[372] In another place Tolstoi says: “Playing the fool (like Christ) i.e., the purposeful representing of yourself as worse than you are, is the highest quality of virtue.” (Journal, May 29, 1893.) [373] An omission in the copy in possession of the editors. [374] Tolstoi wrote to V. G. Chertkov as early as December 13, 1898: “I absolutely cannot occupy myself with anything else than with _Resurrection_. Just like a shell, when it gets to the earth, falls more and more quickly, in the same way I now, when I am nearing the end, I cannot think--no, not that I cannot: I can and even do think--but I don’t want to think about anything else but about it.” [375] At this time the emigration of the Dukhobors to Canada had not yet been accomplished. Tolstoi took an active part in the affair: he addressed various people with the request for contributions for this purpose, he carried on a correspondence with friends in England in regard to a place of settlement for the Dukhobors, he sent letters to the authorities to try to remove obstacles which were in their way, he saw agents who suggested places of settlement, he carried on a correspondence with the Dukhobors themselves, etc. [376] February 15, 1899, Tolstoi wrote to V. G. Chertkov: “My back hurts all the time and I am weak and I am disgusted with _Resurrection_, which I can’t touch.” [377] The retired officer addressed himself to Tolstoi with the question whether the Gospels were not against military service. Tolstoi’s answer was printed in the leaflets of _The Free Press_, No. 5, 1899, and in 1906 in Petrograd in the publication, _Obnovlenia_, No. 130 (which was confiscated). [378] A group of representative Swedish intellectuals addressed themselves to Tolstoi with a letter as to the means of attaining universal peace. In this letter on the one hand, they expressed the thought that universal disarmament could be attained by the surest path of each separate individual refusing to take part in military service, and on the other hand, they acknowledged that the Peace Conference fixed for The Hague at the instigation of the Russian Government was useful to the attainment of universal peace.... [379] In the middle of February, 1898, the students of the University of Petrograd, in the form of a protest against the beating of people in the streets, decided on the day of the student holiday, February 8th, as a peaceful-minded group of students, to cease work. They were soon joined by students of other higher schools in Petrograd and later in Moscow, Kiev, Kharkov, Jurev, Odessa, Tomsk, Kazan, Riga and Novaia Alexandria. In this way the studies of several thousand men and women students were suspended. The representatives of the Moscow and Petrograd student bodies came to Tolstoi with the purpose of obtaining his opinion and sympathy for the student movement.