REALITY
He thought he had arrived in port, had achieved the haven in which his
unquiet soul might take its repose. He was only at the beginning of a
new period of activity.
A winter passed in Moscow (his family duties having obliged him to
follow his family thither),[1] and the taking of the census, in which
he contrived to lend a hand, gave him the occasion to examine at first
hand the poverty of a great city. The impression produced upon him was
terrible. On the evening of the day when he first came into contact
with this hidden plague of civilisation, while relating to a friend
what he had seen, "he began to shout, to weep, and to brandish his
fist."
"People can't live like that!" he cried, sobbing. "It cannot be! It
cannot be!" He fell into a state of terrible despair, which did not
leave him for months. Countess Tolstoy wrote to him on the 3rd of
March, 1882:
"You used to say, 'I used to want to hang myself because of my lack of
faith.' Now you have faith: why then are you so unhappy?"
Because he had not the sanctimonious, selfsatisfied faith of the
Pharisee; because he had not the egoism of the mystic, "who is too
completely absorbed in the matter of his own salvation to think
of the salvation of others";[2] because he knew love; because he
could no longer forget the miserable creatures he had seen, and in
the passionate tenderness of his heart he felt as though he were
responsible for their sufferings and their abjectness; they were
the victims of that civilisation in whose privileges he shared; of
that monstrous idol to which an elect and superior class was always
sacrificing millions of human beings. To accept the benefit of such
crimes was to become an accomplice. His conscience would have given him
no repose had he not denounced them.
_What shall we do?_ (1884-86) is the expression of this second
crisis; a crisis far more tragic than the first, and far richer in
consequences. What were the personal religious sufferings of Tolstoy
in this ocean of human wretchedness--of material misery, not misery
created by the mind of a self-wearied idler? It was impossible for him
to shut his eyes to it, and having seen it he could but strive, at any
cost, to prevent it. Alas! was such a thing possible?
An admirable portrait,[3] which I cannot look at without emotion,
tells us plainly what suffering Tolstoy was then enduring. It shows
him facing the camera; seated, with his arms crossed; he is wear-a
moujik's blouse. He looks overwhelmed. His hair is still black, but his
moustache is already grey, and his long beard and whiskers are quite
white. A double furrow traces symmetrical lines in the large, comely
face. There is so much goodness, such tenderness, in the great dog-like
muzzle, in the eyes that regard you with so frank, so clear, so
sorrowful a look. They read your mind so surely! They pity and implore.
The face is furrowed and bears traces of suffering; there are heavy
creases beneath the eyes. He has wept. But he is strong, and ready for
the fight.
His logic was heroic:
"I am always astonished by these words, so often repeated: 'Yes, it is
well enough in theory, but how would it be in practice?' As if theory
consisted in pretty words, necessary for conversation, and was not in
the least something to which practice should conform! When I come to
understand a matter on which I have reflected, I cannot do otherwise
than as I have understood."[4]
He begins by describing, with photographic exactitude, the poverty of
Moscow as he has seen it in the course of his visits to the poorer
quarters or the night-shelters.[5]
He is convinced that money is not the power, as he had at first
supposed, which will save these unhappy creatures, all more or less
tainted by the corruption of the cities. Then he seeks bravely for the
source of the evil; unwinding link upon link of the terrible chain
of responsibility. First come the rich, with the contagion of their
accursed luxury, which entices and depraves the soul.[6] Then comes
the universal seduction of life without labour. Then the State, that
murderous entity, created by the violent in order that they might for
their own profit despoil and enslave the rest of humanity. Then the
Church, an accomplice; science and art, accomplices. How is a man to
oppose this army of evil? In the first place, by refusing to join it.
By refusing to share in the exploitation of humanity. By renouncing
wealth and ownership of the soil,[7] and by refusing to serve the State.
