[1] From the Russian version, which Count Tolstoï calls a free translation made with some omissions. After diligent search and inquiry I have been unable to find this catechism among Ballou's works.—Tr.

[2] I know of but one criticism, or rather essay, for it can hardly be termed criticism, in the strict sense of the word, which treats of the same subject, having my book in view. It is a pamphlet by Troïtzky, called "The Sermon on the Mount" (printed in Kazan). Evidently the author acknowledges the doctrine of Christ in the fullness of its meaning. He declares that the commandment of non-resistance to evil means what it says, and the same with the commandment as to taking an oath. He does not deny, as others have done, the meaning of Christ's teaching, but unfortunately neither does he draw those inevitable conclusions which must result from a conception such as his own of Christ's doctrine. If one is not to resist evil by violence, nor to take an oath, it is but natural to ask: Then what is the duty of a soldier? And what is to be done about taking the oath of allegiance? But to these questions the author makes no reply, and surely a reply should have been given. If he had none to make, it would have been better to have said nothing at all.

[3] The Church is the society of the faithful, established by our Lord Jesus Christ, diffused throughout the world, subject to the authority of its lawful pastors and our holy father the Pope.

[4] The definition of Homiakov, which had a certain success among the Russians, does not help the case, if one believes with him that the Orthodox is the only true Church. Homiakov asserts that a church is a society of men (without distinction between the ecclesiastics and the laity) united by love, and to whom the truth is revealed ("Let us love one another, that we may unanimously profess," etc.), and that such a church is, in the first place, one that professes the Nicene creed, and, secondly, one which, after the division of the churches, refused to recognize the authority of the Pope and the new dogmas. With such a definition as this, the difficulty of identifying a church which is united by love with a church professing the Nicene creed, and the accuracy of Photius, as Homiakov would have it, is still greater. Hence the statement of Homiakov that this church united by love, and therefore holy, is the same as that of the Greek hierarchy, is still more arbitrary than the assertions of the Catholics and the old Greek Orthodox believers. If we admit the existence of the Church according to the idea of Homiakov, that is, as a society of men united by love and truth, then all that any man can say in regard to it, is that it would be most desirable to be a member of that society,—if such an one exists,—that is, to live in the spirit of love and truth; but there are no outward manifestations by which one could either acknowledge one's self, or recognize others as members of this holy society, or exclude one's self from it, for there is no outward institution to be found which corresponds to that idea.

[5] Who are those outside the Church? The infidels, heretics, and schismatics.

[6] Thereby may be the true Church known that in it the word of God is taught plainly and clearly, without human additions, and that sacraments are administered faithfully according to the teaching of Christ.

[7] The ikon of the Virgin which stands in a chapel in the heart of Moscow, and which is the object of a special veneration to the Russians.—Tr.

[8] The unity of this social and pagan life-conception is by no means destroyed by the numerous and varied systems which grow out of it, such as the existence of the family, of the nation, and of the State, and even of that life of humanity conceived according to the theory of the Positivists.

These multifarious systems of life are based upon the fundamental idea of the insignificance of the individual, and the assurance that the meaning of life is to be sought and found only in humanity, taken in its broadest sense.—Author.

[9] Here, for example, is a characteristic expression of opinion in the American periodical, The Arena, for November, 1890, from an article entitled "New Basis of Church Life." Discussing the significance of the Sermon on the Mount, and especially the doctrine of non-resistance to evil, the author, having no reason for obscuring its meaning as the ecclesiastics do, says:—

"Devout common sense must gradually come to look upon Christ as a philanthropic teacher, who, like every enthusiast who ever taught, went to an Utopian extreme in his own philosophy. Every great agitation for the betterment of the world has been led by men who beheld their own mission with such absorbing intensity that they could see little else. It is no reproach to Christ to say that he had the typical reformer's temperament; that his precepts cannot be literally accepted as a complete philosophy of life; and that men are to analyze them reverently, but, at the same time, in the spirit of ordinary truth-seeking criticism," etc.

"Christ did in fact preach absolute communism and anarchy; but," and so on. Christ would have been glad to have expressed Himself in more fitting terms, but He did not possess our critical faculty in the use of exact definitions, therefore we will set Him right. All He said concerning meekness, sacrifice, poverty, and of taking no thought for the morrow, were but haphazard utterances, because of His ignorance of scientific phraseology.

[10] The book was published a year ago, and since then dozens of new weapons and smokeless powder have been invented for the annihilation of mankind.—Author.

[11] La Revue des Revues, "La guerre, état de la question, jugé par nos grands hommes contemporains."—Tr.

