a peasant there is not the least suggestion of pose or selfconsciousness in his appearance. He never thinks of the gallery. Victor Hugo had many of the ideas of Tolstoy. He rebelled against the distinctions of rich and poor, of governed and governing. He showed his deep sympathy for the poor by directing that he should be buried in a pauper's coffin, and as a matter of fact his body was placed in one while it lay in state in the midst of mourning thousands. But Hugo knew that he could not have dressed as a peasant during his life without becoming hopelessly theatrical. He lacked the simplicity, the single-mindedness, which, in Tolstoy's case, convinces all who see him that he dresses and lives as he does because he cannot do otherwise. His inmost being has revolted against the injustice of the whole gentility business, and he must show it in his life or die of repression.

Q. In sacrificing the beauty of his home and insisting on living the rigidly plain and prosaic life of his rustic neighbors, do you think he is accomplishing as much good as he might do if he had retained more of beauty and culture in his home surroundings and sought to enrich and beautify the homes of the peasants and bring into their barren lives something of the joy that comes from an appreciation of the beautiful? I may be wrong, but it seems to me that the Count laid too little stress on the refining, exalting, and ennobling influence of beauty. Stern duty, in her simple and austere mien, appears to have filled his mental horizon. His splendid imagination has in a way been starved, it seems to me. There is a moral grandeur and heroism in this noble apostle of the higher life which calls for the tribute of every high-thinking man and woman, but in spite of this it seems to me that the Count has fatally overlooked the fundamental demand of life: he has not considered the lily, with all that that implies; and, strangely enough, with all his natural wealth of imagination he has failed to learn the lesson that the Creator has striven to impress on the minds of the simplest of his children. Everywhere Nature spells out the word Beauty, that the imagination of man may be satisfied and that he may learn the lesson

taught by a million tongues. To me it seems that he who seeks to divorce beauty from utility seeks to separate what God has joined together. Now, is it not true that Count Tolstoy has in a way repeated the fatal error of the cloister of the Middle Ages and the brutal warfare that Puritanism later waged against the beautiful? He has conceived it his duty to serve his fellow-men. Well and good. He believes it his duty to go to the poor and be as one of them. Well and good, if it is to enrich their hard and prosaic existence, giving them an ampler life, richer in all that enriches being. The spirit of altruistic service, the overmastering desire to aid the poor, as manifested by the great Nazarene, calls for the tribute of our love and admiration; but at the same time I deplore his failure to see that with his rich imagination and strong sense of beauty he might, but for mistaking a partial appearance for the whole truth, have enriched a hundred fold the lives of those about him and inaugurated a movement destined to grow rapidly. Yet here I may be mistaken; but you who have communed with him, and who know the conditions of life environing him, can better judge than I.

A. I think there is much force in your criticism. Tolstoy is a great artist, but his revulsion of feeling against the society in which he lived so long has made him suspicious of its art. The art of the day is preoccupied, he says, with three insignificant and worn-out feelings-pride, sexual desire, and weariness of life. He wants a new art built on something higher. “Art is a human activity," he tells us, "consisting in this-that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them." "It is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings." If we accept these principles, and to me they seem manifestly true, we can understand how Tolstoy has come to protest against a dilettante art, produced for a small and pampered portion of the community and tending to separate men into classes rather than to unite them. In a new and brotherly world Tolstoy expects a new

and real art to arise, of which indeed he is the forerunner, crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord! Meanwhile he is ready to dispense with the half-art that we have. It is another exhibition of relentless Russian logic, which leaves us unconvinced although we accept its premises. There are pretty things in life, and it is better to have them around us than ugly things; and, while it is quite true that our education has vitiated our taste, we must make the best use we can of such taste as has survived in us. To beautify our lives, where we can do it even in mere externals (without dealing unjustly with any one), is clearly a duty; and it does seem to me that Tolstoy has failed to see this. He virtually admits the claims of beauty, at least in one passage: "The subject-matter of all kinds of ornamentation consists not in the beauty, but in the feeling (of admiration of, and delight in, the combination of lines and colors) which the artist has experienced and with which he infects the spectator. Among these feelings is the feeling of delight at what pleases the sight." Beauty, then, is a unifier too, and as such a proper element of art.

