THE LAW OF LOVE
AND
THE LAW OF VIOLENCE
BY
LEO TOLSTOY
TRANSLATED BY
MARY KOUTOUZOW TOLSTOY
RUDOLPH FIELD, PUBLISHER
NEW YORK
1948
Transcribed and edited by:
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OBERLIN, OHIO
2010
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
NOTE
The work of Count Leo Tolstoy entitled The Law of Love and the Law of Violence has never been published in Russia, and consequently was not translated into English with the rest of his works. A Russian author, M. Halperine-Kaminsky, translated it into French from the manuscript and published it in France.
Shortly after its publication, Paul Bourget’s drama La Barricade was produced in Paris. This play, based on the idea of inter-class warfare, was the subject of much controversy. It was even supposed that, in answer, Tolstoy wrote this treatise with its theory of the “Law of Love” as opposed to the “Right of Violence” proclaimed by the French master and his friends. But this supposition was erroneous, for the book was published first.
M. Halperine-Kaminsky sent Count Tolstoy criticisms of the play from the pens of such well-known writers as Rene Dounic and M. de Mun, and received the following reply:
Mr. Halperine-Kaminsky:
Thank you very much for the articles on The Barricade. I read the most interesting ones at once.
Yes, it is a very significant phenomenon, and I should like to give you my opinion on this subject. But I have so little strength left, so short a time to live, and so much work on hand that I doubt if I shall entirely realize my desire.
For the moment, what struck me most in the debates caused by Mr. Bourget’s play is their astonishing mixture of profound erudition, great intelligence, extraordinary elegance of language, and subtle courtesy towards the adversary. But I am also struck by their most brutal egotism, concerned only with personal and class interest, and absolute ignorance of religious and moral principles, even those which are indispensable to our lives and without which man descends to the level of the beasts. This is in spite of the invention of marvelous flying machines, or of the wonderful perfection of the artists of the Theatre Français, of the Vaudeville, and the like.
I am particularly surprised that men like M. Bourget and his friends can still speak so seriously of Catholicism in France in 1910, after Voltaire, Rousseau, and many other thinkers. Nothing proves more clearly how misguided these men have been, not as to their intelligence, but as to their reasoning; not their polish and brilliance, but their morality. In this conflict it is evident that tous les moyens sont bons.[1]
