What Tolstoy taught

Introduction

Anyone may reject Count Tolstoy's teaching: no one can Ignore it; his doctrine Is dynamic, revolutionary, fatal If false, a message of peace if true. It has made a profound Impression upon the world, and It would therefore behoove us at least to know exactly what that doctrine is. It is strange that, notwithstanding his great popularity and great influence upon thought and feeling. Indirect as well as direct, there is no book written by which we can show plain people just what he does teach. I have long been a student of Tolstoy, but only in writing this book did I see, myself, all that Tolstoy taught.

Most persons want to get a clear impression of the matured views of the Prophets, not of how they developed, changed and were often recanted. Many of the apparent contradictions that confuse us in the doctrines of the great are simply questions of time, and are due to expression of opinions afterwards changed, under the influence of the changing experiences of their authors. Tolstoy wrote to Rahmanoff in 1891 : " Do not imagine that I defend the point of view I formerly expressed In What do I Believe? ^^ (published In 1884) referring, apparently, to his remark that " It Is Impossible to love one's enemies." " I not only do not defend It, but am glad to have outlived It." He rewrote all his books, revising and changing again and again.

There are several lives of Tolstoy, among the best of which are Blrukof's, a very extensive work, and Aylmer Maude's Life In two thick volumes.

Maude's account of Tolstoy's doctrine Is excellent and shows Its progressive character, but it Is voluminous. The book Is rather costly and Is somewhat marred, as It seems to me, by Maude's own Intelligent, but conventional and equally voluminous criticisms of Tolstoy's thought.

Some others of these " Lives " contain short reviews of his doctrine; but most persons, however well educated, can gather from them but the vaguest notions of what he did say and of why he lived as he did. Consequently he is regarded by many, just as Jesus Is, as an amiable idealist, wholly Illogical and Impracticable, who preached a gospel that no one can follow. Readers think that he was an original but eccentric and inconsistent teacher. As Tolstoy points out, the learned Jews, who were the contemporaries of Jesus, had a very similar Idea of his teachings. Tolstoy and Jesus are regarded as impractical for the same reason,' that each states the same doctrine, which men do not wish to practice and have therefore misinterpreted and perverted.

Tolstoy says that the precepts of Jesus have been misconstrued by us because we do not wish to understand them. — (M. R., 147.) He says, " If however we take the words of Jesus as we would take the words of anyone who speaks to us and admit that he says exactly what he does say, all these profound circumlocutions vanish away."

It would be unfortunate If Tolstoy's own writings met the same difficulty notwithstanding his plain writing and tediously careful repetitions. Therefore, I have taken Tolstoy's very words, " as we would take the words of anyone who speaks to us," In order to set forth his doctrine truly.

This doctrine Is In short that for a man always to substitute love for all compulsion would solve his harassing perplexities and abolish for him the horrors and the unreasonable complexities of life.

Tolstoy approved of my account of his book On Life as originally published, and, since his voice Is stilled, I have added from his other writings only his own words to amplify and complete that Summary of his Message.

I believe that this volume contains the substance of everything that Tolstoy taught. I have not attempted to give the lessons of his works of fiction, because those are of the nature of parables, and from a parable each person learns only what he is ready to receive. Accordingly, comments on those could be only interpretations, not expositions. Tolstoy's fiction but popularizes or illustrates the doctrine of what he regarded as his only important works, but which, in comparison to his wonderful fiction, are hardly read at all.

The late Ernest Crosby first directed me to Tolstoy's book On Life, saying that much as he admired it, he had ceased to call general attention to it, because he found that people would not and could not read it; and even the French version wearied those who might be expected to enjoy the elegant French for its own sake.

It is not wonderful then that there is so little clear understanding of Tolstoy because, unlike his novels, all his religious books are, I regret to say, quite unreadable. The style is involved, the matter is lacking in order, filled with tedious repetition and written for those only who want to understand; but when the ideas are combed out of his tangle of words, they prove to be sharp-cut and to fit one another.

The extracts from My Confession, My Religion, and What To Do (all of which are so marked), read by themselves, form good abstracts of those books, and, read In connection with the summary of his philosophy, give a clear view of his whole religious teaching.

The book What is Art?, a most entertaining work, not only expresses his views on this vexed question, but helps to clear the atmosphere for any who earnestly seek to answer that question in its relation to real life.

