Anna Karenina (Literature Classics Series). Leo Tolstoy

“Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, Confucius, Mencius, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, and all those who have taught men to live a moral life.” He examined “the results 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, imprisonment 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 — 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, circumstances 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 Doukhobórs 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-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 establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God, that is, of Truth and Good.

“Tolstoy the Artist” and “Tolstoy the Preacher”

       by Ivan Panin

       Table of Contents

       TOLSTOY THE ARTIST.

       TOLSTOY THE PREACHER

      TOLSTOY THE ARTIST.

       Table of Contents

      1. I have stated in the first lecture that the soul of man ever strives onward and upward; that its goal is the establishment of the kingdom of heaven, which consists in reverence before God above, and in love towards man here below. I have stated that of this journey of the soul heavenward, literature is the record; that the various phases of literary development are only so many mile-posts on the road; that after the voices of the singer, of the protester, of the warrior, are hushed, there must be heard what must remain forever the loftiest voice in letters,—the voice of the preacher, the prophet, the inspirer. And I have stated that just as Pushkin is the singer, Gogol the protester, and Turgenef the fighter, so is Tolstoy in Russian literature the preacher, the inspirer.

      2. But just because he is the prophet, the uplifter, the proclaimer, Tolstoy is no longer the merely Russian writer. Pushkin is the Russian singer, Gogol is the Russian protester, and Turgenef is the Russian fighter; but Tolstoy is not the inspirer of Russia alone, but of all mankind. Tolstoy has the least of the Russian in him, because he has the most of the man in him; he has the least of the son of the Slav in him, because he has the most of the Son of God in him. The voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of the nineteenth century, but of all centuries; the voice of Leo Tolstoy is not the voice of one land, but of all lands; for the voice of Leo Tolstoy, in short, is the voice of God speaking through man.

      3. For, O my friends, there is a God in heaven, even though the voices of pessimism and agnosticism be raised never so high against him. There is a God who ruleth over the heavens and over the earth; and he is boundless with space, and everlasting with time; and he is sublime with the sky, and he twinkleth with the star; and he smileth with the sun, and he beameth with the moon; and he floateth with the cloud, and he saileth with the wind; he flasheth with the lightning, and resoundeth with the thunder, he heaveth with the sea, and he dasheth with the surf; he floweth with the river, and he rusheth with the torrent; he babbleth with the brook, and he sparkleth with the dew-drop; he reposeth with the landscape, and he laugheth with the meadow; he waveth with the tree, and he quivereth with the leaf; he singeth with the bird, and he buzzeth with the bee; he roareth with the lion, and he pranceth with the steed; he crawleth with the worm, and he soareth with the eagle; he darteth with the porpoise, and he diveth with the fish; he dwelleth with the loving, and he pleadeth with the hating; he shineth with the merciful, and he aspireth with the prayerful. He is ever nigh unto men,—he, the Prince of Light!

      4. And I say unto ye that the Lord God hath not hid himself from the hearts of men; he that spake unto Moses and the prophets, and through them,—he is still nigh. He that spake unto Jesus and the Apostles, and through them,—he is still nigh. He that spake to Mohammed and Luther, and through them,—he is still nigh. He recently spake through Carlyle and through Emerson, and their voices are not yet hushed. And he still speaketh, my friends, through Ruskin in England and through Tolstoy in Russia, as he ever shall speak through all earnest souls who love him with all their heart because they know him, who seek him with all their heart because they know him not. Think not therefore