Chapter VIII: ), Tolstóy, seems to have taken no interest in it; and (2)

The small room he took in his rich mansion is well known through a world-renowned photograph. Tolstóy behind the plough, painted by Ryépin, has gone the round of the world, and is considered by the Russian Government so dangerous an image that it has been taken from the public gallery where it was exhibited. Limiting his own living to the strictly necessary minimum of the plainest sort of food, he did his best, so long as his physical forces lasted, to earn that little by physical work. And for the last years of his life he has been writing even more than he ever did in the years of his greatest literary productivity.

The effects of this example which Tolstóy has given mankind everyone knows. He believes, however, that he must give also the philosophical and religious reasons for his conduct, and this he did in a series of remarkable works.

Guided by the idea that millions of plain working people realised the sense of life, and found it in life itself, which they considered as the accomplishment of “the will of the Creator of the universe,” he accepted the simple creed of the masses of the Russian peasants, even though his mind was reluctant to do so, and followed with them the rites of the Greek Orthodox Church. There was a limit, however, to such a concession, and there were beliefs which he positively could not accept. He felt that when he was, for instance, solemnly declaring during the mass, before communion, that he took the latter in the literal sense of the words--not figuratively--he was affirming something which he could not say in full conscience. Besides, he soon made the acquaintance of the Non-conformist peasants, Sutyáeff and Bondaryóff, whom he deeply respected, and he saw, from his intercourse with them, that by joining the Greek Orthodox Church he was lending a hand to all its abominable prosecutions of the Non-conformists--that he was a party to the hatred which all Churches profess towards each other.

Consequently, he undertook a complete study of Christianity, irrespective of the teachings of the different churches, including a careful revision of the translations of the gospels, with the intention of finding out what was the real meaning of the Great Teacher’s precepts, and what had been added to it by his followers. In a remarkable, most elaborate work (_Criticism of Dogmatic Theology_), he demonstrated how fundamentally the interpretations of the Churches differed from what was in his opinion the true sense of the words of the Christ. And then he worked out, quite independently, an interpretation of the Christian teaching which is quite similar to the interpretations that have been given to it by all the great popular movements--in the ninth century in Armenia,--later on by Wycliff, and by the early Anabaptists, such as Hans Denck,[19] laying, however, like the Quakers, especial stress on the doctrine of non-resistance.

HIS INTERPRETATION OF THE CHRISTIAN TEACHING

The ideas which Tolstóy thus slowly worked out are explained in a succession of three separate works: (1) _Dogmatic Theology_, of which the Introduction is better known as _Confession_ and was written in 1882; (2) _What is my Faith?_ (1884); and (3) _What is then to be Done?_ (1886), to which must be added _The Kingdom of God in Yourselves, or Christianity, not as a mystic Teaching but as a new Understanding of Life_ (1900) and, above all, a small book, _The Christian Teaching_ (1902), which is written in short, concise, numbered paragraphs, like a catechism, and contains a full and definite exposition of Tolstóy’s views. A number of other works dealing with the same subject--such as _The Life and the Teachings of the Christ_, _My Reply to the Synod’s Edict of Excommunication_, _What is Religion_, _On Life_, etc., were published during the same year. These books represent the work of Tolstóy for the last twenty years, and at least four of them (_Confession_, _My Faith_, _What is to be Done_, and _Christian Teaching_) must be read in the indicated succession by everyone who wishes to know the religious and moral conceptions of Tolstóy and to extricate himself from the confused ideas which are sometimes represented as Tolstóyism. As to the short work, _The Life and the Teaching of Jesus_, it is, so to speak, the four gospels in one, told in a language easy to be understood, and free of all mystical and metaphorical elements; it contains Tolstóy’s reading of the gospels.

These works represent the most remarkable attempt at a rationalistic interpretation of Christianity that has ever been ventured upon. Christianity appears in them devoid of all gnosticism and mysticism, as a purely spiritual teaching about the universal spirit which guides man to a higher life--a life of equality and of friendly relations with all men. If Tolstóy accepts Christianity as the foundation of his faith, it is not because he considers it as a revelation, but because its teaching, purified of all the additions that have been made to it by the churches, contains “the very same solution of the problem of life as has been given more or less explicitly by the best of men, both before and since the gospel was given to us--a succession which goes on from Moses, Isaiah, and Confucius, to the early Greeks, Buddha, and Socrates, down to Pascal, Spinoza, Fichte, Feuerbach, and all others, often unnoticed and unknown, who, taking no teachings on mere trust, have taught us, and spoken to us with sincerity, about the meaning of life”[20]; because it gives “an explanation of the meaning of life” and “a solution of this contradiction between the aspiration after welfare and life, and the consciousness of their being unattainable” (_Chr. Teach._ §13)--“between the desire for happiness and life on the one hand, and the increasingly clear perception of the certainty of calamity and death on the other” (_ibid._, §10).

