ldquo;BETHINK YOURSELVES!” “This is your hour, and the power of darkness.”—Luke xxii. 53. I Again war. Again sufferings, necessary to nobody, utterly uncalled for; again fraud; again the universal stupefaction and brutalization of men. Men who are separated from each other by thousands of miles, hundreds of thousands of such men (on the one hand—Buddhists, whose law forbids the killing, not only of men, but of animals; on the other hand—Christians, professing the law of brotherhood and love) like wild beasts on land and on sea are seeking out each other, in order to kill, torture, and mutilate each other in the most cruel way. What can this be? Is it a dream or a reality? Something is taking place which s... (From : Gutenberg.org.)
1897 Jan. 5, Moscow. There is still nothing good to write about myself. I feel no need of working and the devil does not leave me. Have been ill for about 6 days. Began to reread Resurrection and reached up to his decision to marry and threw it away with disgust. It is all untrue, invented, weak. It is hard to repair a spoiled thing. In order to repair it, there is necessary: 1) alternately to describe his feeling and life, and hers, and 2) sympathetically and seriously hers, and critically and with a smile, his. I shall hardly finish it. It is all very spoiled. Yesterday I read Arkhangelsky’s article “Whom to Serve” and was very delighted. Have finished the notebook. And here I am writing from it: 1) My article on ... must be written for the people ... 2)...
In the year 1884 I wrote a book under the title "What I Believe," in which I did in fact make a sincere statement of my beliefs. In affirming my belief in Christ's teaching, I could not help explaining why I do not believe, and consider as mistaken, the Church's doctrine, which is usually called Christianity. Among the many points in which this doctrine falls short of the doctrine of Christ I pointed out as the principal one the absence of any commandment of nonresistance to evil by force. The perversion of Christ's teaching by the teaching of the Church is more clearly apparent in this than in any other point of difference. I know—as we all do—very little of the practice and the spoken and written doctrine of former times on the subject of nonresistance to evil. I knew what had been said on the subject by the fathers of the Church—Origen, Tertullian, and others—I knew too of the existence of some so-called sects of Menno...
To one not familiar with the Russian language the accessible data relative to the external life of Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy, the author of this book, are, to say the least, not voluminous. His name does not appear in that heterogeneous record of celebrities known as The Men of the Time, nor is it to be found in M. Vapereau's comprehensive Dictionnaire des Contemporains. And yet Count Leo Tolstoy is acknowledged by competent critics to be a man of extraordinary genius, who, certainly in one instance, has produced a masterpiece of literature which will continue to rank with the great artistic productions of this age. Perhaps it is enough for us to know that he was born on his father's estate in the Russian province of Tula, in the year 1828; that he received a good home education and studied the oriental languages at the University of Kasan; that he was for a time in the army, which he entered at the age of twenty-three as an officer of artillery, serving later...
The Free Age Press is an earnest effort to spread those deep convictions in which the noblest spirits of every age and race have believed—that man's true aim and happiness is “unity in reason and love”; the realization of the brotherhood of all men: that we must all strive to eradicate, each from himself, those false ideas, false feelings, and false desires—personal, social, religious, economic—which alienate us one from another and produce nine-tenths of all human suffering. Of these truly Christian and universally religious aspirations the writings of Leo Tolstoy are to-day perhaps the most definite expression, and it is to the production of very cheap editions of his extant religious, social and ethical works, together with much unpublished matter and his new writings, to which we have special access (being in close touch with Tolstoy), that we are at present confining ourselves. We earnestly trust that all who symp...