y ^ «0v. A^' anfc face, that on the contrary he is for all the world like a peasant, or " moujik. ,, While he is still a boy, the family remove to Moscow. When Leo was eleven years old, a pupil in a gymnasium spent a Sunday with them, and informed the children of the latest discovery at school, namely that there was no God, and that all that was taught on the subject was an invention. " I remember well," he says, " how interested my older brothers were in this news ; I was admitted to their deliberations, and we all eagerly accepted the theory as something particularly attractive and possibly quite true." Thus we have Tolstoy, while hardly out of the nursery, a full-fledged nihilist, as he calls himself — not indeed a dynamiter, but, as the name implies, a believer in nothing — and the story of his life is the story of a sincere, spiritu- ally-minded man in search of a satisfying faith. From the first he honestly wished to become a good man, but he received no encouragement from others. His longings for a virtuous life were met with laughter, but whenever he gave way to his lower passions he found only praise and approval. " My kind-hearted aunt," he tells us, " a really good woman, used to say to me that there was one thing above all others which she wished for me — a liaison with a married woman — 'nothing so forms a young /IDanbooo « If Tolstoy left the university because of a dramatic picture of the labour question as a whole, he found himself at Yasnaia Poliana confronted with the same problem in its simplest and most comprehensive form, namely the land question. Why, indeed, should he, a lad of eighteen, own thousands of acres of the surface of the earth which God has given to the children of men, while his serfs, who cultivated it and made it fruitful, did not possess a foot ? There is no reasonable answer to this question, and while Tolstoy may not have put it to himself in that form at that time, still he soon learned the futility of benevolence based upon land- lordism. In his story, A Russian Proprietor, he gives the results of his experiences as a country gentleman, and shows how his efforts were misunderstood by the peasants, and how im- possible it was to get into touch with them. Over fifty years later, continuing the history of the same Prince Nekhludof, in his great novel, Resurrection, he gives the true solution of the land question by making his hero adopt the simple device of the single-tax as advocated by Henry George. After a few years spent in this unsuccessful experiment, Tolstoy gave it up, and secured a commission in the army. . He served in the artillery in the Crimea, and when the Crimean War broke out he asked to be transferred to 12 3Bosboo£> anb Sebastopol, and took an active part in the defence of that city. Here he was surrounded by those dramatic scenes upon which his soul was wont to feed. It was war itself that taught Tolstoy to abhor war, and his early books, written at this period and giving vivid accounts of warfare, while they do not explicitly condemn war, are sufficiently realistic to dis- credit it at least. And in one passage of his Sebastopol he seems to anticipate his final judgment on military life. He is describing a truce for the purpose of burying the dead after a sortie. " Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to, and smile at one another. And these people — Christians con- fessing the one great law of love and self- sacrifice — looking at what they have done, do not at once fall repentant on their knees before Him who has given them life and laid in the soul of each a fear of death and a love of good and of beauty, and do not embrace like brothers with tears of joy and happiness/' At the end of the war Tolstoy found a literary career open before him, and he resigned his commission and went to St. Petersburg to live, where he was welcomed by the highest literary circle. For some years now he led a more or less dissipated life, drank, gambled, and fought duels, like his companions. But he was never satisfied. His soul always yearned for some- thing better. He made the tour of Europe, /IDanboofc 13 and it shows the serious character of his mind that his main object was to visit the great thinkers of England and the Continent, and question them as to the meaning of life. He learned nothing from them, however. Beyond a general belief resembling his own in the " progress " of the race, and the perfectibility of the world, they had nothing to offer him. The only thing that he learned on this journey was taught him, not by men of science, but by another dramatic incident of the kind which always so strongly appealed to him. " During my stay in Paris/' he says, " the sight of a public execution revealed to me the weakness of my superstitious belief in progress. When I saw the head divided from the body and heard the sound with which they fell separately into the box, I understood, not with my reason, but with my whole being, that no theory of the wisdom of all established things nor of progress, could justify such an act ; and that if all the men in the world from the day of creation, by whatever theory, had found this thing necessary, it was not so ; it was a bad thing, and that therefore I must judge of what was right and necessary, not by what men said and did, not by progress, but by what I felt to be true in my heart." This incident is an excellent example of Tolstoy's habit of looking at things afresh as if no one had ever considered them before. 14 Boshoob ant) It is clear that he lacks the historical sense and that the idea of evolution has made no deep impression upon him. He does not appreciate the fact that there may have been a time when the taking of life was as natural and right for man as it is for a tiger to-day, and that the theory that we are now growing out of the brute state into a higher one explains many things otherwise inexplicable. While I believe that the standard which he applies in this matter of violence is the true standard, I should say that the people whom he criticizes are not necessarily perverse or wicked, but that they have not advanced as far as he has along the road of human progress. While Tolstoy was abroad on a second journey the news came of the liberation of the serfs, and he hurried back to Yasnaia Poliana with the object of fitting his freed men for their new-found freedom. He became head-master of the village school, besides publishing an educational journal which gave the results of his experiences. Many of his articles were translated into French thirty years later, and published in book form, and they give an interesting view of his experiments in pedagogy. He started out with the rule that a child should not be taught anything that he did not wish to learn, and, as is his habit, he adhered to his principle through thick and thin. About twice a week, after school had been in progress /IDanboofc 15 for a couple of hours, some small boy would jump up and make for the door. Expostula- tions were useless, and in five minutes the room would be empty, and remain so for the rest of the day. This, however, did not dis- concert Tolstoy in the least. It happened, he said, only twice a week on an average, and after two hours of recitation, and to counter- balance these half-holidays he had the satis- faction of knowing that on all the other days of the week, and for two hours on these days, every boy and girl was in the schoolroom because he or she preferred to be there. They were absolutely free, and he believed that an atmosphere of freedom was more favourable to education than one of coercion. He never took up a lesson to which the children objected, nor continued it when their interest began to flag, nor interrupted it so long as they were eager for it, and he assures us that this last rule sometimes kept him in school inconveni- ently late in the evening, which fact would lead one to suppose that Russian children differ from those of other nations. It is to be hoped that Tolstoy will still write a book on education on the model of his What is Art? It could not fail to be one of the most interest- ing and suggestive of his works. It was at this period that he accepted the post of county magistrate, and his various occupations wore upon him so that he fell ill, 16 Bosboob an& and was obliged to drop everything and go out on the steppes to live for a time among the Kirghiz and drink Kumyss (a preparation of mare's milk) there. But his mind was not at rest, and he thinks that the change which occurred in his views fifteen years later might now have been anticipated if he had not been diverted from himself by his marriage. The romance of this event is given in Anna Karenine, in the courtship of Levine and Kitty, and we may state