As to the dogmatic and mystical elements of Christianity, which he treats as mere additions to the real teaching of Christ, he considers them so noxious that even he makes the following remark: “It is terrible to say so (but sometimes I have this thought): if the teaching of Christ, together with the teaching of the Church that has grown upon it, did not exist at all--those who now call themselves Christians would have been nearer to the teachings of Christ--that is, to an intelligent teaching about the good of life--than they are now. The moral teachings of all the prophets of mankind would not have been closed for them.”[21]

Putting aside all the mystical and metaphysical conceptions which have been interwoven with Christianity, he concentrates his main attention upon the moral aspects of the Christian teaching. One of the most powerful means--he says--by which men are prevented from living a life in accordance with this teaching is “religious deception.” “Humanity moves slowly but unceasingly onward, towards an ever higher development of consciousness of the true meaning of life, and towards the organisation of life in conformity with this development of consciousness;” but in this ascendant march all men do not move at an equal pace, and “the less sensitive continue to adhere to the previous understanding and order of life, and try to uphold it.” This they achieve mainly by means of the religious deception which consists “in the intentional confusion of faith with superstition, and the substitution of the one for the other.” (_Chr. Teach._, §§181, 180.) The only means to free one’s self from this deception is--he says--“to understand and to remember that the only instrument which man possesses for the acquisition of knowledge is reason, and that therefore every teaching which affirms that which is contrary to reason is a delusion.” Altogether, Tolstóy is especially emphatic upon this point of the importance of reason. (See _The Christian Teaching_, §§206, 214.)

Another great obstacle to the spreading of the Christian teaching he sees in the current belief in the immortality of the soul--such as it is understood now. (_My Belief_, p. 134 of Tchertkoff’s Russ. ed.) In this form he repudiates it; but we can--he says--give a deeper meaning to our life by making it to be a service to men--to mankind--by merging our life into the life of the universe; and although this idea may seem less attractive than the idea of individual immortality, “though little, it is sure.” (_Chr. Teaching._)

In speaking of God he takes sometimes a pantheistic position, and describes God as Life, or as Love, or else as the Ideal which man is conscious of in himself (_Thoughts about God_, collected by V. and A. Tchertkoff); but in his last work (_Christian Teaching_, ch. VII. and VIII.) he prefers to identify God with “the universal desire for welfare which is the source of all life.” “So that, according to the Christian teaching, God is that Essence of life which man recognises both within himself and in the whole universe as the desire for welfare; it being at the same time the cause by which this Essence is enclosed and conditioned in individual and corporal life” (§36). Every reasoning man--Tolstóy adds--comes to a similar conclusion. A desire for _universal_ welfare appears in every reasoning man, after his rational consciousness has been awakened at a certain age; and in the world around Man the same desire is manifest in all separate beings, each of whom strives for his own welfare (§37). These two desires “converge towards one distinct purpose--definite, attainable, and joyful for man.” Consequently, he concludes, Observation, Tradition (religious), and Reason, all three, show him “that the greatest welfare of man, towards which all men aspire, can only be obtained by perfect union and concord among men.” All three show that the immediate work of the world’s development, in which he is called upon to take part, is “the substitution of union and harmony for division and discord.” “The inner tendency of that spiritual being--love--which is in the process of birth within him, impels him in the same direction.”

Union and harmony, and steady, relentless effort to promote them, which means not only _all_ the work required for supporting one’s life, but work also for increasing universal welfare--these are, then, the two final accords in which all the discords, all the storms, which for more than twenty years had raged in the distraught mind of the great artist, all the religious ecstasies and the rationalistic doubts which had agitated his superior intelligence in its insistent search for truth finally found their solution. On the highest metaphysical heights the striving of every living being for its own welfare, which is Egoism and Love at the same time because it is Self-Love, and rational Self-Love must embrace all congeners of the same species--this striving for individual welfare by its very nature tends to comprise all that exists. “It expands its limits naturally by love, first for one’s family--one’s wife and children--then for friends, then for one’s fellow-countrymen; but Love is not satisfied with this, and tends to embrace all” (_ibid._, §46).

