Berdyaev (original) (raw)

N. A. BERDYAEV (BERDIAEV)

THE OLD AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
IN THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS
OF L. TOLSTOY *

(1912 - #54)

About Lev Tolstoy they have written very much, [too much]. It is indicative perhaps of a fastidious desire to say something new about him. Yet all the same it mustneeds be acknowledged, that the religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy has not been subjected to sufficiently extensive an investigation. It was in essence considered of little value, independent of the utilitarian points of view, [from its usefulness for the aims of the liberal-radicals or the conservative-reactionaries]. Some with their utilitarian-tactical aims have praised L. Tolstoy, as a true Christian, while others, frequently from just the same sort of utilitarian-tactical aims have anathematised him, as being a servant of the Anti Christ. In such instances, Tolstoy is employed as a means for their own ends, and by this they have given insult to the genius of the man. His memory following his death, and his very death itself have been transformed into utilitarian tools. The life of L. Tolstoy, his searchings, his rebellious criticism -- has the appearance of something great, of world significance; it demands appreciation sub specie of eternal value, and not the mere usefulness of the moment. We desire, that the religion of L. Tolstoy be subjected to investigation irrespective of considerations about Tolstoy from the ruling circles and irrespective of the quarrel of the Russian Intelligentsia with the Church. We do not want, as do many of the Intelligentsia, to avow L. Tolstoy as a true Christian just because he was excommunicated from the Church by the Holy Synod, nor on the same basis do we want to see in Tolstoy [only] a servant of the devil. Of essential interest to us, was whether L. Tolstoy was Christian, what was his attitude towards Christ, and of what sort was the nature of his religious consciousness? For us both clerical utilitarianism and the utilitarianism of the Intelligentsia are alike alien to and alike distort the understanding and the evaluation of the religious consciousness of Tolstoy. From the extensive literature about L. Tolstoy there mustneeds be noted the remarkable and very valuable work of D. S. Merezhkovsky -- "L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky", in which were essentially the first investigations of the religious element and the religious consciousness of L. Tolstoy, dissecting the paganism of Tolstoy. True, Merezhkovsky has too much employed Tolstoy for the conveying of his own religious conceptualisation, [but this has not hindered him from speaking the truth about the religion of Tolstoy, which the more recent utilitarian-tactical articles of Merezhkovsky do not supplant.] (And sometimes, what he writes, reminds one of pamphlet form). The whole of the work of Merezhkovsky remains (almost) the sole one for evaluating the religion of Tolstoy. 1

First of all, it mustneeds be said about L. Tolstoy, that he -- had genius as an artist and genius as a person, but he did not have genius [nor even talent] as a religious thinker. For him there was no gift of expression in word, bespoken by its own religious life, of his religious searching. Within him stormed the religious element, but it was not for the verbal. The genius of religious experiencings, when without talent, are (often) banal religious thoughts! Every attempt of Tolstoy to express in word, to make logical his religious element, has begotten only [banal,] dull thoughts. Essentially the Tolstoy of the first period, before the turnaround, and the Tolstoy of the second period, after the turnaround, -- are one and the same Tolstoy. The worldview of the young Tolstoy was [banal] (mediocre), he wanted totally "to be, like everyone". The difference is but in this, that in the first period the "everyone" -- is the fashionable worldly society, and in the second period the "everyone" -- is the peasantry, the toiling people. And over the course of all his life and banal of thought, Tolstoy wanted to become assimilated either into the fashionable people or into the peasantry, yet not only was he not like everyone, but he was like no one, for he was unique, he was a genius. And always to this genius, the religion of the Logos and the philosophy of the Logos were foreign, always his religious element remained non-verbal, not expressible in word, in consciousness. L. Tolstoy is exceptionally original and a genius, but still he was (close to banality) also limited. In this, what demands notice is the antinomic in Tolstoy.

On one side, L. Tolstoy strikes one by his organic belonging to high society, by his exclusive belonging to the nobleman’s way of life. In his work, "Childhood, Boyhood and Youth", there are disclosed the formative sources upon L. Tolstoy, his social haughtiness, his ideal of man comme il faut. This was the leavening in Tolstoy. Up through the period of "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" it is evident, how close to his nature was the high-society tablature of ranks, the habits and biases of that social world, how he knew all the ins and outs of that particular world, and how difficult it seemed for him to surmount this element. He thirsted to go off from his social circle to nature ("The Cossacks"), as being a man too much caught up in this circle. In Tolstoy there is sensed all the oppressiveness of high society, of the nobility’s lifestyle, and all the power also of the vital law of the pull and attraction to the soil. In him there is nothing up in the air nor frivolous. He wants to be a wanderer and cannot become it until the final days of his life, chained down to his family, to his birth, to his manor-house, to his circle. On the other side is that Tolstoy, with an unprecedented power of negation and genius, and he rises up against the "world", not only in the narrow, but also in the broad sense of the word, against the godlessness and nihilism not only of all the nobility’s society, but also of all the "cultural" society. His mutinous critique passes over into a negation of all history, of all culture. He, -- from his childhood years is permeated by social vanity and convention, worshipping an ideal of "comme il fault" and "to be, like everyone", -- he did not know the mercy in the lie of the knout under which society lives, in the breakdown of the protections from all its conventions. Through Tolstoy’s negation the nobility, the worldly high society, had to move on, had to be cleansed. Tolstoy’s negation remains a great truth for this society. But here still is the Tolstoy antinomy. On the one side, one is struck by the peculiar materialism of Tolstoy, his apology for living life, his exclusive preoccupation with the life of the bodily emotion of soul and the alienness of spirit from his life. This materialism in life is sensed not only in his artistic creativity, where he reveals with an exceptional gift of genius his penetration into the primal elements of life, in the animate and vegetative processes of life, 2 but likewise also in his religio-moral preaching. L. Tolstoy preaches an exalted, moralistic materialism, an animal-vegetative happiness, as the realisation of the supreme, the Divine law of life. When he speaks about the happy life, there is not a single sound from him, that would hint at the spiritual life. There is only the soulific, the soul-bodily. And in this indeed Tolstoy renders himself an adherent of an extreme spirituality, he denies the flesh, he preaches asceticism. His religio-moral teachings seem something unprecedented and impossible, an exaltedly-moralistic and ascetic materialism, something on the order of a spiritualistic beastliness. His consciousness is occupied and delimited by the soulific-bodily plane of being and cannot break forth into the kingdom of spirit.

