III

I will permit myself to remind the reader of Tolstoi's letter to his

son, lately published by the latter in the newspapers. It is very

interesting. Once more, not from the standpoint of the practical man

who has to decide the questions of the day--from this standpoint

Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and their similars are quite useless--but man does

not live by bread alone.

Even now in the terrible days through which we have to live, now, if

you will, more than ever before, one cannot read newspapers alone, nor

think only of the awful surprises which to-morrow prepares for us. To

every one is left an hour of leisure between the reading of newspapers

and party programmes, if it be not an hour in the day when the noise

of events and the pressure of immediate work distracts, then an hour

in the deep night, when everything that was possible has been already

done, and everything that was required has been said. Then come flying

in the old thoughts and questions, frightened away by business, and

for the thousandth time one returns to the mystery of human genius and

human greatness. Where and how far can genius know and accomplish more

than ordinary men?

Then Tolstoi's letter, which during the day aroused only anger and

indignation,--is it not outrageous and revolting, think some, that

in the great collision of forces which contend with one another in

Russia, Tolstoi cannot distinguish the right force from the wrong, but

stigmatises all the struggling combatants by the one name of ungodly?

During the day, I say, it is surely outrageous: in the daytime we would

like Tolstoi to be with us and for us, because we are convinced that

we and we alone are seeking the truth,--nay, that we know the truth,

while our enemies are defending evil and falsehood, whether in malice

or in ignorance. But this is during the day. In the night-time, things

are changed. One remembers that Goethe also overlooked, simply did not

notice, the great French Revolution. True, he was a German who lived

far from Paris, while Tolstoi lives close to Moscow, where men, women,

and children have been shot, cut down, and burnt alive. Moreover,

there is no doubt that Tolstoi has overlooked not merely Moscow, but

everything that went before Moscow. What is happening now does not seem

to him important or extraordinary. For him only that is important to

which he, Tolstoi, has set his hand: all that occurs outside and beside

him, for him has no existence. This is the great prerogative of great

men. And sometimes it seems to me--perhaps it is only that I would have

it seem so--as though there were in that prerogative a deep and hidden

meaning.

When we have no more strength in us to listen to the endless tales

of horrible atrocities which have already been committed, and to

anticipate in imagination all that the future holds in store for us,

then we recall Tolstoi and his indifference. It is not in our human

power to return the murdered fathers and mothers to the children nor

the children to their fathers and mothers. Nor stands it even in our

power to revenge ourselves upon the murderers, nor will vengeance

reconcile every one to his loss. And we try no longer to think with

logic, and to seek a justification of the horrors there where there is

and can be none. What if we ask ourselves whether Tolstoi and Goethe

did not sec the Revolution and did not suffer its pain, only because

they saw something else, something, it may even be, more necessary and

important? Maybe there are indeed more things in heaven and earth than

are dreamed of in our philosophy.

Now we may return to Dostoevsky and his 'ideas'; we may call them

fearlessly by the names which they deserve, for though Dostoevsky is

a writer of genius, this does not mean that we must forget our daily

needs. The night and the day have each their rights. Dostoevsky wanted

to be a prophet, he wanted people to listen to him and cry 'Hosanna!'

because, I say again, he thought that if men had ever cried 'Hosanna!'

to any one, then there was no reason why he, Dostoevsky, should be

denied the honour. That is the reason why in the 'seventies he made his

appearance in the new rôle of a preacher of Christianity, and not of

Christianity merely, but of orthodoxy.

