Name: The Kingdom of God Is Within You
Author: Leo Tolstoy

This is an AI modernization of The Kingdom of God Is Within You into contemporary English. The original is available from Russian Wikisource (Jubilee edition, vol. 28, 1957). Also available as an epub. Standard Ebooks publishes a classic English translation, free.

Editor's Introduction

Leo Tolstoy was past fifty, with War and Peace and Anna Karenina behind him, when he decided that Jesus meant exactly what he said in the Sermon on the Mount. The verse that mattered most was Matthew 5:39, "Resist not evil," which Tolstoy read as a plain command: never meet evil with violence. In "What I Believe" (1884) he argued that the churches had canceled that commandment by blessing armies, courts and executions. The censor stopped that book, but it traveled in handwritten copies and translations, and what came back is the subject of this book.

From people who agreed with him came news of predecessors he had never heard of: letters from American Quakers; the Declaration of Sentiments that William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, wrote for a peace convention in Boston in 1838, sent by Garrison's son; the writings of Adin Ballou, a Massachusetts minister; the English Quaker Jonathan Dymond's book on war; the fifteenth-century Czech Petr Chelčický. From churchmen, scholars and liberals came objections that nonresistance was naive or impossible. Tolstoy began in July 1890 meaning to write only a preface to a Russian translation of Ballou's catechism. It grew into this book, which he signed at Yasnaya Polyana on 14 May 1893.

The argument goes further than pacifism. Every government, Tolstoy says, rests on violence: on taxes, courts and prisons that work only because soldiers stand behind them. Universal military service has made every man one of those soldiers, sworn to shoot whomever he is told to shoot, and the German emperor said as much to his recruits in 1891, in a speech quoted here. The way out is neither revolution, which puts one violence in place of another, nor peace congresses, but for each person to refuse to take part: to refuse the oath, the uniform and the office. The title is Luke 17:21.

The censor banned this book too. It was first printed in French, in Paris in October 1893, then in Russian by August Deubner in Berlin early in 1894, with cuts, and in two English translations the same year, Constance Garnett's and Aline Delano's. In Russia it circulated in hectographed and typewritten copies until 1906. Mohandas Gandhi, a young lawyer, read it in his first years in South Africa. "Tolstoy's The Kingdom of God is within You overwhelmed me," he wrote in his autobiography. "It left an abiding impression on me." He wrote to Tolstoy on 1 October 1909, and Tolstoy's last letter to him is dated 7 September 1910, two months before Tolstoy died.

Tolstoy lets allies and opponents speak at length: Garrison's declaration, Ballou's catechism, reviews, speeches at peace meetings, the resolutions of a peace congress, French novelists on war. And the last chapter is built on a real event. On 9 September 1892, on his way to the famine relief he had been running since the year before, Tolstoy met at Uzlovaya station a train of soldiers under the governor of Tula, carrying rifles and birch rods to punish hungry peasants in a quarrel over a wood.

This edition is translated from the Russian of the Jubilee edition. Scripture is given in the King James Version. Where Tolstoy translated English documents into Russian (Garrison, Ballou's articles, Dymond, the speeches), they are printed in their authors' own English, cut where he cut them; the French writers are translated from the French, and the emperor's speech from the German. Ballou's catechism, which survives in no English text, is translated from Tolstoy's Russian. His word nasilie is always "violence", never the older translations' "force", because his argument is that the state is violence.

On the cover. The Apotheosis of War, painted in 1871 by Vasily Vereshchagin and now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow: a pyramid of skulls in a dry plain, with crows over it, from his series on Russia's conquest of Turkestan. Vereshchagin had been there as a soldier; he won the Cross of St. George during the siege of Samarkand in 1868, and he died in 1904 when the battleship Petropavlovsk struck mines off Port Arthur. He dedicated the painting "to all great conquerors, past, present and to come."

Preface

Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

John 8:32

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.

Matthew 10:28

Ye are bought with a price; be not ye the servants of men.

1 Corinthians 7:23

In 1884 I wrote a book called "What I Believe." And in that book I really did set down what I believe.

In setting out my faith in the teaching of Christ, I could not help saying why I do not believe in the church faith that usually goes by the name of Christianity, and why I hold it to be a delusion.

Of the many ways in which that faith has departed from the teaching of Christ, I pointed to the chief one: its refusal to recognize the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence, Christ's "Resist not evil." No other departure shows so plainly how the teaching of the Church has distorted the teaching of Christ.

Like the rest of us, I knew very little about what had been done, preached and written on nonresistance to evil in earlier times. I knew what the fathers of the Church, Origen, Tertullian and others, had said on the subject. I knew, too, that there had been and still are certain so-called sects, the Mennonites, the Herrnhuters (the Moravian Brethren) and the Quakers, who do not allow a Christian to bear arms and who will not serve in the army. But what these so-called sects had done to make the question clear, I hardly knew at all.

My book, as I had expected, was stopped by the Russian censorship. But partly because of my reputation as a writer, and partly because it had caught people's interest, it spread through Russia in handwritten and lithographed copies, and abroad in translation. And it brought me two things. From people who shared my views came a stream of information about writings on the same subject; from others came a stream of criticism of the ideas in the book itself.

Both of these, together with the historical events of recent years, made a great deal clear to me and led me to new conclusions, which I now want to set out.

I will speak first of what I have learned about the history of the question of nonresistance to evil; then of the opinions on this question expressed by critics both religious (that is, professing the Christian religion) and secular (not professing it); and finally of the conclusions to which both kinds of critic, and the historical events of recent years, have brought me.