And still more the Tolstoy antinomy. L. Tolstoy always and in everything strikes one by his sobriety, rationality, practicality, utilitarianism, the absence of poetry and dreaminess, with a lack of understanding of beauty and a lack of love, passing over into a persecution of beauty. But this non-poetic, soberly-utilitarian persecutor of beauty was one of the greatest artists of the world; in the denial of beauty he has left us works of eternal beauty. Aesthetic barbarity and crudeness are united with artistic genius. No less antinomic is this also, that L. Tolstoy was an extreme individualist, anti-social so much, that he never understood the social forms of struggle with evil and the social forms of the creative building up of life and of culture. He denied history, and this anti-social individualist did not have a sense of personhood, essentially he denied personhood, and everything remained within this element of the race. We see further, that with the absence of the sense and consciousness of person, there was connected the deep-rooted peculiarities of his world-approach and his world-consciousness. (He was close to Buddhism). The extreme individualist in "War and Peace" with delight showed the world the childish diaper, smelly in its green and yellow, and he discovered, that the self-consciousness of person has not surmounted in him even the natal element. And is not this antinomic, that he negates the world and the world’s values with a singular audacity and radicalism -- this one who is all so chained down to the immanent world and cannot even in his imaginings propose himself a different world? Is it not antinomic, that a man, passionate and angry over a time when they had conducted a search of him on his property, going into a fit of rage and demanding that they report this matter to the sovereign, that he should be given a public apology, otherwise threatening to quit Russia forever, -- is it not antinomic that this man preached vegetarianism, and the less-bloody ideal of non-resistance to evil? Is it not antinomic, that a Russian to the marrow of his bones, with a national peasant-lordly face, is it not antinomic that he should preach an Anglo-Saxon religiosity alien to the Russian people? This genius of a man all his life sought the meaning of life, he thought about death, he knew not satisfaction, but all the same he was almost bereft of the sense and consciousness of the transcendent, he was delimited by the horizon of the immanent world. And finally, the most telling Tolstoy antinomy: a preacher of Christianity, concerned exclusively with the Gospel and the teaching of Christ, he was [before this] a stranger to the religion of Christ, [how little one could be a stranger -- after the appearance of Christ], and yet he was bereft of any sense of the Person of Christ. This is the striking and incomprehensible antinomy in L. Tolstoy, upon which insufficient attention has been turned; it is a mystery of the genius of his person, the mystery of his fate, which cannot fully be solved. The hypnosis of the Tolstoy simplicity, his almost Biblical style reveals this antinomic aspect, it creates the illusion of wholeness and clarity. L. Tolstoy was fated to play a great role in the religious rebirth of Russia and all the world: with the power of genius he turned contemporary people back again to religion and to the religious meaning of life, he traced out for it the crisis of historical Christianity, he -- was a weak and incapable religious thinker, in that his mindset and consciousness were alien to the mysteries of the religion of Christ, and he -- was a rationalist. This rationalist, this preacher of a rational-utilitarian felicity, demanded folly from the Christian world in the name of the consequent fulfilling of the teaching and commandments of Christ, and he compelled the Christian world to be pensive over its own un-Christian and hypocritical life filled with lies. He -- was a strange enemy of Christianity but also a precursor of Christian renewal. Upon the genius of person and life of L. Tolstoy there lies the seal of some sort of special mission.

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Lev Tolstoy’s world-sense and world-consciousness [is outside the Christian and pre-Christian during all the periods of his life. This mustneeds decidedly be stated, irrespective of any utilitarian considerations. His great genius obliges, first of all, that about him there be spoken essentially the truth.] (is more Buddhist, than it is Christian. It can likewise be said, that) for Lev Tolstoy everything was in the Old Testament, [in paganism,] in the Hypostasis of the Father. The religion of Tolstoy -- is not a new Christianity, it is an Old Testament and pre-Christian religion, precluding the Christian revelation about person, the revelation about the Second Hypostasis, the Hypostasis of the Son. For L. Tolstoy the self-consciousness of person is as strange, as it would be strange for a man of a pre-Christian epoch. He does not sense the uniqueness and unrepeatability of every person and the eternal mystery of their destiny. For him only the world soul exists, and not the separate person, he lives in the element of the human race, and not in the consciousness of the person. The racial element, the natural soul of the world was revealed in the Old Testament and in paganism, and with these was connected the religion of the pre-Christian revelation of the Hypostasis of the Father. But with the Christian revelation of the Hypostasis of the Son, of the Logos, of Person-ness, there is connected the self-consciousness of the person and its eternal destiny. Every person religiously dwells in the mystical atmosphere of the Hypostasis of the Son, of Christ, of Person-ness. Prior to Christ, in the deep and religious sense of the word, there is not yet person-ness. Person-ness ultimately is conscious of itself only in the religion of Christ. The tragedy of personal destiny is known only by the Christian epoch. L. Tolstoy is not at all aware of the Christian problem of the person, he does not see the person, for him the person sinks away into the natural soul of the world. And therefore too he neither senses nor sees the Person of Christ. For one who does not see any sort of person, that one also does not see the Person of Christ, since in Christ truly, in His Filial Hypostasis as Son, every person dwelleth and knoweth oneself. The very consciousness of the person is bound up with the Logos, and not with the soul of the world. For L. Tolstoy there is no Logos, and therefore there is for him no person-ness, for him -- there is only the individual. And in this context all are mere individuals, not knowing the Logos, they know not the person, their individualism is impersonal, and it dwells within the natural soul of the world. We see, how foreign the Logos was for Tolstoy, how foreign Christ was for him, he was not the enemy of Christ the Logos within the Christian epoch, he is simply blind and deaf, he is as it were in a pre-Christian epoch. L. Tolstoy -- is cosmic, he is entirely within the soul of the world, in created nature, he penetrates into the depth of its element, the primordial elements. In this is the power of Tolstoy as artist, an extraordinary power. And how distinct he is from Dostoevsky, who was anthropologic, who was entirely within the Logos, who attained to self-knowledge of person and its fate at the extreme limits, in sickness. With the anthropologicism of Dostoevsky, with his strained feel for the person and its tragedy, is connected his extraordinary feeling for the Person of Christ, his almost ecstatic love for the Person of Christ. With Dostoevsky there was an intimate relationship to Christ, with Tolstoy there was no sort of relationship to Christ, to Christ Himself. For Tolstoy there exists not Christ, but only the teachings of Christ, the commandments of Christ. The pagan Goethe sensed Christ [rather] more intimately, and [far] better did he perceive the Person of Christ, than did Tolstoy. The Person of Christ is obscured for L. Tolstoy as something impersonal, elemental, general. He hears the commandments of Christ, but he does not hear Christ Himself. He fails to understand, that the uniquely important is Christ Himself, and what saves is only His mysteried closeness to us. The Christian revelation about the Person of Christ and about every person is foreign, is alien to him. He accepts Christianity impersonally, abstractly, without Christ, as it were without a face to it.

