importance to them, calling them ' artistic ' and f beautiful ' 
 without well knowing what we meant by those words. 
 
 But here is a book that obliges us to clear our minds. It 
 challenges us to define ' art ' and ' beauty,' and to say what 
 grounds we have for attaching importance to these things that 
 happen to please us. 
 
 As to beauty, we find that the definition given by esthetic 
 writers amounts merely to this, that " Beauty is a kind of 
 pleasure received by us, not having personal advantage for 
 its object." But it follows from this that ' beauty ' is a matter 
 of taste, differing among different people ; and to attach 
 special importance to what pleases me (and others who have 
 had the same sort of training that I have had) is merely 
 to repeat the old, old mistake which so divides human 
 society : it is like declaring that my race is the best race, my 
 nation the best nation, my Church the best Church, and my 
 family the best family. It indicates ignorance and selfishness.
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 43 
 
 But " truth angers those whom it does not convince " ; 
 there are people who do not wish to understand these things. 
 It seems, at first, as though Tolstoy were obliging us to 
 sacrifice something valuable. We do not realise that we are 
 being helped to select the best art, but we do feel that we 
 are being deprived of our sense of satisfaction in Rudyard 
 Kipling. 
 
 Both the magnitude and the difficulty of the task were 
 therefore very great, but they have been surmounted in a 
 marvellous manner. In its construction, in co-ordination in 
 concise form of many converging thoughts, this is, probably, 
 the most masterly of all Tolstoy's works. Of the effect the 
 book has had on me personally, I can only say that, though 
 sensitive to some forms of art, I was, when I took it up, 
 much in the dark on questions of esthetic philosophy ; when 
 I had done with it, I had grasped the main solution of the 
 problem so clearly that, though I subsequently read a number 
 of conflicting opinions on the subject, I never again became 
 perplexed upon the central issues. 
 
 Tolstoy was indeed peculiarly qualified for the task he has 
 accomplished. It was after many years of work as a writer of 
 fiction, and when he was already standing in the very fore- 
 most rank of European novelists, that he found himself com- 
 pelled to face, in deadly earnest, the deepest problems of 
 human life. He not only could not go on writing books, but 
 he felt he could not live, unless he found clear guidance, so 
 that he might walk sure-footedly and know the purpose and 
 meaning of his life. Not as a mere question of speculative 
 curiosity but as a matter of vital necessity, he devoted years 
 to re-discover the truths which underlie all religion. 
 
 To fit him for this task he possessed great knowledge of 
 men and books, a wide experience of life, a knowledge of 
 languages, and a freedom from bondage to any authority but 
 that of reason and conscience. He was pinned to no thirty-nine 
 articles, and was in receipt of no retaining fee which he was 
 not prepared to sacrifice. Another gift, rare among men of
 
 44 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 his position, was his wonderful sincerity, and (due, I think, 
 to that sincerity) an amazing power of looking at the 
 phenomena of our complex and artificial life with the eyes 
 of a little child ; going straight to the real, obvious facts 
 of the case and brushing aside the sophistries, the conven- 
 tionalities, and the ' authorities ' by which they are obscured. 
 
 He commenced the task when he was about fifty years 
 of age, and during the next twenty years produced a dozen 
 philosophical or scientific works of first-rate importance, 1 
 besides many stories and short articles. 
 
 And all this time the problems of Art : What is Art ? 
 What importance is due to it ? How is it related to the 
 rest of life ? were working in his mind. He was a great 
 artist, often upbraided for having abandoned his art. He, of 
 all men, was bound to clear his thoughts on this perplexing 
 subject and to express them. His whole philosophy of life 
 the " religious perception " to which, with such tremen- 
 dous labour and effort, he had attained forbade him to 
 detach art from life, and place it in a water-tight compart- 
 ment where it should not act on life or be re-acted upon 
 by life. 
 
 Life to him is rational. It has a clear aim and purpose, 
 discernible by the aid of reason and conscience. And no 
 human activity can be fully understood or rightly appreciated 
 until the central purpose of life is perceived. 
 
 You cannot piece together a puzzle-map as long as you 
 keep one bit in a wrong place, but when the pieces all fit 
 together you have a demonstration that they are all in their 
 right places. Tolstoy used that simile years ago when ex- 
 plaining how the comprehension of the text, " resist not him 
 that is evil," enabled him to perceive the reasonableness of 
 Christ's teaching, which had long baffled him. So it is with 
 the problem of Art. Wrongly understood, it will tend to 
 confuse and perplex your whole comprehension of life. But 
 the clue supplied by true " religious perception " enables you 
 1 For a list of these see the article, Leo Tolstoy, p. 21 of this book.
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO ^WHAT IS ART?" 45 
 
 to place art so that it shall fit in with a right understanding 
 of politics, economics, sex-relationships, science, and all other 
 phases of human activity. 
 
 The basis on which the work rests is a perception of the 
 meaning of human life. This was lost sight of by some of 
 the reviewers, who, when the book first appeared, misrepre- 
 sented what Tolstoy said, and then demonstrated how stupid 
 he would have been had he said what they attributed to him. 
 Leaving his premises and arguments untouched, they dis- 
 sented from various conclusions as though it were all a mere 
 question of taste. But such criticism can lead to nothing. 
 Discussions as to why one man likes pears and another pre- 
 fers meat do not help towards finding a definition of what 
 is essential in nourishment ; and, just so, " the solution of 
 questions of taste in art does not help to make clear 
 what this particular human activity which we call art really 
 consists in." 
 
 The object of the following summary of a few main points 
 is to help the reader to avoid pitfalls into which many 
 reviewers have fallen. It aims at being no more than a bare 
 statement of the positions for more than that the reader 
 must turn to the book itself. 
 
 Let it be granted at the outset that Tolstoy writes for 
 those who have ears to hear. He seldom pauses to safeguard 
 himself against the captious critic, and cares little for minute 
 verbal accuracy. For instance, on page 144, 1 he mentions 
 " Paris," where an English writer (even one who knew to what 
 an extent Paris is the art centre of France, and how many 
 artists flock thither from Russia, America, and all ends of the 
 earth) would have been almost sure to say " France," for fear 
 of being thought to exaggerate. One needs some alertness 
 of mind to follow Tolstoy in his task of compressing so large 
 a subject into so small a space. Moreover, he is an emphatic 
 writer, who says what he means, and even, I think, sometimes 
 
 1 The references relate to my translation in the "Scott Library" 
 edition.
 
 46 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 rather over-emphasises it. With this much warning let us 
 proceed to a brief summary of Tolstoy's view of art. 
 
 " Art is a human activity," and consequently does not exist 
 for its own sake, but is valuable or objectionable in propor- 
 tion as it is serviceable or harmful to mankind. The object 
 of this activity is to transmit to others feelings the artist has 
 experienced. Such feelings intentionally re-evoked and 
 successfully transmitted to others are the subject-matter 
 of all art. By certain external signs movements, lines, 
 colours, sounds, or arrangements of words an artist infects 
 other people so that they share his feelings. Thus " art 
 is a means of union among men, joining them together in 
 the same feelings." 
 
 In Chapters II. to V. we have an examination of various 
 theories which have taken art to be something other than 
 this, and step by step we are brought to the conclusion that 
 art is this, and nothing but this. 
 
 Having got our definition of art, we first consider art inde- 
 pendently of its subject-matter, i.e. without asking whether 
 the feelings transmitted are good, bad, or indifferent. With- 
 out adequate expression there is no art, for there is no " infec- 
 tion," no transference to others of the author's feeling. The 
 test of art is infection. If an author has moved you so that 
 you feel as he felt, if you are so united to him in feeling that 
 it seems to you that he has expressed just what you have 
 long wished to express, the work that has so infected you is 
 a work of art. 
 
 In this sense it is true that art has nothing to do with 
 morality ; for the test lies in the infection, and not in any 
 consideration of the goodness or badness of the emotions con- 
 veyed. Thus the test of art is an internal one. The activity 
 of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his 
 sense of hearing or sight another man's expression of feeling, 
 is capable of experiencing the emotion that moved the man 
 who expressed it. We all share the same common human 
 nature, and in this sense, at least, are sons of one Father.
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 47 
 
 To take the simplest example : a man laughs, and another, 
 who hears, becomes merry ; or a man weeps, and another, 
 who hears, feels sorrow. But note in passing that it does not 
 amount to art "if a man infects others directly, immediately, 
 at the very time he experiences the feeling : if he causes 
 another man to yawn when he himself cannot help yawning," 
 etc. Art begins when some one, with the object of making 
 others share his feeling, expresses that feeling by certain ex- 
 ternal indications. 
 
 This faculty of being infected by the expression of another 
 man's emotions is possessed by all normal human beings. 
 For a plain man of unperverted taste, living in contact with 
 nature, with animals, and with his fellow-men, say, for "a 
 country peasant of unperverted taste, this is as easy as it is 
 for an animal of unspoilt scent to follow the trace he needs." 
 And he will know indubitably whether a work presented to 
 him does, or does not, unite him in feeling with the author. 
 But very many people " of our circle " (upper and middle- 
 class society) live such unnatural lives, in such conventional 
 relations to the people around them, and in such artificial 
 surroundings, that they have lost "that simple feeling . . . 
 that sense of infection with another's feeling compelling us 
 to joy in another's gladness, to sorrow in another's grief, and 
 to mingle souls with another which is the essence of art." 
 Such people, therefore, have no inner test by which to recog- 
 nise a work of art ; and they will always be mistaking other 
 things for art, and seeking for external guides, such as the 
 opinions of 'recognised authorities.' Or they will mistake 
 for art something that produces a merely physiological effect : 
 lulling or exciting them ; or some intellectual puzzle that 
 gives them something to think about. 
 
 But if most people of the 'cultured crowd' are impervious 
 to true art, is it really possible that a common Russian 
 country peasant, for instance, whose work-days are filled with 
 agricultural labour, and whose brief leisure is largely taken up 
 by his family life and by his participation in the affairs of the
 
 48 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 village commune is it possible that he can recognise and be 
 touched by works of art ? Certainly it is ! Just as in ancient 
 Greece crowds assembled to hear the poems of Homer, so 
 to-day in Russia, as in many countries and many ages, the 
 Gospel parables, and much else of the highest art, are gladly 
 heard by the common people. And this does not refer to 
 any superstitious use of the Bible, but to its use as literature. 
 
 Not only do normal labouring country people possess the 
 capacity to be infected by good art " the epic of Genesis, 
 folk-legends, fairy-tales, folk-songs, etc.," but they them- 
 selves produce songs, stories, dances, decorations, etc., which 
 are works of true art. Take as examples the works of Burns 
 or Bunyan, and the peasant women's song mentioned in 
 Chapter XIV. of What is Art? ; or some of those melodies 
 produced by the negro slaves on the southern plantations, 
 which have touched, and still touch, many of us with the 
 emotions felt by their unknown and unpaid composers. 
 
 The one great quality which makes a work of art truly 
 contagious is its sincerity. If an artist is really actuated by a 
 feeling, and is strongly impelled to communicate that feeling 
 to other people not for money or fame or anything else, but 
 because he feels he must impart it then he will not be 
 satisfied till he has found a clear way of expressing it. And 
 the man who is not borrowing his feelings, but has drawn 
 what he expresses from the depths of his nature, is sure to be 
 original, for in the same way that no two people have exactly 
 similar faces or forms, no two people have exactly similar 
 minds or souls. 
 
 That, in brief outline, is what Tolstoy says about art con- 
 sidered apart from its subject-matter. And this is how 
 certain critics have met it. They say that when Tolstoy says 
 the test of art is internal, he must mean that it is external. 
 When he says that country peasants have in the past appre- 
 ciated, and do still appreciate, works of the highest art, he 
 means that the way to detect a work of art is to see what 
 is apparently most popular among the masses. Go into the
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 49 
 
 streets or music-halls of the cities in any particular country 
 and year, and observe what is most frequently sung, shouted, 
 or played on the barrel-organs. It may happen to be 
 
 " Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay," 
 or, 
 
 " We don't want to fight, 
 Bnt, by Jingo, if we do ! " 
 
 But whatever it is, you may at once declare these songs to be 
 the highest musical art, without even pausing to ask to what 
 they owe their vogue : what actress, or singer, or politician, 
 or wave of patriotic passion has conduced to their popularity ! 
 Nor need you consider whether that popularity is not merely 
 temporary and local. Tolstoy has said that works of the 
 highest art are understood by unperverted country peasants, 
 and here are things which are popular with the mob ergo, 
 these things must be the highest art. The critics then pro- 
 ceed to say that such a test is utterly absurd. And on this 
 point we may agree with the critics. 
 
 Some of these writers commence their articles by saying 
 that Tolstoy is a most profound thinker, a great prophet, an 
 intellectual force, etc. Yet when Tolstoy, in his emphatic 
 way, makes the sweeping remark that "good art always 
 pleases every one," the critics do not read on to find out 
 what he means, but reply : " No ! good art does not please 
 every one ; some people are colour-blind, and some are deaf, 
 or have no ear for music." 
 
 It is as though a man strenuously arguing a point -were to 
 say, " Every one knows that two and two make four," and a 
 boy who did not at all see what the speaker was driving at 
 were to reply : " No, our new-born baby doesn't know it ! " 
 It would be true enough, and would distract attention from 
 the subject in hand, but it would not elucidate matters. 
 
 There is, of course, a verbal contradiction between the 
 statements that " good art always pleases every one " 
 (p. 1 00), and the remark concerning " people of our circle,"
 
 50 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 who, artists and public and critics, " with very few excep- 
 tions . . . cannot distinguish true works of art from counter- 
 feits, but continually mistake for real art the worst and most 
 artificial" (p. 151). But I venture to think that no unpre- 
 judiced and intelligent person, reading the book carefully, 
 should fail to reach the author's meaning. 
 
 A point to be well noted is the distinction between science 
 and art. " Science investigates and brings to human per- 
 ception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a 
 given time and society consider most important. Art trans- 
 mits these truths from the region of perception to the region 
 of emotion" (p. 102). Science is an "activity of the 
 understanding which demands preparation and a certain 
 sequence of knowledge, so that one cannot learn trigo- 
 nometry before knowing geometry." "The business of art," 
 on the other hand, "lies just in this: to make that under- 
 stood and felt which in the form of an argument might be 
 incomprehensible and inaccessible" (p. 102). It "infects 
 any man, whatever his plane of development," and "(as 
 is said in the Gospel) the hindrance to understanding the 
 best and highest feelings does not at all lie in deficiency 
 of development or learning, but, on the contrary, in false 
 development and false learning" (pp. 102, 103). Science 
 and art are frequently blended in one work, e.g. in the 
 Gospel elucidation of Christ's comprehension of life, or, to 
 take a modern instance, in Henry George's elucidation of 
 the land question in Social Problems. 
 
 The class distinction to which Tolstoy repeatedly alludes 
 needs some explanation. The position of the lower classes 
 in England and in Russia is different. In Russia a much 
 larger number of people live on the verge of starvation, 
 the condition of the factory-hands is much worse than 
 in England, and there are many glaring cases of brutal 
 cruelty inflicted on the peasants by the officials, the police, 
 or the military ; but in Russia a far greater proportion of the 
 population live in the country, and a peasant usually has
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 51 
 
 his own house and tills his share of the communal lands. 
 The " unperverted country peasant " of whom Tolstoy 
 speaks, is a man who perhaps suffers grievous want when 
 there is a bad harvest in his province, but he is a man 
 accustomed to the experiences of a natural life, to the 
 management of his own affairs, and to a real voice in the 
 arrangements of the village commune. The Government 
 interferes from time to time to collect its taxes by force, to 
 take the young men for soldiers, or to maintain the ' rights ' 
 of the upper classes ; but otherwise the peasant is free to do 
 what he sees to be necessary and reasonable. On the other 
 hand, English labourers are, for the most part, not so poor, 
 they have more legal rights, and they have votes ; but a far 
 larger number of them live in towns and are engaged in 
 unnatural occupations, while even those that do live in touch 
 with nature are usually mere wage-earners tilling other 
 men's land, and living often in abject submission to the 
 farmer, the parson, or the lady-bountiful. They are de- 
 pendent on an employer for daily bread, and the condition 
 of a wage-labourer is as unnatural as that of a landlord. 
 
 The tyranny of the Petersburg bureaucracy is more dra- 
 matic but less omnipresent, and is probably far less fatal to 
 the capacity to enjoy art. than the tyranny of our respectable, 
 self-satisfied, and property-loving middle-class. I am, there- 
 fore, afraid that we have no great number of " unperverted " 
 country labourers to compare with those of whom Tolstoy 
 speaks, and some of whom I have known personally. But 
 the truth Tolstoy elucidates lies far too deep in human nature 
 to be infringed by such differences of local circumstance. 
 Whatever those circumstances may be, the fact remains that 
 in proportion as a man approaches towards the condition not 
 only of " earning his subsistence by some kind of labour," 
 but of " living on all its sides the life natural and proper 
 to mankind," his capacity to appreciate true art tends to 
 increase. On the other hand, when a class settles down into 
 an artificial way of life loses touch with nature, becomes
 
 52 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 confused in its perceptions of what is good and what is bad, 
 and prefers the condition of a parasite to that of a producer 
 its capacity to appreciate true art must diminish. Losing all 
 clear perception of the meaning of life, such people are 
 necessarily left without any criterion which will enable them 
 to distinguish good from bad art, and they are sure to follow 
 eagerly after beauty, i.e. " that which pleases them." 
 
 The artists of our society can usually only reach people of 
 the upper and middle classes. But is the great artist he 
 who delights a select audience of his own day and class, or 
 he whose works link generation to generation and race to 
 race in a common bond of feeling ? Surely art should fulfil its 
 purpose as completely as possible. A work of art that united 
 every one with the author and with one another, would be 
 perfect art. Tolstoy, in his emphatic way, speaks of works 
 of " universal " art, and (though the profound critics hasten 
 to inform us that no work of art ever reached everybody) 
 certainly the more nearly a work of art approaches to such 
 expression of feeling that every one may be infected by it, 
 the nearer (apart from all question of subject-matter) it 
 approaches perfection. 
 
 But now as to subject-matter. The subject-matter of art 
 consists of feelings which can be spread from man to man, 
 feelings which are "contagious" or "infectious." Is it of 
 no importance what feelings increase and multiply among 
 men ? 
 
 One man feels that submission to the authority of his 
 Church, and belief in all that it teaches him, is good ; another 
 is imbued by a sense of each man's duty to think with his 
 own head : to use for his guidance in life the reason and 
 conscience given him. One man feels that his nation ought 
 to wipe out in blood the shame of a defeat inflicted on her ; 
 another feels that we are brothers, sons of one spirit, and 
 that the slaughter of man by man is always wrong. One 
 man feels that the most desirable thing in life is the satis- 
 faction obtainable by the love of women ; another man feels
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART>" 53 
 
 that sex-love is an entanglement and a snare, hindering his 
 real work in life. And each of these, if he possess an artist's 
 gift of expression and if the feeling be really his own and 
 sincere, may infect other men. But some of these feelings 
 will benefit and some will harm mankind, and the more 
 widely they are spread the greater will be their effect. 
 
 Art unites men. Surely it is desirable that the feelings in 
 which it unites them should be " the best and highest to 
 which men have risen," or at least should not run contrary 
 to our perception of what makes for the well-being of our- 
 selves and of others. And our perception of what makes 
 for the well-being of ourselves and of others is what Tolstoy 
 calls our "religious perception." 
 
 Therefore the subject-matter of what we, in our day, can 
 esteem as being the best art, can be of two kinds only : 
 
 (1) Feelings flowing from the highest perception now 
 attainable by man, of our right relation to our neighbour and 
 to the Source from which we come. Of such art, Dickens's 
 Christmas Carol, uniting us in a more vivid sense of compas- 
 sion and love, is a ready example. 
 
 (2) The simple feelings of common life, accessible to every 
 one, provided that they are such as do not hinder progress 
 towards well-being. Art of this kind makes us realise to how 
 great an extent we already are members one of another, 
 sharing the feelings of one common human nature. 
 
 The success of a very primitive novel, the story of Joseph, 
 which made its way into the sacred books of the Jews, spread 
 from land to land and from age to age, and continues to be 
 read to-day among people quite free from bibliolatry shows 
 how nearly " universal " may be the appeal of this kind of 
 art. This branch includes all harmless jokes, folk-stories, 
 nursery rhymes, and even dolls, if only the author or designer 
 has expressed a feeling (tenderness, pleasure, humour, or 
 what not) so as to infect others. 
 
 But how are we to know what are the ' best ' feelings ? 
 What is good ? and what is evil ? This is decided by
 
 54 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 religious perception. Some such perception exists in every 
 human being ; there is always something he approves of, 
 and something he disapproves of. Reason and conscience 
 are always present, active or latent, as long as man lives. 
 Miss Flora Shaw tells that the most degraded cannibal she 
 ever met, drew the line at eating his own mother : nothing 
 would induce him to entertain the idea, his moral sense was 
 revolted by the suggestion. In most societies the religious 
 perception to which they have advanced the foremost 
 stage which has been discerned in mankind's long march 
 towards perfection has been clearly expressed by some one, 
 and more or less consciously accepted as an ideal by the 
 many. But there are transition periods in history when the 
 worn-out formularies of a past age have ceased to satisfy 
 men, or have become so incrusted with superstitions that 
 their original brightness is lost. The religious perception 
 that is dawning may not yet have found such expression as 
 to be generally understood, but for all that it exists, and 
 shows itself by compelling men to repudiate beliefs that 
 satisfied their forefathers, the outward and visible signs of 
 which are still endowed and dominant long after their spirit 
 has taken refuge in temples not made with hands. 
 
 At such times it is difficult for men to understand each 
 other, for the very words needed to express the deepest ex- 
 periences of men's consciousness mean different things to 
 different men. So, among us to-day, to many minds ' faith ' 
 means 'credulity,' and 'God' suggests a person of the male sex, 
 father of one only-begotten son, and creator of the universe. 
 
 This is why Tolstoy's clear and rational religious percep- 
 tion, expressed in the books referred to on a previous page, 
 is frequently spoken of by people who have not grasped it, as 
 'mysticism.' 
 
 The narrow materialist is shocked to find that Tolstoy 
 will not confine himself to the ' objective ' view of life. 
 Encountering in himself that ' inward voice ' which compels 
 us all to choose between good and evil, Tolstoy refuses to be
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 55 
 
 diverted from a matter of immediate and vital importance 
 to him by discussions as to the derivation of the external 
 manifestations of conscience which biologists are able to 
 detect in remote forms of life. The mystic, 1 on the other 
 hand, shrinks from Tolstoy's desire to try all things by the 
 light of reason, to depend on nothing vague, and to accept 
 nothing on authority. The man who does not trust his own 
 reason, fears that life thus squarely faced will prove less worth 
 having than it is when clothed in mist. 
 
 In this work, however, Tolstoy does not recapitulate at 
 length what he has said before. He does not pause to re- 
 explain why he condemns Patriotism, i.e. each man's pre- 
 ference for the predominance of his own country, which leads 
 to the murder of man by man in war ; or Churches, which 
 are sectarian, i.e. which (striving to assert that your doxy 
 is heterodoxy, but that our doxy is orthodoxy) make external 
 authorities (Popes, Bibles, Councils) supreme, and cling to 
 superstitions (their own miracles, legends, and myths), thus 
 separating themselves from communion with the rest of 
 mankind. Nor does he re-explain why he (like Christ) says 
 " pitiable is your plight, ye rich," who live artificial lives, 
 maintainable only by the unbrotherly use of force (police 
 and soldiers), but "blessed are ye poor," who, by your way 
 of life, are within easier reach of brotherly conditions if 
 you will but trust to reason and conscience and change 
 the direction of your hearts and of your labour: working 
 no more primarily from fear or greed, but seeking Jtrst the 
 kingdom of righteousness, in which all good things will be 
 added unto you. He merely summarises it all in a few 
 sentences, defining the "religious perception" of to-day, 
 
 1 As the term ' mystic ' is used in more than one sense in English, 
 I must explain that I use it to denote one who believes in a wisdom 
 "sacredly obscure or secret" (Chambers's Dictionary), or "not dis- 
 criminated or tested by the reason " (Century Dictionary). This is 
 the sense in which it would generally be used in foreign languages, 
 and in which Tolstoy uses the word.
 
 56 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 which alone can decide for us " the degree of importance 
 both of the feelings transmitted by art, and of the informa- 
 tion transmitted by science." 
 
 " The religious perception of our time, in its widest and 
 most practical application, is the consciousness that our well- 
 being, both material and spiritual, individual and collective, 
 temporal and eternal, lies in the growth of brotherhood 
 among men in their loving harmony with one another" 
 (p. 159). 
 
 And again : 
 
 "However differently in form people belonging to our 
 Christian world may define the destiny of man : whether 
 they see it in human progress in whatever sense of the 
 words, in the union of all men in a socialistic realm, or in 
 the establishment of a commune ; whether they look forward 
 to the union of mankind under the guidance of one universal 
 Church, or to the federation of the world however various 
 in form their definitions of the destination of human life may 
 be, all men in our times already admit that the highest well- 
 being attainable by men is to be reached by their union with 
 one another" (p. 188). 
 
 This is the foundation on which the whole work is based. 
 It follows necessarily from this perception that we should 
 consider as most important in science "investigations into 
 the results of good and bad actions, considerations of the 
 reasonableness or unreasonableness of human institutions and 
 beliefs, considerations of how human life should be lived in 
 order to obtain the greatest well-being for each ; as to what 
 one may and should, and what one cannot and should not 
 believe ; how to subdue one's passions, and how to acquire 
 the habit of virtue." This is the science that occupied the 
 greatest sages of the ancient world, and it is precisely to 
 this kind of scientific investigation that Tolstoy has devoted 
 most of the last twenty years, and for the sake of which the 
 author of Resurrection is often said to have abandoned art. 
 
 Since science, like art, is "a human activity," that science
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 57 
 
 best deserves our esteem, best deserves to be "chosen, 
 tolerated, approved, and diffused," which treats of what is 
 supremely important to man ; which deals with urgent, vital, 
 inevitable problems of actual life. Such science as this 
 brings " to the consciousness of men the truths that flow 
 from the religious perception of our times," and "indicates 
 the various methods of applying this consciousness to life." 
 " Art should transform this perception into feeling." 
 
 Experimental science studies questions of pure curiosity, 
 or things harmful to mankind (such as quick-firing cannon), 
 or technical improvements which in a better state of society 
 would lighten the workers' burden. But, even at its best, 
 such science "cannot serve as a basis for art/' for it is 
 occupied with subjects unrelated to human conduct. 
 
 Naturally enough, the last chapter of the book deals with 
 the relation between science and art. And the conclusion 
 is, that : 
 
 " The destiny of art in our time is to transmit from the 
 realm of reason to the realm of feeling, the truth that well- 
 being for men consists in being united together, and to set 
 up in place of the existing reign of force, that kingdom of 
 God i.e. of love which we all recognise to be the highest 
 aim of human life." 
 
 And this art of the future will, in subject-matter, not 
 be poorer, but far richer, than the art of to-day. From the 
 lullaby that will delight millions of people, generation after 
 generation to the highest religious art, dealing with strong, 
 rich, and varied emotions flowing from a fresh outlook upon 
 life and all its problems, the field open for good art is enormous. 
 With so much to say that is urgently important to all, the 
 art of the future will, in matter of form also, be far superior 
 to our art in " clearness, beauty, simplicity, and compression " 
 (p. 194). 
 
 For beauty (i.e. " that which pleases ") though it depends 
 on taste, and can furnish no criterion for art will be a 
 natural characteristic of work done, not for hire nor even
 
 58 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 for fame, but because men, living a natural and healthy life, 
 wish to share the " highest spiritual strength which passes 
 through them " with the greatest possible number of others. 
 The feelings such an artist wishes to share, he will transmit 
 in a way that will please him, and that will, therefore, please 
 other men who share his nature. 
 
 In the subject-matter of art that really lives, morality is 
 as unavoidable as in life itself. It is in the nature of things 
 and we cannot escape it. 
 
 In a society where each man sets himself to obtain wealth, 
 the difficulty of obtaining an honest living tends to become 
 greater and greater. The more keenly a society pants to 
 obtain "that which pleases," and puts this forward as the 
 first and great consideration, the more puerile and worthless 
 will their art become. But in a society which seeks, pri- 
 marily, for right relations between its members, an abundance 
 will be obtainable for all ; and when " religious perception " 
 guides a people's art beauty inevitably results, as has always 
 been the case when men have seized a fresh perception of 
 life and of its purpose. 
 
 An illustration which Tolstoy struck out of the work while 
 it was being printed, may serve to illustrate how, with the 
 aid of the principles explained above, we may judge of the 
 merits of any work professing to be art. 
 
 Take Romeo and Juliet. The conventional view is that 
 Shakespear is the greatest of artists, and that Romeo and Juliet 
 is one of his good plays. That is the way certain people feel 
 about it ; they are the ' authorities,' and to doubt their 
 dictum is to show that you know nothing about art. If 
 Tolstoy does not agree with them in their estimate of Shake- 
 spear, Tolstoy must be wrong ! 
 
 But now let us apply Tolstoy's view of art to Romeo and 
 Juliet. He does not deny that it infects. "Let us admit 
 that it is a work of art, that it infects (though it is so arti- 
 ficial that it can infect only those who have been carefully 
 educated thereunto) ; but what are the feelings it transmits ? "
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 59 
 
 That is to say, judging by the internal test Tolstoy admits 
 that Romeo and Juliet unites him to its author and to other 
 people in feeling. But the work is very far from being one 
 of " universal " art only a small minority of people ever 
 have cared, or ever will care, for it. Even in England, or 
 even in the layer of European society it is best adapted to 
 reach, it only touches a minority, and does not approach the 
 universality attained by the story of Joseph and by many 
 pieces of folk-lore. 
 
 But perhaps the subject-matter, the feeling with which 
 Romeo and Juliet infects those whom it does reach, lifts it 
 into the class of the highest religious art ? Not so. The 
 feeling is that of the attractiveness of love at first sight. A 
 girl of fourteen, and a young man, meet at an aristocratic 
 party, where there is feasting and pleasure and idleness ; 
 and, without knowing each other's minds at all, they fall in 
 love as the birds and beasts do. If any feeling is transmitted 
 to us, it is the feeling that there is a pleasure in these things. 
 Somewhere in most natures there dwells, dominant or dor- 
 mant, an inclination to let such physical sexual attraction 
 guide our course in life. To give it a plain name it is " sen- 
 suality." " How can I, father or mother of a daughter of 
 Juliet's age, wish that those foul feelings which the play 
 transmits should be communicated to my daughter ? And if 
 the feelings transmitted by the play are bad, how can I call 
 it good in subject-matter ? " 
 
 But, objects a friend, the moral of Romeo and Juliet is ex- 
 cellent. See what disasters followed from the physical love 
 at first sight. But that is quite another matter. It is the 
 feelings with which you are infected when reading, and not 
 any moral you can deduce, that is subject-matter of art. 
 Pondering upon the consequences that flow from Romeo and 
 Juliet's behaviour may belong to the domain of moral science, 
 but not to that of art. 
 
 I have hesitated to use an illustration Tolstoy struck out, 
 but I think it serves its purpose. No doubt there are other,
 
 60 
 
 subordinate, feelings (e.g. humour) to be found in Romeo and 
 Juliet; but much in Shakespear that has been highly es- 
 teemed, and that occupies our brains, does not come under 
 Tolstoy's definition of art because, however ingenious the 
 reflections evoked may be, it is thought and not feeling that 
 is imparted. 
 
 Tried by such tests the enormous majority of the things 
 we have been taught to consider great works of art are found 
 wanting. Either they fail to infect (and attract merely by 
 being interesting, realistic, effectful, or by borrowing from 
 others) and are therefore not works of art at all ; or they are 
 works of " exclusive art," poor in form and capable of infect- 
 ing only a select audience trained and habituated to such 
 inferior art ; or they are bad in subject-matter, transmitting 
 feelings harmful to mankind. 
 
 But strive as we may to be clear and explicit, our approval 
 and disapproval is a matter of degree. The thought which 
 underlay the remark : " Why callest thou me good ? none is 
 good, save one, even God," applies, not to man only but to 
 all things human. 
 
 Tolstoy does not shrink from condemning his own artistic 
 productions ; with the exception of two short stories, 1 he 
 tells us, they are works of bad art. Take, for instance, the 
 novel Resurrection, of which he has, somewhere, spoken dis- 
 paragingly, as being " written in my former style." 2 What 
 does this mean ? The book is a masterpiece in its own line ; 
 it undoubtedly infects many people, and the feelings trans- 
 mitted are, in the main, such as Tolstoy approves of : in fact, 
 they are the feelings to which his religious perception has 
 brought him. If for a moment lust is felt, the reaction follows 
 
 1 Both of which were written in the interval between War and 
 Peace and Anna Kartnvna (1869-1872) and during his school-teaching 
 period. 
 
 8 The remark quoted above referred to the book as it was originally 
 written. It was to so large an extent re-written in 1899, before its 
 publication, that the criticism only applies in a very limited degree to 
 he work now before the public.
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 61 
 
 as inevitably as in real life, and is transmitted with great 
 artistic power. Tolstoy approves of treating all the problems 
 of life, including the sex-question, quite plainly and explicitly. 
 To guide us in life we need, not ignorance nor evasion of 
 facts but soundness of religious perception, clearness of 
 thought, and a right direction and development of feeling. 
 In subject-matter, then, Resurrection is as clearly a work of 
 religious art as any novel mentioned by Tolstoy in Chapter 
 XVI. of What is Art ? And with regard to the manner in 
 which the matter is presented, I think it may safely be said 
 that in " clearness," as well as in " simplicity and compres- 
 sion," it stands easily first among Tolstoy's novels. Of its 
 " individuality and sincerity," to say that it equals his former 
 works is to say that it is unsurpassed in those qualities by 
 any novel we possess. Why the work does not fully satisfy 
 Tolstoy is, I think, because it is a work of "exclusive art," 
 laden with details of time and place. " Simplicity and com- 
 pression " it possesses, but not in the degree required from 
 works of " universal " art. It is a novel : appealing mainly 
 to the class that has leisure for novel-reading because it 
 neglects to produce its own food, make its own clothes, or 
 build its own houses. But if these considerations apply to 
 Resurrection, they apply, with at least equal force, to all the 
 best novels extant. If Tolstoy is sometimes severe on others, 
 it must be admitted that he is at least as severe on himself, 
 and, to enable us to discern the comparative merits of different 
 works of art, we may use his principles without applying 
 them as exactingly as he does himself. 
 
 There is one defect in Tolstoy's writings in general, which 
 needs to be noted. It is observable in his novels, but it is 
 more serious in his essays and in his philosophical works. 
 He does not write a style always easy to read. He seems to 
 expect a greater amount of strenuous co-operation from his 
 readers than can safely be looked for from the ordinary man. 
 His sentences are often long, sometimes extremely involved, 
 and occasionally they are even faulty in structure. The
 
 62 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 strenuous labour he puts into his work all goes to elucidate 
 his perception of the matter, and the sequence of the ideas. 
 For the mere phraseology he seems to trust to his great 
 power of expression, and to have as little inclination to polish 
 it on a final revision as when writing the first rough draft. 
 He will re-shape an article again and again if the thoughts 
 expressed do not satisfy him. But he will, sometimes, leave 
 uncorrected a careless sentence which may baffle many an 
 unwary reader. This characteristic was not noticeable in his 
 earlier works, when the matter he wrote about was less 
 absorbingly important. 1 He certainly now cares nothing at 
 all for the elegant verbosity so highly prized by writers 
 who, having nothing particular to express, attach supreme 
 importance to their power of expression. But his readers 
 have occasionally, especially in such a book as On Life, to pay 
 for his indifference. 
 
 What is Art? itself is a work of science, though many 
 passages, and even some whole chapters, appeal to us as 
 works of art, and we feel the contagion of the author's hope, 
 his anxiety to serve the cause of truth and love, his indigna- 
 tion (sometimes rather sharply expressed) at whatever blocks 
 the path of progress, and his contempt for much that the 
 1 cultured crowd ' in our erudite, perverted society have 
 persuaded themselves, and would vain persuade others, is the 
 highest art. 
 
 One result which follows inevitably from Tolstoy's view (and 
 which illustrates how widely his views differ from the fashion- 
 able esthetic mysticism), is that art is not stationary but pro- 
 gressive. It is true that our highest religious perception 
 found expression eighteen hundred years ago, and then 
 served as the basis of an art which is still unmatched ; and 
 
 1 Indeed, in the earlier period of his literary activity he devoted 
 much attention to style, and spent great pains upon the matter. 
 About the period at which he wrote Three Deaths (1859), it is said, 
 the style of his great artistic contemporary, Tourge"nef, exercised 
 much influence on his own.
 
 AN INTRODUCTION TO "WHAT IS ART?" 63 
 
 that similar cases can be instanced from the farther East. 
 But allowing for such great exceptions to which, not in- 
 aptly, the term ' inspiration ' has been specially applied 
 the subject-matter of art improves, though long periods of 
 time may have to be viewed to make this obvious. Our 
 power of verbal expression, for instance, may be no better 
 now than it was in the days of David, but we must no 
 longer esteem as good in subject-matter poems which appeal 
 to the Eternal to destroy a man's private or national foes ; 
 for we have reached a religious perception which bids us 
 have no foes, and the ultimate source (undefinable by us) 
 from which this consciousness has come, is what we mean 
 when we speak of God. 
 
 Tolstoy's What is Art? both in Kussian and in my translation, 
 appeared in separate parts during the first half of 1898. The foregoing 
 Introduction first appeared about a year later in the " Scott Library " 
 edition, issued in April 1899. 
 
 John C. Kenworthy in Tolstoy, His Life and Works a book parts of 
 which may be commended for a clear and trenchant statement of the 
 relation of religion to economics expresses an opinion that " Dr. 
 Traill and Mr. Spielmann were put off the track of Tolstoy's real 
 thought " by my Introduction, in which, he says, " Tolstoy's spirit 
 is dissipated." But the articles by the gentlemen named appeared 
 in Literature, July 1898 months before my Introduction was com- 
 menced and, moreover, against J. C. Ken worthy's condemnation of 
 my essay may be set Tolstoy's approbation of it, for the latter wrote 
 me: "I have read your Introduction with great pleasure. You 
 have admirably and strongly expressed the fundamental thought of 
 the book."
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 
 
 [Written in reply to certain critics of What is Art?, this essay 
 unavoidably includes a brief re-statement of matters dealt with in 
 the foregoing essay. I ask the reader's pardon for repetitions notice- 
 able now that the two essays stand side by side. ] 
 
 THE forefathers of the scribes and Pharisees of old stoned 
 the prophets, and in more recent days so respectable an 
 organ as The Times has spoken with intolerance of men as 
 estimable as Macaulay, Cobden, Bright, and Abraham Lincoln. 
 History and experience alike show how difficult it is to treat 
 with fairness the prominent exponents of views we do not 
 share. 
 
 A striking instance of this is furnished by the palpable 
 unfairness of certain recent attacks on the philosophical 
 writings of Leo Tolstoy, a man whose views deserve, at least, 
 serious examination. 
 
