The Forged Coupon | Page 3

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THE FORGED COUPON
And Other Stories
BY LEO TOLSTOY

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION THE FORGED COUPON AFTER THE DANCE
ALYOSHA THE POT MY DREAM THERE ARE NO GUILTY
PEOPLE THE YOUNG TSAR

INTRODUCTION

IN an age of materialism like our own the phenomenon of spiritual
power is as significant and inspiring as it is rare. No longer associated
with the "divine right" of kings, it has survived the downfall of feudal
and theocratic systems as a mystic personal emanation in place of a
coercive weapon of statecraft.
Freed from its ancient shackles of dogma and despotism it eludes
analysis. We know not how to gauge its effect on others, nor even upon
ourselves. Like the wind, it permeates the atmosphere we breathe, and
baffles while it stimulates the mind with its intangible but compelling
force.
This psychic power, which the dead weight of materialism is impotent
to suppress, is revealed in the lives and writings of men of the most
diverse creeds and nationalities. Apart from those who, like Buddha
and Mahomet, have been raised to the height of demi-gods by
worshipping millions, there are names which leap inevitably to the
mind-- such names as Savonarola, Luther, Calvin, Rousseau-- which
stand for types and exemplars of spiritual aspiration. To this high
priesthood of the quick among the dead, who can doubt that time will
admit Leo Tolstoy--a genius whose greatness has been obscured from
us rather than enhanced by his duality; a realist who strove to demolish
the mysticism of Christianity, and became himself a mystic in the
contemplation of Nature; a man of ardent temperament and robust
physique, keenly susceptible to human passions and desires, who
battled with himself from early manhood until the spirit, gathering
strength with years, inexorably subdued the flesh.
Tolstoy the realist steps without cavil into the front rank of modern
writers; Tolstoy the idealist has been constantly derided and scorned by
men of like birth and education with himself-- his altruism denounced
as impracticable, his preaching compared with his mode of life to prove
him inconsistent, if not insincere. This is the prevailing attitude of
politicians and literary men.
Must one conclude that the mass of mankind has lost touch with
idealism? On the contrary, in spite of modern materialism, or even
because of it, many leaders of spiritual thought have arisen in our times,

and have won the ear of vast audiences. Their message is a call to a
simpler life, to a recognition of the responsibilities of wealth, to the
avoidance of war by arbitration, and sinking of class hatred in a deep
sense of universal brotherhood.
Unhappily, when an idealistic creed is formulated in precise and
dogmatic language, it invariably loses something of its pristine beauty
in the process of transmutation. Hence the Positivist philosophy of
Comte, though embodying noble aspirations, has had but a limited
influence. Again, the poetry of Robert Browning, though less frankly
altruistic than that of Cowper or Wordsworth, is inherently ethical, and
reveals strong sympathy with sinning and suffering humanity, but it is
masked by a manner that is sometimes uncouth and frequently obscure.
Owing to these, and other instances, idealism suggests to the world at
large a vague sentimentality peculiar to the poets, a bloodless
abstraction toyed with by philosophers, which must remain a closed
book to struggling humanity.
Yet Tolstoy found true idealism in the toiling peasant who believed in
God, rather than in his intellectual superior who believed in himself in
the first place, and gave a conventional assent to the existence of a
deity in the second. For the peasant was still religious at heart with a
naive unquestioning faith-- more characteristic of the fourteenth or
fifteenth century than of to-day--and still fervently aspired to God
although sunk in superstition and held down by the despotism of the
Greek Church. It was the cumbrous ritual and dogma of the orthodox
state religion which roused Tolstoy to