Leo Tolstoy

Leo Tolstoy on his existential crisis and search for meaning, advice for writers, vegetarianism, and the quest for gratification.

A brief overview of Leo Tolstoy before delving into his own words:

Who (Identity)	Leo Tolstoy, a Russian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and philosopher, renowned as one of the greatest authors in world literature. He is celebrated for his epic novels and profound philosophical writings.
What (Contributions)	Tolstoy’s contributions to literature include some of the most influential works in the canon of world literature, such as “War and Peace” and “Anna Karenina.” These novels explore complex themes of love, morality, society, and the human condition. Tolstoy’s philosophical essays, including “What Is Art?” and “The Kingdom of God Is Within You,” also left a significant impact.
When (Period of Influence)	Tolstoy’s literary career spanned from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century, during a time of significant social and political change in Russia. His works continue to be revered and studied worldwide.
Where (Geographic Focus)	Born at Yasnaya Polyana, Russia, Tolstoy’s writing is deeply rooted in Russian culture, society, and history. His novels are set in various parts of Russia, reflecting the diversity of the country.
Why (Artistic Philosophy)	Tolstoy’s artistic philosophy centered on realism, depicting life as it is, and exploring the moral and spiritual dimensions of human existence. He believed in the power of literature to convey universal truths and promote social justice.
How (Technique and Style)	Known for his intricate character development, vivid descriptions, and philosophical depth, Tolstoy’s writing style is characterized by its realism, psychological insight, and the exploration of the inner lives of his characters. He often used a narrative technique that shifts between individual perspectives, offering multiple viewpoints on the same events.

This post is a collection of selected quotes and excerpts from secondary sources used for educational purposes, with citations found at the end of the article.

Love

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Love is real only when a person can sacrifice himself for another person. Only when a person forgets himself for the sake of another, and lives for another creature, only this kind of love can be called true love, and only in this love do we see the blessing and reward of life. This is the foundation of the world. ¹

In every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love. The mere fact that this thought has sprung up among different nations and at different times indicates that it is inherent in human nature and contains the truth. ²

Advice For Writers

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The following are various extracts from Tolstoys letters ³ to beginner writers who wrote to him looking for advice.

The main thing is not to be in a hurry to write, not to grudge correcting and revising the same thing 10 or 20 times, not to write a lot and not, for heaven’s sake, to make of writing a means of livelihood or of winning importance in people’s eyes.

You should only write when you feel within you some completely new and important content, clear to you but unintelligible to others, and when the need to express this content gives you no peace.

Don’t spare your labour. Write as it comes, at length, and then revise it, and above all shorten it. In the business of writing, gold is only obtained, in my experience, by sifting.

Advice to fiction writers:

Live the lives of the people described, describe in images their inner feelings, and the characters themselves will do what they must do according to their natures. A fiction writer needs two things: firstly, to know thoroughly what should be; and secondly, to believe in what should be.

Gratification

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Our life is a quest for gratification. There is physical gratification in health, in satisfying the lusts of the body, in wealth, sexual love, fame, honor, power. All these gratifications 1) are outside our control, 2) may be taken away from us at any moment by death, and 3) are not accessible to everyone.

But there is another kind of gratification, the spiritual, the love for others, which 1) is always in our control, 2) is not taken from us by death, and we can die loving, and 3) not only is accessible to all, but the more people live for it, the more joy there will be. ⁴

Vegetarianism

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Not long ago I had a talk with a retired soldier, a butcher, and he was surprised at my assertion that it was a pity to kill, and said the usual things about its being ordained. But afterwards he agreed with me: “Especially when they are quiet, tame cattle. They come, poor things, trusting you. It is very pitiful.”

This is dreadful! Not the suffering and death of the animals, but that a man suppresses in himself, unnecessarily, the highest spiritual capacity – that of sympathy and pity towards living creatures like himself – and by violating his own feelings becomes cruel. And how deeply seated in the human heart is the injunction not to take life!

