glorification of democracy. Or again, tracing the action between cause and effect, Tolstoi has observed how at every stage the individual will is overruled by a Higher Will; how in the battlefield the leader does not lead, but follows; how victory and defeat are equally at the mercy of forces beyond human control. And thus we see the gambler and Bohemian of earlier years transformed into a Russian Puritan and a Christian Nihilist.
But although the burning problems of modern life are presented to us in all their aspects, Tolstoy is too much of an artist to obtrude his own theories upon his audience. He lets life teach its own lessons, and he lets the reader draw his own moral. From the first page to the last he remains the objective creator; standing, as it were, outside and above his own creation, he retains his impartiality and his serenity. No doubt he writes with a purpose, but the purpose is hidden from us. The time will soon come in the life of Tolstoy when the story will be overweighted with the message, and when the story-teller will recede in the background and surrender to the leader and preacher. But until the "final conversion" he maintains that perfect equilibrium which is so rarely met with