[12] Words taken from Victor Hugo's "Notre Dame," where he says that printing will kill architecture.—Author.

[13] That the abuse of authority exists in America, despite the small number of troops, by no means refutes our argument; on the contrary, it serves rather as a testimony in its favor. In America there are fewer troops than in other States, and nowhere do we find less oppression of the downtrodden classes, and nowhere have men come so near to the abolition of governmental abuses, and even of government itself. However, it is in America that, owing to the growing unity among the working-men, voices have been heard, more and more frequently of late, calling for an increase of troops, and this when no foreign invasion threatens the States. The ruling classes are fully aware that an army of 50,000 men is insufficient, and, having lost confidence in Pinkerton's forces, they believe that their salvation can only be secured by the increase of the army.

[14] The fact that some nations, like the English and American, have no general conscription system (although one hears already voices in its favor), but a system of recruiting and hiring soldiers, nowise alters the case as regards the slavery of the citizens under the government. In the former system every man must go himself to kill or be killed; in the latter, he must give the proceeds of his labor to employ and drill murderers.

[15] Matthew xii. 19, 20.

[16] John viii. 32.

[17] Petty rural police.—Tr.

[18] The details of this case are authentic.

[19] Such declarations on the part of Russian authorities, who are noted for their oppression of foreign nationalities,—the Poles, the Germans of the Baltic provinces, and the Jews,—strike one as both amusing and artless. The Russian government, which has oppressed its own subjects for centuries, and which has never protected the Malo-Russians in Poland, the Latishi in the Baltic provinces, nor the Russian peasants, of whom all sorts of people have taken advantage for hundreds of years, suddenly becomes a champion of the oppressed, of the very same people whom it still continues to oppress.

[20] Matt. xxiv. 3-28.

[21] Matt. xxiv. 36.

[22] Matt. xxiv. 43; xxv. 1—13, 14-30.

[23] 1892.—Tr.

[24] 1893.

[25] Attorney-General.

[26] House of the rural communal government.

[27] Elders.

[28] In Moscow.

[29] Chiefs of rural police.

[30] 1892.

[31] See vol. iv. of the works of Jukovsky (a Russian poet).

[32] Herzen, vol. v., p. 55.

[33] Acts iv. 19.

[34] Acts v. 29.

[35] Matt. vi. 33.

[36] Luke xvii. 20, 21.

[37] Tolstoï's remarks on Church religion were re-worded so as to seem to relate only to the Western Church, and his disapproval of luxurious life was made to apply, not, say, to Queen Victoria or Nicholas II., but to the Cæsars or the Pharaohs.—Tr.

[38] The Russian peasant is usually a member of a village commune, and has therefore a right to a share in the land belonging to the village. Tolstoï disapproves of the order of society which allows less land for the support of a village full of people than is sometimes owned by a single landed proprietor. The "Censor" will not allow disapproval of this state of things to be expressed, but is prepared to admit that the laws and customs, say, of England—where a yet more extreme form of landed property exists, and the men who actually labor on the land usually possess none of it—deserve criticism.—Tr.

[39] Only two, or at most three, senses are generally held worthy to supply matter for artistic treatment, but I think this opinion is only conditionally correct. I will not lay too much stress on the fact that our common speech recognizes many other arts, as, for instance, the art of cookery.

[40] And yet it is certainly an æsthetic achievement when the art of cooking succeeds in making of an animal's corpse an object in all respects tasteful. The principle of the Art of Taste (which goes beyond the so-called Art of Cookery) is therefore this: All that is eatable should be treated as the symbol of some Idea, and always in harmony with the Idea to be expressed.

[41] If the sense of touch lacks color, it gives us, on the other hand, a notion which the eye alone cannot afford, and one of considerable æsthetic value, namely, that of softness, silkiness, polish. The beauty of velvet is characterized not less by its softness to the touch than by its luster. In the idea we form of a woman's beauty, the softness of her skin enters as an essential element.

Each of us, probably, with a little attention, can recall pleasures of taste which have been real æsthetic pleasures.

[42] M. Schasler, "Kritische Geschichte der Æsthetik," 1872, vol. i., p. 13.

[43] There is no science which, more than æsthetics, has been handed over to the reveries of the metaphysicians. From Plato down to the received doctrines of our day, people have made of art a strange amalgam of quintessential fancies and transcendental mysteries, which find their supreme expression in the conception of an absolute ideal Beauty, immutable and divine prototype of actual things.