parenthetically that Tolstoy walks through all his books, for he is more or less identified with Pierre in War and Peace, with Levine and little Nicholas, with Nekhludoff, and others. Tolstoy's family life was completely happy. He lived with his wife in the country and they rarely went to town. He had a large family of children, his expenses increased, and he worked assiduously at his great novels, War and Peace and Anna Karenine, and his books now brought him in a good income. The constant employment kept him for many years from dwelling on the unsatisfactory foundation of his existence, his lack of faith, his want of a working theory of life. But the books which he was now writing, and even those written at an earlier period, give many proofs of the fact that the light was already dawning in his soul. In fact he informs u^ that almost from the first years of his child J /ifcanbooJ) 17 hood, when he began to read the Gospel for himself, the doctrine which teaches love, humility, meekness, self-denial, and returning good for evil, was the doctrine which touched him most. It would be interesting to go through his earlier works and pick out the passages which reflect this feeling. But two examples will suffice. In The Cossacks, written in the fifties, the hero, Olenine, goes out pheasant shooting alone. He lies down in a thicket where a deer had lain before him and had left the imprint of its body on the leaves, and he is suddenly seized by an inexpressible sensation of happiness and love for all creation. The very gnats that annoyed him at first became a necessary part of the forest, and he actually ends by finding a certain charm in their persistence. He makes the sign of the Cross and murmurs a prayer. He feels his identity with the wild nature around him ; he is no longer a Russian nobleman, but simply a living creature. " Why have I never been happy ? " he asks. He runs over his life in his mind and its selfishness fills him with disgust. Suddenly the light bursts upon him. " Happi- ness/' he cries, " happiness consists in living for others, that is clear. Man aspires to happi- ness ; therefore it is a proper desire. If he tries to get it in a selfish way, in seeking wealth, glory, love, he may not succeed, and B 1 8 3Bo£boo& an& /n>anboofc his wishes remain unsatisfied. Then it must be selfish desires which are wrong, and not the wish to be happy. What are the dreams which may be realized irrespective of our outward circumstances ? Only love and self- sacrifice." He jumps up, rejoicing in his discovery, and seeks impatiently for some one to love, to do good to, to sacrifice himself for. And when he returns to the village he insists upon presenting his horse to a young Cossack who had been his rival in the affections of one of the village maidens. He loved every one so much that he felt that this remote hamlet was his true home, that there was his family and his happiness, that nowhere else and never again could he be so full of joy. The other instance in which Tolstoy antici- pates his mature views is found in " War and Peace, which was written some years after his marriage. It is Pierre who speaks. " To live and avoid evil so as to escape remorse, that is too little. I have lived that way and my life was lost in uselessness. It is only now that I really live — that I try to live for others that I understand the blessing of it." f>is Great Spiritual Crisis 19 v CHAPTER II HIS GREAT SPIRITUAL CRISIS These clear premonitions of Tolstoy's ultimate convictions show how his mind and heart were continually working beneath all the apparent absorption of his literary and domestic life. At fifty years of age he found himself cele- brated, rich, surrounded by a loved and loving family, and yet so wretched that he thought seriously of suicide, and gave up shooting for fear that he might be tempted to blow out his brains, and hid a rope which offered itself too readily to him as a means of escape. The question which he had throughout his life buried under his superficial activities now rose to confront him and to insist upon an answer. The crisis, which we find in the lives of men who pass through deep spiritual experi- ences, and are by them fitted to guide others, was upon him. He too was led into the wilder- ness. The fact was that the life which had been his, however honourable in the eyes of the world, was not the true life ; his relations, the relations of a rich man, to the poor peasantry round him were not such as were demanded 20 trts (Breat by his deepest soul, and it was finally in re- adjusting those relations that he found peace. The question which thus puts itself to him, he gives us in various forms : " What if I should become more famous than Pushkin and Shakespeare — than all the writers of the world/ ' he asked himself, " What then ? What result will there be from what I am doing now, and may do to-morrow ? What will be the issue of my life ? Why should I live ? Why should I wish for anything ? Why should I do anything ? Is there any object in life which can survive the inevitable death which awaits us ? " For an answer to these questions he sought long and patiently in every branch of human learning, but in vain. The natural sciences ignored them, philosophy admitted them but gave no satisfactory solution. He turned from the learned books to the men of his own circle of society, and made a study of their way of accounting for life. He discovered that they met the question in four equally senseless ways : namely, by remaining ignorant of it, by recognizing it but seeking distraction in ephemeral amusements and occupations, by suicide, and by a cowardly avoidance of suicide, continuing to drag on a hopeless existence. During all this time Tolstoy laboured under the belief that his own small circle of learned, rich, and idle people formed the whole of humanity, and that the millions outside did Spiritual Crisis 21 not deserve serious consideration, but fortu- nately his strange instinctive affection for the working classes came at last to his rescue and he turned to them. He began to feel that if he wished to understand the meaning of life, he must seek it amongst those who had not lost their grasp upon it, among the millions on whom rests the burden of our life and theirs. Accordingly he applied himself to the study of the simple, unlearned and poor peasantry of his neighbourhood, and at once discovered that he could not classify them with his rich friends, for they found nothing unreasonable in life, neither did they ignore the questions which had disturbed him. He became con- vinced that while the knowledge of the learned based on intellectual activity denied a mean- ing to life, the great mass of mankind have an unreasoning consciousness of life which gives meaning to it. It was in short their faith which brought them into relation with the infinite. Here was the defect of the learned authors and the fashionable world : neither of them provided any bridge between the finite self and the infinite — neither of them assigned any reasonable function to the finite creature in an infinite world. The faith of the peasantry supplied this missing link, and he saw that this faith was not intellectual acquiescence in certain truths, but the knowledge of the mean- 22 1bte Great ing of life — the very force itself of life. For any one to live he must either close his eyes to infinity or find some way of relating himself to the infinite. " What am I ? " he asked. " A part of an infinite whole.' ' Here was the answer to the problem ; and faith which defines our relation to the whole world is the deepest source of human wisdom. Filled with this belief, Tolstoy sought instruc- tion from his orthodox friends, but he found no satisfaction in their doctrines, not so much on account of the unreasonable statements that were mixed with them as because of the fact that they did not live according to the doctrines which they professed. He was persuaded that they deceived themselves. He looked in vain to them for actions showing that their concep- tion of life had destroyed their fear of poverty, illness and death. He turned to the believers among the poor, the pilgrims, the monks, the members of the various peasant sects. They too professed the same superstitions which offended him among the higher classes, but there was this differ- ence : the whole life of the rich was in flat contradiction with their faith, while that of the people was in complete consistency with it. The more Tolstoy studied the lives of the peasantry, the more he was convinced that they had a true faith, a solid foundation for their lives. They passed their days contentedly Spiritual Crisis 23 in heavy labour ; they accepted illness and sorrow unresistingly, in the assurance that