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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James: no life, but a parody on life, which its superfluities simply
keep us from comprehending,"--and Tolstoy thereupon embraced the
life of the peasants, and has felt right and happy, or at least
relatively so, ever since.[96]
[96] I have considerably abridged Tolstoy's words in my
translation.
As I interpret his melancholy, then, it was not merely an
accidental vitiation of his humors, though it was doubtless also
that. It was logically called for by the clash between his inner
character and his outer activities and aims. Although a literary
artist, Tolstoy was one of those primitive oaks of men to whom
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