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Carlyle, as his writings, as his recorded actions approve, was not less sensitive than Tolstoi to the pity of human life, to the "tears of things" as Virgil would say; but are there not in every city, in every town, hospitals, wounds, mangled limbs, fevers, that make of every day of this sad earth of ours a day after Borodino?
Nearly all of his trips to Britain were made solely for this purpose, and most of the distinguished Englishmen that he met, like Tennyson, he met while visiting England for grouse. Shooting, to be sure, is common enough in Russia; it appears in Artsybashev's "Sanin," and there was a time when Tolstoi was devoted to this sport, though it later appeared on his long blacklist.
Shortly after the marriage, Tolstoi began the composition of a leviathan in historical fiction, "War and Peace." While composing it, he wrote: "If one could only accomplish the hundredth part of what one conceives, but one cannot even do a millionth part! Still, the consciousness of Power is what brings happiness to a literary man. I have felt this power particularly during this year."
"What sort of book?" "It's about women, by Tolstoi," replied the lanky officer, raising his voice as if he were making a report. On his long sallow face there was a look of evident pride at being able to read and discuss Tolstoi. "Do you read Tolstoi?" asked Ivanoff, who had noticed this naively complacent expression. "Von Deitz is mad about Tolstoi," exclaimed Malinowsky, with a loud guffaw.
And he was always making a parade of Father Duvillard's millions, while pretending to disdain them, and act the revolutionist, for ever saying that he'd use his cigarette to fire the cartridge which was to blow up the world! He was Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, and Tolstoi, and Ibsen, rolled into one! And you can see what he has become with it all: a humbug with a diseased mind!"
Soutaïeff travelled all over the country preaching that true Christianity consists in the love of one's neighbour, and was welcomed with open arms by Tolstoi himself.
"Then let's get on where it's quieter. What ho!" They moved demurely away. "Can you deny," the narrow-chested man continued, sawing the air with a thin, dirty hand, "that you are all dissatisfied with life, that you wonder about it, as Plato wondered, as Tolstoi wondered, as the Dean of St. Paul's wonders, as I am wondering now?
What the Russian lacks the Englishman has; what the Englishman lacks, that has the Russian. The works of Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoievsky, Tolstoi, Tchekov the amazing direct and truthful revelations of these masters has let me, I think, into some secrets of the Russian soul, so that the Russians I have met seem rather clearer to me than men and women of other foreign countries.
Tolstoi's logic is fruitful, because it allows for human weakness, because it understands, and because to understand is, among other things, to pardon. In a word, the difference between the spirit of Tolstoi and the spirit of Mr. Shaw is the difference between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of Euclid.
Tolstoi, in spite of his contrary impression, here reaches conclusions which are the same as those of the Socialists; for they are well aware that armies are likely to be used to dissolve Parliaments and labor unions. "The introduction of socialistic principles into the army will not accomplish anything," Tolstoi continues.
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