Still, when all allowances are made, the greater part of Tolstoy's indictment lies good against the whole of modern society: in all countries there are classes ruined by idleness, leading lives which, as Tolstoy says, are "a mania of selfishness," consuming in senseless luxury the toil of thousands. Everywhere there are other classes, degraded by poverty and misery, who spend their whole lives in labour, and reap for themselves hardly any of the benefits of their toil. Everywhere men permit many thousands of people to become criminals simply because they are helpless and defective, and then, when they have made them criminals, debase and torture them further by imprisonment. Tolstoy is convinced from the bottom of his heart that the whole penal system is cruel, savage, and unjust, and it is almost impossible to read him without feeling the same. He is certain that the majority of men are naturally good, and that the so-called "wicked" are either the victims of our social system, or else of a physical and mental weakness they cannot control. It is easy to object to the "sordid realism" of _Resurrection_, and to declaim against its morbidness and misery, but this morbidness and misery are not Tolstoy's fault; they are inherent in the social system which we, all of us, uphold and, in wishing to escape from them, we are trying to escape from the consequences of our own acts and principles. To use one of Tolstoy's own phrases, he "rubs our noses" into the mess we have made of civilisation; he makes us realise the horrors in which our depths {88} abound--the vice, the dirt, the foul obscenity, the vermin--and people who think that great literature exists merely to amuse and soothe object with furious vehemence. The great heart of the writer is stung with anger and pity and shame that men--our brothers--should be so debased and tortured. He is goaded to madness by this outrage on our common humanity, this insult to God. Tolstoy is a realist because he has the courage to face facts as they are, because he believes that the cause of true morality is never served by evasions and concealment, because this concealment is, in itself, one of the chief allies of vice. Though a realist Tolstoy is not, in essence, a pessimist. There is more real pessimism in one chapter of Thackeray than in the whole of _Resurrection_, for Thackeray thinks men despicable, and despairs of their being otherwise. Tolstoy, like Rousseau before him, is convinced that human beings are naturally good, and that, if human nature becomes base, it is only because it has slipped from the divine ideal, the spark of God, which exists in each one of us. Like his Master, Tolstoy is assured of the redeeming power of penitence and tenderness.