forget that killing, robbery, and plunder are sins. If people only came
to their senses they could no longer do these things; for nineteen
hundred years of Christianity, however falsified, leave their trail in
the consciousness of man, and make it impossible for him to rage like
the heathen. But everything is done to suppress religion. Our upper
classes have already completely lost religious consciousness. They
either say 'Away with this nonsense!' and become gross materialists, or
they remain orthodox and do not themselves know what they
believe--stupid stuff about the world's being created in six days and
lasting only six thousand years. This trash, which is taught the people
as religion--that is to say, belief in the schools--is just as much a
means of hindering religion as a superficial knowledge of science. Yet
religion alone can free us from our evils, from war and violence, and
bring men together again. Religion is at present in a latent condition
in every one, and needs only to be developed. And this religion is the
same for all, for the native religious consciousness is quite the same
in all men. But the churches prevent this unity, and bury this religious
consciousness under forms and dogmas which produce a sort of
stupefaction instead of satisfying the religious hunger."
I repeated the amusing remark of the Cossack colonel of Tula, that
Tolstoï was a great man, only that it was a pity that he was an atheist.
The poet laughed, with something like pain in the laugh.
"There is always a certain amount of truth in which people believe, only
it is misunderstood. To that good Cossack faith and orthodoxy are
identical. My own sister, who is in a convent, laments that her brother
asserts that the Gospel is the worst book that has ever been written.
The truth is that I made this assertion about the legends of the saints,
but it is misquoted. The authorities know what I think of the Gospel.
They have even struck out of the Sermon on the Mount two verses which I
put into an alphabet for the people."
"Who struck them out?" I asked.
"The censor, to be sure. An orthodox Christian censorship strikes out of
the Sermon on the Mount two verses which do not suit it. This is called
Christianity."
The authorities give the Tolstoï family the greatest difficulty in its
work of educating the people. The village school was suppressed, because
reading and writing were taught there and not orthodoxy. The instruction
which the Countess Sasha now gives is quite unsystematic. Five children
come to her at the old manor, and are taught the black arts of reading,
writing, arithmetic, and manual training, in constant danger that some
high authority will interfere to ward off this injury to the state.
"It is quite probable that we shall all be officially disciplined when
my father is no longer living," the Countess Sasha said to us, with that
calmness with which every one in Russia sacrifices himself to his
convictions.
There was nothing pastoral, likewise nothing exalted, in Tolstoï's
manner during this conversation. After finishing his luncheon he rose
and walked up and down the long dining-room with me, both hands in his
belt, as he is painted by Ryepin. He spoke conversationally, with no
especial emphasis on any word, as to one whom there is no need of
convincing. It was the afternoon conversation of an intelligent country
gentleman with his guest--the easy, matter-of-course talking in a minute
of resting--talk that is not meant to go deep or to philosophize. To me
it proved only the lively interest taken by Tolstoï in all the events of
the day. He was not at all the hermit, merely preparing himself by holy
deeds for heavenly glory, but an alert, vigorous, elderly man who
watches events without eagerness or passion, yet with sufficient
sympathy--an apostle unanointed, literally or figuratively.
A half-hour's siesta was a necessity after the night spent in travel and
the excitements of the morning. We rested, as did the whole house, in
which at this time there was scarcely a sound. I do not know whether
such stillness reigns in summer in the park, which now lay buried deep
in snow. The house is very quiet now because it has become too large for
the remaining occupants. A whole suite of simply furnished rooms on the
ground floor stands entirely empty, and is awakened to life only when
the married children come to visit. In the first floor, also, where the
study and reception-room are, everything has become too large. After we
had settled for our nap we heard only the click of the typewriter, on
which the Countess Sasha was copying the manuscript her father had
written in the morning, and the low song with which she accompanied her
work. Then the house awoke again. The count was about to take his ride.
