No More Learning

He has the disinterestedness of the ideal


## p. 14967 (#551) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14967
statesman, who notes the pulse of the times with extreme care only
that he and others may know how to deal wisely with the body pol-
itic. Personally, Tocqueville might be an absolute monarchist for
aught that the book betrays of his preferences. He merges himself
in his curiosity concerning this powerful spirit of the age.
Aside from its value as a dispassionate inquiry into the merits of
democracy, Democracy in America' is remarkable as a sharply
drawn picture of political and social institutions in the United States,
excluding nothing that could be a source of enlightenment. The
first volume is taken up mainly with a consideration of government
and organization, of American townships, of the State, of judicial
power, of political jurisdiction, of the Federal Constitution, of political
parties, of the liberty of the press, and of the government of the
democracy; then follow some highly significant chapters on the
advantages and disadvantages accruing from democratic government.
These show a political subtlety which at times reaches the degree of
prophecy. Especially is this true in the discussion of parties in the
United States; in the recognition of the tyranny which may lurk in
the power of the majority, and from which Tocqueville believes the
greatest dangers to the State are to be feared. The second volume
is concerned with the influence of democracy upon the intellect of
the United States; upon the feelings of the Americans; upon man-
ners; upon political society. Reading the entire work in the light of
over fifty years of national development, this generation can realize,
as Tocqueville's contemporaries could not, how deeply he had pene-
trated to the essence of America's democracy, how few of his obser-
vations concerned what was merely superficial or transitory.
Yet this exhaustive study of democracy in the United States
was by no means intended as a preliminary to the advocacy of its
institutions for European governments, but to demonstrate that
the democratic spirit may be linked with social and religious order.
Tocqueville perceived that in France this spirit was well-nigh syn-
onymous with anarchy; finding its home among the illiterate and
the disordered, and so inducing in the minds of the conservative and
law-abiding the belief that it could be productive of nothing but evil.
This belief he wished to dispel. In concluding his great work he
writes:
-
"For myself, who now look back from this extreme limit of my task and
discover from afar, but at once, the various objects which have attracted
my more attentive investigation upon my way, I am full of apprehensions
and hopes. I perceive mighty dangers which may be avoided or alleviated;
and I cling with a firmer hold to the belief that for democratic nations to be
virtuous and prosperous, they require but to will it. . . The nations of
our time cannot prevent the conditions of men from becoming equal; but it
•


## p. 14968 (#552) ##########################################

14968
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
depends upon themselves whether the principle of equality is to lead them to
servitude or freedom, to knowledge or barbarism, to prosperity or wretched-
ness. »
'Democracy in America' at once achieved a signal success: it
was read throughout Europe, being translated into nearly all Euro-
pean languages. In 1836 Tocqueville received the Montyon prize of
several thousand francs, which is bestowed each year by the French
Institute upon the work of the greatest moral utility produced dur-
ing the year. In 1837 he was made a member of the Academy of
Moral and Political Sciences, and in 1841 of the French Academy.
About this time he visited England, receiving there an enthusiastic
reception from the Liberal party. In England he married a Miss
Motley. Upon his return to France, he became, by a family arrange-
ment, possessor of the estate of Tocqueville.
In 1837 he was a candidate for the representation of Valoques
in the Chamber of Deputies, but was defeated. His political career
began in 1839; when, his character and principles being better known
and appreciated, he was elected by the same district, with a large
majority. As a practical politician, Tocqueville was not entirely suc-
cessful, although his influence in the legislature was always pene-
trative and lasting. He was of too exalted a character, of too lofty
an idealism, to ride triumphantly upon the surface current of events.
He was lacking in diplomacy and in calculation. His opposition to
Guizot and to Louis Napoleon was founded strictly upon principle.
Predicting the Revolution of 1848, he conformed to the new condition
of affairs only so long as Louis Napoleon represented a moderate
and reasonable Republicanism. In 1849 he was vice-president of the
Assembly, and Minister of Foreign Affairs from June to October of
the same year. The Coup d'État of 1851, by which Louis Napoleon
became Napoleon III. , forced Tocqueville into private life, from which
he did not again emerge.
In 1856 he published the first part of 'L'Ancien Régime et la
Révolution,' a work which he was not destined to complete. His
health, which had been impaired since his visit to America, began to
fail. In 1858 he was obliged to seek the south of France for the
relief of a pulmonary trouble. He died on the 16th of April, 1859.
His 'Memoirs and Correspondence' were published in the following
year.
In 1896 appeared an English translation of his 'Recollections'
- of the period between the Revolution of 1848 and the 30th of
October, 1849. These 'Recollections' have a great personal as well
as political interest; throwing light as they do upon a character of
unusual charm and beauty, in whom devotion to an ideal was blended
with a certain rare acquiescence in the march of events,- a patience
only possible to the seer. While the absolute element of unqualified
-


## p. 14969 (#553) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14969
admiration must be present always in estimates of Tocqueville, ap-
preciation of his life and work increases with the increasing years,
since that life and work were intimate with the future, rather than
with his own time and place.
EDUCATION OF YOUNG WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES
From Democracy in America,' by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
N°
FREE communities ever existed without morals; and as I
observed in the former part of this work, morals are the
work of woman. Consequently, whatever affects the con-
dition of women, their habits and their opinions, has great politi-
cal importance in my eyes.
Amongst almost all Protestant nations, young women are far
more the mistresses of their own actions than they are in Catho-
lic countries. This independence is still greater in Protestant
countries like England, which have retained or acquired the right
of self-government: freedom is then infused into the domestic
circle by political habits and religious opinions. In the United
States, the doctrines of Protestantism are combined with great
political liberty and a most democratic state of society; and no-
where are young women surrendered so early or so completely
to their own guidance.
Long before an American girl arrives at the marriageable
age, her emancipation from paternal control begins: she has
scarcely ceased to be a child when she already thinks for herself,
speaks with freedom, and acts on her own impulse.
The great
scene of the world is constantly open to her view: far from seek-
ing to conceal it from her, it is every day disclosed more com-
pletely; and she is taught to survey it with a firm and calm
gaze. Thus the vices and dangers of society are early revealed
to her; as she sees them clearly, she views them without illus-
ion, and braves them without fear; for she is full of reliance on
her own strength, and her confidence seems to be shared by all
around her.
An American girl scarcely ever displays that virginal softness
in the midst of young desires, or that innocent and ingenuous
grace, which usually attend the European woman in the transition


