[Image]  [Hi-Res Image]

Page 464

served to undermine the moral prestige of a brutal government and a persecuting church. Tolstoy practically said: " There are two kinds of people: the good, who rely on example, persuasion, exhortation; and the bad, who rely on physical force: police, gendarmes, and soldiers." Had the government banished him to Siberia, by so doing it would, apparently, have confirmed his indictment. Hesitating to crush him by brute force, it had to endure from him a continual stream of scathing criticism which the partizans of the Church and the autocracy were quite unable to meet. In another aspect Tolstoy's theory of non-resistance served a useful purpose. A curious superstition exists which causes people to assume that any amount of slaughter and destruction are justifiable provided they are undertaken for national aggrandizement. As a direct challenge to this came Tolstoy's proposition that to slay a man (or even to coerce a man) is always immoral and harmful. It served also as a challenge to what is brutal and vindictive in the criminal codes.

Tolstoy popularized his views in a series of short stories (" What Men Live By," " Ivan the Fool," etc.), which had an immense circulation among all classes, and carried the germs of his teaching far and wide. From about 1888 he commenced a series of interesting essays on a variety of questions: manual labor, stimulants and narcotics, the

Publication famine, vegetarianism, war, the sexof his Views. problem, religion and morality, patriotism, corporal punishment, the agrarian question, etc. He gave his views of the connection between art and religion in " What is Art? " a work which at first met with a storm of hostile criticism, but the true value of which is gradually being recognized. In 1899 appeared his novel " Resurrection," in which he incidentally gave a scathing description of the head of the Holy Synod (M. Pobiedonostzeff; q.v.). After a preliminary threat, a decree of excommunication was launched at Tolstoy in 1901, to which he retorted with an outspoken " Reply to the Synod," and followed this up by a bold letter " To the Czar and his Assistants."

Concerning Tolstoy's simplification of his own life there has been much exaggeration. The plain facts are these. After some friction with his wife, whose views did not agree with those he adopted, he handed over to her, and to his children, the whole of his estates, as well as the copyrights in all his works published before 1880. His own position

Manner of in the house became that of a guest who Life. is very much at home. Tie declined to accept payment for his later works or to retain any rights in them. To this rule he made an exception when he accepted money for Resurrec tion, in order to assist the Dukhobors to migrate to Canada. Before this, in 1891-92, with several members of his family, he spent many months in the famine district to organize soup-kitchens and to administer the famine-relief funds which were sent to him with great liberality from all parts of Europe and America. Wishing to master a handicraft, he learned to make boots, but never devoted much time to this occupation. Even in early life he had been fond of plowing; and for.about ten years (1880-90) he devoted a good part of each summer to manual

labor out of doors, doing all the field work during one summer for a peasant woman who could not afford to hire a laborer.

Of no modern writer, probably, is it so difficult to compile a correct bibliography as of Tolstoy. Many of his works were forbidden in Russia and had to appear abroad (in Switzerland, Germany,

AYLMER MAITDE.