all was for the best ; they lived, suffered, and drew near death in quiet confidence and often with joy. Among them death is almost invari- able easy, without terror and despair. In all these things their life presented the greatest contrast to that of the world of wealth and culture. This distinction between rich and poor, which had so long haunted the mind of Tolstoy like a phantom, now took the form of a sub- stantial conviction, and the manner of life of his own class became senseless and repulsive to him. He saw clearly that the difficulty in* finding the meaning of life arose from leading \ a false and artificial life, and from not sharing | in the common life of humanity. Throughout all this period of mental torment, his heart had been oppressed by a feeling which he says he cannot describe otherwise than as a searching after God, a feeling of\ dread, of orphanhood, of isolation. He now' made every effort to apprehend what God was. Sometimes for a moment he would seem to have found Him and then only he would feel that he really lived, but he would soon lose his grasp. One day in the early spring, while he was walking in the woods, he was as usual engaged in such thoughts. " I do not live when I los§ 24 1b!s (Sreat faith in the existence of God," he said to him- self ; "I only really live when I seek him ." "What more then do you seek?" a voice seemed to cry within him, " this is He, He without whom there is no life. To know God and to live are one. God is life. Live to seek God and life will not be without Him." " And stronger than ever," he tells us, " life rose up within me and round me, and the light that then shone forth never left me afterwards." " I renounced the life of my own class," his Confession continues, " f or I had come to confess that it was not a real life, only the semblance of one, that its superfluous luxury prevented the possibility of understanding life, and that in order to do so I must know, not an excep- tional parasitic life, but the simple life of the working classes, of those who produce life and give it a meaning." And once more he turned to the Russian peasantry, but he soon was impressed by the fact that their simple faith in the necessity of following God's will by labour, humility, patience, and goodwill to all men, was bound up with much superstition. However, he tried to ignore this, and returned to the church of his childhood. For three years he was a regular attendant at the little village church at Yasnia Poliana, striving with all his might to enter into the spirit of the peasants and to overlook the con- tradictions, obscurities and superstitions of Spiritual Crisis 25 their cult. But finally the obstacle which turned him away from the church was not a matter of form or theory, but a purely prac- tical and ethical matter which shocked his essentially practical mind. It was in the year 1878, and the great Russo-Turkish war had broken out. The Holy Synod ordered prayers to be said in the churches for the success of the Russian armies, and when Tolstoy heard the lips of the priest, who had so often read the Gospel injunction to love your enemies and do good to those who despitefully use you, utter supplica- tions in the name of Jesus to the Almighty that He might destroy the Turks with sword and bombshell, or words to that effect, his soul re- volted at the blasphemy and as he left the building he shook the dust from his feet. Tolstoy's struggle to gain the truth seemed for a moment to have failed, but he clutched at one remaining straw. The Church was founded upon the Gospels. (In Russia they say " the Gospels," when we say " the Bible," and they give the proper precedence to the four biographies of Jesus.) The Church was founded upon the Gospels and any truth which the Church possesses must be contained in those Gospels. He would study them for himself ; and he set to work with his usual thoroughness, single-mindedness and patience. He took up the Greek language again, so that he might not be misled by translators, and the result of 26 Dte (Breat his labour is shown in a complete commentary in three volumes with the Greek text in one column, the translation in another and his notes below. Tolstoy is not a scholar and his knowledge of Greek is not profound. There are some drawbacks also in his methods. For instance, when he does not like a verse he simply leaves it out, a wonderfully simple expedient which seems to have escaped the ingenuity of former commentators, and it is remarkable that they never thought of it, it is so satisfactory — to the commentator. But making all allowances for Tolstoy's arbitrary ways and his lack of scholar- ship, the fact remains that his dramatic quality of mind has enabled him to enter into the spirit of the Gospel narrative as few other writers have ever done. He describes the events as if they had occurred in Moscow to-day, and we see with new insight why the Pharisees spake thus and why the disciples made such and such an answer. When Tolstoy began to examine the record of the evangelists, he was struck by the fact that the texts upon which the Church founded its dogmas were invariably obscure, while those which teach us how to live are clear and to the point. He read the Gospel over and over again and he was most impressed by the Sermon on the Mount. Nowhere else did he find such plain and definite precepts, and for that reason Spiritual Crisis 27 he looked particularly to these three chapters of St. Matthew for a solution of his doubts. Whenever he read them his heart was touched by the idea of turning the cheek to the smiter of giving up our cloak to him who takes our coat, of loving our enemies ; and yet these texts seemed to call for an impossible self- sacrifice which was inconsistent with true life. He sought counsel in the commentaries and treatises of learned theologians, but they gave him no help. It was only after he had given up all expectation of aid from such sources and had ceased to expend deep thought and in- tellectual skill in comparing texts, and when at last he approached the simple account of Christ's words as a little child, that he came to under- stand them. " The text that gave me the key to the truth/' he says, " was the 39th verse of the fifth chapter of St. Matthew : * Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you that ye resist not evil* The simple meaning of these words suddenly flashed full upon me ; I accepted the fact that Christ meant exactly what He said, and then, though I had found nothing new, all that had hitherto obscured the truth cleared away, and the truth itself arose before me in all its solemn importance.' ' " Christ was not exaggerating. He says, 4 Resist not him that is evil ; ' but if you obey Him in this, you may meet some one who, 28 ibfs Great having smitten you on one cheek and meeting with no resistance, will smite you on the other ; who, after taking away your coat, will take away your cloak also ; having profited by your work will oblige you to work on ; who will take and never give back. ' Nevertheless I say unto you, that ye resist not him that is evil.' Still do good to those that even smite and abuse you. : ; : Christ meant to say, ' Whatever men may do to you, bear, suffer, submit, but never resist evil.' What could be clearer, more in- telligible and more indubitable than this ? As soon as I understood the exact meaning of these simple words, all that had appeared to me con- fused in the doctrine of Christ grew intelligible ; what had seemed contradictory now became consistent, and what I had deemed superfluous became indispensable. All united in one whole, one part fitting into and supporting the other, like the pieces of a broken statue put together again into their proper place.' ' Let us briefly glance at the remaining years of Count Tolstoy's history before returning to the consideration of the system of ethics to which his admission of the doctrine of non- resistance led him. In 1881 he once more made Moscow his home, and sought in schemes of philanthropy some outlet for his new-found spiritual energy. A census of the city was in progress and he had himself appointed as census- taker in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in Spiritual Crisis 29 order that he might become familiar with the population. He happened to meet the peasant sectary and religious reformer Soutaieff and explained to him his plans for the care of the aged and orphans and for putting an end to all misery in the city, expecting to receive en- couragement from him, but the moujik kept silence. Finally Tolstoy asked him what he thought of the scheme. " That's all nonsense," was the answer. " Why ? " " Because no good can come from it. ,, " How so ? Does not the Gospel teach us to clothe