Chapter 1: The Teaching of Nonresistance to Evil by Violence Has Been and Still Is Professed by a Minority of People from the Very Beginning of Christianity

One of the first responses to my book came in letters from American Quakers. Writing to tell me how much they agreed with my view that all violence and all war are unlawful for a Christian, the Quakers told me about their own so-called sect, which for more than two hundred years has practiced Christ's teaching of nonresistance to evil by violence, and which has never taken up arms to defend itself and does not do so now. With the letters they sent me their pamphlets, journals and books. And from these journals, pamphlets and books I learned how many years ago, and how unanswerably, they had proved that a Christian is bound to keep the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence, and had exposed the error of the Church's teaching, which permits executions and wars.

Having shown by a long chain of arguments and texts that war, which is to say the maiming and killing of people, cannot be reconciled with a religion founded on peace and goodwill toward men, the Quakers maintain, and prove, that nothing has done more to darken the truth of Christ in the eyes of pagans, and nothing has done more to hinder the spread of Christianity in the world, than the refusal of people who called themselves Christians to recognize this commandment, and their allowing Christians to make war and use violence.

"The teaching of Christ," they say, "which entered the consciousness of men not by the sword and by violence but by nonresistance to evil, by gentleness, humility and love of peace, can spread through the world only by the example of peace, concord and love among its followers.

"A Christian, by the teaching of God himself, can be guided in his dealings with other people by love of peace alone; and therefore there can be no authority that could compel a Christian to act against the teaching of God and against what is the chief mark of a Christian in his dealings with his neighbors.

"The rule of state necessity," they say, "may compel those to betray the law of God who, for the sake of worldly advantage, try to reconcile the irreconcilable; but for a Christian who truly believes that following the teaching of Christ gives him salvation, that rule can have no meaning at all."

Getting to know the work of the Quakers and their writings, George Fox, William Penn, and above all Dymond's book of 1827, showed me that the impossibility of uniting Christianity with violence and war had been recognized long, long ago, and more than that: that this incompatibility had long ago been proved so clearly and so beyond doubt that one can only wonder how this impossible union of Christian teaching with violence, which the churches have preached and go on preaching, can still continue.

Besides what I learned from the Quakers, at about the same time I received information on the same subject, also from America, from a quite different source of which I had known nothing before.

The son of William Lloyd Garrison, the famous champion of freedom for Black Americans, wrote to me that in reading my book he had found ideas like those his father had expressed in 1838, and, thinking it would interest me, he was sending me the declaration, or proclamation, of nonresistance ("Non-resistance") that his father had drawn up almost fifty years before.

The declaration came about in this way. In 1838 William Lloyd Garrison, taking part in a discussion of measures for ending war in a society then existing in America for establishing peace among men, came to the conclusion that universal peace could be founded only on the open recognition of the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence (Matthew 5:39) in its full meaning, as it is understood by the Quakers, with whom Garrison was on friendly terms. Having come to that conclusion, Garrison drew up the following declaration and put it to the society, and many of its members signed it then and there, in 1838.¹

Declaration of Sentiments Adopted by the Peace Convention

Boston, 1838.

We, the undersigned, regard it as due to ourselves, to the cause which we love, to the country in which we live, and to the world, to publish a Declaration, expressive of the principles we cherish, the purposes we aim to accomplish, and the measures we shall adopt to carry forward the work of peaceful and universal reformation.

We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human government.… We recognize but one King and Lawgiver, one Judge and Ruler of mankind.… Our country is the world, our countrymen are all mankind. We love the land of our nativity, only as we love all other lands. The interests, rights, and liberties of American citizens are no more dear to us, than are those of the whole human race. Hence, we can allow no appeal to patriotism, to revenge any national insult or injury.…

We conceive, that if a nation has no right to defend itself against foreign enemies, or to punish its invaders, no individual possesses that right in his own case. The unit cannot be of greater importance than the aggregate.… But if a rapacious and blood-thirsty soldiery, thronging these shores from abroad, with intent to commit rapine and destroy life, may not be resisted by the people or magistracy, then ought no resistance to be offered to domestic troublers of the public peace, or of private security.… The dogma, that all the governments of the world are approvingly ordained of God, and that the powers that be in the United States, in Russia, in Turkey, are in accordance with His will, is not less absurd than impious. It makes the impartial Author of human freedom and equality, unequal and tyrannical. It cannot be affirmed, that the powers that be, in any nation, are actuated by the spirit, or guided by the example of Christ, in the treatment of enemies: therefore, they cannot be agreeable to the will of God: and, therefore, their overthrow, by a spiritual regeneration of their subjects, is inevitable.

We register our testimony, not only against all wars, whether offensive or defensive, but all preparations for war; against every naval ship, every arsenal, every fortification; against the militia system and a standing army; against all military chieftains and soldiers; against all monuments commemorative of victory over a foreign foe, all trophies won in battle, all celebrations in honor of military or naval exploits; against all appropriations for the defence of a nation by force and arms on the part of any legislative body; against every edict of government, requiring of its subjects military service.

Hence, we deem it unlawful to bear arms, or to hold a military office.… We cannot hold any office which imposes upon its incumbent the obligation to do right, on pain of imprisonment or death. We therefore voluntarily exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body, and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of authority.

If we cannot occupy a seat in the legislature, or on the bench, neither can we elect others to act as our substitutes in any such capacity. It follows, that we cannot sue any man at law, to compel him by force to restore any thing which he may have wrongfully taken from us or others; but, if he has seized our coat, we shall surrender up our cloak, rather than subject him to punishment.

We believe that the penal code of the old covenant, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth, has been abrogated by Jesus Christ; and that, under the new covenant, the forgiveness, instead of the punishment of enemies, has been enjoined upon all his disciples, in all cases whatsoever. To extort money from enemies, or set them upon a pillory, or cast them into prison, or hang them upon a gallows, is obviously not to forgive, but to take retribution.

