Russia is the natural mediator1 between Europe and Asia. It happens with the regularity2 of an ethnic3 law that every race partakes of the characteristics of neighbouring races. The extinct Tasmanian, by his curious aberrations4 from the Australian type and approximation to that of Polynesia, furnished an unexpected anthropological5 problem that is still unsolved. Everywhere the same mysterious blending or transition may be witnessed. Apart from complexion6, it has been said, many a Russian peasant might pass in Lahore or Benares as a native of the Ganges valley. Whatever the ethnologist may say, one way or another, as to the racial elements of the country, anyone who approaches the study of Russian men and Russian things perpetually meets with traits that are not familiar to him as European, but which he may have already learnt to know as Asiatic. Nor is it only in the little traits of character and daily life that these Eastern influences appear; the language itself has close Oriental affinities7, and the old Sclavonic is nearly related to Sanscrit. In[175] trying to make Russia plain to ourselves, it is constantly necessary to sound this keynote.
A nation’s instincts are revealed in its art. The complex history of the origin and development of Russian art is full of interest. “Russia,” as Viollet le Duc wrote in his charming book, “L’Art russe,” “has been a laboratory in which the arts coming from all parts of Asia have united to assume an intermediate form between the eastern and western worlds.” The art of Russia has three great sources, the Scythian, the Byzantine, and the Mongolian, but when these are analyzed8 it is found that each of them consists largely, when not entirely9, of Oriental elements. Not less than nine-tenths of these component10 elements, Persian, Greek, Hindu, Finnic, and other, may, in Viollet le Duc’s opinion, be set down as Eastern. Sometimes the art of Russia seems to have been almost effaced11 by Byzantine or Hindu influences, yet it ultimately assimilated all these Eastern influences until it reached its highest point of development at the end of the sixteenth century. In the gilded12 bulbous domes13 we see Hindu influence. Persian influence was peculiarly strong; the beautiful Holy Gate of the Church of St. John at Rostoff, the work of sixteenth century Russian artists, is of thoroughly15 Persian character. All that Russia took from Central Asia and Persia strengthened her art, though it[176] retained its own characteristics, shown partly by the love of splendour peculiar14 to a youthful and semi-barbaric race, as in the fantastic magnificence of that “gigantic madrepore,” the Church of Vassili Blagennoi in the Kremlin at Moscow; partly by a freedom of conception and variety of execution in which the native spirit found expression. Gothic art, with its whole gamut16 of notes, from divine aspiration17 to grotesque18 humour, remained absolutely alien. When Peter the Great introduced Latin and Teutonic influences, and German, Italian, English, above all, French elements poured into the country, an “official Russia” grew up, speaking a foreign language and having no contact with the nation. Russia remained the same, but the dissolution of Russian art was ensured.
The genuine Russian spirit seems not to have emerged distinctively21 into the region of great art until it was brought into the peculiarly modern and western shape of the novel by Gogol, the Ukranian Cossack. “Dead Souls” is the first great Russian example of the modern story-teller’s art, and still the most popular. Oriental influences have ceased; in Gogol we find western, especially English, influences, but, unlike the literary tendencies of the last century, they are duly subordinated to elements that are essentially22 Russian. The direct simplicity23 of the Russian, his love of minute realistic detail, which[177] seems to be expressed even in the ancient form of the Russian cross, his quietism, his profound human sympathy, have all found adequate voice in the modern Russian novel. The Russian painters of to-day, and the artists in bronze, with their simple realism and constant research for the expression of life in action, have but followed in the steps of the Russian novel, which has, as its supreme24 representatives, Tourgueneff, Dostoieffski, and Tolstoi. Tourgueneff, so delicate and sensitive in his realism, with its atmosphere of ineffable25 melancholy26, a Corot among novelists, as De Vogüé calls him, is great not only by the breadth and insight of his art, but by the unique position he holds in the development of Russian literature. The “Stories by a Hunter,” published a few years before the emancipation27 of the serfs, to which they are supposed to have contributed, turned the Russian novel in the direction of peasant life. The study of the peasant which occupies so much attention in Russia to-day is much more than a mere28 fashion, for the peasant in Russia represents by far the chief element in the population; certainly the interest in him has already left an ineffaceable mark on those great Russian novelists whose influence is world-wide. Tolstoi, Gregorovitch, Tchedrine, and others, have drawn29 the moojik with the breadth and faithfulness of Millet30, in every attitude of godlike strength, of pathetic resignation, of abject[178] vice31. In Dostoieffski, as in the poet Nekrassoff, this democratic element is more fundamental than in either Tourgueneff or Tolstoi. Dostoieffski’s profound science of the human heart could never get near enough to its primitive32 and instinctive33 elements. There are two or three scenes in “Recollections of the Dead House,” of Dantesque awfulness, which seem to bring nearer to us than anything else the very flesh and spirit of humanity. Such is that scene of the convicts in the bath-room, close and crowded, until, on the reddened backs, beneath the stress of the heat and the steam, stand out clearly the old scars of whips and rods. In all Dostoieffski’s books we are constantly irritated and fascinated by this same strange penetrating34 odour of humanity.
Russian art has always been very closely allied35 with religion, and the Russian is very religious. Ever since, a thousand years ago, the Muscovites swam by thousands into their rivers, headed by the chiefs, to receive Christian36 baptism, they seem to have taken great interest in religion. But their religion has a distinctive20 character. It has no clear demarcation from ordinary life, a characteristic that is reflected in the similarity of religious and secular37 art in Russia. More than this, unlike both the favourite religions of the Indian and of the Teutonic races, it is not largely mystical; it is simply a mystical communism. Sympathy and the need of com[179]radeship, which seem to be deeply rooted in the national character, are the characteristics of Russian religion. “Pity for a fallen creature is a very national trait,” wrote Gogol, and among the great Russian novelists, Dostoieffski, who is the most intensely Russian, is throughout penetrated38 by the passion of pity. This spirit shows itself in the remarkable39 sympathy with which, in Russian popular stories, the devil is treated. “He is represented,” Stepniak remarks, “as the enemy of man, doing his best to drag him down into hell. But as this is his trade he cannot help it, and the people bear him no malice40. He is a good devil after all.” Of the three persons of the Christian Trinity, the second, most associated with images of love, appeals most to the Russian popular imagination. God the Father, as an austere41 personage, lacking in sympathy, is, on the other hand, regarded with indifferent, not to say hostile, feelings. This was well exemplified by the innocent remark of a venerable moojik in a remote part of the country: “What! Is the old fellow alive still?”
The Russian has yet changed but little. The Scythians, as we see them in the realistic repoussé work of the Nikopol vase of twenty-three centuries ago, are the Russian moojiks of to-day; the features and the dress have scarcely changed. They are, as Herodotus described them, a race very tenacious42 of their customs. The sorcerer[180] still holds his own among them, while the orthodox pope, it is well known, is regarded with no reverence43, but rather as a tradesman. Propitiatory44 sacrifices, it is said, are still paid by fishermen to the river-gods, and families in the same way try to keep on good terms with the household deities45. The ancient communistic land customs still flourish, together with the ineradicable belief that the land must be the property of everyone. In some parts of the country it is not uncommon46 for a poor man to help himself to the corn of a rich man, the loan being repaid with interest in subsequent years. The deeply-rooted indifference47 of the people to external laws appears in the difficulty with which they have been induced to accept an officially recognized marriage ceremony, and in the indulgence which is still felt towards liberty, which is not always licence, in such matters. In some parts of Russia, even to-day, it is said, a kind of Pervigilium Veneris is held periodically; the young people ascend48 a mountain to sing and to dance, after which it is de rigueur to separate and to spend the night in couples. The primitive matter-of-fact simplicity of the people, as well as their indifference to law and authority, is shown in an incident that is said to have occurred only a few years ago. The peasants in a certain village decided49 that it was not desirable for their widowed pope to live alone, but the priest of the Greek Church is not allowed[181] to re-marry; therefore the peasants, having obtained the consent of a soldier’s widow to be the pope’s mistress, insisted on introducing her into his house.[11] Such incidents often took place in the western Europe of five centuries ago.
We have to bear in mind these characteristics when we try to understand the great religious movements that are going on in Russia. In all these sects50 we see the tenacity52 with which the Russian people have clung to their inborn53 practical instincts of communism, fraternity, and sexual freedom. This religious movement is but another aspect of the spirit that shows itself in Nihilism, and it is a wider, deeper, and more interesting aspect. Both represent a profound antagonism54 to the State and to the official western methods of social organization promulgated55 by the State. Religious nonconformity dates far back into the Middle Ages, but to Peter the Great is owing the first great development of Russian sects. That Tzar, with his hatred56 of all things Russian, was naturally regarded by pious57 and patriotic58 Russians as Antichrist, and they perished, in thousands at a time, by their own hands, rather than submit to the western notions which, knout[182] in hand, he tried to force upon them. On the soil of poverty, wretchedness and disease, which distinguishes Russia to-day from the rest of Europe, these religious sects have everywhere sprung up and flourished; some of an ascetic59 type, with Asiatic tendencies, belonging more especially to the north of Russia, such as those frantic60 devotees, the Skoptsy, who mutilate themselves after the manner of the Phrygian worshippers of Cybele; or of those sects, belonging more to the south, and rapidly gaining ground over the others, who desire to lead a life of reason and love, such as the Doukhobory, who recognize no more divinity in Jesus than resides in all men, deny all dogmas, ceremonies, authority, give equal rights to every man and woman, treat children with the same respect as the aged61, practise free marriages, and are in their daily lives both more moral and more prosperous than their neighbours. One of the most recent of these sects is the Soutaiefftsky, that first became generally known about 1880. Basil Soutaieff, an uneducated mason, belonging to the centre of Russia, from his early years pondered and dreamed over the misery62 of the world. To obtain light he visited the priests, and one referred him to the Gospels. His zeal63 induced him to learn to read, and he studied the New Testament64 eagerly. One day he carried to the church the body of a young son for burial. The pope asked fifty kopecks for the ceremony;[183] Soutaieff had only thirty, and the pope began to bargain with him over the corpse65. Soutaieff indignantly took up the body and buried it in his own garden. From that time dated his criticism of the Church, and side by side grew up also a criticism of the world. He observed in his own trade the tricks of commerce and the perpetual effort to amass66 money and to deceive the worker. He abandoned his work as a mason and returned from St. Petersburg to the country to cultivate the earth, distributing to the poor the money he had previously67 earned. But in the country he found, from pope to peasant, the same vices68 as in the town, and with no wish to found a new sect51, he became, by example as well as by precept69, the teacher of a religion of universal love and pity.
