Tolstoy’s Views on Religion and Philosophy

In trying to give a brief outline of his present views, it will be convenient to confine the survey to works written since Anna Karénina
was finished—say since 1878. And no more will here be attempted than to
mention the chief subjects he has written about during the last
twenty-five years, and to give a rough sketch of certain main
conclusions he has reached, as well as of his reasons for adopting them.

In My Confession (1879)¹ Tolstoy tells how he
tried to grasp the meaning of his life, and how unsatisfactory he found
the conventional answers. A law of his being obliged him to approve and
disapprove of things: to discriminate between good and evil, and to
follow after that which is good. But what is Goodness? Where can help
or guidance for our lives be found? The results reached in My Confession
were not final, but led on to what followed. Tolstoy could not brush
away the claims of the Church without consideration; still less could
he, as a truth-respecting man, profess to believe what he saw no
sufficient grounds for believing. So, taking an authoritative text-book
of the Eastern Church, he sought the bases of doctrines and dogmas such
as those of the Trinity, the Sacraments, the scheme of Redemption, the
miraculous Conception and Resurrection, and the claim of the Churches
to authority over man's reason. His conclusion is expressed in A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology
(1880-81), which says that not only are such doctrines false and
harmful, but that they are fraudulent, and that the original purpose of
the fraud can be detected. The dogmas bolster up the Church; and 'the
Church,' when we come to practical business, means "power in the hands
of certain people." By inducing people to surrender their reason, and
to believe what is untrue, the rulers and officials of the
Churchesobtained for themselves advantages and authority. When the
Church, in the time of Constantine, allied itself with the State (which
uses violence and causes men to be killed), it abandoned the religion
Christ believed in, and substituted Churchianity for Christianity.

He next proceeded to a strenuous examination of the Gospels. If the
claims of the Church needed consideration before they could be honestly
accepted or rejected, equally was this the case with the collection of
Hebrew and Greek literature called the Bible.

The best of the books of the Old Testament appear to Tolstoy to rank
with the greatest works of Chinese, Indian, or Greek philosophy or
religion. The Epistles of St. Paul do not rank so high in his esteem,
but the four little booklets called the Gospels he has found more
helpful and convincing than anything else in literature. The
understanding of life they have helped him to reach is explained in The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated (1880-82); The Gospel in Brief (1883); My Religion (or What I Believe) (1883-4); and The Christian Teaching (written later, put on one side, and published in 1898 without final revision).

Briefly (and by no means completely) summarised, the conclusions arrived at in these books were these:—

We have reason and conscience ("the light which lighteth every man")
to guide us forward. We did not originate these for ourselves, but owe
them to some Source outside ourselves. The clue to the perplexities of
life is, that life is not our own to do as we like with, but we owe
allegiance to what has been called "Our Father in Heaven," from whom
(or from whence) proceeds the guidance we possess. Try to define God as
He, She, or It; as three persons, or as thirty-three persons; as being
the creator of the material universe (and therefore responsible for all
that is amiss in it)—and we land ourselves in hopeless perplexities.
But if we keep closely to what we know and have ourselves experienced,
we may be as sure as Socrates was that we are in touch with the Eternal
Goodness. We know not how to speak of this power within us and outside
us, except to say that it is Love: God is Love.

The practical application of Christ's teaching to life, Tolstoy
found given with special clearness in the Sermon on the Mount, from
which he extracted five precepts already referred to in the preceding
essay:—

1. Do not be angry.
2. Do not lust.
3. Do not bind yourself by oaths.
4. "Resist not him that is evil."
5. Be good to the just and the unjust.

In a leaflet, How to read the Gospels (1896), Tolstoy tells us:—

A great teacher is great just because he is able to express the
truth so that it can neither be hidden nor obscured, but is as plain as
daylight.

And, indeed, the truth is there for all who will, with a sincere
wish to know the truth, read the Gospels without prejudice, and, above
all, without supposing that the Gospels contain some special sort of wisdom beyond human reason.

The Gospels, as is known to all who have studied their origin, far
from being infallible expressions of Divine truth, are the work of
innumerable minds and hands, and contain many errors. Therefore the
Gospels can, in no case, be taken as a production of the Holy Ghost, as
Churchmen assert. Were that
so, God would have revealed the Gospels as he is said to have revealed
the Commandments on Mount Sinai; or he would have transmitted the
complete book to man as the Mormons declare was the case with their
Holy Scriptures. But we know how these works were written and
collected, and how they were corrected and translated; and therefore
not only can we not accept them as infallible revelations, but we must,
if we respect truth, correct the errors we find in them. Read them,
putting aside all foregone conclusions; read them with the sole desire
to understand what is said there. But, just because the Gospels are
holy books, read them considerately, reasonably, and with discernment,
and not haphazard or mechanically, as though all the words were of
equal weight.