## p. 14970 (#554) ##########################################

14970
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
from girlhood to youth. It is rare that an American woman, at
any age, displays childish timidity or ignorance. Like the young
women of Europe, she seeks to please, but she knows precisely
the cost of pleasing. If she does not abandon herself to evil, at
least she knows that it exists; and she is remarkable rather for
purity of manners than for chastity of mind.
I have been frequently surprised, and almost frightened, at
the singular address and happy boldness with which young
women in America contrive to manage their thoughts and their
language, amidst all the difficulties of free conversation: a phi-
losopher would have stumbled at every step along the narrow
path which they trod without accident and without effort. It is
easy indeed to perceive that even amidst the independence of
early youth, an American woman is always mistress of herself:
she indulges in all permitted pleasures without yielding herself
up to any of them; and her reason never allows the reins of
self-guidance to drop, though it often seems to hold them loosely.
In France, where traditions of every age are still so strangely
mingled in the opinions and tastes of the people, women com-
monly receive a reserved, retired, and almost conventual educa-
tion, as they did in aristocratic times; and then they are suddenly
abandoned, without a guide and without assistance, in the midst.
of all the irregularities inseparable from democratic society.
The Americans are more consistent. They have found out
that in a democracy the independence of individuals cannot fail
to be very great, youth premature, tastes ill restrained, customs
fleeting, public opinion often unsettled and powerless, paternal
authority weak, and marital authority contested. Under these
circumstances, believing that they had little chance of repress-
ing in woman the most vehement passions of the human heart,
they held that the surer way was to teach her the art of com-
bating those passions for herself. As they could not prevent her
virtue from being exposed to frequent danger, they determined
that she should know how best to defend it; and more reliance
was placed on the free vigor of her will than on safeguards
which have been shaken or overthrown. Instead, then, of incul-
cating mistrust of herself, they constantly seek to enhance her
confidence in her own strength of character. As it is neither
possible nor desirable to keep a young woman in perpetual and
complete ignorance, they hasten to give her a precocious knowl-
edge on all subjects. Far from hiding the corruptions of the


## p. 14971 (#555) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14971
world from her, they prefer that she should see them at once,
and train herself to shun them; and they hold it of more import-
ance to protect her conduct than to be over-scrupulous of the
innocence of her thoughts.
Although the Americans are a very religious people, they do
not rely on religion alone to defend the virtue of woman: they
seek to arm her reason also. In this respect they have followed
the same method as in several others: they first make vigorous
efforts to cause individual independence to control itself, and they
do not call in the aid of religion until they have reached the
utmost limits of human strength.
I am aware that an education of this kind is not without
danger; I am sensible that it tends to invigorate the judgment
at the expense of the imagination, and to make cold and virtuous
women instead of affectionate wives and agreeable companions
to man. Society may be more tranquil and better regulated, but
domestic life has often fewer charms. These however are sec-
ondary evils, which may be braved for the sake of higher inter-
ests. At the stage at which we are now arrived, the choice is
no longer left to us: a democratic education is indispensable to
protect women from the dangers with which democratic institu-
tions and manners surround them.
POLITICAL ASSOCIATION
From Democracy in America, by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
IT
T MUST be acknowledged that the unrestrained liberty of polit-
ical association has not hitherto produced, in the United
States, the fatal results which might perhaps be expected
from it elsewhere. The right of association was imported from
England, and it has always existed in America; the exercise of
this privilege is now incorporated with the manners and customs
of the people. At the present time, the liberty of association
has become a necessary guaranty against the tyranny of the
majority. In the United States, as soon as a party has become
dominant, all public authority passes into its hands; its private
supporters occupy all the offices, and have all the force of the


## p. 14972 (#556) ##########################################

14972
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
administration at their disposal. As the most distinguished mem-
bers of the opposite party cannot surmount the barrier which
excludes them from power, they must establish themselves out-
side of it; and oppose the whole moral authority of the minority
to the physical power which domineers over it. Thus a dangerous
expedient is used to obviate a still more formidable danger.
The omnipotence of the majority appears to me to be so full
of peril to the American republics, that the dangerous means
used to bridle it seem to be more advantageous than prejudicial.
And here I will express an opinion which may remind the
reader of what I said when speaking of the freedom of town-
ships. There are no countries in which associations are more
needed to prevent the despotism of faction or the arbitrary power
of a prince, than those which are democratically constituted.
In aristocratic nations, the body of the nobles and the wealthy
are in themselves natural associations, which check the abuses
of power. In countries where such associations do not exist, if
private individuals cannot create an artificial and temporary
substitute for them, I can see no permanent protection against
the most galling tyranny; and a great people may be oppressed
with impunity by a small faction, or by a single individual.
The meeting of a great political convention (for there are
conventions of all kinds), which may frequently become a neces-
sary measure, is always a serious occurrence, even in America,
and one which judicious patriots cannot regard without alarm.
This was very perceptible in the convention of 1831, at which all
the most distinguished members strove to moderate its language,
and to restrain its objects within certain limits. It is probable
that this convention exercised a great influence on the minds of
the malcontents, and prepared them for the open revolt against
the commercial laws of the Union which took place in 1832.
It cannot be denied that the unrestrained liberty of associa-
tion for political purposes is the privilege which a people is
longest in learning how to exercise. If it does not throw the
nation into anarchy, it perpetually augments the chances of that
calamity. On one point, however, this perilous liberty offers a
security against dangers of another kind: in countries where asso-
ciations are free, secret associations are unknown. In America
there are factions, but no conspiracies.


## p. 14973 (#557) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14973
CAUSE OF LEGISLATIVE INSTABILITY IN AMERICA
From Democracy in America, by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
I
HAVE already spoken of the natural defects of democratic insti-
tutions: each one of them increases in the same ratio as the
power of the majority. To begin with the most evident
of them all, the mutability of the laws is an evil inherent in a
democratic government, because it is natural to democracies to
raise new men to power. But this evil is more or less sensible
in proportion to the authority and the means of action which the
legislature possesses.
In America, the authority exercised by the legislatures is
supreme; nothing prevents them from accomplishing their wishes
with celerity and with irresistible power, and they are supplied
with new representatives every year. That is to say, the circum-
stances which contribute most powerfully to democratic instability,
and which admit of the free application of caprice to the most
important objects, are here in full operation. Hence America
is, at the present day, the country of all where laws last the
shortest time. Almost all the American constitutions have been
amended within thirty years: there is therefore not one Ameri-
can State which has not modified the principles of its legislation
in that time. As for the laws themselves, a single glance at the
archives of the different States of the Union suffices to convince
one that in America the activity of the legislator never slackens.
Not that the American democracy is naturally less stable than
any other; but it is allowed to follow, in the formation of the
laws, the natural instability of its desires.
The omnipotence of the majority, and the rapid as well as
absolute manner in which its decisions are executed in the United
States, not only render the law unstable, but exercise the same
influence upon the execution of the law and the conduct of the
administration. As the majority is the only power which it is
important to court, all its projects are taken up with the greatest
ardor; but no sooner is its attention distracted than all its ardor
ceases: whilst in the free States of Europe, where the adminis-
tration is at once independent and secure, the projects of the
legislature continue to be executed, even when its attention is
directed to other objects.