Once, when walking from Moscow, I was offered a lift by some carters who were going to Serpukhov to a neighbouring forest to fetch wood. It was Thursday before Easter. I was seated in the first cart with a strong, red, coarse cartman, who evidently drank. On entering a village we saw a well-fed, naked, pink pig being dragged out of the first yard to be slaughtered. It squealed in a dreadful voice, resembling the shriek of a man. Just as we were passing they began to kill it. A man gashed its throat with a knife. The pig squealed still more loudly and piercingly, broke away from the men, and ran off covered with blood.

Being near-sighted I did not see all the details. I saw only the human-looking pink body of the pig and heard its desperate squeal, but the carter saw all the details and watched closely. They caught the pig, knocked it down, and finished cutting its throat. When its squeals ceased the carter sighed heavily. “Do men really not have to answer for such things?” he said.

So strong is humanity’s aversion to all killing. But by example, by encouraging greediness, by the assertion that God has allowed it, and above all by habit, people entirely lose this natural feeling. ⁵

What, then, do I wish to say ? That in order to be moral, people must cease to eat meat? Not at all.

I only wish to say that for a good life a certain order of good actions is indispensable; that if a man’s aspirations toward right living be serious they will inevitably follow one definite sequence; and that in this sequence the first virtue a man will strive after will be self-control, self-restraint. And in seeking for self-control a man will inevitably follow one definite sequence, and in this sequence the first thing will be self-control of food. And if he be really and seriously seeking to live a good life, the first thing from which he will abstain will always be the use of animal food, because, to say nothing of the excitation of the passions caused by such food, its use is simply immoral, as it involves the performance of an act which is contrary to moral feeling – killing; and is called forth only by greediness and the desire for tasty food.

“But why, if the wrongfulness of animal food was known to humanity so long ago, have people not yet come to acknowledge this law?” will be asked by those who are accustomed to be led by public opinion rather by reason. The answer to this question is that the moral progress of humanity – which is the foundation of every other kind of progress – is always slow; but that the sign of true, not casual, progress is its uninterruptedness and its continual acceleration.

And the progress of vegetarianism is of this kind. That progress is expressed in the actual life of mankind, which from many causes is involuntarily passing more and more from carnivorous habits to vegetable food, and is also deliberately following the same path in a movement which shows evident strength, and which is growing larger and larger – viz. vegetarianism.

This movement should cause special joy to those whose life lies in the effort to bring about the kingdom of God on earth, because it is a sign that the aspiration of mankind towards moral perfection is serious and sincere, for it has taken the one unalterable order of succession natural to it, beginning with the first step.

One cannot fail to rejoice at this, as people could not fail to rejoice who, after striving to reach the upper story of a house by trying vainly and at random to climb the walls from different points, should at last assemble at the first step of the staircase and crowd towards it, convinced that there can be no way up except by mounting this first step of stairs. ⁵

Defining Art

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In order correctly to define art, it is necessary, first of all, to cease to consider it as a means to pleasure and to consider it as one of the conditions of human life. Viewing it in this way we cannot fail to observe that art is one of the means of intercourse between man and man.

Every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression.

The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing or sight another man’s expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the man who expressed it. And it is upon this capacity of man to receive another man’s expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based.

To evoke in oneself a feeling one has once experienced, and having evoked it in oneself, then, by means of movements, lines, colors, sounds, or forms expressed in words, so to transmit that feeling that others may experience the same feeling — this is the activity of art.

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.

Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of man’s emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity. ⁶

How To Distinguish True Art

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If a man, without exercising effort and without altering his standpoint on reading, hearing, or seeing another man’s work, experiences a mental condition which unites him with that man and with other people who also partake of that work of art, then the object evoking that condition is a work of art. And however poetical, realistic, effectful, or interesting a work may be, it is not a work of art if it does not evoke that feeling (quite distinct from all other feelings) of joy and of spiritual union with another (the author) and with others (those who are also infected by it).

