For several months now the suspicion has kept recurring to the author that perhaps most of the literary critics who have recently come to think of themselves as Marxists are really much closer to Tolstoy. A new reading of Tolstoy's "What Is Art?" a product of his postconversion period, has now largely confirmed that suspicion, and seems to make it worth while to examine his position afresh. The range of feelings experienced by the powerful and the rich who have no experience of labor for the support of life is far poorer, more limited, and more insignificant than the range of feelings natural to working people. People of our circle, aestheticians, usually think and say just the contrary of this.