The history of mankind is crowded with evidences, proving that physical coercion is not adapted to moral regeneration; that the sinful disposition of man can be subdued only by love; that evil can be exterminated from the earth only by goodness; that it is not safe to rely upon an arm of flesh … to preserve us from harm; that there is great security in being gentle, harmless, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy; that it is only the meek who shall inherit the earth, for the violent, who resort to the sword, shall perish with the sword.

Hence, as a measure of sound policy, of safety to property, life, and liberty, of public quietude and private enjoyment, as well as on the ground of allegiance to Him who is King of kings, and Lord of lords, we cordially adopt the non-resistance principle; being confident that it provides for all possible consequences … and must ultimately triumph over every assailing force. We advocate no Jacobinical doctrines. The spirit of jacobinism is the spirit of retaliation, violence and murder. It neither fears God, nor regards man. We would be filled with the spirit of Christ. If we abide by our principles, it is impossible for us to be disorderly, or plot treason, or participate in any evil work: we shall submit to every ordinance of man, for the Lord's sake; obey all the requirements of government, except such as we deem contrary to the commands of the gospel; and in no wise resist the operation of law, except by meekly submitting to the penalty of disobedience. But, while we shall adhere to the doctrines of non-resistance and passive submission to enemies, we purpose, in a moral and spiritual sense, to speak and act boldly in the cause of God; to assail iniquity in high places and in low places; to apply our principles to all existing civil, political, legal, and ecclesiastical institutions; and to hasten the time, when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever.

It appears to us a self-evident truth, that, whatever the gospel is designed to destroy at any period of the world, being contrary to it, ought now to be abandoned. If, then, the time is predicted, when swords shall be beaten into plough-shares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and men shall not learn the art of war any more, it follows that all who manufacture, sell, or wield those deadly weapons, do thus array themselves against the peaceful dominion of the Son of God on earth. Having thus briefly, but frankly, stated our principles and purposes, we proceed to specify the measures we propose to adopt, in carrying our object into effect. We expect to prevail through the foolishness of preaching.…

From the press, we shall promulgate our sentiments as widely as practicable. We shall endeavor to secure the co-operation of all persons, of whatever name or sect.… Hence we shall employ lecturers, circulate tracts and publications, form societies, and petition our state and national governments in relation to the subject of Universal Peace. It will be our leading object to devise ways and means for effecting a radical change in the views, feelings and practices of society respecting the sinfulness of war, and the treatment of enemies. In entering upon the great work before us, we are not unmindful that, in its prosecution, we may be called to test our sincerity, even as in a fiery ordeal. It may subject us to insult, outrage, suffering, yea, even death itself. We anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, calumny. Tumults may arise against us. The ungodly and violent, the proud and pharisaical, the ambitious and tyrannical, principalities and powers, and spiritual wickedness in high places, may combine to crush us. So they treated the Messiah, whose example we are humbly striving to imitate.… We shall not be afraid of their terror, neither be troubled. Our confidence is in the Lord Almighty, not in man. Having withdrawn from human protection, what can sustain us but that faith which overcomes the world? We shall not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try us, as though some strange thing had happened unto us; but rejoice, inasmuch as we are partakers of Christ's sufferings.

Wherefore, we commit the keeping of our souls to God.… "For every one that forsakes houses, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for Christ's sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life."

Firmly relying upon the certain and universal triumph of the sentiments contained in this Declaration, however formidable may be the opposition arrayed against them, … we hereby affix our signatures to it; commending it to the reason and conscience of mankind, … and resolving, in the strength of the Lord God, calmly and meekly to abide the issue.

Following this declaration, Garrison founded a nonresistance society and a journal called "The Non-Resistant," which preached the teaching of nonresistance in its full meaning and with all its consequences, as the declaration had set it out. What I know of the later fate of the society and the journal comes from the excellent biography of W. L. Garrison written by his sons.

Neither the society nor the journal lasted long. Most of Garrison's fellow workers in the cause of freeing the slaves were afraid that the too radical demands made in "The Non-Resistant" would turn people away from the practical work of emancipation; and most of them gave up professing the principle of nonresistance as the declaration had expressed it, and the society and the journal ceased to exist.

One would have thought that this declaration of Garrison's, which expressed so powerfully and so eloquently a profession of faith of such importance to mankind, must have struck people, become known all over the world and been discussed from every side. Nothing of the kind happened. Not only is it unknown in Europe; even among Americans, who honor Garrison's memory so highly, it is almost unknown.

The same obscurity has fallen on another fighter for nonresistance to evil, the American Adin Ballou, who died recently after preaching this teaching for fifty years. How little is known of anything touching the question of nonresistance can be seen from this. Garrison's son, who wrote an excellent biography of his father in four large volumes, answered my question whether the nonresistance society still existed and had followers by saying that as far as he knew the society had broken up and the teaching had no followers left; and at the very time he was writing to me, there was living in Hopedale, Massachusetts, Adin Ballou, who had shared in the elder Garrison's labors and had given fifty years of his life to preaching the teaching of nonresistance by voice and in print. Later I had a letter from Wilson, Ballou's disciple and assistant, and entered into correspondence with Ballou himself. I wrote to Ballou, and he answered and sent me his writings. Here are some extracts from them.

