“Our great Leo is dead,” cried one. “Long live our great Leo’s spirit.”
Tolstoy’s body was laid where he had wished to lie, on the spot where his brother Nicholas had buried the green stick on which was written the great secret it was Tolstoy’s purpose in life to discover.
What was the secret of Tolstoy’s power?
Every one who came near him seemed to feel it, and most of those who read his books. It is true that there still exists a certain number of people who recognize him only as a novelist. These are generally among the upper classes and among literary people who are impatient with him for having neglected his art. If it had not been for his novels it is probable that his influence would not have been nearly so far-reaching. It is doubtful whether fashionable people would have taken any notice of his serious books at all. But the fact that he had written “Anna Karenina” and had made a great name, roused their curiosity and they read his indictments against society, governments, and the Church with some interest, and many have gradually come under his spell.
It was Tolstoy’s profound sincerity and his warm heart that made people love him. They saw how passionate was his wish to make the world a better place, how he hated small, mean things, and worshiped goodness and truth. He had immense courage, and fame or the praise of men by the time he was middle-aged meant nothing to him. But he confesses that in his younger days he looked for and enjoyed success. His art had been a temptation to him, and that was one of the reasons why he would have nothing more to do with it.
Tolstoy was above all things a human being: indeed, it was his special characteristic. Being so, he was sometimes inconsistent and swayed by his moods and his likes and dislikes, which makes his critics say he did not practise his doctrine of love. He asked people to turn the other cheek and love their enemies, while he himself found it almost impossible to be agreeable to disagreeable people or to stupid people, and he never succeeded in tolerating those whom he considered responsible for the evils of our social system, rulers, politicians, and policemen.
When absorbed in thought he was forgetful and inconsiderate; he did not mean to be selfish, but his wife’s sufferings and what people who lived with him had to put up with did not strike him. He was impetuous, especially in his younger days, and he was always making resolutions which he failed very often to carry out. But all great idealists must suffer from this; it is infinitely better than having no ideals at all and making no mistakes. If a man with Tolstoy’s ideals could carry them all out, he would be the perfect man, and Tolstoy was far from being that. But no one could be more humble or more ready to blame himself, and as he grew older he more and more succeeded in practising in his life what he preached to others.
Tolstoy believed in God, and in the spiritual element that is in all men and women and which all, he insisted, must cherish and try to increase.
He believed that all men are equal as Christ did, and that all are brothers, so there should be no such thing as rivalry among nations, and no wars. If a man is not bent on money-making, on stealing and grasping for himself and taking away from others, if he only desires to treat them as he wishes they would treat himself, then will force become unnecessary. This idea may also be applied to States, for wars arise out of their jealousies and rivalry, in the search after power and wealth.
Tolstoy saw that much wickedness and misery came out of poverty, and a great deal through riches: one is often the cause of the other, and the unequal distribution of wealth is one of the greatest problems of our civilization.