One of the most significant and revolutionary of Tolstoy's reforms consisted in the school he conducted for the children on his estate. It was on the model of our present Ferrer Schools: in it he worked out many of the problems of his own relation to hfe that had not been clear to him before. The quotations given here convey Tolstoy's general idea of education.

What to Do, written in 1882, is the practical summing up of Tolstoy's teaching, the summing up of what set him to make shoes and to produce with his hands, not in order to earn his own living, which Tolstoy never pretended to do, but to produce at least so much of what people need as would convince him that " I give people more than I take from them . . . and . . . that their account with me does not land them in a loss." He worked because he felt that it is not enough to feel love or to teach love by lip words.

As he himself expressed it: " It is not enough lo INTRODUCTION

to tend a man, to feed and teach him Greek; we must teach the man how to hve, — that is, to take as little as possible from others, and to give as much as possible ; and we cannot help teaching him to do the contrary, if we take him into our houses, or into an institution founded for this purpose." — {W. D., 70.) We must express genuine love by " getting off the backs of the poor " (M. L., 476) , by becoming producers instead of parasites.

In reading Tolstoy's sweeping assertions we must remember, I think, that in order to force a new doctrine into public attention it is necessary, as Garrison knew, for a preacher of it to state it broadly and without qualification. This was the method of Jesus also: for example, it cannot be that all those Scribes and Pharisees were nothing but " hypocrites." To straighten a steel bar, wc must bend it in the opposite direction.

Had Garrison said merely that Slavery was an outgrown institution that ought to be thrown off; or had the early Temperance reformers said only that liquor drinking was a needless and injurious habit, people would have said, " Yes, that is probably true; we must modify these things and eventually get rid of them," and would have gone on to talk to the reformers about the weather. But when Garrison said that the Constitution that sane-

INTRODUCTION ii

tloned Slavery was " a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," and the Prohibitionists told us about " the Demon Rum " they got attention and consideration.

It is necessary, it seems to me, to state a great truth in large and emphatic terms if it is to be heard at all. This Tolstoy did whether he spoke of Religion, Teaching, Literature, Art, Government or Land-owning. He admitted, says Maude, that " sometimes he strained the meaning in a contrary direction. He compares his task to that of a man who has to demagnetize a steel bar by exposing it to an opposite influence." — (M. L., 53).

Truth may need to be overstated, but plenty of persons who believe in overstatement, will be found to overstate it. Maybe to do so is the office of the prophet — but that is no reason why we who see the true proportion of things, should exaggerate, much less a reason why we should reject all the statements of the prophet. If then we find in Tolstoy ideas that seem to us unreasonable, why so we did in all the Prophets. But if they really are unreasonable, we need not eat the pit with the peach.

I think that Tolstoy, like Henry George and many another Master, did not realize the far-reaching conclusion to be deduced from his own premises. Tolstoy teaches the Oneness of Men, but seems often to overlook the fact that this Oneness makes it impossible for any man to do right by himself. Each must, however unwillingly, take some part in the " sins " of all the rest.

For example, D. Merejkowsky, a Russian biographer (in his Tolstoy as Man and Artist)^ finds much fault with Tolstoy himself because he appears inconsistent in that he " ceased to make use of his property " " except for the fact that he remained under the roof of Yasnaia."

Why should he do otherwise ? To live in a hut next door to his family, and to prepare his separate food, would have been only to add an additional expense to the family budget. To separate himself entirely from his family would have been merely to sacrifice more of his own time and of theirs in getting the necessary living and to establish a still less normal life at the cost of much pain to them and to him. He did all that he could by insisting on actually producing, by such means as seemed most natural, as much as he consumed.

Nor was it possible for him, any more than for the rest of us, to make a right disposition of his land or of the revenues from it. To give it to the State under present conditions would be merely to add to the wealth and power of an Institution of which he did not approve, and to induce new State extravagance, or to lighten the burden of those who support that Institution.

To present the land to the tenants would be merely to create numerous small landlords, who would be more effective in sanctioning landlordism than one big landlord. This is what the English Tories have striven to do for Ireland by government Land Purchase, and the Allotment Acts.

Under present conditions everyone must be either a nomad, a tenant, or a land owner : there Is no escape. The tenant Is as much a sustalner of the land system as the land owner: for if no one would pay rent, if men could find a way to live without paying rent directly or indirectly to private persons, it would be as fatal to the land system as if no one would collect rent.

Tolstoy, like Thoreau, made the best attempt he could to live according to his ideals, and no one can read What To Do without seeing how sadly unsatisfactory the result was to him and even to those who most sympathize with him and admire him and his ardor and sincerity.