L. Tolstoy, like no one ever before, thirsted to fulfill to the very end the will of the Father. All his life he was tormented by a burning thirst to fulfill the law of life of the Master, thus in his life glorifying Him. (He had a troubling sense of guilt and a troubling thirst for truth.) Such a thirst for the fulfilling of the commandments, the (moral) law, is not to be met with in anyone, except Tolstoy. This was something primary, and engrained in him. (He demanded the fulfilling of the Sermon on the Mount.) And L. Tolstoy believed, as no one hitherto ever did, that by the will of God it was easy to fulfill totally, he did not want to acknowledge the difficulty of fulfilling the commandments. Man himself, with his own powers, should and can fulfill the will of God. This is an easy fulfilling, and it bestows happiness and felicity. The commandment, the law of life is fulfilled exclusively in the relationship of man to the Father, in the religious atmosphere of the Fatherly Hypostasis. L. Tolstoy wants to fulfill the will of God not through the Son, he does not know the Son and has need of nothing in the Son. The religious atmosphere of sonship to God, of filiation, of the Son’s Hypostasis, is not necessary to Tolstoy for fulfilling the will of the Father: he himself, he himself fulfills the will of the Father, he himself is able to. Tolstoy regards it immoral, when they avow it possible to fulfill the will of the Father only through the Son, the Redeemer and Saviour, he reacts with repugnance towards the idea of redemption and salvation, i.e. he reacts with repugnance not towards Jesus of Nazareth, but towards Christ the Logos, Who didst offer Himself in sacrifice for the sins of the world. The religion of L. Tolstoy wants to know only the Father and it does not want to know the Son; the Son hinders him to fulfill by his own powers the law of the Father. L. Tolstoy consequently confesses a religion of law, an Old Testament religion. The religion of grace, the New Testament religion is alien and unknown to him. Tolstoy is moreso a Buddhist, than he is a Christian. Buddhism is a religion of self-salvation, just as is the religion of Tolstoy. Buddhism does not know the person-aspect of God, the person-aspect of the Saviour and the person-aspect of the saved. Buddhism is a religion of compassion, and not love. Many tend to say, that Tolstoy was a true Christian, and they contrast him against the false and hypocritical Christians, with which the world is filled. But the existence of false and hypocritical Christians, working deeds of hatred in place of deeds of love, (how very much so,) but this does not justify the misuse of words, or a play on words [to imply falsehood]. It is impossible to term someone a Christian, for whom the very idea of redemption, the very need of the Saviour, is foreign and repugnant, i.e. for whom the very idea of Christ is alien and repugnant. Suchlike an hostility to the idea of redemption, suchlike a flailing at it, the Christian world has never yet known. In L Tolstoy the Old Testament religion of law rose up against the New Testament religion of grace, against the mystery of redemption. L. Tolstoy wanted to transform Christianity into a religion of rules, of law, of moral commandments, i.e. into a religion that is Old Testament and pre-Christian, not knowing grace, into a religion not only not knowing redemption, but also not thirsting for redemption, as even the pagan world had thirsted for it during its final days. Tolstoy says, that it would be better, if Christianity had not existed as the religion of redemption and salvation, that it then would be easier to fulfill the will of the Father. All religions, in his opinion, are better than the religion of Christ -- the Son of God, since they all teach, how to live, they gives laws, rules, commandments; the religion of salvation, however, transfers everything from man to the Saviour and to the mystery of redemption. L. Tolstoy hates the churchly dogmas since what he wants is a religion of self-salvation, as being the solely moral, the solely fulfilling of the will of the Father, of His law; these dogmas however speak about salvation through the Saviour, through His redemptive sacrifice. For Tolstoy the solely-salvific commandments of Christ are fulfilled by man through his own powers. These commandments are also the will of the Father. Christ Himself, however, had spoken concerning Himself: "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life" -- for Tolstoy this is altogether unnecessary, he wants not only to dispense with Christ the Saviour, he also considers it immoral to have any recourse to the Saviour, any sort of assist in fulfilling the will of the Father. For him the Son does not exist, there exists only the Father, i.e. he finds everything of significance in the Old Testament and does not know the New Testament.

It seems easy for L. Tolstoy to fulfill totally, by his own powers, the law of the Father, because he does not sense nor know sin and evil. He does not know the irrational element of evil, and therefore redemption is unnecessary for him, and he does not want to know the Redeemer. Tolstoy looks upon evil rationalistically, in the manner of Socrates, and in evil he sees only the lack of knowledge, only an insufficiency of rational awareness, almost a misapprehension; he denies the unfathomable and irrational mystery of evil, connected with the unfathomable and irrational mystery of freedom. One who is conscious of the law of the good, according to Tolstoy, already under the effect of this consciousness alone would want to fulfill it. Evil is wrought but by the lack of this consciousness. Evil is rooted not in the irrational will and not in irrational freedom, but in the absence of rational consciousness, in ignorance. It is impossible to do evil, if thou knowest, what suchlike be the good. Human nature is essentially good and unsinning, and it does evil only through ignorance of the law. The good is rational. Tolstoy especially emphasises this. Evil is done out of stupidity, there is no deliberate consideration to do evil, for only the good leads to the bliss in life, to happiness. It is apparent, that Tolstoy looks upon good and evil just like Socrates looked at it, i.e. rationalistically, identifying the good with the rational, and evil with the non-rational. The rational consciousness of the law, bestown by the Father, leads to the ultimate triumph of the good and the elimination of evil. This comes about easily and happily, and is done through man’s own powers. L. Tolstoy, like no one ever before, rails at evil and the falsity of life and he calls for a moral maximalism, for the immediate and ultimate realisation of good in all. But his moral maximalism in regard to life is also particularly bound up with an ignoring of evil. With naivete, and with the hypnotic effect of the genius lodged within him, he does not want to know the power of evil, the difficulty of its overcoming, the irrational tragedy connected with it. To the superficial glance it might seem, that L. Tolstoy in particular better than others saw the evil of life, and that deeper than others he exposed it. But this is a mistaken perspective. Tolstoy did see, that people fail to fulfill the law of the Father, sent them in life, and to him people appeared walking in darkness, since they live by the law of the world, and not by the law of the Father, Whom they know not; people seemed to him irrational and foolish. But the evil he did not see at all. If he had viewed evil and gotten at its mystery, he would then never have said, that it is easy to totally fulfill the will of the Father by the natural capacities of man, that the good can be victorious without the redemption of evil. Tolstoy did not see sin, sin was for him but ignorance, only a weakness of the rational awareness of the law of the Father. He did not know sin, nor did he know redemption. From his naive ignoring of sin and evil there issues forth also the Tolstoyan denial of the burdens of universal history, Tolstoy’s maximalism. Here we again come back to what was said at the beginning. L. Tolstoy did not see evil and sin, because he does not see the aspect of person. The consciousness of evil and sin is connected with the consciousness of person, and the selfness of the person is perceived in connection with the consciousness of evil and sin, in connection with the opposing of the person by natural elements, by the setting of limits. The absence of personal self-consciousness in Tolstoy is also in him the absence of consciousness of evil and sin. He does not know the tragedy of person -- the tragedy of evil and sin. Evil is unconquered by the consciousness, by the reason, it is situated unfathomably deep within man. Human nature is not good, but is rather a fallen nature, and human reason -- is a fallen reason. There is need for the mystery of redemption, in order for evil to be conquered. But with Tolstoy there was some sort of a naturalistic optimism.

