The Theological Works of Leo Tolstoy. Leo Tolstoy

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СКАЧАТЬ men who kill in retail without being told to. We must go on injuring one another, or evil will be sure to come of it.’ If so, then let us throw away Christ’s religion, for it leads us astray, and let us find a better religion instead. The trouble is that the best of the other religious teachers (such as Buddha) said the same thing! And we can hardly admit openly that we are still worshipping Mars or Mammon.

      The only other way is for us to be humble and honest about the matter and confess: “I begin to see the truth of this teaching. It points to perfection above the level we have reached; but if I am not good enough to apply it altogether, I will apply it as far as I can, and will at least not deny it, or pervert it, or try by sophistry to debase it to my own level.”

      After reaching this view of life (about the year 1880 or a little earlier), Tolstoy saw that much he had formerly considered good was bad, and much he had thought bad was good.

      If the aim of life is to co-operate with our Father in doing good, we should not seek to acquire as much property as possible for ourselves, but should seek to give as much to others, and to take as little from others, as we can.

      Instead of wanting the most expensive and luxurious food for ourselves, we should seek the cheapest and simplest food that will keep us in health.

      Instead of wishing to be better dressed than our neighbours, and wanting to have a shiny black chimney-pot hat to show that we are superior to common folk, we should wish to wear nothing that will separate us from the other children of our Father.

      Instead of seeking the most refined and pleasant work for ourselves, and trying to put the rough, disagreeable work on those weaker, less able, less fortunate, or less pushing and selfish than ourselves, we should, on the contrary, make it a point of honour to do our share of what is disagreeable and ill-paid.

      Economically speaking, what I take from my brethren should go to my debit, only what service I do them should go to the credit of my account.

      Tolstoy became a strict vegetarian, eating only the simplest food and avoiding stimulants. He ceased to smoke. He dressed in the simplest and cheapest manner. Attaching great importance to manual labour, he was careful to take a share of the housework: lighting his own fire and carrying water. He also learned boot-making. Especially he enjoyed labouring with the peasants in the fields, and found that hard as the work was he enjoyed it, and, strange to say, could do better mental work when he only allowed himself a few hours a day for it than he had been able to do when he gave himself up entirely to literary work. Instead of writing chiefly novels and stories for the well-to-do and idle classes, he devoted his wonderful powers principally to clearing up those perplexing problems of human conduct which seem to block the path of progress.

      Besides some stories (especially short stories for the people, and some folk-stories which he wrote down in order that they may reach those who are not accustomed to go to the peasants for instruction), many essays and letters on important questions, and a drama and a comedy, his chief works during the last twenty years have been these thirteen books: —

      (1) My Confession.

      (2) A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, never yet translated.

      (3) The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated, of which two parts out of three have been (not very well) translated.

      (4) What I Believe, sometimes called My Religion.

      (5) The Gospel in Brief, a summary of The Four Gospels, and better suited for the general reader than the larger work.

      (6) What then must we do? Sometimes called What to do?

      (7) On Life, also called Life: a book not carefully finished, and not easy to read in the original. The existing English translation makes nonsense of it in many places, but a new one has now (1902) been announced by the Free Age Press.

      (8) The Kreutzer Sonata: a story treating of the sex-question. It should be read with the Afterword, explaining Tolstoy’s views on the subject.

      (9) The Kingdom of God is Within You.

      (10) The Christian Teaching: a brief summary of Tolstoy’s understanding of Christ’s teaching. He considers that this book still needs revision, but it will be found useful by those who have understood the works numbered 1, 4, 5 and 6 in this list.

      (11) What is Art? In Tolstoy’s opinion the best constructed of his books. The profound outcome of fifteen years’ consideration of the problem.

      (12) Resurrection, a novel begun about 1894, laid aside in favour of what seemed more important work, and completely re-written and published in 1899, for the benefit of the Doukhobórs.

      (13) What is Religion, and what is its Essence? (Feb. 1902.)

      The subjects that occupied him were the most important subjects of human knowledge, those which should be (though to-day they are not) emphatically called Science: the kind of science that occupied “Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, 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, СКАЧАТЬ