Soutaieff rejects all ceremonies, including baptism and marriage (for which he substitutes a simple blessing70 and exhortation71 to a just life), and all those external manifestations72 of religion which render men hypocritical. At the same time he rejects all faith in angels or devils, or in the supernatural generally, and is absolutely indifferent to the question of a future life. We have to occupy ourselves with the establishment of happiness and justice on this earth; what happens above, he says, I cannot tell, never having been there; perhaps there is nothing but eternal darkness.
He recognizes that the moral regeneration of[184] men is closely connected with social and economic questions. Private property is the source of the hatreds73, jealousies74, and miseries75 of men. The proprietors76 must give up the land of which they have arbitrarily gained possession, and work for their living. But this end is to be gained, not by violence, but by persuasion77; men will recognize the hypocrisy78 and injustice79 of their lives, and those who persist in evil will be shut out from the fraternal community. Soutaieff refused, at one period at all events, to pay taxes. Once he went to St. Petersburg to explain the state of things to the Emperor; great was his indignation when not only was an interview refused, but he was summarily expelled from the city. Soutaieff and his disciples80 refuse military service, for the men of all nations and religions are brothers: why should they quarrel?
This is the substance of Soutaieff’s teaching. Large numbers of persons come to hear him, sometimes out of curiosity, more often as disciples. He leads the life of a simple peasant. One evening, it is said, on going to his barn, he found several men carrying away sacks of flour. Without saying a word, he entered the barn and found a sack that the robbers had not yet carried off. He pursued them, and on catching81 up with them, he said: “My brothers, you must be in need of bread; take the sack that you have forgotten.” The following day the robbers[185] brought back the flour, and asked Soutaieff’s forgiveness.
He has himself summed up his teaching. “What is truth?” a hearer once asked him. “Truth,” answered Soutaieff with conviction, “truth is love, in a common life.”
II.
Every artist writes his own autobiography82. Even Shakespeare’s works contain a life of himself for those who know how to read it. There is little difficulty in reading Tolstoi’s; moreover, it is very copious83, and possesses the additional advantage of being written from at least two distinct points of view. It is seldom necessary to consult any other authority for the essential facts of his life and growth. “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth,” the earliest of his large books, and one of the most attractive, tells us all that we need to know of his early life. An English critic has remarked that, if Tolstoi has here described his boyhood, he must have been a very commonplace child. The early life of men of genius is rarely a record of precocities. The boy here described so minutely, with his abnormal sensitiveness, his shy awkwardness and profound admiration84 of the comme il faut, his perpetual self-analysis, his brooding dreams, his amusing self-conceit, bears in him the germs of a great artist much more certainly[186] than any small monster of perfection. It is scarcely necessary to say that the autobiography here is not one of incident, as some persons have foolishly supposed; it is neither complete nor historically accurate. Tolstoi uses his material as an artist, but the material is himself. The artist craves85 to express the inward experiences of his past life, of which he can scarcely speak. He invents certain imaginary events, or rearranges actual events as a frame into which he fits his own inward experiences. Whatever is most poignant86 and vivid in the novelist’s art is so produced; and you say to him, “This is so real; you are narrating87 your own history.” He will be able to reply laughingly, “Oh, no! my life is not at all like that.” Imagination is a poor substitute for experience. There is sufficient external evidence extant, even if it were possible to doubt the internal, that Tolstoi is here throughout drawing on his own youthful experiences. Like Irteneff, young Tolstoi followed Franklin’s injunctions as to the use of “Rules of Life;” his favourite books are the same; like him, also, he early developed a love of metaphysics, owing to which, young Irteneff says, “I lost one after the other the convictions which, for the happiness of my own life, I never should have dared to touch.” All the slight indications in the “Confessions” of young Tolstoi’s spiritual experiences agree with young[187] Irteneff’s. Even the plain face, “exactly like that of a common peasant,” the small grey eyes and thick lips and wide nose, that caused the boy of the story to look at himself in the glass with such sorrow and aversion, to pray so fervently88 to God to be made handsome, correspond exactly to those of the real hero. No sign of the boy’s early development is left untouched. We feel that this book, in which the artist is first fully89 revealed, was the outcome of an overmastering impulse to give expression to the accumulated experiences of an intense and sensitive childhood, now receding90 for ever into the past.
Descended91 from a well-known minister and friend of Peter the Great, and belonging to a family that has been eminent93 for two hundred years in war, diplomacy94, literature, and art, Lyof Tolstoi was born in 1828, the youngest of four sons; his mother, the Princess Marie Volkonsky, was the daughter of a general in Catherine’s time, and, according to friends of the novelist’s family, she resembled the Marie Bolkonsky of “War and Peace.” Both parents were, he says, in the general esteem95, “good, cultivated, gentle, and devout96.” He was early left an orphan97, his mother dying when he was not yet two years of age, his father when he was nine. At the age of fifteen he went to the University of Kazan; he left it suddenly to settle on the estate at Yasnaya Polyana which had fallen to him. In 1851,[188] at the age of twenty-three, he became a yunker (the usual position of a nobleman entering the army, doing the work of a common soldier and associating with the officers) in the artillery98 at the Caucasus; he was stationed on the Terek. This expedition to the Caucasus was a memorable99 event in young Tolstoi’s life. It determined100 finally his artistic101 vocation102. A centre of military activity on the most interesting frontier of the empire, it is a land of wonderful scenery and strange primitive customs, hallowed with association with Poushkin and Gogol. Tolstoi’s elder and most loved brother Nikolai had just come home on leave from the Caucasus; it was natural that young Lyof, who had never yet left the neighbourhood of Moscow, should be attracted to a land which held for him a fascination103 so manifold. Under the influence of this strange and new environment he became, almost at once, a great artist, and “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth” was written in 1852.
Tolstoi’s critics have sometimes regretted that he never continued this story. The only possible continuation of “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth” is “The Cossacks.” The young Irteneff of the end of the former book corresponds as closely as possible with the Olyenin who is analyzed at the beginning of the latter. A few years only have intervened. These years he long after summed up briefly104 and too sternly in[189] the “Confessions”: “I cannot think of those years without horror, disgust, and pain of heart. There was no vice or crime that in those days I would not have committed. Lying, theft, pleasure of all sorts, intemperance105, violence, murder—I have committed all. I lived on my estate, I consumed in drink or at cards what the labour of the peasants had produced. I punished them, and sold them, and deceived them; and for all that I was praised.” Tolstoi condemns106 himself without mercy, as Bunyan condemned108 himself in his “Grace Abounding;” even in the “Confessions” he admits that at this time his aspirations109 after good were the central element in his nature, and it was out of desire to benefit his peasants that he left the university prematurely110 to settle on his estate.
Tolstoi’s spiritual autobiography is carried on as accurately111 as anyone need desire in “The Cossacks.” It was in the Caucasus that he first powerfully realized what nature is, and natural life; he was, for the first time, forced to consider his own relation to such life. Lukashka, the healthy, coarse young Cossack soldier, Maryana, the beautiful robust112 Cossack girl, and the delightful113 figure of Uncle Jeroshka, the old hunter, display their vivid and active life before Olyenin, the child of civilization. He lives constantly in the presence of the “eternal and inaccessible114 mountain snows and a majestic115 woman endowed with the[190] primitive beauty of the first woman;” he feels the contrast between this and the life of cities: “happiness is to be with Nature, to see her, to hold converse116 with her;” and he longs to mingle117 himself with the life of Maryana. In vain. “Now if I could only become a Cossack like Lukashka, steal horses, get tipsy on red wine, shout ribald songs, shoot men down, and then while drunk creep in through the window where she was, without a thought of what I was doing or why I did it, that would be another thing, then we should understand one another, then I might be happy.... She fails to understand me, not because she is beneath me, not at all; it would be out of the nature of things for her to understand me. She is light-hearted; she is like Nature, calm, tranquil118, sufficient to herself. But I, an incomplete feeble creature, wish her to understand my ugliness and my anguish119.” The book is full of strongly-drawn pictures of the beauty of natural strength and health; sometimes recalling Whitman at his best. They are strange, these resemblances between three great typical artists of to-day, so far apart, so little known to each other, Millet, Whitman, and Tolstoi. In “The Cossacks” Tolstoi gives his first statement of that problem of man’s natural function in life which he has been seeking to solve ever since. Here he has no sort of solution to offer;[191] “some voice seemed to bid him wait, not decide hastily.”
In 1854 Tolstoi was transferred at his own request to the Crimea, to obtain command of a mountain battery, doing good service at the battle of the Tchernaya. At this period also he wrote his “Sketches of Sebastopol.” By this time he had attracted considerable attention as a writer, and by command of the Emperor, who said that “the life of that young man must be looked after,” he was, much to his own annoyance122, removed to a place of comparative safety.
