COUNT TOLSTOI.

Otago Witness, Issue 2429, 3 October 1900, Page 64

COUNT TOLSTOI.

TLe great sorrow of Tolstoi's childhood was his personal appearance. He had an elder brother who was strikingly handsome, but ho himself was utteily lacking in beauty. lie was early lautjlit that no one would love him for ms good looks, and that therefore he must strive to be a good and sensible boy. He was painfully sensitive to the contrast between his brother's winning exterior and his own unattractive one. "Moments of despair," he s'iys, "often visited me. 1 fancied that there vw.s 'O happiness on inrth for a person with such a wide nose, such thick lips, and such small grey eyes as I had ; and I besought God to work a miracle, to turn me into a beauty, and all I had in the present, or might have in the future, 1 would give in exchange for a handsome face."' Kvcn when he gicw up the feeling did not leave him. RFc would gaze in the mirror with a heavy feeling of sorrow and even of avi-nsion. "I was convinced that my appearance was not only plain, but I could not comfort myself with the consolation usual in such cases, i could not say that mv face was expressive, intellectual, or noble. There was nothing expressive 'bout il ; the features were of the coi>rspM.-j •vM ordinary, and homcli°sl. !My small aiey eyes were stupid rather than .iiVicilfparticularly when I lo^ktTd in the mirroi . There was still less manliness in my visage ; ;>HJi.r,<gfi' T wa.s not so very diminutive in stature, and was very strong iot; -,ny age. All nvv features were soft, flabby, and unformed. There was not even "anything noble nlovt my person; on the eontrary^my face v.vs oxpetly like that of a eomnum peasant (mj^kik)_j and I had

just such big hands and feet. This seemed to me at that lime very disgraceful. All people in the world were, for him, divided into two classes, those who were comme il faut and those who were not. By this second cla<is he meant those of a certain position who were lacking in this respect. The common people for him did not exist. The conditions of this quality were : First, a perfect pronunciation of French ; second, long, clean, polished finger nails ; third ; a knowledge of how to bow, dance, converse ; and fourth, a very important one, indifference to everything, and the constant expression of a certain elegant ennui. His whole time was given to attaining these things. Hours were spent in secretly practising bowing, conversation, dancing, French ; in cultivating indifference and ennui ; and many, many hours of arduous labour were devoted to Lis finger nails. He could' not have respected a renowned artist, nor a scholar, nor a benefactor to the human race it he had not been comme il faut.

In the book called "My Confession," Tolstoi ha a given in a few brief lines a picture of his life during the first ten years aftci leaving college — a picture which would suit many a Russian nobleman of that day or this ; he was, in fact, considered more particular than was necessary by the men of ni.s class. '"I cannot now recall these years," Le says, "without a painful feeling of horror and loathing. ... I put me:i to death in war, I fought duels to &lt»y otheis. I lost at cards, wasted my substance wrung fiom the sweat of peasants, punished the latter cruelly, rioted with loose women and deceived men. Lying, robbery, adultery of all kinds, drunkenness, violence, and murder, all committed by me, not one crime omitted, and yet I v, do not the ler-s considered by my equals ji comparatively moral man. Such was my life during ten years. ' . . . In his fiftieth year he found life impossible unlej-s he could obtain on answer to the question, '"What re=U-t will there be from what I am doing now, and may do tomorrow? What will be the issue of my life? Why should I live? Is there any meaning in my life which can overcome the inevitable death awaiting me?' 1 He sought the answer in human learning and human wisdom. hut science and philosophy could only answer, "I do not know." . '. . His wanderings through the fields of knowledge not only failed to cure him of his despair, but increased it. All the sages gavo Lim the same answer: "A]] i.s vanity"' ; a misfortune to be born. Death was better than life. Having failed to find an explanation in knowledge, he began to seek it in life itself. He began to watch the lives of the men about him, to see how they treated the question. He found that the' people of his class met it in four ways: First, with ignorance. The majority of women and very young or very stupid men, not understanding the problem of life, did not see either the dragon or the mice, and so enjoyed the honey. A second ,vay was the epicurean, knowing the evil and hopelessness of life, and yet taking the advantage of every good there is in it, avoiding the sight of the dragon and the mice, torgotting the future. A third class escape byv&uicidc. The fourth way is through weakness, to know the evil and absurdity of life and yet live on, wa&h, dre&s, dine, talk, , and oven write books, and so consent to live in despair. In the fourth class Tolstoi ranked himself. And all this time he fancied he was studying mankind. It seemed to him that the small circle of learned, rich, and idle people to which he himself belonged formed the whole of humanity, and that the millions living outside of it were animals, not men. He thought the life of a Solomon, a Schopenhauer, a Tolstoi, was alone real and fit, and the life lived by unconsidered millions a chcumstance not' wonky of attention.

Poitunately for Tolstoi, his instinctive affection for the labouring classes and his fondness for country life led him to realise that he and a few thousand like him did not constitute the whole of mankind, that he- was sstill ignoiant of what life was. He found that the unconsidered millions who form the great world of humanity had another answer to his questions. JTor them the meaning of life was. faith. He was compelled to admit that besides the reasoning knowledge, which had seemed to him the only true knowledge, there was in every living man another kind of knowledge, an unreasoning one which gives a posf-ibility of living — faith.