To have sacrificed and renounced and dared as much and as long as he had, and, in the end, to find what he found, in his three days observation of village miseries and outrages, was more than his great heart could stand. It broke. He was eighty-two years old. He could no longer continue the fight. He could no longer look upon the suffering of the unfortunates, nor upon the wrongs of the world, nor upon the extravagances even within his own family. He regarded his whole life-work a dismal failure. He knew of no other balm for his bleeding heart than flight from the world to some secluded spot, there, as a hermit, to await the end, which he knew was not far distant. Truly pathetic were his farewell lines to his wife:
"I cannot continue longer to live a life of ease and luxury while others starve and suffer. Like many other old men, I retire from the world to await my end in solitude. I ask that you do not seek my place of sojourn, and that you do not come to it if it be discovered. I beg forgiveness for the grief that I may cause you."
Characteristic of great reformers.
He was not the first of the world's great reformers and lovers of humanity to lose heart and to experience spells of despair. Moses and Elijah and Jesus and others had their hours of agony, and prayed that the end might come, and deliver them from their hopeless labors. And many who, like Tolstoy, closed their eyes in the belief that they had utterly failed loomed large in subsequent ages among the greatest of the world's benefactors.
Succeeded better than he knew.
Tolstoy has not failed. He succeeded better than he knew. His pathetic death revealed the vast number of followers he had in his own country and in all parts of the world. And had he cared to inquire, he might have known it before his death. He could have seen it from the fact that more books of his were sold than of all other Russian authors combined. He could have seen it in the vast crowds that gathered all along the line, to catch a glimpse of him, when on his journey, a few years ago, to the Crimea, in search of health. He could have seen it in the deputations of sympathizers that waited upon him, and in the streams of congratulatory letters and telegrams that rushed in upon him—till suppressed—after his excommunication. He could have seen it in the Tolstoyan societies among the students of almost all the Russian universities and among other bodies. He could have seen it among the considerable number of landlords, who made conscientious efforts at following his life, and at adopting his mode of dealing with peasants and laborers. Were the yoke of autocracy removed, there would arise in Russia an army of Tolstoyans as vast and mighty as the host which Ezekiel in his vision saw in the valley of dry bones.
Religion of future will be largely Tolstoyan.
The religion of Russia of the future will be largely that which Tolstoy lived and taught, and it will be the religion of a large part of the rest of the world. Time's sifting process will eliminate whatever is untenable in his system of moral and social and economic philosophy, which sprang more from a flaming heart than from a cool, calculating mind. He had neither the time nor the inclination to work out a synthetic philosophy. He wrote as the spirit moved him, and whenever it moved him, the keynote of all his writing having been, as he said to me, "the hastening of the day when men will dwell together in the bonds of love, and sin and suffering will be no more."
There are in the Tolstoyan system of religion the elements of the long-dreamed of universal creed. It will take time for the rooting of it. Mormonism and Dowieism spring up, like Jonah's gourd, and pass away as speedily as they came. A system as rational and radical as that of Tolstoy requires an age for germination. But, once it takes root, it takes root forever; once it blossoms, it blossoms for eternity.