The chief peculiarity of this feeling is that the receiver of a true artistic impression is so united to the artist that he feels as if the work were his own and not someone else’s — as if what it expresses were just what he had long been wishing to express. A real work of art destroys, in the consciousness of the receiver, the separation between himself and the artist — not that alone, but also between himself and all whose minds receive this work of art. In this freeing of our personality from its separation and isolation, in this uniting of it with others, lies the chief characteristic and the great attractive force of art. ⁶

The 3 Conditions Determining The Infectiousness Of Art

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The stronger the infection, the better is the art as art, speaking now apart from its subject matter, i.e., not considering the quality of the feelings it transmits. And the degree of the infectiousness of art depends on three conditions:

1. On the greater or lesser individuality of the feeling transmitted;

2. On the greater or lesser clearness with which the feeling is transmitted;

3. On the sincerity of the artist, i.e., on the greater or lesser force with which the artist himself feels the emotion he transmits.

The more individual the feeling transmitted the more strongly does it act on the receiver; the more individual the state of soul into which he is transferred, the more pleasure does the receiver obtain, and therefore the more readily and strongly does he join in it.

The clearness of expression assists infection because the receiver, who mingles in consciousness with the author, is the better satisfied the more clearly the feeling is transmitted, which, as it seems to him, he has long known and felt, and for which he has only now found expression.

But most of all is the degree of infectiousness of art increased by the degree of sincerity in the artist. As soon as the spectator, hearer, or reader feels that the artist is infected by his own production, and writes, sings, or plays for himself, and not merely to act on others, this mental condition of the artist infects the receiver; and contrariwise, as soon as the spectator, reader, or hearer feels that the author is not writing, singing, or playing for his own satisfaction — does not himself feel what he wishes to express — but is doing it for him, the receiver, a resistance immediately springs up, and the most individual and the newest feelings and the cleverest technique not only fail to produce any infection but actually repel.

I have mentioned three conditions of contagiousness in art, but they may be all summed up into one, the last, sincerity, i.e., that the artist should be impelled by an inner need to express his feeling. That condition includes the first; for if the artist is sincere he will express the feeling as he experienced it. And as each man is different from everyone else, his feeling will be individual for everyone else; and the more individual it is — the more the artist has drawn it from the depths of his nature — the more sympathetic and sincere will it be. And this same sincerity will impel the artist to find a clear expression of the feeling which he wishes to transmit.

Therefore this third condition — sincerity — is the most important of the three. It is always complied with in peasant art, and this explains why such art always acts so powerfully; but it is a condition almost entirely absent from our upper-class art, which is continually produced by artists actuated by personal aims of covetousness or vanity.

Such are the three conditions which divide art from its counterfeits, and which also decide the quality of every work of art apart from its subject matter.

The presence in various degrees of these three conditions — individuality, clearness, and sincerity — decides the merit of a work of art as art, apart from subject matter. All works of art take rank of merit according to the degree in which they fulfill the first, the second, and the third of these conditions. In one the individuality of the feeling transmitted may predominate; in another, clearness of expression; in a third, sincerity; while a fourth may have sincerity and individuality but be deficient in clearness; a fifth, individuality and clearness but less sincerity; and so forth, in all possible degrees and combinations.

Thus is art divided from that which is not art, and thus is the quality of art as art decided, independently of its subject matter, i.e., apart from whether the feelings it transmits are good or bad. ⁶

Essential Books

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In a letter to a friend dated October 25, 1891, Leo Tolstoy compiled a list of books that left an impact on him, and sorted them into five life stages, as listed below. ³

CHILDHOOD TO AGE 14 OR SO

• Tales from The Thousand and One Nights: The 40 Thieves, Prince Qam-al-Zaman
• Pushkin’s Poems: “Napoleon”
• The Little Black Henby Pogorelsky
• The story of Joseph from The Bible
• The Byliny folk tales: Dobrynya Nikitich, Ilya Muromets, Alyosha Popovich