A fine black horse was led to the door, and the old count descended the
stairs with his light, quick step. He now had the Russian shawl around
his neck and a broad woollen scarf belted about his body. He drew on his
high felt overshoes and thick mittens, put the lambskin cap on his head,
seized his riding-whip, and went out. A strange muzhik was waiting for
him before the door. He had come from a distance to lay his case before
the count. Tolstoï listened to him, questioned him, and then called the
servant. As he was not at hand, the count asked me to tell him to give
the muzhik some money. Then a foot in the stirrup, and, with the swing
of a youth, the man of seventy-five seated himself in the saddle. It is
easy to see, even now, that he must once have been a notable horseman
and athlete. For, though strength of passion abates in an elderly man,
he who has once had muscular training does not lose the effects of it.
With a nod of the head the rider rapidly disappeared in the lane that
leads to the main road. It was already growing dark when he returned,
chilled through, and now noticeably altered. The cold had pinched his
face; his eyelids were slightly reddened; eyebrows, mustache, and beard
were thickly frosted. The change was only superficial, however. An hour
later he was more fresh and vigorous than before, held himself erect,
and spoke with ever-increasing animation.
We, however, spent the afternoon in a walk in the village with the
Countess Sasha. We had accepted her invitation with pleasure. She now
appeared, humming, in a lively mood, slipped on a light gray Circassian
mantle and her little high overshoes, wound a long, red scarf about her,
and put a gray Circassian cap on her thick hair. Nothing was ever more
beautiful than this creature, so full of health and strength. She took a
stout stick from the wall for protection from dogs, and then led us out
into the deep snow, in which only a narrow path was trodden.
Even the deepest reverence does not require uncritical adoration.
Moreover, Tolstoï is of such phenomenal importance for us all that the
narrator who can communicate his own perceptions is bound to reproduce
them with the most absolute fidelity. Therefore, I believe I ought not
to conceal the thoughts which refused to leave me during the walk
through this village. I had to admire once more the deep humanity of the
Tolstoïs when I saw the Countess Sasha, in her beauty and purity, go
into the damp, dirty hovels of the peasants, and caress the ragged and
filthy children, just as Katyusha, in _The Resurrection_, kissed a
deformed beggar on the mouth in Easter greeting after the Easter mass.
This absolute Christian brotherliness receives expression also in the
whole attitude of the family. Countess Sasha says, quite in the spirit
of her father: "The industrious peasant stands much higher morally than
we who own the land and do not work it. Otherwise he differs in no way
from us in his virtues and vices." This brotherliness, however, has this
shortcoming, that it leaves the brother where it finds him, and does not
compel him to conform to different and more refined ways of living. The
Tolstoï family teaches the village children. It has established a little
clinic in the village. But it does not make its influence felt in
teaching the villagers personal cleanliness, taking, say, the German
colonists in the south as a model. I cannot conceive of the peasants of
Yasnaya Polyana looking as they would if the landlord were an English or
Dutch philanthropist instead of a Russian; and I cannot believe, either,
that the simplicity of manners or the warmth of brotherly love would
suffer if the village looked, for instance, like those of the Moravians,
which shine with cleanliness. To be sure, the count refrains from any
pressure on the people about him, and if his muzhik feels better
unwashed, as his fathers were before him, and prefers a dirty, unaired
room, shared with the dear cattle, to one in which he would have to take
off his shoes to prevent soiling the floor, the count will not exhort
him to change into a Swabian or a Dutchman. Æsthetic demands do not form
any part of the Tolstoï view of life--I believe that for this reason it
will find slow acceptance in the West.