 Tolstoy has had very great difficulty in presenting his 
 opinions (especially his religious and philosophic opinions) 
 to the world. Several of his books are totally prohibited in 
 Russia ; when printed in Russian at Geneva they were most 
 carelessly edited, and, missing the attention Tolstoy usually 
 devotes to his proof-sheets, contain errors that have proved a 
 stumbling-block to translators. Other works of his, permitted 
 in Russia, were tampered with by the Censor, who struck 
 out what Tolstoy wrote, and, worse still, sometimes inserted 
 words of his own. 
 
 But for non-Russian readers the heaviest blow to Tolstoy's 
 reputation as a clear and sane thinker, was struck, not by 
 Censor or by editor, but by translators who, if perhaps cap- 
 able of dealing with his stories, were incompetent to render 
 
 M
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 65 
 
 his philosophy. Versions of his most serious work appeared 
 containing much absolute nonsense. A comparison with the 
 original shows that the usual Russian double negative was 
 sometimes mistaken for the affirmative, and that the trans- 
 lations contained other almost incredible blunders. They 
 appeared at a time when readers, surprised that a novelist 
 should attempt philosophical work, were wondering whether 
 they ought to take Tolstoy seriously in his new role ; and 
 they caused many people to conclude that, as a philosopher, 
 he must not be taken seriously. Once created, such a pre- 
 judice is not easily broken down, and his subsequent works 
 have not received the serious attention they deserve. 
 
 A man who has spoken the truth as he saw it, under 
 constant risk of persecution ; who has had his works sup- 
 pressed or mutilated at home, and badly edited abroad ; who 
 has been translated so that he has appeared to assert what 
 he wished to deny such a man surely has a special claim 
 to scrupulously fair treatment at the hands of his reviewers. 
 But to show that this claim is not always recognised, it will 
 only be necessary to instance the reception accorded by 
 certain critics to the Count's last philosophical work, What 
 is Art? 
 
 Tolstoy's novels and stories, with the solitary exception 
 of the Kreutzer Sonata, have been very well received. It is 
 no mean tribute to his power of infecting his reader with 
 his own feelings, that though his last novel, Resurrection, 
 indicts fundamental principles of civil and criminal law in 
 the validity of which most men still firmly believe, it has yet 
 been welcomed with enthusiasm by a considerable part of 
 the Press and passed over in almost absolute silence by the 
 rest. Of attack on the book there has been next to none. 
 In fact, in this country, since Ralston, at Tourgenef s instiga- 
 tion, drew attention to him, and especially since Matthew 
 Arnold and William Dean Howells commended him to 
 English readers, Tolstoy's rank among the very foremost 
 writers of fiction has not been seriously questioned. His 
 
 E
 
 66 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 philosophical and scientific works, treating of human conduct, 
 activities, institutions, and beliefs, have had a different fate, 
 but even they met with some cordial appreciation. For 
 instance, on the appearance of What is Art ?, at a time when 
 it took some courage to say such a thing, A. B. Walkley 
 was prompt to assert that " this calmly and cogently reasoned 
 effort to put art on a new basis is a literary event of the first 
 importance." Another early and appreciative review of the 
 same work was G. Bernard Shaw's in the Daily Chronicle. 
 The opening sentences : " This book is a most effective booby 
 trap. It is written with so utter a contempt for the objec- 
 tions which the routine critic is sure to allege against it, that 
 many a dilettantist reviewer has already accepted it as a butt 
 set up by Providence . . ." precisely hit off one aspect of 
 the matter, for many of the reviewers had abstained entirely 
 from explaining Tolstoy's views, and contented themselves 
 with derision and denunciation. 
 
 For example, a leading article in Literature (30th July 1898) 
 accorded to the author of such " clotted nonsense," " dis- 
 tinction among aesthetic circle-squarers." After stating that 
 " there never was any reason for inferring . . . that Count 
 Tolstoi's opinions on the philosophy of art would be worth 
 the paper on which they are written " ; and that the ex- 
 pounder of these "fantastic doctrines surpasses all other 
 advocates of this same theory in perverse unreason," the 
 writer proceeds with an examination of "the melancholy 
 case of the eminent Russian novelist," and tells us that : 
 
 " The notion of turning for guidance to a Russian man 
 of letters of whom all we know, outside his literary record, 
 is that he has embraced Socialism on much the same grounds 
 of conviction as a Sunday afternoon listener to a Hyde 
 Park orator, and ' found religion ' in much the same spirit 
 as one of the ' Hallelujah lasses ' of the Salvation Army, 
 is on the face of it absurd. Nobody, however eminent as 
 a novelist . . . has any business to invite his fellow-men to 
 step with him outside the region of sanity . . . and sit down
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 67 
 
 beside him like Alice beside the Hatter or the March Hare 
 for the solemn examination of so lunatic a thesis as this." 
 
 All this is somewhat bewildering to those who have read 
 What is Art ? and understood it ; but light is thrown upon 
 the real state of the case by the following sentence from 
 the same article : " We respectfully but firmly decline his 
 proposal that we should study his opinions." 
 
 The respect is not very obvious, but the frankness of the 
 writer's admission that he will not study the views he is 
 denouncing is all that could be desired. It had cost Tolstoy 
 fifteen years of effort to produce and clarify his thesis. But, 
 as there are none so deaf as those who won't hear, we may 
 well believe that a man who would not study it, really did 
 not understand it. 
 
 To tell the simple truth, Tolstoy had said much that was 
 new and startling but that could not be quickly digested; 
 and he had expressed it in such a caustic manner, had been 
 so severe on critics, specialists, professional artists, and art 
 schools, as well as on whole groups of other people, from 
 spiritualists to scientists (and to fifty or more well-known 
 living people into the bargain), had, in fact, hit so freely and 
 so hard, that counter attacks of considerable asperity were 
 inevitable. It was only natural that people whose cherished 
 beliefs were ruthlessly trampled under foot should resist 
 with all their might. But were their blows effective, or did 
 they merely beat the air ? In order to answer this question 
 it will be necessary to take a representative criticism and 
 examine it with some care. It would be hardly fair to take 
 for this purpose one of the reviews that appeared while 
 the book was still new. It is true that one of the earliest 
 reviewers hailed it as being " the most important essay in 
 pure criticism of recent years, and destined to become a 
 classic," but most of the critics at that time had not begun 
 to realise this importance. Let us therefore rather take 
 the review that appeared in the April 1900 number of the 
 Quarterly Review, under the title : Tolstois Viervs of Art.
 
 68 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 First, however, it will be well to sketch in bare outline the 
 main position taken up by Tolstoy. This is the more neces- 
 sary as it is a task generally neglected by the reviewers. 
 
 No department of science, as Veron justly remarks, has 
 been more generally abandoned to the dreams of the meta- 
 physicians than esthetic philosophy. The task Tolstoy 
 undertook was to clear up " the frightful obscurity which 
 reigns in this region of speculation." 
 
 What is Art ? Its manifestations are " bounded on one 
 side by the practically useful and on the other by unsuccess- 
 ful attempts at art." But what working definition of Art 
 have we, that would enable us to feel sure that this or that 
 production of human activity is a work of art ? The answer 
 at first seems very simple to those "who talk without think- 
 ing." They are accustomed to say that " Art is such activity 
 as produces beauty." But this only shifts the matter a step. 
 We have now to ask for a working definition of beauty, and 
 on careful examination we find that this has nowhere been 
 given. Every attempt to define beauty objectively, as con- 
 sisting "either in utility, or in adjustment to a purpose, or 
 in symmetry, or in order, or in proportion, or in smoothness, 
 or in harmony of the parts, or in unity amid variety, or in 
 various combinations of these " (p. 38), has broken down 
 utterly, and we have nothing left but a subjective definition 
 which amounts to this, that beauty is " that which pleases 
 us " without evoking in us desire. In other words, " Beauty 
 is simply a certain kind of disinterested pleasure received by 
 us." This definition seems clear enough, but unfortunately 
 it is inexact, and can be widened out to include the pleasure 
 derived from drink, from food, from touching a delicate skin, 
 etc., as is done by Guyau, Kralik, and other estheticians. 
 
 A yet more serious trouble is, that different things please 
 different people. Instead of getting a solid basis for a science, 
 we get landed in confusion arising from the fact that tastes 
 differ. If we use the word beavty in our definition of art, 
 and if beauty means " that which pleases," and if different
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 69 
 
 things please different people our definition is useless. 
 One man will say a certain thing is a work of art because 
 it pleases him, another will reply that it is not a work of art 
 because he does not like it. 
 
 And this is precisely what has happened and is happening. 
 Is Walt Whitman a great poet ? Yes, says A, he is, because 
 I like his poems and agree with them. No, says B, he is not, 
 because I don't like his poems and disagree with them. 
 
 Thus the science of esthetics has as yet failed to get even 
 a start. It has not told us what art is, still less has it enabled 
 us to judge of the quality of art. " So that the whole exist- 
 ing science of esthetics fails to do what we might expect 
 from it, being a mental activity calling itself a science : 
 namely, it does not define the qualities and laws of art, or 
 of the beautiful (if that be the content of art), or the nature 
 of taste (if taste decides the question of art and its merit), 
 and then, on the basis of such definitions, acknowledge as art 
 those productions which correspond to these laws, and reject 
 those which do not come under them. But this science of 
 esthetics consists in first acknowledging a certain set of pro- 
 ductions to be art (because they please us), and then framing 
 such a theory of art that all these productions which please a 
 certain circle of people shall fit into it" (p. 41). 
 
 Such being the case, reasonable men should be not merely 
 ready but anxious to avoid the use of the word beauty in 
 framing their definition of art, and should select words which 
 mean the same thing to each of us who uses them. Yet, 
 strange to say, the estheticians, the specialists, and the f cul- 
 tured crowd ' cling tenaciously, and even fanatically, to the use 
 of a word which they cannot define in a serviceable manner. 
 They are as angry with any one who protests against its use 
 in a scientific definition, as the Scarboro' roughs 1 are with a 
 Quaker who says that men ought not to kill each other. 
 
 1 Written soon after the Rowntrees had been attacked by a patriotic 
 mob, whose feelings were harrowed by an attempt to hold a peace- 
 meeting.
 
 70 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 u As is always the case, the more cloudy and confused the 
 conception conveyed by a word, with the more aplomb and 
 self-assurance do people use that word, pretending that what 
 is understood by it is so simple and clear that it is not worth 
 while even to discuss what it actually means. This is how 
 matters of orthodox religion are usually dealt with, and this 
 is how people now deal with the conception of beauty " 
 (p. 14). 
 
 For his part, Tolstoy prefers to understand, and to let 
 other people understand, what he means by the words he 
 uses, and he has therefore framed . a definition of art which 
 avoids all obscurity. 
 
 " Art is a human activity, consisting in this, that one man con- 
 sciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others 
 feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected 
 by these feelings and also experience them " (p. 50). 
 
 Art is possible because we share one common human 
 nature. One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. 
 All who are capable of experiencing "that simple feeling 
 familiar to the plainest man and even to a child, that sense 
 of infection with another's feeling compelling us to joy 
 in another's gladness, to sorrow at another's grief, and to 
 mingle souls with another" (p. 151), possess the mental and 
 emotional telegraph wires along which an artist's influence 
 may pass. 
 
 A common crowd may be swayed by an orator, but not by 
 the ablest mathematical lecturer ; for, whereas thoughts can 
 only be transferred to minds sufficiently prepared to receive 
 them, the feelings that are the birthright of our common 
 humanity are shared by all normal people. When an orator 
 fails to sway his audience, we say the orator has failed, 
 not the audience. But when a boy fails to understand the 
 fifth proposition because he has not understood those that 
 preceded it, we do not say that Euclid has failed, but that 
 the boy has not understood him. Science is a human activity 
 transmitting thoughts from man to man : Art is a human
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 71 
 
 activity transmitting feelings. They have some features in 
 common. Clearness, simplicity, and compression are desir- 
 able in both, and the same book, or the same speech, may 
 contain both science and art ; it is desirable to discriminate 
 clearly between the one and the other, though both alike 
 are " indispensable means of communication, without which 
 mankind could not exist " (pp. 52 and 200). 
 
 Before passing from definitions to deductions based on 
 them, reference should be made to the physiological evolu- 
 tionary definition of Schiller, Darwin, and Herbert Spencer, 
 which Tolstoy sums up thus : " Art is an activity arising 
 even in the animal kingdom and 'springing from sexual 
 desire and the propensity to play'" (p. 46). This, though 
 superior to the definitions which depend on the conception 
 of beauty, is unsatisfactory because, "instead of speaking 
 about the artistic activity itself, which is the real matter in 
 hand, it treats of the derivation of art " (p. 46). 
 
 Accepting Tolstoy's definition of art, we at once see that art 
 covers a much wider ground than we have been accustomed 
 to suppose. 
 
 "We are accustomed to understand art to be only what 
 we hear and see in theatres, concerts, and exhibitions ; 
 together with buildings, statues, poems, novels. . . . But all 
 this is but the smallest part of the art by which we com- 
 municate with each other in life. All human life is filled 
 with works of art of every kind from cradle-song, jest, 
 mimicry, the ornamentation of houses, dress, and utensils, 
 up to church services, buildings, monuments, and triumphal 
 processions. It is all artistic activity" (p. 51). 
 
 But we generally use the word in a special and restricted 
 sense to mean, not all human activity that deliberately and 
 with premeditation transmits feelings, "but only that part 
 which we for some reason select from it, and to which we 
 attach special importance " (p. 51). 
 
 Before considering what kind of art deserves to be thus 
 specially selected for our highest esteem, we must clearly
 
 72 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 distinguish between two different things : the subject- 
 matter of art, and the form of art apart from its subject- 
 matter. This distinction is fundamentally important, and as 
 soon as it is made the vexed question of the relation of art to 
 morality solves itself easily and inevitably. 
 
 Let us take art apart from its subject-matter first. 
 
 "There is one indubitable indication distinguishing real 
 art from its counterfeit namely, the infectiousness of art. 
 If a man, without exercising effort, and without altering his 
 standpoint, on reading, hearing, or seeing another man's 
 work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with 
 that man and with other people who also partake of that 
 work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work 
 of art" (p. 152). 
 
 "And not only is infection a sure sign of art, but the 
 degree of infectiousness is also the sole measure of excellence 
 in art." 
 
 " The stronger the infection the better is the art, as art, 
 speaking now apart from its subject-matter i.e. not con- 
 sidering the quality of the feelings it transmits " (p. 153). 
 
 From this point of view, art has really nothing to do with 
 morality. The feelings transmitted may be good or bad 
 feelings, and may produce the best or the worst results on 
 those who are influenced by them, yet, in either case, the 
 man who transmits them is an artist. 
 
 "The feelings with which the artist infects others may be 
 most various very strong or very weak, very important or 
 very insignificant, very bad or very good : feelings of love 
 for native land, self-devotion and submission to fate or to 
 God expressed in a drama, raptures of lovers described in 
 a novel, feelings of voluptuousness expressed in a picture, 
 courage expressed in a triumphal march, merriment evoked 
 by a dance, humour evoked by a funny story, the feeling of 
 quietness transmitted by an evening landscape or by a 
 lullaby, or the feeling of admiration evoked by a beautiful 
 arabesque it is all art" (p. 49).
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 73 
 
 If you have not lost the capacity usually possessed by 
 people leading a sane and natural life to share the feelings 
 expressed by others, you may try the quality of a production 
 first of all by this internal test : Does it unite you in feeling 
 with its author and with others who are exposed to its in- 
 fluence ? Only if it does this, have you any right to testify 
 to its being a work of art. 
 
 If you are infected by the work, and are therefore sure 
 that it is a work of art, the next question is whether it is a 
 weak work of " exclusive " art, or a great work of " universal " 
 art. It may influence you who have, perhaps, been specially 
 trained and accustomed to that kind of art, or who share 
 the prepossessions of the artist and belong to his set, class, 
 school, sect, or race but is it capable of influencing men 
 of other classes, races, and ages ? Here the primary internal 
 test is supplemented by an external one. There are works 
 of " universal " art (using the word, of course, in a comparative 
 and not in an absolute sense). The Iliad, the Odyssey, the 
 story of Joseph, the Psalms, the Gospel parables, the story of 
 Sakya Muni, the hymns of the Vedas, the best folk-legends, 
 fairy-tales, and folk-songs, are understood by all. If only they 
 are adequately rendered, and are received not superstitiously 
 but with an open mind, they are " quite comprehensible now 
 to us, educated or uneducated, as they were comprehensible 
 to the men of those times, long ago, who were even less 
 educated than our labourers" (pp. 102-103). 
 
 Even a strictly national art, such as Japanese decorative 
 art, may be admirable and " universal." " The feeling (of 
 admiration at, and delight in, the combination of lines and 
 colours) which the artist has experienced, and with which he 
 infects the spectator " (p. 171), may be so sincere that it acts 
 on men of other races without demanding from them any 
 laborious preparation before they can enjoy it. 
 
 When we find ourselves admiring " exclusive art," we 
 must beware of flattering ourselves with the supposition 
 that great masses of people do not like what we consider
 
 74 
 
 undoubtedly good because they are not sufficiently developed, 
 while rve are very superior people. Perhaps we admire and 
 enjoy these things, not because they are very good but 
 merely because we have trained ourselves to admire them 
 and have got into the habit of doing so. But " people may 
 habituate themselves to anything, even to the very worst 
 things. As people may habituate themselves to bad food, 
 to spirits, tobacco, and opium, just in the same way they may 
 habituate themselves to bad art and that is exactly what is 
 being done " (p. 101). 
 
 Nor should we let our self-sufficiency blind us to the ob- 
 vious lesson of history : " we know that the majority of the 
 productions of the art of the upper classes, such as various 
 odes, poems, dramas, cantatas, pastorals, pictures, etc., which 
 delighted people of the upper classes when they were pro- 
 duced, never were afterwards either understood or valued 
 by the great masses of mankind, but have remained, what 
 they were at first, a mere pastime for the rich people of 
 their time, for whom alone they ever were of any import- 
 ance" (pp. 70-71). 
 
 " Art is a human activity," and, consequently, does not exist 
 for its own sake, but is valuable or objectionable in propor- 
 tion to the benefit or the harm it brings to mankind. Its 
 subject-matter consists of feelings which are contagious or 
 infectious i.e. which can spread from man to man. Is it 
 not supremely important what feelings spread among us ? 
 
 From this point of view the connection between morality and 
 art is intimate and inevitable. It is a fact of human life from 
 which we can no more escape than we can from gravitation. 
 
 Art unites men ; and the better the feelings in which it 
 unites them the better it will be for humanity. 
 
 But which are the best and highest feelings ? How are 
 we to discern or to define them ? They have differed, and 
 men's definitions of them have differed, from age to age ; 
 but, as Tolstoy explains, each age has had its dominant view 
 of life, which may be called its "religious perception."
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 75 
 
 Humanity progresses, and our view of life, our religious per- 
 ception, is in many things different from that, say, of the 
 ancient Greeks. In relation, not to the forms of art but to its 
 subject-matter, it would be a mistake to suppose " that the 
 very best that can be done by the art of nations after 1900 
 years of Christian teaching, is to choose as the ideal of their 
 life the ideal that was held by a small, semi-savage, slave- 
 holding people who lived 2000 years ago, who imitated the 
 nude human body extremely well, and erected buildings 
 pleasant to look at " (p. 65). 
 
 And Tolstoy, having begun by giving us his definition of 
 art, concludes by giving us a statement of the view of life he 
 has accepted, and which he believes is influencing us all 
 whether we know it or not. It is, he says, Christ's teach- 
 ing in its real and not in its customary and perverted 
 meaning. 
 
 " That meaning has not only become accessible to all men 
 of our times, but the whole life of man to-day is permeated 
 by the spirit of that teaching, and, consciously or unconsciously, 
 is guided by it" (p. 188). 
 
 " The religious perception of our time, in its widest and 
 most practical application, is the consciousness that our well- 
 being, both material and spiritual, individual and collective, 
 temporal and eternal, lies in the growth of brotherhood 
 among all men in their loving harmony with one another " 
 (p. 159). 
 
 And whether we accept this view of life or some other, 
 it is certain that the view we hold will influence our approval 
 or disapproval of the various feelings transmitted by art. 
 
 Accepting Tolstoy's standpoint, we should allow the highest 
 honour to " positive feelings of love to God and one's neigh- 
 bour, and negative feelings of indignation and horror at the 
 violation of love " ; but the realm pf subject-matter for good 
 art includes much more than that. 
 
 " The artist of the future will understand that to com- 
 pose a fairy-tale, a little song which will touch, a lullaby or a
 
 76 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 riddle which will entertain, a jest which will amuse, or to 
 draw a sketch in such a way that it will delight dozens of 
 generations or millions of children and adults, is incomparably 
 more important and more fruitful than to compose a novel or 
 a symphony, or paint a picture of the kind which will divert 
 some members of the wealthy classes for a short time and 
 then for ever be forgotten. The region of this art of the 
 simple feelings accessible to all is enormous, and it is as yet 
 almost untouched " (p. 197). 
 
 The artist should know that this art of the simple feelings 
 of common life, like the highest religious art, tends to unite 
 us all and to exclude none. 
 
 " Sometimes people who are together are, if not hostile to 
 one another, at least estranged in mood and feeling, till, per- 
 chance, a story, a performance, a picture, or even a building, 
 but oftenest of all, music, unites them all as by an electric 
 flash, and in place of their former isolation or even enmity 
 they are all conscious of union and mutual love. Each is 
 glad that another feels what he feels; glad of the com- 
 munion established, not only between him and all present 
 but 'also with all now living who will yet share the same 
 impression ; and, more than that, he feels the mysterious 
 gladness of a communion which, reaching beyond the grave, 
 unites us with all men of the past who have been moved by 
 the same feelings, and with all men of the future who will yet 
 be touched by them " (p. 165). 
 
 Thus, apart from subject-matter, the best art is that which 
 best accomplishes its purpose of infecting others with the 
 feelings the artist wishes to impart. And the best subject- 
 matter is that which, directly or indirectly, tends to forward 
 brotherly union among all men. 
 
 The good art of the future should be superior to our 
 present art in " clearness, beauty, simplicity, and compres- 
 sion," for one penalty of forgetting the primary aim of art is 
 that we greatly lose that which is a natural accompaniment 
 of art the pleasure given by beauty. We are like men who,
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 77 
 
 living to eat, eventually lose even the natural pleasure food 
 affords to those who eat to live. 
 
 Such, in brief outline, are Tolstoy's essential views of art. 
 Even so bare and incomplete a recapitulation, stripped as it 
 is of the convincing arguments, the brilliant examples, and 
 the masterly support and elucidation which are crammed into 
 the 237 pages of this marvellous book, may suffice to show 
 that it is a work deserving study rather than abuse. To 
 some men it seems so obviously and fundamentally true that 
 they teach it in Sunday Schools and talk about it at Pleasant 
 Sunday Afternoons ; others (who from their tone of authority 
 must be men of the highest ability) tell us it is " clotted non- 
 sense " and " confusion worse confounded." The only way is 
 to read the book for oneself, just as men flee to the Gospels 
 to escape the commentators. 
 
 Now that we have seen what the book is about, it will not 
 take long to show the unfairness and incompetence of the 
 Quarterly Reviewer's article. He begins, as is customary, by 
 telling us that Tolstoy is a prophet, and then (as is also cus- 
 tomary) he proceeds to attribute to him views that could 
 only come as Diavolo in The Heavenly Twins put it from 
 "a sort of prophet to whom God does not speak." 
 
 But we must beware of taking the reviewer too seriously. 
 It is told of an Irish member that he once palmed off some 
 sentences of gibberish on the House of Commons, pretending 
 they were a Greek quotation ; and I am half inclined to sus- 
 pect we have before us in this review a yet more elaborate 
 and audacious hoax. The grounds for my suspicion are : 
 that the reviewer ignores the definition of art on which the 
 work is based ; ignores the view of life essential to its com- 
 prehension ; misquotes Tolstoy four times (using inverted 
 commas), building attacks on the basis of his own blunders ; 
 imputes to Tolstoy absurd opinions ; re-states fallacies Tolstoy 
 had exposed and then says "such facts and principles as 
 these have never occurred to Tolstoi " ; ignores the English
 
 78 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 version of What is Art?, and finally he mis-spells Tolstoy's 
 name. 1 
 
 By treading in the steps of previous reviewers, and adding 
 here and there a slight touch of exaggeration, he exposes the 
 futility of their criticisms. And I should have no hesitation 
 in welcoming the Quarterly Reviewer as a valuable ally, were it 
 not for these words of Tolstoy (who is truly a prophet) : 
 
 " I know that most men not only those considered clever, 
 but even those who are very clever, and capable of under- 
 standing most difficult scientific, mathematical, or philosophic 
 problems can very seldom discern even the simplest and 
 most obvious truth if it be such as to oblige them to admit the 
 falsity of conclusions they have formed, perhaps with much 
 difficulty, conclusions of which they are proud, which they 
 have taught to others, and on which they have built their 
 lives. And therefore I have little hope that what I adduce 
 as to the perversion of art and taste in our society will be 
 accepted or even seriously considered " (p. 143). 
 
 It would need a long article to expose all the mistakes of 
 the review, and I will here merely produce evidence enough 
 to show that my indictment of it is not made without cause. 
 
 Of the misquotations, here is a single instance : 
 
 " The majority of men has always understood all that 
 we consider as the highest art : the Book of Genesis, etc.," 
 quotes the reviewer, and proceeds to speak of the incompre- 
 hensibility of the opening chapters of Genesis to many people. 
 But what Tolstoy really said was : " The majority always have 
 understood, and still understand, what we also recognise as 
 being the very best art: the epic of Genesis, etc." (p. 101) 
 i.e. the story part of Genesis, especially the story of Joseph, 
 to which Tolstoy particularly refers. 
 
 1 It almost looks as if the outward and visible sign adopted by a 
 large part of our Press to indicate their ignorance of Leo Tolstoy is to 
 miss-spell his name. In French there is some excuse for spelling the 
 name Tolstoi, but what excuse is there in English for not spelling it as 
 Tolstov does ?
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 79 
 
 Of opinions wrongly attributed to Tolstoy I will also give 
 but one out of many. The review ends : " despite Tolstoi's 
 statement to the contrary, art ... is necessary to mankind's 
 full and harmonious life." 
 
 In the very book under review, Tolstoy wrote : " Art is 
 . . . indispensable for the life and progress towards well- 
 being of individuals and of humanity " (p. 50). 
 
 In defence of some of his mistakes, the Quarterly Reviewer 
 may plead that he relied on a French translation. But 
 that is just what he had no business to do, for, after the 
 Russian original had been mutilated by the Censor, Tolstoy, 
 in his preface to the English translation I made under his 
 guidance, had written: "I request all who are interested in 
 my views of art to judge them only by the work in its present 
 shape." That translation was obtainable in the " Scott 
 Library " edition (to which the pages quoted in this article 
 refer), and the French version which, presumably, the 
 Quarterly Reviewer used, is in parts unreliable. The test 
 of the reviewer's sincerity is, in this case, a very simple one. 
 If he has erred by inadvertence, he owes an explanation to 
 the author he has misrepresented and to the readers he has 
 misled ; if he remain silent we may take it he was joking. 
 
 The article does not lack humour, conscious or unconscious. 
 Beauty is adopted as the criterion of art, and in sentences 
 which combine a maximum of involution with a minimum of 
 sense, the reviewer, with great show of erudition, explains 
 that it is difficult and " in the present backward state of 
 aesthetic science, perhaps impossible, to define " what the 
 word beauty means. But "the progress of science will one 
 day explain " it, as being a desirable thing causing pleasure. 
 
 Tolstoy had said : " The acknowledgment of beauty (i.e. 
 of a certain kind of pleasure received from art) as being the 
 aim of art, not only fails to assist us in finding a definition of 
 what art is, but, on the contrary, by transferring the question 
 into a region quite foreign to art (into metaphysical, psycho- 
 logical, physiological, and even historical discussions as to
 
 80 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 why such a production pleases one person and such another 
 displeases or pleases some one else), it renders such definition 
 impossible " (p. 44). So that it comes to this Tolstoy says : 
 We must keep to words we understand. His critic replies 
 (if he means anything at all, and is not merely poking fun 
 at us) that we may use words we don't understand, because 
 the " progress of science " will enable our grandchildren to 
 understand them ! 
 
 He plays the same trick a second time, with, I suspect, a 
 sly laugh at those applications, so common to-day, of evolu- 
 tionary science to problems of human conduct. For once 
 he agrees with Tolstoy. Most of what in our society is called 
 art, "is in our days largely artificial, often unwholesome, 
 always difficult of appreciation, and, above all, a luxury : . . . 
 it is mere nonsense and cant to talk of the usefulness of" 
 (such) " art to mankind as a whole, and the only sincere 
 statement is that of the cynical and immoral persons who 
 calmly admit that art is one of the many luxuries of the rich 
 and leisured minority, and maintained for their sole enjoy- 
 ment." The conclusion evidently should be that, as what we 
 are accustomed to call ' Art ' is in such a bad way, we must 
 try to understand the malady, that we may not hinder but 
 help the substitution, for all that is bad in our present art, of 
 something more genuine, wholesome, and true, based on a real 
 understanding of the purpose of our life. But the reviewer 
 escapes from this conclusion as easily as the juggler escapes 
 from the corded box. We, forsooth, need not alter our 
 views or our habits self-acting evolution will do all that is 
 necessary for us. 
 
 " We would explain," says the reviewer, " not to Tolstoi, 
 for whom all scientific explanations are mere lumber, but 
 to those readers of Tolstoi whom his arguments may have 
 shaken, first that the present state of things " (like everything 
 else) " has had antecedent causes, and, secondly, that these 
 wrong conditions cannot fail to right themselves." " In 
 what precise manner this may take place it would be pre-
 
 TOLSTOY'S VIEW OF ART 81 
 
 sumptuous to forecast/' and therefore, the reviewer assures 
 us, it is not selfishness to " foster the art of the present " (i.e. 
 the art which he has just agreed in condemning) for the 
 sake of the future. 
 
 Truly this review helps us to realise how keen a prophet is 
 the man who wrote, of such ' scientific ' explanations : " It 
 seems to us that science is only then real science when a 
 man . . . weaves in a specialised, scientific jargon an obscure 
 network of conventional phrases theological, philosophical, 
 historical, juridical, or politico-economic semi-intelligible to 
 the man himself, and intended to demonstrate that what now 
 is, is what should be " (p. 205). 
 
 What is Art? is a work on esthetic philosophy, and is, 
 in the true sense, a great scientific work. But after what 
 has gone before, one is hardly surprised when the Quarterly 
 Reviewer asserts that to Tolstoy " all science and all philo- 
 sophy are worthless," and proceeds to repeat this as- 
 sertion just ten times over without once attempting to 
 substantiate it. 
 
 The reviewer makes no serious attempt to explain, to 
 confirm, or to refute, Tolstoy's fundamental views, and the 
 space that he saves by neglecting these views he devotes 
 to depreciation of their author. 
 
 Tolstoy gives some examples of art good in subject- 
 matter, and says : " While offering as examples of art those 
 that seem to me the best, I attach no special importance 
 to my selection. . . . My only purpose in mentioning ex- 
 amples of works of this or that class is to make my meaning 
 clearer " (p. 1 70). 
 
 The reviewer treats these examples as though they were 
 a full catalogue and as if Tolstoy approved of nothing else : 
 "There remain," says he, "besides the Gospels, the more 
 obvious moralising works of Victor Hugo and of Dickens," etc. 
 
 The article teems with the usual amenities, to which the 
 old Russian struggling so hard, amid discouragement, to help 
 his fellow-men to truths which may set us free from the
 
 82 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 prejudices and fallacies thatunderlie so much unwise activity 
 is by this time so well accustomed. 
 
 " He has become incapable of admitting more than one 
 side to any question," the reviewer informs us. " Destitute 
 of all historic sense." " Unreasonableness like this is conta- 
 gious " (which is serious news for the readers of the Quarterly). 
 " He has lost all sense of cause and effect," etc., etc. 
 
 Many causes have conspired to conceal from English 
 readers the fact that Tolstoy is a great thinker as well as a 
 great artist ; but is it not time that respectable journals 
 ceased to mis-state his views ? There are many people who 
 are to-day perplexed how to act in relation to art. For 
 themselves, for their children, and for the people, they desire 
 guidance, and are ready to welcome an explanation of broad 
 principles helping them to know what to seek and what to 
 shun. They would like to know how to judge for them- 
 selves, independently of the infallible critics who contradict 
 each other week by week. Most of the specialists, the pro- 
 fessionals, and the erudite estheticians, do not want Tolstoy's 
 explanations "They that are whole have no need of a 
 physician." Let them, then, remain outside the edifice he 
 has erected, but why will they not suffer "them that were 
 entering in to enter " ? 
 
 From the Contemporary Review, August 1900.
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION* 
 WAS WRITTEN 
 
 TOLSTOY is never satisfied with himself or with what he has 
 accomplished. He is always striving forward and aiming 
 toward perfection. Whether you talk to him about his life, 
 or your own, his novels, or his philosophical works, he will 
 speak with equal clearness and sincerity of what is accom- 
 plished and of what is yet lacking. When his fifteen years' 
 efforts to elucidate his view of the relation in which art 
 stands to life were approaching completion, and he was 
 finishing What is Art ?, he remarked to the present writer 
 that he felt to blame for having spent so much time and 
 effort on a work which would be read only by well-to-do 
 and leisured people, on whom too much attention is already 
 lavished. " It is not a book that can reach the people." 
 
 I replied that at least it gave me and others like me the 
 clue to a perplexing question with reference to which we 
 had been much at sea, and that that was a great service to 
 us, and made it possible to feel and act as we could not have 
 done without such assistance. 
 
 Yes, he quite agreed. It was just what he hoped to accom- 
 plish ; but the fact remained that he had allowed himself to 
 devote much labour to what was, at best, but a secondary, 
 not a primary, service to those who most lack aid. 
 
 Tolstoy does not seem to be depressed by such reflections. 
 He wishes to see and state things as they are. Another in 
 his place might have emphasised the indirect benefit to the 
 labouring classes that may result from an exposure of the 
 worthless and harmful nature of much that is called < Art/ 
 
 83
 
 84 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 and on which an enormous amount of human labour is 
 wasted. But Tolstoy always considers the sequence. What 
 is the first and most direct duty ? is an ever-present question 
 with him. 
 
 With regard to his own life, living as he does with his own 
 family, who are comparatively well off, he has, of course, a 
 room, food and clothes, etc., provided for him. And he does 
 not satisfy himself with the thought that his clothes are of 
 the plainest and cheapest ; that he is a strict vegetarian, 
 avoiding butter, milk, and eggs, as well as all expensive food, 
 all intoxicants, and usually even such stimulants as tea and 
 coffee ; that his room has only the plainest old furniture, and 
 that he uses as little money as possible. No ! he says plainly 
 that he cannot justify this way of life. To allow things to 
 be provided for one by the use of money is not right. Cir- 
 cumstances family ties have led him into a position which 
 gives him leisure to write books, and he hopes these books 
 do good. But to say, as he does, " I could not see my way 
 to act otherwise ; it came naturally to me to act so," though 
 it is an explanation, does not pretend to be a justification. 
 When all is said and done, we are unprofitable servants. 
 
 This, indeed, is the frame of mind to which Tolstoy's view 
 of life inevitably tends to bring every sincere man who accepts 
 it. Ways of life, occupations, customs and beliefs generally 
 approved by society are analysed, and shown to be based on 
 selfishness, credulity, or stupidity. Arriving at these con- 
 clusions of the intellect, however, though they may modify 
 our feelings and influence our life, does not abolish those 
 defects or that nature in us which made the former occupa- 
 tions, customs, beliefs, etc., possible. What we shall do, or 
 even what we can do, in the future, depends very largely on 
 what we have done in the past. Finite and imperfect beings 
 cannot act perfectly, and if they could they would be out of 
 place in a world in which not perfection but progress is man's 
 normal condition. 
 
 All this follows inevitably from the belief that the human
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION" WAS WRITTEN 85 
 
 race has progressed, is progressing, and should progress. 
 We must not advance at random, or mechanically, but have 
 first to discern some aim ahead of our present practice. 
 Self-satisfaction produces stagnation. The publican who feels 
 himself to be a sinner is more capable of improvement than 
 the contented Pharisee. 
 
 To have discerned, and to have compelled others to 
 recognise, defects in social, political, national, and religious 
 conventions which we were in danger of regarding as sacro- 
 sanct, is one of the greatest services Tolstoy has performed 
 for his generation. And nowhere has he done this more 
 powerfully and effectively than in his last novel, Resurrection. 
 It reminds one of Socrates, who told his judges that he was 
 a gadfly stinging that lazy horse, the Athenian people, into 
 action ! Humanity must be up and doing ever approaching 
 a step nearer to the ideal of being " perfect, as your Father 
 in heaven is perfect." 
 
 The story of the production of Resurrection is marked all 
 through with traces of the struggle between what could be 
 done and what ideally should be done. 
 
 When his legal friend, Senator Koni, gave Tolstoy an out- 
 line of the story as it occurred in real life, Tolstoy at once 
 perceived its value as framework for a novel. But he had 
 much other work on hand that seemed more important. 
 His artistic nature, long deprived of free and full scope, drew 
 him on to write the novel, and he knew how many readers 
 can be reached by a novel who can be touched by no other 
 book-work ; but there was the other work to do which 
 seemed to him of more serious importance. What is Art ? 
 was not then written ; The Christian Teaching was not finished 
 (indeed, it never has been finished, and was eventually 
 printed in England, in English and in Russian, in a some- 
 what incomplete condition). He has long wished to write 
 on education, a subject on which prevailing opinions and 
 customs seem to him greatly in need of sweeping reform. 
 A clear, short work on philosophy : one which should put
 
 86 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 the best human thoughts on life, death, matter, spirit, good- 
 ness, destiny, faith, and credulity so simply that they might 
 be grasped by any intelligent cabman, was another of the 
 many tasks he had in contemplation. A thousand and one 
 projects teemed in his fertile brain, and the novel had to 
 struggle for existence with many a project that his conscience 
 more fully approved of. 
 
 The result was that the novel got itself written with diffi- 
 culty, again and again being put aside for other work. We 
 may be quite sure that this struggle was not without influence 
 on the writer and on what he wrote. It was this desire to 
 render the utmost service of which he was capable that made 
 even the novel, of which he only partly approved, what it 
 is : a most powerful piece of propaganda. As W. T. Stead 
 says : " It is gravid with all Count Tolstoy's distinctive teach- 
 ing. It is a kind of shrapnel-shell of a novel. The novel 
 is but the containing case. The genius of the author is 
 the explosive force, which scatters its doctrines like closely- 
 packed bullets among the enemy." What subject of vital 
 interest to the forward movement of humanity does it not 
 touch upon ? and which of them does it fail to set in a 
 fresh light, while almost compelling the reader to share 
 the author's feeling? Non-resistance and the employment 
 of violence among men, government and legality, the sex- 
 question, militarism, capital punishment, prisons, luxury, 
 class distinctions, officialism, church superstition, vegetari- 
 anism, socialism, the land question, anarchism, nihilism, and 
 Christianity, real and spurious all come under survey, and 
 the author's feeling about each is passed on to the reader 
 as only an artist of first-rate power could pass it on. 
 