"Jesus Christ is my Lord and Master," says Ballou in one of his articles, exposing the inconsistency of Christians who recognize the right of self-defense and of war. "I have covenanted to forsake all and follow him, through good and evil report, until death. But I am nevertheless a Democratic-Republican citizen of the United States, implicitly sworn to bear true allegiance to my country, and to support its Constitution, if need be, with my life. Jesus Christ requires me to do unto others as I would that others should do unto me. The Constitution of the United States requires me to do unto two million slaves (there were slaves then; now we may safely put the working people in their place) the very contrary of what I would have them do unto me, namely, assist to keep them in a grievous bondage.… But I am quite easy. I vote on. I help govern on. I am willing to hold any office I may be elected to under the Constitution. And I am still a Christian. I profess on. I find no difficulty in keeping covenant both with Christ and the Constitution.…

"Jesus Christ forbids me to resist evil-doers by taking 'eye for eye, tooth for tooth, blood for blood, and life for life.'

"My government requires the very reverse, and depends, for its own self-preservation, on the halter, the musket, and the sword, seasonably employed against its domestic and foreign enemies. Accordingly, the land is well furnished with gibbets, prisons, arsenals, train-bands, soldiers, and ships-of-war.

"In the maintenance and use of this expensive life-destroying apparatus, we can exemplify the virtues of forgiving our injurers, loving our enemies, blessing them that curse us, and doing good to those that hate us. For this reason, we have regular Christian chaplains to pray for us, and call down the blessing of God on our holy murders.… I see it all (that is, the contradiction between what we profess and how we live); … I vote on; I help govern on; I profess on; and I glory in being at once a devoted Christian, and a no less devoted adherent to the existing government. I will not give in to those miserable non-resistant notions. I will not throw away my political influence, and leave unprincipled men to carry on government alone.… The Constitution says, 'Congress shall have power to declare war.'… I agree to this. I endorse it. I swear to help carry it through.… What then, am I less a Christian? Is not war a Christian service? Is it not perfectly Christian to murder hundreds of thousands of fellow human beings; to ravish defenceless females, sack and burn cities, and exact all the other cruelties of war? Out upon these new-fangled scruples! This is the very way to forgive injuries, and love our enemies! If we only do it all in true love, nothing can be more Christian than wholesale murder!"

In another pamphlet, under the title "How Many Does It Take to Metamorphose Wickedness into Righteousness?", he says: "One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder. Two, ten, one hundred men, acting on their own responsibility, must not kill. If they do, it is still murder. But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is no murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many men does it take?

"This is the question. One man may not steal or rob, but a whole nation may. But how many exactly does it take? Why is it that one man, or ten, or a hundred may not break the law of God, but a great many may?"

And here is Ballou's catechism, composed for his flock.

Catechism of Nonresistance²³

Q. Where does the word "nonresistance" come from?

A. From the saying Resist not evil (Matthew 5:39).

Q. What does the word express?

A. A high Christian virtue enjoined by Christ.

Q. Should the word "nonresistance" be taken in its widest sense, as meaning that one should offer no resistance to evil of any kind?

A. No. It must be understood in the exact sense of the Savior's teaching, which is not to repay evil for evil. Evil is to be resisted by every righteous means, but never by evil.

Q. How do we know that Christ enjoined nonresistance in that sense?

A. From the words he spoke when he enjoined it. He said: "Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also."

Q. Of whom was he speaking when he said, "Ye have heard that it hath been said"?

A. Of the patriarchs and the prophets, and of what they said, which is contained in the writings of the Old Testament, which the Jews commonly call the Law and the Prophets.

Q. What commandments did Christ mean by the words "it hath been said"?

A. Those in which Noah, Moses and the other prophets give the right to do personal harm to those who do harm, so as to punish and put down evil deeds.

Q. Give some of these commandments.

A. "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed" (Genesis 9:6).

"He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death.… And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe" (Exodus 21:12, 23-25).

"And he that killeth any man shall surely be put to death." "And if a man cause a blemish in his neighbour; as he hath done, so shall it be done to him." "Breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth" (Leviticus 24:17, 19, 20).

"And the judges shall make diligent inquisition: and, behold, if the witness be a false witness, and hath testified falsely against his brother; then shall ye do unto him, as he had thought to have done unto his brother.… And thine eye shall not pity; but life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" (Deuteronomy 19:18-19, 21).

These are the commandments Jesus is speaking of.

Noah, Moses and the prophets taught that whoever kills, maims or torments his neighbor does evil. To resist such evil and put an end to it, the evildoer must be punished with death, or with maiming, or with some personal torment. Injury must be met with injury, murder with murder, torment with torment, evil with evil. That was the teaching of Noah, Moses and the prophets. But Christ rejects all of it. "I say unto you," it is written in the Gospel, "resist not evil": do not resist injury with injury, but rather bear a second injury from the one who does evil. What was permitted is forbidden. Once we understand what kind of resistance they taught, we know exactly what Christ's nonresistance teaches.

Q. Did the ancients permit injury to be resisted with injury?

A. Yes. But Jesus forbade it. A Christian has no right, in any case whatever, to take the life of a neighbor who does evil, or to do him injury.

Q. May he kill or maim another in self-defense?

A. No.

Q. May he bring a complaint to a court so that the one who injured him will be punished?

A. No. For what he does through others, he really does himself.

Q. May he fight in an army against foreign enemies, or against rebels at home?

A. Certainly not. He may take no part in war or in preparations for war. He may not use deadly weapons. He may not resist injury with injury, whether he is alone or with others, whether he acts himself or through other people.

Q. May he of his own free will choose soldiers for the government, or equip them?

A. He may do none of these things, if he wants to be faithful to the law of Christ.

Q. May he of his own free will give money to help a government that is upheld by military force, by capital punishment, by violence in general?

A. No, unless the money is meant for some particular object that is right in itself, where both the end and the means are good.

