from The Vegetarian, January/February 1987, published by The Vegetarian
Society UK:
The fame and popularity of Leo Tolstoy as a novelist, at any rate as the author
of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, has quite overshadowed his writings on religious
and ethical subjects. Yet it was these latter writings which he himself regarded
as his most important work and for which he hoped to be remembered.
In a time of great economic change in Russia, Tolstoy belonged to the landed
aristocracy whose wealth and power came from the possession of estates worked
by their serfs, not emancipated till 1861, who belonged to the land. His own
estate of Yasnaya Polyana was relatively modest but it was very dear to him
throughout his life and an anchorage of stability amid the turbulence of his
career. The Tolstoys lost their mother when Leo was two, their father when he
was nine. He and his three bothers were educated by tutors under the guardianship
of an aunt, till in 1846 Leo began to study at Kazan University. Here he lived
the life traditional for young men of his class and later he described, perhaps
exaggerated, the gambling, drinking and fornication into which he was willingly
drawn. But he completed neither the course in Oriental Languages with which
he started nor that in Law to which he later transferred. Throughout life, in
spite of the moral struggles which tormented him, he felt an urge towards perfection,
whether physical or moral and continually drew up rules to regulate the way
he spent his time. After his period of unsystematic study, having become restless
and unsettled, he travelled with his bother Nicholas, an army officer, to the
Caucasus, eventually joined the army and when the Crimean War hegan in 1854
proved himself a courageous if wayward officer during the siege of Sevastopol.
After the war there was a spell of foreign travel during which Tolstoy visited
France, Switzerland, England and Germany learning in each country as much as
he could about its educational system and methods of teaching. In 1859 he had
started a school for peasant boys at Yasnaya Polyana where he could try out
the practical and very libertarian teaching that he favoured; on his return
he re-established this and it lasted until his marriage. In Paris he witnessed
with a lasting sense of outrage a public execution by the guillotine, which
confirmed his hatred of State power. 'I shall never enter the service of any
government anywhere.'
In 1862 Leo Tolstoy married Sonya Behrs, a girl of only 18. In the early very
happy years of married life, the literary ability which had shown itself in
his early sketches and stories, such as Childhood, Boyhood, Sevastopol Sketches
and the Cossacks, flowered in the outstanding novels, War and Peace and Anna
Karenina, which established him as one of the greatest European novelists. But
there was in Tolstoy's life a current of religious questioning which flowed
steadily though largely unnoticed amid the worldly success and domestic happiness
of these years. As a boy he had shown a precocious interest in philosophy; in
1855 at Sevastopol he expressed in his diary the singular ambition of establishing
a system of religion founded upon reason. A conversation about divinity and
faith has suggested to me a great. a stupendous idea, to the realization of
which I feel capable of devoting my life. That idea is the founding of a new
religion corresponding to the present state of mankind, the religion of Christ
but purged of dogma and mysticism - a practical religion not promising future
bliss but giving bliss on earth.
Then during the writing of Anna Karenina, the religious quest became more insistent.
Levin became the embodiment of some of his own problems, but the full predicament
that Tolstoy suffered is the theme of A Confession. He relates how he gradually
became aware of a paralysis of life, 'moments of perplexity and arrest of life,
as though I did not know how to live or what to do, and I felt lost and became
dejected.' He could not simply accept that life had no meaning and bear this
fate with stoicism. There was an obstinate prompting that there was an answer
but that he would never find it. Though in an enviable position as a writer
of renown, happily married with a big family, he was tempted to destroy himself
and had to hide the rope and put away the gun which might have been the means
of suicide. Yet he continued to search for an answer that would give a meaning
and purpose to his life. 'Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable
death awaiting me does not destroy?'
He could not kill himself and turned in vain for enlightenment in science and
in the attitudes of people around him. At last in despair he abandoned reason
and sought refuge in faith. Only faith made life possible for man. 'Faith is
the strength of life.' So Tolstoy embarked upon a study of the traditional religions
by which men have lived, Buddhism, Mohammedanism and above all Christianity.
But the lives of Orthodox believers of his own class did not match their faith
so he began 'to draw near to the believers among the poor, simple, unlettered
folk: pilgrims, monks, sectarians and peasants.' The lives of workers in the
past and in the present who understood the meaning of life began to attract
him. He returned to the religion of his childhood. 'I returned to the belief
in that Will which produced me and desires something of me.' But a return to
the Orthodox Church could not satisfy him for long, though he humbled himself
to accept its teaching and seeming absurdities. The Church fostered disunity;
it supported war and violence. There must be a mixture of truth and falsehood
in its teachings and with supreme self-confidence he set himself the immense
task of separating the true teaching of Jesus from the Church's distortions
of it. The results appeared in The Criticism of Dogmatic Theology, A New Translation
and Harmony of the Four Gospels and finally in What I Believe. In the Gospels
it was the Sermon on the Mount that fascinated him and finally he reduced the
essential teaching of Jesus to five commandments which he expounded in the main
chapter in What I Believe. They need to be studied in full but in a letter of
1882 he summarized them as 'Do not be angry. Do not fornicate. Do not swear.
Do not judge Do not make war. This is what the essence of Christ's teaching
is for me.'
The five commandments were entirely concerned with man's relationship with his
fellow men. He tried later to find a link between Christianity and his growing
concern about the treatment of animals. 'Christ never preached mercy to animals.