 When the story had been written in the rough, it was laid 
 aside unfinished and with little apparent chance of ever 
 being finished. Tolstoy had resolved to spend no more 
 time on it, and not to allow it to be published during his 
 lifetime. But " there is a destiny that shapes our ends," 
 and things occurred which altered this resolution.
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION" WAS WRITTEN 87 
 
 In the Caucasus the persecution of the Doukhobors for 
 refusing military service broke out with fury in the year 
 1895. In one district, of 4000 Doukhob6rs as many as 1000 
 perished within three years owing to want, exposure, anxiety 
 and unhealthy conditions, caused by their being driven from 
 their homes and placed in localities where it was impossible 
 for them to find sufficient work or means of livelihood. At 
 last, in 1898, permission was granted them to emigrate. 
 The conditions were, that those who had been called upon 
 to serve in the army must remain, as well as the leaders 
 and others (about one hundred and ten in all) who had 
 been exiled to Siberia. The rest might go at their own 
 expense (after being in many cases completely ruined), 
 but if any of them ever returned they would be exiled 
 to distant parts of the empire. 
 
 The conditions were rigorous enough, but at least they 
 made it possible to save the lives of these people men, 
 women, and children who could not have been kept alive 
 in the conditions in which they were then situated. 
 
 Once again Tolstoy was drawn by two different tendencies. 
 He had long before considered the economic enigmas of our 
 social system, and had made up his mind definitely that 
 it is a gigantic delusion to suppose that we do good by 
 sucking up money in rent, interest, or profits, and then 
 pouring it out again in charities. We are in such a case 
 only " making pipes of ourselves " : we take the money from 
 people who want it, and who, perhaps, know how to use it 
 better than we do ; we hamper ourselves, and consume our 
 own time and energy, in first collecting and then disbursing 
 it, and finally we often distribute it unwisely, and the results 
 are never what we expect them to be. So that the wise 
 course is to tread in the footsteps of Buddha, Socrates, or 
 Jesus : be as little absorbed by or encumbered with money 
 as possible. A man's service to his fellows consists in what 
 he himself does, not in what he bribes other people to do. 
 Indeed, he serves others far better by offering them advice
 
 88 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 and good example and leaving them free to act, than he 
 can ever do by seeking to control their activities by the 
 inducement or the constraint of money. 
 
 This was no merely abstract theory : it was the line of 
 life he had definitely adopted. When people demanded 
 money of him, he could usually reply with perfect truth, 
 " I have no money." But now thousands of poor peasants 
 were starving and dying because they were faithful to prin- 
 ciples of non-resistance which he entirely shared. They 
 were almost friendless, or at any rate they had no other 
 friend who was so well able to help them as he and he 
 all the time was eating his regular three meals a day while 
 they were starving. An almost similar problem had faced 
 him at the time of the famine in 1891 and 1892. Europe 
 and America have rung with praises of the work he then 
 did in organising relief in the famine districts. Contributions 
 flowed to him from all sides. He worked indefatigably and 
 admirably. But (it is entirely characteristic of the man) 
 he does not approve of what he did, and is sure that the 
 handling of money in order to make other people work 
 as he wishes them to, is not a worthy activity in which to 
 spend his time. " I cannot get away from the conclusion. If 
 I believed that money does good, I ought to alter my whole 
 way of life and go back to money-making," says Tolstoy. 
 
 But when water is badly wanted in a given place, a 
 pipe may be extremely valuable to bring it there ; and, simi- 
 larly, there are times when a sympathetic man can hardly 
 decline to "make a pipe of himself" in order to bring 
 succour to the afflicted. So it happened that now, as in 
 1891, Tolstoy's feelings were too strong for his intellectual 
 conclusions. 
 
 He had, from 1895 onward, written in strong condemna- 
 tion of the persecution, thus giving publicity to facts the 
 Russian Government was most anxious to conceal, and to 
 which no reference was permitted in the Russian press ; and 
 now, not without hesitation, he resolved to allow the pub-
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION" WAS WRITTEN 89 
 
 lication of Resurrection, that the profits might be used to 
 assist the Doukhobors. 
 
 The work was sold to Marx, the editor of an illustrated 
 Petersburg weekly paper, for a sum of money to be paid in 
 advance. But fresh perplexities awaited the author. He 
 had for twenty years past refused to work for pay, and had 
 announced that he wished to retain no copyright in anything 
 he wrote : it was all, when once published, to be free to 
 whoever liked to use it. He had, moreover, always strenu- 
 ously avoided working against time that is, being obliged 
 to have a certain quantity of copy ready corrected by a 
 certain date. Now everything that he disliked and wished 
 to avoid befell him. There were many claimants for the 
 privilege of producing the work, and to select between them 
 without giving offence was no easy matter. Even after 
 Marx had secured the prize there were vexatious problems 
 to be faced. The work was not to be copyrighted in 
 Russia, the freedom promised to any one to reproduce the 
 Russian original of Tolstoy's works after they were once 
 published was to be respected ; but Marx was paying money, 
 and wanted to know precisely what he was to have for his 
 money. He would give Rs. 30,000 if he might have the sole 
 rights for even a few weeks after serial publication ended, or 
 he would give Rs. 12,000 only, if he was merely to have the 
 opportunity of first publication in serial form. Tolstoy, after 
 hesitating, decided to take the smaller amount. But unfore- 
 seen troubles were in store. Other editors began to reprint 
 the weekly instalments directly Marx published them. Marx 
 protested that he had expected to remain in undisturbed 
 possession of the work at least until it was completed. Tolstoy 
 was persuaded to write an open letter appealing to the good 
 feeling of the other editors to abstain from reprinting the 
 story before its completion. They acceded to his request, 
 but the difficulties and complications were far from ending 
 there. There were, of course, the usual troubles with the 
 Press Censor in St. Petersburg. Whatever was likely to impair
 
 90 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 the authority of Church or State, and whatever else might 
 seem objectionable to the official whose duty it was to revise 
 the book, had to be omitted. Naturally, Part III., in which 
 the treatment of the prisoners on their way to Siberia and 
 in Siberia is described, suffered most. But all through the 
 book whole chapters, as well as parts of chapters and many 
 stray sentences here and there, fell under the strokes of the 
 executioner with the red pencil. 
 
 In Part I., of Chapters XXXIX. and XL., only the words : 
 "The church service began," were left, and the whole of 
 Chapter XIII., describing the effect of army life, disap- 
 peared. In Part II., Chapter XXVII., describing the visit to 
 Toporof, the head of the Holy Synod, had, of course, to be 
 struck out ; indeed, had the book been by almost any one 
 but Tolstoy, such a life-like portrait of the arch-persecutor 
 Pobedon6stsef would probably have caused the suppression 
 of the book and the arrest of its author. Among the other 
 chapters that suffered heavily in Part II. were Chapter XIX. : 
 the general in charge of the prison in Petersburg ; Chapter 
 XXX. : the classification of criminals ; and Chapter XXXVIII. : 
 the starting of the convict train from Moscow. 
 
 On the whole, Russian readers wonder that the book got 
 through the Censor's hands as well as it did. It surely 
 deserved the honour of being burned at least as much as 
 those previous works by the same author which received 
 that mark of attention from a paternal Government. But, 
 though nothing better could have been expected, it can 
 never be a pleasure to watch the gradual mutilation of the 
 latest offspring of one's brain, especially when one knows 
 that the same process will be repeated in other countries, 
 not to please an autocratic Government, but simply to suit 
 the taste of a public who want the story the novelist has to 
 tell, but do not want the message the prophet is bent on 
 delivering. 
 
 M. Wysewa, for instance, who has an admirable command 
 of the French language, not content with polishing Tolstoy's
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION" WAS WRITTEN 91 
 
 simple and direct style into exquisitely flowing book-lan- 
 guage, omits the description of the church service in order 
 to conciliate the Catholics, and leaves out what Tolstoy says 
 about the army lest it should alienate the sympathy of the 
 anti-Dreyfusites. 
 
 Tolstoy's translators have, indeed, in the past been guilty 
 of many offences, both wilfully and involuntarily. As an 
 instance of the latter class of delinquencies one recalls the 
 German translation of Anna Karenina which altered the 
 motto of the book from : " Vengeance is mine : I will repay," 
 into " Revenge is sweet : I play the ace ! " 
 
 But besides the Russian Censor and the foreign transla- 
 tors, there are the editors and publishers to be reckoned 
 with before those dangerous explosives the thoughts of 
 Tolstoy can reach the public, who might be harmed by 
 them. 
 
 As an instance of what publishers can do, take the follow- 
 ing case : The Echo de Paris, in which Resurrection appeared, 
 received letters fr6m some of its readers complaining that 
 Nehludof did not occupy himself sufficiently with Katusha. 
 There was, they said, not enough love story in the book. 
 The editor thereupon knowing that his business was to 
 cater for his public and to supply what they wanted 
 omitted the next instalment and hurried on to a scene in 
 which Nehludof again occupied himself with Katusha, 
 though, it is to be feared, not quite in the manner 
 desired. 
 
 What happened in America with the serial publication of 
 the work is too well known to need special mention. 
 Tolstoy's point of view on the sex-question, and the opinion 
 which is dominant and blatant in many religious circles of 
 the English-speaking world, are wide as the poles asunder. 
 Both disapprove of and would discourage what is lewd and 
 sensual, but the method too often followed among us is to 
 seek to inflict penalties on those of whose actions we dis- 
 approve, and to fine, punish, or imprison them, while we
 
 92 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 abandon all consideration and discussion of sex-questions to 
 those who approach the subject for pleasure or for gain. 
 Tolstoy would leave penalties to be inflicted by " Him that 
 hath no sin," but would express his opinions and feelings as 
 simply, freely, and fully on this as on any other subject, 
 hoping to convert or to influence those whom he would never 
 consent to coerce. 
 
 When once the publication of Resurrection was decided on, 
 Tolstoy set eagerly to work revising it. And the revision 
 amounted to completely re-writing the book, and re-writing 
 parts of it several times over. So greatly did he lengthen 
 the work that (in spite of the damage done by the Censor) 
 Marx voluntarily added another Rs. 10,000 to the payment 
 of Rs. 12,000 which he had made in advance. 
 
 Tolstoy was never satisfied. Whenever proofs reached 
 him, fresh and ever fresh corrections and alterations had to 
 be made ; so that the translators abroad were unable to 
 receive the final version of some chapters till they were 
 already published in Petersburg. This increased the danger 
 of unauthorised versions appearing, which would contribute 
 nothing to the cause which had spurred Tolstoy on to allow 
 the book to be produced. 
 
 So exacting was he to his work, and so prolific in correc- 
 tions, that on several occasions even after the 'final' version 
 had come to hand, been translated, and even set up in type, 
 a fresh and yet more finally final version of the chapter 
 would arrive, and the translator's and type-setter's work had 
 to be done over again. 
 
 A couple of years ago, Tolstoy mentioned in a private 
 letter that whereas in earlier life, when he sold his works in 
 the usual manner, the publication of each new work afforded 
 him pleasure ; now, when he wishes to do better and refuses 
 to receive pay for his work, he finds that the publication of 
 each new book involves him in perplexity and trouble, many 
 people are displeased with him, and publication, instead of 
 being a pleasure, has become a pain.
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION" WAS WRITTEN 93 
 
 His experience with Resurrection has been even more pain- 
 ful than usual. Tolstoy's great desire is to live at peace 
 with all men, to do nothing that may create anger and ill- 
 will ; but, on the contrary, to serve others, and bring them 
 into harmony with himself and with one another. But if 
 merely abjuring the beaten track and preferring to give 
 rather than to sell his works, involved him in trouble, the 
 case was far worse now that he allowed his sympathy for 
 the persecuted Doukhobors to cause him to swerve from the 
 direction he had taken, a direction to which those about him 
 had begun to adapt themselves. 
 
 Busy with his work, and quite out of touch with commer- 
 cial ways of thought and action, Tolstoy had to intrust the 
 foreign (non-Russian) editions of his work to others, and if the 
 difficulties in Russia were great, abroad they were yet greater. 
 In Germany a quarrel broke out owing to the fact that Marx 
 was supplying some newspapers, while others were receiving 
 copy from Tolstoy's representative in England. And each side 
 urgently demanded that Tolstoy should support them and 
 repudiate the other. In America the serial publication in 
 the Cosmopolitan broke down, and at one time there was 
 danger of legal proceedings between the editor of that 
 magazine and the agent employed by Tolstoy's English 
 representative. 
 
 However, at last the work was published, and published in 
 an unmutilated form. Nothing was omitted in the English 
 translation. In Germany the work had a great success, and 
 quickly ran through a dozen editions. A second (and this 
 time a complete) French translation was prepared. And the 
 complete Russian text was published both in England and in 
 Germany. 
 
 The book has also appeared in Swedish and even in 
 Slovak, 1 and whatever difficulties arose anywhere were 
 
 1 I do not know into how many languages Resurrection has been 
 already translated, but translations of Tolstoy have appeared in thirty- 
 eight languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Chinese, and Hebrew.
 
 94 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 smoothed over by the feeling that it would not do to go to 
 law over a book of Tolstoy's. Everybody knew that Tolstoy 
 was doing his best and was acting unselfishly, and, whether 
 they agreed as to the expediency of his course or not, they 
 put up with it. 
 
 As showing Tolstoy's own state of mind at different times, 
 the following extracts from his letters may be of interest. 
 
 On the 24th of January 1899, when the work had been 
 sold to Marx and the question of allowing or not allowing 
 any copyright in Russia or elsewhere was being discussed, he 
 said in a letter to the present writer : " In this whole business 
 there is something indefinite, confused, and seemingly dis- 
 cordant with the principles we profess. Sometimes, in bad 
 moments, this acts on me too, and I wish to get rid of the 
 affair as quickly as I can ; but when I am in a good, serious 
 frame of mind I am even glad of the unpleasantness bound 
 up with it. I know that my motives were, if not good, at 
 least quite innocent ; and therefore if in men's eyes it makes 
 me appear inconsistent or even something still worse, it is all 
 good for me, teaching me to act quite independently of men's 
 judgment, and in accord only with conscience. One should 
 prize such experiences. They are rare, and very useful." 
 
 When the work was drawing toward its close, and he was 
 fagged out with the distasteful task of having to correct the 
 weekly instalment by a fixed date, and was approaching 
 the very severe illness that showed itself in an acute attack 
 on the 24th of December 1899, he wrote to another friend : 
 " I am much absorbed in my work. And, regularly, as soon 
 as I see the proof-sheets from Marx I feel sick and have 
 pain. ... I am so occupied with writing the book that 
 I spend my whole strength on it. Other movements of the 
 soul go on within me ; and, thank God, I see the light, and 
 see it more and more. More and more often I feel myself 
 not the master of my life, but a labourer. . . ." 
 
 A very few days later, when the work at last seemed 
 finished, he wrote : " All that money business that I under-
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION" WAS WRITTEN 95 
 
 took, and of which I now repent, has been so tormentingly 
 painful that now, when it is over, I have decided to have 
 nothing more to do with the matter, but to return to my 
 former attitude toward the publication of my writings that 
 is, while letting others do as they please with them, to stand 
 quite aside from the business myself." 
 
 But is Tolstoy satisfied with Resurrection now that it is 
 completed ? 
 
 Not altogether. In What is Art ? he has shown us how 
 necessary it is to view every work of art in two aspects ; 
 considering it in relation to (1) Form, and to (2) Subject- 
 matter. 
 
 Resurrection undoubtedly deals with feelings deeply ex- 
 perienced by the author, and re-evoked by him in order to 
 infect others and cause them to share these feelings with 
 him and with each other. In reply, then, to the question, 
 Does it infect us? is the form such as to produce the 
 intended effect ? I feel no hesitation in replying for myself 
 that it does. But its intention is to influence as many people 
 as possible, and to influence them as much as possible ; to 
 what extent does it succeed in this attempt ? 
 
 Granting that it has all the signs of genuine art that it is 
 sincere, and possesses both individuality and clearness how 
 far does it reach ? Many versions and many editions have 
 appeared already, and more are coming; tens of thousands 
 of copies have been sold already but will it reach the 
 people ? Will it, like that ancient Egyptian novel, the story 
 of Joseph, pass from age to age, reaching rich and poor, 
 young and old, learned and simple ? No ; we must admit 
 that, to a certain extent, it is " exclusive " art : art not 
 confined to, but chiefly suited to, leisured and cultured 
 people, to whom a novel of over five hundred pages is not 
 a heavy burden. Compared with other novels, especially 
 compared with Tolstoy's former novels, and allowing for the 
 tremendous amount of matter in it, it is not lacking in com- 
 pression. The indictment against it is one which well-nigh
 
 96 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 all novels must share, for no doubt it is to some extent 
 weighted with superfluous details, and lacking in that sim- 
 plicity, brevity, and compression essential to the form of any 
 story that aims at becoming ' universal art.' 
 
 On the 29th of December 1 899, Tolstoy wrote : "... the 
 day before yesterday I sent off the last chapters of Resurrec- 
 tion. I am dissatisfied with them, but feel that that task is 
 ended, and with joy and hope I waver in the choice of my 
 next work." 
 
 Some readers complain that the hero, Nehliidof, did not 
 achieve tangible results : did not reform society, found a 
 colony, influence the Tsar, or do something that the news- 
 papers would take notice of. But Tolstoy is describing life 
 as he has seen and known it. He perceives that the 
 principles of Jesus condemn the Prince of this World, and 
 that society, as we know it, is as certainly doomed to pass 
 away as was imperial Rome and the slave-world of two 
 thousand years ago. But he knows, too, by experience, that 
 for men to be willing co-workers with Jesus in establishing 
 a better order of society, the first condition must be a re- 
 birth, a change of the inner man. We must learn to see 
 things as they are ; to discern good from evil ; to distinguish 
 the real from the apparent, and to know the true purpose of 
 human life. External changes in the form and structure of 
 society will (as they always have done) follow and depend 
 upon the character of the men who form the society. 
 
 We live in a time of transition, when men hardly know in 
 which direction they wish to advance. Some believe in 
 imperialism and the reign of force, a few believe in non- 
 resistance and the brotherhood of man. Some believe in the 
 divine right of kings, others in the divine right of majorities 
 and the infallibility of the odd voter ; a few believe in the 
 inward voice of reason and conscience. 
 
 It would be untrue to life untrue to the experience of 
 such a man even as Tolstoy himself to represent the resur- 
 rection to a new purpose and meaning in life as producing
 
 HOW "RESURRECTION" WAS WRITTEN 97 
 
 large and immediate external results, other than that the 
 individual when re-born seeks to leave the path of evil and 
 choose the good. Those who want quick returns and visible 
 advantages must deal with the surface of events and shun 
 fundamental problems. The mills of God grind slowly. 
 As well demand of a shoot that has felt the approach of 
 Spring and begun to bud, that it should plant a garden, as 
 demand of a man who, touched by the spirit of truth and 
 love, is turning his back upon an evil past, that he should 
 re-organise society. 
 
 As to subject-matter, the book will stand any test that can 
 be applied. It belongs both to " universal " and to " religious " 
 art, especially to the latter and higher branch of art. That 
 is to say, again and again Tolstoy evokes feelings in us which 
 remind us that we are all of one spirit, sons of one Father, 
 and he awakens even more frequently sentiments which have 
 slumbered in the depths of our nature so that we hardly 
 knew we possessed them, and impels us to take purer and 
 less selfish views of our relation one to another, and of the 
 purpose of our life. 
 
 First published in the New York Bookman, June 1900.
 
 INTRODUCTION TO "THE SLAVERY 
 OF OUR TIMES " 
 
 THIS little book shows, in a short, clear, and systematic 
 manner, how the principle of non-resistance, about which 
 Tolstoy has written so much, is related to economic and 
 political life. 
 
 It is a sequel to the larger and more artistically powerful 
 work, What then must we do ? which deals with the same 
 problems from a more personal aspect. An attempt to 
 consider Tolstoy's view of this matter at all fully will be 
 more in place if, at some future time, I have occasion to deal 
 with the greater of the two books. Here I will do no more 
 than ask the reader into whose hands The Slavery of Our 
 Times may come, not lightly to put it aside as being extreme 
 or unreasonable, but to recognise that, far as Tolstoy's con- 
 clusions are from the theories and practices to which we 
 are accustomed, he is, nevertheless, dealing with a profound 
 truth, so that to listen to and understand his message 
 cannot hurt us, but, on the contrary, will help us to realise 
 our own position in relation to this important question. 
 
 The great majority of men, without knowing why, are 
 constrained to labour long hours at tasks they dislike, and 
 often have to live in unhealthy conditions. This is not be- 
 cause Nature is niggardly : mother-earth is willing to yield 
 enough for us all ; neither is man incompetent to utilise 
 Nature's gifts. The necessity for most men to work under 
 such conditions in order to obtain a subsistence, lies in the 
 fact that men have made laws about land, taxes, and pro- 
 perty, which result in placing the great bulk of the people 
 
 98
 
 "THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES" 99 
 
 in conditions which compel them to labour thus, or go to the 
 workhouse, or starve. 
 
 It may be said that man's nature is so bad that were it 
 not for these laws an even worse state of things would exist ; 
 that the laws we make and tolerate are outward and visible 
 signs of an inward and spiritual disgrace the selfishness of 
 man which is the real root of the evil. But granting that, 
 in a sense, this is true, we need not suppose man's nature 
 to be immutable and all progress for ever impossible. Nor 
 need we suppose it our duty to leave progress in the hands 
 of some kind of self-acting evolution, whose operations we 
 can only watch as a passenger watches the working of a 
 ship's engines. We may consider the effect of the laws we 
 have made, may approve or disapprove of them, may discern 
 the direction in which it is possible to advance, and may take 
 our part in furthering or hampering that advance. 
 
 Laws are made by Governments, and are enforced by 
 physical violence. We have been so long taught that it is 
 good for some people to make laws for others, that most men 
 approve of this. Just as genteel people have been known to 
 approve of wholesale while they turned up their noses at retail 
 business, so people in general, while disapproving of robbery 
 and murder when done on a small scale, admire them when 
 they are organised : and when they result in allotting to a 
 few thousands most of the land on which forty millions have 
 to live, and in maintaining a system which periodically 
 causes thousands of men to be sent out to kill and be killed. 
 Nor are people much shocked at isolated murders provided 
 that the responsibility for them is subdivided between the 
 King, hangman, judge, jury, and officials. 
 
 To Tolstoy's mind, violence done by man to man is wrong. 
 We cannot escape the wrongness by doing it wholesale, or 
 by subdividing the responsibility. 
 
 But what would happen if we ceased to abet it ? 
 
 If it were possible forcibly to oblige men to cease from 
 using force, the selfishness which is at the root of the matter
 
 100 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 would, no doubt, burst out in some fresh form. That is, in 
 fact, pretty much what has happened : weary of strife and 
 private feuds, people consented to leave to Governments the 
 use of force. External peace among individuals ensued, but 
 in place of strife with club or sword a new struggle almost 
 as fierce is carried on under legal and commercial forms. 
 Tolstoy's desire is not that people should be compelled to 
 cease from violence, but that violence should become to 
 them abhorrent, and that they should not wish to sway 
 others more than they can sway them by reason and by 
 sympathy. Were that accomplished, surely we may trust 
 that good would come of good, as now ill comes of ill. At 
 any rate, as Tolstoy sho*vs, there is no other path of advance. 
 We can neither revert to the belief that to use violence is a 
 divine right of kings, nor can we maintain the current belief 
 that to do so is a divine right of majorities. To be subjected 
 by force to a rule we disapprove of is slavery, and we are all 
 slaves or slave-owners (sometimes both together) as long as 
 our society bases itself on violence. 
 
 But can we abolish the use of violence, and cease to 
 imprison and kill our fellow-men ? 
 
 We can at least consider what Tolstoy says on the matter, 
 and realise that organised violence exists, claiming our 
 approval, and that it is possible to withhold that approval. 
 As for abolishing violence, it is for us not a question of Yes 
 or No, but a question of more or less. The amount of 
 violence committed depends on the amount of support the 
 violators receive. There are places where it is now impos- 
 sible to get any one to become a hangman, and even in 
 England, comparatively brutal as we are, it would be 
 impossible to re-enact the penal code of George III., under 
 which 160 different crimes were punishable with death. To 
 shake ourselves completely free from all share in violence, if 
 we are not quite ready to become martyrs, may seem and 
 does seem impossible. Tolstoy himself does not profess to 
 have ceased to use postage-stamps which are issued, or the
 
 "THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES" 101 
 
 highway that is maintained, by a Government which collects 
 taxes by force ; but reforms come by men doing what they 
 can, not what they can't. It would be an easy and a silly 
 reply to the teaching of Jesus, to say that as he tells us to 
 be perfect, and we can't be perfect, we can get no guidance 
 from his teaching. In the same way, any one who wishes to 
 be logical but not reasonable, may say that as Tolstoy tells us 
 to stand aside from all violence, and we cannot do so, his 
 guidance is useless. Tolstoy relies on his readers to use 
 common sense, and the common sense of the matter is, that 
 if we are so enmeshed in a system based on violence, and if 
 we ourselves are so weak and faulty, that we cannot avoid 
 being parties to acts of violence, we should avoid this as 
 much as we can. 
 
 The mind is more free than the body, let us at least try 
 to understand the truth of the matter, and not excuse a 
 vicious system in order to shelter ourselves. When we have 
 understood the matter, let us not fear to speak out ; and 
 when we have confessed our views, let us try to bring our 
 lives more and more into harmony with them. 
 
 To free ourselves from the perplexity produced by the 
 dual standard of legality and of right, would in itself be 
 an enormous gain. Take, for instance, the drink traffic in 
 England; what friction and waste of power has resulted 
 from attempts to legislate on the matter. How greatly 
 brewers, distillers, and dealers have gained in respectability 
 by the fact that their occupations are legal, if not right. 
 And is it not becoming evident that it is not by laws 
 that such evils as excess in eating and drinking can be 
 amended ? 
 
 But, we are told, people are so inconsiderate and so wrong- 
 headed that nothing but the strong arm of the law will 
 restrain them. To disturb their respect for the law is 
 dangerous. 
 
 Of course it is dangerous ! Every great moral movement, 
 and every strong reform movement, has its very real dangers.
 
 102 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 A century and a half after St. Francis of Assisi had stirred 
 Europe by his example of self-renunciation and devotion to 
 the service of others, such a crowd of impudent mendicants 
 shirking the drudgery of a workaday world were preying on 
 society in his name, that Wyclif denounced them as sturdy 
 beggars, and strongly censured any man " who gives alms to 
 a begging friar." 
 
 History is apt to repeat itself in such matters, and, no 
 doubt, Tolstoy's views will again and again he exploited by 
 unworthy disciples. But is humanity to stagnate because 
 what is evil is so easily grafted on what is good ? To think 
 and to move may be dangerous, but to stagnate is to die ; 
 and progress along the path of violence as Babylon, Assyria, 
 Egypt, Rome, Spain, and many other nations have shown is 
 progress to destruction. 
 
 No doubt, too, many good people will be shocked at Tol- 
 stoy's statement that " Laws are rules made by people who 
 govern by means of organised violence." They will plead 
 that, in modern Governments, the administrative functions 
 are becoming more and more predominant, and the coercive 
 ones are falling more and more into abeyance. But the 
 reply is, that Governments need only drop these dwindling 
 and secondary functions in order to escape the criticism here 
 levelled at them. Governments which, without insisting on 
 having their services accepted, are content to offer to organise 
 society on a voluntary basis killing no one, imprisoning no 
 one, and relying on reason and persuasion to make their 
 decrees prevail are not here attacked. Tolstoy would wel- 
 come such a Government as that of which Guizot (himself 
 afterwards Prime Minister in a Government not of the type 
 he here mentions) wrote : " I think I have shown that the 
 necessity for, and the existence of a Government, are very 
 conceivable, even though there should be no room for com- 
 pulsion, even though it should be absolutely forbidden," a 
 Government which should exist : " for the purpose of dis- 
 covering the truth which by right ought to govern society,
 
 "THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES" 103 
 
 for the purpose of persuading men to acknowledge this truth, 
 to adopt and respect it willingly and freely." 
 
 But whatever good-natured people may wish to believe 
 about existing Governments, the fact is that they rely on 
 force, and that when they do not rely on force we do not call 
 them Governments, but voluntary associations. 
 
 That men concerned in governing others know this, is 
 shown all through history, and has been again shown recently 
 in South Africa. As long as Kruger and his party had the 
 armed force, the Boer reform party, the miners, and even 
 Messrs. Beit, Rhodes & Co., had to submit. At the time of 
 the Raid the question who should make the laws in future, 
 hung in the balance it might be Kruger, or Rhodes, or 
 somebody else ; but it was sure to be the man, or men, who 
 could obtain the advantage of being allowed openly, syste- 
 matically, and unblushingly, to do violence to those who dis- 
 obeyed them. Men who were organising the buccaneers one 
 day might become a ' Government ' another day. In fact, 
 just as in Sparta it was considered immoral, not to thieve but 
 to be caught thieving, so among modern moralists (such as 
 Paley) it has been gravely argued that the morality of using 
 violence against the men in power depends on the chance of 
 being successful. 
 
 Tolstoy says that the systematic use of organised violence 
 lies at the root of the ills from which our society suffers ; and 
 while agreeing with the indictment Socialism brings against 
 the present system, he points out that the establishment of 
 a Socialist State would necessitate the enforcement of a fresh 
 form of slavery : direct compulsion to labour. And if he is 
 not at one with the Socialists, neither is he at one with the 
 Russian Revolutionary party usually spoken of in England 
 as "Nihilists." They, indeed, are often very bitter in their 
 denunciations of Tolstoy, whose influence has increased the 
 moral repugnance felt for their policy of assassination. Their 
 accusation that Tolstoy wishes to oppose despotism by mere 
 metaphysics is, however, met in the present work by a direct
 
 104 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 and explicit appeal to conscientious people not voluntarily 
 to pay taxes to Governments which spend the money on 
 organising violence and murder. 
 
 This view of the duty of individuals towards Governments 
 has had exponents in our own language. The saintly Quaker, 
 John Woolman, wrote in his journal in 1757 : 
 
 " A few years past, money being made current in our pro- 
 vince for carrying on wars, and to be called in again by taxes 
 laid on the inhabitants, my mind was often affected with the 
 thoughts of paying such taxes . . . there was in the depth of 
 my mind a scruple which I never could get over ; and at 
 certain times I was greatly distressed on that account. I 
 believed that there were some upright-hearted men who paid 
 such taxes, yet could not see that their example was a suffi- 
 cient reason for me to do so, while I believe that the spirit 
 of truth required of me, as an individual, to suffer patiently 
 the distress of goods, rather than pay actively." He found 
 he was not alone among the Philadelphian ' Friends ' in this 
 matter. 
 
 Nearly a century later Henry Thoreau wrote in his admir- 
 able essay, Civil Disobedience : 
 
 " I heartily accept the motto ' That Government is best 
 which governs least ' ; and I should like to see it acted up 
 to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally 
 amounts to this, which also I believe ' That Government is 
 best which governs not at all ' ; and when men are prepared 
 for it, that will be the kind of Government which they will 
 have. . . . 
 
 " It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote 
 himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous 
 wrong ; he may properly have other concerns to engage him ; 
 but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he 
 gives it no thought longer, not to give it practically his 
 support. 
 
 " I do not hesitate to say that those who call themselves 
 Abolitionists should at once effectually withdraw their sup-
 
 "THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES" 105 
 
 port, both in person and property, from the Government 
 of Massachusetts, and not wait till they constitute a majority 
 of one, before they suffer the right to prevail through them. 
 I think it is enough if they have God on their side, without 
 waiting for that other one." 
 
 Holding these views, he refused to pay the poll-tax, and 
 was put in prison for one night, till some one paid the tax 
 for him much to his disgust. 
 
 Tolstoy, therefore, is in good company in holding the 
 view that it were better to offer a passive resistance to 
 Governments than voluntarily to pay what they demand and 
 misapply. Such refusals might bring about the bloodless 
 revolution of which Thoreau spoke : 
 
 " If a thousand men were not to pay their tax bills this 
 year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as 
 it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit 
 violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the 
 definition of a peaceful revolution, if any such is possible 
 If the tax-gatherer or any other public officer asks me, as 
 one has done, ' But what shall I do ? ' my answer is, ' If 
 you really wish to do anything, resign your office.' When 
 the subject has refused allegiance, and the officer has resigned 
 his office, then the revolution is accomplished." 
 
 But while we remember that Tolstoy is in good company 
 in this matter, and that he here offers just what some people 
 pine for : something definite and decided to do or to refuse 
 to do, we shall, I think, make a sad mistake if we fail to 
 differentiate between the main philosophical principle of his 
 work and such a piece of practical advice as this. 
 
 The main intention and drift of the work is to show that 
 progress in human well-being can only be achieved by relying 
 more and more on reason and conscience and less and less 
 on man-made laws ; that we must be ready to sacrifice the 
 material progress we have been taught to esteem so highly, 
 rather than acquiesce in such injustice and inequality as is 
 flagrant among us to-day; that what we should desire is
 
 106 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 the supremacy of truth and goodness, and that consequently 
 violence between man and man must more and more be 
 recognised as evil, whether it boasts itself in high places 
 or lurks in slums ; and that we must more and more free 
 ourselves from the taint of murder that clings to all robes 
 of state. 
 
 These things, to my mind, seem certainly true ; we must 
 turn our back on the religion of Jesus if we would rebut 
 them. 
 
 But as soon as it comes to any definite precept and ex- 
 ternal rule to do this, or not to do that, we must remember 
 that what is really needed, and what Tolstoy is aiming at, 
 is that mankind should steadily advance towards perfection. 
 And no one action can be the next step for all men in all 
 places. 
 
 Of the three things Tolstoy here definitely advises 
 viz. : (1) not to take part in Governmental activity ; (2) not 
 to pay taxes, but to submit rather to imprisonment or seizure 
 of goods ; (3) to possess only what others do not claim from 
 us it is the third that is the most difficult and the most 
 important. Without it the others would have no great 
 value ; and our own falling short in it is a reminder of 
 what is so important viz. that we form parts of the obstacle 
 hindering the coming of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Nor would external obedience avail : "If I bestow all 
 my goods to feed the poor, but have not love, it profiteth 
 me nothing." I knew a man who performed an act of 
 heroic generosity, but was so self-willed and wrong-headed 
 that he set others at discord ; and I knew a woman whose 
 advance along the path of unselfishness was almost free 
 from friction, who, beyond going to live in a slum, did 
 little that shocked the prejudices of her well-to-do friends, 
 and yet who helped an ever-increasing circle of men and 
 women to shape their lives better than they would have 
 done without her aid and encouragement. 
 
 I will not stop to discuss the tempting subject (more than
 
 "THE SLAVERY OF OUR TIMES" 107 
 
 once treated of by Tolstoy in other books) of Christ's relation 
 to Caesar and to taxes. A very fair case may be made 
 out for the view that the hardest blow ever dealt at the 
 power of the prince of this world, was dealt by carrying the 
 doctrine of non-resistance one step further than Tolstoy 
 takes it in this book. Why not, it may be asked, hand over 
 the tribute-money to Caesar as one might yield one's purse to 
 a highway robber without waiting for him to put his hand 
 in one's pocket ? 
 
 But whatever may be the best method of undermining the 
 authority of the prince of this world, the condemnation pro- 
 nounced by Jesus makes in the same direction as Thoreau's 
 Civil Disobedience, and Tolstoy's theory of non-resistance. 
 Each in his own way says, " The kings of the Gentiles have 
 lordship over them ; and they that have authority over 
 them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so : but 
 he that is the greater among you, let him become as the 
 younger ; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve " (Luke 
 xxii. 25, 26). 
 
 The prince of this world is judged : the change foreshadowed 
 is a vast one, and must commence with a change of each 
 man's inner self. But its outward manifestations may be as 
 various as the flowers of the field which are all fed by the 
 same rain and sunshine from above. 
 
 The direction of the change is shown in this book on 
 Slavery, and the heart of the matter is reached in the truth 
 that he who would reform society must first reform himself. 
 It is not by retaining India, by being paramount in Africa, 
 or by insisting on our rights as individuals or as nations, 
 that we shall establish the Kingdom of God. " For who- 
 soever would save his life shall lose it : and whosoever shall 
 lose his life shall find it." When men have learnt not to 
 desire to retain what others claim, the Kingdom of God 
 within them will make itself outwardly manifest. Nor will 
 this change be a sudden one ; age after age it is going on, 
 step by step, inch by inch, in men's hearts and consciences,
 
 108 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 and even in their manners and customs. And it is because 
 we dimly perceive and desire that the poor shall be blessed 
 and the meek shall inherit the earth, that we sympathise 
 with those who strive to hasten the process, whether by 
 the tender persuasion of a Woolman or the vehement logic 
 of a Tolstoy. 
 
 First published by " The Free Age Press," as Introduction to my 
 translation of The Slavery of Our Times, October 1900.
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 
 
 THE coronation, in Moscow, of Nicholas II. more destruc- 
 tive of wealth and more fatal to life than many a pitched 
 battle I witnessed, not as a special correspondent bound to 
 telegraph columns of descriptive copy day by day, but as 
 a resident ; and having time to chew the cud of reflection, 
 I ask myself in how far does a demoniac possession by the 
 passions of patriotism and loyalty, such as I have witnessed 
 here in Russia, afflict also the inhabitants of the British 
 Empire ? 
 
 I fear that the worship of rank, wealth, and especially of 
 royalty, in many English people amounts to an hypnotic in- 
 fluence, depriving them of reasoning power and of all sense of 
 proportion. A curious instance of this occurred in a letter I 
 received lately from a near relation of my own, who, a propos of 
 this very coronation calamity, wrote : " The Moscow disaster 
 has been very terrible to read about, and I feel so sorry for the 
 Emperor and Empress." Which is as though when a house falls 
 in, killing and maiming the members of several families, one's 
 first thought were to feel pity for the ground landlord ! Yet 
 it is a fair sample of the feeling expressed by many people. 
 
 A still more striking example of the same sentiment came 
 under my notice some years ago. Another near relative 
 of mine had an acquaintance, a Miss Wells. A Russian 
 lady, who pronounces English rather badly, came into her 
 room one day with the announcement, " Wales is dead ! " 
 " What ? " cried my relation ; " the Prince of Wales is dead ? " 
 and she burst into a flood of genuine tears for a man she had 
 never spoken to, but cheered up promptly on discovering that 
 it was only her friend Miss Wells who had departed this life. 
 
 109
 
 110 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Such 'loyalty' may have seemed suitable in the time of Edward 
 the Black Prince (whose courage outweighed his cruelty in 
 the eyes of his contemporaries), but it seems somewhat out of 
 place when applied to Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. 
 
 Again, I recollect a Canadian clergyman who took my 
 father's duty and came to live at the parsonage for 
 some months, when I was a boy of nine, a couple of 
 years after the close of the Civil War in the United States. 
 He was very friendly to me, and under his guidance my 
 mind expanded ; on politics, however (a subject to which he 
 introduced me), the main point he made clear to my boyish 
 perceptions was the terrible blunder committed by the 
 English Government in not seizing the opportunity afforded 
 by the American War. He pointed out that by joining the 
 Confederate States a policy in which we should have been 
 enthusiastically supported by both Canada and France we 
 could have broken the United States in two, and the hege- 
 mony of the English-speaking nations would have remained 
 with England. I accepted this teaching with faith and 
 enthusiasm, never asking what would have been the fate of 
 the slaves, or what I should have gained personally by an 
 arrangement which might have condemned North America 
 to a militarism similar to that which has since then grown 
 like a cancer on Europe. Nor did either he or I consider 
 how the transaction would look from the standpoint of an 
 Eternal that loveth righteousness. 
 
