Page:The Complete Works of Lyof N. Tolstoi - 11 (Crowell, 1899).djvu/560

536 called it, or of self-renunciation, as Christianity has it, and gradually, by strenuous efforts, succeeds in attaining this primary virtue.

just been reading some letters, written between 1840 and 1850 by a highly educated, advanced man, the exile Ogaref, to another still more highly educated and clever man, Herzen. In these letters Ogaref gives expression to his sincere thoughts and highest aspirations, and one cannot fail to see that—as was natural to a young man—he somewhat shows off before his friend. He talks of self-perfecting, of sacred friendship, love, the service of science, of humanity, and the like. And at the same time he calmly writes that he often irritates the companion of his life by, as he expresses it, "returning home in an unsober state, or disappearing for long hours with a fallen, but dear creature. …."

Evidently it never even occurred to this remarkably kind-hearted, talented, and educated man that there was anything in the least objectionable in the fact that he, a married man, awaiting the confinement of his wife (in his next letter he writes that his wife has given birth to a child), returned home intoxicated, and disappears with dissolute women. It did not enter his head that until he had commenced the struggle, and had, at least to some extent, conquered his inclination to drunkenness and fornication, he could not think of friendship and love, and still less of serving any one or anything. But he not only did not struggle against these vices, he evidently thought there was something very nice in them, and that they did not in the least hinder aspiration after perfection; and, therefore, instead of hiding them from the friend in whose eyes he wishes to appear in a good light, he exhibits them.

Thus it was half a century ago. I was contemporary with such men. I knew Ogaref and Herzen themselves, and others of that stamp, and men educated in