But Christ preached love and the state of love is general and from his general
teaching of love, we can't help deducing love of animals, whose turn hadn't
come in this time.' Tolstoy's wide reading which included the scriptures of
the Eastern religions and which later led to the compilation of The Circle of
Reading may well have helped to widen his concern. He was later to write: 'The
meaning of our lives consists in fulfulling the will of that infinite principle
of which we feel ourselves to be a part and this will lies in the unity of all
living things, above all of people in their brotherhood, in the service of each
other.'
Tolstoy's change from a full meat diet to vegetarianism seems to have been gradual
but a decisive stage was reached after the visit of F. G. Frey to Yasnaya Polyana
in 1885. Frey was the assumed name of a Russian of great intellectual ability
who had emigrated to the USA in 1868 to join an agricultural community. This
failed and he returned to Russia by way of England. Aylmer Maude relates that
it was from Frey that Tolstoy first heard a comprehensive exposition of the
case for a vegetarian diet and that he greeted it with delight. Frey used arguments
from human anatomy to show that meat was not a suitable diet for humans and
that fruit and nuts provided the ideal diet. Tolstoy decided that from then
on he would give up animal food.
Vegetarianism became an important aspect of Tolstoy's teaching, but his only
writing about it is The First Step (1892), included in Essays and recollections.
This was an introduction to a Russian edition of The Ethics of Diet by Howard
Williams. Tolstoy approaches his condemnation of the slaughter of animals by
a somewhat oblique and ponderous route. He argues that to move towards a virtuous
life man must follow a certain sequence of moral achievements and that this
order is essential. The first of the virtues is self-control and liberation
from desires. To achieve this control we must start by mastering our most basic
lusts, which are gluttony, idleness and sexual lovc. Our efforts must begin
with gluttony and this requires fasting. If then we fast, what foods must we
abstain from first. We must begin, Tolstoy argues, with meat because this food
excites the passions, blunts our human feelings and involves pain and death
for animals. The descriptions of the slaughter house at Tula with which the
essay ends, are to provoke revulsion both from the violent killing of the animals
and from the disgusting work which the men must do. A very meagre diet is enough
to satisfy our needs - bread, porridge, or rice, Tolstoy suggests. When in 1894
a correspondent asked him about his own diet, this seemed to be mainly oatmeal
porridge, bread and vegetable soup and he asserts that his health has improved,
since giving up milk, butter and eggs as well a sugar, tea and coffee.
In a letter of 1893 Tolstoy noted the spread of a feeling that men should not
cause suffering to animals and mentioned England as a country where this humanitarian
attitude was increasingly powerful. He thought about ways of reducing human
dependence on animals and welcomed the use of machinery to take the place of
animals in farming. One can regulate one's desires by moderation, restraint
and hard work and the first step in reducing this dependence is not to eat animals
and not to travel by them but to go on foot. 'And everyone of us ought to start
this now.'
Hunting had been a favourite pastime of Tolstoy since his youth. It combined
his sensitive appreciation of natural beauty, his empathy with the animals hunted
and those trained for the chase, and his outstanding energy and daring. While
serving in the Caucasus he wrote enthusiastically in his letters of hunting
expeditions to kill foxes and grey hares or of pursuing wild boar and deer without
success. Among the changes that he brought into his life in 1885, Tolstoy abruptly
gave up hunting. His young brother-in-law, Stepan Behrs writing in 1887 after
a long absence, says: 'From compassion he has given up hunting and he told me
that he has not only lost all wish to hunt but feels astonished that he could
formerly have liked it.'
In the same period of change Tolstoy gave up alcoholic drinks after learning
about the American Temperance Movement and he tried to have its principles accepted
by the peasants round Yasnaya Polyana. After a long struggle he also conquered
his addiction to tobacco. In his article: Why Do Men Stupify Themselves? Tolstoy
wrote of both alcohol and tobacco as drugs to which men chose to resort to still
an uneasy conscience by keeping themselves in a mild state of intoxication.
'The confusion and above all the imbecility of our lives, arises chiefly from
the constant state of intoxication in which most people live.' He was alive
also to the misuse of productive land for the provision of these luxury products
to satisfy cravings that were quite unnecessary.
In the last twenty years or so of his life, Tolstoy continued to write fine
novels, such as Resurrection, stories and plays. He continued to make the protests
against the cruelty and repression of the Tsarist government which only he could
make, and to denounce war and preach non-violence, as in The Kingdom of God
is Within You one of his most powerful books which greatly influenced Gandhi.
Ever since, in 1881, the family had started the custom of spending some time
each year in Moscow and Tolstoy had seen at close quarters through his work
in the Census of 1882 the degradation of the great city, he had been prone to
periods of great dissatisfaction with the style of life into which he was drawn.
He was conscience stricken at the difference between the opulent yet idle life
style of his own family, with comfort, plentiful food and the attention of servants
and the simplicity and unselfishness of the existence that he wanted for himself
and them all. Sonya, satisfied with traditional religion and understandably
committed to the welfare of their large family and already overburdened with
responsibilities that Tolstoy had allowed her to assume, could not sympathize
with these ideals. In spite. of their deep love for one another they could not
adjust their differences; a tragic tension and disharmony became inevitable.
The division was accentuated by the struggle for the possession of Tolstoy's
later manuscripts, even of his diaries, between Sonya and Chertkov, the implacable
favourite disciple, more rigid in his application of Tolstoy's principles than
the master himself. Tolstoy never achieved a final peace, though he finally
left home to find it. He was deprived of it by this ahsurd confusion and the
legal manoeuvres secretly plotted by Chertkov to ensure that he became Tolstoy's
literary heir.
R. F. Summers