Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/294

278 for an Excommunication without really being one; as happened, in fact, for that is how the Edict has been understood.

It is arbitrary, for it accuses only me of disbelief in all the points enumerated in the Edict; whereas many, in fact almost all educated people, share that disbelief and have constantly expressed and still express it both in conversations, in lectures, in pamphlets and in books.

It is unfounded because it gives as a chief cause of its publication the great circulation of the false teaching wherewith I pervert the people—whereas I am well assured that hardly a hundred people can be found who share my views, and the circulation of my writings on religion, thanks to the Censor, is so insignificant that the majority of those who have read the Synod's Edict have not the least notion of what I may have written about religion—as is shown by the letters I have received.

It contains an obvious falsehood, for it says that efforts have been made by the Church to show me my errors, but that these efforts have been unsuccessful. Nothing of the kind ever took place.

It constitutes what in legal terminology is called a libel, for it contains assertions known to be false and tending to my hurt.

It is, finally, an incentive to evil feelings and deeds, for, as was to be expected, it evoked, in unenlightened and unreasoning people, anger and hatred against me, culminating in threats of murder expressed in letters I received. One writes: 'Now thou hast been anathematized, and after death wilt go to everlasting torments, and wilt perish like a dog anathema upon thee, old devil be damned.' Another blames the Government for not having, as yet, shut me up in a monastery, and fills his letter with abuse. A third writes: 'If the Government does not get rid of you, we will ourselves make you shut your mouth,' and the letter ends with curses. 'May you be destroyed—you blackguard!' writes a fourth; 'I shall find means to do it and then follows indecent abuse. After the