Excerpt from Leo Tolstoy: A Biographical and Critical StudyOne of Tolstoy's English disciples complains that no European writer of eminence has refuted the doctrines of his master. For this absence of a lengthy and adverse criticism there are two reasons. In the first place, no European writer of eminence thinks that Tolstoyism, as a religious and social theory, needs refuting, and, in the second place, if it did happen to call for systematic scrutiny, he has more important work on hand, and would prefer to leave such scrutiny to the pens of lesser scribes.At any rate, the silence of the eminent man may be taken as some justification for the present volume, in which I have endeavoured to trace the development of Tolstoy's ideas and to examine them in the light of modern knowledge.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully, any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.