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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



EDITOR'S TABLE. 



TOZSTOrS " CONFESSION." 



AMONG the numerous writings 

 from the pen of Count Tolstoi 

 which have of late been made accessible 

 to the English reader is one entitled 

 " My Confession." In this work the 

 author tells us that, having in his youth 

 led the life of a pleasure-loving man of 

 the world, and in his maturer years of a 

 literary man in considerable repute, he 

 woke up in middle life, when all his 

 outward circumstances were highly 

 prosperous, to find that life to him 

 seemed to possess no meaning and no 

 value. He could find no answer to the 

 Carlylean questions "Whence?" and 

 "Whither?" and so distressed was he 

 thereat that for a long time he was 

 haunted by the thought of suicide. He 

 had recourse to science, and could get 

 no light ; to philosophy, and could reap 

 no consolation. It seemed to him as if 

 some tyrant had called him into exist- 

 ence simply to make a mock of him, by 

 hiding from his eyes the answer to life's 

 riddle by implanting in him an in- 

 stinctive love of life, and yet depriving 

 him of the knowledge which alone 

 would supply a rational motive for 

 living. 



The nature of Tolstoi's trouble is 

 fully explained in his book. His youth 

 had been one of passion and riot, un- 

 guided by any principle save the loose 

 code of honor prevalent in military 

 circles. As an author he had encount- 

 ered men with whom literature was a 

 means for the gratification of vanity and 

 nothing more, whose aims were sordid, 

 whose ideas were conventional, and 

 whose lives were actually worse than 

 those of the wild companions of his 

 youth. Yet these men set themselves up 

 for guides of society and final arbiters 

 in all questions of taste and morals. 

 Tolstoi himself had caught their tone, 



and for a time imagined that, because 

 he enjoyed popularity as a writer, he 

 must necessarily be a very superior per- 

 son. According to the ideas prevalent 

 among his literary friends, the world 

 existed for hardly any other purpose 

 than to provide them with the oppor- 

 tunity for airing their superiority. It 

 is not surprising that a man of Tolstoi's 

 sensibility should eventually have been 

 led to see the falsity of this whole view 

 of life ; the only wonder is that he did 

 not revolt against it sooner than he did. 

 The thoughts that came to him toward 

 middle life have come to some others 

 much earlier. The poet Clough was 

 only twenty- two when he wrote : 



" How often sit I poring o'er 

 My strange distorted youth, 

 Seeking in vain, in all my store, 



One feeling based on truth ; 

 Amid the maze of petty life 

 A clew whereby to move, 

 A spot whereon in toil and strife 

 To dare to rest and love ! " 



The life of Tolstoi had been essentially 

 based upon privilege. He had lived 

 above the mass of mankind, and had 

 imbibed the narrow ideas of an exclu- 

 sive set. He had not taken humanity 

 into his thoughts, except for purposes 

 of literary treatment; and, therefore, 

 when a period of calm reflection came, 

 though his intellectual pride took flight, 

 and his false ideas stood confessed in 

 their falsity, what to do he knew not. 

 It seemed to him that he had to con- 

 struct a new philosophy of life, and in 

 the search for a solid basis for such a 

 philosophy he endured the distress 

 which he has so vividly described. He 

 attacked the problem, however, from 

 the wrong side, asking questions which 

 only metaphysicians or theologians have 

 ever attempted to answer, and which 

 have never been answered in any satis- 



