I was once in a company of Russian people, when a lady suddenly asked to be explained what algebra meant. There were several mathematicians present, but they, perhaps because they were mathematicians, were unable to give a satisfactory explanation. I then said to the lady that algebra is to arithmetic what Andreev’s play _The Life of Man_ is to other plays. She immediately understood the nature of algebra. Andreev’s play, _The Life of Man_, which was produced for the first time last year in St. Petersburg, and which is now being given at the Artistic Theatre of Moscow, is written in the algebra of art. Shakespeare wrote plays in which Fate manifested its inexorable designs through the passions of individual men; for instance, he showed us the fate of a man who was warm-hearted, brave, simple and jealous--Othello; of a man who was dreamy, ambitious, superstitious and hysterical--Macbeth. Molière, on the other hand, synthesised into a series of vital types the various aspects of humanity, and showed us the misanthropy of the whole human race in _Le Misanthrope_, and the hypocrisy of all hypocrites in _Tartuffe_. Andreev in his play represents neither types nor individuals, but simply the algebraic symbol of man. Not man the miser, or man the infinitely complex Hamlet, but man the quantity, man _X_, in face of fate the quantity _Y_. [5] _The Life of Man_, by Andreev. His play is not a play but a morality, such as those which were played in the Middle Ages, without the buffoonery. It is a solemn mystery and it is treated as such. The audience do not applaud and the actors do not come before the curtain. The persons of the plays are puppets, the pictures shown are like a series of rough woodcuts such as those in a child’s newspaper; a penny plain and twopence coloured. I have seen the play mounted and played with all the skill and subtlety which are at the command of M. Stanislavski’s company at the Artistic Theatre of Moscow. The acting was superlative, and the mounting curious and original; nevertheless I will describe the play as I saw it when it was given for the first time at the small theatre of Madame Komisarjevskaia at St. Petersburg; because there (although the acting was less excellent), owing to the simplicity of the staging, the poignancy and the _macabre_ effect of the play were to my mind even more forcibly brought home, and the effect, if not more impressive, was in closer harmony with the author’s written words.