The Timaru Herald. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1910. TOLSTOY AND HIS WORK.

Timaru Herald, Volume XCIII, Issue 14352, 18 November 1910, Page 4

The Timaru Herald. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1910. TOLSTOY AND HIS WORK.

Famous as novelist, teacher, social reformer and prophet, there is no doubt that in Count Leo Tolstoy there has passed away one of the great men of the age. His novels can be read to-day in most European languages, his efforts as a social reformer have clone much to uplift the downtrodden Russian peasantry, but it is to his work as a prophet that Tolstoy no doubt attached most importance during the latter years_of his life. English understanding of Tolstoy's mind and character is likely to be helped enormously by the official biography, so to speak, of his later years, written by his intimate friend, Mr Aylmer Maude, and published as recently as last month. The article iu which the London " Times ""' reviews this biography appears to us so wise and illuminating on the subject of Tolstoy's work, that we make no apology for quoting it extensively. " He certainly has the outward semblance of a prophet," states " The Times," "'" this tall, rugged Russian, with the beetling eyebrows, the deep voice, the trenchant, words, the sense of inspiration and authority, the deep emotions that shake him into tears or set hlra rocking with uncouth laughter. All the world knows him, in his cheap sheepskin coat and leather belt, ploughing, reaping - , building houses, making - boots, or sitting at work in his study, as liepin paints him, on a rough wooden stool, with his scythe and saw and his big spade rather obtrusively set up about him (that is Repin's fault, not Tolstoy's). His enthusiasm and sincerity are undoubted, his suffering and his conviction of the truth of what he saj r s. But when you are estimating a prophet the only question is, Is his message true? Mr Maude lays his finger on the radical weakness of Tolstoy's manner of thought when he speaks of his 'ethical arrogance,' «kis readiness ' fa condemn tin-

achievements of those whose work has been remote from his own experience, and to impute base motives to men and movements he knows almost nothing of.' 'He trusts his own conclusions too implicitly, and distrusts the motives, efforts, and conclusions of other men too mucli.' " If it be thought that the Itussian Church dealt harshly by Count Tolstoy when it excommunicated him, it must be remembered that he used no temperate language in his attacks upon the Churches. He spurned their teachings as the deliberate misrepresentations of an unscrupulous caste, working only for its own aggrandisement, and he repudiated all the commentators •of the Scriptures as " either horrid atheists or partners in the great conspiracy, and all of them fools too." He set out to interpret the Scriptures from the Gresk himself. Almost all Ms interpretations, according to " The Times," are. demonstrably false, hut the mind of a prophet and the insight of a genius were in the task, and he_ made Christianity a living thing for thousands whom it had not previously attracted. A.state of perfect anarchy Kust be the outcome _if Tolstoy's ideas of Christianity were put into general practice. Since we must swear not at all, since we must love our enemies and resist not evil, he declared, we must abolish government, law, war, frontiers and nationality. A Christian after Tolstoy should neither wilnor under compulsion, take any part in Government activity, and should therefore be neither a soldier, nor a fieldmarshal, nor a Minister of State, nor a tax-collector, nor a witness, nor an alderman, nor a juryman, nor a member of Parliament, nor, in fact, hold any office connected with violence. Tolstoy is not a. great prophet. It is noticeable, moreover, that whereas with most of the great teachers whom he quotes, Lao Tsze, Budda and Socrates, their writing and their teaching were but incidents of their doing, with Tolstoy, on the other hand, the doing has been only an occasional distraction from the teaching. '"'And the reason is radical," states the "Times" writer, "because the doing is impossible and absurd, while the teaching is stimulating and suggestive. Having made some bad boots and built a house that tumbled down, he returned to his study and wrote a book to show that men ought to make boots and build houses instead of writing books. Having put on his bad boots and walked a few miles away to escape from the ' father and mother, wife and child ' that his religion taught him he ought to

hate, lie came back and continued to love theni heartily, and invented a shocking doctrine of compromise, in accordance with which we ought to believe in the " ideals ' which, he discovered by mistranslating the Bible but not carry theni out strictly." Nevertheless Tolstoy was undoubtedly a great man, and one whose influence will long remain. To a wonderful extenthe has set men thinking. He has roused thousands from their apathy towards the evils of society. In Mr Maude's words, he has awoken the "sense of sin'' in men whom Samuel Smiles would have patted on the back. Mr Maude also states, with penetration, that Englishmen owe Tolstoy an especial debt because he has breathed for them a certain Russian geniality of feeling into the word " goodness," that was beginning to get a rather sour and chilly atmosphere about it.