L. Tolstoy, rebelling against the whole of society, against all culture, arrived at an extreme optimism, at a denial of the corruptness and sinfulness of nature. Tolstoy believes, that God Himself makes real the good in the world and that only one should not oppose His will. Everything natural -- is good. In this Tolstoy comes close to Jean Jacques Rousseau and to the teachings of the XVIII Century about the natural condition as being both good and divine. Resist not evil, and the good itself wilt be realised without thine action, it will be a natural condition, in which directly will be realised the Divine will, the utmost law of life, which also is God. (There will be the immediate intervention of God.) 3 The teaching of L. Tolstoy about God is a peculiar form of pantheism, for which there does not exist person-ness in God, just as there does not exist person-ness in man nor in general is there any sort of person-ness. For Tolstoy God is not a being, but rather a law, diffused through everything as a divine principle. Thus for him there does not exist a personal God, just as there does not exist any personal immortality. His pantheistic consciousness does not permit of the existence of two worlds -- the world of nature, immanent, and a world of the Divine, transcendent. Such a pantheistic consciousness presupposes that the good, i.e. the Divine law of life, is to be realised by a naturo-immanent path, without grace, without the emergence of the transcendent into this world. Tolstoy’s pantheism confuses God with the soul of the world. But his pantheism is not consistent and at times it assumes an hint of Deism. The God indeed, which gives the law of life, a commandment, but bestows neither grace nor help, is the dead God of Deism. With Tolstoy there is a mighty sense of God, but a weak consciousness of God, he dwelt primitively with the Fatherly Hypostasis, but without the Logos. Just as L. Tolstoy believes in the blessedness of the natural condition and in the realisation of good by natural powers, wherein the Divine will actualises itself, so also he believes in the singular inerrancy of the natural reason. He does not see the fallenness of reason. Reason is for him sinless. He does not know, that initially it is reason, which is fallen away from the Divine Reason, and it is reason, which becomes co-united with the Divine Reason. Tolstoy adheres to a naive, naturalistic rationalism. He always appeals to reason, to the intellectual principle, and not to the will, not to freedom. In the rationalism of Tolstoy, at times very coarse, is expressed this faith in the blissful natural condition, in the goodness of nature and the natural. Tolstoy’s rationalism and naturalism are incapable of explaining the deviating away from the rational and natural condition, and indeed human life is full of these deviations, and they beget that evil and falseness of life, which Tolstoy so mightily rails against. Why has mankind fallen away from the good natural condition and the rational law of life, governing this condition? It means, that there was some sort of a falling away, a fall into sin. Tolstoy says: all evil is from this, that people walk in darkness, that they do not know the Divine law of life. But from whence is this darkness and ignorance? We inevitably come to the irrationality of evil as an utmost mystery -- the mystery of freedom. In Tolstoy’s world-feeling there is something in common with the world-feeling of Rozanov, both likewise not knowing evil, not seeing the countenance, likewise believing in the felicitude of the natural, likewise dwelling in the Father’s Hypostasis and in the soul of the world, in the Old Testament and paganism. And indeed both L. Tolstoy and V. Rozanov, despite all their differences, are identically opposed to the religion of the Son, the religion of redemption.

