But the supreme effect is produced, nevertheless.
At last came the diametrical change of views, apparently, which led to this supreme artist's discarding his art, and devoting himself to religious and philosophical writings for which neither nature nor his training had fitted him.

He himself dates this change from the middle of the '70's, and it must be noted that precisely at this period that strong movement called "going to the people," i.e., devoting one's self to the welfare of the peasants, became epidemic in Russian society.
Again, as fifteen or twenty years previously, Count Tolstoy was merely swept onward by the popular current.

But his first pamphlet on his new propaganda is ten years later than the date he assigns to the change.
Thereafter for many years he devoted his chief efforts to this new class of work, "Life," "What Is to Be Done ?" "My Confession," and so forth, being the more bulky outcome.

Some of the stories, written for the people during this interval, are delightful, both in tone and artistic qualities.

Others are surcharged with "morals," which in many cases either directly conflict with the moral of other stories in the same volume, or even with the secondary moral of the same story.