Q. May he pay taxes to such a government?

A. No. He must not pay taxes of his own free will, but neither must he resist their collection. A tax imposed by the government is collected whatever the will of those who owe it. It cannot be resisted without resorting to violence oneself; and a Christian may not use violence. He must therefore simply surrender his property to the violent loss inflicted on it by the authorities.

Q. May a Christian vote in elections, or take part in the courts or in government?

A. No. To take part in elections, in the courts or in government is to take part in the violence of government.

Q. What is the chief significance of the teaching of nonresistance?

A. That it alone makes it possible to tear evil out by the root, both from one's own heart and from the heart of one's neighbor. This teaching forbids the very thing by which evil is perpetuated and multiplied in the world. Whoever attacks another and injures him kindles in him a feeling of hatred, the root of all evil. To injure another because he has injured us, supposedly in order to remove the evil, is to repeat the bad deed both on him and on ourselves; it is to beget, or at the least to set free and encourage, the very demon we claim to want to cast out. Satan cannot be cast out by Satan, wrong cannot be cleansed by wrong, and evil cannot be overcome by evil.

True nonresistance is the only real resistance to evil. It bruises the serpent's head. It kills the evil feeling and destroys it utterly.

Q. But even if the idea of the teaching is right, can it be carried out?

A. As surely as any good thing the law of God commands. Good cannot be done in every circumstance without self-denial, privation and suffering, and in the last extremity without the loss of life itself. But whoever values his life more than doing the will of God is already dead to the only true life. Such a man, trying to save his life, will lose it. Besides, wherever nonresistance costs the sacrifice of one life, or of some essential good of life, resistance costs a thousand such sacrifices.

Nonresistance saves; resistance destroys.

It is incomparably safer to act justly than unjustly, to bear an injury than to resist it with violence: safer even with regard to this present life. If no one resisted evil with evil, our world would be a blessed one.

Q. But if only a few people act in this way, what will become of them?

A. Suppose only one man acted this way, and all the rest agreed to crucify him: would it not be more glorious for him to die in the triumph of nonresisting love, praying for his enemies, than to live wearing a Caesar's crown spattered with the blood of the slain? But whether there is one of them or there are thousands, people firmly resolved not to resist evil with evil are far safer from violence than those who rely on violence, whether their neighbors are civilized or savage. The robber, the murderer and the swindler will sooner leave them in peace than those who resist with arms. They that take the sword shall perish with the sword, while those who seek peace, who behave in a friendly and harmless way, who forget and forgive injuries, for the most part enjoy peace, or, if they die, die blessed.

And so, if everyone kept the commandment of nonresistance, there would plainly be neither injury nor crime. If such people were a majority, they would establish a rule of love and goodwill even over those who do injury, never resisting evil with evil, never using violence. If they were a fairly large minority, they would have such a reforming moral effect on society that every cruel punishment would be abolished, and violence and enmity would give way to peace and love. If they were only a small minority, they would rarely suffer anything worse than the world's contempt, while the world, without noticing it and without thanking them for it, would grow steadily wiser and better from their hidden influence. And if, at the very worst, some members of the minority were persecuted to death, those who died for the truth would leave their teaching behind them, already hallowed by their martyrs' blood.

Peace be with all who seek peace, and may all-conquering love be the imperishable inheritance of every soul that willingly submits to the law of Christ:

"Resist not evil by violence."

For fifty years Ballou wrote and published books, chiefly on the question of nonresistance to evil by violence. In these works, admirable for the clearness of their thought and the beauty of their style, the question is examined from every possible side. He establishes that this commandment is binding on every Christian who professes the Bible as the revelation of God. He brings forward all the usual objections to the commandment of nonresistance, from the Old Testament and the New alike (Christ's driving the traders out of the temple, for example), and answers every one. He shows, quite apart from Scripture, the practical good sense of the rule, and sets out all the objections usually made against it and refutes them. One chapter of his work deals with nonresistance to evil in exceptional cases, and there he grants that if there were cases in which nonresistance to evil could not be applied, that would prove the rule unsound altogether. He takes up these exceptional cases one by one and shows that it is precisely in them that the rule is necessary and reasonable. There is no side of the question, for its supporters or for its opponents, that these works leave unexamined. I say all this to show the undoubted interest that such works ought to hold for people who profess Christianity, and to show that Ballou's work ought, one would think, to have been known, and the ideas he expressed either accepted or refuted. Nothing of the kind happened.

The work of the elder Garrison, with his founding of a society of nonresisters and his declaration, convinced me even more than my dealings with the Quakers that the departure of state Christianity from Christ's law of nonresistance to evil by violence was something noticed and pointed out long ago, something people had worked to expose and are still working to expose. Ballou's work confirmed it for me further still. But the fate of Garrison, and still more the fate of Ballou, known to no one in spite of fifty years of stubborn, unbroken work toward one and the same end, confirmed something else for me as well: that there exists some unspoken but firm agreement to pass over every such effort in silence.

Ballou died in August 1890, and an obituary of him appeared in an American journal of Christian leanings (the "Religio-Philosophical Journal," August 23).

This admiring obituary tells us that Ballou was the spiritual leader of a community, that he preached between eight and nine thousand sermons, married a thousand couples and wrote some five hundred articles; but it says not one word about the aim to which he devoted his life. It does not so much as contain the word "nonresistance."

Everything the Quakers have preached for two hundred years, the work of the elder Garrison, the founding of his society and his journal, his declaration, and the whole of Ballou's work: all of it is exactly as though it did not exist and never had.

A striking example of this obscurity of the writings that set out to make nonresistance to evil by violence clear, and to expose those who do not recognize the commandment, is the fate of a book by the Czech Chelčický, which has become known only recently and has still not been printed.

