Page:The Novels and Other Works of Lyof N. Tolstoï-v20.djvu/14

viii aries, destroying his self-respect by flogging and his dignity by a State religion which does not appeal to his conscience, is bringing ruin upon Russia. The peasantry is the very bone and sinew of a country, and when agriculture fails, the country is doomed. Count Tolstoï advocates greater freedom of education, of religion, of movement, and he predicts that prosperity would soon return, and the chronic state of famine now obtaining and growing worse year after year would correct itself, if the terrible exactions of government would cease.

He returns again and again to his plea for Christians to unite on the five simple commands of Christ and put them into practice. The "Three Parables" and the "Letter to N. N." contain a rather unusual and pathetic personal note which cannot help touching the heart, bringing out so evidently the man's generous sincerity and simplicity.

His application of the rule of non-resistance to the tremendous international questions which are keeping Europe, and, indeed, the whole world, in the condition of a vast mine of dynamite, ready at any instant to explode with unimaginable consequences, is perhaps his most important contribution to the practical solution of the difficulty which confronts humanity at the present time. Occasionally a single man, or even a whole body of men, like the Dukhobors, who have been transported en masse to the Canadian wilderness, refuse to bear arms from conscientious motives. Count Tolstoï sees that the simplest and easiest method of disposing of the question of excessive armament of the nations is for all men to follow their example. War would then cease from sheer inertia. If every man in Russia refused to