Page:The American Review of Reviews - Volume 24.djvu/60

 gle between logic and usefulness logic has lost. So he spends his time in the summer at his country home, plowing and reaping in the fields, helping the widow to gather in her crops, bargaining with tax-collectors on behalf of the poor, and giving his peasants sound practical advice as to how best to carry on their work and resist extortion. The fact that he lives in a "palace" does not trouble his conscience in the least. And in his winter home at Moscow he does not consider it necessary to sweep the snow from the front of his house. He knows that it is better both for his gospel and for its propagation that he should spend his time to the best advantage with his pen; and that, if his health demands exercise and recreation, it is no sin to possess a bicycle and a horse, even though these are luxuries undreamed of by the majority of the human race.

All this is very characteristic, not only of Count Tolstoy, but of Russians in general. While the Russian is the very first to rush and put all his thoughts into immediate action,—a circumstance which makes the abstract revolutionary much more dangerous in Russia than elsewhere,—he is by no means a worshiper of absolute ideals either in thought or in action. As it is in Russian literature, it is very much in Russian life. The best Russian novels are distinguished from those of western Europe by the complete absence in the delineation of human character of absolute types of goodness or badness, beauty or ugliness. In all the writings of Tolstoy and Turgenieff there is not a single character personifying any absolute quality, whether good or bad. In the actions which they depict, there is the same deprecation of extravagance. The fanatic and the man of fixed ideas invariably come to a bad end. A rational compromise between ideas and facts is the essential in useful work. This characteristic of Russian ideas is admirably illustrated in Turgenieff s best-known novel, "Virgin Soil." The hero, Nezdanoff, the man of fixed ideas, breaks down when he attempts to apply them to life. But the same ideas, held in a less intense degree, and therefore more easily applicable to existing conditions, triumph in the hands of the practical factory manager, Solomin. It is said that one of Count Tolstoy's favorite books is Mr. Morloy's work "On Compromise." It is probably true. His life is an admirable example of the application of extreme ideas to action. He lives as nearly according to the literal precepts of Christianity as it is possible for any man who values practical usefulness to do. But in the conflict between his ideas and the immediate needs of the world about him it is the practical side of his character which gains the victory.

V.—COUNT TOLSTOY AND THE RUSSIANS.

What is Tolstoy's real relationship to the people whom he serves and idealizes? What is the popular view of Tolstoy as an active social force ? We know that the official classes distrust and fear him; and that as Marxism is the only gospel of educated non-official Russia, educated non-official Russia is content with admiring him as an artist and deriding him as a moralist and political philosopher. But Tolstoy himself puts his ethical teachings on the summit; his novels at best have been only instruments, and. as he has many times declared of late, unfit instruments. He is the last man to set any store upon his reputation as an artist, and he has condemned unhesitatingly the whole theory of art upon which his earlier works were constructed. So, if we eliminate distrustful officials, and an educated class which respects moral courage and intercession for the weak but regards the Tolstoyan gospel with contempt, we are brought at once to the bed rock of Russian society—the people. What do the people, what do the peasants think? The peasants are inarticulate, and that is the first difficulty. To solve it satisfactorily would therefore require a knowledge of Russia which few Westerners possess. Tolstoy has himself declared that many even of his own peasantry regard him merely as a horn of plenty and an intercessor in time of trouble. How the Russian peasant regards unexpected benefactors, he has shown in "Resurrection." where Prince Nekliudoff fails utterly to convince his peasants of his good intentions ; and it is a fact that when at the emancipation of the serfs many enlightened proprietors wished to make a liberal distribution of their land the peasants drew back, fearing attempts at trickery. The legacy of distrust left by serfdom is strong among Russians to-day. I remember myself seeing a German traveler in Nijui Novgorod offering cigars all round to a group of bargees from the Oka, and being repulsed with the incredulous grin to which one treats a thimblerigger. There is, of course, no doubt whatever that the Russian peasant is highly responsive to kindly treatment when once he can be convinced that it is disinterested. But he requires convincing, and Tolstoy has not entirely escaped the fate which overtook his predecessor.

But how do the peasants regard Tolstoy as a reformer and propagandist? I made many efforts to solve this question. In Moscow he was well known, at least by appearance, and there were few whose attention had not been attracted by the sight of an aged peasant riding round the suburbs in the twilight, mounted on an excellent