When peace was made, Tolstoi, then twenty-six years of age, left the army and settled in St. Petersburg, where he was warmly received by the chief literary circle of the capital, then including Tourgueneff, Gregorovitch, and Ostroffsky; the first, who was a comparatively near neighbour at Yasnaya Polyana, becoming one of his most intimate friends. During the following ten years he wrote little, but travelled in Germany, France, and Italy, and devoted123 himself to the education of the serfs on his estate, marrying in 1862 the young and beautiful daughter of a German military doctor at Tula. Although he wrote little, he was enlarging his conception of art and studying literature. He admired English novels, both for their art and naturalism, and among French novelists he preferred Dumas and Paul de Kock, whom he called the French[192] Dickens. Schopenhauer was a favourite writer at this period. He found his chief recreations in that love of sport in all its forms which has left such vivid and delightful traces throughout his work. In his portraits he appears with a shaggy bearded face, with large prominent irregular features, and rather a stern fixed124 and reserved expression; the deep eyes are watchful125 yet sympathetic, and at the same time melancholy, and the thick lips are sensitive. His acquaintances described him as not easy to approach, very shy and rather wild (très-farouche et très-sauvage), but those who approached him found him “extremely amiable126.” In his later “Confessions” he thus summarizes his view of things, and that of the group to which he belonged, during this literary period of his life, more especially with reference to the earlier part of it. “The view of life of my literary comrades lay in the opinion that in general life developed itself; that in this development we, the men of intellect, took the chief part, and among the men of intellect we, artists and poets, stood first. Our vocation was to instruct people. The very natural question, ‘What do I know and what can I teach,’ was unnecessary, for, according to the theory, one needed to know nothing. The artist, the poet, taught unconsciously. I held myself for a wonderful artist and poet, and very naturally appropriated this theory.[193] I was paid for it, I had excellent food, a good habitation, women, society; I was famous.... When I look back to that time, to my state of mind then, and to that of the people I lived with (there are thousands of them, even now), it seems to me melancholy, horrible, ludicrous; I feel as one feels in a lunatic asylum127. We were all then convinced that we must talk, talk, write and print as quickly as possible and as much as possible; because it was necessary for the good of humanity.” This is by no means a satisfactory or final account of the matter.
“War and Peace,” Tolstoi’s longest and most ambitious work, which began to appear in 1865, is from the present point of view of comparatively slight interest. His art had now become more complex, and this was a serious attempt to give life to various aspects of a great historical period. Much of himself, certainly, we find scattered128 through the work, especially in Pierre Besoukhoff, though it is unnecessary to say that a very large part of Pierre’s experiences had no counterpart in Tolstoi’s; the not very life-like or interesting Masonic episode, for instance, has clearly been read up. Pierre, however, appears before us, from first to last, as Tolstoi appears before us, a seeker.
“Anna Karenina” is full of biographic material of intense interest. In Vronsky, doubtless much of his earlier experience, and in Levine,[194] his own inner history at that time, are written clearly enough. From this standpoint the book has the vivid interest of a tragedy; we see the man whose efforts to solve the mystery of life we can trace through all that he ever wrote, still groping, but now more restlessly and eagerly, with growing desperation. The nets are drawn tight around him, and when we close the book we see clearly the inevitable130 fate of which he is still unconscious.
I once lived on the road to the cemetery131 of a large northern town. All day long, it seemed to me, the hearses were trundling along their dead to the grave, or gallopping gaily132 back. When I walked out I met men carrying coffins133, and if I glanced at them, perhaps I caught the name of the child I saw two days ago in his mother’s lap; or I was greeted by the burly widower135 of yesterday, pipe in mouth, sauntering along to arrange the burial of the wife who lay, I knew, upstairs at home, thin and haggard and dead. The road became fantastic and horrible at last; even such a straight road to the cemetery, it seemed, was the whole of life, a road full of the noise of the preparation of death. How daintily soever we danced along, each person, laughing so merrily or in such downright earnest, was merely a corpse, screwed down in an invisible coffin134, trundled along as rapidly as might be to the grave-edge.—It was at such a[195] point of view that Tolstoi arrived in his fiftieth year.
“When I had ended my book ‘Anna Karenina,’” he wrote in his “Confessions,” “my despair reached such a height that I could do nothing but think, think, of the horrible condition in which I found myself.... Questions never ceased multiplying and pressing for answers, and like lines converging136 all to one point, so these unanswerable questions pressed to one black spot. And with horror and a consciousness of my weakness, I remained standing137 before this spot. I was nearly fifty years old when these unanswerable questions brought me into this terrible and quite unexpected position. I had come to this, that I—a healthy and happy man—felt that I could no longer live.... Bodily, I was able to work at mowing138 hay as well as a peasant. Mentally, I could work for eighteen hours at a time without feeling any ill consequence. And yet I had come to this, that I could no longer live.... I only saw one thing—Death. Everything else was a lie.”
The greater part of the “Confessions” is occupied with the analysis of this mental condition, and with the earlier stages of his deliverance, for when he wrote the book he was scarcely yet quite free. The direction in which light was to break in upon him is very clear even to the reader of “Anna Karenina.” It seemed to him at length[196] that the awful questions which had oppressed him so long had been solved for thousands of years by millions upon millions of persons who had never reasoned about them at all. “From the time when men first began to live anywhere,” he says in the “Confessions,” “they already knew the meaning of life, and they carried on this life so that it reached me. Everything in me and around me, corporeal139 and incorporeal140, is the fruit of their experiences of life; even the means by which I judge and condemn107 life, all this is not mine, but brought forth141 by them. I myself have been born, bred, grown up, thanks to them. They have dug out the iron, have tamed cattle and horses, have taught how to till the ground, and how to live together and to order life; they have taught me to think and to reason. And I, their production, receiving my meat and drink from them, instructed by their thoughts and words, have proved to them they are an absurdity142!... It is clear that I have only called absurd what I do not understand.”
When he had made this great discovery the rest followed, slowly, but simply and naturally. First, he understood the meaning of God. He had all his life been seeking God. Now, one day in early spring, he was in the wood, trying to catch among the tones of the forest the cry of the snipe, listening and waiting, and thinking of the things he had been thinking of for the last three[197] years, especially of this question of God. There was no God—that he knew was an intellectual truth. But is the knowledge of God an intellectual matter? And it seemed to him that he realized that God is life, and that to live is to know God. “And from that moment the consciousness of God, as known by living, has remained with me.”
Following up this clue, he proceeded to attend church regularly, and to fulfil all the orthodox ceremonies. This, however, was a failure. He could not get rid of the consciousness that these things were—“bosh.” He turned from the church to the Gospels. At this point the “Confessions” end. In the year 1879, in which he wrote that book, he heard of, and met, Soutaieff.
One evening a beggar woman had knocked at Soutaieff’s door, asking shelter for the night. She was given food and a place of rest. Next morning all the family went to work in the field. The woman took the opportunity of collecting all the valuables she could lay her hands on, and fled. Some peasants at work saw her, stopped her, examined her bundle, and having bound her hands, led her before the local authorities. Soutaieff heard of this, and soon arrived. “Why have you arrested her?” he asked. “She is a thief; she must be punished,” they cried. “Judge not, and you will not be judged,” he said solemnly; “we are all guilty at some point. What is the[198] good of condemning144 her? She will be put in prison, and what advantage will that be? It would be much better to give her something to eat, and to let her go in the grace of God.” Such curiously145 Christ-like stories as this of the peasant-teacher reached Tolstoi, and made a deep impression on him. They were in the line of his mental development, and threw light on his own experiences. The influence of Soutaieff appears in “What then must we do?”—a further chapter in the history of Tolstoi’s development, and perhaps the most memorable of his attempts at the solution of social questions.
What then must we do? It was the question the people asked of John the Baptist, and we know his brief and practical answer. It was the question that pressed itself for solution on Tolstoi when he began to investigate the misery of Moscow, and to start philanthropic plans for its amelioration. He tells us in this narrative146, which has a dramatic vividness of its own that will not bear abbreviation, how he was gradually forced, by his own well-meaning attempts and mistakes, to abandon his philanthropic projects, and to realize that he himself and all other respectable and well-to-do people were the direct causes of the misery of poverty.
He investigated the worst parts of the city, finding more comfort and happiness amidst rags than he had expected, and only discovering one[199] hopelessly useless class—the class of those who had seen better days, who had been brought up in the notions that he himself had been brought up in as to the relative position of those who are workers and those who are not workers.
He met with a prostitute who stayed at home nursing the child of a dying woman. He asked her if she would not like to change her life—to become, he suggested at random147, a cook. She laughed: “A cook? I cannot even bake bread;” but he detected in her face an expression of contempt for the occupation of a cook. “This woman, who, like the widow of the Gospel, had in the simplest way sacrificed all that she possessed148 for a dying person, thought, like her companions, that work was low and contemptible149. Therein was her misfortune. But who of us, man or woman, can save her from this false view of life? Where among us are the people who are convinced that a life of labour is more honourable150 than one of idleness, who live according to such a conviction, and value and respect men accordingly?” He came across another prostitute who had brought up her daughter of thirteen to the same trade. He determined to save the child, to put her in the hands of some compassionate151 ladies, but it was impossible to persuade the woman that she had not done the best for the daughter whom she had cared for all her life and brought up to the same occupation as her[200]self; and he realized that it was the mother herself who had to be saved from a false view of life, according to which it was right to live without bearing children and without working, in the service of sensuality. “When I had considered this, I understood that the majority of ladies whom I would have called on to save this girl, not only themselves live without bearing children and without working, but also bring up their daughters to live such a life; the one mother sends her daughter to the public-house, the other to the ball. But both mothers possess the same view of life, namely, that a woman must be fed, clothed, and taken care of, to satisfy the wantonness of a man. How, then, could our ladies improve this woman and her daughter?” He was anxious to befriend a bright boy of twelve, and took him into his own house among the servants, pending152 some better arrangement to give him work. At the end of a week this ungrateful little boy ran away, and was subsequently found at the circus, acting153 as conductor to an elephant, for thirty kopecks a day. “To make him happy and to improve him I had taken him into my house, where he saw—what? My children—older, younger, and the same age as himself—who not only did not work for themselves, but in every way gave work to others: they spoiled everything they came in contact with, over-ate themselves with sweets and deli[201]cacies, broke crockery, and threw to the dogs what to this boy would seem dainties.... I ought to have understood how foolish it was on my part—I who brought up my children in luxury to do nothing—to try to improve other people and their children, who lived in what I called ‘dens,’ but three-fourths of whom worked for themselves and for others.” His experience was the same throughout, and he brings his usual keen insight to the analysis of his mental attitude when he gave money in charity, and to the mental attitude of the recipients154 of his charity. He found also that, even if his charity were to rival that of the poor, he would have to give 3,000 roubles to make a gift proportioned to the three kopecks bestowed155 by a peasant, or to sacrifice his whole living for days at a time, like the prostitute who nursed the dying woman’s child.
