Page:Tolstoy - Essays and Letters.djvu/83

 Rh he wishes to appear in a good light, he exhibits them.

Thus it was half a century ago. I was contemporary with such men, I knew Ogaryóf and Herzen themselves, and others of that stamp, and men educated in the same traditions. There was a remarkable absence of consistency in the lives of all these men. Together with a sincere and ardent wish for good, there was an utter looseness of personal desire, which, they thought, could not hinder the living of a good life, nor the performance of good, and even great, deeds. They put unkneaded loaves into a cold oven, and believed that bread would he baked. And then, when with advancing years they began to remark that the bread did not bake—i.e., that no good came of their lives—they saw in this something peculiarly tragic.

And the tragedy of such lives is indeed terrible. And this same tragedy apparent in the lives of Herzen, Ogaryóf, and others of their time, exists to-day in the lives of very many so-called educated people who hold the same views. A man desires to lead a good life, but the consecutiveness which is indispensable for this is lost in the society in which he lives. As fifty years ago Ogaryóf, Herzen, and others, so also the majority of men of the present day are persuaded that to lead an effeminate life, to eat sweet and fat dishes, to delight one's self in every way and satisfy all one's desires, does not hinder one from living a good life, but as it is evident that a good life in their case does not result, they give themselves up to pessimism, and say, 'Such is the tragedy of human life.'

What is also strange in the case is that these people know that the distribution of pleasures among men is unequal, and regard this inequality as an evil, and wish to correct it, yet do not cease to strive to augment their own pleasures—i.e., to augment inequality in the distribution of pleasures. In acting thus, these people are like men who being the first to enter an orchard hasten to gather all the fruit they can lay their hands on, and vet wish to organize a more equal distribution of the