TOLSTOI. LECTURE BY MR. WILSON FRITCH.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18, 23 January 1911, Page 2

TOLSTOI. LECTURE BY MR. WILSON FRITCH.

The American lecturer, Mr. Wilson Fritch, delivered an interesting lecture at the Opera House last night on "Tolstoi : His Problems of the Family, Church, and State, and their True Solution." Mr. W. M'Lean. who presided, stated that he could vouch for Mr. Fritch's credentials, which were of the best character. The lecturer was very well received. "We rejoice in Tolstoi," he comnienced, "because he was one of the great teachers who brought us to the view that we must have a good lime in this world, that is, in the proper sense of the term." Tolstoi, he proceeded, questioned the value of the University teachings because they dealt with unrealities, while his heart melted with sympathy for the poor, and he endeavoured to uplift the peasants, but without success. "Why am I in this world?" asked Tolstoi. Amid the granduer of nature, he divested himself of the conventions of society, and commenced to enquire into the why and wherefore of things. Until his question was answered, he felt he did not know what course to adopt. Science and philosophy gave no reply. The nobility had given way to luxury by way of answer, and the Church tried to silence the question, and still did so in some of its branches. Tolstoi was an earnest soul, striving for the solution of the problem of existence, and failing to find it or even sympathy touching Lhe matter. He returned to the peasantry, saw their oppression, and found that one must cease to be a parasite. Life and wisdom were inseparpble, and a man could not know the heights and depths of the soul without living truly. Life and God were one, and to really live was to know God. The light then came within him and nover left him. He found that society was crushed at the bottom and rotten at the Lop. Tolstoi found the State to be founded on violence, and regarded it as naturally evil. Dealing with the fnmily life of the subject, Mr. Fritch declared Lhafc Tolstoi was decidedly opposed to divorce. Tolstoi, the speaker concluded, had not given us a regime of life, but he had cleared the way for a practical universal brotherhood. Mr. Fritch knew hia subject very thoroughly, and keenly interested his audience with his rich fund of information and his quiet and effective way of expressing himself.