Soon after my book came out in German, I had a letter from a professor at the university in Prague telling me of a work, never printed anywhere, by Petr Chelčický, a Czech of the fifteenth century, called "The Net of Faith." In this work, the professor wrote, Chelčický, some four centuries ago, had expressed the same view of true and false Christianity that I had expressed in "What I Believe." The professor wrote that Chelčický's work was to be published for the first time, in Czech, in the journal of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. Unable to get hold of the work itself, I tried to learn what is known about Chelčický, and I got this information from a German book sent to me by the same Prague professor and from Pypin's history of Czech literature. Here is what Pypin says:

"'The Net of Faith' is the teaching of Christ, which is to draw man up out of the dark depths of the sea of life and its unrighteousness. True faith consists in believing the words of God; but now a time has come when people take the true faith for heresy, and so reason must show what true faith consists in, for anyone who does not know. Darkness has hidden it from people, and they do not recognize the true law of Christ.

"To explain this law, Chelčický points to the original order of Christian society, the order that, he says, is now regarded in the Roman Church as abominable heresy.

"This primitive Church was his own ideal of a social order founded on equality, liberty and brotherhood. Christianity, in Chelčický's view, still holds these foundations within it; society need only return to its pure teaching, and then every other order, the kind that needs kings and popes, would turn out to be superfluous: in all things the one law of love is enough.…

"Historically, Chelčický dates the decline of Christianity from the time of Constantine the Great, whom Pope Sylvester brought into Christianity together with all his pagan ways and pagan life. Constantine in his turn endowed the pope with worldly wealth and power. From then on the two powers constantly helped each other and strove only for outward glory. The doctors and masters and the clergy came to care only for bringing the whole world under their dominion; they armed people against one another for murder and plunder, and destroyed Christianity altogether, in faith and in life. Chelčický rejects outright the right to make war and the death penalty: every soldier, even the 'knight,' is nothing but a man of violence, a villain and a murderer."

The same is said in the German book, with some biographical details and extracts from Chelčický's letters.

Having learned in this way what Chelčický taught, I waited all the more impatiently for "The Net of Faith" to appear in the Academy's journal. But a year went by, then two, then three, and the book did not appear. Only in 1888 did I learn that the printing, once begun, had been stopped. I got hold of the proof sheets of what had been printed and read the book. It is a remarkable book in every respect.

Pypin has given its contents quite accurately. Chelčický's central idea is that Christianity, by joining itself to power under Constantine and going on developing under those conditions, was utterly distorted and ceased to be Christianity. Chelčický gave his work the title "The Net of Faith" because he took as its epigraph the verse of the Gospel about the calling of the disciples to become fishers of men, and then carried the comparison further: "Through his disciples Christ caught the whole world in his net of faith; but the big fish broke through the net and leaped out of it, and through the holes these big fish had made all the rest got away too, so that the net was left almost empty."

The big fish that broke through the net are the rulers, the emperors, popes and kings, who did not give up their power, and so accepted not Christianity but only its mask.

Chelčický teaches what the nonresisting Mennonites and Quakers have taught and still teach, and what was taught in earlier times by the Bogomils and the Paulicians, sects of the medieval Balkans and Asia Minor, and by many others. He teaches that Christianity, which asks of its followers meekness, humility, gentleness, the forgiveness of injuries, the turning of the other cheek when one is struck, and the love of enemies, is incompatible with violence, which is the necessary condition of power.

A Christian, as Chelčický interprets it, not only cannot be a magistrate or a soldier; he cannot take any part in government, he cannot be a merchant, or even a landowner. He can only be either a craftsman or a tiller of the soil.

This book is one of the few books exposing official Christianity that escaped the bonfires. All such books, the ones called heretical, were burned together with their authors, so that very few old writings exposing the apostasy of official Christianity survive, and that makes this book especially interesting.

But interesting as it is, however one looks at it, the book is also one of the most remarkable works of thought, for the depth of what it says, for the wonderful strength and beauty of its popular language, and for its age. And yet for more than four centuries now it has remained unprinted, and it is still unknown to anyone but learned specialists.

One would have thought that all writings of this kind, the Quakers', Garrison's, Ballou's and Chelčický's, which assert and prove on the ground of the Gospel that our world misunderstands the teaching of Christ, would arouse interest, excitement, uproar and argument among shepherds and flock alike.

Writings of this kind, which touch the very essence of Christian teaching, ought, one would think, to have been examined, and either acknowledged to be right or rejected and refuted.

But nothing of the kind happens. The same thing is repeated with every one of these writings. People of the most different views, believers and, what is surprising, unbelieving liberals too, keep the same stubborn silence about them, as though they had agreed on it, and everything people do to make clear the true meaning of Christ's teaching stays unknown or forgotten.

Still more surprising is the obscurity of two works that I also learned of because my book had appeared. One is Dymond's book "On War," first published in London in 1824, and the other is Daniel Musser's "On Nonresistance," written in 1864. The obscurity of these books is especially surprising because, quite apart from their merits, both of them deal less with theory than with the practical application of theory to life, with how Christianity stands toward military service, which is especially important and interesting now that military service is universal.

It may be asked: what is a subject bound to do if he believes that war is incompatible with his religion, but his government demands that he take part in military service?

This, I think, is a question of the most living kind, and one whose answer matters especially now that military service is universal. All people, or the great majority of them, are Christians, and every man is called up for military service. How is a man, as a Christian, to answer that demand? Dymond's answer is this:⁴

"It is his duty, mildly and temperately, yet firmly, to refuse to serve.

