Page:Tolstoy - Tales from Tolstoi.djvu/47

Biography of Scripture, which he was forced to recast in order to make it fit in with his own very peculiar version of the Gospels (as to which by the way he dogmatizes every whit as magisterially as the church which he so hastily disparages and has finally driven to condemn him), are too well known to be alluded to here. But however we may deplore Tolstoi's provocative method of biblical interpretation, we cannot but reverence the sublime unselfishness of the life he has led ever since what we may perhaps call his conversion. From 1881 to the present time, he has literally devoted himself, body and soul, to the service of his poorer brethren, the Russian muzhiks, for whom he has always had an intense sympathy and admiration. He has done this in two ways, by working among them and by writing for them. He had always been of the opinion that "the only really honest labour worthy of a man was manual labour," and from henceforth he adopted the life of a common peasant, and worked vigorously alongside his labourers in his own fields. "It is better," he observes, with equal wisdom and humanity, "it is better to help the poor by actually working at their own handicraft with them, than doing higher and perhaps more lucrative work, and giving them the profits thereof, inasmuch as by working with them you teach them to respect their own particular work by showing them that you yourself do not despise it, whereas any money you might give them would be apt to make them indolent and lazy." So he set about tilling his own fields, thatching his own cottage roofs, and teaching his peasantry thrift and xxxix.