Chapter I: Front Matter

[Picture: Public domain cover]

WHAT TO DO?
THOUGHTS EVOKED BY THE CENSUS
OF MOSCOW

BY
COUNT LYOF N. TOLSTOÏ

_TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN_
BY ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

NEW YORK
THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.
13 ASTOR PLACE
1887

COPYRIGHT, 1887,
BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO.

ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED
BY RAND AVERY COMPANY,
BOSTON.

TRANSLATOR’S NOTE.

Books which are prohibited by the Russian Censor are not always inaccessible. An enterprising publishing-house in Geneva makes a specialty of supplying the natural craving of man for forbidden fruit, under which heading some of Count L. N. Tolstoi’s essays belong. These essays circulate in Russia in manuscript; and it is from one of these manuscripts, which fell into the hands of the Geneva firm, that the first half of the present translation has been made. It is thus that the Censor’s omissions have been noted, even in cases where such omissions are in no way indicated in the twelfth volume of Count Tolstoi’s collected works, published in Moscow. As an interesting detail in this connection, I may mention that this twelfth volume contains all that the censor allows of “My Religion,” amounting to a very much abridged scrap of Chapter X. in the last-named volume as known to the public outside of Russia. The last half of the present book has not been published by the Geneva house, and omissions cannot be marked.

ISABEL F. HAPGOOD

BOSTON, Sept. 1, 1887

THOUGHTS EVOKED BY THE CENSUS OF MOSCOW. [1884–1885.]

And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then?

He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him
impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do
likewise—LUKE iii. 10. 11.

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust
doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor
rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single,
thy whole body shall be full of light.

But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness.
If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that
darkness!

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and
love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the
other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye
shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye
shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than
raiment?—MATT. vi. 19–25.

Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall
we drink? Or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?

(For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly
Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.

But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all
these things shall be added unto you.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take
thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the
evil thereof.—MATT. vi. 31–34.

For it is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye, than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.—MATT. xix. 24; MARK x. 25;
LUKE xviii. 25.