It seemed to him that he was like a man trying to draw another man out of a swamp, while he himself was standing on the same shifting and treacherous156 ground; every effort only served to show the character of the ground that he stood upon himself. When he was at the Night Shelter at Moscow, and looked at the wretched crowd who sought admission, he recalled his impression when he had seen a man guillotined at Paris thirty years previously, and with his whole being had understood that murder would always[202] be murder, and that he had his share in the guilt143. “So, at the sight of the hunger, cold, and degradation157 of thousands of men, I understood, not with my reason, but with my heart and my whole being, that the existence of ten thousand such men in Moscow, while I and other thousands eat daintily, clothe our horses and cover our floors—let the learned say as much as they will that it is inevitable—is a crime, committed not once but constantly, and that I with my luxury do not merely permit the crime, but take a direct part in it. The difference in the two impressions consisted only in this—that before the guillotine all I could have done would have been to cry out to the murderers that they were doing evil, and to try to prevent them. Even then I should have known beforehand that the deed would not have been prevented. But here I could have given, not merely a warm drink or the little money that I had about me, but I could have given the coat from my body, and all that I had in my house. I did not do so, and therefore I felt, and still feel, and shall never cease to feel, that I am a partaker in that never-ceasing crime, so long as I have superfluous158 food and another has none, so long as I have two coats and another has none.”
“My Religion,” the best known of Tolstoi’s social works, contains—not, indeed, the latest or the final statement, for Tolstoi is not a man to[203] stand still—the clearest, most vigorous and complete statement of his beliefs. He here frankly159 admits that he has arrived by the road of his own experience at convictions similar to those of Jesus as expressed in the Sermon on the Mount. That he has nothing to say in favour of the Christianity of to-day, which approves of society as it now is, with its prison cells, its factories, its houses of infamy160, its parliaments, one need scarcely point out. He has nothing but contempt for “faith” which he regards as merely a kind of lunacy. “But reason, which illuminates161 our life and impels162 us to modify our actions, is not an illusion, and its authority can never be denied.... Jesus taught men to do nothing contrary to reason. It is unreasonable163 to go out to kill Turks or Germans; it is unreasonable to make use of the labours of others that you and yours may be clothed in the height of fashion and maintain that source of ennui164, a drawing-room; it is unreasonable to take people, already corrupted165 by idleness and depravity, and devote them to further idleness and depravity within prison walls: all this is unreasonable—and yet it is the life of the European world.” The doctrine166 of Jesus is hard, men say. But how much harder, exclaims Tolstoi, is the doctrine of the world! “In my own life,” he says, “(an exceptionally happy one, from a worldly point of view), I can reckon up as much suffer[204]ing caused by following the doctrine of the world as many a martyr167 has endured for the doctrine of Jesus. All the most painful moments of my life—the orgies and duels168 in which I took part as a student, the wars in which I have participated, the diseases that I have endured, and the abnormal and unsupportable conditions under which I now live—all these are only so much martyrdom exacted by fidelity169 to the doctrine of the world.” And what of those less happily situated170? “Thirty millions of men have perished in wars, fought in behalf of the doctrine of the world; thousands of millions of beings have perished, crushed by a social system organized on the principle of the doctrine of the world.... You will find, perhaps to your surprise, that nine-tenths of all human suffering endured by men is useless, and ought not to exist—that, in fact, the majority of men are martyrs171 to the doctrine of the world.”
Tolstoi sums up his own doctrine under a very few heads:—Resist not evil—Judge not—Be not angry—Love one woman. His creed172 is entirely covered by these four points. “My Religion” is chiefly occupied by the exposition of what they mean, and in his hands they mean much. They mean nothing less than the abolition173 of the State and the country. He is as uncompromising as Ibsen in dealing174 with the State. “It is a humbug175, this State,” he remarked[205] to Mr. Stead. “What you call a Government is mere phantasmagoria. What is a State? Men I know; peasants and villages, these I see; but governments, nations, states, what are these but fine names invented to conceal176 the plundering177 of honest men by dishonest officials?” Law, tribunals, prisons, become impossible with the disappearance178 of the State; and with the disappearance of the country, and of “that gross imposture179 called patriotism,” there can be no more war.
In place of these great and venerable pillars of civilization, what? The first condition of happiness, he tells us, is that the link between man and nature shall not be broken, that he may enjoy the sky above him, and the pure air and the life of the fields. This involves the nationalization of the land, or rather, to avoid centralizing tendencies, its communalization. “I quite agree with George,” he remarked, “that the landlords may be fairly expropriated without compensation, as a matter of principle. But as a question of expediency180, I think compensation might facilitate the necessary change. It will come, I suppose, as the emancipation of slaves came. The idea will spread. A sense of the shamefulness181 of private ownership will grow. Someone will write an ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ about it; there will be agitation182, and then it will come, and many who[206] own land will do as did those who owned serfs, voluntarily give it to their tenants183. But for the rest, a loan might be arranged, so as to prevent the work being stopped by the cry of confiscation184. Of course I do not hold with George about the taxation185 of the land. If you could get angels from Heaven to administer the taxes from the land, you might do justice and prevent mischief186. I am against all taxation.” The second condition of happiness is labour, the intellectual labour that one loves because one has chosen it freely, and the physical labour that is sweet because it produces the muscular joy of work, a good appetite, and tranquil sleep. The third condition of happiness is love. Every healthy man and woman should have sexual relationships; and Tolstoi makes no distinction between those that are called by the name of marriage and those that are not so called; in either case, however, he would demand that they shall be permanent. The fourth condition is unrestrained fellowship with men and women generally, without distinction of class. The fifth is health, though this seems largely the result of obedience187 to the others. These are the five points of Tolstoi’s charter. They seem simple enough, but he is careful to point out that most of them are closed to the rich. The rich man is hedged in by conventions, and cannot live a simple and natural life. A peasant can associate[207] on equal terms with millions of his fellows; the circle of equal association becomes narrower and narrower the higher the social rank, until we come to kings and emperors, who have scarcely one person with whom they may live on equal terms. “Is not the whole system like a great prison, where each inmate188 is restricted to association with a few fellow-convicts?” The rich may, indeed, work, but even then their work usually consists in official and administrative189 duties, or the observance of arduous190 social conventions which are odious191 to them: “I say odious, for I never yet met with a person of this class who was contented192 with his work, or took as much satisfaction in it as the man who shovels193 the snow from his doorstep.” From this standpoint Tolstoi has never since greatly varied194.
Such as he is now he is known throughout the civilized195 world. He lives at his old home at Yasnaya Polyana, surrounded by less luxury than may be found in many a Siberian cottage, writing or shoemaking or ploughing, or kneading clay in a tub to build incombustible cottages, or spending the day in spreading manure196 over the land of some poor widow. Such we see him in his portraits, in the coarse blouse and the leather belt that he has always worn, with the massive, earnest, suffering, baffled face, as of a blind but unconquered Samson.
[208]
III.
With Tolstoi the artist we have here little concern. Yet from the first he has been an artist, and in spite of himself he is an artist to the last. We cannot pass by his art. One realizes this curiously in reading “What then must we do?” A profoundly sincere record without doubt of deeply-felt experiences and of a mental revolution, it is yet the work of an artist, a tragedy broadly and solemnly unfolding the misery of the world, the impotence of every scheme or impulse of charity, the light that comes only from freedom and self-development. Let us read, again, that little popular tract—“Does a man need much land?”—brimming over with meaning, about the man who gained permission to possess as much land as he could walk round from sunrise to sunset. Can he get so much into the circuit, not omitting this fine stretch of land, and this other? His constantly growing desires, his efforts, are told in brief, stern phrase, his feverish197 and failing strain to reach the goal, that at sunset is reached, and the man drops down dead. Then the curt198 and unaccentuated conclusion: “Pakhom’s man took the hoe, dug a grave for him, made it just long enough from head and foot—three arshins—and buried him.” All the tragedy of the nineteenth[209] century is pressed together into those half-dozen pages by the strong, relentless199 hand of the great artist who deigns200 to point no moral. From the early and delicious sketch121 of the frail201 musician, Albert, down to the sombre and awful “Death of Ivan Ilyitch,” Tolstoi has produced an immense body of work that must be considered, above all, as art. One reads this body of work with ever-growing delight and satisfaction. Gogol was a finer artist than Dickens, but there are too many suggestions about him of Dickens and the English novelists. Tourgueneff, a very great artist—how great, those little prose-poems, “Senilia,” would alone suffice to show—an artist who thrilled to every touch, suffered from the excess of his sensitiveness, and perhaps also from an undue202 absorption in the western world. In Dostoieffski there is nothing of the west; he is intimately and intensely personal, with an even morbid203 research of all the fibres of organic misery in human nature. In all his work we seem to hear the groans204 of the prison-house, the house of the dead in Siberia. When we have read the wonderful book in which he has recorded the life of his years there, we know the source of all his inspiration. Reading all these authors, we are constantly aware of the neurotic205 element in Russian life and Russian character, the restless, diseased element that is revealed to us in cold scientific[210] analysis by Tarnowsky and S. P. Kowalevski and Dmitri Drill. It is not so when we turn to Tolstoi. In him we find not merely the insight and the realistic observation, but a breadth and sanity206 and wholeness that the others mostly fail to give us. His art is so full and broad and true that he seems able to do for his own time and country what Shakespeare with excess of poetic207 affluence208 did for his time, and Balzac for his. He is equal to every effort, he omits nothing that imports, he describes everything with the same calm ease and simplicity. It makes no difference whether, within the limits of a slight sketch, he is tracing delicately the life of the drunken artist, Albert, or producing the largest literary canvas of modern times, “War and Peace.” In “Family Happiness” he analyzes209 passion, marriage, parenthood, the cycle of life, in a simple narration210, a few chapters, yet nothing is omitted, and one shudders211 at the awful ease with which to this man these things seem to yield their secret. In “Ivan Ilyitch” he analyzes death and the house of death, quietly, completely, with a hand that never falters212. He writes as a man who has touched life at many points, and tasted most that it has to offer, its joys and its sorrows, but he gazes upon it, even from the first, with the luminous213 and passionless calm of old age. His art is less perfect than Flaubert’s, but Flaubert’s[211] intense personal note, the ferocious214 nihilism of the Norman, is absent. He holds life up to the light, simply, and says: “This is what it is!”
