your letter I was particularly pleased by your saying: 'If we observed all that has already been given us from above, we should be quite happy. What is necessary and right, must certainly exist in everyone, and comes directly from above, or is found in one's self.' That is quite true, and is just how I understand man's nature. Every man can undoubtedly know the truth of God—all he need know to fulfil what God demands of him in this life—if only this truth revealed to man be not darkened by false human interpretations. Therefore to know God's truth, man should first of all discard all false interpretations, and all the snares of the world tempting him to accept those interpretations, and then truth alone will remain, and will be accessible to little children, for it is native to the soul of man. The chief difficulty is, when discarding falsehood, not to throw away with it some part of the truth, and when explaining truth not to introduce new errors. me.
Thank you, dear brother, for the greetings you sent Write to me in Moscow, if there is no obstacle to your doing so. Cannot I be of any service to you? You would please me very much if you would give me some commission to execute.
I embrace you as a brother.
Leo Tolstoy.
[November 21, o.s., 1895.]
This letter and the one that follows were written to Peter Verigin while he was at Obdórsk, a small settlement near the mouth of the river Obi in Northern Siberia, undergoing his fifteen years' exile. He was released in 1902, and rejoined his sect in Canada.