## p. 14974 (#558) ##########################################

14974
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
TYRANNY OF THE MAJORITY
From Democracy in America,' by permission of the Century Company
publishers
I
HOLD it to be an impious and detestable maxim, that politically
speaking the people have a right to do anything; and yet I
have asserted that all authority originates in the will of the
majority. Am I then in contradiction with myself?
A general law, which bears the name of justice, has been
made and sanctioned, not only by a majority of this or that peo-
ple, but by a majority of mankind. The rights of every people
are therefore confined within the limits of what is just. A nation
may be considered as a jury which is empowered to represent
society at large, and to apply justice, which is its law. Ought
such a jury, which represents society, to have more power than
the society itself whose laws it executes ?
When I refuse to obey an unjust law, I do not contest the
right of the majority to command, but I simply appeal from the
sovereignty of the people to the sovereignty of mankind. Some
have not feared to assert that a people can never outstep the
boundaries of justice and reason in those affairs which are pecul-
iarly its own; and that consequently, full power may be given to
the majority by which they are represented. But this is the lan-
guage of a slave.
A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose
opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of
another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted
that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power
by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable
to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by
uniting with each other; nor does their patience in the presence
of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part I
cannot believe it: the power to do everything, which I should
refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of
them.
I do not think that for the sake of preserving liberty, it is
possible to combine several principles in the same government so
as really to oppose them to one another. The form of govern-
ment which is usually termed mixed has always appeared to me
a mere chimera. Accurately speaking, there is no such thing as
a mixed government, in the same sense usually given to that


## p. 14975 (#559) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14975
word; because in all communities some one principle of action
may be discovered which preponderates over the others. Eng-
land in the last century—which has been especially cited as an
example of this sort of government-was essentially an aristo-
cratic State, although it comprised some great elements of de-
mocracy; for the laws and customs of the country were such that
the aristocracy could not but preponderate in the long run, and
direct public affairs according to its own will. The error arose
from seeing the interests of the nobles perpetually contending
with those of the people, without considering the issue of the
contest, which was really the important point. When a com-
munity actually has a mixed government,- that is to say, when
it is equally divided between adverse principles,—it must either
experience a revolution or fall into anarchy.
I am therefore of opinion that social power superior to all
others must always be placed somewhere; but I think that liberty
is endangered when this power finds no obstacle which can retard
its course, and give it time to moderate its own vehemence.
Unlimited power is in itself a bad and dangerous thing.
Human beings are not competent to exercise it with discretion.
God alone can be omnipotent, because his wisdom and his justice.
are always equal to his power. There is no power on earth so
worthy of honor in itself, or clothed with rights so sacred, that
I would admit its uncontrolled and all-predominant authority.
When I see that the right and the means of absolute command
are conferred on any power whatever, be it called a people or a
king, an aristocracy or a democracy, a monarchy or a republic, I
say there is a germ of tyranny; and I seek to live elsewhere,
under other laws.
In my opinion, the main evil of the present democratic insti-
tutions of the United States does not arise, as is often asserted
in Europe, from their weakness, but from their irresistible
strength. I am not so much alarmed at the excessive liberty
which reigns in that country, as at the inadequate securities.
which one finds there against tyranny.
When an individual or a party is wronged in the United
States, to whom can he apply for redress? If to public opinion,
public opinion constitutes the majority; if to the legislature, it
represents the majority, and implicitly obeys it; if to the execu
tive power, it is appointed by the majority, and serves as a pass-
ive tool in its hands. The public force consists of the majority


## p. 14976 (#560) ##########################################

14976
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
•
under arms; the jury is the majority invested with the right of
hearing judicial cases; and in certain States, even the judges are
elected by the majority. However iniquitous or absurd the meas-
ure of which you complain, you must submit to it as well as you
can.
If, on the other hand, a legislative power could be so consti-
tuted as to represent the majority without necessarily being the
slave of its passions, an executive so as to retain a proper share
of authority, and a judiciary so as to remain independent of the
other two powers, a government would be formed which would
still be democratic, while incurring hardly any risk of tyranny.
I do not say that there is a frequent use of tyranny in Amer-
ica at the present day; but I maintain that there is no sure
barrier against it, and that the causes which mitigate the govern-
ment there are to be found in the circumstances and the man-
ners of the country, more than in its laws.
POWER EXERCISED BY THE MAJORITY IN AMERICA UPON
OPINION
From Democracy in America, by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
T IS in the examination of the exercise of thought in the United
States, that we clearly perceive how far the power of the ma-
jority surpasses all the powers with which we are acquainted
in Europe. Thought is an invisible and subtle power that mocks
all the efforts of tyranny. At the present time, the most abso-
lute monarchs in Europe cannot prevent certain opinions hostile
to their authority from circulating in secret through their domin-
ions, and even in their courts. It is not so in America: as long
as the majority is still undecided, discussion is carried on; but
as soon as its decision is irrevocably pronounced, every one is
silent, and the opponents as well as the friends of the measure
unite in assenting to its propriety. The reason of this is per-
fectly clear: no monarch is so absolute as to combine all the
powers of society in his own hands, and to conquer all opposi-
tion, as a majority is able to do, which has the right both
of making and of executing the laws.
The authority of a king is physical, and controls the actions
of men without subduing their will. But the majority possesses
_______________


## p. 14977 (#561) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14977
a power which is physical and moral at the same time, which
acts upon the will as much as upon the actions, and represses
not only all contest but all controversy.
I know of no country in which there is so little independence
of mind and real freedom of discussion as in America.
In any
constitutional State in Europe, every sort of religious and politi-
cal theory may be freely preached and disseminated; for there
is no country in Europe so subdued by any single authority
as not to protect the man who raises his voice in the cause of
truth from the consequences of his hardihood. If he is unfor-
tunate enough to live under an absolute government, the people
are often upon his side; if he inhabits a free country, he can if
necessary find a shelter behind the throne. The aristocratic part
of society supports him in some countries, and the democracy
in others. But in a nation where democratic institutions exist,
organized like those of the United States, there is but one author-
ity, one element of strength and success, with nothing behind it.
In America the majority raises formidable barriers around the
liberty of opinion: within these barriers, an author may write
what he pleases; but woe to him if he goes beyond them. Not
that he is in danger of an auto-da-fé, but he is exposed to con-
tinued obloquy and persecution. His political career is closed
forever, since he has offended the only authority which is able
to open it. Every sort of compensation, even that of celebrity,
is refused to him. Before publishing his opinions, he imagined
that he held them in common with others; but no sooner has he
declared them than he is loudly censured by his opponents, whilst
those who think like him, without having the courage to speak
out, abandon him in silence. He yields at length, overcome by
the daily effort which he has to make; and subsides into silence,
as if he felt remorse for having spoken the truth.
Fetters and headsmen were the coarse instruments which
tyranny formerly employed; but the civilization of our age has
perfected despotism itself, though it seemed to have nothing to
learn. Monarchs had, so to speak, materialized oppression: the
democratic republics of the present day have rendered it as
entirely an affair of the mind, as the will which it is intended.
to coerce. Under the absolute sway of one man, the body was
attacked in order to subdue the soul; but the soul escaped the
blows which were directed against it, and rose proudly superior.
XXV-937


