Robert Edward Crozier Long

“ It is quite true that Count Tolstoy lives, if not in palaces, at least in houses which are infinitely better than those of ninety-nine out of a hundred of his countrymen. It is no less certain that primitive as is his dress, it is sufficient, and that cannot be said of the clothing of most Russian peasants, while his food, if simple, is certainly better and more regular. Black coffee is not a prime necessity of life, neither are bicycles, but I have seen the count drinking coffee after dinner, and he bicycles and rides on horseback in the Moscow suburbs without any qualms of conscience. ”

“ But no nation has ever entered into an agreement with another to limit its ability to carry on war. And governments cannot in any case limit their armaments for another reason, because each rules by force over countries whose inhabitants desire their independence. The governments distrust not only one another, but also their own subjects. But as this is a necessary function of a government, no government can bring about peace. If all men were guided by their consciences, and trusted one another, there would be no governments and no wars. ”

“ The life of the Russian people is less expansive, and they do not regard the law as an active factor."
"But surely Russians submit to their own laws as much as we?"
"They submit to them, but they are not guided by them. It is not their submission, but their neglect of the law, which makes our people so peaceful and long-suffering. And that neglect of the law is also what makes our officials the greatest knaves in the world. You ask why? Because the mass of the people, while they despise external restrictions, are guided by their consciences. ”

“ It is plainly that which differentiates Tolstoy from the hundreds of other educated Russians who devote their lives to the people and earn in return nothing better than the reputation of ”characters,” and the benevolent contempt of peasants who do not understand them, and whom they do not understand. But Tolstoy found not only his ethical but also his asthetic doctrines realized among the people. The common life, he says, is not only the basis of all true morals, but of all true art. What cannot be understood by the simplest, he argues again and again, is not true art. ”

“ The man of example is much rarer than the man of precept. So while we all are familiar with Tolstoy as a worker in the field, a herdsman, a shoemaker, and a schoolmaster, Tolstoy at rest from his labors, or laboring only at the perfecting of his own ideas, is a figure unknown to most.
Yet though Moscow is Count Tolstoy's home throughout the whole of the long Russian winter, Tolstoy is in it, but not of it. He forms no part of its common social or common intellectual life. The great mass even of educated Russians know little about the greatest man who has ever lived among them ”

“ Because, having decided that there is nothing in common between Russia and Europe, there is not even a ground for experimenting with Western reforms in Russia. The Western system fails to insure real morality in the West, and why should it do better in a country for which it was not devised than in countries for which it was? The most we can do is to admit that Russian systems have failed equally. ”

“ The first reason why governments cannot and will not abolish war is that armies and war are not accidental evils, but are symptoms and essential parts of government as it exists itself. When I say, therefore, that the conference is hypocritical, I do not mean that it is essentially so. But when you declare your intention to do something which cannot be done without changing your whole life, and when you do not intend to change your whole life, you must be a hypocrite. ”

“ Your mistake is always in assuming that Western institutions are a stereotyped model upon which all reforms should be based. It is this delusion that is at the bottom of half the wars and predatory aggressions carried on by Europeans against men of other races. If reforms are wanted in Russia, it is not either Western or Eastern reforms, but measures suited for the people, and not for other peoples. The assumption that reforms so called must be constructed upon Western models is a pure product of Western exclusiveness, and is opposed both to Christianity and to common sense. ”

“ Yet lie knows Russia, its needs and its failings, much better than any other man in his position, for he is practically the only educated man who has lived as an equal among the class which is in reality all Russia—that is to say, the peasants and the workmen. And as a practical man he is quite as ready to accept installments of reform and amelioration as any Liberal in the land, though it is quite certain that no reforms which imply the maintenance of existing governments, whether in Russia or in the West, will mitigate his abstract condemnation for one moment. ”

“ The dualism of Count Tolstoy’s mental equipment, which is the first thing noticed by a stranger, serves him in good turn here, and relieves him of the necessity of compounding with his conscience. For if, as an ethical teacher, he professes doctrines which, in the present state of things, it is impossible to apply consistently with efficiency as a worker and reformer, as a practical man he sees at once the limitations which must be placed upon these doctrines. He is content to observe his abstract rule of life as far as is consistent with the highest efficiency as a worker and an example. ”

“ But if Tolstoy is not a great influence in Russia, what is his value as a representative of Russian ideas? The first thing notable is that his philosophy, even although he finds its germs more widespread in Russia than anywhere else, is a general human philosophy in its application, and is even more generally comprehensible than his art. Yet Tolstoy is really a very faithful representative of Russian life. If Tolstoy has never made a Russian sect, the Russian sects have made Tolstoy. He is a pupil, not a teach. ”

“ To any one wholly ignorant of Tolstoy's life it might seem, indeed, that he had abandoned his path of detached denunciation and entered upon the ways of practical reformers, differing from them only in that he is more fearless. But this view is really not in accord with Tolstoy's life. He has always been a very practical man, in whom the struggle between his own ideas and the immediate needs of the world around him has been very keen. In his letter to the Czar he is merely a practical liberal Russian who wishes, first of all, for an improvement in the present method of government. ”

