The great heart of the writer is stung with anger and pity and shame that men—our brothers—should be so debased and tortured. He is goaded to madness by this outrage on our common humanity, this insult to God.
Tolstoy is a realist because he has the courage to face facts as they are, because he believes that the cause of true morality is never served by evasions and concealment, because this concealment is, in itself, one of the chief allies of vice.
Though a realist Tolstoy is not, in essence, a pessimist. There is more real pessimism in one chapter of Thackeray than in the whole of Resurrection, for Thackeray thinks men despicable, and despairs of their being otherwise.
Tolstoy, like Rousseau before him, is convinced that human beings are naturally good, and that, if human nature becomes base, it is only because it has slipped from the divine ideal, the spark of God, which exists in each one of us. Like his Master, Tolstoy is assured of the redeeming power of penitence and tenderness.
Our redemption may come to us from within, through the struggles of our own soul, or by the aid of another, but it is always accompanied by sweetness and compassion; loving-kindness is the true centre of our being; the supreme sin—the sin against the Holy Spirit—is to transgress, no matter for what motive, the law of love in our dealings with our fellows.
Our so-called "principles" and "ideals" do not excuse us; any ideal, whether patriotism or justice or honour or religion, becomes reprehensible when it makes man act inhumanly to man; the supreme test, always and invariably, is the test of brotherhood.
CHAPTER VIII
THE INFLUENCE OF TOLSTOY