## p. 14978 (#562) ##########################################

14978
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
Such is not the course adopted by tyranny in democratic repub-
lics; there the body is left free and the soul is enslaved. The
master no longer says, "You shall think as I do, or you shall
die"; but he says, "You are free to think differently from me,
and to retain your life, your property, and all that you possess;
but you are henceforth a stranger among your people. You may
retain your civil rights, but they will be useless to you, for you
will never be chosen by your fellow-citizens if you solicit their
votes; and they will affect to scorn you if you ask for their
esteem. You will remain among men, but you will be deprived
of the rights of mankind. Your fellow-creatures will shun you
like an impure being; and even those who believe in your inno-
cence will abandon you, lest they should be shunned in their
turn. Go in peace! I have given you your life, but it is an exist-
ence worse than death. "
DANGERS FROM OMNIPOTENCE OF THE MAJORITY
From Democracy in America,' by permission of the Century Company,
publishers
G
OVERNMENTS usually perish from impotence or from tyranny.
In the former case their power escapes from them; it is
wrested from their grasp in the latter. Many observ-
ers who have witnessed the anarchy of democratic States have
imagined that the government of those States was naturally weak
and impotent: the truth is that when war is once begun between
parties, the government loses its control over society. But I do
not think that a democratic power is naturally without force or
resources; say rather that it is almost always by the abuse of its
force, and the misemployment of its resources, that it becomes a
failure. Anarchy is almost always produced by its tyranny or
its mistakes, but not by its want of strength.
It is important not to confound stability with force, or the
greatness of a thing with its duration. In democratic republics,
the power which directs society is not stable, for it often changes
hands and assumes a new direction; but whichever way it turns,
its force is almost irresistible. The governments of the Ameri-
can republics appear to me to be as much centralized as those
of the absolute monarchies of Europe, and more energetic than


## p. 14979 (#563) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14979
they are. I do not therefore imagine that they will perish from
weakness.
If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that
event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority;
which may at some future time urge the minorities to despera-
tion, and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy
will then be the result, but it will have been brought about by
despotism.
FRANCE UNDER THE RULE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS
From the 'Recollections of Alexis de Tocqueville. ' The Macmillan Company,
publishers
OUR
UR history from 1789 to 1830, if viewed from a distance and
as a whole, affords as it were the picture of a struggle to
the death between the Ancien Régime - its traditions,
memories, hopes, and men, as represented by the aristocracy —
and New France under the leadership of the middle class. The
year 1830 closed the first period of our revolutions; or rather of
our revolution, for there is but one, which has remained always
the same in the face of varying fortunes,—of which our fathers
witnessed the commencement, and of which we, in all probability,
shall not live to behold the end. In 1830 the triumph of the
middle class had been definite; and so thorough that all political
power, every franchise, every prerogative, and the whole govern-
ment, was confined, and as it were heaped up, within the narrow
limits of this one class, to the statutory exclusion of all beneath
them, and the actual exclusion of all above. Not only did it
thus alone rule society, but it may be said to have formed it.
It ensconced itself in every vacant place, prodigiously augmented
the number of places, and accustomed itself to live almost as
much upon the treasury as upon its own industry.
No sooner had the Revolution of 1830 become an accom-
plished fact, than there ensued a great lull in political passion, a
sort of general subsidence, accompanied by a rapid increase in
the public wealth. The particular spirit of the middle class
became the general spirit of the government; it ruled the latter's
foreign policy as well as affairs at home: an active, industrious.
spirit, often dishonorable, generally sober, occasionally reckless
through vanity or egotism, but timid by temperament, moderate


## p. 14980 (#564) ##########################################

14980
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
in all things except in its love of ease and comfort, and wholly
undistinguished. It was a spirit, which, mingled with that of the
people or of the aristocracy, can do wonders; but which by itself
will never produce more than a government shorn of both virtue
and greatness. Master of everything in a manner that no aris-
tocracy had ever been or may ever hope to be, the middle class,
when called upon to assume the government, took it up as a
trade; it intrenched itself behind its power: and before long, in
their egoism, each of its members thought much more of his pri
vate business than of public affairs, and of his personal enjoy-
ment than of the greatness of the nation.
Posterity, which sees none but the more dazzling crimes, and
which loses sight in general of mere vices, will never perhaps
know to what extent the government of that day, towards its
close, assumed the ways of a trading company, which conducts
all its transactions with a view to the profits accruing to the
shareholders.
These vices were due to the natural instincts of
the dominant class, to the absoluteness of its power, and also to
the character of the time. Possibly also King Louis Philippe had
contributed to their growth.
This prince was a singular medley of qualities, and one must
have known him longer and more nearly than I did to be able
to portray him in detail.
Nevertheless, although I was never one of his Council, I have
frequently had occasion to come into contact with him. The last
time that I spoke to him was shortly before the catastrophe of
February [1848]. I was then director of the Académie Française,
and I had to bring to the King's notice some matter or other
which concerned that body. After treating the question which
had brought me, I was about to retire, when the King detained
me, took a chair, motioned me to another, and said affably:—
"Since you are here, Monsieur de Tocqueville, let us talk: I
want to hear you talk a little about America. "
I knew him well enough to know that this meant, "I shall
talk about America myself. " And he did actually talk of it at
great length and very searchingly: it was not possible for me to
get in a word; nor did I desire to do so, for he really interested
me. He described places as if he saw them before him; he
recalled the distinguished men whom he had met forty years
ago as if he had seen them the day before; he mentioned their
names in full, Christian name and surname, gave their ages at


## p. 14981 (#565) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14981
the time, related their histories, their pedigrees, their posterity,
with marvelous exactness, and with infinite though in no way
tedious detail. From America he returned, without taking breath,
to Europe; talked of all our foreign and domestic affairs with
incredible unconstraint (for I had no title to his confidence);
spoke very badly of the Emperor of Russia, whom he called "Mon-
sieur Nicolas"; casually alluded to Lord Palmerston as a rogue;
and ended by holding forth at length on the Spanish marriages,
which had just taken place, and the annoyances to which they
subjected him on the side of England.
"The Queen is very angry with me," he said, "and displays
great irritation; but after all," he added, "all this outcry won't
keep me from driving my own cart. "
Although this phrase dated back to the Old Order, I felt
inclined to doubt whether Louis XIV. ever made use of it on
accepting the Spanish Succession. I believe, moreover, that
Louis Philippe was mistaken; and to borrow his own language,
that the Spanish marriages helped not a little to upset his cart.
After three quarters of an hour the King rose, thanked me
for the pleasure my conversation had given him (I had not
spoken four words), and dismissed me, feeling evidently as
delighted as one generally is with a man before whom one thinks
one has spoken well. This was my last audience of the King.
Louis Philippe improvised all the replies which he made, even
upon the most critical occasions, to the great State bodies; he
was as fluent then as in his private conversation, although not so
happy or epigrammatic. He would suddenly become obscure,
for the reason that he boldly plunged headlong into long sen-
tences, of which he was not able to estimate the extent nor per-
ceive the end beforehand; and from which he finally emerged
struggling and by force, shattering the sense and not completing
the thought.
In this political world thus constituted and conducted, what
was most wanting, particularly towards the end, was political life
itself. It could neither come into being nor be maintained
within the legal circle which the Constitution had traced for it:
the old aristocracy was vanquished, the people excluded. As all
business was discussed among members of one class, in the in-
terest and in the spirit of that class, there was no battle-field for
contending parties to meet upon. This singular homogeneity of
position, of interests, and consequently of views, reigning in what


