Page:Complete Works of Count Tolstoy - 02.djvu/87

 Rh as he thought, the laws of being, and he dwelt with proud delight upon these thoughts. And again a higher feeling said, "Not this," and again caused him to seek and be agitated.

Without ideas and desires, as always happens after an intensified activity, he lay down on his back under a tree, and began to gaze at the translucent morning clouds, which scudded above him over the deep, endless sky. Suddenly tears stood, without any cause, in his eyes, and, God knows how, there came to him the clear thought, which filled his soul, and which he seized with delight,—the thought that love and goodness were truth and happiness, and the only truth and possible happiness in the world. A higher feeling did not say, "Not this," and he arose, and began to verify his thought.

"It is, it is, yes!" he said to himself in ecstasy, measuring all his former convictions, all the phenomena of life, with the newly discovered and, as he thought, entirely new truth. "How stupid is all which I have known, and which I have believed in and loved," he said to himself. "Love, self-sacrifice,—these constitute the only true happiness which is independent of accident!" he repeated, smiling, and waving his hands. He applied this thought to life from every side, and he found its confirmation in life, and in the inner voice which told him, "It is this," and he experienced a novel feeling of joyful agitation and transport. "And thus, I must do good in order to be happy," he thought, and all his future was vividly pictured to him, not in the abstract, but in concrete form, in the shape of a landed proprietor.

He saw before him an immense field of action for his whole life, which he would henceforth devote to doing good, and in which he, consequently, would be happy. He would not have to look for a sphere of action: it was there ; he had a direct duty,—he had peasants—

What refreshing and grateful labour his imagination