Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/556

 532 is, on the contrary, regarded as a desirable condition, as a sign of development, civilization, culture, and perfection. So-called educated people regard habits of comfort, i.e. of effeminacy, as not only harmless, but even good, indicating a certain moral elevation,—almost a virtue.

It is thought that the more the wants, and the more refined these wants, the better.

Nothing corroborates this statement better than the descriptive poetry, and especially the novels of the last two centuries.

How are the heroes and heroines who represent the ideals of virtue portrayed?

In most cases the men who are meant to represent something noble and lofty from—Childe Harold down to the latest heroes of Feuillet, Trollope, De Maupassant—are nothing else than depraved sluggards, consuming in luxury the labor of thousands, and themselves doing nothing useful for anybody. The heroines, their mistresses, who in one way or another afford more or less delight to these men, are equally idle, also devouring by their luxury the labor of others.

I do not refer to those representations of really abstinent and industrious people with which one occasionally meets in literature; I am speaking of the usual type, representing an ideal to the masses of the person whom the majority of men and women are trying to resemble. I remember the difficulty (inexplicable to me at the time) that I experienced when I wrote novels, and with which I contended, and with which I know all now contend who have even the dimmest conception of what constitutes real moral beauty,—the difficulty of portraying a type taken from the upper classes, ideally good and kind, and at the same time true to life.

A description of a man or woman of the upper classes would be true to life only if it represented him in his usual surroundings, i.e. in luxury, physical idleness, and demanding much. From a moral point of view such a person is undoubtedly objectionable. But it is necessary to represent this person in such a way that he may