But these are only my own opinions. This book gives Tolstoy's opinions, and his reasons for them, in his own words.

The Count wrote to me the following endorsement of a draft of the first part of this book On Life:

Dear Sir:

I have received your book and have read it. I think it is very good and renders in a concise form quite truly the chief ideas of my book; I hope that this book in this new form will be useful in the sense in which I intended it to be to a larger public than the original.

With my best thanks and wishes for the success of your book, I am, dear sir,

Yours truly,

No idea has been added to the text or modified since that letter was written. The ideas have only been elaborated in order that they may be plain and clear; that they are rightly elaborated Is clear from their agreement with the extracts from Tolstoy's other books, which, arranged, as far as may be, in logical order, form the second part of this volume.

Lest the reader should suspect that I have perhaps softened Tolstoy's dogmatic and unqualified assertions, or arranged his words so as to convey my own thought, I should say that there is much in Tolstoy's writings that I cannot agree with. I recognize that It may well be that he sees much deeper than I. Those who care for my own views will find them In my Life and Love and Peace, for the basis of most of which I am indebted to this great Teacher.

It may be that it is given to me to help to carry on Tolstoy's great work, in some measure to extend the influence of his writings and of his life, and so to help to balance the account with his fellow-men that he thought, even up to his death, to be so sorely against him.

Bolton Hall.

Part I On Life Chaptea Vagi

I The Separate Life 23

II Delusions about Life 29

III Attempts to Explain Life ... 36

IV The Search for Truth .... 43 V The True Law of Life .... 48

VI The Good of Life 54

VII The Life Universal 62

VIII Desire 69

IX Unity of Our Lives 75

X The Dual Nature 81

XI The Selfish Love 87

XII Animal Love 93

XIII Real Love 98

XIV Love's Sacrifice 104

XV Life is Love 109

XVI The Pursuit of Happiness . . .115

XVII The Fear of Death 120

XVIII Life Everlasting 126

XIX The Terror from Ignorance . .133

XX Spiritual Life .138 i8

CONTENTS

XXI The Real Life 143

XXII The Use of Pain 149

XXIII The Balm for Suffering . . . 155

PART II ON ACTION I Problems 163

II Religion 171

III The Church 180

IV The School 184

V Art 192

VI Science 205

VII What, then, Must We Do? . . .213

VIII Women and Men 222

IX Alcohol and Tobacco . . . .231

X Government 235

XI A Great Iniquity 241

XII Human Rights 269

Index 277

REFERENCES

The following abbreviations are used in citations of Tolstoy's works so as not unnecessarily to break the connection of the text:

C. R. — ' Cycle of Readings, (Dana Estes & Co.)

M. L. — Life of Tolstoy. (When not marked V. I, citations are from Vol. II) by Aylmer Maude. (Dodd Mead & Co., 1910.)

M. R.— My Religion, (Crowell & Co., 1899.) Some editions are entitled, What I Believe, Although citing from the later edition, I have often used clearer phraseology from Huntington Smith's translation from the French ed. of 1885, or from others.

M. C—My Confession, (Crowell, 1887.)

S. C. T. — Spirit of Christ's Teachings. (Dana Estes & Co.) Some editions are entitled. Summary of Christ* s Teachings,

T. S. M. — Tolstoy as a Schoolmaster. By Ernest Crosby. (A. C. Fifield, London.)

E. S. — Tolstoy on Shakespeare. (Funk & Wagnalls.) Also entitled, Essay on Shakespeare.

W. A.— What is Art? (Crowell, 1899.)

W. D.— What to Do. ( Crowell, 1887.) Some editions entitled. What, Then, Must We Do? For other books occasionally cited, the full name is

given ; also page, except where the book is very small.

PART I ON LIFE

On Life, carelessly printed in Geneva or copied from the rough manuscript, requires much critical acumen on the part of its readers to grasp its full meaning. . . . We have as yet, I think, no satisfactory translation; but Bolton Hall without knowing Russian, puzzled out the meaning of the book and has written a free paraphrase giving its essence very well."— (M. L., 523.)

Chapter I The Separate Life

Life contains the true and the false, and whether it means much to us or little depends upon whether the true seems false to us and the false true, or whether we know things as they are.

