The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1911-06-28

den1ned all his former work and, in fact, changed his views on most all subjects The old question as to the purpose of life now came before him with new insistence. In the effort to answer it. after first applying to the church, the scientists and the phil osophers without success, he went to the Gospels; and in rediscovering them he found his answer: The pur- pose of life is to serve that power with which our higher nature recog- nizes it's kinship.
 This religion of Tolstoy's is Chris tianity not Churchianity. Tolstoy does not believe in the organized church, and it was his attacks upon it's dogmas and doctrines which led to his excOmmunicatiOn from the Greek church. He believed in disassocia- once said that Christianity without the church would be in the same stunted condition as the English language would be in without it's literature
 This same protest against organ ized activities is em bodied in his doc Urine of Resist not Evil" which would, if carried to its conclusion, lead to the abolition of the organized state, military service, taxation, and civil justice. Tolstoy makes a tremendous attack upon civil justice and the whole penal system in Resurrection, novel which, perhaps more than any thing else, has acted as a quickener of the worlds conscience in regard to the wrong society is doing by judging and puniShing its criminals.
 In his educational papers Tolstoy again makes a plea for the repression of institutionalism and the develop ment of individualism. He lays great emphasis on this development of the individual, believing it to be the de- termining factor in the students abil- ity to come to a right understanding of his relation to the race.
 Definition of Art.
 To bring about this right rela ton of the individual to the race, that is to bring about the brotherhood of man, Tolstoy offers Art as a medium. But by Art he means something diff ferent from the accepted view. He defines it in this way: Art is human activity consisting in this, that one external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that others are infected by these feelings and also experience them '' According to this the necessary re- quirements of Art are infectiousness, sincerity, simplicity and compression. This theory brought to a conclusion would lead to the esta blishment of the full and harmonious life of mankind.
 Sets New Standards
 And so when we sum up TolStoy'S teachings and literary activities we can understand in what his great service consisted; he has shown Rus sia to the world, and what is more inn pOrtant he has shown Russia to the Russians: he has made repeated att tackS upon the church as a result of which it is being secretly investigated by all thinking minds in Russia; he has given us new standards in art and religion; he has made clear to us that our spiritual retrogression has been the result of our material prog ress; and lastly, by his life he has given us an invaluable example of simplicity, sincerity, self-forgetfulness and usefulness. In the light of this it is easy to understand why at his death last November beureaucracy and the church breathed freer; why the peasants were inconsolable and said that he died because his heart was broken over their wrongs; and furthermore we can fully realize the truth of what the Countess Tolstov said. The light of the world is gone" But, in reality Tolstoy did more than throw searching ligh, upon the wrongc of humanity, he suffered for these wrongs. He was a men ldl giant, recogniZing-bu helpless to solve-the wrongs of his fellow men; and so he was something more, something greater than the supreme literary genius of the century, he was the Supreme Man of Sorrows of the century.