For one who cannot read Tolstoi in the original, and who misses the style so much praised by those who are more privileged, Tolstoi seems an uncompromising realist. He has therefore often been compared with Zola, the prodigious215 representative and champion of Latin realism. In vain Zola himself disclaims216 this position; it is he more than any other who has influenced the novel, especially in the Latin countries, in the direction, if not of realism, at all events in that of anti-idealism; not Balzac or Stendhal, who have reached sure summits of fame, but have ceased to be living influences; not the De Goncourts, whose style cannot be imitated; least of all Flaubert, an idealist of idealists, whose profound art and marmoreal style are of the sort that it takes generations even to understand. It is interesting, doubtless, to put Tolstoi beside Zola, but the resemblance is not deep. Zola is the avowed217 prophet of a formula. He has read and pondered the “Introduction à l’étude de la Médicine Expérimentale,” in which the great physiologist218, Claude Bernard, expounded219 the principles of the experimental method as applied220 to the sciences of physical life. He has asked himself: “Can we not apply this same method to the psychological life? Can we not have an experi[212]mental novel?” “We seek the causes of social evil,” he declares in “Le Roman Experimental,” a collection of essays not less instructive than his novels, and more interesting; “we present the anatomy221 of classes and of individuals, in order to explain the aberrations which are produced in society and in man. This obliges us often to work on bad subjects, and to descend92 into the midst of human miseries and follies222. But we bring the documents necessary to be known by those who would dominate good and evil. Here is what we have seen, observed, explained in all sincerity223. Now it is the turn of the legislators!” To bring the scientific spirit of the age into the novel: it was a brilliant idea, and Zola forthwith set to work, with his immense energy and unshakeable resolution, to draw up a procès-verbal of human life—for this is the most that the “experimental method” comes to in the novel—which has not ceased to this day.
But, one asks oneself, what is reality? Zola has frankly explained how a novel ought to be written; how one must get one’s human documents, study them thoroughly, accumulate notes, systematically224 frequent the society of the people one is studying, watch them, listen to them, minutely observe and record all their surroundings. But have we got reality then? Does the novelist I casually225 meet, and who has opportunities to take notes of my conversation and appearance, to[213] examine the furniture of my house and to collect gossip about me, know anything whatever of the romance or tragedy which to me is the reality of my life, these other things being but shreds226 or tatters of life? Or if my romance or tragedy has got into a law-court or a police-court, is he really much nearer then? The unrevealable motives227, the charm, the mystery, were not deposed228 to by the policeman who was immediately summoned, nor by the servant-girl who looked through the key-hole. Certain disagreeable details: do they make up reality? To select the most beautiful and charming woman one knows, and to set a detective artist on her track, to follow her about everywhere, to keep an opera-glass fixed upon her, to catch fragments of her conversation, to enter her house, her bedroom, to examine her dirty linen,—would Helen of Troy emerge beautiful from this procès-verbal? And on which side would be most reality? Nature seems to resent this austere method of approaching her, and when we have closed our hands the reality has slipped through our fingers. A great artist, a Shakespeare or a Goethe, is not afraid of any fact, however repulsive229 it may seem, so long as it is significant. But it must be significant. Without sympathy and a severe criticism of details, the truly illuminating230 facts will be missed or lost in the heap. It is interesting to note that Zola himself recognizes this, and admits that he has[214] been carried away by his delight and enthusiasm in attempting to vindicate231 for Art the whole of Nature. Whatever is really fine in Zola’s work—“La Faute de l’Abbé Mouret,” or the last chapters of “Nana”—is fine because the man of a formula is for awhile subordinated to the artist.
Zola may work as hard as he will in the cause of the formula; he remains232, above all, a man of massive temperament233 and peculiarly strong individuality. That is the real secret of his influence. A youth, developed in the poverty and hunger of a garret on the outskirts234 of Paris, who was fascinated by the great city he has lovingly painted, as it was there spread out before him, in “Une Page d’Amour,” and condemned to see it only from the outside,—here was material for that irony235, unending and absolutely pitiless, that runs through the whole of the vast Rougon-Macquart drama of the world. He is an austere moralist, with no tenderness for human weakness, “un tragique qui se fache,” as he calls himself, a Republican in spirit long before the Republic was proclaimed, a hater of all hypocrisies236 and empty prettinesses and fine phrases and elegant circumlocutions, a fighting man ready to fight to the last, with rude weapons but in fair combat. He represents the revolt against the French romantic movement—“une émeute de rhétoriciens,” he calls it—which found its supreme[215] incarnation in Victor Hugo. The Forty Immortals237 may have laughed serenely238, but when Zola declared that he was carrying on the classic tradition he was not altogether wrong. The classic tradition of France is marked by a very vivid sense of life; it has a close grip of the practical and material side of things, a wholesome239 contempt for all pretence240, and sometimes a certain rather rank savour of audacity241. Zola will scarcely stand beside Rabelais and Montaigne and Molière; the artist in him is too much crushed by ideas, and he has altogether run too much to seed; but he is fighting on the same side, and he has been proved to possess one quality which leaves little more to be said, effectiveness. Whatever the value of his work, he has turned the tide of novel literature, wherever his influence has spread, from frivolous242 inanities243 to the painstaking244 study of the facts of human life. Whatever we may think for the moment, that is a very wholesome and altogether moral revolution.
As for great art, that is neither here nor there. Shakespeare, Goethe, Flaubert,—for such men the extremes of poetry and of realism are equally welcome. Tolstoi, it is clear, is more of a realist than a poet, but his realism is of the kind that grows naturally out of the experiences of a man who has lived a peculiarly full and varied life. It is life sur le vif, not studied from a garret[216] window. Nothing is omitted, nothing is superfluous; the narrative seems to lead the narrator rather than the narrator it, and through all we catch perpetually what seems an almost accidental fragrance245 of poetry. See the account of the storm in the “Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth,” or of the child in the raspberry bush, or of the mowing, or the horse-race, in “Anna Karenina,” with their peculiar, intangible yet vivid reality. But these things, it may be said, are poetry, the effluence of some divine moment of life, the record of some unforgettable thrill of blood and brain. Compare, then, the account of a childbirth in “Anna Karenina” (there is an earlier and less successful attempt in “War and Peace”) with a similar scene which is the central episode in Zola’s “La Joie de Vivre.” The latter, doubtless, is instructive from its fidelity; every petty detail is coldly and minutely set forth. Its artistic value is difficult to estimate; it can scarcely be large. Zola presents the subject from the point of view of a disinterested246 and impossible spectator; in Tolstoi’s scene we have frankly the husband’s point of view. There is no room here for instructive demonstration247 of the mechanism248 of birth, of all its physical details and miseries. It is real life, but at such a moment real life is excitement, emotion, and the result is art. What, again, can be more unpromising than a novel about a remote historical war? But read[217] “War and Peace” to see how lifelike, how vivid and fascinating, the narrative becomes in the hands of a man who has known the life of a soldier and all the chances of war.
Tolstoi is not alone among Russian novelists in the character of his realism. Gogol’s “Dead Souls” has something of the wholesome naturalism as well as of the broad art and the good-natured satire249 of Fielding. He is perpetually insisting on the importance to the artist of those “little things which only seem little when narrated250 in a book, but which one finds very important in actual life.” In his letters on “Dead Souls” Gogol wrote: “Those who have dissected251 my literary faculties252 have not discovered the essential feature of my nature. Poushkin alone perceived it. He always said that no author has been gifted like me to bring into relief the triviality of life, to describe all the platitude253 of a commonplace man, to make perceptible to all eyes the infinitely254 little things which escape our vision. That is my dominating faculty255.” Tourgueneff declared that the novel must cast aside all hypocrisy, sentimentality, and rhetoric256 for the simple yet nobler aim of becoming the history of life. Dostoieffski, that tender-hearted student of the perversities of the human heart, so faithful in his studies that he sometimes seems to forget how great an artist he is, justifies257 himself thus: “What is the good of prescribing to[218] art the roads that it must follow? To do so is to doubt art, which develops normally, according to the laws of nature, and must be exclusively occupied in responding to human needs. Art has always shown itself faithful to nature, and has marched with social progress. The ideal of beauty cannot perish in a healthy society; we must then give liberty to art, and leave her to herself. Have confidence in her; she will reach her end, and if she strays from the way she will soon reach it again; society itself will be the guide. No single artist, not Shakespeare himself, can prescribe to art her roads and aims.” Tolstoi but followed in the same path when, in one of the earliest of his books, the “Sebastopol Sketches,” he wrote: “The hero of my tale, whom I love with all the strength of my soul, whom I have tried to set forth in all his beauty, and who has always been, is, and always will be, most beautiful, is—Truth.”