Again, I would draw attention to the far from accidental circumstances

that his preaching coincided with the 'serenest' period of his life. He

who had in time past been a homeless wanderer, a poor man who had not

where to lay his head, had provided himself with a family and a house

of his own, even with money (for his wife was saving). The failure

had become a celebrity; the convict a full citizen. The underworld,

where-into his fate had but lately driven him, it might seem for ever,

now appeared to him a phantasmagoria which never had been real. In the

galleys and the underworld had been born within him a great hunger for

God which lived long; there he fought a great fight, the fight of life

against death; there for the first time were made the new and awful

experiments which allied Dostoevsky with everything that is rebellious

and restless on earth. What Dostoevsky wrote during the closing years

of his life (not merely _The Journal of an Author,_ but _The Brothers

Karamazov_ as well) has value only in so far as Dostoevsky's _past_

is reflected therein. He made no new step onwards. As he was, so he

remained, on the eve of a great truth. But in the old days that did

not suffice him, he hungered for something beyond; but now he does not

want to struggle, and he cannot explain to himself or to others what is

really happening within him. He pretends to be struggling still, nay,

more, he behaves as though he had won the final victory, and demands

that his triumph should be acknowledged by public opinion. He loves to

think that the night is already past and the actual day begun: and the

galleys and the underworld, reminding him that the day is not yet, are

no more. All the evidences of a complete illusion of victory seem to

be there--let him only choose the text and preach! Dostoevsky clutched

at orthodoxy. Why not Christianity? Because Christianity is not for

him who has a house, a family, money, fame, and a father-land. Christ

said: 'Let him leave all that he hath and follow me.' But Dostoevsky

was afraid of solitude, he desired to be the prophet of modern, settled

men to whom pure Christianity, unadapted to the needs of civilised

existence in a governed state, is unfitted. How should a Christian

seize Constantinople, drive out the Tartars from the Crimea, reduce

all Slavs to the condition of the Poles, and the rest--for all the

projects of Dostoevsky and the _Moscow Gazette_ defy enumeration? So,

before accepting the Gospel, he must explain it....

However strange it may appear, it must be confessed that one cannot

find in the whole of literature a single man who is prepared to accept

the Gospel as a whole, without interpretation. One man wants to seize

Constantinople according to the Gospel, another to justify the existing

order, a third to exalt himself or to thrust down his enemy; and each

considers it as his right to diminish from, or even to supplement,

the text of Holy Writ. I have, of course, only those in view who

acknowledge, at least in word, the divine origin of the New Testament;

since he who sees in the Gospel only one of the more or less remarkable

books of his library, naturally has the right to subject it to whatever

critical operations he may choose.

But here we have Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Vladimir Soloviev. It is

generally believed, and the belief is particularly supported and

developed by the most recent criticism, that Tolstoi alone rationalised

Christianity, while Dostoevsky and Soloviev accepted it in all the

fullness of its mysticism, denying reason the right to separate

truth from falsehood in the Gospel. I consider this belief mistaken:

for Dostoevsky and Soloviev were afraid to accept the Gospel as the

fountain of knowledge, and relied much more upon their own reason and

their experience of life than upon the words of Christ. But, if there

was a man among us who, though but in part, took the risk of accepting

the mysterious and obviously dangerous words of the Gospel precepts,

that man was Leo Tolstoi. I will explain myself.

We are told that Tolstoi made the attempt, in his works published

abroad, to explain the miracles of the Gospel in a way intelligible

to human reason. Dostoevsky and Soloviev, on the other hand, readily

accepted the inexplicable. But generally the miracles of the Gospel

attract the people who believe least, for it is impossible to repeat

the miracles, and this being so, then it follows that a merely external

faith is sufficient, a mere verbal assertion. A man says that he

believes in miracles: 'his reputation as a religious man is made, both

in his own mind and in others', and as for the rest of the Gospel,

there remains 'interpretation.' Consider, for instance, the doctrine

of non-resistance to evil. It need not be said that the doctrine of

non-resistance is the most terrible, and the most irrational, and

mysterious thing that we read in the Gospel. All our reasoning soul is

indignant at the thought that full material freedom should be given

to the murderer to accomplish his murderous acts. How can you allow a

murderer to kill an innocent child before your very eyes, and yet not

draw the sword? Who has the right to give that abominable precept?

Soloviev[3] and Dostoevsky alike repeat that question, the one in a

disguised, the other in an open attack on Tolstoi. Yet since the

Gospel plainly declares 'Resist not evil,' both of our believers in

miracles have suddenly remembered reason and turned to its testimony,

knowing that reason will naturally destroy any meaning whatever that

may be in the precept. In other words, they repeat the question of

the doubting Jews concerning Christ: 'Who is He that speaketh as one

having authority?' God commanded Abraham that he should offer up his

son. By his reason, his human reason, Abraham refused to acknowledge

any intelligible meaning in the cruel command, but yet made ready to

act according to the word of God and made no attempt to rid himself

of the hard and inhuman obligation by cunning interpretation. But

Dostoevsky and Soloviev refuse to fulfil Christ's demands so soon as

they find no justification in the human reason. Yet they say that they

believe that Lazarus was raised from the dead and that the man who

was sick of a palsy was cured, and all the other miracles which are

related by the Apostles. Why then does their belief end just at the

point where it begins to place obligations upon them? Why the sudden

recourse to reason, when we know exactly that Dostoevsky came to the

Gospels only to be rid of the power of reason? But that was in the

days of the underworld. Now the 'serene' period of his life has begun.