In considering this matter of art we must remember that Tolstoy is not an "all-round man" by any means, but a prophet; and a prophet must in the nature of things be one-sidedhe must lay the emphasis in one direction. It is notable that Jesus showed little interest in external art. He was an artist in literature. (Was there ever anything written more artistic than the first part of the parable of the Prodigal Son?) But when his disciples called his attention to the wonders of the temple architecture, he had no eye for them. Although his father was a carpenter, and he may have worked at the trade himself, yet he never dwells on form. His life work lay in another direction. Tolstoy has not been able to divest himself of his literary art; it was too deeply bound up with his nature. His "Resurrection" shows it in all its original splendor, and Sir Henry Irving recently said that one of his two dramas was the strongest play of recent times. But he has turned his back on the plastic arts, feeling that a

divided world cannot do justice to them. If Tolstoy and William Morris could have been united in one man, we should have had an all-round man indeed. While Tolstoy has shortcomings on the external side, Morris has them on the spiritual. But would a man so balanced have been such a force in the world as either of these incomparable men? I doubt it.

Q. Do you think that the views of Count Tolstoy are having as much effect on thinking Russia as upon scholars throughout western Europe and the New World, and that he is producing a lasting impression upon the peasants around him; or do they reflect in a large measure the narrow bigotry and prejudice of the priesthood and regard him as an atheist who, though he may have a kind heart, is nevertheless to be regarded with suspicion and whose teachings are to be shunned as imperiling the soul?

A. I have no means of knowing how great the influence of Count Tolstoy is in Russia. I know of individual instances of noblemen who have followed his example and devoted their lives to their fellows. One noteworthy example is that of Vladimir Tchertkoff-formerly an officer in the imperial guards at St. Petersburg and a personal friend of the late Czar, with whom he used to play lawn tennis-who has been exiled on account of his democratic and humanitarian activities, and lives in England, where he conducts the "Free Age Press," which prints cheap editions of Tolstoy's ethical writings in both English and Russian. I met Mr. Tchertkoff last summer in London-a thorough-going aristocrat in appearance, despite his flannel shirt. It was odd to think that not so many years ago he was attached to the Embassy there and on intimate terms with the great people of London society. It stands to reason that a genuine Russian like Tolstoy must have more influence in his own country than abroad. There is something distinctively Russian in his thought and it appeals to the Russian mind.

As for the peasants, it is not easy to get at them. They cannot read, and depend upon rumor for most of their knowledge. In his own village of Yasnaia Poliana they are devoted

to him, and I was told that this village was far superior to the general run; but, as it was the only one I examined, I could not judge for myself. When the peasants do think, they think independently in the line of Count Tolstoy's thought. Indeed, he claims to have learned the truth from them. Russia is honey-combed with peasant sects, more or less inclined to non-resistance and fraternal principles. The Doukhobors, of whom we all have heard so much, are a conspicuous example of this. Nine thousand of them are now settled in Northwestern Canada, largely through Count Tolstoy's efforts, having emigrated to avoid military service, which offends their consciences. Tolstoy has written many tracts and moral tales for the peasants, and they have a wide circulation. We may be sure that they have an extended influence, following as they do the natural bent of the people.

Q. In his purely religious views, what are his conceptions, as you understand them, of Deity, of the future of the soul, and those questions over which churches have warred and great religious bodies have chiefly concerned themselves?

A. Tolstoy's religious ideas have not been at a standstill. It is easy to quote his books for almost any assertion on this subject, but the fact is easily explained when we consider the regular development of his views from the beginning. He was, until he reached the age of fifty, an agnostic if not an atheist. The faith that has grown in him since has been altogether the work of his own experience. The only use he has made of the experience of others has been in inducing similar experiences in himself, and even this he has not done deliberately, but naturally in the search for the truth. “If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine." Tolstoy has found this statement to be true. In the experience of love to God and men, he has become conscious of possessing an immortal soul. He told me, when I asked him, that all true life was immortal. He answers the question specifically in a recent leaflet :* "As to the question about what awaits us

*Free Age Press Leaflets, No. 4. Thes publications may be obtained of the "Straight Edge," 240 Sixth ave. e. New York City.