driven to crime by their miserable conditions, while others have riches and luxury, even throwing their superfluous food to the dogs and enjoying the fruit of other people's labor.
It was impossible for Tolstoy to have any respect for civilization as such, unless it really helped men. He judged it fairly by what it did and found it wanting. He longed to see real progress, not merely mechanical progress. He did not call progress making battleships, inventing flying machines, or electricity, or explosives if people's hearts remained hard. He wanted to see a spiritual progress, people being kind and helpful to one another.
The root of all the evil lay in man's selfishness, he thought, and the corruption of Governments: these he considered existed only for the benefit of the rich. We must remember that the Russian Government at that time was one of the most backward of so-called civilized Powers, and what we call representative government did not exist at all, but a government by a few for the few.
Tolstoy also set himself to the great work he had dreamt of doing as a young man, that of separating the true from the false in the teachings of the Church. The Greek or the Russian Church does not differ fundamentally in its doctrines from the Roman Catholic or Protestant churches.
Tolstoy saw that man needed some religion or chart to guide him through life, and being himself pro-