You and I live for our own good; that is, we have for our main object in life what we think will benefit us individually. All of us seek the conditions that we think will make us happy, and this we do instinctively. It is impossible for us to imagine life without the desire for happiness. Sometimes the desired benefit is direct, sometimes indirect, but it is for ourselves. You do not live for the sole purpose of securing good for me, nor do I live with no other aim than your good. If we examine our thoughts we find that the desire for personal happiness is the motive of all we do; without this desire there would be nothing in our lives that is there now. Everything we do is done consciously or unconsciously to increase the sum of our happiness.

If we look about us, as well as within, we shall 23 find that other persons live like ourselves for their own particular good, and seek what they, too, think will bring happiness to themselves. When considering any course of action, they ask themselves the one question — "Will this be good for me?" If they see the thing clearly as good for them, their decision is quickly made.

Their idea of good for them is simply the gratification of their own desires, no matter what those desires may be. " I want this '' seems to them a sufficient reason for taking it, unless the consequences that they can see are disastrous. They cannot conceive of disappointment or hindrance as other than a sorrow, something " bad " for them. So, even though they may see also that their gratification may be bad for you and for me, in that it may prevent us getting what we desire, yet they do not hesitate. They believe that this good of theirs requires the sacrifice of your good and mine.

This is the separate. Individual Idea of life; the idea that regards each living creature as separate and distinct from every other living creature, and as necessarily antagonistic to others. It is this conception of life that, for the sake of their petty happiness, their own personal good, makes living beings willing to deprive other beings of greater happiness and even of life itself. In consequence of this separate feeling each one is always contend-

THE SEPARATE LIFE 25

ing against hosts of others. We make Ishmaels of ourselves, with our hand against every man, and every man's hand against us.

Under these conditions it is impossible that we should get any other idea of life than that we have individual interests separate from the interests of those about us and conflicting with them. So thoroughly does this idea pervade our beliefs, that we speak of even the devotion of a mother to her child as a " sacrifice " of her interests for those of the child. Yet if we only consider this view we must see how false it is. How could a mother sacrifice her " interests " to those of her child when, if properly understood, they are one and the same? She may be mistaken in what really is the child's interest, and all her devotion may result in injuring It, or at least In delaying its development, but the fact of her unfailing devotion Is Itself the best proof that she could conceive of no real Interests for herself apart from those of her child.

So long as we think the false life Is true life, just so long will continue the struggle, to which hfe Is always likened. And at the end of It all we see Death, which we believe to be the loss of consciousness, or at best a change to a spirit life. Our conception of the spirit life Is so at variance with what we think of this life, that we cannot reconcile the two, and so this change seems to us a strange and terrible transformation. To contemplate it deprives us of joy and comfort. Although we feel compelled to continue the struggle, the inevitable end of it all fills us with terror or loathing, which no immediate success can materially mitigate.

For, though we succeed from day to day in the struggle for that which we think good for us, we feel that the good we seek will be incomplete, even if it were to last; we know this from our past experience. Everything that we have secured by struggle has given us less happiness than we had hoped for; indeed, many times it has brought us only pain, and we have regretted our success. Furthermore, If it has fulfilled our desire, even then It has not satisfied us. We have learned that the fulfillment of one desire but creates fresh desires which in their turn clamor for satisfaction; but we also know that the good we seek will not last, that It will be but for a moment In our hands. Whether we are willing to understand or not, life shows us on every plane that *' this, too, shall pass away." At the least, the form of the good will change, so that we shall not recognize it.

Holding the false view of life, and feeling only our own desires, we Imagine that the personal good, for which we live, and true happiness are one and the same. But we shall find, if we go on, that this Is a mistake; we do not secure true happiness

THE SEPARATE LIFE 27

to ourselves even though we are able to grasp all that seems good to us In our struggle with others.

True happiness cannot consist in seeking our own good. Sooner or later we all learn that. When it is first borne In upon us, we try to make a bargain with life. Still having in view our own happiness, we attempt to secure it by efforts to do good to others which we hope to exchange for their efforts to do good to us. But happiness is not to be secured through trading, however unconscious It may be; happiness cannot be won through barter; It is not for sale or exchange In the world's market.

Nor IS this selfish attitude really natural; on the contrary, the desire for the happiness of others IS natural to the uncorrupted man. He willingly subordinates his personal desires to the good of others, and will sacrifice his separate Interests to that unselfish aim as readily and naturally as an animal will sacrifice its life In defense of Its young.

All great religious teachers have taught this gospel; we recognize its truth, and are inspired to better things by its ennobling force. Yet in the early movement for a scientific interpretation of life and its phenomena, " scientific '' men like Herbert Spencer were led to deny this doctrine, and to assert that the object of life Is simply the satisfaction of desires.

