The conversation was about religion. Tolstoi said:
“Rousseau expressed a perfectly true idea that the Jewish religion admitted one revelation—the past; the Christian religion two—the past and present; and the Muhammadan three—the past, the present, and the future. Historically it is undoubtedly a progressive movement. Christianity is higher than Judaism, which is no longer alive. It is all in the past; and Muhammadanism is higher than Christianity: it has not the superstitions, the idolatry. To me personally Christianity, to be sure, is above all religions, but I speak about Christianity, not as the highest religious moral teaching, but as a historical fact. And as there is ever much in common between the opposite poles, so there is here; both Judaism and Muhammadanism keep strictly to monotheism, and there is no intoxication in either; but in the historical Christianity of the churches there is polytheism, as well as all kinds of ignorance and cruelty. Everything is justified and even encouraged.”
FOOTNOTES:
[2] A comic poem by Count Alexey K. Tolstoi.
[3] Mme. Kolokoltsev was the wife of the landowner N. A. Kolokoltsev. She suffered from nervous disorder and made several attempts at suicide. In spite of constant observation, she managed one night to make the blanket on the bed into a figure, and thus deceived her husband. She went into his study, opened the drawer of his table with a skeleton key, took out his revolver and shot herself. She was an elderly woman, the mother of two grown-up daughters.
[4] G. S. Petrov, a publicist and politician who started his career as a preacher of the Church and then resigned his priesthood.
[5] Called in its final version, After the Ball.
[6] N. V. Orlov, a painter from the people, of whose pictures Tolstoi was very fond. Reproductions of most of his paintings hang in Tolstoi’s room.
[7] The brother of the well-known editor M. N. Katkov.