There is the meekness and "lowliness" of early Christianity, there is
an anti-Hellenic principle in the village dirt of Yasnaya Polyana. It is
true that Hellenism leads in its final outcome to the abominable
"Herrenmenschenthüm"[14] of Nietzsche, to Nero's hatred of the "many too
many." A predominant æsthetic valuation of the good things of life leads
in a negative way to the immoral in conduct. Every final consequence,
however--that is, every extreme--is absurd; even absolute spirituality,
indifferent to all outward things, as well as the heartless cult of mere
external beauty. If we may learn from the muzhik patience in misfortune,
we have also something to offer him in return for this in ideas of how
to care for the body and of æsthetically refined ways of living. But Leo
Tolstoï is an enemy of all compromise, and perhaps must be so. If the
impulse towards the spiritualizing of our life, towards brotherly
kindness and holiness, which goes out from him, is to work in its full
force, it must be free from any foreign admixture, at least in him, its
source. In the actual world counteracting forces are not wanting,
moreover, and in some way the balance is always struck. The synthesis of
Nietzsche and Tolstoï is really not so very hard to find. It was given
long ago in the "kaho-kayadin" (beauty and goodness) of the ancients as
well as in the rightly understood conception of the gentleman. If
Tolstoï's human ideal wears the form of the muzhik and flatly rejects
every concession to the claims of an æsthetic culture, the fact leads
back ultimately to the repulsion which the St. Petersburg type of
civilization must awaken in every unspoiled mind. One perceives there
that luxury cannot uplift man. Indeed, it is easy to come to the Tolstoï
conviction that it ruins instead of ennobling him. An isolated thinker
like Tolstoï reaches in this revulsion very extreme consequences. In any
case the bodily uncleanness of the peasants is less unpleasant to him
and his daughter than the moral impurity of the town dwellers. The dirt
of the peasants is for him nature, like the clinging clay of the field.
Suppressing our thoughts, we followed our brave guide into the houses of
the village. With a few blows of her stick she put to flight the
snarling curs that stood in her way. In the first house there was great
wretchedness. The muzhik lay sick on the oven, beside him a stunted,
hunchback child. The wife sat at the loom, surrounded by a heap of other
children, flaxen-haired and unspeakably filthy. Half a dozen lambs
shared the room and its frightful air with the peasants, sick and well.
The young countess had a friendly word for each. One of the children was
a pupil of hers, and was at that very time working at her writing
lesson. This, of course, was praised. There was, however, something
obsequiously cringing about the peasant woman I did not like. It was
all quite different in the next house, which belonged to a rich muzhik.
He likewise lay on the oven. The room was lighter, thanks to a larger
window, but the floor was equally dirty, and the inevitable lambs were
pushing each other about in the straw in the same way. At our entrance
the muzhik awoke and got up. His mighty brown beard almost covered his
breast, which showed through his open shirt, and was covered with a
thick crust. This peasant, however, read the paper, spoke of the war,
and put a very interesting question. A little while before the Countess
Sasha had been at his house with Bryan, who had visited her father. The
muzhik and his visitor had become rather friendly. Now the muzhik read
in the paper that the Americans are enemies of Russia. How about his
friend Bryan? The countess, therefore, had to tell him whether Bryan had
now become his personal enemy. She reassured him, laughing. The peasant
woman accompanied us out of the house, and made the characteristic
speech: "I am ashamed; we live here like pigs; but what is any one to
do? We are so, and can't help it!"
In the same house is the little village hospital, which for the present
is only a movable affair. This is kept really clean. The amount of
illness is large. The peasants from the surrounding country come also,
and the doctor often has to treat forty patients in a single office
hour. He is said to be an able man and a good one--a matter of course
in Tolstoï's vicinity. Whether one wishes it or not, one is drawn out
here in the atmosphere of pure kindliness. When I came back from the
village I was almost ashamed that I had held my breath in the peasant's
room.
FOOTNOTE:
[14] The theory that the elect few alone deserve to live and that the
masses are superfluous.
XXX
A VISIT TO TOLSTOÏ--_CONTINUED_
At six o'clock we were summoned to dinner, at which the count appeared.
As entrée there were baked fish--for the count, rice cutlets--then a
roast and vegetables, of which the count took only the latter; then
dessert and black coffee. We drank kvass, later tea, with cakes.
Everything was very well prepared. A man-servant waited at table. It is
by no means petty to tell all this. The Tolstoïs do not live on locusts
and wild honey, but like other good families in Russia. We have, thank
Heaven, outgrown the days when genius had to assert itself by
extravagant conduct. Brilliant originality is entirely compatible with
conformity to custom in all every-day usages, according to our way of
thinking. Conversely, all originality immediately becomes suspicious in
our eyes when it labors to assert itself in trifles. "A wise man behaves
like other people." The individuality of Tolstoï shows in no way the
stamp of the idle wish to differentiate itself in each and every
particular from other people.