 I now, thanks to the teaching of Tolstoy, see the insanity 
 of attempting to guide the destinies of mankind on motives 
 of expediency which run counter to the laws of morality. 
 We have not seen the ultimate results of England's non- 
 intervention in that war, still less can we tell what would 
 have resulted had she fought; but we may know that no 
 aim can justify the use of evil means, and that hatred and 
 bloodshed are evil whether we think they tend to " establish 
 the empire " (which is not the Kingdom of God) or not. 
 
 Yet what but my Canadian friend's conception of right and
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 111 
 
 wrong can justify Palmerston's or Disraeli's policy of defend- 
 ing the integrity of the Ottoman Empire by force or by 
 threats ? and what will be the end of these things ? Will 
 not "the Eternal have them in derision" ? Or what shall be 
 said for the Christian journalists who defend Cecil Rhodes 
 and Dr. Jameson by quoting the example of Clive and of 
 Warren Hastings as men once defended the slave trade by 
 quoting the example of John Hawkins. Is the growth of 
 our moral perceptions to be stopped until the British Empire 
 has been sufficiently expanded to satisfy the ambition of the 
 most inflated Englander? Who, after all, can yet tell what 
 the final outcome of the conquest of India, of the greed that 
 caused it and of the violence that characterised it, will be ? 
 Does a nation's life consist in the abundance of the things 
 it possesses ? And does an empire gain in well-being when 
 a small minority 'make fortunes' in a distant land, and 
 return to establish families which henceforth live, generation 
 after generation, on the labour of their fellow-men, for 
 whom, in exchange, they perchance make laws which con- 
 travene, but do not surpass, the two great commandments 
 approved by Christ ? 
 
 We grasp at what we fancy is desirable, as a baby reaches 
 out for a knife that would cut it or a bottle that holds 
 poison. Our pretence that we murder and steal in order to 
 do good to less civilised nations, amounts to a declaration 
 that the best results are obtainable, not by doing right but 
 by doing wrong, and that as a nation we have reached a state 
 of civilisation which we are prepared to force upon others. 
 
 And what is this civilisation which, since it does not 
 attract the savages, is to be thrust upon them with rifles and 
 maxim-guns ? 
 
 Is not the scramble and massacre on the Hodinskoe 
 Field l the very type of what our boasted civilisation has 
 
 1 Fields near Moscow, where, as part of the Coronation Festivities, 
 on 18th May 1896 (O.S.), a People's Fete was held, at which some 3000 
 people perished.
 
 112 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 brought us to ? The grab for enamelled mugs and bad 
 sausages at the People's Fete was mere child's play (even 
 with all its bloodshed) to the grab for money which year 
 by year crushes thousands into the workhouses and prisons, 
 and into that worst of deaths prostitution. Some unwhole- 
 some food or petty rewards are offered, by men who never 
 made or earned them, to those who can push hard enough 
 to get them. A struggle ensues : each strives to be first 
 served ; some seize several times their share but many have 
 to go hungry ; lives are lost, property destroyed, and a festival 
 is turned into a house of mourning 
 
 " . . . where men sit and hear each other groan ; 
 Where but to think is to be full of sorrow." 
 
 And the rich and great, whose example and guidance has 
 led to such a result, harden their hearts like Pharaoh of old, 
 and hasten to find occupations or amusements, to prepare 
 which the labour and lives of the common people are again 
 demanded. 
 
 Of the eighteen on whom the tower in ,Siloam fell, Jesus 
 said : " Think ye that they were offenders above all the men 
 that dwell in Jerusalem ? I tell you, nay : but except ye 
 repent, ye shall all likewise perish." May we not say the 
 same with reference to the three thousand who were mas- 
 sacred on the Hodinka ? Is not our society actuated by the 
 same motives of greed (selfish for ourselves, selfish for our 
 families, selfish for our nation) which led those poor peasants 
 to their doom ? and do we not see around us misery and death 
 caused by the industrial competition in which we share ? 
 Within these last hundred and fifty years the productive 
 power of man's labour has doubled and much more than 
 doubled. Men were fed, clothed, and lodged before the 
 steam-engine was used, the spinning-jenny, the mule, or the 
 power-loom invented ; before the ocean was crossed by a 
 steamer, or a locomotive had been designed, or the triumphs
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 113 
 
 ot applied science (that we hear so much of) had been 
 achieved. Surely all might now be well provided for, were 
 it not for the waste and loss in the scramble, and for the mis- 
 direction and ill example of those who profess to lead us ! 
 
 There is in England a certain old lady whom poets have 
 panegyrised and about whom the newspapers are never tired 
 of writing ; she is much respected, and is looked up to as an 
 example of all the virtues ; and what she the Queen does 
 is generally accepted as being ' the right thing.' No doubt 
 she is morally very much superior to the average of people of 
 her class. But what sort of example does she set in so simple 
 and practical a matter as dressing ? A magazine lately stated 
 that she wears silk stockings of such extreme fineness that a 
 man has been continually engaged for many years past doing 
 no other productive work than weave stockings for Her Most 
 Gracious Majesty, the Defender of the Christian Faith ! 
 
 How can want and poverty be avoided in a society in 
 which people think it right and reasonable that the whole 
 labour of a highly-skilled workman shall be devoted to pro- 
 viding the coverings for one woman's legs ? 
 
 Think, again, of what a Queen's Drawing-Room means. 
 Women not only dress themselves in extravagant clothes, 
 which many people have laboured many days in poverty to 
 produce, but men are tempted from useful work, and 
 paid high wages to serve, together with strong, well-fed 
 horses, in conveying these women, shut up in expensive 
 boxes, to the drawing-room, where they will not do anything 
 more useful than courtesy and kiss Her Most Gracious 
 Majesty's hand. This performance is carried on repeatedly 
 and openly, in a city where hungry people lack food, cloth- 
 ing and lodging to enable them to live and work ; and neither 
 the Queen nor the newspapers, nor the people who waste 
 their time and money at the court, seem even to suspect that 
 there is aught to be ashamed of in the matter. 
 
 What wonder if the rest of society, from the burglar to the 
 financier, also aim at enjoying the fruits of other men's 
 
 H
 
 114 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 labour, and are not particular by what means they gratify 
 their wish ! It is as Isaiah said : " They fight every one 
 against his brother, and every one against his neighbour ; 
 city against city, and kingdom against kingdom." Mother 
 earth would yield enough for all without excessive toil or 
 need for any to scramble, to envy, or to hate ; but the aim 
 our competitive system sets before men namely, the out- 
 stripping of their fellows in the race for wealth, the grasping 
 and retaining of ' property rights ' to make ten or one hun- 
 dred of our fellow-men obey our orders can only be reached 
 by a few ; can only be held precariously and by the use of 
 violence ; and can never be approved by any one to whom 
 Christ's example seems admirable. 
 
 Once upon a time five thousand people went out into a 
 wilderness to hear a favourite preacher. The day was far 
 spent, and no regular provision had been made for their 
 supper. Baskets were to be seen here and there, but what 
 they contained had not been reckoned up. The preacher's 
 own immediate followers had only five barley loaves and two 
 fishes at hand, but with these he gave a practical lesson in 
 economics. Letting the people sit down in companies of 
 about fifty each, he took the five loaves and two fishes, and 
 having blessed them he brake them and gave to the disciples, 
 not to eat themselves but to offer to the people. The 
 example, following on his teaching and coinciding with his 
 known manner of life, was readily imitated. All shared what 
 they had like members of one family ; and the food pro- 
 duced not only sufficed, but, each being careful for the sake 
 of his fellows to waste nothing and to take no more than he 
 needed, there turned out to be a superabundance ; and when 
 they gathered up the fragments there remained twelve 
 baskets full of provisions. 
 
 That lesson, alas ! has been forgotten or lost, owing, per- 
 chance, to slowness of understanding in evil and adulterous 
 generations who sought after a sign. 
 
 The virtue of selfishly ' getting on ' ; the thrift which
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 115 
 
 means hoarding up to-day what our brother man requires, 
 in order to be able to compel his labour to-morrow these 
 things have been so diligently instilled into our minds, that 
 it needs an intellectual effort for us even to understand that 
 if men sought first the righteousness of God's kingdom, all 
 these things (necessaries, comforts, arts, and sciences) would 
 be added unto us in good measure, perhaps even pressed 
 down and running over. 
 
 Yet how evident the waste and loss of our un-Christian 
 individualistic system is. Consider, for instance, an Insurance 
 Company. It occupies fine premises ; has in its employ agents, 
 correspondents, bookkeepers ; it advertises much, calculates 
 much, does much banking, and uses up many books. The 
 whole machine is brought to great perfection but what does 
 it produce ? How much does it add to the wealth of the 
 community ? Nothing at all ! It is merely one of our many 
 elaborate and expensive contrivances for maintaining a selfish 
 system of society. It safeguards the wealth of individuals, 
 but it leaves the community poorer; for all the men who 
 are unproductively engaged in it have to be fed, clothed, 
 and lodged by the labour of workers. Think of trade 
 secrets : manufacturers carefully hiding their processes one 
 from another, and making goods less durable in order that 
 they may be more saleable. Or take another instance : a 
 merchant, trading in Eastern Siberia, finds a cheaper way of 
 getting his goods shipped thither, but the knowledge is only 
 profitable to him so long as he can conceal it from his com- 
 petitors. And so it is in all the processes of trade : it would 
 be easy to multiply examples to any extent. We are so sunk 
 in the bog, that hardly with our utmost effort can we get out 
 of it. But why pretend the thing is good ? Why say it is 
 better to live in a bog than on dry ground ? Why boast so 
 glibly of our progress and our civilisation, when we have 
 well-nigh lost sight of the ideals which were plainly set up 
 before men thousands of years ago ? With an art that, in 
 its efforts to satisfy the rich, demands labour from the poor
 
 116 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 to build its studios and exhibitions and provide its materials ; 
 with a science that is as ready to perfect instruments for 
 human slaughter as it is to write learnedly upon the data 
 of ethics we pride ourselves, forsooth, on our ' advance ' 
 beyond the man who said, "What doth the Lord require 
 of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
 humbly with thy God ? " 
 
 And who really profits by the present system ? 
 
 Measured in money, and considering the tremendous waste, 
 how few gain and how many lose ! Measured by any other 
 standard than filthy lucre, among the people I know, there 
 are none who profit : all are losers. The city man has his 
 nervous and digestive troubles, his irritability and anxiety, 
 and he has lost well-nigh the capacity to tell good from evil, 
 or to be healthily interested even in his own children. His 
 son is cut off from the natural and healthy activity helpful 
 to others for which nature has fitted him, and is constrained 
 by his surroundings to find an outlet for his physical energy 
 in rushing like a lunatic after a tennis or a cricket ball, over 
 ground carefully prepared and kept in order by the labour 
 of working-men. The satisfaction and the moral growth 
 which attend on service well rendered to one's fellows 
 (which, rationally organised, in good company, might be so 
 pleasant) is denied him : and who can say how great in its 
 ultimate effect on mind and character that deprivation is ? 
 
 The daughter may not share the work her father and 
 brother are to devote their lives to, nor is that work such 
 as would be likely to attract her or any rational being ; but 
 she is well fed, and requires an outlet for her energies till 
 she gets married and has children, and, too often, she finds 
 it in family quarrels, or in balls, visiting and theatre-going, 
 or in slave-driving which is called housekeeping. Instead 
 of using her health and ability to lighten the toil of humanity, 
 she is, economically, a dead-weight, making the world poorer 
 by her presence and failing to reap satisfaction for herself. 
 This indeed is the problem which faces Dives to-day. What
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 117 
 
 will you do with your sons and daughters ? Which will you 
 stunt : their minds ? or their consciences ? For if both are 
 allowed to develop, the day is not far off when they will 
 feel a moral revulsion against the system you represent ; and 
 the activity you force on the one, and the inactivity you 
 inflict on the other, will alike be moral torture to them. 
 
 The injustice of our present system to the great bulk of 
 humanity, who have to labour excessively, who are ill-trained, 
 ill-taught, and ill-cared for, and for whom art and science 
 hardly exist, is painfully obvious. If you search the registers 
 of London churches, I am told, you will find the same family 
 names cropping up for two or three generations and then 
 dying off. Among the classes who do not get away to the 
 seaside or go for long holidays to the country, three, or at 
 most four, generations of city life destroy the family. I do 
 not wish to underrate the importance of free picture-galleries, 
 museums, and libraries open to ' the people/ but, in so far as 
 they have an effect, they tend to draw more and more of the 
 lower classes into the cities, there, as a rule, to die out. This 
 is a most serious set-off against the good such institutions do 
 to those who have already been engulfed by the city. 
 
 Worst of all in the indictment against our civilisation is 
 this, that the ideal held up for men's admiration that of 
 freedom from the obligation to toil, and the having a legal 
 'right' to consume extravagantly the fruits of other men's 
 labour is a false light, luring them towards moral quick- 
 sands. The difference which divides the economic teaching 
 and example of respectable society from those of Jesus, is 
 not a difference of degree only but of direction ; and before 
 we can know whether to steer north or south in this matter, 
 we have to make up our minds (1) whether Jesus meant 
 what he taught, or whether his statements on economic 
 matters were mere windy verbosity " divine paradoxes," as 
 Dean Farrar calls them ; and (2) supposing that he meant 
 what he said, whether he was talking sense. 
 
 Christ did not denounce slavery, polygamy, patriotism, or
 
 118 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 pride of race or of family, because the forms under which 
 man exploits his brother man, and the excuses whereby he 
 justifies his conduct to himself and to others, can be endlessly 
 varied ; but he struck at the root of the whole matter by 
 appealing to the heart of man. He proclaimed the brother- 
 hood of man, and said that to whom much (whether in 
 capacity, in strength, or in means) has been given, from him 
 much shall be required. 
 
 The world, age after age, tries other lines : claims ' rights ' 
 for the skilful, clever, strong, or lucky, and for their descend- 
 ants after them. But these experiments, such as slavery or 
 feudalism, have broken down in the past, and to-day indi- 
 vidualism and the competitive system of production are on 
 their trial, and they too seem to be breaking down. Some 
 faith in them still exists, and holds the system together. 
 You may still meet people who talk about wealth being the 
 reward of industry, and poverty being always the merited 
 reward of idleness ; but year by year it requires an increasing 
 degree of obtuseness to enable a man to talk in that way 
 without conscious hypocrisy. Mill's indictment of society 
 remains unanswered and unanswerable : it is evidently wrong 
 that " the produce of labour should be apportioned as we now 
 see it, almost in an inverse ratio to the labour the largest 
 portions to those who have never worked at all, the next 
 largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so on in a 
 descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work 
 grows harder and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing 
 and exhausting bodily labour cannot count with certainty on 
 being able to earn even the necessaries of life." And, as he 
 rightly says: "If this or communism were the alternative, all 
 the difficulties, great or small, of communism, would be but as 
 dust in the balance." l 
 
 " Well," says a friend, " but granting that things are not as 
 they should be, we are at any rate progressing. This very 
 coronation shows how much worse the Government of Russia 
 1 J. S. Mill, Political Economy, People's edition, p. 128.
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 119 
 
 is than that of England, and progress in the future must go 
 along the same lines as in the past." 
 
 The case seems to be this. The English Government is in 
 closer touch with the people than the Russian Government is. 
 No doubt, in England as in Russia, the rich and educated 
 make the laws, chiefly for their own advantage ; but in 
 England they have to reckon with the whims, the passions, 
 and the opinions of an active and audible section of the 
 people who occupy themselves with politics. The sins of the 
 English Government are therefore, in a sense, the sins of 
 the people. In Russia the case is different. An autocratic 
 Government blunders along, not asking advice, resenting 
 criticism, pretending to infallibility, and even trying to dic- 
 tate to its subjects what they may read and what they 
 must believe. The failure of representative Governments, 
 in England, France, and America, to free men from the yoke 
 that greed and selfishness have put upon them, to divide 
 the fruits of labour more equally, or to make men happier, 
 prevents such faith from growing up in Russia as gave the 
 revolutionary movements of a century or two ago their force 
 in those other countries. 
 
 Far be it from me to underrate the service to humanity of 
 those true men who strove for political emancipation, and who 
 kept alive in the hearts of men the sacred hope of a coming 
 time when truth and justice should reign on earth ; but is it 
 not obvious, for instance, that the great Reform Bill of 1832 
 has not done what Macaulay and his contemporaries hoped 
 from it ? How different are its effects to those of the agita- 
 tion led by Christ, which did not aim at any one special 
 practical political change, and yet the echoes of which, last- 
 ing through the ages, have inspired, and will yet inspire, re- 
 formers in all lands. The agitation for a Reform or a Home 
 Rule Act concentrates and buries itself in one object, which 
 is accomplished to our disappointment, or perhaps never is 
 accomplished at all. 
 
 The line of advance in Russia may lie, not in upsetting the
 
 120 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Government but in ignoring it What is desirable is, not 
 that another and a better Pougatchef should dethrone the 
 Emperor and declare a Constitution, but that men should 
 open their minds to what is true, and, seeing the right, 
 should " obey God rather than men." 
 
 Take the example of Prince Hilkof. Finding by actual 
 experience how impossible it was for him, living as a rich 
 man, to ' do good ' to the labourers on his estate in the 
 Kharkof government, to gain their confidence, or to set them 
 any useful example ; and seeing that this was necessarily so 
 as long as he demanded from them labour that he might live 
 sumptuously, he gave up his land to the peasant commune, 
 and began to live as nearly as possible like one of them. His 
 influence then became great. Seeing that in plain practical 
 matters they were the better and not the worse off for his 
 life, the people came to him for religious guidance also, 
 which he and they found in the Gospels, reading simply 
 " like little children " ; looking for what was plain and clear, 
 and practically applicable to the guidance of the life we are 
 all living. Looked at in this way, the stress and emphasis of 
 Christ's teaching did not appear to lie in the announcement 
 of a mysterious Trinity, or in a theory of Redemption by 
 blood, or in the founding of an infallible Church, or in the 
 institution of any rites or ceremonies, but in the inculcation 
 of love and goodwill among men, who are all sons of one 
 Father ; a sonship that should be practically shown by 
 burdening others as little as possible, and doing as much as 
 possible ourselves : devoting one's talents, not to the service 
 of mammon but to the service of righteousness. 
 
 This view, being totally different from that taught by the 
 Holy Orthodox Russian Church, caused the peasants to cease 
 going to church, and also caused the revenues of the village 
 priests to shrink ; and, Church and State leaning upon each 
 other for mutual support, a persecution was commenced, and 
 Prince Hilk6f was exiled to the Caucasus. There he fell in 
 with the Doukhobors, whose views coincided with his own i
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 121 
 
 and after a time the authorities found it advisable to re-exile 
 him to an out-of-the-way part of the Baltic Provinces. 1 His 
 children have been taken from him, to be brought up in the 
 true religion professed by Pobedonostsef and the Most Holy 
 Synod. 
 
 The English Government would not have persecuted 
 Prince Hilkof; but, on the other hand, have we a Prince 
 Hilkof to persecute ? How does the activity of our most 
 Radical peers compare with his ? Not, of course, that such 
 men are common in Russia either ; but among the Russian 
 peasants there are many who, though they have not had 
 to renounce so much, see things eye to eye with Hilkof. 
 Such men would neither put up a fence to protect private 
 property in land, nor serve as soldiers or policemen to en- 
 force ' legal rights,' nor be lawyers to plead the cause of those 
 who can pay for it, nor judges to administer iniquitous laws, 
 nor politicians to set an example of quarrelling where what 
 is wanted is an example of useful and self-sacrificing work, 
 nor priests claiming an endowment and petrifying the beliefs 
 of one age to check the spiritual advance of the next. 
 
 There are two different and incompatible lines of advance. 
 One is that followed, say, by Gladstone (to take a prominent 
 instance), which is that of aiming at immediate practical 
 results by legal enactments. It may not be always useless, 
 but what is made legal is not always right and what is made 
 illegal is not always wrong ; it generates much friction, is 
 disappointing in its results, and sets no example which all 
 men can follow. It is a line which can, indeed, hardly be 
 pursued except by men who have divorced themselves from 
 the universal duty of man to earn his bread by the sweat 
 of his brow. The other line, followed by such men as Paul, 
 Wyclif, or George Fox, and most conspicuously by Jesus, is 
 that of doing what is right and speaking what is true, leaving 
 
 1 Since the above was written he has been allowed to leave Russia 
 (but not to return thither), and has taken an active part in settling 
 the Doukhobdrs in Canada.
 
 122 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 the results to be enforced, not by the policeman but by the 
 Eternal. Who can ever measure or tell what results have 
 followed, or will follow, from any action or example ? Is it 
 not better to leave the calculations of expediency to those 
 who do not believe that truth is great and shall prevail ? 
 
 Even on a lower plane, do we not see that the quiet and 
 thoughtful work of Adam Smith, for instance, has had far 
 more wide-reaching effects, even in the making and altering 
 of laws, than the labours of six hundred and seventy members 
 of Parliament, with all their election committees and political 
 campaigns, for the last ten years ? And, however much the 
 influence of the advance of the physical sciences on the 
 happiness of the human race has been overrated, is it not 
 certain that Newton and Darwin have done more to liberate 
 mankind from the thraldom of an ignorant and bigoted 
 priesthood than could be effected by a dozen church-dis- 
 establishment bills ? 
 
 But "What is truth?" asks, not Pilate only but all 
 thoughtful men who have pierced to the heart of the 
 materialistic philosophy of the day, hoping in it to find 
 solid ground to build on. 
 
 God, say they, is a reflection of himself which man has 
 cast upon the clouds. Granted that there may be a great 
 first cause of all things, we can know nothing of it, and must 
 leave it completely out of our reckoning. What we can know 
 is matter and its movements ; what can be known of higher 
 forms of life towards which man may be tending must be 
 learnt by studying the evolution of lower forms which he 
 has already surpassed. Morality is a question of expediency : 
 it is one thing for the ants, another for the bees, and a dozen 
 different things for man, according to his race and climate 
 and surroundings. Do not, therefore, elevate your whims 
 and guesses and fancies into the decrees of an " Eternal 
 who makes for righteousness." 
 
 That is about as far as the materialistic philosopher cares 
 to go in his public speech or writings ; it is perhaps as far
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 123 
 
 even as some of them care to penetrate in their own thoughts. 
 But get an intellectually honest and sincere materialist, who 
 will not shirk the issue (nor, like so many intellectually 
 dishonest Christians, simply refuse to discuss his beliefs), 
 and you come to something further, which marks the real 
 dividing line between a thoroughly consistent materialist 
 and a spiritualist (if I may use that word to denote one who 
 thinks that conscience and reason afford indications of eternal 
 truth). The consistent materialist will say that what we 
 see around us is a huge evolutionary process tending we 
 know not whence or whither, that we cannot stop it, and 
 whether we go against it and are wiped out, or go with it 
 and are wiped out, does not really seem to matter much ; 
 for the power will certainly destroy first you and me, then 
 the human race and the earth itself, and eventually the 
 whole solar system to which we belong. All our morality 
 is but relative ; probably there is no such thing as absolute 
 right or wrong, and no such thing as moral truth or false- 
 hood, or, if there be, we are probably quite incapable of 
 grasping them. 
 
 That, really, is the root of the whole matter. Is anything 
 true ? Is anything right or wrong ? 
 
 We may, with the thoroughgoing materialist, assume that 
 there are no such things as righteousness or moral truth 
 (indeed, accepting his assertion that conscience gives us no 
 perception of the Eternal, I do not see how that conclusion 
 can logically be avoided) ; and having assumed that, it does 
 not seem to matter much what else we assume for the short 
 remainder of our days. Or we may take up the spiritual 
 hypothesis that there is an eternal right, a truth leading 
 towards it, and that our minds and consciences are so framed 
 that if we are intellectually honest, and strive to act up to 
 what we know, we can obtain such glimpses of these eternal 
 truths as are needful to enable us to steer our course aright 
 through our brief sojourn here. 
 
 The distant mountain does not look the same to all eyes
 
 124 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 or from all points of view, but it is one and the same, and we 
 can approach towards it if we will. 
 
 One of these two conclusions the thoughtful man who 
 goes unflinchingly to the heart of the matter must ultimately 
 reach, even if he first takes it on trial merely, as a working 
 hypothesis. Afterwards by its fruits shall ye judge it. 
 Once assume that we dwell, not in a chaos but in a universe 
 designed for objects which transcend our comprehension, 
 and one can work quietly at what the great Taskmaster sets 
 before us. Expediency and tangible success lose their 
 importance, and even death for ourselves and extinction for 
 our race, cease to be the inexplicable curse from the very 
 thought of which we sought to escape. 
 
 Now, to return to the coronation. No one I have met 
 attempts to justify it as reasonable, right, or necessary in 
 itself : the sham and tinsel of the whole affair was too 
 obvious ; but many try to explain that it was expedient or 
 necessary, as being likely to impress the people or the 
 foreign visitors. Some Russians thought it would favour- 
 ably impress foreigners, and some foreigners excused it as 
 necessary to impress the semi-savage delegates from Asiatic 
 Russia. What was especially noticeable, however, was the 
 disinclination of most people to consider anything more than 
 the mere surface of the event. The thought, lurking at the 
 back of their minds, seemed to be : If we admit that our 
 social system is founded on selfishness and wrong, and that 
 the Government exists in order that the rich may oppress the 
 poor, what will happen ? what have we to put in place of the 
 present system ? 
 
 Well, whether we speak the truth or whether we lie, 
 whether we worship God or mammon, we none of us know 
 what will happen ; we can, however, see the past more 
 clearly than the future. Suppose, then, that a Roman slave- 
 owner had realised that though Paul wrote " Slaves, obey 
 your masters," yet slavery was wrong. He would have been 
 tempted to ask, " But how will the abolition of slavery work ?
 
 THE TSAR'S CORONATION 125 
 
 Who will ever labour at slavish tasks, unless a whip is held 
 over him ? " He would be apt to say, " Even with con- 
 tinual flogging, my slaves can hardly be got to do a decent 
 day's work, any of them." And he would ask, " How, for 
 instance, can woollen cloth ever get made if there are no 
 slaves to pasture the sheep, or to shear them or wash them, 
 or make the fleeces into bundles, or spin it into yarn, or 
 weave it into cloth, or dye it ? " Had he tried to forecast 
 in his mind what a modern Yorkshire mill would be like, he 
 would have failed completely. Yet the conclusion presented 
 by his conscience was right. Slavery was bad, economically 
 as well as morally ; and the emancipation of slaves has not 
 impoverished the world nor left us without cloth. 
 
 In such problems, the question of conscience and motive is 
 the one we are capable of forming a sound judgment on, 
 not the question of the results of actions. And whether we 
 believe that conscience is a guide to be consulted and 
 followed, depends again on whether we believe that there 
 is a Power " lasting through the ages, which makes for 
 righteousness " and which acts upon us. 
 
 As to the moral revolution which is now fermenting in 
 many lands, especially with regard to economic questions, it 
 can neither be helped nor hindered by shams and lies and 
 surely, as to this revolution, it behoves all men to take heed 
 what side they are on ; for " if this counsel or this work be of 
 men, it will be overthrown ; but if it be of God, ye will not 
 be able to overthrow it ; lest haply ye be found even to be 
 fighting against God." 
 
 NEMTCHfNOVSKY POST, 
 
 near Moscow, Junt 1896. 
 
 The above formed the " Epilogue " to a pamphlet describing " The 
 Tsar's Coronation," in which I Ivied to draw attention to the unreason- 
 ableness of such performances.
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 
 
 WHEN I was about thirty-seven years old I acted in a 
 manner of which I had always disapproved. I had known of 
 other people acting in the same way, and had always felt 
 that they were doing wrong. It was in sex matters that I 
 sinned, and the matter was the more startling because I had 
 been guilty of no outwardly wrong action of the kind since I 
 was quite a young man, and for about a year before the lapse 
 I had been stirred by a strong desire to change my whole 
 way of life and be of more use in the world than heretofore. 
 And the question arose : Was I to confess my conduct to 
 those whose lives were linked to mine and whom I could 
 not wound without lacerating myself? or had I better con- 
 ceal it ? 
 
 If I told the truth it would hurt them and I should fall in 
 their esteem, while, on the other hand, by not telling them, I 
 should be entering on a course of concealment which would 
 easily lead to untruthful ness and ultimately, perhaps, to 
 systematic deception. 
 
 I had from childhood kept a clear perception that truth is 
 better than falsehood, and the feelings which had grown up 
 on this opinion caused me now to be frank ; and as soon as I 
 had confessed, and saw how the knowledge of my conduct 
 acted on those who were nearest to me, it became obvious 
 that I must not repeat my misconduct. All the excuses and 
 justifications which seemed so plausible while I was looking 
 at the matter from my own point of view swayed by a 
 strong personal bias vanished when I had to face the case 
 as it really stood, and saw that it did not affect one or two 
 
 126
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 127 
 
 people only, but necessarily reacted upon all with whom 
 they were in touch. 
 
 I had, in fact, run up against the root question of human 
 conduct : Is there a right and a wrong ? I had assumed that 
 it is right to tell the truth and wrong to tell lies, and this 
 had decided for me another important question of conduct. 
 Evidently each part of our conduct is linked on to all the 
 rest. Morality (i.e. right conduct) relates to all we do and 
 knits our life into one organic whole. We cannot be moral 
 in one thing and irresponsible in another. If right and 
 wrong can be predicated of human actions at all, they relate 
 to all our actions, and we cannot separate out some one 
 section of life (our family, our business life, our sexual rela- 
 tions, our friendships and enmities, our amusements, or our 
 studies) and say that in this department we wish to be free 
 from the rule of right and wrong. 
 
 I was resident at that time in Russia, where such problems 
 are discussed with great frankness, and with these thoughts 
 working in my mind it came natural to me to speak of them 
 to some personal friends. I found that more than one acquaint- 
 ance had gone through experiences similar to my own, but 
 not all of them had felt it necessary or desirable to confess 
 their actions. This one, and that one, had chosen the path 
 of concealment, the ultimate consequences of which were not 
 yet apparent. For convenience' sake let me speak as though 
 the considerations which were presented to me, and claimed 
 my attention, all came from one and the same friend. 
 
 I pleaded that surely truth is better than falsehood. This 
 my friend would not admit to be necessarily so ; he said he 
 had become convinced that our ideas of morality are con- 
 ventional. He recognised an evolutionary process going on 
 in the world. Some power of which we know nothing, for 
 reasons we cannot discern, ages ago evolved enormous ante- 
 diluvian animals with tremendous teeth and claws adapted to 
 their environment, and enabling them to fight, which was 
 what they were destined for. When the power (Nature) had
 
 128 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 done with them, it wiped them all out and continued its 
 process of evolving fresh types, which it successively used up 
 and wiped out. Among the rest came man. To man nature 
 has not given such terrible teeth and claws, but it has fur- 
 nished him with faculties which adapt him also to his environ- 
 ment. It has given him a conscience, and a capacity to feel 
 sympathy and love. These, he said, are evidently mere 
 adaptations of the primitive tribal instincts of the savage, 
 which, in turn, were adaptations of the sexual and maternal 
 instincts of the animals. Love is a lubricant designed to 
 enable the machinery of human society to work without too 
 much friction. It is merely one more adaptation of creatures 
 to their environment just as were the teeth and claws of the 
 antediluvian monsters. What we call ' promptings of con- 
 science ' are merely inherited habits, the results of the fear 
 of punishment transmitted through the nervous system. 
 My friend stated the matter somewhat in this way : 
 " We do not understand this Nature of which we are a 
 part, nor do we know its purpose. An earthquake swallows 
 up a town ; the bird tears the worm to pieces ; the beautiful 
 rainbow represents both the fruitful and life-giving rain, and 
 the destructive and life-destroying flood which sweeps the 
 helpless child from its despairing mother. 
 
 " Deify this Nature if you like ; talk, as the sentimentalists 
 do, of the perfect harmony which (they say) exists, or will 
 some day exist, between what is going on in Nature and what 
 we feel would satisfy us. Or, like Moses, say that an all- 
 good and all-powerful God created this world as we see it 
 and pronounced it to be quite satisfactory ; or, like the pessi- 
 mists, curse Nature for her heartless cruelty, for being ' red 
 in tooth and claw.' But for those of us who care to be at all 
 truthful in the matter, the plain fact remains that we simply 
 do not know what Nature is aiming at ; many of her pro- 
 cesses and operations are terrible, shocking and revolting to 
 what we are accustomed to call ' our best feelings,' and we 
 do not even know whether Nature is aiming at anything at all.
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 129 
 
 "We may dislike death, decay, destruction, and misery ; 
 but they exist and have to be reckoned with. All the efforts 
 to believe, as the Greeks did, in a beautiful harmony of 
 Nature, like the Jewish attempts to believe in a good God 
 who overrules all things for the best, are merely attempts to 
 lull ourselves into a comfortable state of mind. They are 
 not rational beliefs but Epicurean consolations a kind of 
 intellectual opium-eating. 
 
 " We are infinitesimally small parts of an infinitely large 
 whole which we do not understand. If we knew the scheme 
 of creation we might be able to see how we fit into it, and 
 whether our life has or has not any meaning. But not under- 
 standing the plan and purpose of the whole machine, it is 
 hopeless to ask what this or that particular little wheel is 
 for. We are simply groping in the dark, and when we speak 
 of ' right ' and ' wrong ' we are only deceiving ourselves. 
 Not knowing what Nature has designed us for, we cannot 
 know whether it is more moral to oppose her in her designs 
 and be wiped out, or to assist her in her plans and equally be 
 wiped out. 
 
 " For science tells us (only men dislike what is unpleasant, 
 and therefore this is often slurred over or kept in the back- 
 ground) that not only is death inevitable, both for ourselves 
 and our friends, but that the human race itself will come to 
 an end, and the earth will perish, and the whole solar system 
 will pass away. No doctor ever yet saved any life ; the utmost 
 he could by any possibility do was to postpone the inevit- 
 able death. All the progress people talk about is progress 
 towards the destruction of the world and the termination of 
 the race. 
 
 " Reason, conscience, and love, therefore, are expedients, 
 adaptations designed by nature for her own unknown pur- 
 poses ; and more than this, they are merely temporary ex- 
 pedients. There is nothing permanent about them. What 
 is called the ' soul ' or the ' spirit ' is to the body what the 
 flame is to a candle a result of its gradual combustion. 
 
 I
 
 130 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 The ' spirit ' can no more continue to exist after the body 
 has decomposed than the flame can go on burning after the 
 candle has been consumed. 
 
 " Some people are fond of advising you to develop powers, 
 and form habits which tend towards life, and to shun others 
 which tend towards death. But this is a fallacious manner 
 of expressing oneself, for none of our faculties or habits tend 
 anywhere but towards ultimate death. The difference is only 
 that some paths lead to the goal more quickly than others. 
 
 " So far from any clear rule of right or morality being 
 discernible in the operations of Nature, nothing of the kind 
 exists even in the mind of man. Human morality is merely 
 conventional. It not only differs from the morality of the 
 bees and the ants and other animals, but even among men 
 themselves what is right in one age is wrong in another, and 
 what is moral in one country is immoral in another. Under 
 the Mosaic law it was right to slaughter one's national 
 enemies and to have a hundred wives. In modern England 
 most people are shocked if you have even half-a-dozen wives, 
 and though many people still admire a Cecil Rhodes for 
 ' painting the map of Africa red ' with human blood, some 
 people begin to disapprove of killing men, and of regarding 
 the lives of foreigners as less sacred than the lives of one's 
 own countrymen." 
 
 My friend instanced to me a case in which his own con- 
 science had misled him. He had been brought up to think 
 it wrong to read novels on Sunday. When he was a young 
 man he wanted to read a novel on Sunday and did so, but his 
 conscience made him perfectly wretched about it. This, how- 
 ever, only lasted till he had become accustomed to reading 
 novels on Sunday. Then he perceived that he " had been 
 hampered by a ridiculous Jewish superstition, the power of 
 which was called conscience." 
 
 "There is a continual shifting and surging of opinions 
 backwards and forwards now to the left hand and now to 
 the right. Under such circumstances only the fanatic will
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 131 
 
 try to dogmatise, and only the ascetic will forego the few 
 pleasures, not harmful to our physical life, which are open 
 to us." 
 
 Again, my friend argued : " Even admitting that we could 
 discern right from wrong, could we alter our conduct ? Could 
 we be any better or any worse than we are ? 
 
 " In nature there is no effect without an antecedent cause. 
 Whatever is now going on in the world is the effect of what 
 was happening millions of years ago. We have been shaped 
 to what we are by the combined influence of soil and climate 
 acting on our food and our surroundings, and on those of 
 our ancestors for thousands of generations. There is no spot 
 on your body, no atom in your brain, no thought that rises 
 within you, but is an inevitable result of antecedent physical 
 causes. The cause may be what you had for dinner yes- 
 terday (causing indigestion and irritability), but even the 
 way you ate your yesterday's dinner was influenced by 
 what your remote ancestors fed on millions of years ago, 
 when the foundations were laid of the character you have 
 inherited. 
 
 " Is it not sheer self-conceit and self-deception to imagine 
 that we can counteract the accumulated results of all these 
 antecedent causes, which have been operating steadily 
 through the ages ? Can we work miracles ? Can we bid 
 the sun stand still ? or (what is equally impossible) say to 
 the inevitable result which must follow from what has gone 
 before, ' Thou shalt not be ! ' We fancy we are free to act, 
 only because we do not see the threads by which we are 
 moved in reality we are mere automata." 
 
 It is always painful to disagree with one's friends on the 
 fundamental problems of life and conduct. It was so in this 
 case, and, moreover, a dread haunted me that perhaps the 
 power which had presented these problems to me and given 
 me a desire to solve them and a perception that their solution 
 was necessary, had yet left me incapable of solving them as
 
 132 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 a fish is sometimes left on dry land a few feet from the river, 
 struggling and gasping for the water it is unable to reach. 
 
 This fear disappeared when I came to face the difficulties 
 seriously. There was much that I could not solve or fathom, 
 but what man needs to know in order to steer his course 
 aright can be found by those who really seek it. The diffi- 
 culty (it now seems to me) lies not so much in perceiving 
 what is right as in doing it. But thought is enormously im- 
 portant, because it is to man what the rudder is to a ship ; it 
 gives the direction. The tide may carry the ship to one side, 
 the wind may even drive it back, but that does not mean that 
 it is unimportant how the ship is steered. Unless it be steered 
 rightly, what hope is there of reaching harbour ? So with 
 man ; his actions result from his feelings, but his feelings 
 grow up rooted on his sense of the meaning of life. 
 
 Thoughts such as those expressed by my friend do not 
 often trouble plain, honest folk, but they colour and influence 
 the minds of many of the sophisticated and over-instructed 
 people of our day ; and what makes them perplexing is that 
 they contain a certain proportion of truth and are often 
 mixed up with theories and conclusions which are valid. 
 
 Pure gold is easily distinguishable from alloy, but it is 
 difficult to separate the one from the other in a coin. So 
 with a man's view of life. What is true and what is false 
 may be easily distinguished if they are once separated : 
 perplexity arises from having them intermixed. 
 
