rt of foliage.

Without the divine optimism that comes from soul-consciousness, such a one
could not endure the life of the body: without the absolute assurance that
comes with cosmic consciousness, men like the late Count Tolstoi must needs
die of soul-loneliness.

From early childhood up to the time of his Illumination Tolstoi indulged in
seriousness of thought. Like Mohammed, great and overpowering desire to
fathom the mystery of death took possession of him. He was ever haunted by
an excessive dread of the "darkness of the grave," and in his essay,
"Childhood," he describes with that wonderful realism, which characterizes
all his works, the effect on a child's mind of seeing the face of his dead
mother. This may be taken in a sense as biographical, although it is not
probable that Tolstoi here alludes to the death of his own mother as she
died when he was too young to have remembered. He describes the scene in
the words of Irteniev:

"I could not believe that this was her face. I began to look at it more
closely, and gradually discovered in it the familiar and beloved features.
I shuddered with fear when I became sure that it was indeed she, but why
were the closed eyes so fallen in? Why was she so terribly pale, and why
was there a blackish mark under the clear skin on one cheek?"

A terror of death, and yet a haunting urge that compelled him to be forever
thinking upon the mystery of it, is the dominant note in every line of
Tolstoi's writings up to the time which he describes as "a change" that
came over him.

For example, when Count Leo was in his 33d year, his brother Nicolai died.
Leo was present at the bedside and described the scene with the utmost
frankness regarding its effect upon his mind; and again we note that awful
fear and hopeless questioning which characterizes the sense-conscious man
whose intellect has been cultivated to the very edge of the line which
separates the self-conscious life from the cosmic conscious.

This questioning, with the fear and dread and terror of death and of the
"ceaseless round of births" and the cares and sorrows of existence was
what drove Prince Siddhartha from his father's court and Mohammed into the
mountains to meditate and pray until the answer came in the light of
illumination.

It came to Tolstoi through the very intensity of his powers of reason and
analysis; through the sword-like quality of mental urge--a much more
sorrowful path than the one through the