No one will expect me to reproduce every detail of the conversation,
which began at dinner and ended almost six hours later at the house
door. I certainly have not forgotten a word of it, but I cannot answer
for the order of succession of subjects, nor even for every expression
and every turn of speech. I therefore reconstruct from memory only what
seems to me the most important, and ask every indulgence for this
report. It is as faithful as is possible to human inadequacy after such
fatigues and excitements, and with rather tardy notes.
"I am now under the influence of two Germans," began the count. "I am
reading Kant and Lichtenberg--selections, to be sure, for I do not
possess an original edition. I am fascinated by the clearness and grace
of their style, and in particular by Lichtenberg's keen wit."
"Goethe says, 'When Lichtenberg makes a jest, a whole system is hidden
behind it,'" I threw in.
"I do not understand how the Germans of to-day can so neglect their
writer and go so mad over a coquettish feuilletonist like Nietzsche. He
is no philosopher, and has no honest purpose of seeking and speaking the
truth."
"But he has an unprecedented polish of style, and an endless amount of
temperament."
"Schopenhauer seems to me greater as a stylist. Still, I agree with you
that he has a glittering polish, though it is only the facile grace of
the feuilletonist, which does not entitle him to a place among the great
thinkers and teachers of humanity."
"He flatters, however, the aristocratic instincts of the new-Germans,
who have attained power and honor, and he works against the evils of
socialism."
"What is the condition of socialism in Germany?" asked the count,
immediately, with great interest.
"I fear it has lost in depth and strength what it has gained in
breadth."
"You may be right," he answered. "I have the same impression. The belief
in its invincibility is broken, and its internal strength of conviction
begins to weaken. It had to be so. Socialism cannot free humanity. No
system and no doctrine can do that--nothing but religion."
"The Church says that, too."
"But she teaches it falsely. What is religion? The striving of each
individual soul towards perfection; the subordination to an ideal. As
long as a man has that he feels a purpose in life, can endure all
sufferings, and is capable of any strain. It does not need necessarily
to be a lofty ideal. A man may have an ambition to develop his biceps to
an uncommon degree. If he takes this as his particular purpose in life
this aim carries him along completely. To be sure, a man's choice of an
ideal can be only apparently capricious. In reality we are all products
of our environment; and after nineteen hundred years of Christianity we
cannot with any true conviction set up ideals which contradict the real
Christianity. We can make ourselves believe something else for a while.
But the conscience will not submit to be silenced. Peace is attained
only by the religious ideal of perfection and of love of humanity.
Nothing is deadly except cynicism and nihilism."
"I remember your metaphor, comparing a society without religion or moral
enthusiasm to an orchestra that has lost its leader. It keeps in time
for a while, then come the discords."
"We are now in the first measure after his departure. All will go well
for a while, but then every one will get out of time; the leaders first,
because they are most exposed to temptation; then, class by class, the
lower ones also."
"I believe a state is like a magnet, in which every smallest particle
must have its direction, or else the whole loses its strength and
cohesion."
"Exactly. A state or a society, like the individual, is fit for life
only so long as it feels as a whole a reason for being. This life
principle of totality is, however, identical with the idea of the
individual. It is the stream that encircles each particle and brings it
into polarity."
"People try to reach it by the ideal of nationalism and patriotism."
"That is no ideal. It is an absurd idea, which immediately comes into
irreconcilable conflict with our better feelings. An ideal that can and
does require me to kill my neighbor in order to gain an advantage for
the group to which I belong is criminal."
"Yet it is dangerous to stand out against it. You had a controversy on
that point with Spielhagen, who cast it up to you that you incline
people to fling themselves under the wheels of a flying express-train."
"I remember. But Spielhagen does not know how many people already comply
with the requirements of the gospel. The Doukhobors are such people."
"But they were obliged to leave the country."