It is, after all, impossible to disentangle Tolstoi’s art from the man himself and the ideas and aspirations that have stirred him. When we consider his history and development we are sometimes reminded of our own William Morris. They are both men of massive and sanguine258 temperament, of restless energy, groping their way through life with a vague sense of dissatisfaction; both pure artists through the greater part of their career, and both artists still, when[219] late in life, and under the influence of rather sectarian ideas, they think that they have at length grasped the pillars of the heathen temple of society in which they have so long been groping, and are ready to wreak259 on it the pent-up unrest of their lives. But they go to work in not quite the same way. Both, it is true, having apparently260 passed through a very slight religious phase in early life, have had this experience in later life, and in both it has taken on a social character; both, also, have sought their inspiration, not so much in a possible future deduced from the present, as in the past experiences of the race. Tolstoi with his semi-oriental quietism has returned to the rationalistic aspects of the social teaching of Jesus. Morris, who regards Iceland rather than Jud?a as the Holy Land of the race, looks to Scandinavian antiquity261 for light on the problems of to-day. It is on the robust Scandinavian spirit of independence and comfortable well-to-do intolerance of all oppression and domination that Morris relies for the redemption of his own time and people. So far from identifying art, as Tolstoi is inclined to do, with the evil and luxury of the world, Morris finds in art a chief hope for the world. It is not, therefore, surprising that his art has suffered little from the fervour of his convictions, while his varied artistic activities have given him a wholesome grip on life. His new beliefs, on[220] the other hand, have given new meaning to his art. His mastery of prose has only been acquired under the stress of his convictions. It is prose of massive simplicity, a morning freshness, unconscious and effortless. There is about it something of the peculiar charm of the finest Norman architecture. The “Dream of John Ball,” a strong unpretentious piece of work, penetrated at every point by profound social convictions, yet with the artist’s touch throughout, may be read with a delight which the complex and artificial prose we are accustomed to cannot give. England, it is said, is predominantly a Scandinavian country; Morris is significant because he gives expression in an extreme form to the racial instincts of his own people, just as Tolstoi expresses in equally extreme form the deepest instincts of his Sclavonic race.
Against the “Dream of John Ball,” we may place the work produced at the same time by the Russian’s keener and more searching hand, “The Dominion262 of Darkness.” This sombre and awful tragedy is a terribly real and merciless picture of the worst elements in peasant life, a picture of avarice263 and lust264 and murder. Only one pious, stuttering, incoherent moojik, whose employment is to clean out closets, appears as the representative of mercy and justice. So thick is the gloom that it seems the artistic[221] effect would have been heightened if the concluding introduction of the officers of an external and official justice had been omitted, and the curtain had fallen on the tragic265 merriment of the wedding feast. The same intense earnestness taking, almost unconsciously, an artistic shape, reveals itself in the little stories of which in recent years Tolstoi has produced so many, some indeed comparatively ineffective, but others that are a fascinating combination of simplicity, realism, imaginative insight, brought to the service of social ideas. Such is “What men live by,” the story of the angel who disobeyed God, and was sent to earth to learn that it is only in appearance that men are kept alive through care for themselves, but that in reality they are kept alive through love.
Tolstoi’s voice is heard throughout the vast extent of Russia, not by the rich only, but by the peasant. That is why his significance is so great. Sometimes the religious censure266 prohibits his books; sometimes it allows them; in either case they are circulated. Published at a few halfpence, these little books are within the reach of the poorest, and Tolstoi gives free permission to anyone to reproduce or translate any of his books. His drama, “The Dominion of Darkness, or when a bird lets himself be caught by one foot he is lost,” was intended for the public who frequent the open-air theatres of[222] fairs, and eighty thousand copies were sold during the first week, although certainly not altogether among the audience he would have preferred. The stories for children are circulated in scores of editions of twenty thousand copies each. Tolstoi has nothing to teach that he has not learnt from peasants, and which thousands of peasants might not have taught him. He has used his character and genius as a sounding-board to enable his voice to reach millions of persons, many of whom, even the most intelligent, are not aware that he is but repeating the lessons he has learnt from unlettered moojiks.
Now his voice has reached the countries of the West, and it sounds here far more unfamiliar267 than in a land so stirred by popular religious movements as Russia. “My Religion,” that powerful argument ad hominem to the Christian from one who accepts both the letter and the spirit of Jesus’s simplest and least questionable268 teaching, has had an especially large circulation in the West. Such a challenge has never before been scattered broadcast among the nations. What, one wonders, will be the outcome?
To most people the simplicity of the challenger is a cause of astonishment269. After the assassination270 of Alexander II. and the sentence on the assassins, Tolstoi wrote to the present Tzar imploring271 him not to begin his reign19 with judicial272 murder, and he was deeply and genuinely dis[223]appointed at the inevitable reception of his appeal. Count Tolstoi, the author of “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina,” made the same mistake as the simple peasant Soutaieff. That little incident throws much light on his mental constitution. It is the attitude of a child, absorbed wholly in one thing at a time, unable to calculate the nature and the strength of opposing forces. It is the same fact of mental structure which leads the world-renowned novelist to delight to learn from children, to be mortified274 when they do not like his stories, and to experience one of the greatest excitements of life when he thinks he detects the dawn of genius in a child of ten. The same characteristic appears in his treatment of science. He had heard, he told Mr. Kennan, that a Russian scientist had completely demolished275 the Darwinian theory. In “Life,” one of his latest books, this tendency has carried him far away into a sterile276 and hopeless region of mystical phraseology. He dismisses scientific men briefly as the Scribes. It has not occurred to him apparently that this book, “Life,” is a book of science. And, certainly, if science could produce nothing better than “Life,” the language that Tolstoi uses regarding it were not one whit120 too strong. This childlike simplicity is not peculiar to Tolstoi; it is more or less the attitude of every true Russian, of the peasant who[224] sets up the kingdom of Heaven, as of the Nihilist who thinks he can emancipate277 his country by destroying a few Tzars. It is a weakness that must often mean failure because it cannot estimate the strength of difficulties. At the same time it is a power. It is by this intense concentration on one desired object, this heroic inability to see opposition278, that the highest achievement becomes possible.
Whatever Tolstoi’s limitations and failures of perception, those things which he believes he has seen he grasps with inexorable tenacity. The violence and misery of the world—that is a reality; a reality, he feels, which must be fought at all costs. Mr. Kennan tells how he pressed home on Tolstoi the cases of extreme brutality279 and oppression that he had known practised on political prisoners in Siberia, and how, though Tolstoi’s eyes filled with tears as he imagined the horrors described, he still pointed273 out in detail how, by opposing violence to violence in the cases cited, the misery of the world would be increased: “At the time when you interposed there was only one centre of evil and suffering. By your violent interference you have created half-a-dozen such centres. It does not seem to me, Mr. Kennan, that that is the way to bring about the reign of peace and good-will on earth.”[12]
[225]
Tolstoi possesses that social imagination which, though growing among us, is still so rare. If at the dinner where cheerful guests prolong their enjoyment280, there were placed behind each chair a starved, ragged281 figure, with haggard and haunting face—would not the meal be broken up as speedily as if every guest had found the sword of Dionysius hanging by a thread above his head? Yet it is only a lack of imagination which prevents us from seeing through the few layers of bricks that screen us off from these realities. For him who has seen it there is little rest, “so long as I have superfluous food and another has none, so long as I have two coats and another has none.”
With tears in his voice, and in words whose intense reality pierces through the translation, though this, we are told, cannot reproduce the graphic129 vividness of the original, Tolstoi speaks to us through his life and his work as he once spoke282 to the interviewer who came to him:
“People say to me, ‘Well, Lef Nikolaivitch, as far as preaching goes, you preach; but how about your practice?’ The question is a perfectly283 natural one; it is always put to me, and it always shuts my mouth. ‘You preach,’ it is said, ‘but how do you live?’ I can only reply that I do not preach—passionately as I desire to do so. I might preach through my actions, but my actions are bad. That which I say is not[226] preaching; it is only my attempt to find out the meaning and the significance of life. People often say to me, ‘If you think that there is no reasonable life outside the teachings of Christ, and if you love a reasonable life, why do you not fulfil the Christian precepts284?’ I am guilty and blameworthy and contemptible because I do not fulfil them; but at the same time I say,—not in justification285, but in explanation, of my inconsistency,—Compare my previous life with the life I am now living, and you will see that I am trying to fulfil. I have not, it is true, fulfilled one eighty-thousandth part, and I am to blame for it; but it is not because I do not wish to fulfil all, but because I am unable. Teach me how to extricate286 myself from the meshes287 of temptation in which I am entangled,—help me,—and I will fulfil all. I wish and hope to do it even without help. Condemn me if you choose,—I do that myself,—but condemn me, and not the path which I am following, and which I point out to those who ask me where, in my opinion, the path is. If I know the road home, and if I go along it drunk, and staggering from side to side, does that prove that the road is not the right one? If it is not the right one, show me another. If I stagger and wander, come to my help, and support and guide me in the right path. Do not yourselves confuse and mislead me and then rejoice over it and cry, ‘Look at[227] him! He says he is going home, and he is floundering into the swamp!’ You are not evil spirits from the swamp; you are also human beings, and you also are going home. You know that I am alone,—you know that I cannot wish or intend to go into the swamp,—then help me! My heart is breaking with despair because we have all lost the road; and while I struggle with all my strength to find it and keep in it, you, instead of pitying me when I go astray, cry triumphantly288, ‘See! He is in the swamp with us!’”
