Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/526

502 fastened on the ground that knows the truth, but he that knows by the sun where he is going.

All literary works are good and needful, not when they describe what has taken place, but when they show what ought to be; not when they tell what men have done, but when they set a value on what is right and wrong, when they show men the one strait and narrow way of God's will leading to life.

In order to show this way it is impossible to describe only what has taken place in the world. The world lies sunken in evil and in temptations. If you want to describe the world as it is, then you must describe much falsehood, and there will be no truth in your words. In order that there should be truth in what you describe, you must write, not what is, but what ought to be—describe, not the truth of what is, but the truth of God's kingdom which is near at hand, but not yet come to us.

Hence it results that there are mountains of books in which it says just what has taken place or might have taken place, but all these books are lies, if those that wrote them do not themselves know what is good, and what is bad and do not know, and do not show, the only way that leads men to the kingdom of God. And it happens that there are fairy tales, parables, fables, legends which describe such marvels as never have taken place, and never could take place, and these legends, fairy tales, and fables are true because they point out what God's will always has been, is, and will be, point out what the truth of God's kingdom consists in.

There may be a book—and there are many, many of such novels and stories—in which it is described how a man lives for his passions, torments himself, torments others, endures perils, privation, uses craft, struggles with others, escapes from poverty; and in the sequel is united with the object of his love, and becomes distinguished, rich, and happy. Such a book, even if all that is in it describes things exactly as they existed, and even if there was nothing improbable in it, would nevertheless be false and misleading, because a man living