"There are some persons, who, without any determinate process of reasoning, appear to conclude that responsibility for national measures attaches solely to those who direct them; that it is the business of governments to consider what is good for the community, and that, in these cases, the duty of the subject is merged in the will of the sovereign. Considerations like these are, I believe, often voluntarily permitted to become opiates of the conscience. 'I have no part,' it is said, 'in the counsels of the government, and am not therefore responsible for its crimes.' We are, indeed, not responsible for the crimes of our rulers, but we are responsible for our own; and the crimes of our rulers are our own, if, whilst we believe them to be crimes, we promote them by our co-operation.… But those who suppose that obedience in all things is required, or that responsibility in political affairs is transferred from the subject to the sovereign, deceive themselves.

"It is to say that we must resign our conduct and our consciences to the will of others, and act wickedly or well, as their good or evil may preponderate, without merit for virtue, or responsibility for crime."

What is remarkable is that this very idea is set out in the instructions that soldiers are made to learn by heart: there it says that only the commanding officer answers for the consequences of his order.

But this is not right. A man cannot rid himself of responsibility for what he does. And that can be seen from the following: "If your commander directs you to kill your neighbour's child, to kill your father or your mother, will you obey? If you will not, there is an end of the argument, for if you may reject the authority of your rulers in one instance, where is the limit to rejection? There is no rational limit but that which is assigned by Christianity, and that is both rational and practicable.

"We think, then, that it is the business of every man, who believes that war is inconsistent with our religion, respectfully, but steadfastly, to refuse to engage in it. Let such as these remember that an honourable and an awful duty is laid upon them. It is upon their fidelity, so far as human agency is concerned, that the cause of peace is suspended. Let them then be willing to avow their opinions and to defend them. Neither let them be contented with words, if more than words, if suffering also, is required.… If you believe that Jesus Christ has prohibited slaughter, let not the opinion or the commands of a world induce you to join in it. By this steady refusal to take any part in violence, the benediction which attaches to those who hear the sayings of God and do them, will rest upon you, and the time will come when even the world will honour you, as contributors to the work of human reformation."

Musser's book is called "Non-Resistance Asserted," or "The Kingdom of Christ and the Kingdom of This World Separated," and it came out in 1864.

It is devoted to the same question, and takes it up on the occasion of the American government's demand for military service from its citizens during the Civil War. And it too bears directly on our own day, since it makes clear how, and on what conditions, people must and can refuse military service. In the introduction the author says:

"It is well known that there are great numbers of people in the United States, who profess to be conscientiously opposed to war. They are mostly called non-resistants, or defenceless Christians; and refuse to defend their country, or take up arms at the call of the Government, and go forth to battle against its enemies. Hitherto this conscientious scruple has been respected by the Government in this country, and those claiming it have been relieved or excused from this service. Since the commencement of the present civil war in the United States, the public mind has been unusually agitated on this subject. It is not unreasonable, that such persons as feel it to be their duty to go forth and endure the hardships of camp life, and imperil health, life and limb, in defence of their country and Government, should feel some jealousy of those who have, with themselves, long enjoyed the protection and benefits of the Government, and yet, in the hour of its need, refuse to share the burden of its defence and protection. Neither is it strange that such a position should be looked upon as most unreasonable and monstrous, and those who hold it be regarded with some suspicion."

"Many able speakers and writers," the author says, "… have raised their voices and pens, to refute the idea of non-resistance, as both unreasonable and unscriptural; and this is quite natural, and in many cases these writers are right: right with regard to those who decline the labors of military service but do not decline the benefits they receive from their governments; but they are not right with regard to the principle of non-resistance itself." First of all the author proves that the rule of nonresistance is binding on a Christian, because the precept is clear and was given by Christ to every Christian in a form that admits of no reinterpretation.

"'Judge ye, whether it is right to obey man rather than God,' said Peter and John." And in exactly the same way, the author says, every man who wishes to be a Christian must regard the demand that he go to war, since Christ has told him: "Resist not evil by violence."

With that the author considers the question of the principle itself settled. But the other question, whether people who do not decline the benefits that come to them from the government's violence have the right to refuse military service, he examines in detail, and he comes to the conclusion that a Christian who follows the law of Christ and will not go to war can no more take part in any of the government's business, in the courts or in elections, and can no more turn in his own affairs to the authorities, the police or the courts. The book goes on to examine the relation of the Old Testament to the New and the meaning of government for those who are not Christians, and it sets out the objections to the teaching of nonresistance and refutes them. The author closes his book with this:

"Christians have no need of government, and so they can neither obey it in anything contrary to the teaching of Christ, nor, still less, take part in it."

"Christ has chosen his disciples out of the world," he says. "They have no promise of temporal good or happiness, but the contrary. Their promise is in the world to come. The spirit which they possess renders them happy and contented in any sphere of life. So long as the world tolerates them, they are contented; but if they will not let them dwell in peace, they flee to another city or place; and so they are true pilgrims and strangers on earth, having no certain abiding-place.… They are well contented that the dead may bury their dead, if they are only permitted to follow Christ."

Whether or not the duty of a Christian with regard to war is rightly defined in these two books, one cannot fail to see how practically important and how pressing it is to settle the question.

There are people (there are hundreds of thousands of Quakers, there are the Mennonites, there are all our Dukhobors and Molokans, Russian peasant sects that have broken with the Orthodox Church, and there are people who belong to no particular sect at all) who hold that violence, and therefore military service, is incompatible with Christianity; and so every year here in Russia some of the men called up refuse military service on the ground of their religious convictions. What does the government do? Let them go? No. Make them serve and, if they will not, punish them? No. In 1818 the government acted as follows. Here is an extract that the censorship would not pass, and that almost no one in Russia knows, from the diary that N. N. Muravyov-Karsky, later the general who took Kars, kept at Tiflis (now Tbilisi):

Tiflis, October 2, 1818.