To understand any book one must first choose out the parts that are
quite clear, dividing them from what is obscure or confused. And from
what is clear we must form our idea of the drift and spirit of the
whole work. Then, on the basis of what we have understood, we may
proceed to make out what is confused or not quite intelligible. This is
how we read all kinds of books. And it is particularly necessary thus
to read the Gospels, which have passed through a multiplicity of
compilations, translations and transcriptions, and were composed
eighteen centuries ago by men who were not highly educated and were
superstitious.

Very likely, in selecting what is fully comprehensible from what is
not, people will not all choose the same passages. What is
comprehensible to one may seem obscure to another. But all will
certainly agree in what is most important, and these are things which
will be found quite intelligible to every one. It is just this—just
what is fully comprehensible to all men—that constitutes the essence of
Christ's teaching.

In reading the Bible, or listening to the claims of the Churches, one must discriminate between faith and credulity.
We must not accept as a virtue, faith of the kind defined by the
schoolboy who said: "Faith is believing what you know to be untrue."
Credulity is believing things you have no sufficient reason to suppose
true, and is not a virtue but a fault. Faith is holding faithfully to
what our reason and conscience enable us to perceive of the reality of
things. We must not fear to trust our own judgment. The justification for thinking with our own heads is that we have no one else's to think with.

Tolstoy's acceptance of the advice: "Ye have heard that it was said,
An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, Resist
not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek,
turn to him the other also," is explained in the works above mentioned,
and yet more fully in The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893).
It means that we should injure no one, but should influence one
another, not by physical force (nor even by unkindly compulsion
stopping short of violence), but by appeals to man's higher nature: his
sympathy, affection, reason, and respect for truth. It has been said in
reply to this, that even if the text bears such a meaning, and even if
the advice accords with the main drift of Christ's teaching and
example, yet the advice is nevertheless unsound, for experience has
shown that the use ofviolence to destroy or injure bad men is
beneficial. And Tolstoy would admit that if the arrangements of
society—Governments based on violence, wars, executions, protection of
property by force, etc.—are satisfactory to man's highest aspirations,
then the precept quoted is a foolish one. His position may be
elucidated by taking a parallel case:—

We are advised to shun lies and to be truthful. This, he would say,
is a valid precept, and needful because it is sometimes difficult to
know how to speak, and we all need guidance for our conduct. Yet cases
arise in which a man may not see his way to speak the truth. A feeble
old man asks me about his daughter's conduct. If I tell him how she has
behaved it may bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. Am I not
justified in telling a lie? And does not it follow that truth is not
better than falsehood? And that we can have no principle to guide us in
choosing between veracity and mendacity? In regard to all such
sophistries Tolstoy replies that our reason and conscience, faithfully
used, are sufficient to enable us to discern principles for the
guidance of our conduct; though we, and the society in which we live,
may be far from living up to the principles so discerned. Truth, for
instance, is better than falsehood. And the two being
opposites, you cannot cultivate your character towards both sincerity
and duplicity at the same time. Circumstances may arise in which it
seems to you better to lie. But we never really foreknow the ultimate
consequences of any action, and in such a case it is not wise to say "I
did right to lie," but rather, "Owing to my limitations I did not see
my way to escape lying." Truth remains desirable though men may be
mendacious.

To Tolstoy the case of violent coercion versus gentle
persuasion is similar. Violence is employed in our society, and we may,
in this or that case, not have the wisdom or faithfulness to abstain
from using it. Yet violence and gentleness are opposites—and we can
neither progress in two directions at once nor remain safely without
guidance. If it is wrong to believe that the use of violence among men
is an evil causing incalculable suffering, then it is time some one
told us how much violence to use. We need a general principle which
will serve us when we are perplexed.

