Page:The American Review of Reviews - Volume 24.djvu/56

 approve or condemn any institution or project according as it approached or receded from the accepted standard of right and wrong. That all human institutions were equally immoral when tested by his own principles never prevented him from discussing them individually on their merits, and being quite willing to accept installments of human improvement, even though the improvement served but to perpetuate the general system which he condemned. But, brought back to generalities, he was always unfaltering. Governments, churches, institutions, and art were all unchristian, and no Christian could recognize them. Yet he repeatedly expressed admiration of workers and writers who, while supporting the existing system, used their powers to make its working easier for the people. He seemed a man who, had he had a wider sphere of action, would have been quite ready to postpone his personal faith to immediate necessities. In the narrow sphere of work which is open to him in Russia he actually does so to a considerable extent. Had he lived in a freer country, where intellectual revolt is not fed by repression, he might very well have been a practical statesman, or at least a practical revolutionary. That he would reject this view himself, there is no doubt. Yet Tolstoy essentially is not a dreamer, but a man who sees the world as it is, and knows very well that there is little chance of any immediate fundamental change.

III.—WHAT WOULD TOLSTOY DO?

But what would Tolstoy do were he to become as dominant in action in Russia to-morrow as he has become in Russia's thought ? It is an interesting speculation, and one upon which neither his works nor his life throws any real light. As a practical man he knows very well that his ethical abstractions could no more be realized in Russia to-morrow than in any other country. Yet lie knows Russia, its needs and its failings, much better than any other man in his position, for he is practically the only educated man who has lived as an equal among the class which is in reality all Russia—that is to say, the peasants and the workmen. And as a practical man he is quite as ready to accept installments of reform and amelioration as any Liberal in the land, though it is quite certain that no reforms which imply the maintenance of existing governments, whether in Russia or in the West, will mitigate his abstract condemnation for one moment. But while he makes his primary distinction between the present system of government by force and the ideal rule of conscience, he is quite willing to draw a secondary distinction between good governments and bad ones. What would, then, he do to save Russia, if given supreme power, while conscious of the impossibility of carrying his own extreme Christianity into effect ? The question was of especial interest to me as giving an opportunity for learning his outlook on the various rumors current a few years ago as tu the establishment in Russia of constitutional government. Tolstoy was categorical on this point, and was plainly of the Slavophile opinion that Western institutions could never be more than an excrescence upon the body politic in Russia. I had asked him how the more intelligent of the peasantry and workmen regarded those constitutional reforms which the educated non-official classes demanded with almost one voice.

"What do you mean by reforms?" he-interrupted.

"Western institutions generally—a parliament, liberty of the press, legal guarantees"

"What on earth have we to do with legal guarantees and Western institutions?" he interrupted, seemingly astonished that any one should ask such a question. "Your mistake is always in assuming that Western institutions are a stereotyped model upon which all reforms should be based. It is this delusion that is at the bottom of half the wars and predatory aggressions carried on by Europeans against men of other races. If reforms are wanted in Russia, it is not either Western or Eastern reforms, but measures suited for the people, and not for other peoples. The assumption that reforms so called must be constructed upon Western models is a pure product of Western exclusiveness, and is opposed both to Christianity and to common sense."

"But surely the Russians do not differ more from other European races than the European races differ from one another, and a policy which suits all the other races is therefore, prima facie, applicable to Russia."

"I do not admit for one moment that any European policy is more suited to European races than Russian policy is suited to Russia. Both are bad and opposed to Christianity. (Like many other Russians, Tolstoy always spoke of 'Europe' as a distinct geographical unity, of which Russia forms no part.) But every nation has its own social spirit, which is as clearly defined as its religious spirit, and all this perpetual talk of modeling and remodeling has no more practical value than a proposal to reconstruct the religion of Confucius upon the religion of Christ. And what have we to do with legal guarantees? I answer that question by telling you that for the mass of the Russian people the law does not exist at all. They either regard the law, as I do, as a matter wholly external to them, with which they