Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 08 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/338

324 struggle comes, will yield, and do that which he himself considers disgraceful. I do not say which is the better of the two; I only tell what the fact is as it seems to me. I remark only that honesty is not the conviction, that the expression "honest convictions" is nonsense. Honesty is a moral habit; in order to acquire it, it is impossible to proceed in any other way than to begin with the nearest relations. The expression "honest convictions" is in my opinion perfectly meaningless; there are honest habits, but no honest convictions.

The words chestnuiya ubyezhdeniya, "honest convictions," are only a phrase; in consequence of this, these so-called honest convictions, applied to the most distant conditions of life—the treasury, the government, Europe, humanity—and not based on habits of honesty, not taught on the most intimate relations of life, these honest convictions, or rather phrases of honesty, consequently are proved to be impotent with relation to life.

I return to the story. The episode of the money taken from the public funds, which seems at first immoral, but which in our opinion is quite the contrary, has the most beautiful and touching character. How frequently the literarian of our circle, in the simplicity of his soul, wishing to represent his hero as the ideal of honor betrays to us all the vile and dissolute inwardness of his imagination! Here, on the contrary, the author has to make his hero happy; for his happiness his return to his family would be sufficient, but it was necessary to do away with the poverty which had for so many years weighed on the family, but how was he to get the money? From the impersonal treasury! If he is to give them wealth, he must get it of some one—it could not be found in a more legitimate or reasonable place!

In the scene of the explanation about this money there is a pretty detail, one word, which, every time I read it over, seems to strike me with new force. It explains the whole picture, it outlines all the characters and their relations, and it is only one word, and a word irregularly used and syntactically wrong—it is the word zatoropilas, "she hurried up." The teacher of syntax must say that