[12] We find that M. de Vogüé, in the reproach which he addressed to Tolstoy, unconsciously used the phrases of Tolstoy himself. "Rightly or wrongly," he said, "for our chastisement perhaps, we have received from heaven that splendid and essential evil: thought.... To throw down this cross is an impious revolt." (_Le Roman russe,_ 1886.) Now Tolstoy wrote to his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy, in 1883: "Each of us must bear his cross.... Mine is the travail of the idea; evil, full of pride and seductiveness." (_Letters._) CHAPTER XIII SCIENCE AND ART It is a singular fact that in speaking of Tolstoy's ideas concerning science and art, the most important of the books in which these ideas are expressed--namely, _What shall we do?_ (1884-86)--is commonly ignored. There, for the first time, Tolstoy fights the battle between art and science; and none of the following conflicts was to surpass the violence of their first encounter. It is a matter for surprise that no one, during the assaults which have been recently delivered in France upon the vanity of science and the intellectuals, has thought of referring to these pages. They constitute the most terrible attack ever penned against the eunuchs of science" and "the corsairs of art"; against those intellectual castes which, having destroyed the old ruling castes of the Church, the State, and the Army, have installed themselves in their place, and, without being able or willing to perform any service of use to humanity, lay claim to a blind admiration and service, proclaiming as dogmas an impudent faith in science for the sake of science and in art for the sake of art--the lying mask which they seek to make their justification and the apology for their monstrous egoism and their emptiness. "Never make me say," continues Tolstoy, "that I deny art or science. Not only do I not deny them; it is in their name that I seek to drive the thieves from the temple." "Science and art are as necessary as bread and water; even more necessary.... The true science is that of the true welfare of all human beings. The true art is the expression of the knowledge of the true welfare of all men." And he praises those who, "since men have existed, have with the harp or the cymbal, by images or by words, expressed their struggle against duplicity, their sufferings in that struggle, their hope in the triumph of good, their despair at the triumph of evil, and the enthusiasm of their prophetic vision of the future." He then draws the character of the perfect artist, in a page burning with mystical and melancholy earnestness: