The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1906-07-23
TOLSTO| MAN OF
TWO NATURES
Great Russian Writer Subject
of Sermon by DR.. Paden
Last Evening.
BETTER SIDE PREVAILS
HE PRESENTS A CHARACTER
FULL OF NTRADiCTIONS.
BETTER SIDE PREVAILS

1.-The Two ToIstois," was the subject of
a sermon delivered by Rev. w. Nj. Pa
den, d. D., of the First Presbyterian
church, last evening. He emphasized the
two sides of the man Tolstoi. his strug-
gle between them ap his life. and the
final victory of his better nature. The
sermon follows:
. The good that / would / do not; but
the evil which l would not. that l DO;
o wretched man that 1 am; who shall
deliver me? L thank God through Jesus
Christ our rd.'-Romans 7:19-25.
I'VE have been studying certain char
acters created by literary artists. Inc
most daring of them all is real NE Inc
nOveliSts cannot compete with this artist
in the creation of character. Even Toll
stoi, who delights in uniting contrarles,
has depicted no character IN all ms
stories, which are as full of contradictions
as his own. There are three or four OF
him. each very intense and very positive.
At least two of this company have been
very much at odds with each other-Iol.
Stoi the selfish animal-man ana IoIStol
the unselfish man of the spirit. AS one
saws in speaking of this type OF char
= acter:
. The mans interior is battle ground
for what he feels TO be two deadly nos
tile selves, one actual, the other ideal
st Paul, ST Augustine and John Bun
van are classic examples of this type
of man.
Picture of Two Characters.
"a Russian essayist gives us an inter-
esting picture of the homo duplex, Leo
Tolstoi. o.
The impression conveyed says he, is
a strange one as if there were In MN
two hearts two beings-the one ABSORBED
in Christian thoughts of death, even In
childhood, and who went into the pantry
and with rope dashed his bare back so
hard that tears Streamed lnVoluntarlly
down his face. The other, selIzlmpeiIed
by the same thoughts, could suddenly re-
member that death was awaiting MN
every hour every minute, and determined
TO give up all study and Tor three DAYS
do nothing but lie abed ard revel IN read
ing novels and eating gingerbread and
krOnov honey, which he had bought with
his last few pence Thus early the
ascetic and the epicurean did battle IN
him for mastery.
In his early childhood the good Toll
stoi seem to have been uppermost; at
Least this is mis- own account OF his child
hood. Perhaps his good aunt and his
rurse could have told us more about the
other little Tolstoi. His own picture, as
given in Childhood and Youth is one
of the most attractive l know of in all
literature.
His youth was neither so loving nor
so lovable and his years between 10 and
y seem to have been well sown with
wild oats. He broke away from the Uni
NerSity of KaZan, and attempted farming
and cultivating the peasantry. His at
1empts were a flat failure. He then be-
took himself to st. Petersburg, where
he led loose, prodigal life. To his honor
be il said this satisfied him less than
his half-earnest efforts as a farmer and
Teformer.
Enlists in the Army.
In. 1851 he enlisted in the army
and went to the Caucasus. There he
tried to live the life of a COssack. His
call to the army was his Call of the
Wild He had been reading Rousseau and
dreamed of getting back TO nature. de
donned the wild tOggery of COSsack
chieftain and flattered himself into love
with a Cossack girl. All the while he was
sleeping himself in the sentimentallsm OF
Rousseau and Laurence Sterne.
He found great delight in the wild life
and wild scenery OF the mountains
sentence from The Cossack describes one
of his moods:
'Banditti, says he. race through the
steppes. and / am travelling and feal
them not. 1 have gun, and strength
and yOuth-and the mountains. lie car
ries the gospel Of naturalism ad alb
Surdum.
"AiI the while he had the other Toll.
stoi with him, though he did his best
TO suppress him.
How often while writing says he
have / cudgeled my brains to conceal
Under a mask of indifference and pleas
antry those warnings for something bet
ter which formed the real problem of my
life
''At the close of the Crimean war he
came back to ST. Petersburg and con-
tinued his course OF gambling, animalisn
and vainglorous opinionism. The besl
that can be said of his latter teens and
early twenties is that his better self never
ceased To reproach him.
Request for autobiography.
IN his various confessions and novels
he has told us quite enough of this side
of his life, and we can sympathiZe with
him in his recent reply when asked tC
write his autobiography.
L am afraid, he writes, that 1t was
in vain l gave you hopes by my prom
Use TO write my "reminiscences. l have
tried to think about il, and saw what
dreadful difficulty it was to avoid tbs
Charybdis of self-praise and the Scylls
of cynical frankness about all the abOmi
nations of ones life. Were a man tC
describe all his odiousness, stupidity
viciousness and vilenesS, quite truthfully
even more truthfully than Rousseau, II
would be a seductive work or article
People would say: Here is a man whom
many place high, but look what scoun-
drel he was! If so. then for us ordinary
folk il is all the more admissible.
After his experience in the army and ms
later experience as a literary man in st.
Petersburg. he returned to his estate and
again undertook to be a useful land
lord. These attempts and their failure
are pictured in his tale "A Russian Pro-
prietOr' II is only fair, however, to say
that he did some good work during this
period as an educator and arbitrator. His
work was real if somewhat eccentric. OF
course, he took it hard. He iikens himself
TO "a fallen fledgling lying on his back
and crying in the high grass"
Marriage of Novelist.
Then occurred an event which, not ex-
cepting his conversion" had more TO do
than any other with shaping and steady
ing his course in life. He got married and
settled down to taking care of his wife,
his habits. his farm and family. Perhaps
IL would be fairer TO say that from that
time forward his wife taught him how to
take care of himself and live like a Chris
tian This was in 1862. For the next fiji
teen years he lived the life of a correct