 What I first felt about my friend's arguments was that it 
 would not do for me to yield to them, for if I admitted them 
 I should never know what to like and what to dislike, what 
 to do and what not to do. But no sooner did this thought 
 form itself than I felt ashamed of it. I felt (not with my 
 reason only but with my whole being) that : " Truth is great 
 and shall prevail " : that to truth we must be ready to say, 
 "Though thou shouldst slay me, yet will I love thee." 
 A passage from Huxley recurred to my memory : " Granting 
 that a religious creed would be beneficial, my next step is to
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 133 
 
 ask for a proof of the dogma. If this is forthcoming it is my 
 conviction that no drowning sailor ever clutched a hencoop 
 more tenaciously than mankind will hold by such dogma, 
 whatever it may be. But if not, then I verily believe that 
 the human race will go its own evil way ; and my only con- 
 solation lies in the reflection that however bad our posterity 
 may become, so long as they hold by the plain rule of not 
 pretending to believe what they see no reason to believe, 
 because it may be to their advantage so to pretend, they will 
 not have reached the lowest depths of immorality." 
 
 Yes, surely ! No pleasure, no expediency, no profit, no 
 utility, will ever justify us in believing in the existence of 
 right and wrong if it indeed be true that modern thought 
 (Science) has demonstrated that we are but parts of an in- 
 scrutable whole, that we and our race must perish utterly, 
 body and spirit, that all morality is merely conventional, and 
 that even our conscience and our reason are but inevitable 
 results of integrations and disintegrations of matter over 
 which we have no control. 
 
 The view of life which my friend represented, flows 
 logically enough, I think, from the materialistic or synthetic 
 philosophy which is to the fore in our day. 
 
 We are surrounded by something which we call the 
 material universe. The perceptions which reach us through 
 our five senses reveal to us an order of nature. What we 
 perceive seems to obey fixed and definite laws which we can 
 investigate. Our own bodies, and even our brains, belong to 
 this external universe which we know through our senses, 
 and the evolutionary and synthetic philosophy deals with all 
 this. It goes further, and undertakes to tell us all that can 
 be known of the spirit in man. The mainspring of life, 
 the prime mover, it speaks of as "the unknown and the 
 unknowable," and it invites us to dismiss it from our thoughts 
 in order to concentrate our attention on the knowable. 
 
 This philosophy professes to cover the whole ground of 
 human knowledge, and as long as I admitted that claim, and
 
 134 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 looked to it for guidance in my own conduct, it baffled and 
 perplexed me. My friend, on the basis of this philosophy, 
 demonstrated the absurdity of believing in an absolute right 
 and wrong ; and Herbert Spencer, in the fourth great volume 
 (Justice] of the fifth great section (Principles of Ethics) of his 
 great scheme of Synthetic Philosophy, on this same basis seeks 
 to demonstrate that the existing system of landholding (by 
 which the people who till the land of England do not possess 
 it but live under the control of those who do) is one which 
 practically accords with the principles of justice ! 
 
 I could not help suspecting that when it deals with such 
 questions the synthetic philosophy oversteps the limits within 
 which it is competent. 1 
 
 I next came to perceive that the synthetic philosophy 
 neglects the 'subjective' view of life. This view regards 
 'the spirit in man/ actuating his reason and his conscience, 
 as being the most real of all things. This spirit is the divine 
 in man : a something durable, permanent, and reliable. By 
 means of it we are constituted judges having knowledge of 
 good and evil. It is the ' true life/ the ' life eternal ' (in 
 Christ's language) for the sake of which the physical life may 
 well be sacrificed. Compared to this, all that reaches us 
 through our five senses is external, foreign, unsatisfactory, 
 changeable, temporary. This subjective view has been held, 
 and dwelt on, by all the great religious teachers who have 
 ever moved the hearts of men : by Socrates, Lao-Tsze, 
 Buddha, Christ, Paul, Wesley, Woolman, Tolstoy, and by a 
 host of others whose influence spreads from age to age and 
 from continent to continent. 
 
 Now, the question before us is this : Is there any real 
 Right absolute, firm, immovable, durable belonging to a 
 real, eternal order of things ? And this raises the further 
 
 1 The reader who wishes to know the weak places of Herbert 
 Spencer's position on the external side of things, should consult 
 Vol. I. of James Ward's Naturalism and Agnotticitm.
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 135 
 
 questions : Is there something in each of us which is linked 
 indissolubly to that real eternal order ? Are we, therefore, 
 brethren ? Moved by the same spirit ? Owing allegiance to 
 the same truth and the same duty ? 
 
 Will the synthetic philosophy suffice to enable us to answer 
 these questions ? It professes to answer all questions to 
 which mankind possesses any answer. It regards primarily 
 what is external : what can be perceived and investigated 
 through the five senses. It calls these things realities and 
 facts : it holds out hopes that by means of these it will 
 explain also your innermost perceptions, and warns you that 
 every other method is mere self-deception. 
 
 Indeed, to many of us, at first, this outer world does seem 
 more solid and real than the inner world of our conscious- 
 ness. We are, at first, inclined to disbelieve the teachers 
 who tell us that the external is deceptive, unreliable and 
 temporary ; that the inner life alone is reliable and permanent. 
 We are ready to call them mystics, and to put their teaching 
 aside as unsatisfactory. Only after much thought do we begin 
 to perceive to what an extent the external world deceives, 
 baffles, and perplexes us. The mere number of facts relating 
 to this external world is litei'ally infinite, and we can know 
 only a very few of them. Even a Newton may well admit 
 that he is like a little child picking up pebbles by the shore 
 of the ocean of the unknown. 
 
 Even in the things we thought we knew, how often we 
 are deceived ! To borrow an example : you enter a room, a 
 looking-glass fills one end of it and you advance to speak to a 
 lady you see there till you touch the glass and your hand 
 tells you that your eye has deceived you. When this hap- 
 pens we call it an ' optical illusion.' But there are cases in 
 which we find our different senses combining to deceive us, 
 and we then call the result a ' fact.' And as most men have 
 senses similar to ours, when one man's senses deceive him he 
 will easily find plenty of other people to confirm him in his 
 error, and when the people who have made a special study
 
 136 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 of the matter are deceived, it becomes a ' scientific fact.' 
 For thousands of years the earth was flat, and the sun rose 
 in the east and sank in the west each day. And how sure 
 people usually are of their ' scientific facts ' until a fresh 
 generation sweeps them into the rubbish heap. Have we 
 not (particularly those of us who had not themselves in- 
 vestigated it) felt sure that the ' Law of Gravity ' was some- 
 thing quite certainly and absolutely true ? and does not 
 Edward Carpenter now show us that it is " a projection into 
 a monstrous universality and abstraction, of partially under- 
 stood phenomena in a particular region of observation ? " l 
 We are beginning to understand that the ' laws ' of science 
 are not absolutely, but at best only relatively, true. 
 
 Again, how sure most people are that the trees are green. 
 Some one with an eye rather differently shaped, sees red trees 
 where I see green ones. But being in a majority I say that 
 he has a defect of the eye called Daltonism. Really, so far 
 as science has guessed at present, the tree is neither green 
 nor red. Certain waves of light pass from it to our eyes. 
 These waves impinge on the retina, the nerves pass on a 
 sensation to our brain, and we say we see green trees. If the 
 other shape of eye were more common, trees would be red. 
 
 Under the materialistic philosophy ' matter and force ' are 
 the ultimate. Our investigation of them has to decide what 
 importance we should attach to man's spirit : reason, con- 
 science, and judging-faculty. 
 
 The contrary philosophy (call it Socratic, or Christian, as 
 you please) discerns the essential difference between thai 
 which perceives and that which is perceived, and while it recog- 
 nises and includes what can be known of the external 
 universe, admits the validity of the inductive method of 
 investigating nature, and recognises that we learn and are 
 developed by what we perceive, yet instead of looking to the 
 
 1 Modern Science a Criticism, published in the volume of essays 
 entitled Civilisation, its Cause and Cure.
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 137 
 
 external to decide for us what we are to regard as good 
 or bad, it holds that all we perceive has to be judged by 
 the spirit in man. 
 
 Pascal, in a passage Tolstoy has taken as an epigraph to his 
 book On Life, has put the essential position thus : 
 
 " Man is but a reed, the feeblest of things but he is a 
 thinking reed. The whole universe need not rise in order 
 to crush him. A vapour, or a drop of water, is sufficient to 
 kill him. But when the universe crushes him, man still 
 remains nobler than that which kills him, for he knows 
 that he is dying, while of the advantage the universe has 
 over him it knows nothing. Thus, all our dignity consists 
 in thought. It is by that, and not by time or space, that 
 we should raise ourselves. Let us therefore labour to think 
 rightly : that is the principle of morality." 
 
 From the synthetic philosophy we get no clear guid- 
 ance : only a piling up of so-called facts and a process of 
 generalising on these ' facts ' : different authorities coming 
 to different conclusions, perplexing the intellect but not 
 stirring the heart. The subjective view says there is a 
 divine life present in each of us, and that we must realise 
 that it is our true self. In it and not in our physical 
 existence resides true, real, permanent life. Trust it, use 
 it, perceive that it is the ultimate from which there is no 
 appeal, realise that the same spirit lives in you as lives in 
 all your brother-men and you have grasped the master-key 
 to all the problems of morality, ethics, and religion. 
 
 This is the crux of the whole matter : each man must look 
 within himself, and say whether he is conscious of a power 
 approving and disapproving seeking for what is good. If a 
 man be not conscious of it, if the idea seem to him mystical, 
 unreal, fantastic then morality, as I understand it, can have 
 no meaning for him. But if he recognise this life, or light, or 
 spirit, or soul, or divine spark (call it what you will) in him- 
 self, he possesses the essential basis of morality and religion.
 
 138 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Is there, or is there not, a right and wrong discernible 
 to you and to me and incumbent upon us both ? If we use 
 our minds freely (not swayed by prejudices, nor overmastered 
 by our physical nature) can we, or can we not, understand 
 each other, sympathise with each other, aid each other 
 spiritually, and advance hand in hand together ? 
 
 If not, we can never more approve or disapprove of any 
 man's conduct : never be moved by admiration of any self- 
 sacrifice, nor be touched by righteous indignation at any 
 wrong. If I have no judging-f acuity, capable of discerning 
 right and wrong, I must remain neutral, and divide my appro- 
 bation and sympathy equally between the Judas who betrays, 
 the High Priest who prosecutes, the Pilate who condemns, 
 and the Jesus who sacrifices himself for the right. If there 
 be no right and no wrong, or if they be not such as a plain 
 man may find, or if they be different for different men 
 then not only the teaching of Christ but every attempt 
 that ever has been made to supply direction or guidance 
 to mankind must be futile. 
 
 The problem is a tremendous one : On the one hand, 
 admit the existence of an absolute right incumbent on each 
 of us, and it follows that there exists a real, secure, and per- 
 manent spiritual order of things to which we are linked by 
 the spirit in us which recognises right and wrong. On 
 the other hand, deny the existence of an absolute right and 
 wrong, and it inevitably follows that all our discussions and 
 efforts to influence each other are senseless. 
 
 But, important as the problem is, the solution is simple. 
 We only need to consider the facts of our own nature, facts 
 of which we cannot but be conscious, and we shall plainly 
 see that we do distinguish right from wrong. Which of us 
 when he reads the story of Socrates does not admire him for 
 speaking the truth boldly before his judges. Which of us is 
 unable to perceive that Jabez Balfour did wrong when he 
 devoured widows' houses and for a pretence made long 
 prayers ? Do not the great and good who are gone reach
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 139 
 
 their hands to us across the ages, making us feel that (how~ 
 ever dormant it may be) in our innermost selves there dwells 
 some spark of that divine nature which made them heroes, 
 saints, and martyrs, and that we, too (however unworthily), 
 are sons of the same spirit. 
 
 It still remains to meet my friend's arguments, which, after 
 this preparation, will perhaps not prove a difficult task. 
 
 1. Conscience and love, we are told, are mere results of the 
 physical activities and chemical mobilities of matter operating 
 through the ages. 
 
 One recalls the procedure of a conjurer making a ball 
 vanish. First he lets you examine a solid ball, then he 
 manages to substitute a collapsible trick ball for the real one, 
 and rolling it between his hands it gradually becomes smaller 
 and smaller till at last you cannot see what has become 
 of it. 
 
 That is very much like what the materialist does with con- 
 science. Conscience is something real and actual, which 
 influences me and of which I am subjectively conscious. 
 The philosopher comes along and undertakes to make this 
 conscience disappear. This he does by substituting for the 
 thing itself of which we have knowledge at first hand and 
 not through our senses the external phenomena which 
 accompany the existence of a conscience. Passing then 
 from the phenomena which indicate that I and the people I 
 know have consciences, to similar external phenomena which 
 indicate that other people, further removed from me, had 
 consciences, he gradually leads us further and further from 
 what is familiar and sure to what is distant and unknown, till 
 at last we reach the primitive tribe, the apes, the bees, and 
 the ants, and, past them, the colloid or jelly-like substances 
 in which physical life is supposed to have commenced. Here 
 we have quite lost sight of conscience. Instead of speaking 
 about the thing itself (the power which influences our con- 
 duct) he has discussed its derivation, and asked where it came 
 from. Starting with the fundamental confusion of supposing
 
 140 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 that something subjective (like conscience) can be explained 
 by the objective methods of biology, physics, or chemistry, 
 he ends up by informing you of the important fact that your 
 conscience proceeds from chemical activities and physical 
 mobilities the question how we ought to use our conscience 
 remaining unanswered. 
 
 2. Next we are told that Nature (of which we are parts) is 
 non-moral and inscrutable. 
 
 Well, I am prepared to admit that Nature, as I know it 
 externally, appears to me to be non-moral. I may devise 
 plausible guesses to explain the earthquake or the flood, but 
 if in order to know how to act, I had to observe all nature 
 objectively, to accumulate myriads of facts, to generalise from 
 them, and by searching find out the purpose of creation, I 
 should despair of ever accomplishing the task and should be 
 ready to admit that we cannot know right from wrong. We 
 do not know the whole design of the universe, and we should 
 beware of involving ourselves in logical perplexities by assert- 
 ing (as Moses did) that God created the earth, or by saying 
 (as the nature-worshippers do) that all the ways of nature 
 commend themselves to our moral sense. We should content 
 ourselves with making sure of what is necessary and sufficient, 
 and should not assert what is questionable and cannot be 
 verified. 
 
 But putting aside the ambitious design of fathoming the 
 mind of the All, admitting that we, being finite, cannot 
 grasp or span the infinite let us turn from what we cannot 
 know to what we do know. Commune with the spirit within 
 you, and you will find that as the bird knows how to live in 
 the air and is not perplexed how to act, and as the fish is 
 able to live in the water and knows what to do there, so 
 man too can live his life, guided by the spirit within him. 
 That spirit links us, not only to our fellow-men but also to 
 the faithful horse or trusty dog, and sometimes makes us 
 desire more comprehension of, and union with, the flowers, 
 the grass, and all that exists.
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 141 
 
 This does not mean that if man voluntarily indulges in 
 ethical conundrums which have no real application to his 
 own life, he will always be able to solve them. I remember 
 being asked what an Eskimo should do who saw the force 
 of the vegetarian's objection to taking life, but who found 
 that he would die if he ceased to eat whale's blubber. I 
 had to give it up ; because I am not an Eskimo, and do not 
 find it necessary to live on whale's blubber. His course 
 would depend on the strength of his conviction, and on his 
 readiness to sacrifice physical existence for spiritual well- 
 being. 
 
 3. Again, as to the temporary, and consequently unsatis- 
 factory, nature of human existence. 
 
 This is, I think, a very important point in my friend's 
 position, for it links the question of the reality of right and 
 wrong to the question whether the spirit of which we are 
 conscious in ourselves is finite or infinite. There are people 
 who wish to admit the existence of right and wrong, but 
 who incline to the belief that we perish utterly at the death 
 of our body, leaving behind only our dust and our influence, 
 which in its turn will perish when the world is used up and 
 the sun cools down. They think Christ must have been 
 romancing if he ever said he could show us life eternal, that 
 being a matter we can know nothing about. 
 
 They say that life is to the body what the flame is to the 
 candle. But the analogy is misleading. The flame has no 
 choice as to what it will do with the candle : it really de- 
 pends on chemical activities and physical mobilities. But 
 man's spirit (which is his real life) can and does enable him 
 to decide that he will drown himself out of jealousy, risk his 
 life for patriotism, or go to the stake for truth's sake. For 
 the analogy to be complete, the flame of the candle would 
 have to approve or disapprove of the fat of which the candle 
 is made and the shape in which it has been cast. 
 
 A truer analogy, I believe, would be to compare life to an 
 electrical installation. When a good lamp is well attached
 
 142 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 a bright and steady light is shown, if the lamp be badly 
 'attached the flame is irregular, and when the lamp is broken 
 the light goes out. But the electric current (man's life or 
 spirit) continues to flow with equal power whether the lamp 
 (man's body) be sound, or injured, or destroyed. 
 
 For those, however, who accept the materialist point of 
 view, my friend's argument should, I think, be conclusive. 
 It is unreasonable to believe in any absolute right and wrong 
 if our existence be only temporary. Logically it does not 
 matter whether the arrangement lasts, say, for twenty years, 
 till the death of the individual ; or for millions of years, till 
 the extinction of the race. If our spirit be the product of 
 our brain, and our brain be admittedly perishable, what have 
 we to do with the eternal ? Right and wrong belong to the 
 domain of the infinite. Morality depends upon that stream 
 of tendency which makes for righteousness yesterday, to-day, 
 and for ever. 
 
 It needs, however, to be pointed out, that to say, as Christ 
 did, that man has eternal life, is not the same as to assert as 
 a fact, as the Buddhists do, that men will be re-incarnated, 
 or as the European churches do, that men will rise from the 
 dead and have a personal and corporeal immortality. These 
 (however plausible the one or the other may be) are hypo- 
 theses which cannot be verified ; and, dogmatically asserted, 
 they have produced a natural reaction and inclined men 
 towards mere negation. The influence of this reaction is 
 perceptible around us to-day. The basis, however, on which 
 Christ, or Socrates, built in this matter still stands firm, and 
 this much at least we have, many of us, found in our own 
 experience of life : that while we are chiefly occupied with 
 the physical and material side of life we need constant occu- 
 pation and stimulant to keep us from perceiving the approach 
 of death ; but when we are occupied with the spirit and are 
 following after that which is good, the fear of death finds no 
 place, and we need no such pre-occupation or hypnotic in- 
 fluence to blind us to it
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 143 
 
 4. Next as to what my friend said about the instability of 
 the moral code. 
 
 It is true that no code of external rules exists which would 
 fit all men in all ages. But observe the working of your 
 own mind, and it is easy to see why this is so. What we 
 desire and seek is perfection. No sooner is one step gained 
 than it becomes necessary to take another. Morality (by 
 which I mean right conduct) does not consist in reaching an 
 attainable spot and stagnating there, but, on the contrary, 
 it consists in movement forward. Through the ages men 
 have been travelling along converging lines towards one 
 ultimate aim the City of God. 
 
 If we are walking from York to London, would it not be 
 unreasonable to tell us that we must be going wrong because 
 yesterday we were anxious to reach and rest at Grantham, 
 while to-day we are entering Peterboro' ? The immutability 
 lies in the ultimate aim when we approached Grantham 
 we were making for London, and so we are when we have 
 pushed on to Peterboro'. 
 
 The owner who begins to have some compassion for his 
 slaves ; the owner who lets his slaves go free ; the woman 
 who makes a friend of her servant ; the rich man who chooses 
 a life of poverty for conscience' sake ; the Father Damien 
 who gives his life for the lepers : all are alike moving 
 towards the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven on 
 earth. 
 
 The direction we should move in is no insoluble enigma. 
 When any one tells us that morality is mutable, that we are 
 left without guidance and cannot know right from wrong, the 
 reply is one which was given thousands of years ago: "It is 
 not too hard for thee, neither is it too far off. It is not in 
 heaven, that thou shouldest say, who shall go up for us to 
 heaven and bring it unto us, and make us to hear it, that we 
 may do it ? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldest 
 say, who shall go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, 
 and make us to hear it that we may do it ? But the word is
 
 144 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth, and in thy heart, that 
 thou mayest do it." 
 
 5. But, we are told, conscience veers round, as in the case 
 of my friend with his Sunday novel. 
 
 Is not the case this ? He had been accustomed to be 
 guided by the authority of his elders, and to use his own 
 judging faculty merely within prescribed limits. Then he 
 became conscious of a conflict between his own reason and 
 the dictates of authority. He should have faced the prob- 
 lem squarely and cleared his own mind. Finding (as all 
 may find who will think about it) that a man can and must 
 think with his own head, he would have been free to choose 
 his path, and have felt no further compunctions about doing 
 what seemed to him right. His conscience troubled him, I 
 take it, rather because he shirked the problem than because 
 he read the novel. Ultimately he did think for himself, and 
 then his conscience was at rest. 
 
 We are all too apt to be intellectually lazy, shirking the 
 problems of life and saying we do not know the solutions. 
 We are all too apt to be intellectually dishonest, not thinking 
 freely about the questions life puts before us, but allowing 
 a secret bias for some friend, or book, or creed, or church, 
 or occupation, or amusement, to swerve us from following 
 straight after truth. We are too apt to be intellectually 
 cowardly, not believing that our minds were given us to be 
 used, and that they are worth using and trusting. 
 
 6. Lastly, my friend contended that our thoughts, feelings, 
 and actions are pre-determined and inevitable results of what 
 went before. 
 
 This is just where the man whose view of life includes 
 the subjective perception of his own inner consciousness, 
 finds himself at issue with all the philosophic systems 
 which try to confine themselves to a knowledge of what can 
 be studied through the five senses of seeing, hearing, touch- 
 ing, smelling, and feeling. The root of the whole matter is, 
 that if we know ourselves we perceive an inward spirit
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 145 
 
 preferring good to evil. As Tolstoy puts it : " Goodness is 
 really the fundamental metaphysical conception which forms 
 the essence of our consciousness ; it is a conception not 
 defined by reason, it is that which can be defined by nothing 
 else but which defines everything else : it is the highest, the 
 eternal, aim of our life." 
 
 Examining my own inner perceptions, I believe I possess 
 a will. We do not know why or horv the spirit operates upon 
 the physical brain, which, but for that incoming life, would 
 be merely automatic. Neither science nor inspiration has 
 shown us how to produce life, or explained its secret to us. 
 The dilemma is that we must assume either (1) that we are 
 automata, or (2) that we possess some measure of will ; and 
 with the facts of life before me I am driven to assume that 
 I possess some measure of will. We may reject religion as 
 a superstition, morality as a delusion, and duty as a fallacy ; 
 yet we shall continue to desire and strive for something, if 
 for nothing better than for the gratification of some personal 
 caprice, or the satisfaction of some physical want. 
 
 We are not free from the limitations of time and space, 
 nor are we free from the influences of heredity, environment, 
 soil, and climate : my body is largely a result of what occurred 
 before I was born. And this is what should save us from 
 harshly judging one another. " Judge not that ye be not 
 judged " would be sound and sensible advice even if it were 
 shown that no Christ ever gave it. For all judging of the 
 kind we ourselves might reasonably try to escape from 
 i.e. all judging in which the judge seeks to inflict injury on 
 the sinner, is, it seems to me, an evil. On the other hand, 
 "Judge righteous judgments" is not less necessary advice; 
 for by seeking to perceive the truth regarding ourselves and 
 others, and about our mutual relations to one another, we can 
 best learn the lessons of life : learn to understand and escape 
 from our own faults, and learn to help others. 
 
 Very much has been pre-determined for us. It seems im- 
 possible that we should relapse into cannibalism, and equally
 
 146 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 impossible that we should in daily life live up to the level 
 of the highest truths we have seen. 
 
 We are like travellers who have passed through many miles 
 of forest, and who can neither leap, at a bound, back to the 
 entrance, nor overleap the many miles which still lie before 
 them. They are not free to do the impossible, but they are 
 free to select the direction in which they will move. They 
 can continue to advance, or can swerve to the right or left, 
 or can even turn back in despair. 
 
 The above are my perceptions as to the existence of right 
 and wrong. If they be erroneous I hope some one will explain 
 to me my mistakes ; if they be true I hope these thoughts 
 may prove useful to some who still are, as I till recently was, 
 wandering in the wilderness. Assuming them to be in the 
 main correct, I feel drawn to make an application of them 
 with reference to the ' advanced ' people with whom I have 
 come in contact since I settled in England. 
 
 If there is such a thing as right, there must also be such a 
 thing as morality : conduct tending towards the right, con- 
 duct that makes for the establishment of perfect relations 
 among men, and the establishment of the Kingdom of 
 Righteousness. This being so, it is surely of supreme im- 
 portance to discern the right, if any exist, as clearly as 
 possible. Progress is only desirable if it be progress in the 
 right direction. History shows that all past civilisations 
 progressed towards destruction. We, therefore, must realise 
 that to progress is not sufficient we must know what we are 
 progressing towards : that is to say, we must seek for a clear 
 perception of the truth as to what is right and what is 
 wrong in human conduct. It is not enough to rid ourselves 
 of conventional ideas, prejudices, authorities, and legalities ; 
 we must look well to it that these are replaced by a clear, 
 well-verified perception of what we are aiming at. For the 
 house swept and garnished and left empty was soon occupied 
 by seven devils worse than the first.
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 147 
 
 Before we are fit to destroy the old, or can do even that 
 efficiently, we must first know what we seek what we hold 
 to be right towards what ideal we are striving. This is 
 true equally of the economic and the sexual sides of life. 
 
 If you have perceived that, despite the struggle for exist- 
 ence which is said to be a ' law of Nature/ mankind is slowly, 
 through the ages, climbing through cannibalism, slavery, 
 feudal tenure, serfdom, wagedom towards the brotherhood 
 of man, and if your spirit approves that advance and longs 
 to aid it, the time has come when you can profitably use 
 your perception of the absurdity of human law and the 
 iniquities of competitive business. There is then no danger 
 that you will encourage others to forge bank-notes because 
 you see the wrong involved in banking. 
 
 If you have perceived that, despite that struggle for 
 sexual union which we are told is a f law of Nature/ man- 
 kind has slowly, through the ages, climbed through un- 
 natural vice, promiscuity, varietism, polygamy, polyandry, 
 monogamy, towards greater and ever greater chastity and 
 purity, and if your spirit approves that advance (so that the 
 love affairs of a Christ are inconceivable to you), the time 
 has come when you can profitably use your perceptions 
 that the conventions of society are stumbling-blocks, legal 
 damages are anomalous, and that even monogamy is far from 
 affording a final solution of the problem. There is then no 
 danger that those whom you influence will, by your mis- 
 direction, be led backwards to any of the customs from 
 which the mass of humanity have partially escaped after 
 the experience, the relapses, and the painful efforts of many 
 thousand years. 
 
 If you aim at freedom as an end in itself, careless as to 
 how freedom should be used when it is gained, then the 
 more strenuous your efforts are, the more surely will they 
 evoke a reaction in those who feel that life has an aim, and 
 that in the conduct of our lives we all need guidance, and 
 are all (whether we know it or not) influencing and guiding
 
 148 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 others. If you desire freedom, remember that truth alone 
 can really set us free. 
 
 Even to our present perceptions, the 'struggle for exist- 
 ence ' in war and commerce is no inscrutable evil, neither 
 is sexual desire, great as are the evils that have resulted 
 from each of these things. Through war and patriotism, 
 men, from mere isolated individuals or families, have been 
 welded into groups capable of some heroism and some self- 
 sacrifice for a common cause. ' Through business competition 
 men have obtained some mastery over the laziness and 
 self-indulgence of their natures. Through this training (and 
 thanks to the misery it has involved) man is being driven 
 forward (often by "a recoil from his own vices") to seek 
 for wider union, and for a fairer field in which to use his 
 powers in the service of others : and men have at last come 
 to a point at which they can begin to discard, as hindrances, 
 the means by which they have advanced so far. 
 
 So it seems to be with the sex-passion. Who that has 
 watched it awaken in a selfish breast an interest in at least 
 one other existence besides his (or her) own ; and has seen 
 how, through that one other, it has opened a heart to 
 sympathy with a whole class (or sometimes to a perception 
 of the iniquity of a social system), can fail to see that this 
 force, also, serves as a means to a good end ? But again, 
 watching it carefully, and seeing how this passion excites, 
 torments, and pre-occupies men and women, narrowing their 
 interest to what concerns one other or a few others, how 
 can we but desire escape from it for ourselves and for all 
 to whom we wish well ? 
 
 We should try neither to underrate nor to exaggerate the 
 service these things have rendered, and are rendering, to 
 the development of man's nature. Patriotism is better than 
 selfish isolation, but worse than a recognition of the brother- 
 hood of man. Industrious effort to secure one's own living 
 is an advance on laziness, but is worse than zeal in the 
 service of all. Sexual-attraction and the family bond, while
 
 RIGHT AND WRONG 149 
 
 they may draw men from isolation and egotism, may also 
 hamper man when more developed, and confine his interests 
 and activity to a narrower circle and to a lower plane than 
 they would reach were he free. 
 
 From this point of view, war, commerce, and sexual- 
 attraction useful instruments in the progress of the race 
 tried by the standard of the ideal fall short, and stand 
 condemned as things we have to outgrow and leave behind 
 on our upward path towards a fuller spiritual life. 
 
 It may be said that what I have briefly indicated as my 
 perception of the inevitable and desirable line of human 
 progress, is not the right line at all : that the application 
 of Christ's law of love in economics does not make towards 
 the brotherhood of man, or that, in sex matters, it does not 
 make towards chastity and purity. Some may hold that 
 Christ's law itself is erroneous ; others that Christ was wrong 
 in attempting to apply it practically to the different phases 
 of human life : that he should not have expressed any 
 definite opinions on such difficult questions as those of 
 property, law, government, or sex, that, in fact, the 
 application of the ' law of love ' to such a problem, say, 
 as landowning should not be considered in advance, but 
 should be left, by each individual, until the stress of events 
 forces him to take some immediate personal action. 
 
 But my argument is that those who believe in progress at 
 all should understand that progress must have a direction 
 the stream must flow somewhere. What we need is to 
 discern which way it is flowing, and to know whether we 
 approve or disapprove of that direction. This can only be 
 done by unbiassed free-thinking. 
 
 My views may be all wrong, but then those who care 
 about the matter should show me where the error lies, and 
 co-operate with me in seeking to discern the true line of 
 human advance. If Christ's law of love be wrong, what is 
 right ? If it be right, let us study its practical application 
 both in economics and in sex matters.
 
 150 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Some, again, say that the true line, on one or both these 
 sides of life, is undiscoverable ; we must wait and drift a 
 bit. For the present at least, they think, the problems of 
 morality are inscrutable. We may knock, but it will not be 
 opened unto us ; we may search, but shall not find. We are 
 on the river of life, but must not know whether to row 
 upstream or to drift with the current. 
 
 But surely this attitude is a foolish one ; the plain man, 
 facing the facts of life honestly, feels and knows it to be 
 false. Life is indivisible, and life is always in the present. 
 There can be no solution of the economic problem without a 
 solution of the sex-problem. The two are inseparably linked 
 together in the life of man. And how can a man help to 
 guide his fellows unless he know in which direction to point 
 them on both these issues ? 
 
 All who wish to leave the world better than they found it, 
 all who think they have perceived some truth, and who hope 
 to do some service, cannot escape from the responsibility of 
 serving in the same army with the saints, the prophets, and 
 the martyrs : i.e. with those to whom truth was precious and 
 duty imperative, who saw clearly that there is a morality 
 embracing all our actions, discernible to man in the present, 
 now and for ever. 
 
 Like them we must perceive that truth and right exist, 
 and our earnest effort must be that " righteousness shall flow 
 down like a river and truth like a mighty stream." 
 
 First published in the New Order, September 1898.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 
 
 MANY who disapprove of war in general consider it right 
 to abstain from attempting to do anything to check the war 
 in South Africa, or to discourage the patriotic spirit it has en- 
 gendered at home. This has occurred even among Socialists, 
 Secularists, Peace Societies, Christian Churches, Scientists, 
 Non-Resistants, and members of the Society of Friends. 
 
 It is always more difficult to meet confused thought than 
 to reply to a positive mistake. And when many people 
 share in one confusion, yet each states his case somewhat 
 differently, an elucidation becomes almost impossible. 
 
 It therefore seemed to me difficult to apply non-resistant 
 principles to this war in a way that would be intelligible to 
 more than a small section of those I wished to reach, but, 
 while I pondered these things in my mind, John Bellows of 
 Gloucester, a member of the Society of Friends, was moved 
 to break from the general trend of Quaker thought and 
 feeling, and to come forward as spokesman for those who, 
 while theoretically disapproving of war and refusing to share 
 in it themselves, desire to support a war Government. He 
 issued a pamphlet in which he condemned all war, but 
 sought to defend and justify our Government for its part 
 in the South African War. 
 
 Those whom he represented in this matter could hardly 
 have found any one whose character and ability gave him 
 a better right to be heard in their defence ; and it seemed 
 to me that by replying to his pamphlet I could focus the 
 arguments which cause me to disapprove of the war better 
 than if I shot them into the air. Part of John Bellows' 
 purpose in writing was to instruct those foreigners who 
 
 161
 
 152 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 through ignorance believed us to have acted badly towards 
 the Republics ; and, utilising this circumstance, I tried, by 
 pointing out what a well-informed foreigner might fairly 
 charge us with, to put the matter as impartially and im- 
 personally as in me lay. In the second half of my reply 
 I was helped by the theoretical admissions John Bellows 
 made that, in principle, war (when there are no wicked 
 Boers to be chastised) is not a desirable way of spending 
 the powers of mind and body intrusted to us. 
 
 The main purpose of my article is to expose the kind of 
 fallacies by which not only this war but all wars are excused. 
 
 A LETTER TO JOHN BELLOWS ON THE WAR. 
 
 DEAR JOHN BELLOWS, I have read the copy you kindly 
 sent me of your pamphlet, The Truth about the Transvaal 
 War and the Truth about War, written to supply a brief and 
 simple answer to the condemnation of our Government 
 expressed by foreign critics, and at the same time to explain 
 your own belief that all war is wrong. 
 
 The high esteem I feel for your character and your many 
 useful activities, the importance of the subject you touch 
 upon, and the detestation I feel for the wholesale, pre- 
 meditated, and systematic slaughter of my fellow-men (es- 
 pecially when continued after one party to the conflict has 
 asked for peace) move me to reply. 
 
 I, too, have talked with foreigners, and if we consider 
 what their indictment against our Government is, and what 
 reply you are able to make to it, it should help to clear the 
 issue as looked at from a point of morality no higher than 
 that usually accepted among educated men to-day. 
 
 But I agree with you that we must not rest finally content 
 with the code already generally accepted ; and in the latter 
 part of this reply I shall be most happy to follow you in 
 considering what our conduct ought to be, judged by the 
 highest standard our reason and our conscience supply.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 153 
 
 What, then, are the main charges brought against us by 
 well-informed foreign critics ? 
 
 Their first and main contention is that in 1884 the Pre- 
 toria Convention of 1881 was replaced by the London Con- 
 vention. This made the Transvaal independent ; deprived 
 Britain of all right to interfere in its internal affairs ; and 
 except that the British Government retained a right to veto 
 their foreign treaties made the Transvaal a sovereign in- 
 dependent State. The first thing an apologist for the British 
 Government must do is to meet this statement, on which the 
 rest of the quarrel depends. 
 
 Among other proofs our critics adduce the facts that : 
 
 1. The Transvaal Government expressed the above view 
 in their despatch of April 16, 1898, and maintained it 
 throughout the late negotiations. 
 
 2. That it is the unanimous opinion of all the lawyers in 
 Europe and South Africa to whom the case has been sub- 
 mitted, that (except in the one particular mentioned) no 
 "suzerainty" has in fact existed since 1884*. 1 
 
 3. That even British politicians, including members of 
 
 1 In relation to the South African Republic the term Suzerainty has 
 been used in two different ways. 
 
 In the Convention of 1881 it was used to define England's position 
 in connection with the rights of interference she retained under that 
 treaty. There was to be a British resident, who would "report to 
 the High Commissioner as representative of the Suzerain." In case 
 of apprehension of war in South Africa, English troops might move 
 through the Transvaal, and there were a number of enactments 
 relating to the natives and to other questions, which gave the English 
 Government ample scope to interfere in the internal affairs of the 
 Transvaal should they wish to do so. The desire of the Boers to 
 manage their own internal affairs was expressed in their dislike of 
 the word "suzerainty." 
 
 In the Convention of 1884 we abandoned the use of the word, and 
 the Boer delegates who signed that Convention stated the matter to 
 their Volksraad thus: "It" (the 1884 Convention) "makes . . . 
 an end of the British Suzerainty and . . . also restores her full 
 self-government to the South African Republic, excepting a single 
 limitation regarding the conclusion of treaties with foreign powers.
 
 154 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Lord Salisbury's Government, have admitted that after 1884 
 they possessed no right to interfere by force in the internal 
 affairs of the Transvaal. For instance : 
 
 Lord Derby, who negotiated the 1884 Convention, reported 
 that the Convention granted "the same complete internal 
 independence in the Transvaal as in the Free State." 
 
 W. H. Smith, when leader of the House of Commons, 
 said : " It is a cardinal principle of that settlement that the 
 internal government and legislation of the South African 
 Republic shall not be interfered with." 
 
 Mr. Balfour (January 15, 1896) said: "The Transvaal is a 
 free and independent Government as regards its internal 
 affairs." 
 
 Lord Salisbury (January 31, 1896) said: "The Boers have 
 absolute control over their own affairs." 
 
 Mr. Chamberlain in his despatch of December 31, 1895, 
 defined the Transvaal as " a foreign State which is in friendly 
 treaty relations with Great Britain." On May 8, 1896, 
 speaking in the House of Commons, he said : " We do not 
 claim, and never have claimed, the right to interfere in the 
 
 With the suzerainty, the various provisions and limitations of the 
 Pretoria Convention . . . have also, of course, lapsed." 
 
 This statement was transmitted to the English Government, was 
 reprinted in our Blue Books, and no objection was raised to it. 
 
 It is true that, in a restricted sense of the word, " suzerainty " still 
 existed, owing to the fact that foreign treaties concluded by the 
 Transvaal had to be submitted to England. There is, philologically, 
 no objection to such a use of the word ; but the word was dropped 
 at the request of the Boers, who made " considerable territorial and 
 other sacrifices " to be rid of it and of the restrictions which, to them, 
 it represented. And to use it subsequently, without in some way 
 differentiating between the suzerainty of 1881 and that of 1884, was 
 to court confusion. 
 
 The simplest way is to follow the Conventions, and to speak of the 
 suzerainty as implying rights of interference similar to those existing 
 in 1881 but abolished in 1884. 
 
 Evidence in Lord Derby's own handwriting exists of the abolition, 
 in 1884, of the "preamble" to the 1881 Convention, on the retention 
 of which Chamberlain based his case.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 155 
 
 internal affairs of the Transvaal. The rights of our action 
 under the Convention are limited to the offering of friendly 
 counsel, in the rejection of which, if it is not accepted, 
 we must be quite willing to acquiesce. . . . To go to war 
 with President Kruger in order to force upon him reforms in 
 the internal affairs of his State, with which successive Secretaries 
 of State standing in this place have repudiated all right of 
 interference, that would have been a course of action as 
 immoral as it would have been unwise." 
 