But this is not sufficient. One "must not lie," nor be afraid of the
truth. One "must repent," and uproot the pride that is implanted by
education. Finally, one must work with one's hands. _"Thou shalt win
thy bread in the sweat of thy brow"_ is the first commandment and the
most essential.[8] And Tolstoy, replying in advance to the ridicule of
the elect, maintains that physical labour does not in any way decrease
the energy of the intellect; but that, on the contrary, it increases
it, and that it responds to the normal demand of nature. Health can
only gain thereby; art will gain even more. But what is more important
still, it will re-establish the union of man with man.
In his subsequent works, Tolstoy was to complete these precepts of
moral hygiene. He was anxious to achieve the cure of the soul, to
replenish its energy, by proscribing the vicious pleasures which deaden
the conscience[9] and the cruel pleasures which kill it.[10] He himself
set the example. In 1884, he sacrificed his most deeply rooted passion:
his love of the chase.[11] He practised abstinence, which strengthens
the will. So an athlete may subject himself to some painful discipline
that he may grapple with it and conquer.
_What shall we do?_ marks the first stage of the difficult journey
upon which Tolstoy was about to embark, quitting the relative peace of
religious meditation for the social maëlstrom. It was then that the
twenty years' war commenced which the old prophet of Yasnaya Polyana
waged in the name of the Gospel, single-handed, outside the limits of
all parties, and condemning all; a war upon the crimes and lies of
civilisation.
[1] "I had hitherto passed my whole life away from the city." (_What
shall we do?_)
[2] Tolstoy has many times expressed his antipathy for the "ascetics,
who live for themselves only, apart from their fellows." He puts them
in the same class as the conceited and ignorant revolutionists, "who
pretend to do good to others without knowing what it is that they
themselves need .... I love these two categories of men with the same
love, but I hate their doctrines with the same hate. The only doctrine
is that which orders a constant activity, an existence which responds
to the aspirations of the soul and endeavours to realise the happiness
of others. Such is the Christian doctrine. Equally remote from
religious quietism and the arrogant pretensions of the revolutionists,
who seek to transform the world without knowing in what real happiness
consists." (Letters to a friend, published in the volume entitled
_Cruel Pleasures,_ 1895.)
[3] A daguerreotype of 1885, reproduced in _What shall we do?_ in the
complete French edition.
[4] _What shall we do?_
[5] All the first part of the book (the first fifteen chapters).
[6] "The true cause of poverty is the accumulation of riches in the
hands of those who do not produce, and are concentrated in the cities.
The wealthy classes are gathered together in the cities in order to
enjoy and to defend themselves. And the poor man comes to feed upon the
crumbs of the rich. He is drawn thither by the snare of easy gain: by
peddling, begging, swindling, or in the service of immorality."
[7] "The pivot of the evil is property. Property is merely the means
cf enjoying the labour of others." Property, he says again, is that
which is not ours: it represents other people. "Man calls his wife, his
children, his slaves, his goods his property, but reality shows him his
error; and he must renounce his property or suffer and cause others to
suffer."
Tolstoy was already urging the Russian revolution: "For three or four
years now men have cursed us on the highway and called us sluggards
and skulkers. The hatred and contempt of the downtrodden people are
becoming more intense." (_What shall we do?_)
[8] The peasant-revolutionist Bondarev would have had this law
recognised as a universal obligation. Tolstoy was then subject to his
influence, as also to that of another peasant, Sutayev.--"During the
whole of my life two Russian thinkers have had a great moral influence
over me, have enriched my mind, and have elucidated for me my own
conception of the world. They were two peasants, Sutayev and Bondarev."
(_What shall we do?_)
In the same book Tolstoy gives us a portrait of Sutayev, and records a
conversation with him.
[9] _Vicious Pleasures,_ or in the French translation _Alcohol and
Tobacco,_ 1895.
[10] _Cruel Pleasures_ (_the Meat-eaters; War; Hunting_), 1895.
[11] The sacrifice was difficult; the passion inherited. He was not
sentimental; he never felt much pity for animals. For him all things
fell into three planes: "1. Reasoning beings; 2. animals and plants;
3. inanimate matter." He was not without a trace of native cruelty. He
relates the pleasure he felt in watching the struggles of a wolf which
he killed. Remorse was of later growth.