ar? For on this high matter the judgment
of such a man cannot but claim earnest scrutiny. Examining his
writings, even from _The Cossacks_, through such a masterpiece as _War
and Peace_, colossal at once in design and in execution, on to his
latest philosophical pamphlets or paragraphs, one phase at least of his
thought reveals itself--gradually increasing vehemence in the
expression of his abhorrence of all war as the instrument of
oppression, the enemy of man's advance to the ideal state, forbidden by
God, forbidden above all by Christ, and by its continued existence
turning our professed faith in Christ into a derision. This general
impression is deepened by his treatment of individual incidents and
characters. Has Count Tolstoi a campaign to narrate, or a battle, say
the Borodino, to describe? That which rivets his attention, absorbs
his energies, is the fatuity of all the generals indiscriminately, even
of Kutusov; it is the supremacy of Hazard; and in the hour of battle
itself he sees no heroisms, no devotions, or he turns aside from such
spectacles to fasten his gaze upon the shuddering heart, the blanched
countenance, the agonizing effort of the combatants to conquer their
own terror, their own dismay; and to close the scene he throws wide the
hospital, and points to the wounds, the mutilated bodies, the amputated
limbs yet quivering, to the fever, and the revel of death. Has he the
enigma of modern times to solve, Napoleon I? In Napoleon, who in the
sphere of action is to Modern History what Shakespeare is in the sphere
of art, Tolstoi sees no more than the clerical harlequin, Abbe de
Pradt, sees, a stage conqueror, a charlatan devoured by vanity, without
greatness, dignity, without genius for war yet impatient of peace,
shallow of intellect, tricking and tricked by all around him, dooming
myriads to death for the amusement of an hour, yet on the dread morning
of Borodino anxious only about the quality of the eau de Cologne with
which he lavishly sprinkles his handkerchief, vest, and coat. And the
campaigns of Napoleon, republican, consular, imperial? Lodi, Arcola,
Marengo, Austerlitz, Eyiau, Friedland, Wagram, Borodino, Leipzig,
Champaubert, and Montmirail? These all are the deeds of Chance, of
happy Chance, the guide that is no guide, of the eyeless, brutal, dark,
unthinking force resident in masses of men. This is Tolstoi's
conception of the man who is to the Aryan race what Hannibal is to the
Semi