Tolstoy's Theory of Social Reform. II

Abstract

Tolstoy's teaching of property has many elements of chimerical schemes, sometimes confounded with medieval communism and Christian primitive utopias. The labor question is solved by the destruction of private ownership and by the distribution of land to the people who work manually. This doctrine, however, constitutes no valid ground for criticism of the historic right of private property in land. Most of his great expectations would not be realized. The problems of education, marriage, art, literature, sociology, and science in general are much deeper and more complex than the presumed. He approached them largely from the emotional and humanitarian standpoint. Tolstoy excels in the histrionics of reforms, and he achieves the most useful results when his exertions are fused by high moral purposes. His reformatory writings are in the last analysis vague, passionate, and erratic, yet ever sincere and uplifting. No doubt he failed in certain of his sociological theories, but he was operative inawakening the public conscience to the educational needs of the masses, and in erecting new ethical and moral standards for nineteenth-century society.