individual happiness. It is then that all the streams of his life go to nourish the noble graft of the true love: and this graft borrows for its increase all the energies of the wild stock of animal individuality…”[1]
Thus Tolstoy did not come to the refuge of faith like an exhausted river which loses itself among the sands. He brought to it the torrent of impetuous energies amassed during a full and virile life. This we shall presently see.
This impassioned faith, in which Love and Reason are united in a close embrace, has found its most dignified expression in the famous reply to the Holy Synod which excommunicated him:[2]
“I believe in God, who for me is Love, the Spirit, the Principle of all things. I believe that He is in me as I am in Him. I believe that the will of God has never been more clearly expressed than in the teaching of the man Christ; but we cannot regard Christ as God and address our prayers to him without committing the greatest sacrilege. I believe that the true happiness of man consists in the accomplishment of the will of God; I believe that the will of God is that every man shall love his fellows and do unto them always as he would they should do unto him, which contains, as the Bible
- ↑ Life, xxii.-xxv. As in the case of most of these quotations, I am expressing the sense of several chapters in a few characteristic phrases.
- ↑ I hope later, when the complete works of Tolstoy have been published, to study the various shades of this religious idea, which has certainly evolved in respect of many points, notably in respect of the conception of future life.