MAIN POINTS OF THE CHRISTIAN ETHICS

The central point of the Christian teaching Tolstóy sees in non-resistance. During the first years after his crisis he preached absolute “non-resistance to evil”--in full conformity with the verbal and definite sense of the words of the gospel, which words, taken in connection with the sentence about the right and the left cheek, evidently mean complete humility and resignation. However, he must have soon realised that such a teaching not only was not in conformity with his above-mentioned conception of God, but that it also amounted simply to abetting evil. It contains precisely that license to evil which always has been preached by the State religions in the interest of the ruling classes, and Tolstóy must have realised this. He tells us how he once met in a train the Governor of the Túla province at the head of a detachment of soldiers who were armed with rifles and provided with a cart-load of birch-rods. They were going to flog the peasants of a village in order to enforce an act of sheer robbery passed by the Administration in favour of the landlord and in open breach of the law. He describes with his well-known graphical powers how, in their presence, a “Liberal lady” openly, loudly and in strong terms condemned the Governor and the officers, and how they were ashamed. Then he describes how, when such an expedition began its work, the peasants, with truly Christian resignation, would cross themselves with trembling hand and lie down on the ground, to be martyrised and flogged till the heart of the victim stopped beating, without the officers having been touched in the least by that Christian humility. What Tolstóy did when he met the expedition, we don’t know: he does not tell us. He probably remonstrated with the chiefs and advised the soldiers not to obey them--that is, to revolt. At any rate, he must have felt that a passive attitude in the face of this evil--the non-resistance to it--would have meant a tacit approval of the evil; it would have meant giving support to it. Moreover, a passive attitude of resignation in the face of evil is so contrary to the very nature of Tolstóy, that he could not remain for a long time a follower of such a doctrine, and he soon altered his interpretation of the text of the gospel in the sense of: “Don’t resist evil by violence.” All his later writings have consequently been _a passionate resistance against the different forms of evil_ which he has seen round about himself in the world. Continually he makes his mighty voice resound against both evil and evil-doers; he only objects to physical force in resisting evil because he believes that works harm.

The other four points of the Christian teaching, always according to Tolstóy’s interpretation of it, are: Do not be angry, or, at least, abstain from anger as much as you can: Remain true to the one woman with whom you have united your life, and avoid all that excites passion: Do not take oaths, which in Tolstóy’s opinion means: Never tie your hands with an oath; oath-taking is the means resorted to by all governments to bind men in their _consciences_ to do whatever they bid them do; and finally, Love your enemies; or, as Tolstóy points it out in several of his writings: Never judge, and never prosecute another before a tribunal.

To these five rules Tolstóy gives the widest possible interpretation and he deducts from them all the teachings of free communism. He proves with a wealth of arguments that to live upon the work of others, and not to earn one’s own living, is to break the very law of all nature; it is the main cause of all social evils, as also of nearly all personal unhappiness and discomforts. He shows how the present capitalistic organisation of labour is as bad as slavery or serfdom has ever been.

He insists upon the simplification of life--in food, dress, and dwelling--which results from one’s taking to manual work, especially on the land, and shows the advantages that even the rich and idle of to-day would find in such labour. He shows how all the evils of present misgovernment result from the fact that the very men who protest against bad government make every effort to become a part of that government.

As emphatically as he protests against the Church, he protests against the State, as the only real means for bringing to an end the present slavery imposed upon men by this institution. He advises men to refuse having anything to do with the State. And finally, he proves with a wealth of illustrations in which his artistic powers appear in full, that the lust of the rich classes for wealth and luxury--a lust which has no limits, and can have none--is what maintains all this slavery, all these abnormal conditions of life, and all the prejudices and teachings now disseminated by Church and State in the interest of the ruling classes.

On the other hand, whenever he speaks of God, or of immortality, his constant desire is to show that he needs none of the mystical conceptions and metaphysical words which are usually resorted to. And while his language is borrowed from religious writings, he always brings forward, again and again, the rationalistic interpretation of religious conceptions. He carefully sifts from the Christian teaching all that cannot be accepted by followers of other religions, and brings into relief all that is common to Christianity as well as to other positive religions; all that is simply humane in them and thus might be approved by reason, and therefore be accepted by disbelievers as well as by believers.

