Crosby, Ernest H.

English

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TOLSTOY'S ANSWER TO THE RIDDLEOF LIFE.AN AMERICAN ADMIRER OE TOLSTOY.ERNEST Howard Crosby has been called Tolstoy's leading dis-ciple in America, and truly no one has shown himself a moredevoted friend to the venerable Russian reformer whose pictureour author places before us in the following words ^:"A strange figure—this peasant nobleman, this aristocrat, born into the rulingclass of an autocracy, who condemns all government and caste, this veteran of twowars who proscribes all bloodshed, this keen sportsman turned vegetarian, thislandlord who follows Henry George, this man of wealth who will have nothing todo with money, this famous novelist who thinks that he wasted his time in writingmost of his novels, this rigid moralist, one of whose books at least, the KreutzerSotiata, was placed under the ban of the American Post Office. That same dra-matic instinct which made him a great novelist, which impelled Sir Henry Irvingto rank his two plays among the best of the past century, and which, as we haveseen, has so often led him to find lessons in the active world around him, this sameinstinct has made of this least theatrical and most self-forgetful of men the dramaticprefigurement in his own person of a reunited race, set free by love from theshackles of caste and violence. As it was with the prophets of old, so with him,there is a deeper significance in his life, in the tragedy of himself, than in the bur-den of his spoken message."Mr. Crosby's enthusiasm for this prophet of peace and good-will on earth finds utterance in the following lines^:"Hail, Tolstoy, bold, archaic shape.Rude pattern of the man to be.From 'neath whose rugged traits escapeHints of a manhood fair and free." I read a meaning in your face,A message wafted from above.Prophetic of an equal raceFused into one by robust love.1 Tolstoy and His Message, by Ernest H. Crosby, pp. 92-93.2 Quoted from Plain Talk in Psalm and Parable.Tolstoy's answer to the riddle of life. 709" Like some quaint statue long concealed,Deep buried in Mycenae's mart,Wherein we clearly see revealedThe promise of Hellenic art," So stand you ; while aloof and proud.The world that scribbles, prates, and fretsSeems but a simpering, futile crowdOf Dresden china statuettes." Like John the Baptist, once more scanThe signs that mark the dawn of day.Forerunner of the Perfect Man,Make straight His path, prepare the way."The desert too is your abode.Your garb and fare of little worth ;Thus ever has the Spirit showedThe coming reign of heaven on earth." Not in king's houses may we greetThe prophets whom the world shall bless.To lay my verses at your feetI seek you in the wilderness."And, indeed, Tolstoy is a remarkable man in spite of much thatmay be called one-sided and eccentric. Tolstoy, in his ruggedoriginality and with his independence of thought, is and will re-main forever a most unique personality. We will here let Tolstoyspeak for himself, selecting from Mr. Crosby's books Tolstoy's so-lution of the problem of life, his view of the soul, and its destinyafter death, which is Christian in spirit, explaining the argumentof Tolstoy's belief in the doctrine of non-resistance, and at the sametime closely resembles the Buddhist conception of Nirvana.TOLSTOY'S PHILOSOPHY.1"We should begin our researches with that which we aloneknow with certitude, and this is the ' I ' within us. Life is what Ifeel in myself, and this life science cannot define. Nay, it is myidea of life rather which determines what I am to consider as sci-ence, and I learn all outside of myself solely by the extension ofmy knowledge of my own mind and body. We know from withinthat man lives only for his own happiness, and his aspirationtowards it and his pursuit of it constitute his life. At first he isconscious of the life in himself alone, and hence he imagines thatthe good which he seeks must be his own individual good. His1 Quoted from Mr. Crosby's ToUtoy and His Message, pp. 36 £E.7IO THE OPEN COURT.own life seems the real life, while he regards the life of others as amere phantom. He soon finds out that other men take the sameview of the world, and that the life in which he shares is composedof a vast number of individuals, each bent on securing its own wel-fare, and consequently doing all it can to thwart and destroy theothers. He sees that in such a struggle it is almost hopeless forhim to contend, for all mankind is against him. If, on the otherhand, he succeeds by chance in carrying out his plans for happi-ness, he does not even then enjoy the prize as he anticipated. Theolder he grows, the rarer become the pleasures ; ennui, satiety,trouble and suffering go on increasing ; and before him lie old age,infirmity and death. He will go down to the grave, but the worldwill continue to live."The real life, then, is the life outside him, and his own life,which originally appeared to him the one thing of importance, isafter all a deception. The good of the individual is an imposture,and if it could be obtained it would cease at death. The life ofman as an individuality seeking his own good, in the midst of aninfinite host of similar individualities engaged in bringing one an-other to naught and"being themselves annihilated in the end, is anevil and an