gain thereby; art will gain even more. But what is more important still, it will re-establish the union of man with man.
In his subsequent works, Tolstoy was to complete these precepts of moral hygiene. He was anxious to achieve the cure of the soul, to replenish its energy, by proscribing the vicious pleasures which deaden the conscience[1] and the cruel pleasures which kill it.[2] He himself set the example. In 1884, he sacrificed his most deeply rooted passion: his love of the chase.[3] He practised abstinence, which strengthens the will. So an athlete may subject himself to some painful discipline that he may grapple with it and conquer.
What shall we do? marks the first stage of the difficult journey upon which Tolstoy was about to embark, quitting the relative peace of religious meditation for the social maelstrom. It was then that the twenty years’ war commenced which the old prophet of Yasnaya Polyana waged in the name of the Gospel, single-handed, outside the limits of all parties, and condemning all; a war upon the crimes and lies of civilisation.
- ↑ Vicious Pleasures, or in the French translation Alcohol and Tobacco, 1895.
- ↑ Cruel Pleasures (the Meat-eaters; War; Hunting), 1895.
- ↑ The sacrifice was difficult; the passion inherited. He was not sentimental; he never felt much pity for animals. For him all things fell into three planes: “1. Reasoning beings; 2. animals and plants; 3. inanimate matter.” He was not without a trace of native cruelty. He relates the pleasure he felt in watching the struggles of a wolf which he killed. Remorse was of later growth.