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1
mediator
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| n.调解人，中介人 | |
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regularity
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| n.规律性，规则性；匀称，整齐 | |
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ethnic
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| adj.人种的，种族的，异教徒的 | |
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aberrations
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| n.偏差( aberration的名词复数 )；差错；脱离常规；心理失常 | |
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anthropological
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| adj.人类学的 | |
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complexion
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| n.肤色；情况，局面；气质，性格 | |
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affinities
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| n.密切关系( affinity的名词复数 )；亲近；（生性）喜爱；类同 | |
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analyzed
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| v.分析( analyze的过去式和过去分词 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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entirely
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| ad.全部地，完整地；完全地，彻底地 | |
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component
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| n.组成部分，成分，元件；adj.组成的，合成的 | |
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effaced
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| v.擦掉( efface的过去式和过去分词 )；抹去；超越；使黯然失色 | |
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gilded
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| a.镀金的，富有的 | |
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domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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gamut
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| n.全音阶，(一领域的)全部知识 | |
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aspiration
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| n.志向，志趣抱负；渴望；(语)送气音；吸出 | |
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grotesque
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| adj.怪诞的，丑陋的；n.怪诞的图案，怪人（物） | |
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reign
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| n.统治时期，统治，支配，盛行；v.占优势 | |
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distinctive
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| adj.特别的，有特色的，与众不同的 | |
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distinctively
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| adv.特殊地，区别地 | |
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essentially
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| adv.本质上，实质上，基本上 | |
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simplicity
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| n.简单，简易；朴素；直率，单纯 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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ineffable
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| adj.无法表达的，不可言喻的 | |
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melancholy
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| n.忧郁，愁思；adj.令人感伤（沮丧）的，忧郁的 | |
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emancipation
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| n.（从束缚、支配下）解放 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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millet
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| n.小米，谷子 | |
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vice
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| n.坏事；恶习；[pl.]台钳，老虎钳；adj.副的 | |
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primitive
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| adj.原始的；简单的；n.原(始)人，原始事物 | |
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instinctive
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| adj.(出于)本能的；直觉的；(出于)天性的 | |
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penetrating
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| adj.（声音）响亮的，尖锐的adj.（气味）刺激的adj.（思想）敏锐的，有洞察力的 | |
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allied
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| adj.协约国的；同盟国的 | |
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Christian
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| adj.基督教徒的；n.基督教徒 | |
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secular
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| n.牧师，凡人；adj.世俗的，现世的，不朽的 | |
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penetrated
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| adj. 击穿的，鞭辟入里的 动词penetrate的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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39
remarkable
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| adj.显著的，异常的，非凡的，值得注意的 | |
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40
malice
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| n.恶意，怨恨，蓄意；[律]预谋 | |
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41
austere
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| adj.艰苦的；朴素的，朴实无华的；严峻的 | |
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tenacious
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| adj.顽强的，固执的，记忆力强的，粘的 | |
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43
reverence
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| n.敬畏，尊敬，尊严；Reverence:对某些基督教神职人员的尊称；v.尊敬，敬畏，崇敬 | |
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44
propitiatory
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| adj.劝解的；抚慰的；谋求好感的；哄人息怒的 | |
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45
deities
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| n.神，女神( deity的名词复数 )；神祗；神灵；神明 | |
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46
uncommon
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| adj.罕见的，非凡的，不平常的 | |
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47
indifference
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| n.不感兴趣，不关心，冷淡，不在乎 | |
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48
ascend
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| vi.渐渐上升，升高；vt.攀登，登上 | |
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49
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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50
sects
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| n.宗派，教派( sect的名词复数 ) | |
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51
sect
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| n.派别，宗教，学派，派系 | |
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52
tenacity
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| n.坚韧 | |
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53
inborn
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| adj.天生的，生来的，先天的 | |
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54
antagonism
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| n.对抗，敌对，对立 | |
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55
promulgated
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| v.宣扬（某事物）( promulgate的过去式和过去分词 )；传播；公布；颁布（法令、新法律等） | |
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56
hatred
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| n.憎恶，憎恨，仇恨 | |
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57
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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58
patriotic
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| adj.爱国的，有爱国心的 | |
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59
ascetic
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| adj.禁欲的；严肃的 | |
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60
frantic
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| adj.狂乱的，错乱的，激昂的 | |
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61
aged
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| adj.年老的，陈年的 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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zeal
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| n.热心，热情，热忱 | |
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64
testament
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| n.遗嘱；证明 | |
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65
corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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66
amass
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| vt.积累，积聚 | |
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67
previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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68
vices
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| 缺陷( vice的名词复数 )； 恶习； 不道德行为； 台钳 | |
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69
precept
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| n.戒律；格言 | |
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70
blessing
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| n.祈神赐福；祷告；祝福，祝愿 | |
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71
exhortation
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| n.劝告，规劝 | |
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72
manifestations
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| n.表示，显示（manifestation的复数形式） | |
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73
hatreds
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| n.仇恨，憎恶( hatred的名词复数 )；厌恶的事 | |
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jealousies
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| n.妒忌( jealousy的名词复数 )；妒羡 | |
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miseries
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| n.痛苦( misery的名词复数 )；痛苦的事；穷困；常发牢骚的人 | |
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proprietors
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| n.所有人，业主( proprietor的名词复数 ) | |
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77
persuasion
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| n.劝说；说服；持有某种信仰的宗派 | |
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78
hypocrisy
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| n.伪善，虚伪 | |
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79
injustice
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| n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利 | |
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disciples
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| n.信徒( disciple的名词复数 )；门徒；耶稣的信徒；（尤指）耶稣十二门徒之一 | |
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81
catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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82
autobiography
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| n.自传 | |
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copious
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| adj.丰富的，大量的 | |
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84
admiration
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| n.钦佩，赞美，羡慕 | |
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85
craves
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| 渴望，热望( crave的第三人称单数 )； 恳求，请求 | |
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poignant
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| adj.令人痛苦的，辛酸的，惨痛的 | |
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87
narrating
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| v.故事( narrate的现在分词 ) | |
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fervently
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| adv.热烈地，热情地，强烈地 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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receding
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| v.逐渐远离( recede的现在分词 )；向后倾斜；自原处后退或避开别人的注视；尤指问题 | |
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91
descended
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| a.为...后裔的，出身于...的 | |
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descend
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| vt./vi.传下来，下来，下降 | |
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eminent
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| adj.显赫的，杰出的，有名的，优良的 | |
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diplomacy
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| n.外交；外交手腕，交际手腕 | |
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95
esteem
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| n.尊敬，尊重；vt.尊重，敬重；把…看作 | |
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devout
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| adj.虔诚的，虔敬的，衷心的 (n.devoutness) | |
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orphan
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| n.孤儿；adj.无父母的 | |
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artillery
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| n.(军)火炮，大炮；炮兵(部队) | |
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memorable
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| adj.值得回忆的，难忘的，特别的，显著的 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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artistic
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| adj.艺术(家)的，美术(家)的；善于艺术创作的 | |
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vocation
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| n.职业，行业 | |
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fascination
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| n.令人着迷的事物，魅力，迷恋 | |
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briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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intemperance
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| n.放纵 | |
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condemns
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的第三人称单数 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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107
condemn
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| vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑 | |
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108
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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109
aspirations
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| 强烈的愿望( aspiration的名词复数 )； 志向； 发送气音； 发 h 音 | |
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prematurely
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| adv.过早地，贸然地 | |
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111
accurately
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| adv.准确地，精确地 | |
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robust
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| adj.强壮的，强健的，粗野的，需要体力的，浓的 | |
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113
delightful
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| adj.令人高兴的，使人快乐的 | |
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114
inaccessible
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| adj.达不到的，难接近的 | |
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115
majestic
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| adj.雄伟的，壮丽的，庄严的，威严的，崇高的 | |
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116
converse
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| vi.谈话，谈天，闲聊；adv.相反的，相反 | |
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mingle
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| vt.使混合，使相混；vi.混合起来；相交往 | |
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118
tranquil
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| adj. 安静的, 宁静的, 稳定的, 不变的 | |
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119
anguish
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| n.(尤指心灵上的)极度痛苦，烦恼 | |
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120
whit
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| n.一点，丝毫 | |
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121
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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122
annoyance
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| n.恼怒，生气，烦恼 | |
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123
devoted
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| adj.忠诚的，忠实的，热心的，献身于...的 | |
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124
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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125
watchful
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| adj.注意的，警惕的 | |
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126
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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127
asylum
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| n.避难所，庇护所，避难 | |
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128
scattered
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| adj.分散的，稀疏的；散步的；疏疏落落的 | |
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129
graphic
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| adj.生动的，形象的，绘画的，文字的，图表的 | |
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130
inevitable
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| adj.不可避免的，必然发生的 | |
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131
cemetery
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| n.坟墓，墓地，坟场 | |
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gaily
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| adv.欢乐地，高兴地 | |
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133
coffins
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| n.棺材( coffin的名词复数 )；使某人早亡[死，完蛋，垮台等]之物 | |
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134
coffin
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| n.棺材，灵柩 | |
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135
widower
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| n.鳏夫 | |
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136
converging
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| adj.收敛[缩]的，会聚的，趋同的v.（线条、运动的物体等）会于一点( converge的现在分词 )；（趋于）相似或相同；人或车辆汇集；聚集 | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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138
mowing
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| n.割草，一次收割量，牧草地v.刈，割( mow的现在分词 ) | |
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139
corporeal
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| adj.肉体的，身体的；物质的 | |
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140
incorporeal
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| adj.非物质的，精神的 | |
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141
forth
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| adv.向前；向外，往外 | |
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142
absurdity
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| n.荒谬，愚蠢；谬论 | |
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143
guilt
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| n.犯罪；内疚；过失，罪责 | |
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144
condemning
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| v.（通常因道义上的原因而）谴责( condemn的现在分词 )；宣判；宣布…不能使用；迫使…陷于不幸的境地 | |
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145
curiously
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| adv.有求知欲地；好问地；奇特地 | |
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146
narrative
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| n.叙述，故事；adj.叙事的，故事体的 | |
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random
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| adj.随机的；任意的；n.偶然的(或随便的)行动 | |
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148
possessed
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| adj.疯狂的；拥有的，占有的 | |
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149
contemptible
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| adj.可鄙的，可轻视的，卑劣的 | |
