What Shall We Do

Words and illustrations depict the activities of the day as children go out to play.

Musings of a sophist ignorant of Cosmogony and Theogony.

Leo Tolstoy became very interested in love and relationships. He saw the world around him, much like it is now, as the world is, filled with emptiness (if you pardon the ironic phrase). And yet he felt within him a draw and yearning, and, yes, an inner knowledge that there is more, and that there are answers to our questions. "Let us be diligent," that inner light says, as if together within ourselves, we have all we need, or ever would need to find the way forward. This is a paraphrase in my own words of the attitude of these later works by Leo Tolstoy, the great Russian novelist -- and great thinker -- regardless of region. The volume includes two works, the first 100,000 words of which is the treatise, What Shall We Do, perhaps a more accessible work to be acquainted with Tolstoy's soul-searching and concerns of systematic contemporary life. The second work is a shorter yet worthy essay, providing insights as the title suggests. This edition has been lovingly and carefully edited by Alan Lewis Silva.