Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/39

Biography he convinces as no other great writer has ever succeeded in convincing. The character of Napoleon is of itself a revelation. A great critic has well said that after reading the description of Alexander's interview with Bonaparte at Tilsit, one cannot rid oneself of the conviction that Tolstoi must have been concealed somewhere in the same room, for nowhere else do we seem to see "the little corporal" so vividly in the flesh as in the pages of "Voina i Mir." The philosophy of the book, as already hinted, is not without a tinge of Schopenhauerism. Thus, man's reason, coupled with his exacting egoism, is held to be the source of all human suffering. The main duty of man is self-renunciation and absolute subjection to the will of the mass of humanity which makes up the nation. Kutuzov was a great man simply because he understood this, and had no independent will of his own. Such a system necessarily postulates the non-existence of separate human individuality, and, logically pursued, would make unconscious instinct the best, because the strongest force in nature. Even religion is discarded, because, as Tolstoi plainly perceived, religion strengthens the sense of individuality by making man self-conscious. This after all is "Die Welt in Wille und Vorstellung" in a nutshell. No wonder, then, if Tolstoi's great contemporary, Dostoevsky, after reading "Voina i Mir," put the book down with the simple remark: "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." Yet Tolstoi himself at a later day was to reject Schopenhauer's philosophy as inadequate. xxxi.