It is unnecessary in detail and systematically to expound the teachings of L. Tolstoy in order to vouch for the correctness of my characterisation. The teachings of L. Tolstoy are quite well known to all. But usually books are read with preconceptions, and people tend to see in them, that which they want to see, and they do not see, that which they do not want to see. Therefore, I shall present nonetheless a series of the clearest places, supportive of my views on Tolstoy. I take my citations first of all from a basic religio-philosophic tract of Tolstoy, entitled "In What is my Faith?". "It has always seemed strange to me, why did Christ, in future knowing that the fulfillment of his teachings would be impossible by the sole powers of man, give such clear and rational laws, relating directly to each individual man? Reading these rules, it has always seemed to me, that they relate directly to me, and from me alone do they demand fulfilling". 4 "Christ says: "I find, that the manner of providing for your lives is very foolish and hard. I offer ye something altogether other". 5 "It is innate to human nature to do that, what is the better. And every teaching about the life of people is only a teaching about that, what is the better for people. If it be shown to people, what is the better for them to do, then how indeed can they say, that they want to do that, what is the better, but they cannot? People cannot do only that, what is the worse, and cannot not be able to do that, what is the better". 6 "As soon as one (a man) makes a judgement, then he is aware of himself as rational, and being aware of himself as rational, he cannot but recognise, what is reasonable, and that what is unreasonable. Reason commands nothing; it only illumines". 7 "Only a false positing about something, that it is what actually it is not, or that it is not what actually it is, can lead people to such a strange denial of the fulfillment of that, which by their own avowal, bestows them good. The false positing, leading up to this, and it is, is what is called a dogmatic christian faith, -- that very thing, which from childhood all those confessing a churchly christian faith learn by rote variously according to their orthodox, catholic or protestant catechisms". 8 "It is asserted, that the dead continue to be alive. And in that the dead are no wise able to affirm that they have died, nor that they are alive, since a stone cannot affirm whether, that it can or cannot speak, this absence of the negative then is accepted as a proof and it is affirmed that people, who have died, have not died. And moreover with great solemnity and credulity it is affirmed that, after Christ I should believe in Him and therein a man is freed from sin, i.e. that for a man after Christ it is unnecessary further by reason to illumine his life and choose that, what is the better for him. For him it is necessary to believe only, that Christ has redeemed him from sin, and therein he is perfectly sinless, i.e. perfectly fine. According to this teaching people ought to imagine, that within them the reason is powerless and that consequently also they are sinless, i.e. they are unable to make mistakes". 9 "That, which according to their teaching is called true life, is a personal life, blessed, sinless and eternal, i.e. one suchlike, as no one has ever known nor ever will". 10 "Adam before me did transgress, i.e. did err(italics mine)". 11 L. Tolstoy says, that according to the teaching of the Christian Church "a life true and sinless -- is in faith, i.e. in the imagination, i.e. is insanity (italics mine)". And a few lines further on he adds concerning the churchly teaching: "this is indeed sheer madness". 12 "The churchly teaching has given a basic meaning to the life of people in this regard, that man has a right to a blessed life, and that this blessedness is to be attained not by the powers of man, but by something external, and this world-concept has become basic to all our scientific disciplines and philosophies". 13 "The reason, that which illumines our life and leads us to change our courses of action, is not an illusion, and this is something impossible to deny. The following out of reason for the attainment of good -- in this always has been the teaching of all the true teachers of mankind, and in this is the teaching of Christ, (italics mine) and it is in this, i.e. reason, and it is no way possible to deny by reason". 14 "Both before and after Christ people said the same thing: that in man there lives a divine light, come down from heaven, and this light is reason, -- and that it alone it is necessary to serve and in it alone to seek the good". 15 "The people all heard, all understood, but it merely went past their ears then, that the teacher was speaking only about this, that people mustneeds make their own happiness here by themselves, upon this courtyard, on which they had come down, but they imagined for themselves, that this courtyard is but a temporary lodging, and there would be a real one there somewhere". 16 "No one can render help, if they cannot help themselves. It is of no help even for themselves. Do not merely wait for something, either from heaven or from earth, and by yourselves cease destroying yourselves". 17 "In order to understand the teachings of Christ, it is necessary first of all to be in control of oneself, to have changed-about one’s mind". 18 "About personal resurrection in the flesh He never spoke". 19 "The concept of the personal future life has come down to us not from the hebrew teaching and not from the teachings of Christ. It has entered into the churchly teachings completely along the way. However strange it may seem, it is impossible not to say it, that the belief in a personal future life is a very low and vulgar positing, based on the confusing of sleep with death and it is innate to all savage peoples (italics mine)". 20 "Christ contrasts to the personal life not life beyond the grave, but the life in common, connected with the life present, past and future of all mankind". 21 "The whole teaching of Christ is in this, that His disciples, having understood the illusion of personal life, then renounced it and carried it over into the life of all mankind, into the life of the Son of Man. The teaching about the immortality of personal life not only does not call for the renunciation of one’s own personal life, but it forever intensifies this personal aspect... Life is life, and it is necessary to make the best use possible of it. To live for oneself alone in unreasonable. And therefore ever since then there are people, that seek for the goals of live outside themselves: they live for their offspring, for the people, for mankind, for everything that will not die with the personal life". 22 "If a man does not take hold of that which saves him, then this means but that a man understands not his situation". 23 "Faith proceeds only from an awareness of one’s own situation. Faith is created only in the rational consciousness of that what is best to do, when situated in a certain position".24 "It would be terrible to say, but if the teachings of Christ were not altogether the same thing with the churchly teachings, which grew out of them, then those of old, from whom are those now called christians, would have been quite closer to the teaching of Christ, i.e. to the rational teaching about the good life, than they are now. For them there would not have been hidden away the moral teachings of the prophets of all mankind". 25 "Christ says, that it is a credible worldly consideration not to be concerned about the life of the world... It is impossible not to see, that the position of the disciples of Christ ought already to be the better, because that the disciples of Christ, doing everything good, would not incite hatred in people". 26 Christ teaches in particular this, how to deliver us from our misfortunes and how to live happily". 27 Calculating out the conditions of happiness, Tolstoy is unable to find nearly a single condition, connected with the spiritual life, everything is connected with the material, the animal-vegetative life, like physical work, health, etc. "It is not necessary to be a martyr in the name of Christ, for Christ does not teach this. He teaches, that one should cease to torment oneself in the name of the false teachings of the world... Christ teaches people not to do stupidities (italics mine). In this consists the most simple and admissible for all meaning in the teachings of Christ... Do not do stupidities and thou wilt be the better for it". 28 "Christ... teaches us not to do that, which is the worse, but rather that, which is the better for us here, in this life".29 "The rift between the teaching about life and the explanation of life began with the preaching of Paul, not knowing the ethical teaching expressed in the Gospel of Matthew, and preaching instead a strange Christ with a metaphysico-kabbalistic theory". 30 "Everything, necessary for the pseudo-christian -- are mysteries. But the believer himself does not make the mystery, and over him others work it". 31 "The concept about law, undoubtedly by reason and through inner awareness obligatory for all, yet to such a degree lost in our society, that the existence of the hebrew nation’s law, defining all their life, which was obligatory not through compulsion, but through the inner consciousness of each, -- is regarded an exceptional thing characteristic of the hebrew nation alone". 32 "I believe, that the fulfilling of this teaching (of Christ) is easy and an happy thing". 33

