MAUDE, Aylmer (1858-1939). Writer & translator.
Four lengthy Autograph Letters Signed (one unfinished) to Mrs Edge, in all 22 pages 8vo and 2 pages 4to (the latter torn), Great Baddow, Chelmsford, 1921. Containing closely argued explanations of his view of Tolstoy, as put forth in his two-volume Life of Tolstoy.
Maude enjoyed a warm friendship with Tolstoy whose works he, jointly with his wife, translated in 21 volumes.

'... One admits the misery, but it is not proven that civilization has caused it. (One has heard of misery & horrors amid uncivilized canibals[sic].) And even if civilization were to be the real & sole cause of misery, it by no means follows that the individualism (& absence of any organized state supressing murder & arson) recommended by Tolstoy would be a desirable arrangement. ...'
'... Gandhi is a man of saintly personality & with a very clear grip of the fundamental philosophic position held by Tolstoy & by many other sincere & able thinkers both in the West & still more frequently in the East, & which condemns the use of physical force between man & man, but the question we were discussing was not the moral character or personal greatness either of Tolstoy or of Gandhi but the soundness of their philosophy. ...'

[No: 23023]