nakedness. Tolstoi himself knew the value of these documents, for one man was to him as another, and the sincere gropings of a man's reason toward the understanding of the meaning of life was of value even if they were his own, and especially if they were of one who had lived much and thought much as he did. "It is especially disagreeable to me," he writes, "when people who have lived little and thought little do not believe me, and, not understanding me, argue with me about moral problems. It would be the same for which a veterinary surgeon would be hurt if people who were not familiar with his art would argue with him." And Tolstoi knew that he knew his art, he knew consciously, since the spiritual awakening that came to him in the Eighties, the great mission to which he dedicated his life—to find a moral justification of living—and it is therefore that he laid special stress in the disposal of these documents for the public after his death. The volume here printed is only four years of over sixty years of Journal which he kept since his early twenties. They are published first, because it is only with the Journal beginning 1890 that his editor and friend, V. G. Chertkov, has the copied manuscripts in their entirety—from that date up to Tolstoi's death in 1910.
Over and over again in his life, Tolstoi attempted to make special and legal provision for