 On August 12, 1896, he said: "Not only this Government 
 but successive Secretaries of State have pledged themselves re- 
 peatedly that they would have nothing to do with its internal affairs." 
 
 From 1884 till 1897, say our critics, Boers, Britons of all 
 parties, and foreigners, were agreed that on questions of 
 franchise, taxation, treatment of natives, corruption of 
 officials, etc., Britain had no more right to interfere in the 
 Transvaal than in the United States of North America. 
 
 In 1897, say our critics, the British Government revived 
 its claim to " suzerainty " and its claim to interfere in the 
 internal affairs of the Transvaal It refused to submit this 
 pretence to arbitration ; it repeatedly increased its de- 
 mands ; on September 8, 1 899/ it refused to give effect to 
 a pacific proposal of its own, presented to the Transvaal 
 Government during the preceding month ; and, finally, it 
 informed the Transvaal Government that further demands 
 not specified would be formulated, and proceeded to call out 
 the reserves as if for war. 
 
 Our critics hold that this course of proceedings justified 
 the Transvaal Government in issuing their ultimatum which 
 demanded that all differences should be settled by arbitration, 
 and that Great Britain should meanwhile cease to land troops 
 and should withdraw those that had been pushed forward to 
 the borders of the Transvaal. The rejection of this ulti- 
 matum meant war ; and again the Boers are held to have 
 been justified in commencing the fight before the English 
 were in a numerical superiority.
 
 156 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 That is their case. But to understand the sentiment which 
 puts England's treatment of the two republics on a level with 
 Russia's treatment of Poland or Finland, we must listen to 
 what our critics have to say of events that preceded the war : 
 events that belong to a region of lies, suspicion, and under- 
 hand intrigue in which it is easy to be misled, for, owing to 
 the non-production of the Hawkesley cablegrams (of which 
 the Colonial Office received copies), and to the suppression 
 of other important evidence which should have been sub- 
 mitted to the South African Committee appointed to inquire 
 into the matter, the whole truth about them is not yet known. 
 
 About 1887 rich gold fields began to be rapidly developed 
 in the Transvaal, and later on a plan was formed to upset 
 the Government which represented the Dutch agricultural 
 population, and to establish one more favourable to the in- 
 terests of the owners of the gold mines. A Committee of the 
 English Parliament, after inquiry, reported that Cecil Rhodes 
 while Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, managing director 
 of the Chartered Company, and Privy Councillor (besides being 
 Chairman of De Beers diamond mines, and a leading capitalist 
 of the Rand gold mines) was guilty of " subsidising, organis- 
 ing, and stimulating an armed insurrection," and of involving 
 himself in "gross breaches of duty." "He deceived the 
 High Commissioner, . . . concealed his views from his col- 
 leagues, and led his subordinates to believe that his plans were 
 approved by his superiors." 
 
 But a liar does not always lie, and our foreign critics 
 suggest that perhaps his plans were approved by his superiors. 
 
 They allege that the Times newspaper, which supported 
 the Government's policy in South Africa, was in intimate 
 connection with Cecil Rhodes, as is shown by cablegrams 
 produced in evidence before the South African Committee. 
 (They were sent in a code, and that is why they read 
 awkwardly in translation. The punctuation is partly con- 
 jectural) :
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 157 
 
 From Miss FLORA SHAW (who had an important position on the 
 "Times") to CECIL RHODES, 10th December 1895. 
 
 " Can you advise when you will commence the plans, we 
 wish to send at earliest opportunity sealed instructions repre- 
 sentatives of the London Times European capitals ; it is most 
 important using their influence in your favour." 
 
 From Dr. RUTHERFOORD HARRIS to CECIL RHODES, 
 November 4, 1895. 
 
 "... You have not chosen best man to arrange with J. 
 Chamberlain. I have already sent Flora to convince Cham- 
 berlain ; support Times newspaper and, if you can, telegraph 
 course you wish Times to adopt now with regard to Trans- 
 vaal ; Flora will act." 
 
 From Dr. HARRIS to CECIL RHODES, November 5, 1895, con- 
 cerning certain permanent officials of the Colonial Office. 
 
 "These and Flora we have these solid." 
 
 From Miss FLORA SHAW to CECIL RHODES, December 17, 1895. 
 
 "Chamberlain sound in case of interference European 
 Powers ; but have special reason to believe wishes you must 
 do it immediately." 
 
 From CECIL RHODES to Miss FLORA SHAW, December 30, 1895. 
 
 " Inform Chamberlain that I shall get through all right if 
 he supports me, but he must not send cable like he sent to 
 High Commissioner in South Africa. To-day the crux is, I 
 will win, and South Africa will belong to England." (Signa- 
 ture of sender, F. R. HARRIS, for C. J. RHODES, Premier. ) 
 
 Our critics point out how promptly, when Jameson started 
 on his buccaneering expedition, the Times published the
 
 158 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 famous, and infamous, appeal to protect the women and 
 children in Johannesburg from Boer violence ; which was a 
 pre-arranged attempt to excuse murder by mendacity, and 
 had been drawn up weeks in advance, with Mr. Rhodes' 
 approval. 
 
 The Times followed this up with a poem by the Poet- 
 Laureate in praise of Jameson's achievement. 
 
 When the matter was investigated, the Colonial Office did 
 not produce the documents which might have served to 
 disarm suspicion ; and no sooner was the investigation ended 
 than Mr. Chamberlain said in Parliament that " there existed 
 nothing which affected Mr. Rhodes' personal character as a 
 man of honour." Some of our foreign critics, however, differ 
 from Mr. Chamberlain, and consider systematic lying and 
 deception to be dishonourable. 
 
 Mr. Rhodes remained a Privy Councillor ; the English 
 officers who took part in the Raid were re-appointed to their 
 positions in the army. No compensation was paid either to 
 the families of those who were killed by Jameson's men or 
 to the Transvaal Government. 
 
 This attempt to obtain control of the gold fields by 
 violence having failed, Mr. Rhodes said he would adopt 
 " constitutional means " to obtain reform. 
 
 In conjunction with other capitalists (who, our critics 
 admit, were by no means all Englishmen) he obtained 
 control, by purchase, of most of the newspapers published in 
 South Africa. Men on the staffs of these papers acted as 
 correspondents for the leading English newspapers and, by 
 a vast machinery of mendacity, the newspaper readers of 
 England were systematically deceived. 
 
 Outrages and grievances were manufactured faster than 
 the lies could be exposed ; whatever was really bad in the 
 Transvaal was made the most of, till in a few months the 
 majority of readers in England and British South Africa 
 came to believe that the Boers (who had figured in history 
 as being no worse than their neighbours) were a race so
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 159 
 
 exceptionally cowardly, ignoble, corrupt, oppressive and 
 ambitious, that the sooner Englishmen of honour (such as 
 Mr. Rhodes or Mr. Chamberlain) ruled over them the better 
 it would be. 
 
 The re-assertion of England's "suzerainty" ("a breach of 
 national faith " according to Sir Edward Clarke) fitted in with 
 Mr. Rhodes' plans, and at last the capture of Johannesburg, 
 which Jameson failed to effect in 1895, was accomplished by 
 Lord Roberts in 1900, and welcomed all over England with 
 great rejoicings. But the moral aspect of the case is as bad 
 as before, and our critics recall a remark of Gladstone's 
 that a course which is morally wrong cannot be politically 
 right. 
 
 Briefly, then, the charges may be summed up thus : 
 
 1. That the English Government made an unfounded 
 claim to " suzerainty," and interfered unfairly in the internal 
 affairs of the Transvaal. 
 
 2. That it used this unjust claim to "suzerainty" as a 
 pretext to avoid arbitration, repeatedly and urgently pleaded 
 for by the Boers, but evaded (and on the vital issue of 
 " suzerainty " absolutely refused) by the British, who, on 
 the main points, were resolved to be sole judges in their 
 own cause. 
 
 3. That when presumptive proof was found, apparently 
 connecting the Colonial Office with the plans formed by 
 Jameson and Rhodes which culminated in the Raid, the 
 Parliamentary Committee (which contained Liberal as well 
 as Conservative members) avoided and evaded their duty 
 of probing the matter to the bottom, and the bulk of the 
 English press and public appeared well satisfied that this 
 should be so. 
 
 I took up your pamphlet expecting that, if nothing more 
 is possible, you would at least succeed in showing cause for 
 mitigation of the sentence to be pronounced on us by 
 posterity. But I only found a fresh instance of the fact that
 
 160 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 the war-fever deprives men of all sense of proportion, makes 
 them credulous of blame attaching to others, and so un- 
 willing to consider the evidence against themselves that 
 they fail even to understand the charges they should meet. 
 
 You, for instance, devote a quarter of your space to a 
 historical sketch of the Boers, differing gravely from the 
 statements of Professor A. Kuyper and other writers on the 
 same subject ; but you do not explain in what way your 
 statements, if true, justify our Government. Are we killing 
 Boers to revenge cruelties practised by their fathers and 
 grandfathers ? Did we go to war to protect the natives ? 
 Or are no wrongs being perpetrated in Kimberley and in 
 London (where 800,000 people are living in illegally over- 
 crowded dwellings) which should be rectified before we 
 violently attempt to remove the mote from our brother's 
 eye. 
 
 Like other apologists, you tell us the Boers are worse than 
 the English, and that " average Boer opinion and the Boer 
 Executive " are worse than " British law and public opinion." 
 But I fear the testimonials we give ourselves do not convince 
 our foreign critics. All nations are willing to certify to their 
 own moral superiority, and we are accused of having, not too 
 little but too much, of the spirit of the Pharisee who thanked 
 God he was not as other men are. 
 
 Next you proceed and your pamphlet is quite a fair 
 specimen of much other patriotic literature on the subject 
 to treat of the Africander Bond, and the " scheme for 
 driving the English out of South Africa." You are vexed 
 with " party writers " for saying there is no evidence of 
 such a design, and you offer the evidence of Presidents Reitz, 
 Steyn, Kruger, and others, "all distinctly admitting it." 
 " Here, then, is the evidence of every President of the 
 Transvaal and of the Free State for the last quarter century, 
 showing the determination of the Bond to drive the British 
 by the sword out of South Africa." 
 
 We have heard so much of the great Boer conspiracy,
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM l6l 
 
 which foreign critics say that we ourselves invented, that one 
 is glad to meet a writer like yourself not afraid to produce 
 the evidence which leads him to believe in it. 
 
 Leaving the dead to answer for themselves, let us see the 
 evidence against the living "the evidence of every Presi- 
 dent," " all distinctly admitting it." 
 
 "Of President Reitz (since Secretary of State in the 
 Transvaal) a Dutch Burgher, T. Schreiner, writes in the ' Weekly 
 Times,' December 1, 1899: 'I met Mr. Reitz . . . between 
 seventeen and eighteen years ago . . . whereupon the following 
 colloquy in substance took place between us.' " 
 
 But is this the kind of evidence that can justify a war ? 
 Would we, among our own people, condemn a single man 
 to any punishment on such hearsay evidence of things said 
 long ago ? 
 
 After this, one is hardly surprised to find that President 
 Steyn's distinct admission amounts to the fact that the 
 Daily News reports : " Of President Steyn, an Attorney 
 General [unnamed] of the Free State made the follotving 
 statement to the Rev. W. Tees, Presbyterian Minister in 
 Durban ! " 
 
 If we are going to support wars justified by evidence like 
 that, before long, I fear, 
 
 "There'll be one shindy, from here to Indy." 
 
 President Kruger's distinct admission turns out to be a 
 report in the Times (24th May 1900) of "two secret con- 
 ferences" held in 1887 "between Kruger and the Orange 
 Free State." 
 
 People will ask whether Kruger admits the correctness of 
 the conversations he is reported to have had thirteen years 
 ago in secret with " The Orange Free State " (sic .'), especially 
 as many regard the Times as being more patriotic than 
 veracious. 
 
 The reason people doubt whether the conspiracy ever 
 existed, except as an excuse for the seizure of the Transvaal, 
 
 L
 
 162 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 is not merely the absence of any serious evidence of its 
 existence, but also the fact that the number of people of 
 Dutch descent in South Africa is estimated to be less than 
 450,000, of whom more than half are resident in British 
 Colonies. Half of the Dutch population in South Africa 
 took no part in the war, even though they regard it as one 
 of unjust aggression on our part. The populations we have 
 fought against numbered, it seems, about 200,000 souls (less 
 than half the population of Birmingham), and the Empire 
 they are supposed to have conspired against has about 
 50,000,000 white subjects, and has sent to South Africa 
 more than one soldier for each man, woman, child, and baby 
 of its opponents ! Under these circumstances it is difficult 
 to believe in the conspiracy, especially when one reads the 
 ridiculous " evidence " produced to prove its existence. The 
 vagueness of the charge is shown once more in your own 
 pamphlet by the way in which you jumble the Africander 
 Bond in Cape Colony (a political organisation which sup- 
 ported Mr. Rhodes when he was Prime Minister) with the 
 interests of the burghers of the Dutch Republics, who some- 
 times were, and sometimes were not, on good terms with 
 the Africander Bond of Cape Colony. 
 
 The stubborn resistance of the Boers when fighting for 
 their homes and their independence, in or near their own 
 country, is no indication that they would ever have consented 
 to risk their lives for a wild dream utterly unlike any project 
 recorded in the past history of their race. But the history 
 of the New York State shows how well Dutch and British 
 can co-operate on terms of equality, and how false is the 
 pretence that they are condemned by some law of nature 
 to be enemies. 
 
 If the British Empire is to be frightened into oppressing 
 her smaller neighbours by such cowardly fears of such in- 
 tangible conspiracies, the verdict of impartial observers will be 
 that the sooner our Empire crumbles into dust like Babylon 
 or Rome the better for humanity, freedom, and justice.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 163 
 
 The fact that the Boers armed themselves, seems to you, 
 and to others, a proof of evil intentions. And I do not deny 
 that when men arm themselves, and drill, they also mean, 
 under certain circumstances, to kill. But what of the fact 
 that we spent on armaments a hundred times as much as 
 they did, and did what the Boers did not, viz. kept many 
 thousands of men doing nothing else but learning to kill 
 in the most approved way devoting their whole energy 
 to it? 
 
 The truth is, that until the quarrel between the Cape 
 Colony and the Transvaal about the " Drifts," and until 
 the Transvaal Government began to be alarmed at the 
 preparations that preceded the Jameson Raid, in which they 
 were attacked by pati'iotic Englishmen, their military ex- 
 penditure and equipment is known to have been small. 
 
 For admittedly military purposes the expenditure of the 
 Transvaal was : 
 
 1894, before the Raid 28,158 
 
 1895, the year of the Raid 87,708 
 
 1896, the year after the Raid .... 495,618 
 
 If we add all expenses (Public Works, Special Expenditure, 
 and Sundry Services) part of which may have had a military 
 aim, we get : 
 
 1894 528,526 
 
 1895, the Raid year 1,485,244 
 
 1896 2,007,372 
 
 that being the maximum reached before the present war. 
 
 Our own war expenditure had risen since 1894 from about 
 33,000,000 to over 48,000,000 before this war began, and 
 will be likely to increase so long as we think it right for 
 us to do what it is wicked of other people to do. 
 
 Another accusation is that the Boers drew their revenue 
 from the gold mines instead of taxing the farming population. 
 But why should not gold mines, forming the chief wealth
 
 164 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 of the country, pay, as was the case in the Transvaal, the 
 greater part of the taxes ? 
 
 Granting that their method of collecting the taxes was 
 bad, should we (who for the sake of revenue force an opium 
 trade on China) quarrel with them on that account ? And 
 if with them, why not with the United States, and Russia, 
 and all countries in which British residents pay taxes of 
 which we disapprove ? 
 
 Scant allowance is made for the fact that the develop- 
 ment of the gold-fields placed the Transvaal Government 
 in a position of great difficulty and temptation, and entirely 
 altered the conditions existing when the conventions were 
 negotiated. Had the Boers treated their promises as lightly 
 as we treated ours to evacuate Egypt, it would even then 
 have been no more binding upon our Government to take 
 action than it is binding on France to quarrel with us. 
 
 The eagerness with which even professed friends of peace, 
 like yourself, snatch at any and every excuse for strife, and 
 write as though these excuses necessitate and justify the 
 continuance of a war (in which some 10,000 of our own men 
 have already perished) until we utterly destroy two free 
 nations, is one of the saddest features of this bad business. 
 
 To allow miners, most of whom came to the country to 
 get money and did not intend to settle there permanently, 
 to vote in the election of the highest rulers of the State, 
 including the President, would have been a questionable 
 course, and it is not certain that under English rule they 
 will soon obtain the rights we wished to extort for them 
 from the Boers. Englishmen have not hitherto shown 
 themselves eager either to enfranchise the people of India 
 (millions of whom are at least as moral and enlightened as 
 the average Uitlander), or to obtain real freedom of public 
 meeting in this island for those who disapprove of popular wars. 
 
 But the main points to which foreign readers of your 
 pamphlet will be' apt to look are those concerning the claim 
 of " suzerainty " and the refusal of arbitration.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 165 
 
 We are accused not merely of having refused arbitration 
 on the vital question of the interpretation of the Convention, 
 but of having manufactured a fraudulent claim to "suzer- 
 ainty " in order to avoid arbitration. 
 
 Among the evidence adduced is this passage from Mr. 
 Chamberlain's despatch (Bluebook C. 8721, No. 7, October 
 1897): "Finally, the Government of the South African Republic 
 proposes that all points in dispute between Her Majesty's Govern- 
 ment and themselves relating to the Convention should be referred 
 to arbitration, the arbitrator to be nominated by the President 
 of the Stviss Republic." And the reply to this proposal, given 
 in the despatch above quoted, was that " Her Majesty holds 
 toward the South African Republic the relation of a suzerain 
 . . . and it would be incompatible with that position to submit 
 to arbitration the construction of the conditions on which she 
 accorded self-government to the Republic." 
 
 This is the crucial matter. Why did our Government 
 object to allowing the interpretation of the 1884 Convention 
 to be settled by arbitration ? Why did it try to resuscitate 
 the " suzerainty " of 1881 ? Why, that is, did it prefer the 
 path towards war to the path towards peace ? 
 
 It is precisely at this point that all the apologists for our 
 Government seem to break down most utterly ; nothing 
 could be more pitiable than your own collapse. 
 
 You take the impossible line of evading the issue. You 
 treat Reitz's communication of 9th June 1899 (when the 
 Transvaal Government had abandoned hope of inducing our 
 Government to consent to arbitration on the fundamental 
 questions), as though the limitations insisted on by our 
 Government, and there acquiesced in, were limitations 
 cunningly slipped in by the wicked Boers ! 
 
 When men argue in that spirit, war is a natural outcome. 
 Explanations are of no use : 
 
 " Folks never understand the folks they hate ; 
 But fin' some other grievance jest as good, 
 'Fore the month's out, to get misunderstood."
 
 166 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Finally, you pretend (and it shows how desperate your 
 case is) that the English proposal to appoint commissioners 
 to inquire into the working of the seven year franchise law 
 " was arbitration, and Kruger recognised it as such and refused 
 it" (which happens to be untrue), and after proceeding to 
 I'ecount Kruger's objections to our interference in the in- 
 ternal affairs of the Transvaal on this particular point, and 
 distorting them grotesquely, you finish up by asking: "If 
 this is not shuffling and deceit Carried to its farthest limits, 
 what is ? " 
 
 I fear people reading your pamphlet, who do not know 
 how much better are your actions than your arguments, will 
 be likely to quote those words with an application you hardly 
 contemplated when you penned them. 
 
 "We are bound to judge justly of those who do not hold 
 the same views " as we do, say you ; and thereupon comes 
 a denunciation of Kruger's "cant" (" If his offence be rank, 
 should yours be rancour ? ") ; of the cruelty of the Boers ; 
 of the " poor silly Free-Staters " ; of the Gladstone Govern- 
 ment, with " its lack of manliness and honour " ; a con- 
 demnation of " those in England who advocate peace . . . 
 from enmity " to their own Government ; and a laudation 
 of our noble selves, "because England has governed justly, 
 and her Crown has everywhere reflected the sunlight of free- 
 dom." In the despatches of our Colonial Office you " cannot 
 find a single sentence that is not courteous and forbearing 
 and straightforward as ever was penned," and in proof thereof 
 you quote the despatch which precipitated the war by its 
 reference to our rights of interference "which are derived 
 from the Convention* " (in the plural). 
 
 You give us the Uitlander " stung to madness " by taxes 
 on dynamite and on imported bacon (and the fact that most 
 of them objected to the war and some of them fought for 
 the Boers, shows to what a pitch of madness they had been 
 driven) ; but we never come to the real question of our rig/it 
 to interfere, except in your bald assertion that " England was
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 167 
 
 bound to insist on the fair observance of the '81 and '84 
 Conventions," and "justly refused to re-establish the inde- 
 pendence of the Boers." But this is merely a second-hand 
 version of Chamberlain's trick of coupling the two Conven- 
 tions together as though they were both valid. 
 
 So one reluctantly comes to the conclusion that you i-eally 
 have no case, but come into court with so bad a cause that 
 the best you can do is to 'abuse the plaintiff's attorney.' 
 
 So far, I have tried to regard the matter from the point 
 of view of an impartial outsider holding only such moral 
 views as are already, to-day, generally professed among 
 educated men. Let me now speak for myself on the matter, 
 and explain wherein I agree and wherein I disagree with 
 the general principles expressed by you in the last pages 
 of your pamphlet. 
 
 And first for the points of agreement. You rightly say : 
 
 " The force which is already operating to diminish the 
 frequency and the horrors of war is the same that will finally 
 lead to its extinction. This force is sympathy, beginning in 
 the individual, and gradually spreading its influence, . . . 
 and for some share ... in this evolution, every human 
 being is responsible." 
 
 " Every human being is called to that spirit of peace 
 in his own soul (for the Kingdom of God is within) which 
 spreads the influence of peace on those around him." 
 
 " All war is wrong. It is wrong because it deadens 
 the sympathy placed in every human heart. . . . Wrong 
 because it sins against the law, inwrought into our very 
 being, that we should do unto others as we would they 
 should do unto us." 
 
 "Even in an absolutely just cause ... it cannot be 
 carried on without itself creating new and immeasurable 
 wrongs." 
 
 " It is of no moment that all men should hold the opinion 
 that war is unlawful, while they remain in the spirit of which 
 war is one of the natural outcomes." " To insist on the letter
 
 168 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 of Christ's commands, instead of thus coming to the real 
 meaning of them, is to destroy even the letter itself." 
 
 I am in agreement with you that it is useless to try " to 
 distinguish between force used in civil government, such as 
 that of the police, and the power of the sword ; for the 
 power of the policeman rests on that of the soldier, who 
 is called out in the last resort to support it, as in cases of 
 riot, etc." The difference is one of degree and not of kind. 
 
 Again I fear you are right in saying : " The Peace Society 
 . . . takes no account of changing the tree, but aims at 
 preventing some of its fruit from ripening." And I am glad 
 to hear you say of the Society of Friends that : 
 
 " Its members keep as one man faithful to the practice of 
 refusing to bear arms ; and if it came to the test I believe 
 numbers of them would suffer death rather than inflict 
 death." 
 
 Agreeing on these important matters, how is it that I 
 feel shocked and dismayed by your pamphlet as a whole ? 
 
 Let us put the case this way. Two men, John and Paul, 
 have long been quarrelling about certain rights of way that 
 John claims over Paul's ground. Chiefly they are concerned 
 about some yellow sand on Paul's land that John wishes to 
 dig without paying toll to get at it. The quarrel is one of 
 long standing, and the case is too intricate for a plain man 
 easily to understand. Each says the other is a liar ; and 
 Paul says it is a case of Naboth's vineyard. Paul offers to 
 let an umpire settle the quarrel ; but John says that he 
 cannot agree to that, because he has rights over Paul's 
 ground that Paul has not got over his. He says, besides, 
 that Paul's offer to settle peacefully is all lies and cant ; 
 what Paul really wants is to turn him (John) out of some 
 of his own fields. As John is much bigger than Paul, the 
 neighbours laugh at this ; but John says that is only because 
 they are jealous of him for being so much better and richer 
 than they are. 
 
 Well, one fine day the quarrel gets hotter than usual, and
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 169 
 
 John and Paul begin to fight. Paul struck the first blow, and 
 excused himself by saying that John was cutting a big stick 
 to kill him with, and that he had to strike in self-defence. 
 
 So they fought and fought till it became evident that John 
 was really killing Paul. Paul cried out for mercy, and said 
 he would agree to anything John liked, only not to giving up 
 his land altogether. 
 
 Sam (a neighbour who lived across the stream) offered to 
 settle the quarrel, but John said No, it was his patriotic and 
 loyal duty to kill Paul now that he had once started to do it. 
 He did not want the sand-pit, but Paul was such a liar that 
 there was nothing for it but just to take the pit and the 
 field too, so that things should be comfortable all round, and 
 that people should know what sort of a man he was and feel 
 a proper respect for him in future. 
 
 Now one of John's sons, who was called Conciliation, said 
 that it would be better not to kill Paul if he would agree 
 to give all that, before the fight, John had asked for. But 
 another son, called Patriot, hit Conciliation on the mouth 
 and would not let him speak, and called Paul so many 
 names, and accused him of so many crimes, and was so 
 angry with Paul for having struck the first blow, that the 
 matter went on to extremities. 
 
 But now a strange thing happened. A Friend came upon 
 the scene who thought it quite wrong of people to fight 
 and kill each other. All strife is wrong, he said : we should 
 do to others as we would be done by, and we should forgive 
 our enemies always. But when Conciliation said : " Father's 
 very angry and will surely kill Paul, and it will be a great 
 disgrace to our family for many years to come," the Friend 
 got quite excited. " Nonsense," said he, " all strife is wrong 
 only this strife is right. Don't you see that John thinks 
 he ought to kill Paul, and, as he thinks so, it's right for him 
 to do it." And the Friend set to work and wrote a pam- 
 phlet to prove that as Paul struck the first blow Paul was in 
 the wrong ; and as John said he thought he ought to kill
 
 170 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Paul, he did right to kill him ! And the Friend implied 
 that those who tried to persuade John that it was better 
 not to kill, were very bad or stupid people, who, if only 
 they had read all the lawyers' papers about the quarrel for 
 the last twenty years would agree that killing is no murder. 
 He added that it was hatred that made some people try to 
 make peace ; just as it was pure love of truth and goodness 
 that made him try to justify fighting. 
 
 There is, however, one fault in this, and in all such 
 parables : they present nations as though they were solid 
 blocks of homogeneous humanity, as though Judas and 
 Jesus, being of one nationality, must have been of one 
 character. In real life it is of course not so, as you 
 show by remarking that many of " the Boers have had no 
 more voice in passing many of the Transvaal laws than if 
 they lived at the North Pole. There are numbers of good 
 people among them, but they have not led." (The same is 
 true in other countries, and perhaps in our own.) Joubert, 
 representing the Boer reform party, was only some 500 votes 
 behind Kruger at the last election before the Jameson Raid. 
 This being so, is it not terrible to think that (even if killing 
 men could be a useful occupation) we have gone on, month 
 after month, killing the wrong people ? 
 
 Kruger, Leyds, and the rest of the folk our patriots delight 
 in reviling, are not being killed any more than Mr. Joseph 
 Chamberlain, or his brother who gets the cordite contracts. 
 The men we are paying to have killed, and who to obtain 
 peace must submit to our rule, include many of those "good 
 people " who had no voice in the Government. And when 
 we burn their homes the women and children suffer. 
 
 This is terrible. The shame of this crime has indelibly 
 stamped itself upon the memories of men. As the massacre 
 of St. Bartholomew tainted the cause of Catholicism in 
 France, so the long-drawn-out-butchery of a numerically 
 contemptible race of farmers who do not wish to be ruled 
 by us, has tainted the cause of British Imperialism.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 171 
 
 In the sixteenth century men were more openly treacher- 
 ous, but in our age of Bible Societies, Peace Societies, and 
 Societies for the Propagation of the Gospel, our patriots 
 inflict violence on those who wish to stop the war, and con- 
 tinue to write long letters exaggerating the wickedness of the 
 Boers, while the destruction of those brave men fighting for 
 freedom continues month after month. 
 
 I consider your pamphlet useful, inasmuch as it contains 
 certain confusions of thought in current use among us to- 
 day which go far beyond the question of this war, and help 
 to perplex men's minds and hamper' progress in many direc- 
 tions. These sophistries need to be exposed ; but as those 
 who use them are often insincere men, using them with 
 intentional vagueness, it is difficult to bring them to book. 
 You, however (and this, I think, is a real service), use these 
 sophistries honestly and plainly, so that one is enabled to 
 take hold of them and examine them, and detect the fallacies 
 they contain. 
 
 You try to justify conduct (the systematic and long pro- 
 tracted slaughter of men who are pleading for peace) which 
 you know to be wrong, by the curious yet common plea that 
 those who are responsible for the wrong conduct think it 
 right. As though no moral responsibility attached to thinking 
 rightly ! Why, our actions are continually swayed by our 
 thoughts, and by feelings which grow up in connection with 
 our thoughts. Pascal has most rightly said, "Let us then 
 labour to think rightly : that is the principle of morality." 
 Were men responsible merely for doing what they see to 
 be right, and not responsible for making good use of their 
 reason and conscience in discovering what is right, those 
 who most neglected to use their highest faculties would be 
 those least open to reproach. 
 
 On the grounds on which you try to justify our Govern- 
 ment for this war viz. that they consider it right we 
 may with equal ease justify those who practised cannibal- 
 ism, sodomy, slavery, and every evil that ever has been
 
 172 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 defended by those guilty of it. Am I to be bound to support 
 every Government that says it approves of its own actions ? 
 Or does the rule that wrong thoughts justify evil actions 
 apply only when the Government concerned is our own ? 
 
 You speak as if mankind were divided into two sections : 
 (1) those who disapprove of war, and (2) those who approve 
 of it. Yet you have yourself admitted that " all men regard war 
 as an evil," and it is clearly a question of degree. There is 
 not a man who might not yield to the temptation to use 
 some violence to his fellow-men under some extreme provo- 
 cation ; on the other hand, there is, probably, no member 
 of Lord Salisbury's present Government, or of any modern 
 Government, who has not at times had some glimmer of the 
 truth that love is better than hatred, and that the greatest 
 benefactors of humanity have relied not on physical but on 
 moral forces. 
 
 But supposing it were not so. Supposing every member 
 of the Cabinet were proved to have wiped out of his mind 
 absolutely every vestige of Christian or of humane feeling. 
 Suppose the slaughter of thousands of our own people, the 
 destruction of the homes of Boer peasants, the legacy of 
 hatred and bitterness that is being stored up for future 
 generations, counts with them absolutely as nothing even 
 then what motive can you or I have for condoning their 
 conduct ? 
 
 If they have any vestige or spark of those principles, or 
 sentiments, which cause you and me to recognise that gentle- 
 ness is better than violence, should we not try to rouse that 
 side of their nature instead of condoning their present con- 
 duct ? But if (which I refuse to believe) they have sunk so 
 low that no plea for humane action, however urgently made, 
 can be profitably addressed to them, should we not at least 
 cease to defend those who, on matters of such primary im- 
 portance, are dead to all that we hold sacred, and have 
 signed a bond with death and a covenant with hell ? 
 
 I was utterly unable to account for your wish to defend
 
 WA:; AND PATRIOTISM 173 
 
 this Government and this war till I came to your remarks 
 on Patriotism : 
 
 " So far, however, from love of one's own country being 
 a dangerous sentiment, it is our absolute duty. There is 
 nothing whatever to hinder our loving some men more than 
 others ... it is natural and right for me to love my own 
 country better than any other, as it is that I should care for 
 my own family before all other families." 
 
 " I have certainly felt bitterly . . . every reverse . . . and 
 have felt as lively a relief ... at the ending, by Cronje's 
 capture, of his power for mischief." 
 
 Here I think we come to the root of the matter. If 
 patriotism be a virtue, and if it be not merely natural for me 
 to give an involuntary preference to my own country, but 
 also right to give a deliberate preference to it, the matter 
 needs to be very clearly and exactly stated, because the 
 religion we profess fails to enforce this particular virtue. 
 
 What were the teachings of Jesus on Patriotism ? He 
 taught men to love their neighbours as themselves, and in 
 the example given the neighbour was not a Jew but a 
 foreigner a Samaritan. 
 
 When the great patriotic dispute as to the rival merits of 
 Mount Gerizim or Jerusalem was put to him his reply was : 
 " Neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem shall men 
 worship." 
 
 When the clash of Jewish and Roman patriotisms was 
 presented to him in the question whether it was lawful 
 to pay tribute to Caesar, he neither adopted the patriotic 
 Jewish attitude of rejecting Caesar's claim, nor did he (as 
 I read it) adopt the patriotic Roman attitude of extolling 
 Caesar. He said : " Render unto Caesar the things that are 
 Caesar's " (he could hardly say less after teaching " If any 
 man would take thy coat, let him have thy cloak also ") but 
 allotting to God our hearts and souls and minds and strength, 
 he left little enough for Caesar, except the stamped coins. 
 
 The ideal distinctly held up by Jesus was : Love all
 
 174 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 men as yourself. Too high an ideal for us to attain unto, 
 no doubt; but too true an ideal for us to tamper with by 
 talking about the duty of caring for the people in our Empire 
 more than for people outside it. 
 
 Perhaps you may say that the absence of patriotism in 
 Christ's teaching was accidental. He was a Jew at the time 
 when Palestine was held by the Romans. But has it ever 
 struck you that the great religion of the East is as free from 
 patriotism as the teaching of Jesus ? Jesus is represented as 
 declining to be made a king ; Buddha, to serve and save the 
 world, is represented as leaving his throne and his country. 
 
 The moment one begins to examine the matter carefully, 
 one finds that most people do not know what they mean by 
 ' patriotism.' A dictionary definition of the word is : " The 
 love and service of one's country." But why limit love and 
 service to one's own country ? How will such a limit act ? 
 Should I love other countries in the same way as my own, 
 only a little less ? Or should my feeling towards them be 
 different in kind ? 
 
 For instance, there has, for years past, been much talk 
 about the desirability of "painting the map of Africa red," 
 and it has culminated in our painting the soil of Africa very 
 red with human blood. Did the patriots who wished to 
 have Africa painted red, wish rather less strongly to have it 
 painted blue, or yellow, or striped ? Or was it to be red in 
 opposition to the other colours ? 
 
 Or, again, when you felt the English reverses bitterly, did 
 you feel the Boer reverses only a little less bitterly ? Or did 
 patriotism in your own case imply towards others a desire 
 that God should 
 
 " Confound their politics, 
 Frustrate their knavish tricks " ? 
 
 Is it not significant, by the way, that in our National Anthem 
 we should keep a bit of blasphemy like that, ready for loyal
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 175 
 
 and patriotic use even before we know who our next 
 ' enemy ' is to be ? Not being our noble selves they are 
 sure to be a bad lot, and a little defamation in advance 
 perhaps prepares the public mind to take that view of 
 things ; but is not the appeal to God somewhat out of 
 place ? Is it not characteristically patriotic ? 
 
 But let us see how the word 'patriotism' is used in com- 
 mon speech. Is not a patriotic paper one which can be 
 relied on to side with ' my country right or wrong ' ? Is not a 
 patriotic crowd one which to drunkenness and violence adds 
 a fierce dislike to freedom of speech ? Is not a patriotic 
 statesman one who, instead of clearing himself from charges 
 gravely affecting his honour, talks grandiloquently of the 
 greatness and power of the Empire ? Is not a patriotic 
 Empire one which is a source of danger to the small free 
 States within its reach ? Is not a patriotic financier one 
 who regards his country's flag as a " commercial asset " ? 
 And is not a patriotic priest one who confuses the issues 
 he proposes to clear, and inflames the angry passions Christ 
 sought to calm ? 
 
 How did patriotism arise ? And why was it honoured in 
 the past ? 
 
 Long ago men (and animals before men) lived in continual 
 danger of being exterminated. And when individuals, 
 instead of being purely selfish, advanced to the stage of 
 being ready to sacrifice themselves for the good of the 
 family, clan, race, or nation to which they belonged, it was a 
 great advance. Horatius, " who kept the bridge of old " to 
 save the city from destruction, the women from outrage, and 
 his comrades from slaughter, deserved to be admired. 
 
 Patriotism was brotherhood limited. It was natural and 
 inevitable, and a great advance on what went before. The 
 patriot fought for the little group he knew and lived among, 
 and it never occurred to him but that his duty towards 
 foreigners and Gentiles was to hew them in pieces when 
 they threatened his nation.
 
 176 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Loyalty was a similar growth. It was a means of holding 
 men together to resist a common enemy. 
 
 Take the case of Russia. It was split up into small States 
 which the Tartar hordes ravaged with impunity. It was 
 necessary, at whatever loss of freedom, that these small 
 States should all be knit together in implicit obedience to 
 one Tsar, if they were to survive. It was better to be loyal 
 and shut one's eyes to his faults, however great they might 
 be, than to expose the nation men, women, and children 
 to wholesale destruction. 
 
 But the problem of to-day is different. Each age is tried 
 by its own tests. Empires have expanded, circumstances 
 have altered, and now it is not patriotism and loyalty that 
 save us from destruction. No one wants to massacre the 
 populations of London, Paris, Berlin or Petersburg. On the 
 contrary, it is patriotism that now causes loss of life. It has 
 lately sent thousands of our countrymen to perish 6000 miles 
 away in South Africa. Patriotism is like a suit of armour 
 which a young man put on when his life was in danger. It 
 saved him from assassination ; but, getting accustomed to it, 
 he persisted in wearing it when the danger was past, and as 
 he grew broader and stouter the armour became more and 
 more irksome and injurious to him. 
 
 Patriotism in our day is already a gigantic superstition, 
 and it is fast becoming an hypocrisy under cover of which 
 unscrupulous men snatch at wealth or power. Previous 
 civilisations have made the same mistake, and have trodden 
 the same path to destruction. 
 
 I do not mean to deny that there are honest patriots (I 
 have no doubt you are one) just as there are honest Jesuits. 
 The error is the same in both cases. It is a confusion of 
 the means with the end. A man begins by hoping that his 
 Church, or his Order, or his Country, will serve the cause of 
 goodness, and he ends by sacrificing the plainest demands 
 of goodness to the supposed advantage of his Church or 
 Country.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 177 
 
 It was this spirit which caused the crucifixion of Jesus. 
 " If we let him alone . . . the Romans will come and take 
 away both our place and our nation/' said his enemies (with 
 more plausibility than we have for saying that the Boers 
 would have turned us out of South Africa), so it seemed to 
 them " expedient that one man should die for the people." 
 It was a similar spirit which made Inquisitors, who saw their 
 Church in danger, sentence heretics to be burnt ; as though 
 safety for a Church or a nation lay in wrong-doing ! 
 
 Looking at the matter practically, we may see what a hoax 
 is patriotism and all the talk about trade following the flag, 
 and the common excuse for war on the ground that it will 
 open up a fresh field for Britons. As a plain matter of fact, 
 the lack of a flag and a fatherland does not prevent the inter- 
 national Jew from gaining a livelihood. Mr. Beit is said to have 
 made ten times as much money in South Africa as any Briton. 
 And since he seems to have shared with Cecil Rhodes the 
 expense of financing the Johannesburg agitation l which led 
 up to the Jameson Raid, and also to have had a part in the 
 tuning of the newspapers in South Africa and in England 
 which preceded the present war, it would appear that it is 
 possible to exploit a patriotism one does not share. 
 