## p. 14982 (#566) ##########################################

14982
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
M. Guizot had once called the legal country, deprived the par-
liamentary debates of all originality, of all reality, and therefore
of all genuine passion. I have spent ten years of my life in
the company of truly great minds, who were in a constant state
of agitation without succeeding in heating themselves, and who
spent all their perspicacity in vain endeavors to find subjects
upon which they could seriously disagree.
On the other hand, the preponderating influence which King
Louis Philippe had acquired in public affairs, which never per-
mitted the politicians to stray very far from that prince's
ideas lest they should at the same time be removed from power,
reduced the different colors of parties to the merest shades, and
debates to the splitting of straws. I doubt whether any Par-
liament (not excepting the Constituent Assembly,—I mean the
true one, that of 1789) ever contained more varied and brilliant
talents than did ours during the closing years of the Monarchy
of July. Nevertheless I am able to declare that these great ora-
tors were tired to death of listening to one another, and what
was worse, the whole country was tired of listening to them. It
grew unconsciously accustomed to look upon the debates in the
Chambers as exercises of the intellect rather than as serious dis-
cussions, and upon all the differences between the various Par-
liamentary parties - the majority, the left centre, or the dynastic
opposition as domestic quarrels between children of one family
trying to trick one another. A few glaring instances of corrup
tion, discovered by accident, led it to presuppose a number of
hidden cases, and convinced it that the whole of the governing
class was corrupt; whence it conceived for the latter a silent
contempt, which was generally taken for confiding and contented
submission.
The country was at that time divided into two unequal parts,
or rather zones: in the upper, which alone was intended to con-
tain the whole of the nation's political life, there reigned nothing
but languor, impotence, stagnation, and boredom; in the lower,
on the contrary, political life began to make itself manifest by
means of feverish and irregular signs, of which the attentive
observer was easily able to seize the meaning.
I was one of these observers; and although I was far from
imagining that the catastrophe was so near at hand and fated to
be so terrible, I felt a distrust springing up and insensibly grow-
ing in my mind, and the idea taking root more and more that


## p. 14983 (#567) ##########################################

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
14983
we were making strides towards a fresh revolution. This denoted
a great change in my thoughts; since the general appeasement
and flatness that followed the Revolution of July had led me
to believe for a long time that I was destined to spend my life
amid an enervated and peaceful society. Indeed, any one who
had only examined the inside of the governmental fabric would
have had the same conviction. Everything there seemed com-
bined to produce with the machinery of liberty a preponderance
of royal power which verged upon despotism; and in fact, this
result was produced almost without effort by the regular and
tranquil movement of the machine. King Louis Philippe was
persuaded that so long as he did not himself lay hand upon that
fine instrument, and allowed it to work according to rule, he was
safe from all peril. His only occupation was to keep it in order
and to make it work according to his own views, forgetful of
society upon which this ingenious piece of mechanism rested; he
resembled the man who refused to believe that his house was
on fire, because he had the key in his pocket. I had neither the
same interests nor the same cares; and this permitted me to
see through the mechanism of institutions and the agglomeration
of petty every-day facts, and to observe the state of morals and
opinions in the country. There I clearly beheld the appearance
of several of the portents that usually denote the approach of
revolutions; and I began to believe that in 1830 I had taken for
the end of the play what was nothing more than the end of an
act.
In a speech delivered in the Chamber of Deputies, January
29th, 1848, I said:-
-
"I am told that there is no danger because there are no
riots; I am told that because there is no visible disorder on the
surface of society, there is no revolution at hand.
"Gentlemen, permit me to say that I believe you are de-
ceived. True, there is no actual disorder; but it has entered
deeply into men's minds. See what is passing in the breasts of
the working classes,-who, I grant, are at present quiet. No
doubt they are not disturbed by political passion, properly so
called, to the same extent that they have been; but can you not
see that their passions, instead of political, have become social?
Do you not see that there are gradually forming in their breasts
opinions and ideas which are destined not only to upset this or
that law, ministry, or even form of government, but society itself,


## p. 14984 (#568) ##########################################

14984
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE
until it totters upon the foundations on which it rests to-day?
Do you not listen to what they say to themselves each day? Do
you not hear them repeating unceasingly that all that is above
them is incapable and unworthy of governing them; that the
present distribution of goods throughout the world is unjust; that
property rests on a foundation which is not an equitable founda-
tion? And do you not realize that when such opinions take
root, when they spread in an almost universal manner, when
they sink deeply into the masses, they are bound to bring with
them sooner or later, I know not when nor how, a most formi-
dable revolution?
"This, gentlemen, is my profound conviction: I believe that
we are at this moment sleeping on a volcano. I am profoundly
convinced of it. "


## p. 14985 (#569) ##########################################

14985
LYOF TOLSTOY
-
(1828-)
BY WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS
HERE is a certain unsatisfactory meagreness in the facts of
Lyof Tolstoy's life, as they are given outside of his own
works. In these he has imparted himself with a fullness
which has an air almost of anxiety to leave nothing unsaid,—as if
any reticence would rest like a sense of insincerity on his conscience.
But such truth as relates to dates and places, and seems the basis
of our knowledge concerning other men, is with him hardly at all
structural: we do not try to build his moral or intellectual figure
upon it or about it.
He is of an aristocratic lineage, which may be traced back to
Count Piotr Tolstoy, a friend and comrade of Peter the Great; and
he was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana near Tula, where he still
lives. His parents died during his childhood, and he was left with
their other children to the care of one of his mother's relatives at
Kazan, where he entered the university. He did not stay to take a
degree, but returned to Yasnaya Polyana, where he lived in retirement
till 1851; when he went into the army, and served in the Caucasus
and the Crimea, seeing both the big wars and the little. He quitted
the service with the rank of division commander, and gave himself
up to literary work at St. Petersburg, where his success was in every
sort most brilliant; but when the serfs were set free, he retired to
his estates, and took his part in fitting them for freedom by teach-
ing them, personally and through books which he wrote for them.
He learned from these poor people far more than he taught them;
and his real life dates from his efforts to make it one with their
lives. He had married the daughter of a German physician in Mos-
cow, the admirable woman who has remained constant to the
idealist through all his changing ideals, and a family of children
was growing up about him; but neither the cares nor the joys of his
home sufficed to keep him from the despair which all his military
and literary and social success had deepened upon him, and which
had begun to oppress him from the earliest moments of moral con-
sciousness.
The wisdom that he learned from toil and poverty was, that life
has no meaning and no happiness except as it is spent for others;


