TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
The thoughts here offered to the reader, illustrating what Leo Tolstoy understands by the term "God," have been extracted from his diaries, private letters, note-book jottings, draught manuscripts of unfinished papers, and various writings of the same kind. A portion of the matter has already appeared, the remainder has not been published before. If the reader desires to form a complete idea of Tolstoy's views on this subject, he should supplement these thoughts by what the author has written on the same theme in his previously published works and in the other booklets in this series.
The reader is requested to bear in mind that the thoughts here presented, not being originally intended by the author for publication, are not expressed as precisely and carefully as they would have been had he been preparing them for the general public; and also that the translation of writings of this character affords special difficulties, owing to their rough and unfinished form.
In order, therefore, that the reader may both do justice to these expressions of thought and fully profit by them, it is desirable that he should endeavour to understand any verbal imperfections according to the spirit of the whole, and to fill up in the sense most advantageous for the thought expressed, any omission he may remark.
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