With the economic problem Tolstoy deals in What then must we do? (1885), a trenchant sequel to which, The Slavery of our Times,
appeared in 1900. He quite rejects 'charity organisation,'
money-collecting activities, and the belief that expenditure (including
charitable expenditure: entertainments, bazaars, balls, etc.) can
supply the need of the poor. People are fed, clothed, and sheltered by
the results of labour. Economically speaking, what a man produces, or
what service he renders to others, goes to his credit; what he consumes
(were it but a crust of dry bread) goes to his debit. The more a man
takes for himself, and the less he produces for others, the more of a
burden he is to society. And the fact that what he consumes was left
him by his father or given him by a friend does not alter the case.

Examining the fact that now, as in former ages, some people are able
to consume much while they produce little, and others, while producing
much, can hardly keep for themselves the necessaries of life, Tolstoy
came to investigate the use of money, and arrived at the conclusion
that the organisation and justification of violence in the hands of
certain people called 'Government'—who by the use of force maintain
taxation, the private ownership of land and property, and the monetary
system—have reproduced in the modern world the essential evil of
ancient slavery. In both cases the many labour, not under natural,
healthy, and free conditions but under conditions imposed by those who
own the slaves, control the Government, or have the money, the land, or
the property.

On Life (1887) reminds us that besides what we perceive objectively (i.e.
all that can be known by the senses) we have also a subjective
consciousness of the moral law within us. We must distinguish between
our lower nature as animals, and that higher nature which leads a
Socrates to sacrifice physical existence for the sake of goodness. This
is the root of religion. Within our animal personality the spirit
matures, as the chicken grows within the shell. To transfer our
interest from the lower to the higher nature is to be born again, to
lay hold of eternal life. The things which, at first, seem to us most
real are evidently perishable; they disappoint and deceive us. But
death and physical destruction are no disaster to a Socrates, nor do
they threaten that which to him is important. We should shift our
centre of gravity from that in us which is temporary to that which is
permanent. "He that would save his life shall lose it." Tolstoy makes
no assertion of a personal future life, nor even of the transmigration
of souls (which seems so plausible). For we should be very careful to
discriminate between conjectures and knowledge. We should in this
matter, as in mathematics, confine ourselves strictly to what is
'necessary and sufficient'; and the 'necessary and sufficient' is the
recognition that though we live, as animals, in a temporary and elusive
world in which no permanent success is possible, yet we have also a
spiritual nature dealing with goodness, and there is no reason to
suppose that goodness disappoints, or that the Divine spark within us,
which responds to it, is less eternal than goodness itself. Life is
always in the present; here and now we must find out whether it is the
material or the spiritual that to our perception is the more permanent
and real.

The year 1889 saw the publication of the much-misunderstood Kreutzer Sonata. What then must we do?
had ended with an appeal to mothers to fulfil their duty of bearing and
rearing children, and by setting an example of unselfish devotion to
duty to be the saviours of society. Reconsidering the relations of the
sexes subsequently, Tolstoy—without abandoning his opinion that married
people who have conjugal relations should, as the natural result of
physical intimacy, have children—came to the further conclusion that
chastity, like gentleness and truthfulness, is a virtue of universal
application. And by chastity he means complete purity in thought, word,
and deed, and the absence of all carnal desire.

The Kreutzer Sonata should be read with the "Afterword,"
which explains its intention. By putting his views into the mouth of a
man who had murdered his wife out of jealousy and had been acquitted on
the ground of insanity, Tolstoy was enabled to express them with
extreme force and trenchancy. The side he wished to express being the
one usually burked, he preferred to put it in this aggressive fashion.
Though, of course, he had not ceased to know that sexual relations
(like war and commerce) have played, and are playing, their part in the
education of mankind, he felt no need to re-state the side which has
been put forward in the literature of all ages and countries, and even
in some of his own previous writings. On the contrary, he felt that a
desire which is already far too strong is being continually
strengthened by works of art, and he set himself strenuously, and even
fiercely, to evoke those deep instincts of our nature which, whether in
Buddhist monk, in Catholic nun, or in Puritan censure of worldly art,
have never ceased to protest against the belief that sexual pleasure is
morally good.