In other words, in proportion as he has lately studied the teachings of different founders of religions and those of moral philosophers, he has tried to determine and to state _the elements of a universal religion_ in which all men could unite--a religion, however, which would have nothing supernatural in it, nothing that reason and knowledge would have to reject, but would contain a moral guidance for all men--at whatever stage of intellectual development they may halt. Having thus begun, in 1875-77, by joining the Greek Orthodox religion--in the sense in which Russian peasants understand it--he came finally in _The Christian Teaching_ to the construction of a Moral Philosophy which, in his opinion, might be accepted by the Christian, the Jew, the Mussulman, the Buddhist, and so on, and the naturalist philosopher as well--a religion which would retain the only substantial elements of all religions: namely, a determination of one’s _relation towards the universe_ (_Weltanschaung_), in accordance with present knowledge, and _a recognition of the equality of all men_.

Whether these two elements, one of which belongs to the domain of knowledge and science and the other (justice) to the domain of ethics, are sufficient to constitute a _religion_, and need no substratum of mysticism--is a question which lies beyond the scope of this book.

LATEST WORKS OF ART

The disturbed conditions of the civilised world, and especially of Russia, have evidently more than once attracted the attention of Tolstóy, and induced him to publish a considerable number of letters, papers, and appeals on various subjects. In all of them he advocates, first of all, and above all, an attitude of negation towards Church and State. Never enter the service of the State, even in the provincial and urban institutions, which are granted by the State only as a snare. Refuse to support exploitation in any form. Refuse to perform military service, whatever the consequences may be: for this is the only method of being truly anti-militarist. Never have anything to do with Courts, even if you are offended or assailed;--nothing but evil results from them. Such a negative and eminently sincere attitude, he maintains, would better promote the cause of true progress than any revolutionary means. As a first step, however, towards the abolition of modern slavery, he also recommends the nationalisation, or rather the municipalisation, of land.

It is manifest that the works of art which he wrote during the last five-and-twenty years, after 1876, must bear deep traces of his new point of view. He began, first, by writing for the people, and although most of his small stories for popular reading are spoiled to some extent by the too obvious desire of drawing a certain moral, and a consequent distortion of facts, there are a few among them--especially _How much Land is required for a Man_--which are wonderfully artistic. _The Death of Iván Illýtch_ need only be named to recall the profound impression produced by its appearance.

In order to speak to a still wider audience in the theatres for the people, which began to be started in Russia about that time, he wrote _The Power of Darkness_,--a most terrible drama from the life of the peasants, in which he aimed at producing a deep impression by means of a Shakespearian or rather Marlowian realism. His other play--_The Fruits of Civilisation_--is in a comical vein. The superstitions of the “upper classes” as regards spiritualism are ridiculed in it. Both plays (the former--with alterations in the final scene) are played with success on the Russian stage.

However, it is not only the novels and dramas of this period which are works of Art. The five religious works which have been named on a preceding page are also works of art in the best sense of the word, as they contain descriptive pages of a high artistic value; while the very ways in which Tolstóy explains the economical principles of Socialism, or the No-Government principles of Anarchism, are as much masterpieces as the best socialistic and anarchistic pages of William Morris--far surpassing the latter in simplicity and artistic power.

_Kreutzer Sonata_ is surely, after _Anna Karénina_, the work of Tolstóy which has been the most widely read. However, the strange theme of this novel and the crusade against marriage altogether which it contains so much attract the attention of the reader and usually become the subject of so passionate a discussion among those who have read it, that the high artistic qualities of this novel and the analysis of life which it contains have hardly received the recognition they deserve. The moral teaching that Tolstóy has put in _Kreutzer Sonata_ hardly need be mentioned, the more so since the author himself has withdrawn it to a very great extent. But for the appreciation of Tolstóy’s work and for the comprehension of the artist’s inner life this novel has a deep meaning. No stronger accusation against marriage for mere outer attraction, without intellectual union or sympathy of purpose between husband and wife, has ever been written; and the struggle that goes on between Kóznysheff and his wife is one of the most deeply dramatic pages of married life that we possess in any literature.

Tolstóy’s _What is Art?_ is mentioned in Chapter VIII. of this book. His greatest production of the latest period is, however, _Resurrection_. It is not enough to say that the energy and youthfulness of the septuagenarian author which appear in this novel are simply marvellous. Its absolute artistic qualities are so high that if Tolstóy had written nothing else but _Resurrection_ he would have been recognised as one of the great writers. All those parts of the novel which deal with Society, beginning with the letter of “Missie,” and Missie herself, her father, and so on, are of the same high standard as the best pages of the first volume of _War and Peace_. Everything which deals with the Court, the jurymen, and the prisons is again of the same high standard. It may be said, of course, that the principal hero, Neklúdoff, is not sufficiently living; but this is quite unavoidable for a figure which is meant to represent, if not the author himself, at least his ideas or his experience: this is a drawback of all novels containing so much of an autobiographical element. As regards all the other figures, however, of which so immense a number pass under our eyes, each of them has its own character in striking relief, even if the figure (like one of the judges or of the jurymen, or the daughter of a jailer) appears only on a single page, never to reappear again.