I shall offer yet more characteristic places from the writings of Tolstoy. "Thus: the "Lord be merciful to me, a sinner", I now am not at all fond of, since this prayer is egoistic, a prayer of personal weakness and therefore of no usefulness". 34 "I very much want to help you, -- he writes to M. A. Sopots’ko, -- in this weighty and dangerous situation, in which you find yourself. I speak as regards your wish to hypnotise yourself into the churchly faith. This is very dangerous, since with this hypnotising there is lost the most valuable thing, that there is in man -- his reason (italics mine)". 35 "It is impossible without punishment to allow into your faith something non-rational, something not justifiable by reason. The reason is given from above, in order to guide us. If we are deaf to it, this will not go unpunished. And the loss of reason is a most terrible loss (italics mine)". 36 "The Gospel miracles cannot have happened, since they transgress the laws of this reason, amidst which we understand life, the miracles are unnecessary, since in them no one can be convinced. In those wild and superstitious surroundings, in which Christ lived and worked, there cannot but have accumulated traditions about miracles, just as they have not ceased and even in our own time accumulate readily in the superstitious settings of the people".37 "You ask me about theosophy. This teaching has quite interested me, but regrettably, it allows for the miraculous, and the least allowance of the miraculous still deprives religion of that simplicity and clarity, which are unique of a true attitude to God and neighbour. And since in this teaching there can be much that is very good, as in the teachings of the mystics, as in spiritism even, but it is necessary to be cautious of it. The chief thing, I think, is that those people, for whom the miraculous is needful, do not understand fully the true, the simple christian teaching". 38 "For this however, in that man should know what is wanted of him by That One, Who sent him into the world, -- He set into him reason, by means of which man always, if he precisely wants this, can know the will of God, i.e. that which is wanted of him by That One, Who sent him into the world... If we however cleave to that, what reason informs us, then we shall all become united, since reason is the same for everyone, and only reason unites people and does not hinder the manifestation, innate for people, of love one for another".39 "Reason is older and more credible than all the writings and traditions, it was there already, when there was not yet any sort of traditions nor writings and it is given each of us straight from God. The words of the Gospel concerning this, are that all sins are forgiven, but not only is it not a blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, in my opinion, to refer directly to the affirmation of this, that for reason it is not necessary to believe. Actually, if we believe not by reason, which is given us from God, then in whom indeed is there to believe? How possibly can there be those people, who want us to find the wherewithal to believe that, which is inconsistent with reason, as given by God?" 40 "Concerning one’s inner perfecting it is impossible to pray for it, since that it was given to us then, what was needful for our perfecting, and it is both unnecessary and impossible to supplement anything to this". 41 "To beseech God and dwell in thought on the means, whereby to become perfected, should only be then, when there are present some sort of hindrances to this matter, and we ourselves have not the abilities to deal with it". 42 "We here, in this world, are as though in a lodging inn, in which the owner has arranged everything that we as travelers precisely would need, and has gone off himself, having left instructions, how we ought to conduct ourselves in this temporal shelter. Only to fulfill that, which is prescribed for us. Thus also in our spiritual world -- everything needful for us is given, and the task is only for us to do it".43 "There is no more immoral and harmful a teaching, than that man is incapable to be perfected by his own powers". 44 "The wrong and absurd concept, that human reason by its own powers cannot come nigh to the truth, is the result of such dreadful indeed a superstition, as also is this, whereby without help from outside man cannot come nigh to the fulfilling of the will of God. The essence of the superstition is in this, that the full and perfect truth should be revealed by God himself... Man ceases to believe in the sole means of the understanding of truth -- by the powers of his own reason".45 "Except by the reason, no sort of truth can enter into the soul of man".46 "The rational and the moral always co-incide". 47 "Faith in a communicating with the souls of the dead is to such an extent, yet it goes without saying, that for me it is completely unnecessary, to such a degree it infringes upon everything, based on reason, my world-outlook, so that if I were to hear voices of spirits or catch sight of apparitions, I would have recourse to a psychiatrist, imploring his help for my obvious brain disorder". 48 "Ye say, -- writes L.N. to the priest S.K., -- that since man is a person, then also God likewise is Person. It seems to me, that the consciousness by man of himself as person is a consciousness by man of his limitedness. Every limitation however is incompatible with the concept of God. If then it be granted, that God is Person, then the essential consequence of this would be, as this also always occurred in the primordial religions, a matter of ascribing human attributes to God... Such an understanding of God as Person, and suchlike His law, expressed in some sort of book, is completely impossible for me". 49 It would be possible still to cite more places from the works of L. Tolstoy in support of my view on the religion of Tolstoy, but of this enough.

It is evident, that the religion of Lev Tolstoy is a religion of self-salvation, a salvation solely by human powers. This religion therefore has no need of the Saviour, it does not know the Hypostasis of the Son. L. Tolstoy wants to be saved on the strength of his own personal merits, and not in the redemptive power of the bloody sacrifice, offered by the Son of God for the sins of the world. The arrogance of L. Tolstoy is in this, that he has no need of the help of the grace of God in fulfilling the will of God. Rooted innate in L. Tolstoy is that he has no need of redemption, since he does not know sin, he does not see the undefeatability of evil by the natural pathway. He has no need of the Redeemer and Saviour and he is a stranger, like no one else, to the religion of redemption and salvation. He considers the idea of redemption as the chief obstacle for implementing the law of the Father-Owner. Christ, as the Saviour and Redeemer, as "the Way, the Truth, and the Life", not only is unnecessary, but also interferes with the fulfilling of the commandments, which Tolstoy considers Christian. L. Tolstoy understands the New Testament as law, as commandment, as a codex of the Father-Owner, i.e. he understands it, as one might the Old Testament.50 He still does not know this mystery of the New Testament, that in the Hypostasis of the Son, in Christ, there is already neither law nor being subject under law, but rather there is grace and freedom. L. Tolstoy, as one dwelling exclusively upon the Fatherly Hypostasis, in the Old Testament and in paganism, never could grasp this mystery, that there are not commandments of Christ, nor teachings of Christ, but rather Christ Himself, and in His mysteried Person is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life". The religion of Christ is the teaching about Christ, not only the teaching of Christ. The teaching about Christ, i.e. the religion of Christ, for L. Tolstoy always was folly, and he related to it like a pagan. And here we come nigh to another, no less evident side of the religion of L. Tolstoy. This -- is a religion within the limits of reason, a rationalistic religion, repudiating anything mystical, all mystery, all miracles, as contrary to reason, as folly. This rational religion is close to rationalistic Protestantism, to Kant and to Harnack. Tolstoy -- is a crude rationalist in regard to dogma, and his critique of dogmas is on an elementary-judgemental level. With the air of the vanquisher he repudiates the dogma of the Tri-uneness of God, on this simple basis, that 1 cannot equivolate 3. He says straight out, that the religion of Christ, the Son of God, the Redeemer and Saviour, is lunacy. He is an implacable foe of the miraculous and the mysteried. He repudiates the very idea of revelation as being nonsense. It is almost incredible, that such a genius of an artist and a genius of a man, of such a religious nature, was in the grip of so crude and elementary a rationalism, so demonically-possessed by rational-judgement. It is downright monstrous, that such a giant as L. Tolstoy, has reduced Christianity down to this, that Christ teaches us not do stupid things, and teaches happiness on earth. The genius of the religious nature of L. Tolstoy sets itself into the moulds of an elementary level rational-judgement and an elementary level utilitarianism. As religious person -- this is a dumb of speech genius, not endowed with the gift of the Word. And the incomprehensible mystery of his person is connected with this, that with all his existence he dwells on the Hypostasis of the Father and in the soul of the world, outside the Son’s Hypostasis, outside the Logos. L. Tolstoy was not only of a religious nature, all his life parched with a religious thirst, but he also was of a mystical nature in a particular sense. There is this mysticism in "War and Peace", in the "Cossacks", in his attitude to the primal elements of life; there is this mysticism in his very life, in his fate. But this mysticism never made encounter with the Logos, i.e. it never could become actualised.51 In his mystical and religious life Tolstoy [never] makes encounter with Christianity. [The un-Christian nature of Tolstoy is artistically dissected by Merezhkovsky. But that which Merezhkovsky wanted to say regarding Tolstoy, likewise remains outside the Logos, and the Christian question about person was not posited by him.]

