The logic in Tolstoy’s beloved and inspirational story
“What Men Live By” seems a bit convoluted at times but gets sorted out if the subtle
shades of meaning are attended to. The three truths that the displaced angel learns
answer the questions:
What dwells in man, What is not given to man, and
What men live by.
The answers
were revealed through daily living experiences in the shoemaker's cottage. One meaning
of "significance" is the import or consequence of a thing. If this meaning is used, then
the significance is that the truths released the angel Michael from his punishment and
allowed him to return to heaven. His punishment to live like a mortal man was given
because he allowed a dying mother to convince him that humans live by fulfilling the
needs they perceive as she thought of her new born infant daughters. Living on earth
with the shoemaker, Michael learned what humans truly live by, along with what dwells
within humans and what is not known by humans.
I have been punished, but now God has pardoned
me. And I smiled three times, because God sent me to learn three truths, and I have
learnt them.
"Significance"
also means simply meaning. By this definition, the meaning of the three truths learned
by Michael are these. The first truth is that what "dwells
in" humans is love. The shoemaker's wife was bound up in fear for the winter and
adequately meeting their needs, then, when spoken to of God by her husband, she
remembers the admonitions to love and help those who are suffering. In so remembering
and doing, she showed Michael pity and that love dwells
within. Later, the second truth was revealed when the man
ordered boots to last a year, Michael could see by the presence of the angel of death
that the man's life would go no longer than that night. From this he learned the truth
that humans do not know their own needs; this is further significant because Tolstoy
makes the point that humans are meant to live in unity instead of in
solitude.
The significance of the third
truth is that what humans live by is love. Love, then, has
double significance: it is what dwells within and is shown as pity
and kindness, and it is what humans live by as others meet our needs. The significance
is compounded when the two are considered in relation to the second
truth: humans don't know their own needs.
Tolstoy is emphasizing his philosophy that humans are meant to live in
unity on a foundation of love that gives (as the shoemaker's wife gave) what is needed
to humans who do not know what they need (such as the man did not know his needs for
soft slippers) because what humans live by is love freely given (as the woman gave to
the twin girls). Tolstoy creates a closed circle of life that both begins
and ends with love: love is the motivating power
within a person and love is the saving gift that is received by
another person in a life in which one cannot know one's own true
needs.
The
orphans remained alive not because of their mother's care, but because there was love in
the heart of a woman, a stranger to them, who pitied and loved them. And all men live
not by the thought they spend on their own welfare, but because love exists in
man.
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