LEO TOLSTOY'S VIEWS.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1420, 25 October 1923, Page 2

LEO TOLSTOY'S VIEWS.

LYING TO YOURSELF. (Contributed). In the private diary of Leo Tolstoy one of his views there expressed is: "Lying to others is much less serious than lying to yourself." To know this is the beginning of wisdom. Self-deception is the starting point of moral decay. Lying to others may be but a harmless amusement, but lying to yourself is sure to mean inward deformity, the germladen fleck that spreads disease throughout your whole character. Yet it is the commonest, easiest, most subtle of sins. The profligate has told himself that "the world owes him a living" until he believes it. The criminal lays his downfall at the door of society. Every down-and-outer labours to justify himself and trace his misfortune to others. As a matter f fact, no person since the world began was ever compelled to do wrong. No rotten stone or cracked beam was ever laid in the edifice of man's character that he did not put there with his owp hands. When I say that another made me do an evil thing T lie to myself. Others may have threatened, cajoled, tempted, pushed, or bribed me, but the fatal final step was never taken except by the consent of my own will

You may offer me a habit-forming drug, you may argue with me that it will do me good, you may urge me by ridicule, and lead me on by example; and my appetite may second your efforts. I may crave the glass, my nerves may clamour for it, and my imagination may lure me to it; but I do not have to drink. Whatever excuses I may give, there is one thing I do not have to do, and I do only because I will do it, and that is to swallow the stuff. And that is true of every injurious deed. If I do an act of fraud. or uncleanness, or cruelty, there is just one person guilty—it is myself. The world is full of blundering whiners, whimperers, and weaklings. Overful. That we do wrong is not so disgusting. We are ail human, and perhaps all a little perverted. But having erred, let us be downright and manly and honest about it. Let us acknowledge our guilt, admit that our lusts and greeds and selfishness, which other people may have deftly played upon, are no valid excuse, and that the responsibility for our evil rests absolutely upon ourselves. We may be sinners; but at least we can play the man. Don't lie to yourself Don't wallow in self-pity. Don't hunt extenuating circumstances. Don't justify yourself by comparing your own with others' wrongdoing. The wickedness of others may bring pain or loss to you, through no fault of yours. Each of us must bear a portion of the vicarious burden of the world's evil. But mark this: you never did wrong for any other reason than that you chose to do it. Not to have committed the wrong deed may have meant suffering to you or to those you love, may have meant humiliation, or calamity, or even death. But you didn't have to do it