What is Art?

WHAT thoughtful man has not been perplexed by problems relating to art?



An estimable and charming Russian lady I knew, felt the charm of the music and ritual of the services of the Russo-Greek Church so strongly that she wished the peasants, in whom she was interested, to retain their blind faith, though she herself disbelieved the church doctrines.



"Their lives are so poor and bare-they have so little art, so little poetry and colour in their lives- Let them at least enjoy what they have; it would be cruel to undeceive them," said she. A false and antiquated view of life is supported by means of art, and is inseparably linked to some Manifestations of art which we enjoy and prize. If the false view of life be destroyed this art will cease to appear valuable.



Is it best to screen the error for the sake of preserving the art? Or should the art be sacrificed for the sake of truthfulness? Again and again in history a dominant church has utilised art to maintain its sway over men. Reformers (early Christians, Mohammedans, Puritans, and others) have perceived that art bound people to the old faith, and they were angry with art.



These works, in chronological order,are " My Confession ".

A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology,which has never been translated.

The Four Gospels Harmonised and Translated, of which only two parts, out of three, have as yet appeared in English. What I Believe, sometimes called My Religion.



The Gospelin Brief. What are we to do then? sometimes called in English



What to do? On Life, which is not an easy work in the original, and has not been satisfactorily translated. The Kingdom of God is within you; and The Christian Teaching, which appeared after What is Art? though it was written before it.



To these scientific works I am inclined to add The Kteutzer Sonata, with the Sequel or Postscript explaining its purpose; for though The Kreutzer Sonata is a story, the understanding of sexual problems, dealt with explicitly in the Sequel, is an integral part of that comprehension of life which causes Tolstoy to admire Christ, Buddha, or Francis of Assisi.



AUTHOR'S PREFACE



In this book I have endeavored to show that our modern Christianity has been tried and found wanting, that the armed camp of Europe is not Christian, but Pagan, as is latter-day religion, of which the present state of affairs is the outcome. The book contains three principal ideas,—the first, that Christianity is not only the worship of God and a doctrine of salvation, but is, above all things, a new conception of life, which is changing the whole fabric of human society; the second, that from the first appearance of Christianity there entered into it two opposite currents,—the one establishing the true and new conception of life, which it gave to humanity, and the other perverting the true Christian doctrine and converting it into a Pagan religion, and that this contradiction has attained in our days the highest degree of tension which now expresses itself in universal armaments, and on the Continent in general conscription; and the third, that this contradiction, which is masked by hypocrisy, can only be solved by an effort of sincerity on the part of every individual endeavoring to conform the acts of his life,—independent of what are regarded as the exigencies of family, society, and the State,—with those moral principles which he considers to be true.