AGE 14 TO 20

• The Conquest of Mexicoby William Prescott
• Tales of Good and Evil by Nikolai Gogol: “Overcoat,” “The Two Ivans,” “Nevsky Prospect”
• A Sentimental Journey by Laurence Sterne
• A Hero for Our Time by Mikhail Lermontov
• The Hapless Anton by Dmitry Grigorovich
• Polinka Saks by Aleksandr Druzhinin
• A Sportsman’s Notebook by Ivan Turgenev
• Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol
• Die Räuber by Friedrich Schiller
• Yevgeny Onegin by Alexander Pushkin
• Julie, or the New Heloise by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• The Gospel of Matthew: “Sermon on the Mount”
• The Confessions by Jean Jacques-Rousseau
• Emile: Or on Education by Jean Jacques-Rousseau
• “Viy” from The Collected Tales of Nikolai Gogol
• David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

AGE 20 TO 35

• Poems by F.T. Tyutchev
• Poems by Koltsov
• The Iliad / The Odyssey by Homer
• Poems by Afanasy Fet
• The Symposium and The Phaedo by Plato
• Hermann and Dorothea by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
• Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

AGE 35 TO 50

• The novels of Mrs. Henry Wood
• The novels of George Eliot
• The novels of Anthony Trollope
• The Iliad / The Odyssey by Homer
• The Byliny
• Xenophon’s Anabasis
• Les Misérables by Victor Hugo

AGE 50 TO 63

• Discourse on Religious Subject by Theodore Parker
• Robertson’s Sermons
• The Book of Genesis
• Progress and Poverty by Henry George
• The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach
• The Complete Gospels
• Pensées by Blaise Pascal
• Epictetus
• Confucius and Mencius
• The Lalita-Vistara: Or Memoirs Of The Early Life Of Sakya Sinha by Rajendralala Mitra
• Lao-Tzu

His Existential Crisis And Search For Meaning

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My question was the simplest of questions, lying in the soul of every man from the foolish child to the wisest elder: it was a question without an answer to which one cannot live, as I had found by experience. It was: “What will come of what I am doing today or shall do tomorrow? What will come of my whole life?” Differently expressed, the question is: “Why should I live, why wish for anything, or do anything?” It can also be expressed thus: “Is there any meaning in my life that the inevitable death awaiting me does not destroy?” I searched through human knowledge for an answer to this question, which is the same whatever way it is expressed.

One branch of knowledge does not even seem to acknowledge the question and yet gives clear and precise answers to its own independently posed question: this is the realm of experimental knowledge, and at its extreme end stands mathematics. The other realm of knowledge recognizes the question but does not answer it. This is the sphere of speculative philosophy, at the extreme end of which stands metaphysics.

It became apparent to me that to say that in the infinity of time and space everything is developing, becoming more perfect, complex and differentiated, is really to say nothing at all. They are all words without a meaning, for in the infinite there is no simple and complex, no before and after, and no better or worse.

If we turn to those branches of knowledge that attempt to provide solutions to the questions of life, to physiology, psychology, biology and sociology, we encounter a startling poverty of thought, extreme lack of clarity and a completely unjustified pretension to resolve questions beyond their scope, together with continual contradiction between one thinker and another (or even with their own selves).

If we turn to the branches of knowledge that are not concerned with resolving life’s questions, but which answer their own specialized, scientific questions, we may be enraptured by the power of the human intellect, but we know in advance that they will provide no answers to the questions of life.

One who sincerely inquires how he is to live cannot be satisfied with the reply — “Study in endless space the mutations, infinite in time and in complexity, of innumerable atoms, and then you will understand your life” — so also a sincere man cannot be satisfied with the reply: “Study the whole life of humanity of which we cannot know either the beginning or the end, of which we do not even know a small part, and then you will understand your own life.”

