classics digests, reflections and reviews
As a great humanist and artist, Tolstoy was deeply aware of and sympathetic to the prevailing feelings of the common people, although he was an eminent member of the Russian aristocracy. In these essays written between 1890 and 1910, the year of his death, the constant theme is the struggle between his conscience and pacifist convictions, and the society of violence from which he could not extricate himself, and for […]
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Brave New World is a first-class essay written as a third-class novel. It is intellectually stimulating, but emotionally and imaginatively barren, not to mention spiritually uninspiring — curiously similar to the world it envisions. I had known about it for a long time, but had not read it firsthand, and would probably never read it, if the philosopher Dr. Peter Kreeft hadn’t recommended it as one of twenty-six books people […]
Read moreAs thinkers, mankind have ever divided into three sects: 1. The Materialist: “Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” 2. The Transcendentalist: “Though we should soar into the heavens, though we should sink into the abyss, we never go out […]
Read more[Warning: The following review may be strongly biased. I read Chesterton’s Heretics and Orthodoxy a long time ago, but retained nothing from them, except that he had sharp wit and good sense of humour; On the other hand, I’m a fan of Tolstoy and read the majority of his works] If Chesterton had reviewed his essay on Tolstoy in a more reflective mood, he would have retracted it. It’s a […]
Read moreTolstoy wrote “Bethink Yourselves” in protest of the Russo-Japanese war, the first of a series of global wars in the 20th century. It happened six years before Tolstoy’s death and ten years before World War I. The title is a reference to verses in the Gospels (Mark 1:5, Luke 13:5, etc), which are alternatively translated as “Repent”. This article and his treatise “The Kingdom of God is Within You” are […]
Read moreEver since men have been in existence, they have been in the habit of deducing, from all pursuits, the expressions of various branches of learning concerning the destiny and the welfare of man, and the expression of this knowledge has been art in the strict sense of the word. Ever since men have existed, there have been those who were peculiarly sensitive and responsive to the doctrine regarding the destiny […]
Read moreTo do good, signifies to do that which is good for man. But, in order to know what is good for man, it is necessary to be on humane, i.e., on friendly terms with him. It is not money that is necessary, but, first of all, a capacity for detaching ourselves, for a time at least, from the conditions of our own life. It is necessary that we should not […]
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