"The greatest modern sin: the abstract love of humanity, impersonal love for those who are—somewhere, out of sight.... To love those we do not know, those whom we shall never meet, is so easy a thing! There is no need to sacrifice anything; and at the same time we are so pleased with ourselves! The conscience is fooled.—No. We must love our neighbours—those we live with, and who are in our way and embarrass us."[30]
I have read in most of the studies of Tolstoy's work that his faith and philosophy are not original. It is true; the beauty of these ideas is eternal and can never appear a momentary fashion. Others complain of their Utopian character. This also is true; they are Utopian, the New Testament is Utopian. A prophet is a Utopian; he treads the earth but sees the life of eternity; and that this apparition should have been granted to us, that we should have seen among us the last of the prophets, that the greatest of our artists should wear this aureole on his brow—there, it seems to me, is a fact more novel and of far greater importance to the world than one religion the more, or a new philosophy. Those are blind who do not perceive the miracle of this great mind, the incarnation of fraternal love in the midst of a people and a century stained with the blood of hatred!
[1] Le Temps, November 2, 1902.
[2] Tolstoy regarded this as one of his most important works. "One of my books—For Every Day—to which I have the conceit to attach a great importance...." (Letter to Jan Styka, July 27 August 9, 1909).
[3] These works should shortly appear, under the supervision of Countess Alexandra, Tolstoy's daughter. The list of them has been published in various journals. We may mention Hadji-Mourad, Father Sergius, the psychology of a monk; She Had Every Virtue, the study of a woman; the Diary of a Madman, the Diary of a Mother, the Story of a Doukhobor, the Story of a Hive, the Posthumous Journal of Theodore Kouzmitch, Aliocha Govchkoff, Tikhon and Melanie, After the Ball, The Moon shines in the Dark, A Young Tsar, What I saw in a Dream, Who is the Murderer? (containing social ideas), Modern Socialism, a comedy; The Learned Woman, Childish Wisdom, sketches of children who converse upon moral subjects; The Living Corpse, a drama in seventeen tableaux; It is all her Fault, a peasant comedy in two acts, directed against alcohol (apparently Tolstoy's last literary work, as he wrote it in May-June, 1910), and a number of social studies. It is announced that they will form two octavo volumes of six hundred pages each.
But the essential work as yet unpublished is Tolstoy's Journal, which covers forty years of his life, and will fill, so it is said, no less than thirty volumes.
[4] The excommunication of Tolstoy by the Holy Synod was declared on February 22, 1901. The excuse was a chapter of Resurrection relating to Mass and the Eucharist. This chapter has unhappily been suppressed in the French edition.
[5] On the nationalisation of the soil. (The Great Crime, 1905.)
[6] "A 'Great-Russian,' touched with Finnish blood." (M. Leroy-Beaulieu.)