[It is very easy to confuse the asceticism of Tolstoy with Christian asceticism.] They have often said, that as regards his moral asceticism L. Tolstoy was flesh from flesh and blood from blood right out of Christian history. Some have said this in defense of Tolstoy, while others have held him guilty of this. [But it mustneeds be said, that the asceticism of L. Tolstoy has very little in common with Christian asceticism] (This is only partly true). If one consider Christian asceticism in its mystical essence, then he never was such as regards his preaching of ordinary life, of simplification, of down-going. Christian asceticism always has in view an endlessly rich mystical world, the highest degree of being. In the moral asceticism of Tolstoy [there is nothing] (there is little) of the mystical, there is not the riches of other worlds. How distinctly different is the asceticism of that mendicant of God St. Francis from that of Tolstoy’s simplicity. Franciscanism is beautiful in full, and in it is no semblance of Tolstoy’s moralism. From St. Francis was born the beauty of the early Renaissance. Poverty was for him a Beautiful Lady. With Tolstoy there was no Beautiful Lady. He preached ordinary life in the name of a greater happiness, a more felicitous arrangement of life upon earth. [The idea of a Messianic feast was foreign to him, one which mystically brought enthusiasm to the Christian ascetic.] The moral asceticism of L. Tolstoy -- this is a populist asceticism, so characteristic for Russia. With us there has taken shape an unique type of asceticism, not a mystical asceticism, but rather a populist asceticism, an asceticism in the name of the good of the people upon the earth. This is an asceticism to be met with in its baronial form, as becoming a nobleman, and in its Intelligentsia form, of the Populist-Intelligentsia. This asceticism customarily is connected with a persecution against beauty, against metaphysics and mysticism, as against an impermissible and immoral luxury. This asceticism religiously leads to iconoclasm, to a denial of the symbolic in the cultus. L. Tolstoy was an iconoclast. Icon-veneration and all the symbolics of the cultus connected with it seemed an immoral and unallowable luxury, transgressing his moral-ascetic consciousness. L. Tolstoy would not grant, that there exists a sacral elegance and a sacral richness. To the artist of genius it seemed the beauty of an immoral luxury, and a richness, unbecoming the Master-Lord of life. The Master-Lord of life gave the law of the good, and only the good is of value, only the good is divine. The Master-Lord has not placed before mankind and the world an ideal image of beauty as a supreme value of being. Beauty therefore -- is from evil, from the Father is only the moral law. L. Tolstoy -- is a persecutor of beauty in the name of good. He affirms an exclusive overcoming by good not only over beauty, but also over truth. In the name of an exclusionary good he denies not only aesthetics, but also metaphysics and mysticism as ways of the comprehension of truth. Both beauty and truth are a luxury, a richness. The feasting of aesthetics and the feasting of metaphysics are forbidden by the Master-Lord of life. It is necessary to live by the simple law of good, to live by an exclusionary morality. Moralism has never yet been taken to such extreme limits, as it was with Tolstoy. Moralism became terrifying, making one suffocate. Beauty and truth are no less divine, than is good, they are no less -- of value. The good does not take priority over truth and beauty, beauty and truth are no less close to God, to the Primal Cause, than is the good. An exclusionary, an abstract moralism, taken to extreme limits, presents a question about this, that there might too be a demonic good, a good destructive of being, a lessening of the level of being. If there can be a demonic beauty and a demonic knowledge, then there can be also a demonic good. Christianity, taken in its mystical depths, not only does not deny beauty, but it is conscious of an invisible new beauty, and not only does it not deny gnosis, but it is conscious of a supreme gnosis. Rationalists and positivists are too hasty to deny beauty and gnosis, and often they do this in the name of a fanciful good. The moralism of a fanciful good. The moralism of L. Tolstoy is bound up with his religion of self-salvation, with a denial of the ontological meaning of redemption. But the ascetic moralism of Tolstoy is only one side of him turned towards the impoverishment and crush of being, while another side of him is turned towards a new world, and it is boldly that he denies evil.

