It might be imagined, at the first glance, that Tolstoy stands at the opposite pole from such a writer as Ibsen—Ibsen the uncompromising individualist, who preaches self-realisation at all costs, and breaks furiously through our so-called "duties," and Tolstoy who preaches self-abnegation, self-sacrifice, and humility.
But, when we look closer, we see that there is a unity underlying all seeming differences; both men are profoundly dissatisfied with the "ideals" of present-day Europe; they insist that all values must be revalued, that all the old "duties" must be questioned, and rejected if they will not stand the test of the new morality.
And who is to be the supreme arbiter? Both Tolstoy and Ibsen answer: "The man's own soul."
No one would trample on the old "duties" more thoroughly than Tolstoy; he insists that his countrymen must renounce all they have previously held most sacred, their "duty" to the Czar, their "duty" to the State, to their oaths, even in the last resort to their families; for, like Ibsen, he finds the "family snare" one of the worst and deadliest.
Both Ibsen and Tolstoy are quite agreed that, when a man is sure of himself, he should, if need be, stand alone against the world.
Tolstoy is, indeed, one of the strongest of individualists, and, as the terrified Greek Church saw when it excommunicated him, his doctrine of "peaceful anarchy" is the most tremendous solvent for society's hierarchy that has ever been conceived by the mind of man.
We may sum up briefly the leading channels in which the influence of Tolstoy runs.
He is one of the most powerful forces in favour of what may be termed "social justice." The conscience of civilised Europe is more and more declaring that some reconstruction of our social system has become imperative, and Tolstoy is among those who have done most to arouse this conscience. That he overstates in some ways, that he is too hard on the upper classes—all this is possible, but there is so much in his indictment which is true and accurate that we all feel guilty before him.
Again, he is one of the most powerful of all apostles of peace. He is aware, as we have seen, of the nobler side of war. He knows that it really can and does rouse an enervated aristocracy to something finer (in War and Peace he shows us the actual process); but he also realises that the vast majority of the people—the working class—are moralised and strengthened by their daily toil. For the mass of the people war is as needless as it is futile. Tolstoy shows that the ends for which it is waged are nearly always childish and absurd, and his unflinching realism has made him an unrivalled exponent of its horrors. Ruskin and Carlyle have both preached against the horrors of war, but Tolstoy is more effective than they because he knows it at first hand.