## p. 14986 (#570) ##########################################

14986
LYOF TOLSTOY
and it did not matter that the toiling poor themselves illustrated the
lesson unwittingly and unwillingly. Tolstoy perceived that they had
the true way often in spite of themselves; but that their reluctance
or their ignorance could not keep the blessing from them which had
been withheld from him, and from all the men of his kind and qual-
ity. He found that they took sickness and misfortune simply and
patiently, and that when their time came to die, they took death
simply and patiently. To them life was not a problem or a puzzle:
it was often heavy and hard, but it did not mock or deride them; it
was not malign, and it was not ironical. He believed that the hap-
piness he saw in them came first of all from their labor.
He
So he began to work out his salvation with his own hands.
put labor before everything else in his philosophy, and through all
his changes and his seeming changes he has kept it there. There
had been a time when he thought he must destroy himself, after
glory in arms and in letters had failed to suffice him, after the love
of wife and children had failed to console him, and nothing would
ease the intolerable burden of being. But labor gave him rest; and
he tasted the happiness of those whose existence is a continual sacri-
fice through service to others.
He must work hard every day, or else he must begin to die at
heart; and so he believes must every man. But then, for the life
which labor renders tolerable and significant, some sort of formulated
faith was essential; and Tolstoy began to search the Scriptures. He
learned from the teachings of Jesus Christ that he must not only not
kill, but he must not hate or despise other men; he must not only
keep himself chaste, but he must keep his thoughts from unchastity;
he must not only not forswear himself, but he must not swear at
all; he must not only not do evil, but he must not resist evil. If his
own practice had been the negation of these principles, he could not
therefore deny their righteousness; if all civilization, as we see it
now, was the negation of these principles, civilization - in so far as
it was founded upon war, and pride, and luxury, and oaths, and
judgments, and punishments-was wrong and false. The sciences,
so far as they failed to better the lot of common men, seemed to
him futile; the fine arts, so far as they appealed to the passions,
seemed worse than futile; the mechanic arts, with their manifold
inventions, were senseless things in the sight of this seer, who sought
the kingdom of God. Titles, honors, riches; courts, judges, execu-
tioners; nationalities, armies, battles; culture, pleasure, amusement, -
he counted these all evil or vain.
―
The philosophy of Tolstoy is neither more nor less than the
doctrine of the gospels, chiefly as he found it in the words of Jesus.
Some of us whose lives it accused, have accused him of going be-
yond Christ in his practice of Christ's precepts. We say that having


## p. 14987 (#571) ##########################################

LYOF TOLSTOY
14987
himself led a worldly, sensual, and violent life, he naturally wished
to atone for it by making every one also lead a poor, dull, and ugly
life. It is no part of my business to defend him, or to justify him;
but as against this anger against him, I cannot do less than remind
the reader that Tolstoy, in confessing himself so freely and fully to
the world, and preaching the truth as he feels it, claims nothing like
infallibility. He compels no man's conscience, he shapes no man's
conduct. If the truth which he has learned from the teachings of
Jesus, and those other saviors and sages whom he follows less devot-
edly, compels the conscience and shapes the conduct of the reader,
that is because this reader's soul cannot deny it. If the soul rejects
it, that is no more than men have been doing ever since saviors and
sages came into the world; and Tolstoy is neither to praise nor to
blame.
No sincere person, I believe, will deny his sincerity, which is his
authority outside of the gospel's: if any man will speak simply and
truly to us, he masters us; and this and nothing else is what makes
us helpless before the spirit of such books as 'My Confession,' 'My
Religion,' 'Life, What to Do,' and before the ethical quality of
Tolstoy's fictions. We can remind ourselves that he is no more final
than he pretends to be; that on so vital a point as the question of
a life hereafter, he seems of late to incline to a belief in it, though
at first he held such a belief to be a barbarous superstition. We can
justly say that he does not lead a life of true poverty if his wife
holds the means of keeping him from want, and from that fear of
want which is the sorest burden of poverty. We can point out that
his labor in making shoes is a worse than useless travesty, since it
may deprive some wretched cobbler of his chance to earn his living
by making and selling the shoes which Count Tolstoy makes and
gives away. In these things we should have a certain truth on our
side; though we should have to own that it was not his fault that
he had not really declassed himself, and was constrained to the eco-
nomic safety in which he dwells. We should have to confess that
in this the great matter is the will; and that if benevolence stopped
to take account of the harm it might work, there could be no such
thing as charity in the world. We should have to ask ourselves
whether Tolstoy's conversion to a belief in immortality is not an
effect of his unselfish labor; whether his former doubt of immortal-
ity was not a lingering effect of the ambition, vanity, and luxury he
has renounced. It had not indeed remained for him to discover that
whenever we love, the truth is added unto us; but possibly it had
remained for him to live the fact, to realize that unselfish labor gives
so much meaning to human life that its significance cannot be lim-
ited to mortality.


## p. 14988 (#572) ##########################################

14988
LYOF TOLSTOY
However this may be, Tolstoy's purpose is mainly to make others
realize that religion, that Christ, is for this actual world here, and
not for some potential world elsewhere. If this is what renders him
so hateful to those who postpone the Divine justice to another state
of being, they may console themselves with the reflection that his
counsel to unselfish labor is almost universally despised. There is so
small danger that the kingdom of heaven will come by virtue of his
example, that none of all who pray for it need be the least afraid of
its coming. In any event his endeavor for a right life cannot be for-
gotten. Even as a pose, if we are to think so meanly of it as that,
it is by far the most impressive spectacle of the century. All that
he has said has been the law of Christianity open to any who would
read, from the beginning; and he has not differed from most other
Christians except in the attempt literally to do the will of Christ.
Yet even in this he is not the first. Others have lived the life
of labor voluntarily, and have abhorred war, and have suffered evil.
But no man so gloriously gifted and so splendidly placed has bowed
his neck and taken the yoke upon it. We must recognize Tolstoy
as one of the greatest men of all time, before we can measure the
extent of his renunciation. He was gifted, noble, rich, famous, honored,
courted; and he has done his utmost to become plebeian, poor, ob-
scure, neglected. He has truly endeavored to cast his lot with the
lowliest, and he has counted it all joy so far as he has succeeded.
His scruple against constraining the will of others suffers their will
to make his self-sacrifice finally histrionic; but this seems to me not
the least part of his self-sacrifice, which it gives a supreme touch of
pathos. It is something that in fiction he alone could have imagined,
and is akin to the experience of his own Karénin, who in a crucial
moment forgives when he perceives that he cannot forgive without
being ridiculous. Tolstoy, in allowing his family to keep his wealth,
for fear of compelling them to the righteousness which they do not
choose, becomes absurd in his inalienable safety and superiority; but
we cannot say that he ought not to suffer this indignity. There is
perhaps a lesson in his fate which we ought not to refuse, if we can
learn from it that in our time men are bound together so indissolu-
bly that every advance must include the whole of society, and that
even self-renunciation must not accomplish itself at the cost of others'
free choice.
It is usual to speak of the ethical and the æsthetical principles as
if they were something separable; but they are hardly even diver-
gent in any artist, and in Tolstoy they have converged from the first.
He began to write at a time when realistic fiction was so thoroughly
established in Russia that there was no question there of any other.
Gogol had found the way out of the mists of romanticism into the


