PREFACE Vll
ment in Europe during the last half-century. When he plunges into his own inner world, we see the outer world reflected in it.
There is, nevertheless, in this book an effect such as Goethe aimed at in ' Dichtung und Wahrheit,' the representation of how a remarkable mind has been shaped ; and in analogy with the ' Confessions ' of St. Augustine, we have the story of an inner crisis which corresponds with what in olden times was called ' con- version.' In fact, this inner crisis is the turning point and the core of the book.
There are at this moment only two great Kussians who think for the Russian people, and whose thoughts belong to mankind, Leo Tolstoy and Peter Kropotkin. Tolstoy has often told us, in poetical shape, parts of his life. Kropotkin gives us here, for the first time, with- out any poetical recasting, a rapid survey of his whole career.
However radically different these two men are, there is one parallel which can be drawn between the lives and the views on life of both. Tolstoy is an artist, Kropotkin is a man of science ; but there came a period in the career of each of them, when neither could find peace in continuing the work to which he had brought great inborn capacities. Religious considerations led Tolstoy, social considera- tions led Kropotkin, to abandon the paths they had first taken.
Both are filled with love for mankind ; and they are at one in the severe condemnation of the indif-
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