One kind of knowledge did not reply to life’s question, the other kind replied directly confirming my despair, indicating not that the result at which I had arrived was the fruit of error or of a diseased state of my mind, but on the contrary that I had thought correctly, and that my thoughts coincided with the conclusions of the most powerful of human minds. ⁷

Overcoming His Pride And Ignorance

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Life is a senseless evil, that is certain, I said to myself. Yet I have lived and still live, and so too humanity has lived and still lives. How can this be? Why do men live when it is possible not to live? Can it be that only Schopenhauer and I have been intelligent enough to understand the senselessness and evil of life?

The argument about the vanity of life is not particularly subtle and all simple folk have known it for a long time; yet they have lived and still live. How is it they all live and never think of doubting the logic of life?

My knowledge, confirmed by the wisdom of the sages, had revealed to me that everything in the world, organic and inorganic, is arranged with the most unusual intelligence, and it is only my position that is absurd. But these fools, the vast masses of simple folk, while knowing nothing about the organic and inorganic arrangement of the world, continue to live and feel that life is very sensibly organized!

And it struck me: “But what if there is something I do not yet know? Ignorance behaves just in that way. Ignorance always says just what I am saying. When it does not know something, it says that what it does not know is stupid. Indeed, it appears that there is a whole humanity that lived and lives as if it understood the meaning of its life, for without understanding it could not live; but I say that all this life is senseless and that I cannot live.

As I looked around at the narrow circle of my colleagues I saw nothing but people who had failed to understand the question, or who had understood it but drowned it in the intoxication of life, or who had understood it and had put an end to their lives, or who understood it but through weakness continued living in despair. And I saw no others. I thought that this narrow circle of scholars, and of rich and distinguished people, to which I belonged made up the whole of mankind and that the millions who had lived and still live were THEM, some sort of cattle people.

In the delusion of my pride of intellect it seemed to me so indubitable that I had stated the question so truly and exactly that nothing else was possible — that I sought for the meaning of my life without it once occurring to me to ask: “But what meaning is and has been given to their lives by all the milliards of common folk who live and have lived in the world?”

I then instinctively felt that if I wished to live and understand the meaning of life, I must seek this meaning not among those who have lost it and wish to kill themselves, but among those milliards of the past and the present who make life and who support the burden of their own lives and of ours also.

And I considered the enormous masses of those simple, unlearned, and poor people who have lived and are living and I saw something quite different. I saw that, with rare exceptions, all those milliards who have lived and are living do not fit into my divisions, and that I could not class them as not understanding the question, for they themselves state it and reply to it with extraordinary clearness.

Nor could I consider them epicureans, for their life consists more of privations and sufferings than of enjoyments. Still less could I consider them as irrationally dragging on a meaningless existence, for every act of their life, as well as death itself, is explained by them. To kill themselves they consider the greatest evil.

It appeared that all mankind had a knowledge, unacknowledged and despised by me, of the meaning of life. It appeared that reasonable knowledge does not give the meaning of life, but excludes life: while the meaning attributed to life by milliards of people, by all humanity, rests on some despised pseudo-knowledge. ⁷

Faith Is The Force Of Life

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Rational knowledge presented by the learned and wise, denies the meaning of life, but the enormous masses of men, the whole of mankind receive that meaning in irrational knowledge. And that irrational knowledge is faith, that very thing which I could not but reject. It is God, One in Three; the creation in six days; the devils and angels, and all the rest that I cannot accept as long as I retain my reason.

My position was terrible. I knew that I could find nothing along the path of rational knowledge, other than negation of life. While in faith I found nothing other than a negation of reason, which was even more impossible than denial of life.

From rational knowledge it appeared that life is an evil, people know this and it is in their power to end life; yet they lived and still live, and I myself live, though I have long known that life is senseless and an evil. By faith it appears that in order to understand the meaning of life I must renounce my reason, the very thing for which alone a meaning is required.

A contradiction arose from which there were two exits. Either that which I called reason was not so rational as I supposed, or that which seemed to me irrational was not so irrational as I supposed.

