第12章 INTRODUCTION(12)

The mettle tried and proved at Sebastopol sus-tained him when he had drawn on himself the bitter animosity of "Holy Synod" and the relent-less anger of Czardom. In spite of his non-resistance doctrine, Tolstoy's courage was not of the passive order. It was his natural bent to rouse his foes to combat, rather than wait for their attack, to put on the defensive every false-hood and every wrong of which he was cognisant.

Truth in himself and in others was what he most desired, and that to which he strove at all costs to attain. He was his own severest critic, weigh-ing his own actions, analysing his own thoughts, and baring himself to the eyes of the world with unflinching candour. Greatest of autobiogra-phers, he extenuates nothing: you see the whole man with his worst faults and best qualities; weak-nesses accentuated by the energy with which they are charactered, apparent waste of mental forces bent on solving the insoluble, inherited tastes and prejudices, altruistic impulses and virile passions, egoism and idealism, all strangely mingled and continually warring against each other, until from the death-throes of spiritual conflict issued a new birth and a new life. In the ancient Scripture "God is love" Tolstoy discerned fresh meaning, and strove with superhuman energy to bring home that meaning to the world at large. His doctrine in fact appears less as a new light in the darkness than as a revival of the pure flame of "the Mystic of the Galilean hills," whose teaching he accepted while denying His divinity.

Of Tolstoy's beliefs in regard to the Christian religion it may be said that with advancing years he became more and more disposed to regard religious truth as one continuous stream of spirit-ual thought flowing through the ages of man's history, emanating principally from the inspired prophets and seers of Israel, India, and China.

Finally, in 1909, in a letter to a friend he summed up his conviction in the following words:--"For me the doctrine of Jesus is simply one of those beautiful religious doctrines which we have received from Egyptian, Jewish, Hindoo, Chi-nese, and Greek antiquity. The two great prin-ciples of Jesus: love of God--in a word absolute perfection--and love of one's neighbour, that is to say, love of all men without distinction, have been preached by all the sages of the world--Krishna, Buddha, Lao-tse, Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and among the moderns, Rousseau, Pascal, Kant, Emerson, Channing, and many others. Religious and moral truth is everywhere and always the same. I have no predilection whatever for Christianity.

If I have been particularly interested in the doc-trine of Jesus it is, firstly, because I was born in that religion and have lived among Christians; secondly, because I have found a great spiritual joy in freeing the doctrine in its purity from the astounding falsifications. wrought by the Churches."