Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/109

 One cannot fail to rejoice at this, as people could not fail to rejoice who, after striving to reach the upper story of a house by trying vainly and at random to climb the walls from different points, should at last assemble at the first step of the staircase and crowd towards it, convinced that there can he no way up except by mounting this first step of the stairs.

[1892.]

The above essay was written as Preface to a Russian translation of Howard Williams' The Ethics of Diet.