Verifying the line of argument of rational knowledge I found it quite correct. The conclusion that life is nothing was inevitable; but I noticed a mistake. The mistake lay in this, that my reasoning was not in accord with the question I had put. The question was: “Why should I live, that is to say, what real, permanent result will come out of my illusory transitory life — what meaning has my finite existence in this infinite world?” And to reply to that question I had studied life.

The solution of all the possible questions of life could evidently not satisfy me, for my question, simple as it at first appeared, included a demand for an explanation of the finite in terms of the infinite, and vice versa.

I asked: “What is the meaning of my life, beyond time, cause, and space?” And I replied to quite another question: “What is the meaning of my life within time, cause, and space?” With the result that, after long efforts of thought, the answer I reached was: “None.”

In my reasonings I constantly compared (nor could I do otherwise) the finite with the finite, and the infinite with the infinite; but for that reason I reached the inevitable result: force is force, matter is matter, will is will, the infinite is the infinite, nothing is nothing — and that was all that could result.

I understood that it was not possible to seek in rational knowledge for a reply to my question, and that the reply given by rational knowledge is a mere indication that a reply can only be obtained by a different statement of the question and only when the relation of the finite to the infinite is included in the question. And I understood that, however irrational and distorted might be the replies given by faith, they have this advantage, that they introduce into every answer a relation between the finite and the infinite, without which there can be no solution.

So that besides rational knowledge, which had seemed to me the only knowledge, I was inevitably brought to acknowledge that all live humanity has another irrational knowledge — faith which makes it possible to live. Faith still remained to me as irrational as it was before, but I could not but admit that it alone gives mankind a reply to the questions of life, and that consequently it makes life possible.

Having looked around further at people in other countries and at my contemporaries and predecessors, I saw the same thing. Where there is life there is faith. Since the day of creation faith has made it possible for mankind to live, and the essential aspects of that faith are always and everywhere the same.

Whatever answers faith gives, regardless of which faith, or to whom the answers are given, such answers always give an infinite meaning to the finite existence of man; a meaning that is not destroyed by suffering, deprivation or death. This means that only in faith can we find the meaning and possibility of life.

Faith is a knowledge of the meaning of human life, the consequence of which is that man does not kill himself but lives. Faith is the force of life. If a man lives, then he must believe in something. If he did not believe that there was something he must live for he would not live. If he does not see and comprehend the illusion of the finite he will believe in the finite. If he does understand the illusion of the finite, he is bound to believe in the infinite. Without faith it is impossible to live.

It was now clear to me that in order for man to live he must either be unaware of the infinite, or he must have some explanation of the meaning of life by which the finite can be equated with the infinite.

I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man is preserved in the answers given by faith, and that I did not have the right to negate them on grounds of reason and, above all, that it is these answers alone that can reply to the question of life. ⁷

Life Is A Blessing

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There is no evil. Life is a blessing. If it is not, then know that you are at fault. And you have been given time to correct your error, to have the joy (the highest blessing) of correcting your fault. That is the only reason for time. If you do not correct your fault, it will be corrected against your will — by death. Yes, life is a blessing. There is no evil. There are only our faults, faults in general and our personal ones, and we have been given the joy through time of correcting them. And there is the greatest joy in correcting them. ⁴

Next up: Ray Bradbury on Doing What You Love.

1. A Calendar of Wisdom: Daily Thoughts to Nourish the Soul, Written and Selected from the World’s Sacred Texts, Leo Tolstoy
2. A Letter To A Hindu, Leo Tolstoy to Tarak Nath Das, 1908
3. Tolstoy’s Letters, Leo Tolstoy, 1991
4. Leo Tolstoy – Last Diaries, Leon Stilman, 1960
5. The First Step, Leo Tolstoy, 1892
6. What Is Art?, Leo Tolstoy, 1987
7. A Confession, Leo Tolstoy, 1882