It is not to our purpose to point out Tolstoï's theological errors, but his artistic and social errors fall within the scope of our investigations. We know that, applying the principle of non-resistance in the most rigorous acceptation, he proscribes war, and, as a logical consequence, he disapproves the sacred love of country, which he qualifies as an absurd prejudice, and reproaches himself whenever his own instincts lead him to wish for the triumph of Russia over other nations. In the light of his theory of non-resistance he condemns the revolution, and yet he is forwarding it all the while by his own radical socialism. Tolstoï's social ideal is, not to lift up and instruct the ignorant, nor even to suppress pauperism, but to create a state entirely composed of the poor, to annihilate wealth, luxury, the arts, all delicacy and refinement of custom, and lastly--the lips almost refuse to utter it--even cleanliness and care of the body. Yes, cleanliness and instruction, to wash and to learn, are, in Tolstoï's eyes, great sins, the cause of separation and estrangement among mankind. Besides this book in which he has set forth his religious ideas, he has written another called "My Confession" and "A Commentary on the Gospels." In "My Confession" he says that having lost faith when very young and given himself up for a time to the vanities of life, and to making literature in which he taught others what he himself knew nothing about, and then turning to science for light upon the enigma of life, he became at last inclined to suicide, when it suddenly occurred to him to look and see how the humbler classes lived, who suffer and toil and know the object of life; and it was borne in upon him that he must follow their example and embrace their simple faith. Thus Tolstoï formulated the principle enunciated by Gogol, and which is dominant in Russian literature,--the principle of a return to Nature, for which the way was prepared by Schopenhauer, and the sort of modern Buddhism which leads to a subjection of the reason to the animal and the idiot, and a feeling of unbounded tenderness and reverence for inferior creatures.