sidered it a temptation because it would have been spiritually much more easy for him to go away than to refrain from this step. As he expressed himself once, he believed that when there is a doubt in one's soul, as to which one of two possible steps one should take, then it were better to give preference to that one in which there is the greatest self-sacrifice.
In 1899, Tolstoi felt himself spiritually improved and notwithstanding his severely undermined health, he occupied himself much and fruitfully with Resurrection. In the autumn of that year he made the entry in the Journal, "I have wrought for myself a calm which is not to be disturbed: not to speak and to know that this is necessary: that it is under these conditions one ought to live."[1]
Only ten years later, the circumstances arose which freed Tolstoi from the consciousness of the moral responsibility to remain in the conditions of his home life. And having come to the conclusion of the absolute inevitability of going away, he dared, only ten days before his end, to freely give himself to his cherished wish to change the outer conditions of his life.
- ↑ September 28, 1899, page 277.
407
