(9) The Kingdom of God is Within You.

(10) The Christian Teaching: a brief summary of Tolstoy's understanding of Christ's teaching. He considers that this book still needs revision, but it will be found useful by those who have understood the works numbered 1, 4, 5 and 6 in this list.

(11) What is Art?

(12) Resurrection, a novel begun about 1895, laid aside in favour of what seemed more important work, and completely re-written and published in 1899, for the benefit of the Doukhobórs.

The subjects that occupied him were the most important subjects of human knowledge-— those which should be (though to-day they are not) emphatically called Science: the kind of science that occupied "Moses, Solon, Socrates, Epictetus, Confucius, Mencius, Marcus Aurelius, Spinoza, and all those who have taught men to live a moral life." He examined "the results of good and bad actions," considered the "reasonableness or unreasonableness of human institutions and beliefs," "how human life should be lived in order to obtain the greatest well-being for each," and "what one may and should, and what one cannot and should not believe; how to subdue one's passions, and how to acquire the habit of virtue."

When Tolstoy began to write boldly and plainly about these things, he quite expected to be persecuted. The Russian Government, however, has

considered it wiser not to touch him personally, but to content itself with prohibiting some of his books, mutilating others, and banishing several of those who helped him. Under the auspices of the "Holy Synod," books were published denouncing him and his views (an advertisement for which, as he remarked, Pears' Soap would have paid thousands of pounds), his correspondence was tampered with, and spies were set to watch him and his friends.

These external matters, however, did not trouble him so much as did a spiritual conflict. Indeed, at one time imprisonment would have come as a relief, solving his difficulty. The case was this: He wished to act in complete consistency with the views he had expressed, but he could not do this-could not, for instance, give away all his property-without making his wife and some of his children angry, and without the risk of their even appealing to the authorities to restrain him. This perplexed him very much; but he felt that he could not do good by doing harm. No external rule, such as that people should give all they have to the poor, would justify him in creating anger and bitterness in the hearts of those nearest to him. So, eventually, he handed over the remains of his property to his wife and his family, and continued to live in a good house with servants as before; meekly. bearing the reproach that he was "inconsistent," and contenting himself with doing, in addition to his literary work, what manual labour he

could, and living as simply and frugally as possible.

At the time of the great famine in 1891-1892 circumstances seemed to compel him to undertake the great work of organising and directing the distribution of relief to the starving peasants. Large sums of money passed through his hands, and all Europe and America applauded him. But he, himself, felt that such activity, of collecting and distributing money, "making a pipe of oneself," was not the best work of which he was capable. It did not satisfy him. It is not by what we get others to do for pay, but rather by what we do with our own brains, hearts and muscles, that we can best serve God and man.

Since 1895 he has again braved the Russian Government by giving publicity to the facts it was trying to conceal, about the persecution of the Doukhobórs in the Caucasus. To aid these men, who refused military service on principle, he broke his rule of taking no money for his writings, and sold the first right of publication of Resurrection. But of this act, too, he now repents. Whether for himself or for others, he has found that the attempt to get property, money or goods, is apt to be a hindrance to, rather than a means of forwarding, the service of God and man.

Tolstoy is no faultless and infallible prophet whose works should be swallowed as bibliolaters swallow the Bible; but he is a man of extraordinary capacity, sincerity and self-sacrifice, who

has for more than twenty years striven to make absolutely plain to all, the solution of some of the most vital problems of existence. What he has said, is part, and no small part, of that truth which shall set men free. It is of interest and importance to all who will hear it, especially to the common folk who do most of the rough work and get least of the praise or pay. But, in England, his message has not yet reached those who most need it, or it has reached them in perverted forms. Many of the "cultured crowd" who write and talk about him as a genius, twist his views beyond all recognition. They enter not in themselves, neither suffer they them that are entering in, to enter.

The work he has set himself to co-operate in is not the expansion of an Empire, nor is it the establishment of a Church; for man's perception of truth is progressive, and again and again finds itself hampered by forms and dogmas of State and Church. Sooner or later we must break such outward form, as the chicken breaks its shell when the time comes. The work to which Tolstoy has set himself is a work to which each of us is also called-it is the establishment on earth of the Kingdom of God, that is, of Truth and Good.

Published in pamphlet form, July 1900, by Albert Broadbent, Manchester.

TALKS WITH TOLSTOY

SOME ten years ago my brother-in-law, Dr Alexéeff, offered to take me to call on Tolstoy, who had written a preface (Why do people stupify themselves?) to a book the Doctor had written on the drink question. At the tea-table I found myself just opposite Tolstoy, of whose works I had then read but little, and I ventured the remark that I understood that he disapproved of moneymaking, and that this interested me because I was in Russia with just the object of trying to make some money.

This led to a conversation which did not alter my views. I felt that I had the authority of the science of political economy behind me, and that I only needed fully to comprehend Tolstoy's position in order to be able to point out its fundamental fallacies.

Our conversation was soon interrupted, but when we left, Tolstoy said a few kind words and asked me to call again. This I did not do at that time, partly out of shyness and partly from a feeling that it would not do to teach Tolstoy political economy, and from a disbelief that he had anything important to teach me about it.

Years passed during which the talk with Tolstoy clung to my mind, and during which also, though