But the teachers of creeds and superstitions, while rejecting the materialistic conclusions of science, offered no more satisfying view of life than did the scientists. Their idea of the plan of life made it scarcely worth enduring, because of its failure to secure happiness here. They, however, held out the hope of a satisfactory amendment of this worthless plan, in a life beyond the grave for those who accepted their teachings. They did not see that a life carried out on the same principles as this present life, could not bring happiness, no matter how perfectly operated. Indeed, the more perfect its operation the less probability would there be for true happiness.

Chapter II Delusions About Life

What is life, and what Is the good In life that will give us happiness? This Is the question that ever presses for an answer, yet remains unanswered. Our days pass but we find no satisfactory answer in ourselves, for our false view of life precludes the possibility of a satisfactory answer. It Is as though while seeking to see the delicate flush of early dawn, we sought to enhance our vision by looking through smoked glasses.

The tender, gentle gradations of color would be lost to us, and if we had never looked upon the dawn with clear vision, we would surely say that no delicate colors graced the rising of the sun. So it is with us when we try to discern the meaning of life, and to discover the good it holds. That false view of life which makes us think we have separate interests and desires that must be gratified at any cost obscures our mental and spiritual vision, and prevents us seeing the dawning beauty of life.

Finding no satisfaction within, we think that someone else must know the secret of the good in life, and so we follow after another, listening with itching ears for what he has to say, and following with blind groping hands the way he treads. And still we find neither happiness nor peace, though ever in quest of them.

The modern God is Science, and when we appeal to it, its interpreters answer that life is the struggle of persons, races, and species for existence, and that the good of life is success in that struggle, " the highest exercise of faculty." These interpreters are the Scribes of modern days, and iheir answers are not intended to be understood ^if'the people. /'

The answers are not satisfactory, because they cannot be understood. He who has come to the stage where he asks " What is life and its good? '' knows that the scientist has not answered right. It is true that men have so far manifested life through struggle; as individuals, as races, as species, men have contended with each other and he who was strong enough to prevail was he who maintained existence. We know, too, that through that cruel and selfish struggle men have developed qualities that should enable them to make mere existence better and higher from age to age ; in this struggle, then, say the Scientists, life consists. But admitting this struggle for existence, the thoughtful man feels that while it may be a stage through which

DELUSIONS ABOUT LIFE 31

man must pass, the harassing struggle cannot be its object. He knows there must be a higher exercise of faculty than mere struggle. He finds all nature working in harmony with law. The stars and planets circle in their respective orbits without strife, one against the other. Is man's life less harmonious than theirs? He cannot believe it.

Unsatisfied by the answers of the votaries of material science, men turn to the ecclesiastical teachers in the hope of finding what they seek. These are the Pharisees of to-day, and they answer that happiness or good consists only in the hope of a future life. For, say they, we know there Is not, and never can be, good in this life. And having said this, they proceed to prove it by accepting in fact the dictum of the scientist that life here is merely a struggle for existence. They protest against such a view in words, but they accept it in fact, adding only that this struggle is the way by which we shall enter another life which shall gratify all our personal desires. As opposed to the personal life, Jesus taught us, not of a life beyond the grave, but of that universal life which comprises within itself the life of humanity, past, present, and to come. —

(^.2?, 194.)

The time has already come when it is clear to all who will consider It, that the idea of renouncing this life for the sake of preparing for a life for one's self beyond, is a delusion. It Is so illogical that It cannot be clearly expressed, for even though this life were given us only that we might prepare for another, it would be no less necessary that we should understand this life. On the contrary, it would be even more necessary to understand it, since the only possible purpose for us in a life beyond this would be that we had progressed so far that we needed a larger outlet for the " exercise of faculty."

Renouncing this life with all it may contain will not of itself fit us for a larger life.

What would we think of the man who wished to be an expert mathematician, and, knowing nothing of the possible combinations of figures, yet scorned to study the multiplication table? If he said, " I do not know this, but it cannot mean anything compared with those elaborate operations men perform in ' advanced mathematics,' therefore I will not waste time studying it " — we should call him a fool, and remind him that all knowledge was progressive, and that he must know the fundamentals of mathematics before he could perform abstruse calculations.

So, even if we were sure of a life beyond, as sure as we are that we now have life here, it would still be necessary that we understand this hfe before we could understand the next. We get to under-