The fundamental thought of the Kreutzer Sonata is this:
Mankind needs guidance in its sexual relations as on all other matters
of human conduct. The definite regulations of the Mosaic, Mahommedan,
or Church-Christian law, like the regulations of monkish celibacy,
etc., can at best apply only to certain times and places. The authority
behind such regulations gradually breaks down, and if we trust only to
them we are finally left face to face with the problems of life without
guidance for our conduct. But guidance exists. Chastity is a virtue.
Aim towards it. At every stage of progress, from the time reason awakes
and you feel a need to choose yourpath—whether you are boy or girl, man
or woman, married or single—choose the thoughts, feelings, and acts
which bring you nearest to chastity. You need not be afraid of
progressing too rapidly, or of defeating the ends of God by becoming
perfect too soon! If you are entirely satisfied with the life you are
living you will ask for no guidance. Philosophy and religion are
required only for people whose lives are not already perfect! The
fundamental feeling the book seeks to convey is that sexual relations
(however inevitable and natural they may be to man's animal self), from
the moment a reasonable being deliberately seeks them as a means of
pleasure, become revolting to our higher nature. They are instinctively
carried on in secret, nor can we even imagine to ourselves the love
affairs of a Christ.

The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893) has already been
referred to as dealing specially with 'non-resistance' and war. The
most resolute upholder of himself as an example of non-resistant
principles you have ever met, may ultimately have punched another man's
head in anger. But the truth of a principle is not invalidated by human
limitations. A straight line may be desirable and conceivable though no
man ever drew one. It is well to
know whether the line you have to draw is meant to be straight, whether your utterance should be truthful, and whether your conduct to your neighbour near at hand, or to the nation beyond the seas, ought to be loving, gentle, and kindly.

All this time, while the urgent need of elucidating, for himself and
others, the great problems of religion, economics, and philosophy, had
kept Tolstoy from making any prolonged excursions into the realms of
art, the questions: "What is Art? Is it important? Wherein does its
importance lie?" had pursued him, and the answer had been slowly
shaping itself in his mind. What is Art? being specially
treated of in the next essays, we need not here do more than pause to
notice the intimate connection between Tolstoy's theory of art, and the
principle of nonresistance which figures so largely in his
interpretation of the Gospels and in his social and economic studies.

So great is the influence men can, without any violence, exert on
one another by means of art, that: "Through the influence of real art,
aided by science, guided by religion, that peaceful co-operation of man
which is now obtained by external means—by our law courts, police,
charitable institutions, factory inspection, etc.—should be obtained by
man's free and joyous activity. Art should cause violence to be set aside. "

Following this came Resurrection (1899), the only long work
of fiction written by Tolstoy during the last twenty years, and one
faithfully reflecting his mature opinions on all the great problems of
life. That this book—conveying, as it does, feelings (on such subjects
as army service, legal proceedings, church services, marriage, etc.)
which run counter to those that have grown up and become general in
connection with our established order of society—should, nevertheless,
have had a great success in many lands, is an instance of the power
which literary art exerts among us to-day. And when we remember how
small a part a single book on its first appearance can exercise of that
cumulative influence which has sometimes been wielded by art: for
instance, by Homer's art among the Greeks, or that of their scriptures
(a large part of which are artistic) among the Jews; when, moreover, we
bear in mind Tolstoy's assurance that art has never yet done nearly all
it is capable of accomplishing for the benefit of humanity—we begin to
see how great a part art may play in shaping the future of mankind.

Without, here, mentioning in detail Tolstoy's numerous articles and
essays dealing with the use of stimulants, with vegetarianism,
patriotism, manual labour, the famine, the Doukhobórs, andmany other
subjects, one may say, in general, that they all show his profound
conviction that the primary guidance for our life lies not in what is
outside us and reaches us through our senses (as is generally
implicitly or explicitly affirmed among materialists, church people,
worldly people, and spiritualists), but that the essential thing is to
"know thyself," or, as George Fox said, to hearken to the 'inward
voice.'

Those who wish to get at the spirit of Tolstoy's teaching should
read his works in the way he says all books should be read. "One must
first choose out the parts that are quite clear, dividing them from
what is obscure or confused. And from what is clear we must form our
idea of the drift and spirit of the whole work." And the clearness to
be looked for is, he would add, the clearness which comes from
correspondence with the best the reader is himself able to feel and to
perceive.

Tolstoy does not claim to set an example of right living. Man's
reason can always reach beyond his present attainment. The Pharisee may
be satisfied with himself, but the sincere and thoughtful man is ever
conscious of his own shortcomings. Neither does Tolstoy claim any
authority for his teaching except what it derives from its appeal to
man's reason and conscience. There is no tenet of his he would wish
accepted without examination. In this sense his teaching is truly
catholic. Its appeal lies to all who possess a reason and a conscience,
and he would wish it to be verified, and where necessary corrected, by
the thought and experience of all who follow after truth and seek for
goodness.