fore it is a statue! A novel or a story is pictorial work: in it the master works with his brush, putting on dabs of paint, producing backgrounds, shadows, half-tones. A play is sculptor's work. One has to work with a chisel: not to put on dabs of paint but to cut out in relief.

"I first understood the wide difference between a novel and a play when I sat down to write my Power of Darkness. At first I set to work using a novelist's usual methods, to which I was accustomed. But after the first few pages I found that they were not the right thing here. For instance, on the stage it is impossible to prepare for the important moments lived through by the hero, impossible to make him think and call up memories, or to throw light on his character by referring back to the past: it all comes out dull, forced, and unreal. A ready-formed state of mind, ready-formed resolutions, must be presented to the public. Only soul-images like these-sculptured in relief and in mutual collision-agitate and touch the onlooker.

"It is true I myself could not resist it, and put into The Power of Darkness a few monologues; but while doing so I felt it was not the right thing."

The above is taken from The Life of Tolstoy, Vol. II, by Aylmer Maude.

c. 1917.

PART XIX

TWO KINDS OF MENTAL ACTIVITY

(The following article was written by Tolstoy to serve as an introduction to a collection of thoughts, aphorisms, and maxims by La Bruyère, La Rochefoucauld, Vauvenargues, and Montesquieu, which a friend of Tolstoy's had translated into Russian.)

THE activity of human reason directed to the elucidation of the laws that govern human life has always manifested itself in two different ways. Some thinkers have tried to systematize all the phenomena and laws of human life into definite connection with one another. Such were the originators of all the systems of philosophy, from Aristotle to Spinoza and Hegel.

Others have helped the elucidation of the laws of human life not by elaborating shapely systems but by detached observations and apt expressions indicating the eternal laws that rule our life. Such were the sages of the ancient world who formed collections of aphorisms, the Christian mystic writers, and especially the French writers of the XVIth, XVIIth and XVIIIth centuries, who brought this style of writing to the highest degree of perfection.

Such are the thoughts and maxims of La Rochefoucauld, La Bruyère, Pascal, Montesquieu and Vauvenargues, not to mention the wonderful Montaigne, whose writings partly belong to this class.

If we compare all knowledge of the laws of human life to a ball continually enlarged by fresh acquisitions, then thinkers of the first, systematic class should be likened to men who try to enfold the ball with more or less solid and thick stuff in order to enlarge it equally all over. Thinkers of the second category are like men who, disregarding inequalities in the

increase of the surface of different parts of the ball, enlarge it, not all over but at various points of the radii along which their thoughts naturally travel, generally outreaching the thinkers of the first kind and furnishing future systematizers with material to work upon.

The advantages on the side of thinkers of the first category are: coherence, completeness, and symmetry in their doctrines. The disadvantages are: artificiality in their structure, forced connection of the parts, often evident deviations from truth to secure coherence of the whole teaching, and (resulting from this) frequent obscurity and mistiness in the manner of exposition.

The advantages on the side of the second category of thinkers are: directness, sincerity, novelty, boldness, and, as it were, an impulsiveness in their thoughts, a freedom from shackles, and a corresponding vigour of expression. Their disadvantages are: fragmentariness and sometimes external inconsistency—though this latter is usually more apparent than real.

Their greatest advantage however is that whereas works of the first class-philosophic systems-often repel by their pedantry or, if they do not repel, weaken the mind of the reader by subduing him and depriving him of independence, books of the second class always attract by their sincerity, elegance, and brevity of expression. Above all, they do not crush the independent activity of the mind but, on the contrary, evoke it by obliging the reader either to deduce further conclusions from what he has read or sometimes, when he quite disagrees with the author, to contest his positions and thus arrive at new and unexpected conclusions.

Of this kind are the detached thoughts both of ancient and modern writers generally, and such are the thoughts of the French writers whose maxims are collected in the work before us.

1908.

PART XX

PREFACE TO N. ORLOV'S ALBUM OF

"RUSSIAN PEASANTS"

Tolstoy willingly called attention to pictures, as well as to stories, of which he approved; and he was particularly ready to do so if the artists' subject was one that might interest the peasants, for whom he considered that artists have done too little.

Work such as Orlóv's (himself of peasant origin) which, by the disapproval it showed of the Government's treatment of the peasants, involved risk to the artist, was specially calculated to attract his sympathy.

"Be not afraid of them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body." (Matt. X. 28.)

THE publication of Orlóv's pictures in album form is an excellent thing. Orlóv is my favourite artist because the subject of his pictures is my favourite subject-the Russian people: the real Russian peasant-people, not that people which vanquished Napoleon and conquered and subdued other nations, not that people which unfortunately has so quickly learnt to make machines, railways, and revolutions as well as Parliaments with all conceivable sub-divisions of parties and tendencies, but that meek, hard-working, Christian, gentle, much-enduring people which has reared and bears on its shoulders all those who now torture and diligently corrupt it.

And what Orlóv and I love in these people is one and the same thing: namely, the meek, patient peasant-soul, enlightened by true Christianity, which promises so much to those who can understand it.

In all Orlóv's pictures I see that soul, which like the soul of a child retains all possibilities and above all the possibil

ity (while avoiding the depravity of western civilization) of following the Christian path which alone can lead Christendom out of that enchanted circle of sufferings in which, with torment to themselves, men now incessantly revolve.

Here in a smoky hut on a bed of straw lies a dying woman. A burning taper has, according to custom, been placed in her hands which are already growing cold. Near her, in solemn submissive calm, stands her husband; and by his side, in a coarse smock (her only garment), stands their eldest daughter, a thin little girl, crying. Beside a rude cradle, hanging from the ceiling, the grandmother soothes a crying infant. Neighbours stand talking near the door.

This picture evokes in me a wonderful and elevating feeling of tender pity and also, strange as it may seem to say so, a feeling of envy of that holy poverty and of the attitude towards it here revealed.

The same elevating feeling of consciousness of the vast spiritual strength of the people to whom not by my life but by my race I have the good fortune to belong, is produced in me by two other pictures of similar character, which always move me profoundly- The Emigrants and The Soldier's Return.

Apart from the fact that the departure of the emigrants, who are saying good-bye to those they are leaving behind, is important in its subject-matter (showing us as it does in vivid images what, in spite of the difficulties placed in their way by the Government and the landowners, the Russian people are accomplishing: populating and cultivating enormous tracts of country), this picture is rendered particularly touching not merely by the wonderful old man in the foreground, but by all the figures, full of movement and life, excited by the thoughts of departure or doubtful at being left behind.

The Soldier's Return is a picture I am particularly