the naked and feed the hungry ? " " Yes, but money will not do. They need moral help. ,, " But would you let them die of hunger and cold ? " "Not at all," said Soutaieff. "But how many paupers are there ? " " Nearly 20,000 at Moscow." He smiled. " And are there not a million hearths in Russia ? " he asked. " Let us work with them, and have them eat at our tables and hear good words from us ; that would be true almsgiving. All the rest is absurdity." The truth of these remarks grew upon Tol- stoy. It was a fact ; his much vaunted philan- thropy was a mistake. The poor to whom he offered money, saw him in his fine clothes and well-appointed carriage and knew that he was 30 Ibis e 61 Walt Whitman in one of his short poems presents the idea of the relation of the indi- vidual to civil institutions in what seems to me a truly Christian way. He says : " I hear that it was charged against me that I sought to destroy institutions, — But really I am neither for nor against institutions (What indeed have I in common with them ? or what with the destruction of them ?), Only I will establish in the Mannahatta and in every city of these States, inland and sea-board, — And in the fields and woods, and above every keel, little and large, that dents the water, Without edifices or rules or any argument, — The institution of the Dear Love of Comrades." Nor is the principle of non-resistance cowardly or effeminate. The examples which we shall cite will prove that, and indeed it is sufficient to look at the tall stalwart figure of Count Tolstoy, the veteran of the Crimea, as he dares the Russian bear to do its worst, to satisfy us that his religion must be manly. But even if we had no examples to point to, we might assure ourselves of the manliness of non- resistance by arguing from the very nature of men. The first requisite of courage is self-forget- fulness, and the first requisite of self-forgetful- ness is a preponderating care of others, and this we call love. Thus it is true in the broadest sense that perfect love casteth out fear, and 62 Ube Basis of bis the man who refrains from exerting force upon his neighbour because he loves him is the least likely of all men to fear for himself. This courage which springs from love is the courage which differentiates the man from the brute. It derives its power from the region of affections and thoughts, of love and truth, of heart and mind, which region is the proper home of the human soul. All our physical actions which do not find their motive power in that higher plane, are merely the deeds of animals, and in such deeds we can be eclipsed by the first bull- dog or tiger. But, we are told, the doctrine of non-resist- ance would prevent us from interfering to pre- vent the murder of a child, and this is clearly a reductio ad absurdam of the whole principle. It is probably true that few non-resistants would carry out their theory to this extent in practice, but the fact is that not one man in a million is ever placed in such a situation, while the evils of violence and force are ever present with us in all the injustices and in- equalities of society, in the miseries of war, and in almost every incident of our lives. Besides, every principle of morality may be pushed to an extreme at which its application may seem doubtful, and yet the principle itself remain unquestioned. Thus we all admit the moral obligation of truthfulness, but, because it may be contented that a falsehood is justifiable to /©oral anfc Social Co&e 63 save life, we do not for that reason throw the principle overboard, and begin to lie indis- criminately. The fact, therefore, that we might feel bound to defend a child from out- rage, even by violence, is no justification for the settlement of minor disputes by the legal or illegal use of force. The real test is love, and in the vast majority of cases in which we resort to force our conscience would tell us, if we paused to listen to it, that our act is inconsistent with love — that it necessarily involves a certain degree of hatred or ill-will. But are we, burning though we be with a desire to establish the kingdom of God, to re- nounce all the ordinary means of improvement with which civilization has made us acquainted ? Can we improve the world without recourse to legislation, and judges and armies, and sheriffs and prisons ? Christ certainly found no use for these methods. There was far more govern- ment in His day than there is now. He was surrounded by Roman and Hebrew national and municipal institutions, but He never at- tempted to apply them to His purposes. Only once did the idea occur to Him of using them, and this was when the tempter showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them and said, " All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me." We all remember Christ's reply, " Get thee behind Me, Satan." And He never presented a 64 XCbe Basis of bis different view of the power of government. " Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. But it shall not be so among you." " But," we rejoin, " these are things which we have always been taught to regard as the greatest and most important on earth." Quite so, and so Jesus says, " That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God." Nor would the acceptance of Christ's teachings necessarily imply an amor- phous condition of society, a mad revel of indi- vidualism, nor anarchy, nor disorder. / Christianity means union and order, but the [union must be organic and not mechanical, a /growth and not an institution. It must be a living union, transcending the idea of kingship, passing even beyond the nobler conception of fatherhood and brotherhood, and reaching the ideal of actual identity, such as Jesus felt when He prayed that we might be one with Him as He was one with the Father, and when He declared, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." In cultivating our sense of this oneness, in preaching boldly the consequences of its appli cation to our social life, in protesting against every infringement of the law of love which it predicates, lies the true field of activity for the IDoral an& Soctal Go&e 65 hristian reformer. To hold up the noblest deal, trusting to its inherent persuasiveness, md abjuring all coercion — that is, believe me, he highest function of man, and history will how us that it has the most durable practical :onsequences. The Lord is not in the wind nor n the whirlwind, but in the still small voice, md the very climax of the New Testament hows us the Lamb upon the throne. We can make no greater mistake than to lift >ur hand against wrong. The man who will lot strike back is the only man who cannot be conquered, and the treatment of him becomes an insoluble problem for the tyrant. It is the on-resistant alone who can overcome superior :>ower. Nor in the long run will he be per- ecuted beyond endurance. Count Tolstoy says : "If all the members of a family were Christians and gave up their lives to the service of others, no one would despoil them or kill them," and he says in another place that people who take care of their dogs because they are useful, will not, even if they have no higher motive, continue long to oppress those who cheerfully do good to them. That the idea of non-resistance touches a chord in the human heart I can testify from my own experience. I have never presented it to an audience without having their sym- pathies, and I have presented it to audiences of all kinds. I recall one occasion on which I 66 Basis of bis fllioral an& Social Cofce debated the proposition, " Resolved, that the doctrine of non-resistance to evil tends to re- enforce evil and to invite disaster/' before a club of New York " society " ladies. So cer- tain was I that I could have no influence upon them that I did all I could to avoid the dis- cussion, but without effect. The affirmative was sustained with marked ability and con- viction, but to my surprise, when the merits of the question (not of the debate) were put to the vote at the close of the meeting there were thirty-four votes in the negative to fourteen in the affirmative. And I think that at any average meeting the result would not be very different. We still have the fifth commandment to con- sider, but we may dismiss it with a word. It is " Love your enemies.' ' Tolstoy makes the word " enemies " mean national enemies or foreigners, and in this he is undoubtedly mis- taken, but, however that may be, this rule pre- scribes brotherly love towards all men, even those we are most disposed to hate, whether for national or . personal reasons. It woulc condemn much that passes for patriotism, just as it condemns much that passes for honour anc self-respect.