When I was in college, I used to poke around in the library a good deal looking for books which would take me out of the shallow water of college life into the deep channel of experience, into the serious life of the world. And naturally enough the works of Tolstoy came into my hands. Now one knows what a typical Tolstoy novel is. The hero is a young man of rank and wealth and social position. He is at the outset a gay pleasure-loving fellow who enters heartily into the occupations and recreations and dissipations of his class. But somewhere midway in his career, while he is returning from a dance or from a fox-hunt, or perhaps while he is stationed at some lonely army post in the mountains, at midnight under the wintry stars, a great coolness and stillness invade his mind; and in the midst of the stillness he hears a voice which seems to come out of the depths of his own heart, crying: "Young man, what are you about in the universe?"—And then, for the first time in his life, he begins to think. His thinking troubles him. He begins to be worried about the reason and justification for his own existence. He begins to question the use of his wealth and his
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Towards an American Type
