ABSTRACT
The great nineteenth-century writer, Leo Tolstoy, made the purest and most widely accepted presentation of Christian pacifism. Tolstoy is largely responsible for making pacifism the theoretical force it is in the western world. And through his leading disciple, Mohandas Gandhi, pacifism was transformed into a practical reform doctrine in India and other colonial nation. In the Gandhian vision, the pacifist writings of Tolstoy occupied a place equaled only by the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to greatly. Tolstoy thoroughly identified himself with the leaders of the Russian Enlightenment. He saw clearly the economic character of the conflict between classes. The social philosophy of Tolstoy was a bold attempt to translate literary values into actuality. Like many theorists, he desired to make the idea of peace stronger than the material causes of war. To prove that this was possible, Tolstoy evolved a philosophy of history of ethics.