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150
honourable
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| adj.可敬的；荣誉的，光荣的 | |
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151
compassionate
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| adj.有同情心的，表示同情的 | |
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152
pending
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| prep.直到，等待…期间；adj.待定的；迫近的 | |
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153
acting
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| n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的 | |
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recipients
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| adj.接受的；受领的；容纳的；愿意接受的n.收件人；接受者；受领者；接受器 | |
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155
bestowed
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| 赠给，授予( bestow的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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156
treacherous
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| adj.不可靠的，有暗藏的危险的；adj.背叛的，背信弃义的 | |
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157
degradation
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| n.降级；低落；退化；陵削；降解；衰变 | |
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158
superfluous
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| adj.过多的，过剩的，多余的 | |
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159
frankly
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| adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说 | |
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160
infamy
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| n.声名狼藉，出丑，恶行 | |
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161
illuminates
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| v.使明亮( illuminate的第三人称单数 )；照亮；装饰；说明 | |
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162
impels
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的第三人称单数 ) | |
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163
unreasonable
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| adj.不讲道理的，不合情理的，过度的 | |
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164
ennui
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| n.怠倦，无聊 | |
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165
corrupted
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| （使）败坏( corrupt的过去式和过去分词 )； （使）腐化； 引起（计算机文件等的）错误； 破坏 | |
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166
doctrine
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| n.教义；主义；学说 | |
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167
martyr
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| n.烈士，殉难者；vt.杀害，折磨，牺牲 | |
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168
duels
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| n.两男子的决斗( duel的名词复数 )；竞争，斗争 | |
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169
fidelity
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| n.忠诚，忠实；精确 | |
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170
situated
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| adj.坐落在...的，处于某种境地的 | |
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171
martyrs
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| n.martyr的复数形式；烈士( martyr的名词复数 )；殉道者；殉教者；乞怜者（向人诉苦以博取同情） | |
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172
creed
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| n.信条；信念，纲领 | |
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173
abolition
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| n.废除，取消 | |
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174
dealing
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| n.经商方法，待人态度 | |
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175
humbug
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| n.花招，谎话，欺骗 | |
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176
conceal
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| v.隐藏，隐瞒，隐蔽 | |
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177
plundering
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| 掠夺，抢劫( plunder的现在分词 ) | |
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178
disappearance
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| n.消失，消散，失踪 | |
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179
imposture
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| n.冒名顶替，欺骗 | |
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180
expediency
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| n.适宜；方便；合算；利己 | |
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181
shamefulness
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182
agitation
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| n.搅动；搅拌；鼓动，煽动 | |
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183
tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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184
confiscation
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| n. 没收, 充公, 征收 | |
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185
taxation
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| n.征税，税收，税金 | |
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186
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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187
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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188
inmate
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| n.被收容者；(房屋等的)居住人；住院人 | |
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189
administrative
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| adj.行政的，管理的 | |
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190
arduous
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| adj.艰苦的，费力的，陡峭的 | |
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191
odious
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| adj.可憎的，讨厌的 | |
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192
contented
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| adj.满意的，安心的，知足的 | |
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193
shovels
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| n.铲子( shovel的名词复数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份v.铲子( shovel的第三人称单数 )；锹；推土机、挖土机等的)铲；铲形部份 | |
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194
varied
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| adj.多样的，多变化的 | |
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195
civilized
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| a.有教养的，文雅的 | |
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196
manure
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| n.粪，肥，肥粒；vt.施肥 | |
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197
feverish
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| adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的 | |
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198
curt
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| adj.简短的，草率的 | |
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199
relentless
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| adj.残酷的，不留情的，无怜悯心的 | |
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200
deigns
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| v.屈尊，俯就( deign的第三人称单数 ) | |
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201
frail
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| adj.身体虚弱的；易损坏的 | |
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202
undue
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| adj.过分的；不适当的；未到期的 | |
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203
morbid
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| adj.病的；致病的；病态的；可怕的 | |
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204
groans
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| n.呻吟，叹息( groan的名词复数 )；呻吟般的声音v.呻吟( groan的第三人称单数 )；发牢骚；抱怨；受苦 | |
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205
neurotic
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| adj.神经病的，神经过敏的；n.神经过敏者，神经病患者 | |
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206
sanity
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| n.心智健全，神智正常，判断正确 | |
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207
poetic
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| adj.富有诗意的，有诗人气质的，善于抒情的 | |
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208
affluence
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| n.充裕，富足 | |
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209
analyzes
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| v.分析( analyze的第三人称单数 )；分解；解释；对…进行心理分析 | |
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210
narration
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| n.讲述，叙述；故事；记叙体 | |
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211
shudders
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| n.颤动，打颤，战栗( shudder的名词复数 )v.战栗( shudder的第三人称单数 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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212
falters
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| （嗓音）颤抖( falter的第三人称单数 )； 支吾其词； 蹒跚； 摇晃 | |
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213
luminous
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| adj.发光的，发亮的；光明的；明白易懂的；有启发的 | |
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214
ferocious
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| adj.凶猛的，残暴的，极度的，十分强烈的 | |
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215
prodigious
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| adj.惊人的，奇妙的；异常的；巨大的；庞大的 | |
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216
disclaims
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| v.否认( disclaim的第三人称单数 ) | |
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217
avowed
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| adj.公开声明的，承认的v.公开声明，承认( avow的过去式和过去分词) | |
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218
physiologist
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| n.生理学家 | |
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219
expounded
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| 论述，详细讲解( expound的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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220
applied
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| adj.应用的；v.应用，适用 | |
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221
anatomy
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| n.解剖学，解剖；功能，结构，组织 | |
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222
follies
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| 罪恶，时事讽刺剧； 愚蠢，蠢笨，愚蠢的行为、思想或做法( folly的名词复数 ) | |
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223
sincerity
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| n.真诚，诚意；真实 | |
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224
systematically
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| adv.有系统地 | |
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225
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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226
shreds
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| v.撕碎，切碎( shred的第三人称单数 )；用撕毁机撕毁（文件） | |
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227
motives
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| n.动机，目的( motive的名词复数 ) | |
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228
deposed
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| v.罢免( depose的过去式和过去分词 )；（在法庭上）宣誓作证 | |
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229
repulsive
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| adj.排斥的，使人反感的 | |
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230
illuminating
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| a.富于启发性的，有助阐明的 | |
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231
vindicate
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| v.为…辩护或辩解，辩明；证明…正确 | |
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232
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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233
temperament
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| n.气质，性格，性情 | |
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234
outskirts
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| n.郊外，郊区 | |
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235
irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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236
hypocrisies
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| n.伪善，虚伪( hypocrisy的名词复数 ) | |
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237
immortals
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| 不朽的人物( immortal的名词复数 )； 永生不朽者 | |
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238
serenely
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| adv.安详地，宁静地，平静地 | |
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239
wholesome
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| adj.适合；卫生的；有益健康的；显示身心健康的 | |
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240
pretence
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| n.假装，作假；借口，口实；虚伪；虚饰 | |
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241
audacity
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| n.大胆，卤莽，无礼 | |
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242
frivolous
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| adj.轻薄的；轻率的 | |
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243
inanities
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| n.空洞( inanity的名词复数 )；浅薄；愚蠢；空洞的言行 | |
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244
painstaking
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| adj.苦干的；艰苦的，费力的，刻苦的 | |
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245
fragrance
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| n.芬芳，香味，香气 | |
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246
disinterested
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| adj.不关心的，不感兴趣的 | |
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247
demonstration
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| n.表明，示范，论证，示威 | |
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248
mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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249
satire
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| n.讽刺，讽刺文学，讽刺作品 | |
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250
narrated
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| v.故事( narrate的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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251
dissected
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| adj.切开的，分割的，（叶子）多裂的v.解剖（动物等）( dissect的过去式和过去分词 )；仔细分析或研究 | |
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252
faculties
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| n.能力( faculty的名词复数 )；全体教职员；技巧；院 | |
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253
platitude
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| n.老生常谈，陈词滥调 | |
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254
infinitely
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| adv.无限地，无穷地 | |
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255
faculty
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| n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员 | |
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256
rhetoric
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| n.修辞学，浮夸之言语 | |
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257
justifies
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| 证明…有理( justify的第三人称单数 )； 为…辩护； 对…作出解释； 为…辩解（或辩护） | |
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258
sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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259
wreak
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| v.发泄；报复 | |
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260
apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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261
antiquity
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| n.古老；高龄；古物，古迹 | |
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262
dominion
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| n.统治，管辖，支配权；领土，版图 | |
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263
avarice
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| n.贪婪；贪心 | |
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264
lust
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| n.性(淫)欲；渴(欲)望；vi.对…有强烈的欲望 | |
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tragic
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| adj.悲剧的，悲剧性的，悲惨的 | |
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266
censure
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| v./n.责备；非难；责难 | |
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267
unfamiliar
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| adj.陌生的，不熟悉的 | |
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268
questionable
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| adj.可疑的，有问题的 | |
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269
astonishment
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| n.惊奇，惊异 | |
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270
assassination
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| n.暗杀；暗杀事件 | |
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271
imploring
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| 恳求的，哀求的 | |
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272
judicial
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| adj.司法的，法庭的，审判的，明断的，公正的 | |
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273
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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274
mortified
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| v.使受辱( mortify的过去式和过去分词 )；伤害（人的感情）；克制；抑制（肉体、情感等） | |
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demolished
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| v.摧毁( demolish的过去式和过去分词 )；推翻；拆毁（尤指大建筑物）；吃光 | |
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276
sterile
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| adj.不毛的，不孕的，无菌的，枯燥的，贫瘠的 | |
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277
emancipate
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| v.解放，解除 | |
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278
opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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279
brutality
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| n.野蛮的行为，残忍，野蛮 | |
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280
enjoyment
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| n.乐趣；享有；享用 | |
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281
ragged
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| adj.衣衫褴褛的，粗糙的，刺耳的 | |
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282
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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283
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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284
precepts
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| n.规诫，戒律，箴言( precept的名词复数 ) | |
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285
justification
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| n.正当的理由；辩解的理由 | |
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286
extricate
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| v.拯救，救出；解脱 | |
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287
meshes
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| 网孔( mesh的名词复数 )； 网状物； 陷阱； 困境 | |
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288
triumphantly
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| ad.得意洋洋地；得胜地；成功地 | |
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