- (bis Ucacbino TTestefc 67 CHAPTER V HIS TEACHING TESTED BY THE CHRISTIAN SPIRIT I have now given a general view of Count Tolstoy's opinions. Do they fairly represent, as he thinks they do, the teachings of Christ ? It certainly seems to me that he goes no further than Jesus did. It is obviously true no portion of the Gospel or of any other book is to be inter- preted according to the letter irrespective of the spirit. The object of language is to put the hearer into the same mental and spiritual position that is occupied by the speaker, so that he may see the subject from the same standpoint and in the same spirit. Now, to what spirit do Christ's words in the Sermon on the Mount inevitably point ? Non-resistance to bad men, turning the other cheek to the aggressor, the refusal to defend our dearest property by law, the loosening of our purse strings, the love going forth like the sunlight to the very margin of the universe and including all men, even our enemies and per- secutors ; what spirit do these things indicate 6% 1bte Ueacbfna Uestefc (if it be not a spirit of entire indifference to accumulated property — a spirit living in an atmosphere so pure that no insult or injury can disturb it — a spirit whose intense love for the offender outweighs all other considerations ? And if we should endeavour to cultivate this spirit, would it not lead us to an almost literal fulfilment of these very words of Christ ? I see no escape from the conclusion that Christ's language here means what it purports to mean. If it is hyperbolical and exaggerated, has it any meaning at all and is it not hopelessly mis- leading ? When Jesus sets up standards that seem too high for us we ascribe it to Oriental imagery. Moses and St. Paul and St. John were also Orientals, but we interpret their writ- ings literally, and why should we apply a differ- ent canon to the sayings of Christ ? No, it is evident on the face of the Sermon on the Mount that He meant what He said. But these statements in these three chapters of St. Matthew are not exceptional. The spirit of non-resistance, of indifference to property, breathe throughout His discourses. The twelve, and afterwards the seventy, are to carry no gold nor silver nor brass ; ... no wallet . . ., neither two coats, no shoes nor staff. " To great multitudes " He says, " Who- soever he be of you that renounceth not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple." When a man asks Him to bid his brother divide the by the Christian Spirit 6 9 inheritance with him, He calls this desire to get one's own property " covetousness. ,, In another place He says, " Sell all that ye have and give alms/' He teaches us to pray, "For- give us our debts, as we forgive our debtors/ ' He says : " Blessed are the poor " and " Woe unto you that are rich. ,, To the young ruler he says, " Sell all that thou hast and distribute unto the poor." We are often told that covetousness was this man's besetting sin, but those who build upon this guess forget that we have seen Christ twice give the same advice to large audiences, for covetousness is, in fact, the besetting sin of the human race. He says that only with God is it possible for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven — that is, of course, to enter into his proper relations with his fellow- men on this earth — but He nowhere hints that he can do it without getting rid of his riches. Do we ask why Christ draws a sharp line between rich and poor ? I believe that the distinction should be intuitive in the Christian soul. There is nothing more deadening to true life than wealth and purple and fine linen and the accompanying pride. We can each of us test the truth for ourselves. There is on a Sunday morning in any of our East Side Catho- lic Churches in New York a Christian feeling of communion and communism which is not to be 70 Ibis TTeacbing XTestet) found in a fashionable congregation. It is possible to feel the brotherhood of man in East Broadway or Hester Street as it cannot be felt on Fifth Avenue. These are simple facts and we cannot understand the life of Christ until we appreciate how deeply He was imbued with this feeling. Dante beautifully expresses the relation of Jesus to the poor when he says that after He passed from earth Poverty re- mained widowed until St. Francis took her to his bosom — " Questa, privata dal primo marito, Mille e cento anni e piu dispetta e scura Fino a costui si stette senza invito." Jesus bids the disciples too, when persecuted, not to resist. They are to carry no staff, and to " Flee into another city." And when James and John wished to call down vengeance, He rebuked them and said, " Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of." When attacked Himself He rebuked Peter who attempted to resist : " Put up again thy sword into its place, for all they that take the sword shall perish by the sword," thus nullifying completely the words contained only in St. Luke: " He that hath none let him sell his cloak, and buy a sword." Let us note that Peter was not even acting in self-defence, but the far nobler de- fence of his Master. Again He says : " He that loveth his life, loseth it," and " Be not afraid of them which kill the body." We may see t>S the Cbristian Spirit 71 from these sayings of Christ that they exhibit a remarkable consistency and sustain his posi- tion in the Sermon on the Mount. Let us also for a moment consider Christ's actions and see to what extent they agree with His words. Although frequently in danger of violence, He never resisted. His attitude as to property is well summed up by Dr. Thomp- son in The Land of the Book : " With uncontrolled power to possess all, I He owned nothing. He had no place to be y born in but another man's stable, no closet to pray in but the wilderness, no place to die but on the cross of an enemy, and no grave but one lent by a friend. At His death He had ab- solutely nothing to bequeath to His mother: He was as free from the mercenary spirit as though He had belonged to a world where the very idea of property was unknown. And this total abstinence from all ownership was not of necessity but of choice, and I say there is nothing like it, nothing that approaches it in the history of universal man. It stands out perfectly and divinely original" (p. 407). Jesus was the greatest of reformers. He was a Jew, living in Palestine under the most op- pressive and unjust yoke of the Romans. The people continually rebelled and wished Him to lead their rebellion, and in fact this wish of theirs caused His death. And yet He never by a word or act approved of their resistance to 72 Dte XCeacbing TTestefc the Roman power, and even justified the pay- ment of tribute. The only occasion on which He is alleged ever to have used force, is in driving the money changers from the Temple, but the whip of small cords is only mentioned in St. John, and he alone mentions also the sheep and oxen. It is evident that the whip was merely used as the ordinary method of driving the cattle. And furthermore the cleansing of the Temple did not succeed. It was in submission unto death that Christ conquered. We conclude from all the foregoing, that Christ by word and deed condemned all forcible resistance, and we find that He carried this out to its logical results. J Government reposes upon force, hence the /Christian should not share in governing. And this is just what Jesus says : " Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them, but so shall it not be among you." Governments engage frequently in war, but a Christian should not take part in war, and so Christ says : "If My kingdom were of this world, then would My servants fight." He says : " Judge not," and He shows what He means by refusing to adjudicate on the con- tested inheritance, and by refusing to con- cleijm the guilty woman, and in both cases b£ tbe Cbristfan Spirit 73 setting aside the law of Moses. And in fact, as we have seen, He attacks the foundations of that law by expressly enjoining non-resistance as a substitute for the lex talionis. After examining Christ's words and example we cannot easily escape the conviction that Tolstoy has entered into their meaning far more fully than the accepted commentators of any church, and the arguments which are used to show that Christ did not mean what He said may be applied with equal force to Tolstoy's writings, and perhaps before he has been dead many years we shall have books published to show that the Russian reformer, like his Master, had no objection to riches or violence. The position taken by most Christians that Jesus made it a rule to say what He did not mean is fast becoming untenable. Common in- tellectual honesty before long will have com- pletely undermined it. We must choose be- tween Christ plus His teachings on the one hand and