Although Count Tolstoi divided his life into four distinct periods, and although critics have often insisted on the great difference between his earlier and his later work, these differences fade away on a close scrutiny of the man's whole production, from "Childhood" to "Resurrection." "Souls alter not, and mine must still advance," said Browning. This is particularly true of Tolstoi. He progressed, but did not change; and he progressed along the path already clearly marked in his first books. The author of "Sevastopol" and "The Cossacks" was the same man mentally and spiritually who wrote "Anna Karenina," "Ivan Ilyich," "The Kreuzer Sonata," and "Resurrection." Indeed, few great authors have steered so straight a course as he. No such change took place in him as occurred with Bjornson. The teaching of the later books is more evident, the didactic purpose is more obvious, but that is something that happens to almost all writers as they descend into the vale of years. The seed planted in the early novels simply came to a perfectly natural and logical fruition. Not only do the early novels indicate the direction that Tolstoi's whole life was bound to assume, but his diary and letters show the same thing. The extracts from these that I have given above are substantial proof of this--he saw the truth just as clearly in 1855 as he saw it in 1885, or in 1905. The difference between the early and later Tolstoi is not, then, a difference in mental viewpoint, it is a difference in conduct and action.* The eternal moral law of self-sacrifice was revealed to him in letters of fire when he wrote "The Cossacks" and "Sevastopol;" everything that he wrote after was a mere amplification and additional emphasis. But he was young then; and although he saw the light, he preferred the darkness. He knew then, just as clearly as he knew later, that the life in accordance with New Testament teaching was a better life than that spent in following his animal instincts; but his knowledge did not save him. *For a very unfavourable view of Tolstoi's later conduct, the "Tolstoi legend," see Merezhkovski, Tolstoi as Man and Artist.