THE JOURNAL OF LEO TOLSTOY (First Volume—1895–1899) TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN By ROSE STRUNSKY ALFRED A. KNOPF NEW YORK · MCMXVII COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA INTRODUCTION The ultimate meaning of the Russian Revolution which took place in March, 1917, can be best understood through the pages of the Journal of Leo Tolstoy which is here printed. The spiritual qualities which make up the mind and personality of Tolstoy are the spiritual qualities which make up the new era among men which is being waged so painfully and so uncompromisingly at the present moment on the soil of Russia. One holds the key to the other, for no land but Russia could have produced a Tolstoy, and in no land but Russia could Tolstoy have been so embraced and so absorbed. They are both flesh of each other&rs...
CHAPTER III THE NATURE OF MATTER IN the preceding chapter we agreed, though without being able to find demonstrative reasons, that it is rational to believe that our sense-data -- for example, those which we regard as associated with my table -- are really signs of the existence of something independent of us and our perceptions. That is to say, over and above the sensations of color, hardness, noise, and so on, which make up the appearance of the table to me, I assume that there is something else, of which these things are appearances. The color ceases to exist if I shut my eyes, the sensation of hardness ceases to exist if I remove my arm from contact with the table, the sound ceases to exist if I cease to rap the table with my knuckles. But I do not believe that when all these things cease the table ceases. On the contrary, I believe that it is because the table exists continuously that all these sense-data will reappear when I open...