Page:Rebels and reformers (1919).djvu/315

 *thors as the most promising writer of the day. Nobody, after reading "Childhood" or "Sebastopol," could fail to see Tolstoy's marvelous genius for seeing things as they are, and his gift of expression. But he grew impatient in this circle, for his views were too advanced and his love of truth too strong. He could not agree with people, and he could not pretend to agree with them. So he was thought quarrelsome and conceited, and his opinions absurd. He was always questioning things, such as the meaning of existence, and whether he himself was of any use; he would take nothing as a matter of course. Already, before he was twenty-seven, he had conceived the great idea of devoting his life to founding a new Religion—the Religion of Christianity, in fact, but cleansed of all its dogmas, which have nothing to do with Christianity: a practical religion, giving happiness on earth, not merely the promise of future happiness.

And another great question absorbed him, the question of emancipating the serfs. Peasants who worked on the land in Russia were held much as slaves, and were the absolute property of their masters, forced to work for them so many days a week before they might do any work for themselves. Tolstoy violently took the side of the peasants in all that concerned them, and his purpose in life was more or less fixed from this time onward. Like our other great man of noble birth, William of Orange, who worked on the side of the people, he was determined to leave