which he retained to his life's end.

"I have my notes of that time, and now reading them over I am not able
to understand how a man could attain to the state of mental exaltation
which I arrived at. It was a torturing but a happy time."

Further on he writes,--"In those two years of intellectual work, I
discovered a truth which is ancient and simple, but which yet I know
better than others do. I found out that immortal life is a reality, that
love is a reality, and that one must live for others if one would be
unceasingly happy."

At this point one realises the gulf which divides the Slavonic from
the English temperament. No average Englishman of seven-and-twenty (as
Tolstoy was then) would pursue reflections of this kind, or if he did,
he would in all probability keep them sedulously to himself.

To Tolstoy and his aunt, on the contrary, it seemed the most natural
thing in the world to indulge in egoistic abstractions and to expatiate
on them; for a Russian feels none of the Anglo-Saxon's mauvaise honte
in describing his spiritual condition, and is no more daunted by
metaphysics than the latter is by arguments on politics and sport.

To attune the Anglo-Saxon reader's mind to sympathy with a mentality
so alien to his own, requires that Tolstoy's environment should be
described more fully than most of his biographers have cared to do. This
prefatory note aims, therefore, at being less strictly biographical
than illustrative of the contributory elements and circumstances which
sub-consciously influenced Tolstoy's spiritual evolution, since it is
apparent that in order to judge a man's actions justly one must be able