In this chain of seething, imperious instincts linked with delicate spiritual organization lies the profound tragicness of Tolstoy's personality. Mr. Garnett succeeds in giving the quintessence of Tolstoy's works and teachings in less than a hundred pages. Like most of the Russian's eulogistic biographers, Mr. Garnett has not escaped the fallacy of exaggerating the moral power that Tolstoy exercised over the government. To say that the Czar and his ministers "dared not touch" the outspoken anarchist and heretic "out of dread of Europe--nay, of Russia," is to reveal one's ignorance of the brazen defiance displayed by Muscovite autocrats in regard to public opinion. As the Germans put it: "Herr Kossack, schämen Sie sich!" Tolstoy, as a matter of fact, had helped to check the revolutionary spirit of his compatriots in a greater degree than the tyrannic persecutions of Von-Plehve. Had he not appealed time and again to embrace his doctrine of Non-Resistance? Had he not denounced the revolutionists as violent prototypes of their hangers? Could the government see any danger in a man who wrote in _The Times_ during the revolution of 1905: "To free oneself from the government it is only necessary to abstain from participating in it and supporting it. Our consciousness of the law of God demands from us only one thing: moral self-perfection, i. e., the liberation of oneself from all those weaknesses and vices which make one the slave of governments and the participation in their crimes"? Another tragic contradiction of the restless soul of the anarchist who, despite himself, renders aid to the despots. --Alexander S. Kaun. INTROSPECTION _Chance_, by Joseph Conrad. [Doubleday, Page & Company, New York.] Did you ever take supper in the apartments of a dear bachelor friend, on a night when the wind howled outside the window, and the rain beat against the pane? And after the satisfying meal, whose perfect appointment made you forget all save the luxury of living, did you retire to the spacious living room, and after accepting an aromatic Havana, stretch your feet out to the crackling log fire, and as the smoke from your cigar crawled upward listen to the philosophical analyses of your cultured host on that marvelously simple and profoundly complex servant and master of man, the human mind? Of such an evening is the atmosphere of _Chance_. Not academically deep, but deep from the standpoint of a full life and an active intelligence.