[44] See on this matter Benard's admirable book, "L'Esthétique d'Aristote," also Walter's "Geschichte der Æsthetik in Altertum."

[45] Schasler, p. 361.

[46] Schasler, p. 369.

[47] Schasler, pp. 388-390.

[48] Knight, "Philosophy of the Beautiful," i., pp. 165, 166.

[49] Schasler, p. 289. Knight, pp. 168, 169.

[50] R. Kralik, "Weltschönheit, Versuch einer allgemeinen Æsthetik," pp. 304-306.

[51] Knight, p. 101.

[52] Schasler, p. 316.

[53] Knight, pp. 102-104.

[54] R. Kralik, p. 124.

[55] Spaletti, Schasler, p. 328.

[56] Schasler, pp. 331-333.

[57] Schasler, pp. 525-528.

[58] Knight, pp. 61-63.

[59] Schasler, pp. 740-743.

[60] Schasler, pp, 769-771.

[61] Schasler, pp. 786, 787.

[62] Kralik, p. 148.

[63] Kralik, p. 820.

[64] Schasler, pp. 828, 829, 834-841.

[65] Schasler, p. 891.

[66] Schasler, p. 917.

[67] Schasler, pp. 946, 1085, 984, 985, 990.

[68] Schasler, pp. 966, 655, 956.

[69] Schasler, p. 1017.

[70] Schasler, pp. 1065, 1066.

[71] Schasler, pp. 1097-1100.

[72] Schasler, pp. 1124, 1107.

[73] Knight, pp. 81, 82.

[74] Knight, p. 83.

[75] Schasler, p. 1121.

[76] Knight, pp. 85, 86.

[77] Knight, p. 88.

[78] Knight, p. 88.

[79] Knight, p. 112.

[80] Knight, p. 116.

[81] Knight, pp. 118, 119.

[82] Knight, pp. 123, 124.

[83] "La Philosophie en France," p. 232.

[84] "Du Fondement de l'Induction."

[85] "Philosophie de l'Art," vol. i., 1893, p. 47.

[86] Knight, pp. 139-141.

[87] Knight, p. 134.

[88] "L'Esthétique," p. 106.

[89] Knight, p. 238.

[90] Knight, pp. 239, 240.

[91] Knight, pp. 240-243.

[92] Knight, pp. 250-252.

[93] Knight, pp. 258, 259.

[94] Knight, p. 243.

[95] "The foundling of Nuremberg," found in the market-place of that town on 26th May, 1828, apparently some sixteen years old. He spoke little, and was almost totally ignorant even of common objects. He subsequently explained that he had been brought up in confinement underground, and visited by only one man, whom he saw but seldom.—Tr.

[96] Eastern sects well known in early Church history, who rejected the Church's rendering of Christ's teaching, and were cruelly persecuted.—Tr.

[97] Keltchitsky, a Bohemian of the fifteenth century, was the author of a remarkable book, "The Net of Faith," directed against Church and State. It is mentioned in Tolstoï's "The Kingdom of God is Within You."—Tr.

[98] Any one examining closely may see that the theory of beauty and that of art are quite separated in Aristotle as they are in Plato and in all their successors.

[99] Die Lücke von fünf Jahrhunderten, welche zwischen den Kunst-philosophischen Betrachtungen des Plato und Aristoteles und die des Plotins fällt, kann zwar auffällig erscheinen; dennoch kann man eigentlich nicht sagen, dass in dieser Zwischenzeit überhaupt von ästhetischen Dingen nicht die Rede gewesen; oder dass gar ein völliger Mangel an Zusammenhang zwischen den Kunst-anschauungen des letztgenannten Philosophen und denen der ersteren existire. Freilich wurde die von Aristoteles begründete Wissenschaft in Nichts dadurch gefördert; immerhin aber zeigt sich in jener Zwischenzeit noch ein gewisses Interesse für ästhetische Fragen. Nach Plotin aber, die wenigen, ihm in der Zeit nahestehenden Philosophen, wie Longin, Augustin, u. s. f. kommen, wie wir gesehen, kaum in Betracht und schliessen sich übrigens in ihrer Anschauungsweise an ihn an,—vergehen nicht fünf, sondern fünfzehn Jahrhunderte, in denen von irgend einer wissenschaftlichen Interesse für die Welt des Schönen und der Kunst nichts zu spüren ist.

Diese anderthalbtausend Jahre, innerhalb deren der Weltgeist durch die mannigfachsten Kämpfe hindurch zu einer völlig neuen Gestaltung des Lebens sich durcharbeitete, sind für die Aesthetik, hinsichtlich des weiteren Ausbaus dieser Wissenschaft verloren.—Max Schasler.