an honest paganism on the other. I once read the portions of the Sermon on the Mount which refer to turning the other cheek and giving up one's cloak to my nine-year old boy with the object of getting his opinion. His response was brief and to the point. " Oh, what stuff," was the only comment. I value this answer as a frank expression of judgment. If every Christian who, in the bottom pf his 74 Ube Cbristfan Ueacbing heart, believes that these injunctions are " stuff " would cordially say so, it would be a great gain to the cause of truthfulness, whatever the result might be on the dogma of the inspira- tion of the Gospels. CHAPTER VI THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING IN PRACTICE Are the injunctions of Christ practicable ? We can only answer that they have often proved so, and we find the clearest answer in the history of Christianity itself. If St. Peter's plan of defence by the sword had been adopted, pagan Rome would have conquered in an hour, but by resolutely refusing to strike back under the severest provocation, the little band of Chris- tians finally overcame the Empire with all its legions; the meek actually did inherit the earth ; and Jesus was so sure of the success of His method, that He could say, " Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.' ' And this prophecy is coupled with the com- mand to seek first the Kingdom of God and to ° sell that ye have." The practical power of in practice 75 the same teachings was shown again by Francis of Assissi, whose preaching swept over the civilized world and did much to heal the cor- ruptions of the Church and to create Christian art. The achievements of the Quakers must also be put down to the credit of non-resistance. What other Christian body has such a record in social matters ? To them is due the agita- tions against war, the increased regard for the rights of women, and the abolition of slavery. Lloyd Garrison was not a Quaker, but he was a non-resistant and one of the most extreme. Is it a mere coincidence that this typical non- resistant should have been the man who, in the history of America, has, without any excep- tion, accomplished the most for humanity ? At the close of the war, when President Lin- coln was congratulated on having liberated the slaves, he replied with much truth, that he had only been an instrument, and that the moral power of Garrison and his followers had done all. I must dwell for a moment upon the char- acter of Garrison to show what stuff non-re- sistants are made of. Let us judge him by the first number of the Liberator, which was pub- lished on January i, 1831. Garrison had just been released from gaol, a penniless youth of five-and-twenty, without resources or connex- ions. He bought some paper and second- hand type on credit ; he and his assistant were forced by want to live for many months chiefly 76 Ubc Cbristtan XTeacbing on " bread and milk, a few cakes and a little fruit.' ' Their printing office was an attic room where they both slept on the floor. From this point of vantage, he thundered forth thus in his first leading article : " The standard is now unfurled : : : Let the enemies of the persecuted blacks tremble. ; : : I will be as harsh as Truth and as uncom- promising as Justice. : i : I am in earnest. I will not equivocate ; I will not excuse ; I will not retract a single inch ; AND I WILL BE HEARD. Posterity will bear testimony that I was right." And posterity has so borne witness and has long since decided that no man ever did a man's work in a manlier way than the non- resistant Garrison. We see from Garrison's case that non- resistance does not mean non-interference. No class of men has interfered more frequently or more effectively than non-resistants. In the case of the oppressed Armenians and Cubans, as in that of slavery, their voice would have been the first to cry out for justice, but it would have been a cry and not a blow. It was the standing armies of Europe, with the international jealousies centreing in them, which prevented effectual moral interference in Turkey on behalf of Armenia. Another interesting example of non-resist- ance is given in King's History of Ohio. He in practice 77 devotes one chapter to the Moravians who in the eighteenth century went into the wilderness to preach this doctrine to the savages. Here are King's words : " The faith they sought to implant was mainly love. To go in this panoply before the wild Indians of America, it must be ad- mitted, was proof of great faith. * 1 i Strangely the direction thus taken and the sensibilities thus appealed to proved to be precisely adapted to the Indian naturej and had a power which, under different circumstances, might have made a different history for the red man." This is certainly a remarkable admission for a historian who has no brief for non-resistance, and is' simply relating the facts as he finds them ; but on looking into the records we see that these facts fully bear him out in his con- clusions. One of the leading Delaware warriors, and the principal orator of the tribe, Glickhican by name, heard of the inroads which the Moravians were making among his fellow Indians, and he came from a distance to see them with the express object of silencing them by argument. To the surprise of all he was himself convinced, and he laid aside his arms and joined them notwithstanding the taunts of the other warriors. Many others followed his example, and so highly were the Moravians honoured by all the Dela- 78 XTbe Cforistian Ueacbfng wares that they were adopted as members of the tribe. Three villages of non-resistant Indians were established and the " lands, houses and crops of the colony were common property." " The neighbouring Indians were soon at- tracted by the novel scene. It was not by a change of heart only that the brethren counted upon the efficacy of their cause. Through the door and school of industry they sought to draw the Indians to the closer ties of Chris- tian peace, order and love." 1 ' It is easy to perceive . . . how the Indians were drawn to the Moravians. Goodwill once secured, their great aim was to convert the savage to their life of peace and love. To ac- complish it, these wild sons of the forest were constantly urged to turn their thoughts away from blood and rapine to the love of Him who gave to the world all its humanity, and in whose bosom the red man and the white alike found rest. The daily hymns and worship, which so much engaged the Indians, all the exhortations of the preachers, turned upon the one great point of compelling them to live and die like Him who died rather than resist the violence of His enemies. It sought a total reverse of their nature. But the Passion and Crucifixion, as wrought up in the intense and fervent pictures of the Moravian ex- horters, seldom failed to rivet the attention in fl>ractice 79 of even the fiercest warrior ; for it was that supreme heroism of the captive, in the last agony of torture, which was his greatest aspiration ; and he was ready to adore it. " While the unregenerate braves looked with scorn upon the Christian forgiveness and humility which could turn the other cheek when struck, yet before this ideal many of them yielded, and in silent homage with the praying Indians, as they were called, forsook the war-path. Among them were a number of distinguished chiefs. ,, Mr. King thinks that if the Moravians had founded their settlement ten years earlier or iater, they would have had a permanent effect upon the destiny of the American aborigines, but they had fallen upon evil times. The Revolution broke out in 1775 and from that moment efforts were made to drag the Dela- ware Indians into the conflict. For five years the missionaries and the Christian Indians succeeded in persuading them to preserve neutrality. A Wyandot embassy came offering them the war-belt, but the Delawares answered that " they had engaged to hold the chain of friendship with both hands, and therefore could spare no hands to take hold of the war- belt.' ' The Moravian villagers entertained all war-parties hospitably and were not molested by them; But finally the hostilities of the whites 80 T£be Christian TTeacbina brought disaster upon the missions. Three border ruffians arrived who had been confined in American prisons and now wished to unite all the Indians against their former captors. They spread false reports about the mission- aries among the red men, and made two at- tempts to assassinate them. The Moravians found themselves at last obliged to move their villages. " The hideous truth now dawned upon them that, secure as they felt themselves among the savages, their real enemies were the whites, and that the worst of these were those to whom they were most friendly, the