"What difference does that make? They were able to remain true to
themselves. That is better than remaining at home. And when we have once
changed education, and have taken the sinful glorification of deeds of
murder out of the hands of our children, then there will be not merely
thousands, but millions, who will refuse to sacrifice themselves, or
have themselves murdered for the ambition or the material advantage of a
few individuals. And then this chapter of world-history will end."
"But the school is a matter of politics, and the state or the
influential classes will be careful not to permit an education that will
make their lower classes unavailable for purposes of war."
"Certainly. And as long as there is a church which by its fundamental
teaching delivers itself over as an assistant to the state, and which
blesses weapons of murder, so long will it be hard to fight against the
evil instincts thus aroused. But school, of course, does not end man's
education. Later reading is much more important. We have, therefore,
created something that might well be imitated abroad also, our
'Posrednik,' books for the people. The thing that suppresses bad reading
among the people is good books, especially stories. The books are sold
very cheaply. Our artists design frontispieces for them. You must look
at them in Moscow. I will give you a letter to the publisher, my friend
Ivan Ivanovitch Gorbunov, who can tell you the details."
He did so. With his kind letter I afterwards looked up Gorbunov in
Moscow. Under the pressure of the Russian censorship he accomplishes the
immense work of spreading among the people every year several million
good books at a cost of a few kopeks each, without having needed to add
to his original capital of thirty thousand rubles. I fulfil a duty, and
at the same time a wish of Tolstoï's, in here calling attention most
emphatically to this magnificent Russian enterprise, which should be an
example for all other nations.
I took up the subject of socialism again, and said, "In the West, Social
Democracy is trying to solve the problem of educating the masses and to
emancipate them."
"This is certainly meritorious," replied the count. "The mistake lies in
the teaching of the Social Democrats that some other organization of
society will automatically abolish evil from the world. The principal
thing, however, is always to raise the individual to better morals and
better ways of thinking. Without this no system can be permanent. Each
leads only to new violence. People ought not to wish to better the
world, but to better themselves."
"In that you agree essentially with our Moderns, who likewise take a
stand against socialism and preach an extreme individualism. I see in
that only a reactionary manoeuvre, however."
"How so?" asked the count.
"I believe that all wars for culture are always fought in a small class
of thinking people. For the masses, provision for material needs is
really the principal thing. In the thinking class, however, there are
two parties: one, consisting of the feudalists, the plutocrats, and
university-bred business men, fortune-hunters, seeks for itself the
privilege of exploiting others; the other consists of the idealists, who
desire progress--that is, the education and freeing of the masses.
Sometimes the one class, with its aristocratic philosophy of profit,
wins the upper hand, sometimes the other. We do not yet know in what
Hellenic or Sidonian laws the spiritual ebb and flow will find its
consummation. It is certain, however, that each party uses as a means of
attraction the declaration that its point of view is the more
progressive and that the opposite is the losing side. The
individualists, in their scorn of socialism, render the most valuable
service towards fundamental and complete reaction to the
aristocratic-plutocratic party of exploitation, because they spread
confusion in the ranks of the idealists by discrediting their
solidarity. Nevertheless, they call themselves "the Moderns," and dub
the advocates of solidarity 'old fogies.' The most modern thing in the
West is a vile cult of the Uebermensch (over-man) Renaissance
sentimentalism and the cult of beauty in bearing--æsthetic snobism."
"All that originates with Nietzsche. The mistake, however, does not lie
in the principle of individualism, which does not exclude solidarity,
but, on the contrary, advances it. For the individual unquestionably
attains solidarity in the very struggle towards his own perfection. The
mistake lies in the æstheticism, in the basing of life on externals and
on enjoyment. Connected with this is the strangest thing of all, that
this resurrection of the madness of the Renaissance has not made use of
art. For all that is produced is nothing but pure silliness. I have not
laughed so much for years as at an entirely serious account of the
contents of _Mona Vanna_, or at the poems which our æsthete and decadent
Balmont read to me. None of those things are to be taken seriously as
art. They will only confuse people through their absurdity, which could
not exist if the healthy human understanding had not been brought into
discredit. It is no better with you in Germany. Why is your literary
product so low?"