[100] The contrast made is between the classes and the masses; between those who do not and those who do earn their bread by productive manual labor; the middle classes being taken as an offshoot of the upper classes.—Tr.

[101] Dueling is still customary among the higher circles in Russia, as in other continental countries.—Tr.

[102] It is the weariness of life, contempt for the present epoch, regret for another age seen through the illusion of art, a taste for paradox, a desire to be singular, a sentimental aspiration after simplicity, an infantine adoration of the marvelous, a sickly tendency toward reverie, a shattered condition of nerves, and, above all, the exasperated demand of sensuality.

[103]

[104] I think there should be nothing but allusions. The contemplation of objects, the flying image of reveries evoked by them, are the song. The Parnassiens state the thing completely, and show it, and thereby lack mystery; they deprive the mind of that delicious joy of imagining that it creates. To name an object is to take three-quarters from the enjoyment of the poem, which consists in the happiness of guessing little by little: to suggest, that is the dream. It is the perfect use of this mystery that constitutes the symbol: little by little, to evoke an object in order to show a state of the soul; or, inversely, to choose an object, and from it to disengage a state of the soul by a series of decipherings.

.... If a being of mediocre intelligence and insufficient literary preparation chance to open a book made in this way and pretends to enjoy it, there is a misunderstanding—things must be returned to their places. There should always be an enigma in poetry, and the aim of literature—it has no other—is to evoke objects.

[105] It were time also to have done with this famous "theory of obscurity," which the new school have practically raised to the height of a dogma.

[106] For translation, see Appendix IV.

[107] For translation, see Appendix IV.

[108] For translation, see Appendix IV.

[109] For translation, see Appendix IV.

[110] For translation, see Appendix IV.

[111] For translation, see Appendix IV.

[112]

[113] This sonnet seems too unintelligible for translation.—Tr.

[114] For translation, see Appendix IV.

[115] The quicker it goes the longer it lasts.

[116] All styles are good except the wearisome style.

[117] All styles are good except that which is not understood, or which fails to produce its effect.

[118] An apparatus exists by means of which a very sensitive arrow, in dependence on the tension of a muscle of the arm, will indicate the physiological action of music on the nerves and muscles.

[119] There is in Moscow a magnificent "Cathedral of our Saviour," erected to commemorate the defeat of the French in the war of 1812.—Tr.

[120] "That they may be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us."

[121] In this picture the spectators in the Roman Amphitheater are turning down their thumbs to show that they wish the vanquished gladiator to be killed.—Tr.

[122] While offering as examples of art those that seem to me the best, I attach no special importance to my selection; for, besides being insufficiently informed in all branches of art, I belong to the class of people whose taste has, by false training, been perverted. And therefore my old, inured habits may cause me to err, and I may mistake for absolute merit the impression a work produced on me in my youth. My only purpose in mentioning examples of works of this or that class is to make my meaning clearer, and to show how, with my present views, I understand excellence in art in relation to its subject-matter. I must, moreover, mention that I consign my own artistic productions to the category of bad art, excepting the story "God sees the Truth," which seeks a place in the first class, and "The Prisoner of the Caucasus," which belongs to the second.

[123] In Russian it is customary to make a distinction between literate and illiterate people, i.e. between those who can and those who cannot read. Literate in this sense does not imply that the man would speak or write correctly.—Tr.

[124]The over-man (Uebermensch), in the Nietzschean philosophy, is that superior type of man whom the struggle for existence is to evolve, and who will seek only his own power and pleasure, will know nothing of pity, and will have the right, because he will possess the power, to make ordinary people serve him.—Tr.

[125] Stenka Razin was by origin a common Cossack. His brother was hung for a breach of military discipline, and to this event Stenka Razin's hatred of the governing classes has been attributed. He formed a robber band, and subsequently headed a formidable rebellion, declaring himself in favor of freedom for the serfs, religious toleration, and the abolition of taxes. Like the government he opposed, he relied on force, and, though he used it largely in defense of the poor against the rich, he still held to

Like Robin Hood, he is favorably treated in popular legends.—Tr.

[126] Robert Macaire is a modern type of adroit and audacious rascality. He was the hero of a popular play produced in Paris in 1834.—Tr.

[127] The translations in Appendices I., II., and IV., are by Louise Maude. The aim of these renderings has been to keep as close to the originals as the obscurity of meaning allowed. The sense (or absence of sense) has therefore been more considered than the form of the verses.