Ameri- cans." The English, believing that the Moravians were too friendly to the Americans, instigated the Six Nations to drive them out. The Indians were forced to this by threats, the missionaries were seized and robbed, and the houses of the Christian Indians pillaged. Glickhican refused to defend himself, and was taken prisoner. He was* however, dis- charged, and again the Moravians emi- grated to another place, where they nearly died of starvation. They returned to the site of their old village to gather the standing corn, and there they were treacherously murdered by a band of ninety-six Americans. Glickhican was one of those massacred, and to the end refused to defend himself, although if he had in practice 81 raised the war-cry, his reputation as a warrior would have given new courage to his com- panions, and would perhaps have assured their escape. This calamity put an end to the Mora- vian missions. Another more recent example of the prac- ticability of Christ's teachings among savage tribes is given by the Rev. Henry Richards, an English missionary in the service of the Ameri- can Baptist Missionary Society. He went out to Banka Mantekel, on the Congo, in 1879, an< ^ was the first missionary in that neighbourhood. He found that the natives were inveterate thieves and considered it a compliment to be called liarSj but cruelty is not one of their faults. He says : " I do not believe the African is by any means naturally a cruel man. I believe the Anglo- Saxon to be naturally far more cruel and brutal than the African. When graceless white men go away from all the restraints of society, from public opinion, from the salt of the earth, from the direct influence of Chris- tianity, they seem to become demons. I have seen more brutal things done by one white man in one day than I have ever seen done among the Africans all the time I have lived among them." For some years he taught the natives from the Old Testament^ but with no effect. iA I began/' he says, " to study the Scriptures and F 82 Zbc Christian Ueacbinc to feel that there was some mistake in mj preaching." He concluded that it was the Gospel and not the law which they needed; " 1 considered that the best way to preach the Gospel was to take Luke's Gospel, as this seemed the most complete and most suit- able for Gentiles. I began translating ten 01 twelve verses a day as best I could, and then read and expounded them to the people, asking God to bless His word. The people were at once more interested in the Gospel than when 1 preached the law, for when I preached the law the people were evidently irritated and turned away from me, as they did not like to be accused of sin. When I preached of the Lord Jesus coming as a baby, growing up to be a boy* and that He went about doing good, the people were at once interested, and I began to get hopeful, my faith was strengthened* and I believed that anybody could be converted. This went on very well until I got to the sixth chapter of Luke, thirtieth verse, then another difficulty arose. I should mention in describ- ing the character of the people that they were notorious beggars. They would ask for any- thing they saw. They would ask for my only knife, blanket or plate, and I would say that I could not give them to them, and they would say, * You can get more.' They would see me write a note and send it down to Palabala and things would come up, and they thought the in practice s 3 white man, by merely writing a note, could get everything he wanted, and wasn't he mean and selfish not to give them all they asked for. " Now here comes the text , ' Give to every one that asketh thee/ I had been in the habit of taking things in their order. The man who helped me with my translating did not see my difficulty, and I told him that I did not need him further that day, and went to my room and prayed. The time for the service was coming on. We had daily service, and the thought came, why not pass over that verse, and then my conscience stung me, which said that that would not be honest. Service time came, but I did not go on with the Gospel, but went back to the beginning, and I thought this would give me some time to consider the meaning of this text. I could not find that it meant anything else than what it said. I consulted a commentary. I had often done this before, and very often found that it says nothing about the very text which I wish to know about, but this did say something. It said the Lord is speaking on general principles, and we should do a great deal of harm, instead of doing good, if we were to take it literally, for we should give to idlers, drunkards, etc. What the Lord Jesus means is simply that you should be kind and generous, and give to those who are really in need ; but you have also to use your common sense. 84 XCbe Christian TTeacbtns M I thought after reading this, Why did not Jesus say just what He meant ? Was He so badly educated that He could not express His thoughts correctly ? If He does not mean what He says here, how can I know that He does in other places ? I know that He uses figures and parables that may be interpreted differently, but here is a text that a child can understand, and if this text can be interpreted into being kind and generous, why not others on the same broad principles ? 1 ' If we are allowed to interpret Scriptures in this way we might teach any doctrine we like from them. ; ; . Then as to common sense, there seems to be very little what is ordinarily called common sense in the Sermon on the Mount. Would common sense ever dictate such precepts as these : ' Blessed are the poor/ ' the hungry/ ' the weeping/ ' Blessed are ye when men shall hate you ? ' Is this according to common sense ? Does not common sense teach us that we are blessed when we have everything and are well off and happy ? We are to love those who hate us, and to pray for our enemies ; would common sense dictate this ? Would common sense say, ' If a man strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other; Common sense would say, ' If a man strikes you on one cheek, you give him another/ Would common sense say, ' If thy enemy hunger, feed him ? ' Common sense would say, in practice 85 ■ Let him starve and the quicker he is dead the better/ ' Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, but treasures in heaven.' Does not common sense say, ' Lay up a good store for this earth, and then talk of spiritual things ? ' 4 Seek first the Kingdom of Heaven and His righteousness/ Does not common sense say, ' Secure the dollars by might ? ' . .- . " A missionary passed down at this time, and I mentioned to him my difficulty, but he smiled and said, ' No one lives up to the Gospel literally like that/ and passed on. I never have been able to see how it could be under- stood figuratively. Our commander has given us a very solemn warning at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (Luke vi. 46-49) : 4 And why call ye Me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say ? Every one that cometh unto Me, and heareth My words, and doeth them, I will show you to whom he is like ; he is like a man building a house, who digged and went deep, and laid a foundation upon the rock ; and when a flood arose the stream brake against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well builded. But he that heareth and doeth not is like a man that built a house upon the earth without a foundation, against which the stream brake, and straightway it fell in ; and the ruin of that house was great/ ; ; . 