___________________________

In Tolstoy’s moralism there is a stagnantly-conservative principle and there is a revolutionary-rebellious principle. With an unprecedented power and radicalism L. Tolstoy rose up against the hypocrisy of the quasi-Christian society, against the lies of a quasi-Christian sovereignty. With genius he exposed the monstrous untruth and deadness of the state official Christianity, he set a mirror before the pretense and deadness of Christian society, and with a prick of conscience he forced people to be shocked. As a religious critic and as a seeker, L. Tolstoy will always remain great and dear. But the strength of Tolstoy in the matter of religious renewal [exclusively] (chiefly) is with a negative criticism. He has done immeasurably much for the awakening from religious slumber, but not for the deepening of religious consciousness. It is necessary however to remember, that L. Tolstoy with his searchings and criticism was dealing with a society either openly atheistic, or hypocritically and feigningly Christian, or simply indifferent. It was impossible religously to do harm to this society, it was already altogether damaged. And it was the deadeningly-ordinary and ritually-external Orthodoxy that he was to disquiet, and to excite usefully and well so. L. Tolstoy was quite the partisan and a most extreme anarchist-idealist, such as only the history of human thought knows the likes of. To refute Tolstoy’s anarchism is very easy, for in this anarchism is combined extreme rationalism with genuine folly. But Tolstoy’s anarchistic revolt was necessary for the world. The "Christian" world before this had become isolated in its basics, which the irrational need for such a revolt was to show. I think, that Tolstoy’s anarchism in particular, and it was essentially inconsistent -- had a cleansing effect, and its significance was tremendous. Tolstoy’s anarchistic revolt denotes the crisis of historical Christianity, carried over into the life of the Church. This revolt is an harbinger of the coming Christian renewal. And it remains for us a mystery, rationally inconceivable, why the matter of Christian renewal involved a man, alien to Christianity, quite caught up in the Old Testament and the pre-Christian elements. The final fate of Tolstoy remains a mystery, known only to God. It is not for us to judge. It was L. Tolstoy himself that excommunicated himself from the Church, and before this fact pales the fact of his excommunication by the Russian Holy Synod. [We ought directly and openly to say, that L. Tolstoy has nothing in common with the Christian consciousness, that the "Christianity" invented by him has nothing in common with that genuine Christianity, for which in the Church of Christ has been preserved immutably the image of Christ.] (The excommunication of L. Tolstoy is repugnant because, that they excommunicated one who most of all acted for the awakening of religious awareness in Russia). [But] We cannot venture to say anything about the final mystery of his ultimate attitudes towards the Church and what transpired with him at the hour of death. As regards mankind we however know, that by his criticism, by his searchings, by his life, L. Tolstoy shook up a world, religiously asleep and moribund. Several generations of Russian people have passed through Tolstoy, have grown up under his influence, and God grant that this influence not be identified with "Tolstoyism" -- a phenomenon very limited. Without Tolstoy’s criticism and without Tolstoy’s searchings we would have been worse off and would have slept later. Without L. Tolstoy there would not have been put forward so acutely the question about the vital, and not merely rhetorical significance of Christianity. The Old Testament truth of Tolstoy was necessary for the inveterate falsehood of the Christian world. We know moreover, that without L. Tolstoy Russia itself would be unthinkable and that Russia cannot disclaim him. We love Lev Tolstoy, like we do our native-land. It was our grandfathers, it was our land in "War and Peace". He is for us -- richness and magnificence, though he was not fond of riches and elegance. The life of L. Tolstoy -- is a fact of genius in the life of Russia. And everything of genius -- is providential. [Still not so long ago] The "withdrawal" of L. Tolstoy excited the whole of Russia and all the world. This was a "withdrawal" of genius. This was the finish of Tolstoy’s anarchist revolt. Before his death L. Tolstoy became a wanderer, he was torn away from the soil, to which he was fettered by all the burden of life. At the end of his life the great old man returned to mysticism, the mystical notes resound strongly and drown out his rationalism. He prepared himself for his final turnabout.

Nikolai Berdyaev

[1912]

(1944 unpublished redraft)

© 2001 by translator Fr. S. Janos

(1912 - 54 - en)

VETKHII I NOVII ZAVET V RELIGIOZNOM SOZNANII L. TOLSTOGO. Originally published in L. Tolstoy anthology, "O religii L’va Tolstogo" ("Concerning the Religion of Lev Tolstoy"), Moscow, publisher Put’, 1912, p. 172-195. (Tolstoy anthology republished by YMCA Press in 1978).

Revised text redraft from uncompleted 1944 project of Berdyaev’s revision and republication of articles forms the basis of the 1989 YMCA Press Volume 3 of Berdiaev Collected Works, "Tipy religioznoi mysli v Rossii" ("Types of Religious Thought in Russia"), Paris, 1989, p. 119-144. 1944 Revision: [bracketed text]is 1944 deletions from original; **(parenthesis text)**is 1944 new inclusions to original.

Original unrevised article may be found in Volume 2 of Moscow 1994 Liga edition of anthology of Berdyaev’s works, "Nikolai Berdyaev: philosophia, tvorchestva, kul’tury, i iskusstva", p. 461-483.

*****Translator Note: The heavily [bracketed] and (parenthesised) article text here reflects a 1944 uncompleted project of revision and republication by Berdyaev of certain of his articles. These 1944 redrafts and collection of articles forms the basis of the 1989 YMCA Press Volume 3 of Berdyaev’s Collected Works, "Tipy relioznoi mysli v Rossii" ("Types of Religious Thought in Russia").
(sic) [brackets] = 1944 text deletions
(parentheses) = 1944 new inclusions

1A psychological appraisal of Tolstoy can likewise be found in the book of L. Shestov, "The Idea of the Good in the Teachings of Graf Tolstoy and Fr. Nietzsche".

2Merezhkovsky even called L. Tolstoy a "seer of the flesh". In this is [great] truth, although the expression itself bears traces of the delimited schema of Merezhkovsky. I would prefer to say, that Tolstoy was a seer of the soulific-bodily sphere of being.

3(The teaching of Tolstoy about non-resistance to evil by force -- is more profound, than is customarily thought. Christians live according to the laws of the world, and not by the law of God, and they arrange their affairs in the world such that, as though God did not exist. Against this twofold manner of reckoning Tolstoy rose up and demanded the fulfilling of the law of God.) -- Footnote. 1944.

4Vide: "In What is my Faith" {"V chem moya vera"}, Posadnik, 1906, p. 13.

5Ibid., p. 75. 6Ibid., p. 88.

7Ibid., p. 89. 8Ibid., p. 89.

9Ibid., p. 91-92. 10Ibid., p. 92.

11Ibid., p. 92. 12Ibid., p. 93.

13Ibid., p. 94. 14Ibid., p. 97.

15Ibid., p. 98. 16Ibid., p. 102.

17Ibid., p. 103. 18Ibid., p. 104.

19Ibid., p. 112. 20Ibid., p. 115.

21Ibid., p. 118. 22Ibid., p. 125.

23Ibid., p. 125. 24Ibid., p. 132.

25Ibid., p. 135. 26Ibid., p. 140.

27Ibid., p. 142. 28Ibid., p. 150.

29Ibid., p. 152. 30Ibid., p. 168.

31Ibid., p. 169. 32Ibid., p. 178.

33Ibid., p. 186.

34Vide: "Letters of L. N. Tolstoy", tom I, p. 193.

35Ibid., p. 240. 36Ibid., p. 246.

37Ibid., p. 288. 38Ibid., p. 327.

39Vide: "Letters of L. N. Tolstoy", tom II, p.188.

40Ibid., p. 190. 41Ibid., p. 191.

42Ibid., p. 197. 43Ibid., p. 198.

44Ibid., p. 199. 45Ibid., p. 200.

46Ibid., p. 201. 47Ibid., p. 205.

48Ibid., p. 215. 49Ibid., p. 264.

50L. Tolstoy understands the law itself differently, than does Judaism, for which he had no love, although for him this is first of all a commandment of love. N. B. -- Footnote. 1944.

51In the religious characterisation of L. Tolstoy, I made insufficient use of his book, "About Life"{"O zhizni"}, the finest of his religio-moral books, in which there is the mystical tonality. But in it also is expressed the anti-personalism of L. Tolstoy. N.B. -- Footnote. 1944.

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© 2000 by translator Fr. S. Janos