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Since the failure of the Revolution, there has been a marked revolt in Russia against three great ideas that have at different times dominated Russian literature: the quiet pessimism of Turgenev, the Christian non-resistance religion of Tolstoi, and the familiar Russian type of will-less philosophy.
My opinion is that Tolstoi was mistaken, at least as to the father; and that the father had been led to give away his property and work with his hands in obedience to the ideas so eloquently advocated by Tolstoi himself. Unlike his master, this gentleman appears not to have had the advantage of a wife who mitigated his ideas.
We have no right to doubt his word but did Tolstoi know all his followers? Like all who have scattered seed, he was not in a position to count it. But however that may be, he transformed the highest aspirations of man's soul into a noble philosophy of human progress, and attracted the uneducated as well as the cultured classes by his genuine desire for equality and justice.
"Your most humble and unworthy servant, who deserves not to be called your son, After having written and dispatched this letter Alexis surrendered himself to Tolstoi and Rumanrow, and in their charge set out on his return to Russia, there to be delivered into his father's hands; for Peter was now in Russia, having returned there as soon as he heard of Alexis's flight.
Like so many other men of genius in Russia, then, and Russia is fertile in such, Tolstoi has had little opportunity to take part in any real discussion of leading topics; and the result is that his opinions have been developed without modification by any rational interchange of thought with other men.
And just as on this northern summer night there was no restful darkness on the earth, but only a dismal, dull light coming from an invisible source, so in Nekhludoff's soul there was no longer the restful darkness, ignorance." The chapter is profoundly impressive; it is one of those chapters which no one but Tolstoi has ever written.
Reproaching the Emperor of Austria with ingratitude, he announced his political policy; to wit, that Russia would hold Austria in check, while he and Alexander divided the East between them without reference to Francis, unless the latter should disarm and recognize Joseph as king of Spain. Tolstoi remained frigid throughout the long harangue.
"It used to appear to me," writes Count Tolstoi, in a significant passage, "it used to appear to me that the small number of cultivated, rich and idle men, of whom I was one, composed the whole of humanity, and that the millions and millions of other men who had lived and are still living were not in reality men at all."
Tolstoi perceived life as a circle, with the beginning everywhere and with the end everywhere. The Holy Synod, representing Slav Orthodoxy, perceived life as a drama with a beginning and an end in space and time.
George Moore queries, "Is not Turgenev the greatest artist that has existed since antiquity?" Dostoevski, seven years older than Tolstoi, and three years younger than Turgenev, was not so much a Realist as a Naturalist; his chief interest was in the psychological processes of the unclassed. His foreign fame is constantly growing brighter, for his works have an extraordinary vitality.
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