44 After about a fortnight of prayer and con- 86 xrbe Cbristian Ueacfoina sideration, I came to the conclusion that the Lord Jesus meant just what He said, and I went and read it to the people. I told them that they knew I had not lived this, but Jesus meant just what He said. If I had told them that Jesus did not mean what He said, they would have called me a fool. I told them that God had set before us a very high standard, but it would probably take me a life-time to live up to it, but I meant to live what I preached to them. The natives there have common sense, and they would easily see any discrep- ancy between a man's life and preaching. After the address was over, the natives began to ask me for things ; one asked me for this, and another for that, and I gave to them. I began to think whereunto this would grow, but I told the Lord that I could not see that He meant anything different from what He said. I would test this text, and though I could not under- stand all, I would wait until I could. This went on for a day or two. " . . . This created quite a stir among the people. They had never heard such preaching nor seen such living, and they would now listen eagerly to the Word of God. One day a group of people was waiting outside after the service, and from the window in my house I could see them, but they could not see me, and one said 4 I got this from the white man yesterday/ and another said, ' I am going to ask the white man in practice 87 for things like that/ but another said, ' No, if you want it, buy it/ another, ' Yes, buy it, if you want it/ After that I lived there three years amongst these people and they rarely asked me for a thing. A missionary came up during the revival, and said that he was de- lighted to see the people turning from dumb idols to God, and he asked me how it began. I told him my experience and about my difficulty with that text, and he asked if I supposed that it really meant what it said. Then he said, * But these people know you ; you have lived here for seven years, but if you were to go to Palabala they would ask for your house and turn you out/ I had been to Palabala and they always did beg, but my wife and I went there afterwards and remained a week and no one asked me for a single thing. " We were asked how we would live up to this when we got back to England, as there was so much distress there. We lived there for more than a year but found no difficulty in carrying out that text." The result of Mr. Richards' new method of presenting the Gospel was that he soon had a thousand converts where before he had not had one, and he testifies that they are really Chris- tian people in heart as well as name. " I protest against their coming to England or America, as they would see a corrupt form of Christianity/' he declares. He sums up the ss XCbe TTolstos lesson of his experiences in one sentence : " I do believe that if we seek the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, all the necessary things will be supplied, because it is His promise." CHAPTER VII THE TOLSTOY OF TO-DAY That the examples of the success of Christ's teachings should be so few is due to the fact that they have been so rarely tested. Count Tolstoy is making the experiment to-day, and no one who has visited him at his home, as I have had the privilege of doing, and has looked into his searching eyes under their heavy brows,- can for a moment doubt his sincerity. He has stripped his house of everything superfluous, there is not a rug on the floor, not an ornament on the table ; his dress is the peasant's blouse ; he has become a vegetarian and touches neither coffee nor tea nor sugar nor tobacco. That there is a vein of asceticism in all this, I am not disposed to deny. A German admirer of his has called him the John the Baptist of the new j-eligiori of the Spirit, and if sometimes \ye air v e f LffC. J of tro*5a)? 8 9 inclined to criticize him for denying himself unnecessarily and for making the externals of life a little too bare, we should remember that there was room in the world for John whose food was locusts and wild honey, and for Jesus who came eating and drinking, and that wis- dom is justified of all her children. There is a place in our economy for the Tolstoys as well as for the Ruskins and Morrises. And if there seems to be little art in the exterior appearances of Tolstoy's life, it is not because he is not an artist and has not faced the question of art and answered it to his own satisfaction. But he\ denies to the art of the day, the luxurious play- ] thing of the exploiting few, all claim to be con- sidered as art at all. True art, he believes, is a human activity by means of which the artist passes on to others feelings through which he has lived, so that they become infected by them. It is thus a \ means of uniting men through their feelings. The deepest feeling of the present time is that of brotherhood, of love, and harmony, and true art must have as its object the radiating of this feeling. Tried by this standard almost all the art of the day is found lacking, and Tolstoy is willing to wait until a new and true way of life has produced a new and true art. That he may not be separated from his fellows, he works as he may in the fields and he also le&rfled 3, trade, His aim 4 is to support Jhira- 9° trbe ^olstos self by manual labour and at any rate to be worth his own " keep." He also is continually engaged in writing articles and books addressed to the peasants or to the educated classes. The most conspicuous of these in recent years was his great novel Resurrection, a telling in- dictment of caste and government which has challenged the attention of the world. As for the duty of the individual, Tolstoy teaches that it is to do the next loving thing. We should do to others as we would have them do to us. " Only when I yield myself," says he, " to that intuition of love which demands obedience to this law is my own heart happy and at rest. And not only can I know how to act, but I can and do discern the work to co-operate in which my activity was designed and is required." " This work is the annihilaton of discord and strife among people and among all creatures and the establishment of the highest unity, concord and love. Man should always co- operate in the development of love and union among created things." It is to man's culti- vated instinct, to his conscience illuminated by unselfishness, and not to his powers of reasoning that Tolstoy looks for the triumph of his ideas. Thus he says : " To many people of our society it would be impossible to torture or kill a baby, even if they were told that by so doing they could save hundreds of other people. And in the of Zto&as 9 1 same way a man, when he has developed a Christian sensiblilty of heart, finds a whole series of actions become impossible for him. For instance, a Christian who is obliged to take part in judicial proceedings in which a man may be sentenced to death, or who is obliged to take part in evictions, or in debating a pro- posal leading to war, or to participate in pre- parations for war, not to mention war itself, is in a position parallel to that of a kindly man called on to torture or kill a baby." And as man's instincts improve and reform \ his conduct, so the instinct of society, which is ) public opinion, will reform society. War and violence will cease because they will become progressively repugnant to the hearts of men. It would be a mistake to consider Tolstoy's views as the product of an isolated mind. He is in many respects the representation of all that is best in his dearly loved Russian peas- antry. Le Roy Beaulieu tells us in his work on the Empire of the Tzars and the Russians (vol. hi., chap. 3), that the Russian common people are remarkable for their " charity and humility, and what is rarer still and almost un- known in the same class in other countries, for their spirit of asceticism and renouncement, love of poverty, and the taste for self -mortifica- tion and sacrifice.' ' He also shows us that the moral ideal of the people is complete chastity. It is the.n as the mouth-piece of the Russian 92 Ube Uolstos peasantry, among whom he has learned the lesson of his life, that Tolstoy finds his chief significance, and they are fortunate in having a man of such genius and character to represent them. And here we leave this great teacher — great especially in his candour and simplicity. A strange figure — this peasant nobleman, this aristocrat, born into the ruling class of an autocracy, who condemns all government and caste, this veteran of two wars who proscribes all bloodshed, this keen sportsman turned vegetarian, this landlord who follows Henry George, this man of wealth who will have nothing to do with money, this famous novelist who thinks that he wasted his time in writing most of his novels, this rigid moralist, one of whose books at least, the Kreutzer Sonatc:, was placed under the ban of the American Post Office. That same dramatic instinct which made him a great novelist, which im- pelled Sir Henry Irving to rank his two plays among the best of the past century, and which, as we have seen, has so often led him to find lessons in the active world around him, this same instinct has made of this least theatrical and most self-forgetful of men the dramatic prefigurement in his own person of a reunited race, set free by love from the shackles of caste and violence. As it was with the prophets of old, so with him A there is a deeper significance Of GO*t>2V2 93 in his life, in the tragedy of himself, than in the burden of his spoken message. He is the pro- tagonist to-day of the drama of the human soul. A stage which can put forward such a protagonist has no reason for despair; H121 74 :* ^ f ^ C' * * s \ * \^ 1 *v F, V v ; ^ G* V ^T* A <, V*^ T V° V^'"^' "V'^'V" ^^". '**0* o J ^^ A ■a? * 4? ^f. vv "£>. a* ^-^W^J'* .-0. -c. *£,. *»To' f o *,,,♦ ■ .0 ^ ••-•• 4** . . s * A <, J 1 r ~ MAR 74 N. MANCHESTER, INDIANA