That is the simile of Tolstoi and the Holy Synod.


A Circle or a Drama.

Tolstoi perceived life as a circle, with the beginning everywhere and with
the end everywhere. The Holy Synod, representing Slav Orthodoxy, perceived
life as a drama with a beginning and an end in space and time. From his
point of view, Tolstoi thought it possible for mankind to stop a mistaken
course of things and to begin anew, to cast away all the burdens of
culture, of State, Church, militarism, worldly ambitions, the vanities of
towns, to draw the curtain on the past and to come back to the field and
forest, to plough and sow, to listen to the life of Nature and to live with
Nature and God in unison.

The Holy Synod, from their point of view, thought that the past is the very
foundation of the present and future, and that in separating us from the
past we were as an uprooted plant, condemned to inevitable death, while in
continuing the world-drama we are going the only possible way. The
beginning of sin in this drama is in Adam, the beginning of salvation is in
Christ. We cannot live without taking notice even of the life of Adam and
without connecting our life with Christ's. And all the other millions of
human beings between those two milestones, between Adam and Christ, and
Christ and us, are greater or smaller foundations, or conditions, or even
disturbances of our own life.

"My understanding is against your traditions," said Tolstoi.

"Our traditions are against your understandings," replied the Holy Synod.