Page:The Relations Tolstoy.pdf/3

 After the appearance of The Kreutzer Sonata, so misunderstood and misjudged by some readers, hundreds of letters and persons of all grades of society in every part of the globe reached the author, thanking him for the good the book had done them, relating most intimate circumstances in their past lives, and begging for further guidance in their particular difficulties. This correspondence vividly demonstrates anew, if say new demonstration were required, that the old basis of relationship is outworn and a new one more in accordance with the enlarged consciousness of Christendom is being earnestly sought for, as indeed Tolstoy points out in one of the passages here quoted. Many of the extracts included in this collection are taken from Tolstoy's replies to these letters, and the sole reason for the publicity now given to these and other thoughts expressed here, is the hope that they may bring light and help to thousands more who are in the same difficulties, but cannot be reached by personal means.

With regards to the kind of compilation of a writer's thoughts which the present book represents, I feel it necessary to make a few further general observations. Such a collection, although relating to one definite subject, yet being gathered from the most varied sources, and expressing most different frames of mind and periods of inner development, -naturally cannot offer that completeness, consecutiveness, and sense of proportion one is accustomed to expect from a carefully elaborated literary production. To a superficial or hostile reader, or one unacquainted with the basis of the author's life-conception, or who has never seriously contemplated the subject discussed, -such compilations will inevitably afford many seeming contradictions and inconsistencies; especially if the author be indeed a thinker, i.e. -a man with an understanding of life which is not stationary but progressive. There is,