Lot 5371: TOLSTOY, LEO.

"LES GUERRES NE PEUVENT ÊTRE ABOLIES QUE PAR LES INDIVIDUS QUI EN SOUFFRENT...."
Letter Signed ("Léon Tolstoy"), 5 pp recto and verso, 4to (conjoined leaves), Toula, Russia, July 10-23, 1901, to "Mon Prince," Prince Mirza Reza Khan Arfa'ed-Dowleh, in French, inconspicuous punch-holes in top margin, folds just starting, still fine.

Fine, lengthy letter in which Tolstoy outlines his moral philosophy and anarchic pacifism. His correspondent is Prince Arfa of Persia, a nation often at war with Russia and soon to face its own revolution. In part, translated: "I am very grateful to you for sending your poem. It is of the highest interest and I think that the propagation of the ideas it contains will be very useful not only for the Persian people, but for men of all continents. ... I do not completely agree with you about the fraternity that you suppose possible between the states and their leaders. I believe that the state, formed and always sustained by violence, not only excludes fraternity, but is completely its opposite. / If men are brothers, there can be neither emperor, nor minister, nor general, nor subject, nor soldier. Between brothers, no one can have the right to lead, nor the obligation to obey. Everyone must obey God and not men, whose orders most often are contrary to the law of God. In my opinion wars will end only when each individual is so imbued with the religious principle to not do onto others what he does not want done onto himself that no one will be able to accept the obligation of military service ... Wars can be abolished only by the individuals who suffer from them. They will be abolished only when true religion is diffused to such an extent that the majority of men will be ready to endure violence rather than to use it...."
See illustration.