## p. 14989 (#573) ##########################################

LYOF TOLSTOY
14989
open day, and Turguénief had so perfected the realistic methods that
the subtlest analysis of character had become the essence of drama.
Then Tolstoy arrived, and it was no longer a question of methods.
In Turguénief, when the effect sought and produced is most eth-
ical, the process is so splendidly æsthetical that the sense of its per-
fection is uppermost. In Tolstoy the meaning of the thing is so
supreme that the delight imparted by the truth is qualified by no
consciousness of the art. Up to his time fiction had been part of the
pride of life, and had been governed by the criterions of the world
which it amused. But he replaced the artistic conscience by the
human conscience. Great as my wonder was at the truth in Tol-
stoy's work, my wonder at the love in it was greater yet. Here
for the first time, I found the most faithful pictures of life set in the
light of that human conscience which I had falsely taught myself
was to be ignored in questions of art, as something inadequate and
inappropriate. In the august presence of the masterpieces, I had
been afraid and ashamed of the highest instincts of my nature as
something philistine and provincial. But here I stood in the presence
of a master, who told me not to be afraid or ashamed of them, but
to judge his work by them, since he had himself wrought in honor
of them. I found the tests of conduct which I had used in secret
with myself, applied as the rules of universal justice, condemning
and acquitting in motive and action, and admitting none of those
lawyers' pleas which baffle our own consciousness of right and
wrong. Often in Tolstoy's ethics I feel a hardness, almost an arro-
gance (the word says too much); but in his æsthetics I have never
felt this. He has transmuted the atmosphere of a realm hitherto
supposed unmoral into the very air of heaven. I found nowhere in
his work those base and cruel lies which cheat us into the belief
that wrong may sometimes be right through passion, or genius, or
heroism. There was everywhere the grave noble face of the truth
that had looked me in the eyes all my life, and that I knew I must
confront when I came to die. But there was something more than
this,-infinitely more. There was that love which is before even the
truth, without which there is no truth, and which, if there is any last
day, must appear the Divine justice.
It is Tolstoy's humanity which is the grace beyond the reach of
art in his imaginative work. It does not reach merely the poor and
the suffering: it extends to the prosperous and the proud, and does
not deny itself to the guilty. There had been many stories of adul-
tery before 'Anna Karénina,' nearly all the great novels outside
of English are framed upon that argument, but in 'Anna Karén-
ina' for the first time the whole truth was told about it. Tolstoy
has said of the fiction of Maupassant that the truth can never be


## p. 14990 (#574) ##########################################

LYOF TOLSTOY
14990
immoral; and in his own work I have felt that it could never be
anything but moral. In the 'Kreuzer Sonata,' which gave a bad
conscience to Christendom, there was not a moment of indecency or
horror that was not purifying and wholesome. It was not the logic
of that tremendous drama that marriage was wrong,- though Tolstoy
himself pushed on to some such conclusion,- but only that lustful
marriage, provoked through appetite and fostered in idleness and
luxury, was wrong. We may not have had the last word from him
concerning the matter: he may yet see marriage, as he has seen
immortality, to be the inevitable deduction from the human postu-
late. But whatever his mind about it may finally be, his comment on
that novel seems to me his one great mistake, and a discord in the
harmony of his philosophy.
It jars the more because what you feel most in Tolstoy is this
harmony, this sense of unity. He cannot admit in his arraignment
of civilization the plea of a divided responsibility: he will not suffer
the prince, or the judge, or the soldier, personally to shirk the con-
sequences of what he officially does; and he refuses to allow in him-
self the division of the artist from the man. As I have already more
than once said, his ethics and æsthetics are inseparably at one; and
this is what gives a vital warmth to all his art. It is never that
heartless skill which exists for its own sake, and is content to dazzle
with the brilliancy of its triumphs. It seeks always the truth in the
love to which alone the truth unveils itself. If Tolstoy is the great-
est imaginative writer who ever lived, it is because, beyond all others,
he has written in the spirit of kindness, and not denied his own per-
sonal complicity with his art.
As for the scope of his work, it would not be easy to measure
it; for it seems to include all motives and actions, in good and bad,
in high and low, and not to leave life untouched at any point as it
shows itself in his vast Russian world. Its chief themes are the old
themes of art always,-they are love, passion, death; but they are
treated with such a sincerity, such a simplicity, that they seem
almost new to art, and as effectively his as if they had not been
touched before.
Until we read The Cossacks,' and witness the impulses of kind-
ness in Olenin, we do not realize how much love has been despised
by fiction, and neglected for passion. It is with a sort of fear and
trembling that we find ourselves in the presence of this wish to do
good to others, as if it might be some sort of mawkish sentimentality.
But it appears again and again in the cycle of Tolstoy's work: in the
vague aspirations recorded in 'Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth'; in
the abnegation and shame of the husband in 'Anna Karénina,' when
he wishes to forgive his wife's paramour; in the goodness of the


