The question is, has a human being the right to do this, especially if, for any reasons whatever, he is not able to make the full and complete renunciation, and to cut himself off from the world altogether? The answer is that if this be the foundation of Tolstoy’s teaching, people have a right to complain of there being something wrong in it. If he had left the world and become a pilgrim, like one of the early Russian saints, not a word could have been said; or if he had remained in the world, preaching the ideals of Christianity and carrying them out as far as he could, not a word could have been said. But, while he has not followed the first course, he has preached that the second course is wrong. He has striven after the ideal of Ivan Durak, but has been unable to find it, simply because he has been unable to humble himself; he has re-written the Gospels to suit his own temperament. The cry of his youth, “I have no modesty,” remains true of him after his conversion. It is rather that he has no humility; and, instead of acknowledging that every man is appointed to a definite task, and that there is no such thing as a superfluous man or a superfluous task, he has preached that all tasks are superfluous except what he himself considers to be necessary; instead of preaching the love of the divine “image of the King,” with which man is stamped like a coin, he has told us to love the maker of the coin by hatred of His handiwork, quite regardless of the image with which it is stamped. This all arises from the dual personality in the man, the conflict between the titanic “Lucifer” and the other element in him, for ever searching for the ideal of Ivan Durak. The Titan is consumed with desire to become Ivan Durak; he preaches to the whole world that they should do so, but he cannot do it himself. Other proud and titanic natures have done it; but Tolstoy cannot do what Dante did. Dante was proud and a Titan, but Dante divested himself of his pride, and seeing the truth, said: “In la sua volontade è nostra pace.” Nor can Tolstoy attain to Goethe’s great cry of recognition of the “himmlische Mächte,” “Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass.” He remains isolated in his high and terrible solitude: “In the cold starlight where thou canst not climb.” Tourgeniev said of Tolstoy, “He never loved any one but himself.” Merejkowski, in his _Tolstoy as Man and Artist_, a creative work of criticism, is nearer the truth when he says, He has never loved any man, “_not even himself_!” But Merejkowski considers that the full circle of Tolstoy’s spiritual life is not closed. He does not believe he has found the truth which he has sought for all his life, nor that he is, as yet, at rest.