vol. xxx, no. 4 april 1926 universal brotherhood - a fact in nature

THE THEOSOPHICAL PATH
floating, unsettled, and gradually receding personality, that had existed
in him until that time. The soul of Eroshka is an abyss without end;
it is full of darkness and light, of shadows and sunshine. He loves every-
thing that lives, every creature that moves and breathes in the wide
world. Sometimes it appears as if Eroshka and Nature were just one,
so intense is their mutual communion.
Is it not the source from which Tolstoy, perhaps unconsciously
to himself, took the power of his artistic genius, and the inspiration that
enabled him to create? Is it not the sensation of Olenin himself who,
at the glare of a bonfire, looking at the thousands of little flies which
circled around the flames, hearing their soft and musical buzzing, "sees
in each of them another Olenin, another himself "? It is the vague,
germing, nascent consciousness of the grand unity that underlies the
whole of the Universe, of the one Infinite and Changeless Spirit which
pervades the Kosmos and fills it.
It was at that period of his life, that Tolstoy felt the urge to write
and create himself. Besdies The Cossacks, he sent stories to the Russian
newspapers, among which we shall mention The Itzz!asion; Childhood;
Adolescence. During four years he remained in his regiment. After the
beginning of the Crimean war, Tolstoy went to the front of the Danube
with the staff of Prince Gorchakoff. He became an officer shortly after
11855), and took an active part in the siege of Sebastopol.
In spite of this kind of life, Tolstoy did not stop his literary activity
and wrote at that time: Sebastopol in December 1854; Sebastopol in
May 1855, and other descriptions of the military life. It is said that
these works made a very great impression on the Empress Alexandra
Feodorovna, wife of Nikolas I. The latter gave order to remove Tolstoy
from the line of fire, because his life, as he said, "was necessary to Russia."
In September, 1855, Tolstoy was sent as a messenger to St. Petersburg,
and thus the military career of the future writer came to an end.
In the literary world of that epoch the highlights were such famous
authors as Goncharoff, Turgenyeff, Ostrovsky, and Nekrassoff, not to
mention others. Their milieu was entirely separate from everything else,
and constituted something of a literary caste, if we can express ourselves
in that manner. Needless to say, Tolstoy, well known in St. Petersburg's
circles for his masterly descriptions of the war, was received with tre-
mendous enthusiasm in these literary circles of the capital. He did not
form any friendships among men of his own interest and trend of mind.
He lived a short time with Turgenyeff, but after repeated quarrels, the
two 'friends' left each other.
The same thing occurred in the social circles, which Tolstoy