The number of questions which are raised in this novel--social, political, party questions, and so on--is so great that a whole society, such as it is, living and throbbing with all its problems and contradictions, appears before the reader, and this is not Russian Society only, but Society the civilised world over. In fact, apart from the scenes which deal with the political prisoners, _Resurrection_ applies to all nations. It is the most international of all works of Tolstóy. At the same time the main question: “Has Society the right to judge? Is it reasonable in maintaining a system of tribunals and prisons?” this terrible question which the coming century is bound to solve, is so forcibly impressed upon the reader that it is impossible to read the book without, at least, conceiving serious doubts about our system of punishments. _Ce livre pèsera sur la conscience du siècle._ (“This book will weigh upon the conscience of the century”) was the remark of a French critic, which I heard repeated. And of the justice of this remark I have had the opportunity of convincing myself during my numerous conversations in America with persons having anything to do with prisons. The book weighs already on their consciences.

The same remark applies to the whole activity of Tolstóy. Whether his attempt at impressing upon men the elements of a universal religion which--he believes--reason trained by science might accept, and which man might take as guidance for his moral life, attaining at the same time towards the solution of the great social problem and all questions connected with it--whether this bold attempt be successful or not, can only be decided by time. But it is absolutely certain that no man since the times of Rousseau has so profoundly stirred the human conscience as Tolstóy has by his moral writings. He has fearlessly stated the moral aspects of all the burning questions of the day, in a form so deeply impressive that whoever has read any one of his writings can no longer forget these questions or set them aside; one feels the necessity of finding, in one way or another, some solution. Tolstóy’s influence, consequently, is not one which may be measured by mere years or decades of years: it will last long. Nor is it limited to one country only. In millions of copies his works are read in all languages, appealing equally to men and women of all classes and all nations, and everywhere producing the same result. Tolstóy is now the most loved man--the most touchingly loved man--in the world.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] The only exception to be made is the scene with the two old people in _Virgin Soil_. It is useless and out of place. To have introduced it was simply “a literary whim.”

[15] Taken from the excellent translation by Mrs. Constance Garnett, in Heinemann’s edition of Turguéneff’s works.

[16] This has struck most critics. Thus, speaking of _War and Peace_, Písareff wrote: “The images he has created have their own life, independently of the intentions of the author; they enter into direct relations with the readers, speak for themselves, and unavoidably bring the reader to such thoughts and conclusions as the author never had in view and of which he, perhaps, would not approve.” (_Works, VI._ p. 420.)

[17] _Introduction to the Criticism of Dogmatic Theology and to an Analysis of the Christian Teaching_, or _Confession_; Vol. 1 of Tchertkoff’s edition of _Works prohibited by the Russian Censorship_ (in Russian), Christchurch, 1902, p. 13.

[18] “That which some people told me, and of which I sometimes had tried to persuade myself--namely, that a man should desire happiness, not for himself only, but for others, his neighbours, and for all men as well: this did not satisfy me. Firstly, I could not sincerely desire happiness for others as much as for myself; secondly, and chiefly, others, in like manner as myself, were doomed to unhappiness and death, and therefore all my efforts for other people’s happiness were useless. I despaired.” The understanding that personal happiness is best found in the happiness of all did not appeal to him, and the very striving towards the happiness of all, and an advance towards it, he thus found insufficient as a purpose in life.

[19] See _Anabaptism from its Rise at Zwickau to its Fall at Münster_, 1521-1536, by Richard Heath (_Baptist Manuals_, I, 1895).

[20] _The Christian Teaching_, Introduction, p. vi. In another similar passage he adds Marcus Aurelius and Lao-tse to the above-mentioned teachers.

[21] _What is my Belief_, ch. X, p. 145 of Tchertkoff’s edition of _Works prohibited by Russian Censorship_. On pp. 18 and 19 of the little work, _What is Religion and What is its Substance_. Tolstóy expresses himself even more severely about “Church Christianity.” He also gives us in this remarkable little work his ideas about the substance of religion altogether, from which one can deduct its desirable relations to science, to synthetic philosophy, and to philosophical ethics.