1844, leaving in 1847 without receiving a degree. He left his
Christian beliefs behind as well.³

Tolstoy joined the Russian army in 1852 and fought
bravely in the Crimean War. He left the army at the end of the
war in 1856 and made two separate trips to Western Europe
between 1857 and 1861. He subsequently took up residence at
Yasnaya Polyana, which had by then become his personal estate.
Tolstoy married Sophie Andreyevna Behrs in 1862 and spent the
next fifteen years managing his vast holdings, fathering thirteen
children, and writing his great masterpieces, War and Peace and
Anna Karenina. Tolstoy's diaries, however, reveal an unhappy
marriage.⁴

By 1879, Tolstoy, at age fifty-one, was so depressed he
would not go hunting because he feared he would turn his gun
on himself.⁵ Like many others of his time, he believed that more
knowledge would inevitably lead to the answer to his suffering.
Accordingly, Tolstoy began reading in earnest both scientific
and philosophical works. He also corresponded with many
illustrious men of his day. Neither science, philosophy, nor oth-
ers, however, provided any answers.

Unable to find comfort in either knowledge or the exam-
ples of those wealthy men around him, Tolstoy undertook an
in-depth study of Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity. He ulti-
mately came to the conclusion that the solution to "the problem
of life" could be found in the words and teachings of Jesus--but
only if those words were stripped of the official Church's distor-
tions and dogma.⁶ Tolstoy's crisis and gradual renewal are
described by William James in The Varieties of Religious
Experience.

Tolstoy, now a Christian, felt extremely ill at ease with

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