Tolstoy's influence is a great and growing one, both in Europe as a whole and in England. He is the most powerful and impressive critic of our existing social order.
We have seen that, in certain respects, Tolstoy stands apart from the humanism of Europe; it is impossible to read him without seeing that he is imperfectly acquainted with the achievements of the human mind, and very imperfectly indeed with their value. He emphasizes the fact that he is not a humanist by his intense dislike of the Renaissance and his continual references to it as a period of moral decay.
But his very limitations are, in some respects, his strength. He has no unreasonable reverence for civilisation which, to use one of his own favourite words, can "hypnotise" him into accepting civilisation's defects.
He insists on trying it, fairly and squarely, by its conformity to the needs of man, and in condemning it when it does not conform to man's noblest ideal—brotherhood.
And Tolstoy is the latest and the greatest of the mystics; the essence of his creed is the Christian mysticism of the Middle Ages, stripped of its ecclesiasticism and supernaturalism, but insisting most strenuously on the old ideal of the Catholic Church—the brotherhood of all men through religion. According to Tolstoy's creed the Spirit of God exists in each one of us, the highest good for man is to cherish this Divine Spirit within himself, and the supreme duty, both for the individual and for the social order, is to further the true Christian unity.
Moreover, Tolstoy's rule of life is the old monastic rule of poverty, chastity, and labour, though he substitutes for obedience to an "Order," the harder and more rigorous command of immediate obedience to a man's conscience.
The vital spirit of mediæval religion, its unquestioning, wonderful, literal acceptance of the commands of Christ, lives still among the Russian peasants; what Tolstoy has done is to take this spirit, shake it free from ceremonies and dogma, rescue the true and glowing fire from its incumbent mountains of ashes, and insist, with all the vehemence of his most vehement soul, that it is the true light of the world.
Our Christianity, he tells us, is sick to death; it has become so entangled with paganism and rationalism that it is hardly worth while calling Christianity at all; indeed we find in some modern writers—Nietzsche and others—the frankest paganism, calling Christianity a "slave-morality," and declaring it unworthy of the free. Tolstoy declares that Christianity is not founded on rationalism but is divinely inspired; he is original only so far as he insists that this divine inspiration occurs not in any Church or tradition, but in a man's own heart; like the seventeenth-century Puritans, he accepts the Bible as his guide, but he rejects the Old Testament and relies entirely upon the New.
And Tolstoy's influence is so profound because he announces the dissatisfaction which, secret and overt, is assailing us on all sides; we are, none of us, really satisfied with our civilisation as it stands, we all desire a better one, and Tolstoy's is the most powerful and eloquent amid those voices which are summoning us to emerge from the dwelling which has grown too narrow and to build a new.
This is why Tolstoy, the preacher of non-resistance and peace, is really one of the most powerful of revolutionaries. And, paradoxical as it may sound, he is also one of the most powerful of individualists.