 The more one thinks about this patriotism of great Empires, 
 the more perplexing and intangible the whole thing becomes. 
 With a continually growing Empire, I must refer to an atlas 
 to know who does, and who does not, come within the sphere 
 of my patriotic affection. In matters of science, am I to give 
 the preference to theories of British origin ? When I hear a 
 tune, must I withhold approval till I am sure it is by a British 
 composer ? In commerce one quickly sees how empty is this 
 patriotism, which is ready to shed any amount of other people's 
 blood but will not pay more for British goods than for the 
 
 1 The figures given in the Report of the Select Committee on British 
 South Africa are that Beit spent about 200,000 and Cecil Rhodes 
 61,000 on that affair, 
 
 M
 
 178 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 same thing from abroad. How many British manufacturers 
 are there who would refuse to put up works abroad to com- 
 pete with home manufacturers if they saw a good opportunity 
 to do so with profit ? 
 
 There is no real danger to-day of a foreign foe coming to 
 slaughter women and children, and lay waste a country not 
 defended by an army. But our women and children are 
 being slaughtered in a different way. 
 
 The land of England is being used, not to support the 
 population but for the profit or pleasure of a small section of 
 its inhabitants. 
 
 Half of England is owned by less than 8000 people. Even 
 land which during the Middle Ages was given expressly for 
 the support and education of the poor (for whom the monas- 
 teries and priories were supposed to act as trustees) was 
 seized by Henry VIII., and from it great estates were carved 
 for such families as the Cavendishes and the Russells ; and 
 the people have been robbed from generation to generation 
 ever since. " Something like a fifth of the actual land in the 
 kingdom was in this way transferred from the holding of the 
 Church to that of nobles and gentry," says J. R. Green in 
 his Short History of the English People. One effect of the fact 
 that most of the people who cultivate the land do not own the 
 land, and receive less than half the value of what they pro- 
 duce, is that our people are more and more crowding together 
 into towns, and are living in a more and more artificial 
 fashion on food brought from the ends of the earth, much 
 as was the case in Rome when its healthy growth was at 
 an end, and it drew its supplies of grain from Egypt and 
 elsewhere. 
 
 In consequence of the crowding together of so many 
 people in one place, the owners of the soil in that place 
 obtain a great profit ; but at what a cost to the nation ! In 
 patriotic London alone 800,000 people are living in illegally 
 over-crowded dwellings.
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 179 
 
 If England were a patriotic country, and if patriotism 
 were not an excuse for seeking material advantages for our 
 people at the expense of others, but really meant the love 
 and service of our fellow-countrymen, such a state of things 
 would be impossible. 
 
 Is it not time that we ceased to prize the armour where- 
 with the brave and strong defended the weak in days of old, 
 and learned, rather, to esteem such means as may help us now 
 to escape destruction ? 
 
 Patriotism distorts our vision ; it burdens the people ; it 
 causes blood to flow in torrents ; it is a perennial spring of 
 hatred, malice, and evil-speaking ; and its influence is still so 
 strong because some people will not think about it, and some, 
 having thought, are still unable or unwilling to speak out. 
 There can be no hope of right action till we have cleared our 
 minds and know at least which way we ought to face. We are 
 not called upon to struggle for the Reformation, or to resist 
 the Divine right of kings, or to abolish slavery ; but we are 
 called on to realise that to kill men is as bad as to enslave 
 them. 
 
 Let the British Empire perish rather than become a hind- 
 rance to the spread of brotherhood among all who share 
 our common humanity. Welfare lies in the unification and 
 brotherhood of man, and the superstitions which divide men 
 must be destroyed. Among those superstitions none is 
 worse than patriotism : a fetich to which more lives are sac- 
 rificed than ever were offered to Moloch or to Baal. For it 
 our children will be called on to pass through the fire ; and 
 for it the peoples are being crushed with an ever-increasing 
 burden of preparations for ' national defence ' which lead 
 onward towards international destruction. 
 
 It is true that many good people use the word patriotism 
 vaguely, meaning it to cover a blend of the instinctive pre- 
 ference we feel for our own country and the humanitarian 
 sympathies we consciously extend to all nations. But such a
 
 180 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 use of the word is confusing, and makes it difficult to differen- 
 tiate between one tendency which is usually too strong, and 
 another which is always too weak. 
 
 You complain that people speak harshly of those who com- 
 mand or commit this wholesale and premeditated murder. 
 I am willing to assert that all who, though endowed with 
 reason and conscience, omit to denounce the abominations of 
 war, share in the guilt of those whom by their silence they 
 encourage. Some words of William Lloyd Garrison's suit 
 the situation : " I am aware that many object to the severity 
 of my language ; but is there not cause for severity ? I will 
 be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice. ... I 
 am in earnest. I will not equivocate ; I will not excuse. I will 
 not retreat a single inch, and I will be heard. The apathy 
 of the people is enough to make every statue leap from its 
 pedestal and to hasten the resurrection of the dead." 
 
 There is indeed a remarkably close parallel between the 
 position in the United States, during the second quarter of 
 the nineteenth century, of the Abolitionists, who disapproved 
 of slavery, and the position in England, to-day, of those who 
 disapprove of war. Just as it was, and is, impossible to pre- 
 vent men from exploiting one another's labour, so it was, 
 and is, impossible to prevent men from killing one another, 
 and from using violence to one another. Then men openly 
 bought other men to be their chattel-slaves. Now men 
 openly and unblushingly go to war without offering arbitra- 
 tion, and continue it after a defeated foe has asked for peace. 
 Then, as now, a small number of scattered individuals, of 
 little weight with the political parties or the religious sects, 
 began to draw together to make what stand they could 
 against a great evil. Then, as now, they were opposed, 
 ignored, abused, or at best half-heartedly supported, by the 
 newspapers and the pulpits. To the politicians they were a 
 nuisance, and to the religious bodies a stumbling-block. The 
 Bible (" slaves obey your masters ") was quoted against them ;
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 181 
 
 patriotism and loyalty to the Constitution employed to thwart 
 them. Their meetings were broken up, and their speakers 
 suffered from mob violence. They had nothing but the good- 
 ness of their cause to rely upon, and their battle, like ours, 
 had to be fought with clearness of thought, fearlessness of 
 utterance, and firm reliance that there is a Power, not our- 
 selves, " which lasting through the ages makes for righte- 
 ousness." 
 
 Not the least remarkable part of the resemblance is, that 
 just as we have among us members of " Peace Societies " and 
 " Friends " opposed to all war in the abstract, who will not 
 say a word against war in the concrete, so they had their 
 philanthropic " Colonisation Society " to transport the negro 
 population of America, and to evangelise and civilise Africa. 
 It formed, in reality, a bulwark of slavery. By absorbing a 
 number of respectable people who without some such safety- 
 valve would have felt uncomfortable, it rendered to the cause 
 of slavery the same sort of service that is rendered to the 
 cause of war by such advocates of peace as yourself. Their 
 motto seemed to be : 
 
 " I'm willin' a man should go tollable strong 
 Agin wrong in the abstract, fer that kind o' wrong 
 Is oilers unpop'lar an' never gets pitied, 
 Because it's a crime no oue never committed ; 
 But he mustn't be hard on partikler sins, 
 Coz theii he'll be kickin' the people's own shins." 
 
 There was nothing in the abominations of slavery that evoked 
 their wrath so much as it was evoked by the strenuous utter- 
 ances of Garrison and the Emancipationists, just as there 
 seems to be no horror in this war to move you to such warmth 
 of condemnation as you express concerning those who wish 
 to stop this war. 
 
 It is sad to see a worthy man like you led by the patriotic 
 folly of the hour to forget that a love of truth and a desire to
 
 182 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 be fair and impartial are qualities natural to man : that " the 
 human soul is naturally Christian," as Origen expressed it. 
 You write as though there could be no motive for noting the 
 erroi-s committed by our side except infatuated devotion to 
 the Boers. The cry of " Pro-Boer " (which our political 
 roughs have used, intelligently enough, as a bullying clack 
 to frighten men milder than themselves from expressing an 
 opinion in favour of peace) has imposed on you, so that you 
 really seem to believe that every one must be, like yourself, 
 a blind partisan of one or other side. 
 
 When I first wrote this article I had no intention of making 
 other than an indirect use of Tolstoy's teaching, but now, 
 when revising it, I cannot refrain from quoting two letters 
 which, in different ways, both point the moral that if we 
 really wish to reform any one we must begin by reforming 
 ourselves. In the first of the two letters, written when it 
 had become customary abroad to abuse Chamberlain and 
 denounce the English, Tolstoy (who does not hesitate to point 
 out defects in the Russian Government, and to speak plainly 
 of Tsars and Ministers) wrote to a Russian correspondent on 
 4th December 1899 (O.S.) : 
 
 " If two men after drinking in an inn have a fight over 
 their cards, I cannot agree to put the whole blame on one 
 of them, however strong may be the arguments of the other. 
 The cause of the ill-conduct of either lies, not in the justice 
 of the other, but in the fact that instead of quietly working 
 or resting, they both must needs drink and play cards at 
 an inn. In the same way, when I am told that in any war 
 that breaks out the whole blame lies on one side, I am quite 
 unable to accept the statement. One may admit that one 
 side has acted worse than the other, but an examination 
 showing which side acted worse will not explain even the 
 immediate causes of such a terrible, cruel, and inhuman 
 phenomenon as war. 
 
 "Those causes, both in this Transvaal war and in all
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 183 
 
 recent wars, are quite apparent to every man who does not 
 shut his eyes. The causes are three : First, the unequal 
 distribution of property, i.e. the robbing of some men by 
 others ; secondly, the existence of a military class, i.e. 
 of people educated and fore-appointed to murder ; and 
 thirdly, the false, and for the most part consciously mis- 
 leading religious teaching in which the young are com- 
 pulsorily educated. 
 
 " Therefore I think it not only useless, but even harmful, 
 to regard Chamberlains, Wilhelms, or such people as being 
 the cause of wars, for by so doing we hide from ourselves the 
 real causes, which are much nearer, and in which we are our- 
 selves concerned. Chamberlains and Wilhelms we can only 
 rage against and scold ; but our anger and abuse merely pro- 
 duce bile without altering the course of events : Chamberlains 
 and Wilhelms are but the blind tools of forces lying far 
 beyond them. They act as they must act, and they cannot 
 do otherwise. All history is a series of deeds quite similar 
 to the Transvaal war, committed by politicians ; and so to be 
 angry with them and condemn them is quite useless and even 
 impossible when you see the real causes of their actions, and 
 feel that, according to your attitude towards the three funda- 
 mental causes to which I have alluded, you yourself produce 
 this or that activity of theirs. 
 
 " As long as we make use of privileged wealth while the 
 mass of the people are crushed by toil, there will always be 
 wars for markets and for gold-mines, etc., which we need to 
 maintain privileged wealth. Yet more will wars be inevi- 
 table as long as we take part in the military profession toler- 
 ating its existence and do not, with our whole strength, 
 strive against it. We ourselves either serve in the army or 
 acknowledge it as not merely necessary but praiseworthy, 
 and then, when a war breaks out, we put the blame on some 
 Chamberlain or other. But, above all, war will exist as long 
 as we profess, or even tolerate without indignation and re-
 
 184 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 volt, a perversion of Christianity, called Church-Christianity, 
 which is compatible with a ' Christ-loving army,' the conse- 
 cration of cannons, and the recognition of war as a Christian 
 and righteous activity. We teach such a religion to our chil- 
 dren, profess it ourselves, and then when people begin to kill 
 one another we attribute it, some of us to Chamberlain and 
 others to Kruger. 
 
 " That is why I do not agree with you and cannot blame 
 the blind tools of ignorance and evil, but see the cause in 
 things in which I may myself help to diminish or increase 
 the evil. To co-operate in the brotherly equalisation of pro- 
 perty, and to take as little advantage as possible of those 
 privileges which have fallen to my lot ; to take no part what- 
 ever in military affairs, to destroy that hypnotism which 
 causes people, when becoming hired murderers, to think 
 that they are doing something good by serving in the army ; 
 and, above all, to profess a reasonable Christian teaching, 
 trying with all one's might to destroy that cruelly decep- 
 tive false Christianity in which the young are compulsorily 
 educated ; in this triple activity consists, I think, the 
 duty of every man who wishes to serve goodness, and who 
 is justly revolted at this terrible war which has revolted 
 you also." 
 
 That was written, you may be sure, with no desire to 
 excuse men of the type of Chamberlain ; but it was written 
 to remind us all that the work of reform must begin at home. 
 If we are talking about countries, let each man look most 
 sharply to the faults of his own, but deeper even than that 
 let him trace the evil home and see how much of it rises 
 from a spring in his own business, his own family, his own 
 conduct, and his own heart. 
 
 See how far Tolstoy has taken us from those surface sophis- 
 tries with which I had to deal when I began to examine your 
 plea in justification of the English Government. 
 
 The other letter I will quote was written in reply to one in
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 185 
 
 which I mentioned to Tolstoy that a newspaper correspondent 
 had attributed anti-English sentiments to him. In a reply 
 dated 27th January 1900 (O.S.) he wrote : 
 
 " Of course I could not have said, and did not say, what 
 is attributed to me. What really took place was this : A 
 newspaper correspondent came to me as an author wishing 
 to present me with a copy of his book. In answering a 
 question of his as to my attitude toward the war, I men- 
 tioned that I had been shocked to catch myself, during my 
 illness, wishing to find news of Boer successes, and that I 
 was therefore glad to have an opportunity, in a letter to 
 V., to express my real relation to the matter, which is that 
 I cannot sympathise with any military achievements, not 
 even with a David oppposed to ten Goliaths, but that I 
 sympathise only with those who destroy the cause of war : 
 the prestige of gold, of wealth, of military glory, and, above 
 all (the cause of all the evil), the prestige of patriotism, 
 with its pseudo-justification of the murder of our brother 
 men." 
 
 How totally different is Tolstoy's state of mind to that of 
 the furious patriot who shouts " Pro-Boer " at every one who 
 blames him for engaging in or for continuing the war. 
 
 There is yet much in your pamphlet that calls for reply ; but 
 I will only comment briefly on two points. 
 
 The first is with reference to your characterisation of the 
 Boer population. It is natural enough that in ordinary speech 
 we should try to characterise a whole nation collectively, 
 and should say that the French are gay, the Dutch phleg- 
 matic, the Germans pedantic, the Turks fatalistic, etc., etc. ; 
 but surely every reasonable man should know that there is 
 nothing definite or tangible in such generalisations. To 
 speak of "a strong dislike on account of the antagonism 
 between the two people in respect of their treatment of the 
 blacks," is surely absurd. Not all Englishmen are kind, 
 and not all Boers are cruel. If strife and slaughter could be
 
 186 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 justified by loose phrases of this kind, it would not be the 
 slaughter of one race by another, but the slaughter of the 
 cruel people of both races by the kind ones. Then perhaps 
 some people, kinder still, shocked at such barbarity, would 
 step in and slaughter them, in turn ! 
 
 Lastly, I would join issue with you as to the necessity for 
 each man to master the intricacies of a diplomatic dispute 
 before he may disapprove of the action of his Government. 
 Children when scolded for quarrelling and fighting try to 
 shift the question from the broad plain issue on which they 
 are both obviously in the wrong, and to involve it by dis- 
 cussing which began : who took the marble, who first 
 threatened, who first pushed, and who first struck. 
 
 But with children and with nations it should never be a 
 question of comparative, but always one of positive guilt. The 
 older the child, and the more Christian and civilised the 
 nation, the greater the shame if it is always drifting into 
 quarrels and strife. I and a few hundred, or a very few 
 thousand, other people have taken the trouble to examine 
 the excuses and the special pleadings by which patriots like 
 yourself have tried to justify or excuse this war. But the 
 case has been so gratuitously and so mendaciously entangled, 
 that I earnestly protest against your assumption that those 
 who have no time to spend on such subtleties must accept 
 the immoral conclusions arrived at by those who are concerned 
 to condone a course of policy which naturally led on to 
 human slaughter. 
 
 A plain man has a perfect right to say : " I refuse to 
 support the Government because they are again fighting 
 fighting in two or three places at once. They have not made 
 it clear to me and to everybody else, either what they are 
 fighting about, or that they exhausted every possible effort 
 to settle the matter peacefully : by arbitration, or by liberal 
 concessions to the other party. Furthermore, they seem to 
 cherish the childish absurdity that two blacks make one
 
 WAR AND PATRIOTISM 187 
 
 white, and they are as anxious to prove their enemy in the 
 wrong, as if that would put them in the right. They have 
 not shown me that they were eager to avoid war, and people 
 who cause men to be killed and women to be left homeless, 
 must not expect that, because I am too busy to read all 
 about their quarrels, I shall, therefore, support them in con- 
 duct that my very soul abhors." 
 
 First published in the New Age during August 1900. 
 
 More than a year and a half has passed since this article was first 
 written, but the changes that have occurred are not detrimental to its 
 arguments. The number of deaths caused by the war has much more 
 than doubled. Unpleasant facts such as the wholesale farm-burning, 
 the death-rate of women and children in the Concentration Camps, 
 and the shooting of officers for murdering prisoners have occurred, 
 which we would gladly wipe from history's page were it possible to do 
 so without suppressing the truth. As far as the meagre news passed 
 by the censor enables one to guess, it is probably now no longer 
 correct to say that "half of the Dutch population in South Africa 
 took no part in the war." But nothing has occurred to make the 
 policy, or state of mind, which led to, or condoned, the war, appear 
 either more wise or more right than before. 
 
 While this edition is passing through the press, the news reaches 
 me of John Bellow's death. It fell to my lot to oppose his views on 
 more than one question of principle, but I never felt that I was 
 opposing the man I was opposing only his mistakes. The man him- 
 self, eager and active in good works, had my hearty esteem. Even 
 when we differed most strongly, he always showed himself con- 
 siderate and friendly, and has left on me, as on many who knew him 
 more intimately than I did, an impression of earnestness, high char- 
 acter, and genuine goodness of heart.
 
 SOME twelve years ago (I think it was in 1888) my brother- 
 in-law, Dr. Alexeef, offered to take me to call on Tolstoy, 
 who had written a preface (now published as the essay : 
 Why do people stupefy themselves ?) to a book the Doctor had 
 written on the drink question. At the tea-table I found 
 myself just opposite Tolstoy, of whose works I had then 
 read but little, and I ventured the remark that I under- 
 stood that he disapproved of money-making, and that this 
 interested me because I was in Russia with just the object 
 of trying to make some money. 
 
 This led to a conversation which did not alter my views. 
 I felt that I had the authority of the science of political 
 economy behind me, and that I only needed fully to com- 
 prehend Tolstoy's position in order to be able to point out 
 its fundamental fallacies. 
 
 Our conversation was soon interrupted, but, when we left, 
 Tolstoy said a few kind words and asked me to call again. 
 This I did not do at that time, partly out of shyness, and 
 partly from a feeling that it would not do to teach Tolstoy 
 political economy and that he had nothing of importance to 
 teach me about it. 
 
 Years passed, during which the talk with Tolstoy clung to 
 my mind, and during which also, though the business I was 
 engaged in was a prosperous one, the strain and worry of 
 competitive commercial life told on my nerves and health. 
 I began to see that political economy needed hitching on 
 to the rest of life, and I read Tolstoy's later works with 
 attention. 
 
 At last I found myself again at the same tea-table, but 
 
 188
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 189 
 
 this time approaching Tolstoy with a different feeling. I 
 was sure that his message was important and contained much 
 truth, but why was he living in a comfortable house ? Why 
 did he not put into action the whole of his teaching ? I am 
 ashamed to say that, disregarding the presence of visitors, 
 I put the point bluntly to him. I was in earnest, and as 
 sometimes happens when people are in earnest not merely 
 the conventions, but regard for other people's feelings, were 
 forgotten. Tolstoy did not then reply to my questions, but 
 at parting though he was not yet sure of my sincerity he 
 again asked me to come to see him. This time I did not 
 delay doing so. In private, in his own study, he explained 
 to me some things I have alluded to in my article Leo 
 Tolstoy, and from that time till the day I left Russia I never 
 missed an opportunity of obtaining guidance and instruction 
 from him. 
 
 I was more developed mentally than spiritually, and, at 
 first, more inclined to discuss external matters than questions 
 of the inner life ; but the one led on to the other. 
 
 Tolstoy, I remember, speaking one day of the fact that 
 some people seem led towards goodness by the heart, and 
 others by the head, said that the latter was in some respects 
 the safer process. "You may be weary and wish to turn 
 back, but when you have unravelled the tangle of life you 
 see clearly that there is nowhere to turn back to : you must 
 go on." 
 
 The purpose of the present paper is to record some obita 
 dicta worth preserving for their own sake or as characteristic 
 of Tolstoy. 
 
 His opinions did not result from casual likes and dislikes, 
 but were knit together by his perception of the meaning and 
 purpose of life. One could seldom predict what he would 
 say (even on subjects with which I was familiar his views 
 often came as a surprise), but when he had spoken it was 
 generally easy to see why his conclusion was what it was. 
 
 When among sympathetic friends, the connection between
 
 190 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 his general views and his particular opinion on whatever 
 subject was under discussion was specially evident, and the 
 talk would turn easily to the great problems of life. He 
 would suit his conversation to the company, but to whomever 
 he was speaking, and whatever the particular subject might 
 be, any one in touch with him could readily recognise the 
 co-ordination of opinions to which I have referred. Litera- 
 ture, art, science, politics, economics, social problems, sex- 
 relations, and local news, were not subjects detached from 
 each other, as they are in the minds of many men, but were 
 all viewed as parts of an ordered whole. 
 
 In a good game of chess, played by an expert, there is a 
 logical sequence between the moves, so that the purpose of 
 even the most unexpected coups can be puzzled out ; in this 
 it differs from a game of ordinary drawing-room chess, the 
 moves in which are a series of accidents mitigated by 
 occasional ideas. And there is a similar difference between 
 the talk of a man who has a clear idea of the purpose of 
 human life, and the talk of men who are at sea on that 
 matter. 
 
 I do not know how far this characteristic of Tolstoy's talk 
 will be observable in the following gathering together of 
 scraps of conversations on books and authors. On many the 
 first impression a talk with Tolstoy makes is that he is not 
 saying what other people say, and is therefore eccentric; 
 and I fear that in an attempt to reproduce scraps of his talk 
 it will be easier to convey the unorthodoxy than the validity 
 of some of his opinions. 
 
 Novel-writing, Tolstoy says, stands, both in England and 
 France, on a much lower level to-day than it did when he 
 was a young man. Dickens and Victor Hugo were then in 
 their prime and who is there to-day to match them ? They 
 willingly dealt with subject-matter of vital importance, and 
 treated it so that their readers caught their feeling. They 
 dealt with the emotions of pity and affection and sympathy,
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 191 
 
 were concerned for the poor and oppressed, and showed in- 
 dignation at established wrongs in a manner that went home 
 to men's hearts. 
 
 Now, Tolstoy says, writers are dealing with all sorts of 
 social problems, psychological studies, exact copyings of 
 nature, ethical conundrums, and pseudo-scientific puzzles 
 but, for the most part, they fail to deal with essential matters 
 in such a way as to reach the hearts of the people. Among 
 contemporary English novelists whose works he has read, 
 he does not know of any whom he esteems more than 
 Mrs. Humphrey Ward. She usually knows what she means, 
 and does not approve and disapprove of things haphazard. 
 
 Of Olive Schreiner's Dreams his opinion was not high. 
 The main objection, I think, was that Olive Schreiner deals 
 with some problems of immense importance, without so clear 
 and firm a perception of their bearings as would enable her 
 to give right guidance to those who are attracted by her 
 poetic treatment, and by her sympathetic leanings towards 
 what is good. Dreams are likely to please those most, whose 
 own ideas are somewhat vague and unsettled. 
 
 He had not, at that time, read Trooper Peter Halket, but 
 I have an impression, which I am unable just now to verify, 
 that he read it subsequently and was favourably impressed 
 by it. 
 
 Of Zola, Tolstoy speaks in commendation in one respect. 
 Here are we, all talking about the 'people,' about their 
 rights, and about the ways of raising them, etc., etc. ; and 
 here is Zola, who has really depicted common people and 
 shown us there, these are the folk you are talking about ! 
 
 On the other hand, Zola's realism, in so far as it consists in 
 photographic depiction of a mass of details, is not art, trans- 
 mitting feeling from man to man. Man must discriminate 
 between what is essential and what is trivial in life, not pile 
 up mountains of undigested facts and this is true of the 
 artist as well as of the man. 
 
 Sienkiewicz, Tolstoy says, is always readable ; but what he
 
 192 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 writes is tinged with his Catholicism. In Quo vadis the 
 Christians and Pagans are too white and too black ; they 
 should shade off into each other and overlap, as they must 
 have done in real life, and as the persecuted Russian Stun- 
 dists to-day shade off into, and mix with, the Russian 
 Orthodox. 
 
 Frankness and clearness have a great charm for Tolstoy. 
 The mistakes and errors of a man who is clear are more likely 
 to be of use than the half-truths of those who are content to 
 be indefinite. On any matter, to express yourself so that you 
 cannot be understood is bad. The chief defect of Walt 
 Whitman is, that with all his enthusiasm, he yet lacks a clear 
 philosophy of life. On some vital issues he speaks as if with 
 authority, yet stands at the parting of two ways and does not 
 show us which way to go. 
 
 A great literature arises when there is a great moral 
 awakening. Take, for instance, the emancipation period, 
 when the struggle for the abolition of serfdom was going on 
 in Russia, and the anti-slavery movement was alive in the 
 United States. See what writers appeared : Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, Thoreau, Emerson, Lowell, Whittier, Longfellow, 
 William Lloyd Garrison, Theodore Parker, and others in 
 America ; Dostoyevsky, Tourgenef, Herzen (whose influence 
 on educated Russians Tolstoy estimates as having been very 
 great), and others in Russia. The period that followed, when 
 men were not bracing themselves to sacrifice material con- 
 siderations for moral ones, would have been a barren time had 
 not some writers, nurtured and formed in the heroic period, 
 been left to carry on its tradition. 
 
 Tolstoy speaks very highly of Matthew Arnold's works on 
 religion. He says that the usual estimate puts Arnold's 
 poems first, his critical writings second, and his religious 
 works third ; but that this is just the reverse of a true 
 estimate. The religious writings are his best and most im-
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 193 
 
 portant work. That Tolstoy has rightly gauged the "usual 
 estimate " finds confirmation in the book on Matthew Arnold 
 since published by Professor Saintsbury, in which Literature 
 and Dogma, God and the Bible, A Comment on Christmas, etc., 
 are classed as "these unfortunate books," and we are told 
 that " nobody wants religion of that sort." 
 
 Tolstoy considered that Arnold's essay on his own (Tolstoy's) 
 writings contained sound and just criticism. Indeed, it was 
 Tolstoy's fortune to be introduced to the general reader in 
 England and America by the best sponsors he could have 
 had. Not the least among the services rendered by Matthew 
 Arnold and William Dean Howells, is the cordial welcome 
 with which, many years ago, each of them on his own side of 
 the Atlantic greeted an author whose views are, even to-day, 
 singularly little understood by some who profess to admire 
 them. 
 
 Wishing to induce Tolstoy to admit the merits of some of 
 Matthew Arnold's poems, I marked a few, such as Rugby 
 Chapel, To a Republican Friend, The Divinity, Progress, Revolu- 
 tion, Self-dependence, and Morality, and sent them to him. He 
 returned the book in a few days with the remark that they 
 were very good, " but what a pity they were not written in 
 prose ! " 
 
 In poetry Tolstoy is, indeed, hard to please. Why, he 
 asks, need men hamper the clear expression of their thoughts 
 by selecting a style which obliges them to choose, not the 
 words which best express their meaning but those that best 
 enable them to get the lines to scan ? If we can say what 
 we have to say in three words, why use five ? Or if a word 
 or two more will avoid the risk of being misunderstood, why 
 not add them ? People have written valuable things in 
 verse ; but they could, in most cases, have said them better in 
 prose. And how much worthless stuff has been circulated 
 merely for the sake of the skill with which it was expressed ! 
 
 Similarly of eloquence: a visitor one day was speaking of 
 the charm of eloquence. "Yes/' said Tolstoy, "but what a 
 
 N
 
 194 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 dangerous thing it is," and he went on to tell how he heard a 
 celebrated advocate pleading a cause, and had found it diffi- 
 cult not to allow his own judgment to be warped by the 
 mercenary eloquence of the lawyer. 
 
 Tolstoy is too truthful not to tell those who consult him his 
 real opinion of their work ; but he is too considerate to like 
 hurting their feelings, and as the standard he sets for himself 
 and for others is very high he often finds himself in a difficult 
 position. 
 
 I remember one afternoon, at Yasnaya Polyana, how he 
 came to the tea-table, set out in the open air, and told us 
 that an old man, retired from Government service, had just 
 been with him in his study showing him a long poem. 
 Tolstoy had asked him to read some verses of it, and, though 
 he feared the old gentleman would be angry, was obliged to 
 tell him that it was terrible rubbish. Indeed, judging by 
 some scraps that Tolstoy laughingly repeated, the poem must 
 have been unusually bad. Fortunately, however, the visitor 
 turned out to be one of the most even-tempered of mortals, 
 and merely said : " You don't mean to say so ; why here have 
 I been ten years composing it, and thought it was so good ! " 
 and then took his departure, apparently in no way disturbed 
 by the verdict pronounced on his production. 
 
 I once asked Tolstoy how he accounted for the supreme 
 rank among authors accorded, in Russia and elsewhere, to 
 Shakespear. He said he explained it to himself by the fact 
 that the "cultured crowd" have no clear idea of the purpose 
 and aim of life, and can most readily and heartily admire 
 an author who is like themselves in this respect i.e. one 
 with no central standpoint from which to measure his 
 relation to all else. Shakespear owes his great reputation 
 to the fact that he is an artist of great and varied abilities ; 
 but he owes it yet more to the fact that he shares with his
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 195 
 
 admirers this great weakness : that he had no answer to the 
 question, What is the meaning of life ? 
 
 From Shakespear to the Review of Reviews is a far cry, but 
 the same perception of man's need of guidance, and of the 
 possibility of good guidance being supplied if men are willing 
 to concentrate their attention primarily on what is really 
 important, underlies the view he expressed of that maga- 
 zine in 1 897, not comparing it with other existing periodicals, 
 but rather contrasting it with what we should desire from 
 the literature we read. A visitor I met at the house 
 remarked that the Review of Reviews (a copy of which 
 happened to be lying about) always gave him a headache, 
 and Tolstoy replied that that was just the effect it had on 
 him, though he had hardly realised it till he heard the 
 remark made. The jumble of facts and opinions of all 
 sorts, not co-ordinated by any consistent central perception, 
 is what causes the mental strain. Even in the original parts 
 of the magazine, what is one to make of the mixture of 
 patriotism and Christianity, pulling different ways but both 
 considered good ? love of liberty and laudation of autocrats ? 
 love of peace, and desire to have the map of Africa painted 
 red ? etc. 
 
 Stead wants to have two patriotisms : a bad patriotism, 
 which he calls Jingoism, and a good patriotism. But he 
 does not define the one or the other, so as to enable us to 
 know when the line of right is being overstepped. Every 
 patriotism (i.e. deliberate preference for our own country), 
 by tending to make us jealous and suspicious of the men of 
 other nations, or willing to injure them, does harm. 
 
 Of course the criticism applies to most journalism, and 
 Tolstoy is emphatic as to the advisability of giving a pre- 
 ference to books rather than to ephemeral literature. I 
 hear -that Tolstoy, showing a copy of Stead's War against 
 War in South Africa to a friend in 1899> spoke of it with 
 approval, saying that he had not time to read it carefully, 
 but that at any rate it was an effort in a right direction.
 
 196 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Indeed, any effort made to stem the tide of national arrogance 
 and to protest against the wickedness and waste of war, 
 commends itself to Tolstoy. 
 
 Speaking of Stead's Maiden Tribute of Modern Baby Ion 
 crusade, I happened to mention that many people blamed 
 Stead for giving publicity to such a subject, but that, so far 
 as one can estimate such things, the good effected seemed 
 to outweigh the harm done : wrongs which some women 
 have to endure, all may bear at least to hear of, if exposure 
 is a means towards destroying the evil. Tolstoy listened till 
 I had finished, looked at me, and merely said : " And do you 
 also approve of the deception practised when collecting the 
 evidence and in obtaining the girls ? " Short of pleading 
 that "the end justifies the means" which I could not do 
 there was no way to meet this simple question without 
 abandoning my justification of at least part of the crusade. 
 
 Tolstoy has indeed a remarkable knack of making quite 
 obvious remarks which stick in the hearer's mind and make 
 it impossible for him to think as he thought before. 
 
 In quoting Tolstoy's remarks about Stead, I do not wish 
 to give an impression of wholesale condemnation ; on the 
 contrary, the fact that Tolstoy was acquainted with, and 
 interested in, much that Stead has written, is rather a 
 tribute to the latter than a disparagement. Tolstoy's high 
 standard often leads him to indicate defects in efforts which, 
 comparatively speaking and judged by a lower standard, de- 
 serve praise rather than blame. 
 
 A compilation which particularly pleases Tolstoy, is the 
 Labour Annual, edited by Joseph Edwards, and giving 
 information about various ' advanced ' movements. I suspect 
 that some of the movements look more important on paper 
 than they do in real life, and that some of the ' advanced ' 
 groups would, on closer acquaintance, strike Tolstoy as being 
 two thousand years behind the times. But, be that as it 
 may, the indication such a work gives of the fact that our
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 197 
 
 system of land-owning and manufacturing is no more final 
 than slavery or feudalism were, is encouraging to a reformer 
 surrounded by appearances that, since the Emancipation, 
 have seemed, till quite recently, to indicate stagnation. 
 
 For a similar reason, he was very pleased to hear of the 
 immense sale of Robert Blatchford's little book, Merrie 
 England, though he would not endorse all that it contains. 
 
 For the socialism of Karl Marx, and the theory that fate 
 has decreed that the control of the implements of production 
 must pass into fewer and fewer hands before the condition 
 of the masses can improve, Tolstoy has as little respect as 
 he has for Malthus' law of the superfecundity of the human 
 race. Such attempts to ascertain, and declare as final and 
 immutable, certain ' laws of human nature ' discovered, not 
 by knowing man's heart but by mere external observations, 
 do not commend themselves to him. He especially objects 
 to the demand that we should adjust our actions to such 
 imaginary laws, and subordinate to them those moral scruples 
 which form part of our inner consciousness. People who 
 see that our social conditions are bad, and who yet wish 
 neither to alter their own manner of life nor to admit that 
 they are doing wrong, are very apt to accept such ' scientific ' 
 laws as a shield for themselves. They say : (< Things are 
 wrong; but it is all God's fault, and is inevitable. Were 
 we to act as our consciences demand, no good would come 
 of it. The only sensible thing to do is to go on acting in 
 the way which has produced these wrong social conditions, 
 until the Social Democrats re-organise society by means 
 of a parliamentary majority." Many church people say 
 something of the same kind ; only they want us to wait, 
 not for a Social Democratic majority but for the Millennium. 
 In opposition to such views, Tolstoy holds that if we would 
 know the will of God and be willing co-workers with Him, 
 there is only one way, and that is to be as good as we can. 
 If we all did that, property and the means of production
 
 198 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 would not accumulate in fewer and fewer hands, nor should 
 we breed like rabbits up to the limits of the food supply, nor 
 should we need to wait for the external coming of a Kingdom 
 that must be within us before it can be externally manifest. 
 
 Of P. Krop6tkin, though he does not know him personally, 
 Tolstoy holds a high opinion ; regarding him as an honour- 
 able and earnest worker in the cause of brotherhood, and 
 a man of conspicuous ability. But he does not hesitate 
 to mention the weak spots he discerns even in those who 
 have suffered in the cause of freedom, and he much regrets 
 that Kropotkin does not explicitly and decidedly express 
 disapproval of all violence whether directed against Govern- 
 ments or used by Governments. He thinks it must be a 
 mistaken sense of loyalty to the companions and traditions 
 of his youth that keeps Kropotkin among the justifiers or 
 condoners of physical force methods. "He must see that 
 by excusing violence he cuts the ground from under his 
 own feet." If the struggle in Russia to-day were clearly 
 one between men in power trying to enforce their will by 
 violence, and reformers saying and doing what they believe 
 to be right and repudiating all violence, the sympathy of 
 every good man would be against the Government. But by 
 employing force and justifying its use, the anarchist confuses 
 the issue, and obliges people to choose between two sets of 
 men, each abusing the other, and each saying it is right to 
 kill some men and to use violence sometimes. That is why 
 so many hesitate to sympathise with either party. 
 
 Of Kropotkin' s La Conqucte du Pain, Tolstoy says that the 
 part treating of the present basis of production and distri- 
 bution is good, and the explanation of the advantages of a 
 more brotherly order of society is good. But Kropotkin does 
 not explain how he expects the transition from the old to the 
 new order to come about. It is not to come gradually, as a 
 consequence of a change in our perceptions, characters, and 
 aims, but is to be introduced by a revolution to which a
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 199 
 
 section of society objects. How is this to be done ? By 
 using force ! But the use of force causes dislike and hatred, 
 and the wish to retaliate. So that the Anarchist-Communist, 
 having overthrown the existing order of society by force, will 
 have to guard against attempts to restore it by force ; and 
 there will again be some people governing others not by 
 convincing them but by coercing them. 
 
 Among authors who have had a great influence on Tolstoy, 
 or to whose works he attaches importance, may be mentioned 
 J. J. Rousseau, Stendal, Proudhon, Auerbach (Schrvarzwalder 
 Dorfgeschichten), and Schopenhauer. 
 
 Tolstoy keeps a keen look out for works in other languages 
 (especially short, clearly expressed, and original works) that 
 it would be useful to have translated into Russian, Very 
 often the works he selects are not allowed to be printed in 
 Russia ; but in such cases, when he has got some one to 
 translate it, copies are made on a type-writer, and the work 
 gets a limited circulation arid is more or less secured against 
 the risk of being entirely eradicated by the police (who fre- 
 quently search the lodgings of people suspected of Tolstoyan 
 propaganda), and it is thus ready to be printed should the 
 day dawn when the press-censorship in Russia will be less 
 irksome than it now is. In spite of the activity of the secret 
 police in watching his friends, seizing their papers, and 
 banishing them, the works Tolstoy recommends usually get 
 translated. This has been the case with the two works next 
 mentioned. 
 
 Thoreau's essay on Civil Disobedience Tolstoy selects as 
 being the best of all Thoreau's writings. Its great merit lies 
 in its clear statement of man's right to repudiate, and refuse 
 in any way to support, a Government which acts immorally. 
 The State of Massachusetts connived at the maintenance of 
 slavery. Thoreau was disinclined to devote himself to poli- 
 tics, but was also disinclined to support a Government of 
 which he disapproved. So he refused to pay the poll-tax,
 
 200 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 allowed himself to be imprisoned, and wrote Civil Dis- 
 obedience, which may yet prove to be the source from 
 which a telling protest against war, or other evils enforced 
 by Government, will spring. 
 
 The Anatomy of Misery, by J. C. Kenworthy, is a small 
 book on economics which greatly pleased Tolstoy by its 
 brevity, its clearness, and its thoroughness in going to the 
 roots of the question. He thought that the subsequent 
 work of this author, though much of it is good, did not 
 come up to the high standard set by the book mentioned. 
 