## p. 14991 (#575) ##########################################

LYOF TOLSTOY
14991
muzhik to the loathsome sick man in 'The Death of Ivan Ilyitch'; in
the pitying patience of Prince Andreí Bolkonsky with Anatol Kura-
gin in 'War and Peace,' where amidst his own anguish he realizes
that the man next him under the surgeon's knife is the wretch who
robbed him of the innocent love of his betrothed; in the devotion of
the master, even to the mergence of conscious identity, to the servant
in 'Master and Man';- and at no time does it justify our first skep-
tical shrinking. It is as far as possible from the dramatic tours de
force in Hugoesque fiction; it is not a conclusion that is urged or an
effect that is solicited: it is the motive to which all beauty of action
refers itself; it is human nature,- and it is as frankly treated as if
there could be no question of it.
This love-the wish to do good and to be good, which is at the
bottom of all our hearts, however we try to exclude it or deny it—is
always contrasting itself in Tolstoy's work with passion, and proving
the latter mortal and temporal in itself, and enduring only in its union
with love. In most other novelists, passion is treated as if it were
something important in itself,- as if its intensity were a merit and
its abandon were a virtue,-its fruition Paradise, its defeat perdition.
But in Tolstoy, almost for the first time, we are shown that passion
is merely a condition; and that it has almost nothing to do with
happiness. Other novelists represent lovers as forced by their pas-
sion to an ecstasy of selfish joy, or an ecstasy of selfish misery; but
he shows us that they are only the more bound by it to the rest of
the world. It is in fact, so far as it eventuates in marriage, the
beginning of subjection to humanity, and nothing in it concerns the
lovers alone.
It is not the less but the more mystical for this; and Tolstoy
does full justice to all its mystical beauty, its mystical power. Its
power upon Natacha,- that pure, good, wise girl,-whom it suddenly
blinds and bewilders till she must be saved from ruin in spite of her-
self, and almost by violence; and upon Anna Karénina,—that loving
mother, true friend, and obedient wife, are illustrated with a vivid-
ness which I know not where to match. Dolly's wretchedness with
her faithless husband, Kitty's happiness in the constancy of Levine,
are neither unalloyed; and in all the instances and examples of pas-
sion, we are aware of the author's sense of its merely provisional
character. This appears perhaps most impressively in the scenes of
Prince Andrei Bolkonsky's long dying, where Natacha, when restored
and forgiven for her aberration, becomes as little to him at last
as if she had succeeded in giving herself to Anatol Kuragin. The
theory of such matters is, that the passion which unites them in life
must bring them closer still in death; but we are shown that it is
not so.
—


## p. 14992 (#576) ##########################################

LYOF TOLSTOY
14992
Passion, we have to learn from the great master, who here as
everywhere humbles himself to the truth, has in it life and death;
but of itself it is something only as a condition precedent to these:
without it neither can be; but it is lost in their importance, and is
strictly subordinate to their laws. It has never been more charm-
ingly and reverently studied in its beautiful and noble phases than it
is in Tolstoy's fiction; though he has always dealt with it so sincerely,
so seriously. As to its obscure and ugly and selfish phases, he is so
far above all others who have written of it, that he alone seems
truly to have divined it, or portrayed it as experience knows it. He
never tries to lift it out of nature in either case, but leaves it more
visibly and palpably a part of the lowest as well as the highest
humanity.
He is apt to study both aspects of it in relation to death; so apt
that I had almost said he is fond of doing it. He often does this in
'War and Peace'; and in 'Anna Karénina' the unity of passion and
death might be said to be the principle and argument of the story.
In The Death of Ivan Ilyitch' the unworthy passion of the mar-
riage is a part of the spiritual squalor in which the wretched world-
ling goes down to his grave. In the 'Kreuzer Sonata' it is the
very essence of the murder; and in the Powers of Darkness' it is
the spring of the blackest evil. I suppose that one thing which has
made Tolstoy most distasteful to man-made society is, that in all
sins from passion he holds men chiefly accountable. It is their lux-
ury which is so much to blame for the perversion. I can recall, at
the moment, only one woman- the Princess Helena - in whom he
censures the same evils; and even in her he lets you feel that her
evil is almost passive, and such as man-made society chiefly forced
upon her. Tolstoy has always done justice to women's nature; he
has nowhere mocked or satirized them without some touch of pity
or extenuation: and he brings Anna Karénina through her passion
to her death, with that tender lenity for her sex which recognizes
womanhood as indestructibly pure and good.
He comes nearer unriddling life for us than any other writer. He
persuades us that it cannot possibly give us any personal happiness;
that there is no room for the selfish joy of any one except as it dis-
places the joy of some other, but that for unselfish joy there is infi-
nite place and occasion. With the same key he unlocks the mystery
of death; and he imagines so strenuously that death is neither more
nor less than a transport of self-surrender, that he convinces the
reason where there can be no proof. The reader will not have for-
gotten how in those last moments of earth which he has depicted, it
is this utter giving up which is made to appear the first moment of
heaven. Nothing in his mastery is so wonderful as his power upon


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us in the scenes of the borderland where his vision seems to pierce
the confines of another world. He comes again and again to it, as
if this exercise of his seership had for him the same fascination that
we feel in it: the closing hours of Prince Andreí, the last sorrowful
instants of Anna Karénina, the triumphal abnegation of the philis-
tine Ivan Ilyitch, the illusions and disillusions of the dying soldier
in 'Scenes of the Siege of Sebastopol,' the transport of the sordid
merchant giving his life for his servant's in 'Master and Man,'—all
these, with perhaps others that fail to occur to me, are qualified by
the same conviction, imparting itself so strongly that it is like a
proven fact.
Of a man who can be so great in the treatment of great things,
we can ask ourselves only after a certain reflection whether he is as
great as some lesser men in some lesser things; and I have a certain
diffidence in inquiring whether Tolstoy is a humorist. But I incline
to think that he is, though the humor of his facts seeks him rather
than he it. One who feels life so keenly cannot help feeling its gro-
tesqueness through its perversions, or help smiling at it, with whatever
pang in his heart. I should say that his books rather abounded in
characters helplessly comic. Oblensky in 'Anna Karénina,' the futile
and amiably unworthy husband of Dolly, is delicious; and in 'War
and Peace,' old Count Rostof, perpetually insolvent, is pathetically
ridiculous,- as Levine in the first novel often is, and Pierre Bezukhof
often is in the second. His irony, without harshness or unkindness,
often pursues human nature in its vain twistings and turnings, with
effects equally fresh and true; 'as where Nikolai Rostof, flying before
the French, whom he had just been trying his worst to kill, finds it
incredible that they should be seeking to harm one whom he knew
to be so kind and good as himself. In Polikoushka, where the two
muzhiks watching by the peasant's dead body try to shrink into
themselves when some polite people come in, and to make them-
selves small because they are aware of smelling of the barn-yard,
there is the play of such humor as we find only now and then in
the supreme humorists. As for pathos, the supposed corollary of
humor, I felt that I had scarcely known what it might be till I read
Tolstoy. In literature, so far as I know it, there is nothing to match
with the passage describing Anna Karénina's stolen visit to her little
son after she has deserted her husband.
――――――――――――
I touch this instance and that, in illustration of one thing and
another: but I feel after all as if I had touched almost nothing in
Tolstoy, so much remains untouched; though I am aware that I
should have some such feeling if I multiplied the instances indefi-
nitely. Much is said of the love of nature in writers, who are sup-
posed to love it as they catalogue or celebrate its facts; but in
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Tolstoy's work the nature is there just as the human nature is: sim-
ple, naked, unconscious. There is the sky that is really over our
heads; there is the green earth, the open air; the seasons come and
go: it is all actual, palpable,—and the joy of it as uncontrived appar-
ently as the story which it environs, and which gives no more the
sense of invention than the history of some veritable passage of
human events. In 'War and Peace' the fortunes of the fictitious
personages are treated in precisely the same spirit, and in the same
manner, as the fortunes of the real personages: Bezukhof and Napo-
leon are alike real.
He
out of the ver-
what it
Of methods in Tolstoy, then, there can scarcely be any talk.