In speaking of God he takes sometimes a pantheistic position, and describes God as Life, or as Love, or else as the Ideal which man is conscious of in himself (_Thoughts about God_, collected by V. and A. Tchertkoff); but in his last work (_Christian Teaching_, ch. VII. and VIII.) he prefers to identify God with “the universal desire for welfare which is the source of all life.” “So that, according to the Christian teaching, God is that Essence of life which man recognises both within himself and in the whole universe as the desire for welfare; it being at the same time the cause by which this Essence is enclosed and conditioned in individual and corporal life” (§36). Every reasoning man--Tolstóy adds--comes to a similar conclusion. A desire for _universal_ welfare appears in every reasoning man, after his rational consciousness has been awakened at a certain age; and in the world around Man the same desire is manifest in all separate beings, each of whom strives for his own welfare (§37). These two desires “converge towards one distinct purpose--definite, attainable, and joyful for man.” Consequently, he concludes, Observation, Tradition (religious), and Reason, all three, show him “that the greatest welfare of man, towards which all men aspire, can only be obtained by perfect union and concord among men.” All three show that the immediate work of the world’s development, in which he is called upon to take part, is “the substitution of union and harmony for division and discord.” “The inner tendency of that spiritual being--love--which is in the process of birth within him, impels him in the same direction.” Union and harmony, and steady, relentless effort to promote them, which means not only _all_ the work required for supporting one’s life, but work also for increasing universal welfare--these are, then, the two final accords in which all the discords, all the storms, which for more than twenty years had raged in the distraught mind of the great artist, all the religious ecstasies and the rationalistic doubts which had agitated his superior intelligence in its insistent search for truth finally found their solution. On the highest metaphysical heights the striving of every living being for its own welfare, which is Egoism and Love at the same time because it is Self-Love, and rational Self-Love must embrace all congeners of the same species--this striving for individual welfare by its very nature tends to comprise all that exists. “It expands its limits naturally by love, first for one’s family--one’s wife and children--then for friends, then for one’s fellow-countrymen; but Love is not satisfied with this, and tends to embrace all” (_ibid._, §46). MAIN POINTS OF THE CHRISTIAN ETHICS