absurdity. It cannot be the true life."Our quandary arises from looking upon our animal life as thereal life. Our real life begins with the waking of our conscious-ness, at the moment when we perceive that life lived for self can-not produce happiness. We feel that there must be some othergood. We make an effort to find it, but, failing, we fall back intoour old ways. These are the first throes of the birth of the veritablehuman life. This new life only becomes manifest when the manonce for all renounces the welfare of his animal individuality as hisaim in life. By so doing he fulfils the law of reason, the law whichwe all are sensible of within us—the same universal law which gov-erns the nutrition and reproduction of beast and plant."Our real life is our willing submission to this law, and not,as science would have us hold, the involuntary subjection of ourbodies to the laws of organic existence. Self-renunciation is asnatural to man as it is for birds to use their wings instead of theirfeet ; it is not a meritorious or heroic act ; it is simply the neces-sary condition precedent of genuine human life. This new humanlife exhibits itself in our animal existence just as animal life does inmatter. Matter is the instrument of animal life, not an obstacle toit ; and so our animal life is the instrument of our higher humanlife and should conform to its behests.Tolstoy's answer to the riddle of life. 711"Life, then, is the activity of the animal individuality work-ing in submission to the law of reason. Reason shows man thathappiness cannot be obtained by a selfish life, and leaves only oneoutlet open for him, and that is Love. Love is the only legitimatemanifestation of life. It is an activity which has for its object thegood of others. When it makes its appearance, the meaninglessstrife of the animal life ceases." Real love is not the preference of certain persons whose pres-ence gives one pleasure. This, which is ordinarily called love, isonly a wild stock on which true love may be grafted, and true lovedoes not become possible until man has given up the pursuit of hisown welfare. Then at last all the juices of his life come to nourishthe noble graft, while the trunk of the old tree, the animal individ-uality, pours into it its entire vigor. Love is the preference whichwe accord to other beings over ourselves. It is not a burst of pas-sion, obscuring the reason, but on the contrary no other state ofthe soul is so rational and luminous, so calm and joyous; it is thenatural condition of children and the wise."Active love is attainable only for him who does not place hishappiness in his individual life, and who also gives free play to hisfeeling of good-will towards others. His well-being depends uponlove as that of a plant on light. He does not ask what he shoulddo, but he gives himself up to that love which is within his reach.He who loves in this way alone possesses life. Such self-renuncia-tion lifts him from animal existence in time and space into the re-gions of life. The limitations of time and space are incompatiblewith the idea of real life. To attain to it man must trust himselfto his wings."Man's body changes; his states of consciousness are succes-sive and differ from each other; what then is the 'I'? Any childcan answer when he sa3's, 'I like this ; I don't like that.' The 'I 'is that which likes—which loves. It is the exclusive relationshipof a man's being with the world, that relation which he brings withhim from beyond time and space. It is said that in his extreme oldage, St. John the Apostle had the habit of repeating continuallythe words, 'Brethren, love one another.' His animal life wasnearly gone, absorbed in a new being for which the flesh was alread}'too narrow. For the man who measures his life by the growth ofhis relation of love with the world, the disappearance at death ofthe limitations of time and space is only the mark of a higher de-gree of light."My brother, who is dead, acts upon me now more strongly712 THE OPEN COURT.than he did in life ; he even penetrates my being and lifts me uptowards him. How can I say that he is dead? Men who have re-nounced their individual happiness never doubt their immortality.Christ knew that He would continue to live after His death becauseHe had already entered into the true life which cannot cease. Helived even then in the rays of that other centre of life toward whichHe was advancing, and He saw them reflected on those who stoodaround Him. And this every man who renounces his own goodbeholds ; he passes in this life into a new relation with the worldfor which there is no death; on one side he sees the new light, onthe other he witnesses its actions on his fellows after being re-fracted through himself; and this experience gives him an immov-able faith in the stability, immortality, and eternal growth of life.Faith in immortality cannot be received from another; you cannotconvince yourself of it by argument. To have this faith you musthave immortality; you must have established with the world in thepresent life the new relation of life, which the world is no longerwide enough to contain."

Tolstoy\u27s Answer to the Riddle of Life.

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Tolstoy\u27s Answer to the Riddle of Life.

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