But Soloviev, evidently, had never even known the underworld. Only

Tolstoi boldly and resolutely tries to test the truth of the Christian

teaching, not in his thoughts alone, but in part in his life also.

From the human point of view it is mad to make no resistance to evil.

He knows that every whit as well as Dostoevsky, Soloviev and the rest

of his many opponents. But he is really seeking in the Gospels that

divine madness, since human reason does not satisfy him. Tolstoi began

to follow the Gospel in that clouded period of his life when he was

haunted by the phantoms of Ivan Ilyich and Pozdnyshiev. Here belief in

miracles, belief in the abstract, divorced from life, avails nothing.

For belief's sake one must surrender all that is dearest--even a

son--to the sacrifice. Who is He that spake as one having authority?

We cannot now verify whether He did in truth raise Lazarus from the

dead, or satisfy thousands with a few handfuls of loaves. But if we

unhesitatingly perform His precepts, then we may discover whether He

has given us the truth.... So it was with Tolstoi; and he turned to

the Gospel which is the sole and original source of Christianity.

But Dostoevsky turned to the Slavophiles and the teachings of their

state-religion. Orthodoxy infallible, not Catholicism nor Protestantism

nor even simple Christianity; and then, the original idea: _Russland,

Russland über alles._ Tolstoi could prophesy nothing in history, but

then, as if deliberately, he does not interfere with the historical

life. For him our present reality does not exist: he concentrates

himself wholly upon the riddle which God set Abraham. But Dostoevsky

desired at all costs to prophesy, prophesied constantly and was

constantly mistaken. We have not taken Constantinople, we have not

united the Slavs, and even the Tartars still live in the Crimea. He

terrified us by prophesying that Europe would be drenched in rivers

of blood because of the warfare between the classes, while in Russia,

thanks to our Russian ideal of universal humanity, not only would our

internal problems be peacefully solved, but a new unheard-of word would

still be found whereby we should save hapless Europe. A quarter of

a century has passed. So far nothing has happened in Europe. But we

are drowning ourselves, literally drowning ourselves, with blood. Not

only is our alien population oppressed, Slav and non-Slav alike, but

our own brother is tortured, the miserable starving Russian peasant

who understands nothing at all. In Moscow, in the heart of Russia,

women, children, and old men have been shot down. Where now is the

Russian universal soul of which Dostoevsky prophesied in his speech on

Pushkin? Where is love, where are the Christian precepts? We see only

'Governmentalism,' over which the Western nations also fought; but they

fought with means less cruel and less hostile to civilisation. Russia

will again have to learn from the West as she had to learn more than

once before. And Dostoevsky would have done far better had he never

attempted to prophesy.

But there is no great harm done even if he did prophesy. I am glad

with all my heart even now that he rested a little while from the

galleys at the end of his life. I am deeply convinced that even had he

remained in the underworld until the day of his death, yet he would

have found no solution of the questions which tormented him. However

much energy of soul a man puts into his work, he will still remain 'on

the eve' of truth, and will not find the solution he desires. That is

the law of human kind. And Dostoevsky's preaching has done no harm.

Those listened to him who, even without his voice, would have marched

on Constantinople, oppressed the Poles, and made ready the sufferings

which are necessary to the soul of the peasant. Though Dostoevsky gave

them his sanction, on the whole he adds nothing to them. They had no

need of literary sanction, quite correctly judging that in practical

matters not the printed page, but bayonets and artillery are of

deciding value.

All that he had to tell, Dostoevsky told us in his novels, which even

now, twenty-five years after his death, attract all those who would

wrest from life her secrets. And the title of prophet, which he sought

so diligently, considering that it was his by right, did not suit him

at all. Prophets are Bismarcks, but they are Chancellors too. The

first in the village is the first in Rome.... Is a Dostoevsky doomed

eternally to be 'on the eve'? Let us once more try to reject logic,

this time perhaps not logic alone, and say: 'So let it be.'

[Footnote 3: _War and Christianity,_ by Vladimir Soloviev.]