Page:The life of Tolstoy.djvu/39

Rh was living at Kazan and brought all the Tolstoy children there, for whom a new life opened. This happened in 1841. Leo was thirteen years old, and certain definite traits began to appear in his character. Boyhood" gives some autobiographical material. Vanity was one of those character traits of Leo Tolstoy against which he had to fight hard, and which probably more than once troubled his peace of mind. In his childhood this manifested itself in a rough, primitive, naive form. He was particular about his appearance, and was miserable when he saw in the mirror that he was not handsome. His shyness, the opposition of vanity, also caused him much suffering. He early developed a disposition to reason and to analyse, certain definite sceptical conceptions being the result.

This is what the hero of "Boyhood" says:

"No other philosophic system ever carried me so completely away as scepticism, which at one time brought me to a state bordering on madness. I imagined that nobody and nothing existed in the whole world save myself—that objects were not objects, but images appearing only when I paid attention to them, and the moment I ceased to think of them those images immediately disappeared. In a word, I agreed with Schelling's