e effort to get
into right relations with the matter, the sufferer is often led to what
becomes for him a satisfying religious solution.

At about the age of fifty, Tolstoy relates that he began to have
moments of perplexity, of what he calls arrest, as if he knew not "how
to live," or what to do. It is obvious that these were moments in
which the excitement and interest which our functions naturally bring
had ceased. Life had been enchanting, it was now flat sober, more than
{150} sober, dead. Things were meaningless whose meaning had always
been self-evident. The questions "Why?" and "What next?" began to
beset him more and more frequently. At first it seemed as if such
questions must be answerable, and as if he could easily find the
answers if he would take the time; but as they ever became more urgent,
he perceived that it was like those first discomforts of a sick man, to
which he pays but little attention till they run into one continuous
suffering, and then he realizes that what he took for a passing
disorder means the most momentous thing in the world for him, means his
death.

These questions "Why?" "Wherefore?" "What for?" found no response.

"I felt," says Tolstoy, "that something had broken within me on which
my life had always rested, that I had nothing left to hold on to, and
that morally my life had stopped. An invincible force impelled me to
get rid of my existence, in one way or another. It cannot be said
exactly that I WISHED to kill myself, for the force which drew me away
from life was fuller, more powerful, more general than any mere desire.
It was a force like my old aspiration to live, only it impelled me in
the opposite direction. It was an aspiration of my whole being to get
out of life.

"Behold me then, a man happy and in good health, hiding the rope in
order not to hang myself to the rafters of the room where every night I
went to sleep alone; behold me no longer going shooting, lest I should
yield to the too easy temptation of putting an end to myself with my
gun.

"I did not know what I wanted. I was afraid of life; I was driven to
leave it; and in spite of that I still hoped something from it.

"All this took place at a time when so far as all my outer
circumstances went, I ought to have been completely happy. I had a
good wife who loved me and whom I loved; good children and a large
property which was increasing with no pains taken on my part. I was
more respected by my k