Tolstoy, Leo - Aylmer Maude (essay date 1902)

Aylmer Maude (essay date 1902)

SOURCE: "Tolstoy's Teaching," in Tolstoy and His Problems, Grant Richards, 1902, pp. 25-36.

[In the following essay, Maude provides an overview of Tolstoy's religious and philosophical works.]

From his boyhood upwards, both when he listened to the still, small voice within, and when he observed things outside himself, Tolstoy felt, though not always with equal clearness, that life has a meaning and that man has power to progress towards what is good. The intervals of doubt and hesitation through which he passed, served to clarify and shape his certainty that morality is in the nature of things. Beginning with his earliest stories, and through all his writings, the reader may notice how Tolstoy's strenuous observation of things around him, and especially of what went on in his own consciousness, led him towards an understanding of life different from that of people whose creed is a matter of geography, and...

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