Tolstoy's Resurrection

I'm 3/4ths of the way through my final Tolstoy published work, Resurrection. Not that anyone can sum up a Tolstoy work in a few sentences, but basically a rich dude sits on the jury of a woman he was once very close with but raped long long ago and by a total mistake she gets wrongly convicted. He goes through a crisis of character over this and how he has acted as a rich dude, and spends the rest of the book trying to fix his wrongs by working to get her out of jail and get other innocents out of jail. Not sure how it ends yet, but its a great look into criminal justice, societal justice, human nature, compassion, class, all the goodies Tolstoy writes about.

Anyway, a few bits stood out and because I'll probably never re-read it, I'm going to put the quotes here so I can remember them (bold emphasis is mine).

"The upholding of class interests! The law, in my opinion, is only an instrument for upholding the existing order of things to the advantage of our class."

"This is a perfectly new view," said Rogozhinsky with a quiet smile; "the law is generally supposed to have a totally different aim."

"Yes, so it has in theory, but not in practice, as I have found out. The law aims only at preserving the present state of things, and therefore it persecutes and executes those who stand above the ordinary level and wish to raise it-the so-called political offenders-as well as those who are below the average, the so-called criminal types."

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It all lies in the fact that men think there are circumstances when one may deal with human beings without love. But there are no such circumstances. We may deal with things without love - we cut down trees, make bricks, hammer iron without love - but we cannot deal with men without it, just as one cannot deal with bees without being careful. If one deals carelessly with bees one will injure them and will one's self be injured. And so with men. It cannot be otherwise, because mutual love is the fundamental law of human life. It is true that a man cannot force another to love him as he can force him to work for him, but it does not follow that one may deal with men without love, especially if one demands or expects anything from them. If you feel no love, sit still," Nekhlyudov thought; "occupy yourself with things, with yourself, with anything you like, only not with men. Just as you can only eat without injuring yourself when you are hungry, so you can only usefully and without injury deal with men when you love. Only let yourself deal with a man without love, as I did yesterday with my brother-in-law, and there are no limits to the suffering you will bring on yourself, as all my life proves. Yes, yes, it is so," thought Nekhlyudov; "it is true; yes, it is true," he repeated, enjoying the freshness after the torturing heat, and conscious of having attained the fullest clearness on a question that had long occupied him.

I need to read some critical evaluations of Nekhlyudov's character, as I find myself vacillating between Nek. as self-centered to Nek. as reformed to Nek. as reformed but for self-centered reasons. It took me a long time to realize that, but once I saw the layers to his character, I began enjoying the book much more.