 Among books not translated at Tolstoy's suggestion but 
 commended by him, I recollect the philosophical writings of 
 Shankaracarya, translated into Russian by Vera Johnston, 
 and the work, On Compromise, by John Morley. He thinks 
 highly of Merimee for the quality of his literary art. 
 
 Among books translated into Russian by Tolstoy's advice 
 are : from the French, Vie de S. Francois d'Assise by Sabatier, 
 some short stories by Guy de Maupassant, Les sens de la Vie 
 by Ed. Rod, and extracts from Amiel's Journal Intime (the 
 latter translated by Tolstoy's daughter, the Countess Mary 
 Tolstoy, now Princess Obolensky, with a preface by himself ) ; 
 from the German, a novel by Polenz, Der Biitncrbauer ; and 
 from English, Emerson's Essays, Karma and Nirvana by Paul 
 Carus, The Effects of the Factory System by Allen Clarke, Dr. 
 Alice Stockham's Tokology (to which he wrote a short intro- 
 duction), and, in 1902, The Soul of a People by Fielding. 
 To Howard Williams' The Ethics of Diet, Tolstoy contributed 
 an important preface, forming the essay entitled The First 
 Step l in his collected works. 
 
 I remember his telling me of a young Englishman 
 visiting at Yasnaya Polyana, who said he was the only 
 
 1 The First Step is published as a booklet by the Vegetarian Society, 
 Manchester. The selection of The Ethics of Diet for translation into 
 Russian was due, not to Tolstoy, as I mistakenly stated in the first 
 edition of this book, but to Vladimir Tchertkdff. The same remark 
 applies to Humanitarianism and Flesh and Fruit by H. S. Salt, and to 
 The Scientific Basis of Vegetarianism by Dr. Anna Kingsford.
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 201 
 
 vegetarian in his family. " Do you not have squalls with 
 your people ? " asked Tolstoy. " Squalls ? " replied the 
 visitor, " we have hurricanes ! " " And that is how it 
 must be," remarked Tolstoy, who does not believe that 
 we should hide our light under a bushel, or allow the 
 weight of social prejudice to crush the outward manifesta- 
 tions of the faith that is in us. As he grows older, however, 
 though his fiery ardour for reform does not cool, he increases 
 in gentleness, and learns, what to him has been a hard 
 lesson, that " the meek shall inherit the earth," and that, 
 to get the best results with the limited strength allotted to 
 us, we must seek, as much as may be, to avoid creating friction. 
 
 Tolstoy's eldest son, Count Serge Tolstoy, translated 
 Modern, Science, one of the essays in Edward Carpenter's 
 Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure, Tolstoy himself contributing 
 a preface. The issue raised in that essay is : Are scientists, 
 when they are investigating Nature, dealing with absolute 
 truths, ' facts,' and reaching the bottom of things ? Or are 
 they merely studying the relation of phenomena to our per- 
 ceptions ? Tolstoy agrees with Carpenter that we must not 
 hope to " explain man by mechanics " ; what we can know 
 of nature being only its relation to ourselves. Tolstoy agrees 
 also with what Carpenter says of existing social conditions, 
 and with his remark that " the progress of civilisation " has 
 always (as in Egypt, Greece, or Rome) led on, step by step, to 
 ultimate dissolution, and that there is no sufficient reason to 
 suppose that our present ' progress ' in Europe or America is 
 leading anywhere else. " Why did I not think of that for 
 myself it is so obvious," said Tolstoy. 
 
 But on the Sex-Question, Tolstoy and Carpenter represent 
 almost opposite poles of thought. 
 
 Both would agree that serious discussion of this question has 
 been burked, especially in England and America ; that on no 
 subject do conventional misconceptions flourish more luxuri- 
 antly ; and that the results of such falsehood and conceal- 
 ment are evil. But here agreement would end.
 
 202 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Tolstoy would say that the direction in which true pro- 
 gress lies is clearly perceptible, not only " in thy mouth and 
 in thy heart/' but in the teaching of the greatest prophets 
 and religious leaders of mankind. The course you will 
 follow if you discern the ideal of perfection, will be the result- 
 ant of two different forces. One part of your nature (since 
 you are an animal) will draw you one way. Another part of 
 your nature (since you are divine and have perceived the 
 ideal) will draw you another way. 
 
 The virtue to aim at is chastity. If you cannot be per- 
 fectly chaste, be as chaste as you can. The founders of all 
 great religions have recognised this tacitly and partially, if 
 not expressly and fully. Those of them who have given fixed 
 rules of conduct have drawn the line of what was admissible, 
 not further from chastity, but rather nearer to chastity than 
 was customary in their time and place. Polygamy was no 
 doubt an advance, in most cases, on what went before it, but 
 even a strict monogamy does not solve all difficulties, nor 
 reach the highest approach to purity conceivable by man. 
 
 In Carpenter's view chastity is not a virtue. It would 
 seem from what he has written on the subject, that guidance, 
 either by pointing out an ideal to aim at, or by indicating 
 fixed rules of conduct, cannot be given. People must make 
 their own experiments. How far men and women may go, 
 " in default of more certain physiological knowledge than we 
 have, is a matter which can only be left to the good sense 
 and feeling of those concerned." Poor humanity, according 
 to Edward Carpenter, must wander in the wilderness of 
 perplexity till the teachers of physiology can point a path 
 which the teachers of morality have failed to discover. This 
 is the very opposite of Tolstoy's view of the matter. 
 
 Of Grant Allen's The Woman who Did, he remarked that if 
 the author wished* to show us how his theory would work out 
 in real life, he should not have killed off the hero so soon. 
 Trouble arises when, of two people, one wishes to be unfaith- 
 ful while the other is still faithful but if you kill off one of
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 203 
 
 the two you evade the problem. As to the theory that a 
 woman should be free to choose the father of her next child, 
 so as to produce the " best " child she can, Tolstoy replied : 
 " If you are talking about breeding horses, well and good. 
 Then we can have a definite idea of what sort of horse we 
 want : clean cut hoofs, thin legs, wide chest, shape of back 
 and flanks, head, etc., but about a child you can have no 
 such definite idea of what you want to produce is it to be 
 a Shakespear, a Pascal, a Plato, or a martyr ? " 
 
 A writer with whom Tolstoy is very much in sympathy is 
 Henry George. Both the matter and the manner of Social 
 Problems and Progress and Poverty please him greatly. In the 
 middle of this century the great question was, in Russia the 
 abolition of serfdom, and in America the abolition of slavery. 
 To free the land is the next great question. Henry George 
 has directed attention to it ; he has not only expressed him- 
 self with clearness, individuality, and persuasive force, but his 
 practical scheme for dealing with the problem in a political 
 society such as now exists, appears to Tolstoy to be workable 
 and the best that has been proposed. 
 
 We here come upon what, at first sight, looks like a strange 
 contradiction. Tolstoy disapproves of the use of violence 
 between man and man. Not even an Emperor, or a Govern- 
 ment elected by a majority, has a right to execute anybody 
 or to imprison anybody. He is a peaceful anarchist. Yet he 
 is delighted with Henry George, whose system pre-supposes 
 the existence of a government enforcing the decisions of a 
 majority on a possibly reluctant minority and he would be 
 glad to see the single-tax introduced in Russia. 
 
 But the contradiction admits of explanation. It is as 
 though a man in Quebec made up his mind to go as quickly 
 as possible to Vancouver's Island and live there in the 
 country. He meets another man who knows how best and 
 most cheaply to get to Montreal. The first man joins the 
 second man, and having convinced himself that Montreal is
 
 204 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 the next point he must make for on his way to Vancouver's 
 Island, he feels a keen interest in his companion's prepara- 
 tions for the journey and heartily admires his skill in pack- 
 ing and arranging ; though all the time his own aspirations 
 are set on a country home on the Pacific coast, and he cares 
 little for cities or railways. 
 
 " The great majority of people still believe in governments 
 and legality then let them, at least, see that they get good 
 laws," says Tolstoy. It appears to him utterly wrong that we 
 should maintain laws which will make those who work the 
 land in the next generation, dependent on a small number 
 who will be born possessed of the land. That a few of the 
 strongest, cleverest, or most grasping of the labourers may 
 meanwhile succeed in becoming landlords does not mend 
 matters. 
 
 He asked me once, when I had been to England for a few 
 weeks, how the single-tax movement was getting on. 
 
 I said that I thought it was a small movement not making 
 much way. 
 
 " How is that, when the question is one of such enormous 
 importance ? " 
 
 I said I thought that the great majority of Englishmen 
 were too conservative to attend to it, and the Socialists and 
 other advanced parties had gone past Henry George and 
 recognised interest, and private property in the means of 
 production, as being also wrong. 
 
 " That is a pity," said Tolstoy. " If the Conservatives are 
 too conservative to attend to it, and the advanced parties have 
 gone past it, who is to do this work that so urgently needs 
 doing ? " 
 
 Speaking of the same subject, Tolstoy remarked that some 
 men are born with the qualities and the limitations that enable 
 them to concentrate their powers on some one subject that 
 needs attention, and to see all that relates to it without 
 seeing anything that would turn their energies in other direc- 
 tions. So we get a Cobdeu to abolish corn-laws, and a
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 205 
 
 Henry George to elucidate the land question. God needs 
 such labourers as much as he does men of a wider sweep of 
 perception. 
 
 A work of Henry George's that Tolstoy is fond of recom- 
 mending, besides his more important and better known 
 works, is that careful investigation of Herbert Spencer's 
 change of front on the land question, A Perplexed Philosopher. 
 Herbert Spencer is not a favourite of Tolstoy's. Asked 
 one day whether he had made a careful study of Her- 
 bert Spencer's many volumes, he replied : " I have set to 
 work several times ; but it is like chewing chaff! " The 
 fundamental difference between the views of the two men 
 lies in a matter to which I have already alluded, one which 
 frequently comes to the front in Tolstoy's thoughts. To 
 Herbert Spencer and his school (though he objects to being 
 called a materialist) the real things are the external pheno- 
 mena observed through our senses. These are called upon 
 to explain everything, even to explain our subjective con- 
 sciousness of a moral law. To Tolstoy the latter conscious- 
 ness is the surest and most fundamental perception we possess. 
 That we discern a difference between good and evil is the 
 starling-point of all thought and activity. " Goodness is really 
 the fundamental metaphysical conception which forms the 
 essence of our consciousness ; it is a conception not defined 
 by reason, it is that which can be defined by nothing else 
 but which defines everything else : it is the highest, the 
 eternal, aim of life. Whatever our perception of the good 
 
 may be, our life is nothing but an effort towards the good 
 
 i.e. towards God. The good is that which we call God." 
 
 Yet Tolstoy readily admits that the philosophy he criticises 
 has its very strong side. Our senses make us aware of ex- 
 ternal phenomena, and our perceptions of phenomena are 
 subject to fixed laws which can be investigated. And as lono- 
 as we do not forget that it is merely the relation of our per- 
 ceptions to phenomena that we are dealing with, such investi-
 
 206 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 gation is in its place, and materialistic philosophy may be 
 admirable and valid. 
 
 In What is Art ? Tolstoy summarises the physiological 
 evolutionary definition of art thus : " Art is an activity 
 arising even in the animal kingdom and springing from 
 sexual desire and the propensity to play." (Schiller, Darwin, 
 Spencer.) But he says this is far from being exact, because 
 " Instead of speaking about the artistic activity itself, which 
 is the real matter in hand, it treats of the derivation of art." 
 Similarly on other subjects Tolstoy seeks to deal with prob- 
 lems as they affect us, while the evolutionary philosophy 
 (whatever truth it possesses) is still striving " to set up an 
 explanation of phenomena which shall be valid in itself, and 
 without reference to the mental condition of those who set 
 it up," as Edward Carpenter points out. 
 
 Having mentioned Tolstoy's objection to the physiological 
 evolutionary school of esthetics, which is sometimes called 
 the English school, let it also be mentioned that I have 
 heard him speak with commendation of " the characteristi- 
 cally practical and definite work " done by English writers 
 on esthetics. 
 
 Home (Lord Kames), in the eighteenth century, made a 
 real contribution in his definition of beauty ; and Darwin, 
 Herbert Spencer, Grant Allen, and James Sully, in the nine- 
 teenth century, if they have treated of but one side of the 
 matter, have at least avoided losing their way in the 
 metaphysical obscurities of the German school, and have 
 also made definite contributions. 
 
 Darwin's remarks on the origin of music : as being dis- 
 cernible in the call of birds to their mates, struck Tolstoy 
 as being particularly good. 
 
 Among Chinese philosophers, Lao-Tsze is the one Tolstoy 
 prefers, and he once planned, and himself commenced, a 
 Russian translation of the Tao-Teh-King, based on the 
 existing European versions.
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 207 
 
 Of J. S. Mill's works, Tolstoy remarked that what he 
 liked best was the Autobiography. " It is amazing," said 
 Tolstoy, " that a man should have gone so far in his ex- 
 perience of life, and should have put the vital question 
 so clearly and so well, and yet should have stopped short 
 without finding the answer." Mill asked himself whether 
 the realisation of all the projects for the well-being of 
 humanity on which he was engaged would make him 
 happy, and he frankly admitted that they would not. He 
 was thus left face to face with the question : What then 
 is the real purpose of my existence ? 
 
 Tolstoy's reply would be to this effect : The purpose of 
 my life is to understand, and as far as possible to do, the will 
 of that Power which has sent me here and which actuates 
 my reason and conscience. 
 
 Mill found no answer, and lived on with a sense that the 
 brightness had faded from life. 
 
 Tolstoy has projected many works that he has not found 
 time to produce. He would much like to write a short and 
 simple work on philosophy. In philosophy, Kant's work is 
 indispensable for us who live after him. There is no getting 
 away from the fundamental difference between subjective and 
 objective perceptions. But Kant's style is abominable, and 
 Kant did not do all that is needed. A. Spir, a Russian who 
 wrote in German and in French, carried Kant's work forward. 
 Tolstoy recommends a little book of less than 200 pages, 
 Esquisses de Philosophic Critique, as containing a concise state- 
 ment of Spir's conclusions. The work does not entirely 
 satisfy Tolstoy, but he is in fundamental agreement with it 
 as far as it goes. 
 
 Spir's work not being well known in England, it may be 
 well to quote the following characteristic passages approved 
 of by Tolstoy : 
 
 " The perception that God is neither the cause nor, in any 
 sense, a sufficient reason of the existence of the world, and
 
 208 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 cannot be used to explain it, establishes the independence of 
 physical science vis-a-vis of morality and religion. The per- 
 ception that the physical world is abnormal, founded on a 
 delusion, and that physical science has only a relative truth, 
 establishes the independence and the primacy of morality and 
 of religion vis-a-vis of physical science." 
 
 " To sacrifice the moral to the physical, as is done at pre- 
 sent, is to sacrifice the reality to a shadow ; it is to commit a 
 mistake which has to be expiated at a great price, for it is to 
 sacrifice all that can give value to life." 
 
 And elsewhere : " One obligation that we owe to truth has 
 never been recognised explicitly enough. The obligation 
 not to lie, not to say what you do not believe to be true, is 
 recognised ; but the obligation to accept as true only what is 
 satisfactorily proved to be so, is not recognised." 
 
 To the trend of thought represented by Nietzsche, Tolstoy 
 attaches great and sinister importance. A movement of 
 animalism showed itself in Europe at the Renaissance, but 
 that revolt of man's lower nature soon broke its force against 
 the seriousness that then still lived in Church Christianity. 
 A similar tendency is now reviving, expressing itself in the 
 philosophy of Nietzsche and in the art of the decadents, but 
 it now meets no such formidable breakwater : the Churches 
 are too rotten to offer serious resistance to it. 
 
 Feeling that the only power capable of resisting the attacks 
 of materialism and animalism is the inward light operating 
 through man's reason and conscience, Tolstoy is ready to 
 welcome all that shows how untenable are the positions 
 which Churchmen still try to defend, and how inadequate 
 the proofs they rely on. The following incident illustrates 
 this. He had one day been reading a book by a German 
 professor tending to show that as an historical personage 
 Jesus Christ probably never existed. (It was after I had left 
 Russia, but the story was told me by the lady who, at Tol- 
 stoy's request, translated into Russian part of the book in 
 question.) This delighted Tolstoy. " They are attacking
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 209 
 
 the last of the outworks," said he, " and if they carry it, and 
 demonstrate that Christ never was born, it will be all the 
 more evident that the fortress of religion is impregnable. 
 Take away the Church, the traditions, the Bible, and even 
 Christ himself : the ultimate fact of man's knowledge of 
 goodness, i.e. of God, directly through reason and conscience, 
 will be as clear and certain as ever, and it will be seen that 
 we are dealing with truths that can never perish truths that 
 humanity can never afford to part with." l 
 
 This may seem to some readers like an abandonment of the 
 position Tolstoy held when he was writing The Four Gospels 
 and the Gospel in Brief; but really it is only the same position 
 viewed from the other side. He then maintained that what 
 is essential in the Gospels derives authority, not from some 
 supernatural revelation but from its correspondence with 
 man's reason and conscience ; and what he now means is that 
 even though the case against the historic existence of Jesus 
 should grow stronger and stronger, and it should become 
 more and more evident that we do not know where the 
 Gospels were composed, or when, or who wrote them all 
 this will in no way infringe the validity of that teaching and 
 that understanding of life which Tolstoy and many others 
 have found in the Gospels, and which once perceived can 
 never be ignored. 
 
 1 I leave the above as it stood in the first edition, but I have to 
 thank my friend Paul Birukoff for drawing my attention to the follow- 
 ing communication sent by Tolstoy to him, when he was editing a 
 monthly review in Geneva, concerning the book in question, by Verus : 
 Veryleichende Uebersicht der vicr Evangelien. Leipzig. Vaudik. 1897. 
 
 " In this book it is very well argued (the probability is as strong 
 against as for) that Christ never existed. Read the book and make an 
 abstract of it. That, however, has been done in the Schlusswort and 
 good Anhang : Buddha and Jesus. This supposition or probability is 
 like the destruction of the last outskirts exposed to the enemies' attack, 
 in order that the fortress (the moral teaching of goodness, which flows, 
 not from any one source in time or space but from the whole spiritual 
 life of humanity in its entirety) may remain impregnable." 
 
 o
 
 210 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 At an early stage of my intimacy with Tolstoy I took him 
 one of Professor Herron's books, thinking that he would be 
 delighted with it. But he gave it me back with the remark 
 that Herron was not clear, and was still using such terms as 
 "redemption" in a semi-orthodox and confusing manner. 
 Soon after this he received a letter from Professor Herron, 
 who sent him one of his books. Tolstoy answered frankly, 
 though he feared that his letter might hurt Herron; but 
 a reply came which charmed Tolstoy by its gentle and 
 courteous acceptance of his straightforward criticism. 
 
 Between Herron and Tolstoy there is the obvious simi- 
 larity that both insist emphatically that the economics of 
 Jesus must be taken seriously. But there is a great dif- 
 ference between Tolstoy's uncompromising call to poverty 
 and simplicity of life, and Herron's eloquent involutions on 
 the " social sacrifice of conscience." 
 
 Mention is so frequently made of ' Tolstoy Colonies ' in 
 connection with groups of people trying to get ' back to the 
 land ' and to simplify their lives, that it is often assumed that 
 Tolstoy recommends people to make such experiments. The 
 following words, from a letter written in March 1896 to 
 John C. Kenworthy, concerning a small group called the 
 "Brotherhood Church" in Croydon, and who were pre- 
 paring to start a ' Colony ' at Purleigh, in Essex, may help 
 to correct this mistake : 
 
 "Last night I dreamed that I was in Croydon with you 
 and made acquaintance with all our friends, with Mr. Baker 
 and some ladies, and we had a great discussion with them 
 on the theme which is to me always the nearest at heart 
 i.e. that we must all of us direct our whole strength, not 
 to our outer surroundings (in my dream I saw that yours was 
 a Community in a big house) but to the inner life ! " 
 
 Four months later he wrote again : " I think that a great 
 part of the evil of the world is due to our wishing to see 
 the realisation of what we are striving at but are not yet
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 211 
 
 ready for, and our being therefore satisfied with the sem- 
 blance of that which should be. . . . We are so created that 
 we cannot become perfect either one by one or in groups, 
 but (from the very nature of the case) only all together." 
 
 Speaking on education, he said that if a child lack appetite 
 we do not force food down his throat with a spoon, but we 
 give him fresh air and exercise. So, if a child lack desire 
 for knowledge do not cram his head with lessons which 
 may make him permanently hate learning, but rather seek 
 for him those healthy conditions in which the child's natural 
 desire for knowledge will revive. 
 
 We must not hope to bring up our children well so long 
 as we ourselves live in artificial and abnormal surroundings. 
 We cannot go on living wrongly and yet educate them well. 
 If the children see the parents living simply, and doing work 
 the need for which is obvious, they will soon wish to share 
 in the activities of the grown-up people and will take 
 pains to learn to do so. And if the parents are keenly 
 alive to questions of general interest this will excite the 
 curiosity of the children also, and the latter will begin to 
 think, and to pick up knowledge almost instinctively. 
 Sending children away to school, and letting them become 
 estranged from us just when their minds are forming, is a 
 very bad way of shirking our duties. 
 
 Education and instruction are two different things. When 
 it is a question of imparting instruction it is quite right that 
 classes should be formed and that children should learn 
 together. There is a natural competition among children 
 the stimulus of which should not be lost by isolating them 
 from their fellows. 
 
 ... 
 
 On another occasion : 
 
 " I divide men," said Tolstoy, " into two lots. They are 
 freethinkers, or they are not -freethinkers. I am not 
 speaking of the Freethinkers who form a political party in
 
 212 TOLSTOY AND HIS PROBLEMS 
 
 Germany, nor of the agnostic English Freethinkers, but I 
 am using the word in its simplest meaning." Freethinkers 
 are those who are willing to use their minds without pre- 
 judice, and without fearing to understand things that clash 
 with their own customs, privileges, or beliefs. This state 
 of mind is not common, but it is essential for right thinking ; 
 where it is absent, discussion is apt to become worse than 
 useless. A man may be a Catholic, a Frenchman, or a 
 capitalist, and yet be a freethinker; but if he put his 
 Catholicism, his patriotism, or his interest, above his reason, 
 and will not give the latter free play where those subjects 
 are touched, he is not a freethinker. His mind is in 
 bondage. 
 
 On another occasion, when we were speaking of religion, 
 Tolstoy made the startling statement that " There are two 
 Gods." He went on, however, to explain himself : " There 
 is the God that people generally believe in a God who has 
 to serve them (sometimes in very refined ways, say by merely 
 giving them peace of mind). This God does not exist. 
 But the God whom people forget the God whom we all 
 have to serve exists and is the prime cause of our existence 
 and of all that we perceive." 
 
 In these matters we should be very careful not to state 
 as a fact anything that we are not sure about. To do so 
 will lead us into logical perplexities. We should be careful 
 to base ourselves on what is 'necessary and sufficient.' 
 To assert that there is a cause from which we receive reason 
 and conscience, and to call this God, whose voice speaks 
 within us, is to recognise and express a fact of which each 
 conscientious man has had experience. But to go on (as 
 the books of Moses do) and say that God created the 
 heavens and the earth, is to go beyond what I can really 
 know, and exposes me to all sorts of difficulties. As all 
 that I can know about the heavens, the earth, my own 
 brain, and all else that is external to my inner self (which 
 perceives, and approves or disapproves) is merely the
 
 TALKS WITH TOLSTOY 213 
 
 effect these external things have on me and on other creatures 
 like me, it would, in a sense, be truer to say, not that God 
 made the world but that we made it. So that the old pro- 
 blem : Why did a good God create pain, and sin, and failure ? 
 may not be so insoluble after all.
 
 INDEX 
 
 ABOLITIONISTS, 104, 180, 181 
 Adaptation to Environment, 128 
 Afterword to the " Kreutzcr Sonata" 
 
 21, 32 
 
 Africa painted red, 174 
 Africa, South, 103, 1 52 et seq. 
 Allen, Grant, 202, 206 
 Amiel, Henri, 200 
 Anarchist-Communists, 199 
 Anatomy of Misery, The, 200 
 Anna Karenina, 7, 25, 60, 91 
 Arbitration, 11, 164, 166 
 Armaments, 163 
 Army, 2, 91 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, 65, 192, 193 
 Art criticism, 39 
 Art, Destiny of, 57 
 Art, Definition of, 46, 50, 70 
 ' Art for art's sake,' 38 
 Art infectiousness, 46, 50, 53, 72, 
 
 74 
 
 Art of the future, 57, 75, 76 
 Art, Physiological - evolutionary 
 
 definition of, 71, 206 
 Art, Subject-matter of, 52, 72 
 Art unites men, 53, 74 
 Art? What is, 21, 37 et seq., 83, 
 
 206 
 
 Auerbach, Berthold, 199 
 Autobiography (Mill's), 207 
 
 BEAUTY, 42, 57, 68, 79 
 Beit, Alfred, 103, 177 
 
 Bellows, John, 151, 152, 187 
 BiUe, The, 26, 48, 180 
 Blatchford, Robert, 197 
 Boers, The, 18, 158, 165 
 Boer War, The, 152 et seq. 
 Brotherhood, Church (Croydon), 210 
 British Imperialism, 170, 179 
 Brunhes, H. J., 41 
 Buddha and Jesus, 209 
 Biitnerbauer, Der, 200 
 Burns, Robert, 48 
 
 C.ESAR, Tribute to, 173 
 
 Carpenter, Edward, 201, 206 
 
 Carus, Paul, 200 
 
 Censorship, 64, 89, 90 
 
 Chastity, 202 
 
 Christ (see also Jesus), 50 
 
 Christian Teaching, The, 21, 27, 85 
 
 Christmas Carol, The, 53 
 
 Church, The, 26, 209 
 
 City life, 117 
 
 Civil Disobedience, 104, 105, 199, 
 
 200 
 
 Civilisation, Our, 117 
 Civilisation : Its Cause and Cure, 
 
 201 
 
 Civil War, American, 110 
 Clarke, Allen, 200 
 Coercion v. persuasion, 30 
 Colonies (Tolstoyan), 210 
 Commandments, Five, 15, 27 
 Comment on Christmas, A, 193 
 
 215
 
 216 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Committee, South African, 159 
 Conscience, 128, 139, 144 
 Consistency, 23 
 Conventions of 1881 and 1884, The, 
 
 153, 165, 167 
 Copyright, 89 
 
 Coronation, The Tsar's, 109 et teq. 
 Creation, The, 8, 212 
 Cosmopolitan, The, 93 
 Crimean War, 2, 3 
 Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, A, 
 
 21, 26 
 
 DALTONISM, 136 
 Darwin, C., 71, 122, 206 
 David, 63 
 
 Dickens, Charles, 53, 190 
 'Division of products,' 39, 118 
 Dostoydvsky, 192 
 Doukhobdrs, The, 23, 87, 120 
 Drawing-Room, A Queen's, 113 
 Dress, 20, 113 
 Dreams, 191 
 
 Echo de Paris, 91 
 
 Economics, 30 
 
 Education, 1, 2, 5, 85, 211 
 
 Edwards, Joseph, 196 
 
 Effects of the Factory System, The, 
 
 200 
 
 Eloquence, 193 
 Emancipation movement, 5, 180, 
 
 181 
 
 Emerson, 192, 200 
 England, The land of, 178 
 Environment, Adaptation to, 128 
 Epicureans, 11 
 Esquisses de Philosophic Critique, 
 
 207 
 
 Esthetics, Science of, 69 
 Ethics of Diet, The, 200 
 Evolution, 8, 127 
 Excommunication, 22 
 
 FAITH and Credulity, 29 
 
 Famine (Russian), 23, 88 
 
 Farrar, Dean, 117 
 
 Fielding, H., 200 
 
 First Step, The, 200 
 
 Five Commandments, 16, 27 
 
 Flesh and Fruit, 200 
 
 Folk songs and legends, 73 
 
 Four Gospels Harmonised, The, 21, 
 
 27, 209 
 
 Francis, St. (of Assisi), 102, 200 
 Free thought, 144, 212 
 Friends (Quakers), 168, 181 
 Future life, 32 
 
 GABBISON, William Lloyd, 180, 
 
 192 
 
 Geneva editions, 65 
 Genesis, 48, 78 
 George, Henry, 50, 203-205 
 Gladstone, W. E., 121, 159 
 God, 1, 12, 27, 63, 207, 212 
 God and the Bible, 193 
 Goodness, 145, 189, 205 
 Gospels, The, 12 et scq., 21, 26, 28, 
 
 50, 209 
 
 Gospel in Brief, The, 21, 27, 209 
 Gospel parables, The, 48, 73 
 Government, 31, 99, 102, 119, 
 
 204 
 
 Greeks, The ancient, 75 
 Guyau, J., 68 
 Guizot, F., 102 
 
 HEAD and heart, 189 
 
 Health, 6 
 
 Herron, G. D., 210 
 
 Herzen, A., 192 
 
 Hilk<5f, Prince D. A., 120, 121 
 
 Hodinskoe Field, The, 111, 112 
 
 Holy Synod, The, 22 
 
 Homer, 35, 48 
 
 Howells, Wm. Dean, 65, 193
 
 INDEX 
 
 217 
 
 How to read the Oospelt, 27 
 Hugo, Victor, 190 
 Humanitarianisrn, 200 
 Huxley, T. H., 132 
 Hypnotism, 11, 109 
 
 Iliad, 73 
 
 Imperialism, British, 170, 179 
 
 India, Conquest of, 111 
 
 Inquisition, 177 
 
 Insurance company, An, 115 
 
 Intoxicants, 20, 84 
 
 'Inward light,' The, 145, 208 
 
 Inaiah, 114 
 
 JAMESON Raid, The, 103, 111, 158, 
 
 177 
 
 Japanese decorative art, 73 
 Jesus, 13, 18, 138, 173, 177 
 Jingoism, 195 
 Johnston, Vera, 200 
 Joseph, 53, 73, 78 
 Joubert, General, 170 
 Journal Intimt (Amiel's), 200 
 Judging, 145 
 
 KAMES, Lord (Home), 206 
 
 Karma, 200 
 
 Kant, Immanuel, 207 
 
 Kazsin, 2 
 
 Kenworthy, John C., 63, 200, 210 
 
 Kingdom of God is Within You, 
 
 The, 21, 29, 34 
 Kingsford, Dr. Anna, 200 
 Kipling, Rudyard, 43 
 Kralik, R., 68 
 
 Kreutzer Sonata, The, 21, 32, 65 
 KroptJtkin, Prince P., 198 
 
 Labour Annual, The, 196 
 La Conqutte du Pain, 1 98 
 Land Question, The, 86, 178, 203 
 Laws, 99, 204 
 
 Lao Tsze, 206 
 
 Legality, 101 
 
 Lea Sens de la Vie, 200 
 
 Letters from Tolstoy quoted, 41, 
 
 94, 95, 96, 182-185 
 Literature, 63, 66 
 Literature and Dogma, 193 
 Life, 14, 137, 141 
 Life, Eternal, 142 
 Life, True, 134 
 Longfellow, H. W., 192 
 Love at first sight, 59 
 Lowell, J. R., 192 
 Loyalty, 109, 176 
 Lust, Do not, 16 
 
 MAOAULAY, Lord, 102, 119 
 Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon, 
 
 The, 196, 
 " Making a pipe of oneself," 23, 
 
 87, 88 
 
 Malthus, T. R., 197 
 Marriage, 6 
 Marx, Karl, 197 
 Materialism, 136 
 Maupassant, Guy de, 200 
 Meaning of our life, The, 14 
 Merime'e, 200 
 Merrie England, 196 
 Mill, John S., 118, 207 
 Miracles, 13, 114 
 Modern Science, 201 
 Money, 95 
 
 Morality, 5, 58, 122, 127, 142, 14S 
 Morals, Instability of, 143 
 Morley, John, 200 
 Morris, William, 42 
 Moses, 8, 212 
 Music, 37, 76 
 
 My Confession, 4, 21, 25, 26 
 My Religion, 21, 27 
 Mysticism, 54
 
 218 
 
 INDEX 
 
 NATIONAL Anthem, 174 
 
 Nature, 140 
 
 Necessaries of life, 13 
 
 Newspapers, 158 
 
 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 208 
 
 Nihilists, 103 
 
 Nirvana, 200 
 
 Non-resistance, 14, 17, 34, 44, 98 
 
 Novels, 190 
 
 OATHS, 16 
 
 Obole"nsky, Princess, 200 
 
 Odyssey, 73 
 
 On Compromise, 200 
 
 Origen, 181 
 
 On Life, 21, 62, 137 
 
 Orthodox Russian Church, 120 
 
 PALEY, William, 103 
 
 Palmerston, Lord, 111 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 192 
 
 Pascal, Blaise, 137, 171 
 
 Patriotism, 12, 18, 109, 148, 151, 
 173-179, 195 
 
 Paul, St. (Epistles of), 26 
 
 Peace Societies, 168, 181 
 
 Peasants, The, 3, 12, 47, 50 
 
 Penal Code, 100 
 
 Perception, Religious, 56, 74, 75 
 
 Perceptions, Objective and Subjec- 
 tive, 207 
 
 Perplexed Philosopher, A, 205 
 
 Persecution, 10 
 
 Philosophy, 131, 136 
 
 Physiological - evolutionary defini- 
 tion of Art, 71, 206 
 
 Plato, 203 
 
 Pobedonostsef, K. P., 90 
 
 Poetry, 193 
 
 Polenz, W. von, 200 
 
 Predetermination, 131, 144 
 
 Priests, The, 9 
 
 Progress man's normal state, 24 
 
 Progress and Poverty, 203 
 Proof-correcting, 92 
 Property, 19 
 Proudhon, 199 
 Psalms, The, 73 
 Purleigh Colony, The, 210 
 
 QUAKERS, 168, 181 
 Quarterly Review, 67, 77-82 
 Qwo Vadis, 192 
 
 RAID, The Jamesou, 103, 111, 158, 
 
 177 
 
 Ralston, W., 65 
 Re-incarnation, 142 
 Religion, 1 
 
 Religious perception, 56, 74, 75 
 Renaissance, 208 
 " Resist not him that is evil," 14, 
 
 17, 44 
 Resurrection, 22, 23, 35, 61, 65, 83 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Review of Reviews, 195 
 Rhodes, Cecil, 157-159, 177 
 Right and Wrong, 126 ct seq 
 Right? Is there a, 123, 134 
 'Rights,' 118 
 Rod, Edouard, 200 
 Romeo and Juliet, 58-60 
 Rousseau, J. J., 199 
 Ruskin et la Bible, 41 
 Ruskin, John, 40, 41 
 
 SABATIKR, Paul, 200 
 
 St. Francis of Assisi, 102, 200 
 
 St. Paul (Epistles of), 26 
 
 Salcya Muni, 73 
 
 Salt, Henry, 200 
 
 Schrie'ner, Olive, 191 
 
 Schools, 1, 5 
 
 Schopenhauer, A., 199 
 
 Science, 22, 50, 70, 80, 81, 129 
 
 Science, Modern, 201
 
 INDEX 
 
 219 
 
 Scientific 'facts,' 136 
 
 Scientific 'laws,' 197 
 
 Scientists, The, 8 
 
 Science of esthetics, 69 
 
 Scientific Basis of Vegetarianism, 
 
 200 
 
 Sermon on the Mount, 14 et seq. 
 Sex-attraction, 16, 149 
 Sex-question, 33, 61, 86, 91, 201, 202 
 Sex-paision, 148 
 Sexual union, 147 
 Shaw, Miss Flora, 54, 157 
 Shaw, G. Bernard, 66 
 Shakespear, Wm., 39, 58, 60, 194 
 Shankaracarya, 200 
 Sienkie"wicz, Henryk, 192 
 Simplicity of life, 84 
 Sincerity in art, 48 
 Single-Tax, 203-204 
 Slavery, 184 
 Slavery of Our Times, The, 30, 98 
 
 et seq. 
 
 Smith, Adam, 122 
 Smith, W. H., 154 
 Social-Democrats, 197 
 Socialism, 66, 103, 197 
 Social Problems, 50, 203 
 Society of Friends. (See Quakers) 
 Socrates, 85, 136 
 Soul of a People, The, 200 
 South African Committee, 159 
 South African War, 151 et seq., 
 
 182 et seq. 
 Spencer, Herbert, 71, 134, 205, 
 
 206 
 
 Spir, A., 207 
 
 Stead, W. T., 86, 195, 196 
 Stendhal, 199 
 Stimulants, 20 
 Stockham, Dr. Alice, 200 
 'Struggle for Existence,' 147 
 Suicide, 8, 12 
 Sully, James, 206 
 
 "Suzerainty," 153-155, 159, 164- 
 
 165 
 Synthetic Philosophy, 205 
 
 TAO-TKH-KING, 206 
 
 Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, 49 
 
 Taxation, 164 
 
 Temperance, 84 
 
 Thoreau, Henry, 104, 105, 192, 
 
 199 
 
 Thought, 137, 144, 171, 212 
 Times, The, 157, 158 
 Tokology, 200 
 
 Tolstoy, Countess S. A., 6 
 Tolstoy, Countess Mary L., 200 
 Tolstoy, Count Leo, 54, 64, 78, 84, 
 
 91, 94 
 
 Tolstoy, Count Serge, 201 
 Tolstoy : His Life and Works, 63 
 Tourge"nef, 65, 192 
 Transvaal military expenditure, 163 
 Tribute to Caesar, 107, 173 
 Trinity, The, 120 
 Trooper Peter Hallcett, 191 
 True life, 134 
 Truth, 24, 126, 208 
 Truth ? What is, 122 
 Truth and falsehood, 30 
 Tsar's Coronation, 109 et seq. 
 
 UlTLANDKRS, 164, 166 
 
 Ultimatum, Boer, 155 
 University, 1 
 Unto this Last, 41 
 
 Vedas, The, 73 
 Vegetarianism, 20, 84, 141, 201 
 
 Vergleichende Ucbersicht der vier 
 
 Evangelien, 209 
 Ve"ron, E., 68 
 Verus, 209 
 
 Vie de S. Franfois d'Assise, 200 
 Violence, 99, 100, 102, 103
 
 220 
 
 INDEX 
 
 WALKLEY, A. B., 66 
 
 Ward, Mrs. Humphrey, 191 
 
 War, 2, 9, 17, 151, 167 
 
 War. American Civil, 110 
 
 War against War in South Africa 
 
 195 
 
 War and Peace, 7, 60 
 War, Crimean, 2, 3 
 War expenditure, 163 
 War, South African, 151 et seq., 
 
 182 et seq. 
 Wealth, 7 
 What is Art? 21, 34, 37 et seq., 83, 
 
 206 
 
 What is the meaning of life ? 7 
 What I believe, 21, 27 
 
 What then must we do? 21, 30, 98 
 Why do people stupefy themsdvet? 
 
 188 
 
 Whitman, Walt, 192 
 Whittier, J. G.. 192 
 Wilhelm II., 17 
 Williams, Howard, 200 
 Woman Who Did, The, 202 
 Woolman, John, 104 
 Work, 26 
 
 Wyclif, John, 102, 121 
 Wysewa, T. de, 90 
 
 YAsNAYA Polyana, 2, 194, 200 
 ZOLA, Etnile, 191 
 
 THE END 
 
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