Page:Mahatma Gandhi, his life, writings and speeches.djvu/387



The following is a translation of the letter of Count Tolstoy to Mr. Gandhi:— Kotchety, Russia, Sept. 7, 1910. I received your journal, and was pleased to learn all contained therein concerning the passive resisters. And I felt like telling you all the thoughts which that reading called up in me.

The longer I live, and especially now, when I vividly feel the nearness of death, I want to tell others what I feel so particularly, clearly and what to my mind is of great importance—namely, that which is called passive resistance, but which is in reality nothing else than the teaching of love uncorrupted by false interpretation?. That love—i.e., the striving for the union of human souls and the activity derived from this striving—is the highest and only law of human life, and in the depth of his soul every human being (as we most clearly see in children) feels and knows this; he knows this until he is entangled by the false teachings of the world. This law was proclaimed by all—by the Indian as by the Chinese, Hebrew,