第13章 INTRODUCTION(13)

Tolstoy's life-work was indeed a splendid striv-ing to free truth from falsehood, to simplify the complexities of civilisation and demonstrate their futility. Realists as gifted have come and gone and left but little trace. It is conceivable that the great trilogy of "Anna Karenina," " War and Peace," and "Resurrection" may one day be for-gotten, but Tolstoy's teaching stands on firmer foundations, and has stirred the hearts of thou-sands who are indifferent to the finest display of psychic analysis. He has taught men to venture beyond the limits set by reason, to rise above the actual and to find the meaning of life in love. It was his mission to probe our moral ulcers to the roots and to raise moribund ideals from the dust, breathing his own vitality into them, till they rose before our eyes as living aspirations. The spir-itual joy of which he wrote was no rhetorical hyperbole; it was manifest in the man himself, and was the fount of the lofty idealism which made him not only "the Conscience of Russia" but of the civilised world.

Idealism is one of those large abstractions which are invested by various minds with varying shades of meaning, and which find expression in an infinite number of forms. Ideals bred and fos-tered in the heart of man receive at birth an im-press from the life that engenders them, and when that life is tempest-tossed the thought that springs from it must bear a birth-mark of the storm.

That birth-mark is stamped on all Tolstoy's utter-ances, the simplest and the most metaphysical.

But though he did not pass scathless through the purging fires, nor escape with eyes undimmed from the mystic light which flooded his soul, his ideal is not thereby invalidated. It was, he admitted, unattainable, but none the less a state of perfec-tion to which we must continually aspire, un-daunted by partial failure.

"There is nothing wrong in not living up to the ideal which you have made for yourself, but what is wrong is, if on looking back, you cannot see that you have made the least step nearer to your ideal."

How far Tolstoy's doctrines may influence suc-ceeding generations it is impossible to foretell; but when time has extinguished what is merely personal or racial, the divine spark which he re-ceived from his great spiritual forerunners in other times and countries will undoubtedly be found alight. His universality enabled him to unite himself closely with them in mental sympathy; sometimes so closely, as in the case of J. J. Rous-seau, as to raise analogies and comparisons de-signed to show that he merely followed in a well-worn pathway. Yet the similarity of Tolstoy's ideas to those of the author of the "Contrat So-cial" hardly goes beyond a mutual distrust of Art and Science as aids to human happiness and virtue, and a desire to establish among mankind a true sense of brotherhood. For the rest, the appeals which they individually made to Human-ity were as dissimilar as the currents of their lives, and equally dissimilar in effect.

The magic flute of Rousseau's eloquence breathed fanaticism into his disciples, and a desire to mass themselves against the foes of liberty.

Tolstoy's trumpet-call sounds a deeper note. It pierces the heart, summoning each man to the in-quisition of his own conscience, and to justify his existence by labour, that he may thereafter sleep the sleep of peace.

The exaltation which he awakens owes nothing to rhythmical language nor to subtle interpreta-tions of sensuous emotion; it proceeds from a per-ception of eternal truth, the truth that has love, faith, courage, and self-sacrifice for the corner-stones of its enduring edifice NOTE--Owing to circumstances entirely outside the control of the editor some of these translations have been done in haste and there has not been sufficient time for revision.

The translators were chosen by an agent of the executor and not by the editor.

LIST OF POSTHUMOUS WORKS, GIVING DATE WHEN EACH WAS FINISHED OR LENGTH OF TIME OCCUPIED IN WRITING.

Father Serge. 1890-98.

Introduction to the History of a Mother. 1894.

Memoirs of a Mother. 1894.

The Young Czar. 1894.

Diary of a Lunatic. 1896.

Hadji Murat. 1896-1904.

The Light that shines in Darkness. 1898-1901.

The Man who was dead. 1900.

After the Ball. 1903.

The Forged Coupon. 1904.

Alexis. 1905.

Diary of Alexander I. 1905.

The Dream. 1906.

Father Vassily. 1906.

There are no Guilty People. 1909.

The Wisdom of Children. 1909.

The Cause of it All. 1910.

Chodynko. 1910.

Two Travellers. Date uncertain.

THE FORGED COUPON