"Scientific and artistic activity, in its real sense, is only fruitful when it knows no rights, but recognizes only obligations." According to the philosophical beliefs of Leo Tolstoy, the labor of the common man supports the idleness of the thinkers and artists to the advantage of the elite and the detriment of the poor.

The evil that produces this inequality is the belief that mankind is an organism with a fixed division of labor. This mantra in Tolstoy's thinking, serves as a rationalization for the wrongs suffered by Russia's working class.

The works of art produced in Tolstoy's era were not rendered, as in the past, from religious influences. Instead they were a product of the scientific views of atoms, cells, and the aggregate of the organism. Developed by Compte, a French thinker, the theory was called positive philosophy.

While the thinkers and artists of Russian society lived off the labor of the poor, the symphonies, literature, and paintings did not benefit them. What the peasants provided was essential; what the elite produced was non-essential and irrelevant to the greatest number of society.

Tolstoy questioned positive philosophy, protesting that a poor majority should support an idle few. He highlighted individual rights where each used his power of reason and conscious to move mankind forward. This mantra became the banner held high in the Russian Revolution. Tolstoy was spreading the seeds...Highly Recommended!