“ The best Russian novels are distinguished from those of western Europe by the complete absence in the delineation of human character of absolute types of goodness or badness, beauty or ugliness. In all the writings of Tolstoy and Turgenieff there is not a single character personifying any absolute quality, whether good or bad. In the actions which they depict, there is the same deprecation of extravagance. The fanatic and the man of fixed ideas invariably come to a bad end. A rational compromise between ideas and facts is the essential in useful work. ”

“ It is quite true that a peace conference may lay down rules against this. But since every nation that goes to war justifies itself on the ground that its enemy has not kept faith, no nation in time of war can regard the keeping of faith with its enemy as an obligation. ”

“ All this is very characteristic, not only of Count Tolstoy, but of Russians in general. While the Russian is the very first to rush and put all his thoughts into immediate action,—a circumstance which makes the abstract revolutionary much more dangerous in Russia than elsewhere,—he is by no means a worshiper of absolute ideals either in thought or in action. As it is in Russian literature, it is very much in Russian life. ”

“ The fact is that Tolstoy, while retaining his convictions, has long passed the first ardor of the reformer. "Leave all and follow me," he has learned is not a practical doctrine, or, if it is practicable, it is incompatible with the greatest usefulness. Even Shelley, who was the greatest embodiment of white-hot propaganda which the last century produced, sometimes ate meat, and married two wives. And Tolstoy is quite ready to sacrifice an ounce of perfection for a pound of practical good. ”

“ But Tolstoy himself puts his ethical teachings on the summit; his novels at best have been only instruments, and. as he has many times declared of late, unfit instruments. He is the last man to set any store upon his reputation as an artist, and he has condemned unhesitatingly the whole theory of art upon which his earlier works were constructed. So, if we eliminate distrustful officials, and an educated class which respects moral courage and intercession for the weak but regards the Tolstoyan gospel with contempt, we are brought at once to the bed rock of Russian society—the people. ”

“ Because the commander knew that while each might consent to play chess on the chance of getting the bastion without any trouble, there was nothing to prevent the loser making a fresh attempt to capture it by force of arms. The reason why killing men instead of playing chess was adopted as a means of solving disputes was that it was the ultima ratio; and when you have killed sufficient men, your enemy must keep terms with you. But making war with limited armies is not the ultima ratio, and there is nothing to prevent the beaten side raising another army to continue the killing. ”

“ Indeed, it is plain that the root of his doctrine, "Resist not him that is evil," is with him little better than an ethical abstraction. The vituperative condemnation of wrongdoing can hardly be a part of "Resist not him that is evil." But Tolstoy is bitter in condemnation; and while he declares categorically that resistance can never be justified, he is the first to express sympathy with righteous revolt. It is quite true that in his articles and published letters he seldom commits himself to such sympathy. ”

“ The earlier reformers had regarded the Russian peasantry as so much valuable raw material, which would display its true value when impregnated with revolutionary moral and political ideas. Tolstoy never had anything to do with revolution; and in morals he found a better standard among the peasants than anywhere else. He was convinced that culture had nothing to do with morality, and he became therefore a pupil rather than a master in the great peasant school. ”

“ Not to hinder people of various faiths from educating their children in that faith which they regard as the true one. It is necessary to do this because, not to speak of the truth revealed by history and science and recognized by the whole world—that religious persecutions not only fail to attain their object, but produce opposite results, strengthening that which they are intended to destroy ; not to speak of the fact that the interference of government in the sphere of faith produces the most harmful and therefore the worst of vices—hypocrisy, so powerfully condemned by Christ ”

“ In Moscow he was well known, at least by appearance, and there were few whose attention had not been attracted by the sight of an aged peasant riding round the suburbs in the twilight, mounted on an excellent horse, and sitting it with the air of a nobleman and soldier. ”

“ From practical Tolstoyism the Russian Government has hitherto had little to fear. Anti-militarism is really the only applicable part of his teaching, and the anti-military sects of Russia are much older than Tolstoy, and in no way traceable to him, though he has certainly gained them much moral support by his writings in the foreign press. It is a very strange thing, and quite characteristic of Europe's outlook on Russia, that these sects are encouraged in countries where military service, or war taxes, which Tolstoy himself regards as precisely the same thing, are obligatory. ”

“ Tolstoy spoke very much more in the same strain, always showing himself completely out of sympathy with ordinary Russian Liberalism, and particularly with Marxism, its most popular form among the younger men. Socialism in every form lie seemed to regard as little better than autocratic despotism, saying, "Our government keeps one class in idleness by means of violence; the Socialists would keep every one at work by violence." ”

“ It is only now that we see the individual beginning to react upon the community. Thus we see the students supported by a working class whose fists and sticks were not long ago the chief instruments of repression, and a great number of educated Russians of all classes openly expressing their sympathy with both ; and, finally, we see Count Tolstoy entering upon the scene as an advocate of practical reforms, and as the mouthpiece of a class with whom he has often expressed an entire lack of sympathy. ”