growth of evil, and demonstrates with dramatic force the cumulative
misery resulting from one apparently trivial act of wrongdoing.

Of the three plays included in these volumes, "The Light that shines
in Darkness" has a special claim to our attention as an example of
autobiography in the guise of drama. It is a specimen of Tolstoy's gift
of seeing himself as others saw him, and viewing a question in all
its bearings. It presents not actions but ideas, giving with entire
impartiality the opinions of his home circle, of his friends, of the
Church and of the State, in regard to his altruistic propaganda and
to the anarchism of which he has been accused. The scene of the
renunciation of the estates of the hero may be taken as a literal
version of what actually took place in regard to Tolstoy himself,
while the dialogues by which the piece is carried forward are more like
verbatim records than imaginary conversations.

This play was, in addition, a medium by which Tolstoy emphasised
his abhorrence of military service, and probably for this reason its
production is absolutely forbidden in Russia. A word may be said here on
Tolstoy's so-called Anarchy, a term admitting of grave misconstruction.
In that he denied the benefit of existing governments to the people
over whom they ruled, and in that he stigmatised standing armies as
"collections of disciplined murderers," Tolstoy was an Anarchist; but in
that he reprobated the methods of violence, no matter how righteous
the cause at stake, and upheld by word and deed the gospel of Love
and submission, he cannot be judged guilty of Anarchism in its full
significance. He could not, however, suppress the sympathy which he
felt with those whose resistance to oppression brought them into deadly
conflict with autocracy. He found in the Caucasian chieftain, Hadji
Murat, a subject full of human interest and dramatic possibilities; and