"In the morning the commandant told me that five serfs belonging to landowners of Tambov province had recently been sent to Georgia. These men had been given up as soldiers, but will not serve. They have already been flogged with the knout several times and made to run the gauntlet, but they willingly give themselves up to the cruelest torments and to death rather than serve. 'Let us go,' they say, 'and leave us alone; we will not harm anyone. All men are equal, and the Tsar is a man just as we are. Why should we pay him taxes? Why should I put my life in danger to kill in war a man who has done me no wrong? You can cut us to pieces, and we will not change our minds, we will not put on the greatcoat, and we will not eat the ration. Whoever takes pity on us will give us alms; we have never had anything from the Crown and we want nothing from it.' Those are the words of these peasants, who assure us that there are a great many like them in Russia. They were taken before the Committee of Ministers four times, and in the end it was decided to lay the matter before the Tsar, who ordered them sent to Georgia for correction, and instructed the commander-in-chief to report to him every month on the gradual progress made in bringing these peasants round to right thinking."

How this correction ended is not known, just as the whole episode, kept in the deepest secrecy, is not known.

That is how the government acted seventy-five years ago, and that is how it acted in a great many cases, always carefully hidden from the people. And that is how it acts now, except with the German Mennonites living in the province of Kherson, whose refusal of military service is accepted as valid, and who are made to serve out their terms of service working in the forestry service.

In the recent cases of refusal of military service on religious grounds by people other than Mennonites, the authorities have acted in this way.

First they apply every means of violence in use in our time to "correct" those who refuse and bring them "round to right thinking," and they conduct these cases in the greatest secrecy. I know that in the case of one man who refused in Moscow in 1884, two months after his refusal a huge, fat file had been compiled, and it was kept in the ministry under the strictest secrecy.

It usually begins with the man who refuses being sent to the priests, and the priests, to their shame, always exhort him. But since exhorting a man in the name of Christ to renounce Christ mostly comes to nothing, after the clergy's exhortations he is sent to the gendarmes. The gendarmes, usually finding nothing political, send him back, and then he is sent to the learned men, to the doctors, and to the madhouse. Through all these transfers the man who refuses, deprived of his liberty, suffers every kind of humiliation and hardship, like a convicted criminal. (This happened in four cases.) The doctors let him out of the madhouse, and then all sorts of secret and cunning measures begin, so as neither to let him go, which would encourage others to refuse as he did, nor to leave him among the soldiers, lest the soldiers too learn from him that their call-up to military service is not done according to the law of God, as they are assured, but against it.

The most convenient thing for the government would be to execute the man who refuses: to beat him to death with sticks, or do away with him in some other way, as used to be done. But to execute a man openly for being faithful to the teaching that we ourselves profess is impossible. And to leave alone a man who refuses to obey is impossible too. And so the government tries either to make this man renounce Christ by suffering, or to get rid of him somehow without being noticed, without executing him openly, and to hide somehow both what he did and the man himself from other people. And so all kinds of tricks and dodges and torments of this man begin. Either they send him off to the borderlands; or they provoke him into disobedience and then try him for a breach of discipline and lock him up in prison or in a disciplinary battalion, where, hidden from everyone, they can torment him freely; or they declare him insane and lock him up in a madhouse. In this way one man was sent to Tashkent, that is, ostensibly transferred to the Tashkent forces; another to Omsk; a third was tried for disobedience and locked up in prison; a fourth in a madhouse.

Everywhere the same thing is repeated. Not only the government but the majority of liberal, freethinking people, as though they had agreed on it, carefully turn away from everything that has been said, written and done, and is being done, to expose the incompatibility of violence, in its most terrible, crude and glaring form, the form of soldiering, that is, of readiness to kill anyone at all, with the teaching, not only of Christianity, but even of the humanity that our society supposedly professes.

Thus the information I received, about how far the true meaning of Christ's teaching has long since been made clear and is being made clearer and clearer, and about how the higher, ruling classes, not only in Russia but in Europe and America, treat this making clear and this fulfilling of the teaching, convinced me that in these ruling classes there is a deliberate hostility to true Christianity, which shows itself chiefly in silence about every sign of it.

Translator's note. Tolstoy gives the Declaration in his own Russian, abridged and in places paraphrased. It is printed here in Garrison's own words, as he published it in his "Selections" (Boston, 1852), keeping only the passages Tolstoy kept, in Tolstoy's order; "…" marks his cuts. Adin Ballou's two articles below are given in Ballou's English as Leo Wiener recovered it for his translation of 1904 (both pieces, Wiener notes, are articles in "The Non-Resistant," published at Hopedale in 1845); where Tolstoy compresses or adds, his version is translated; his parenthetical remarks inside them are his own. ↩
My translation is a free one, with some omissions. ↩
Translator's note. No English text of this catechism is known; Leo Wiener looked for it among Ballou's writings in and around Boston in 1904 and could not find it. It is translated here from Tolstoy's Russian, with the Bible verses in the King James wording. ↩
Translator's note. Tolstoy gives Dymond and Musser in his own Russian. Both are printed here in their own English, cut to what Tolstoy kept, in his order; "…" marks his cuts. Dymond's passage is from his "Inquiry into the Accordancy of War with the Principles of Christianity," the book Tolstoy calls "On War"; Musser's book, which Leo Wiener searched for in 1904 and could not find, was printed at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in 1864 and survives. Where Tolstoy paraphrases or changes the sense (Dymond's examples of the neighbor's child and the father and mother are Tolstoy's; Dymond's are setting fire to a neighbor's property and throwing him over a precipice), his version is translated. ↩

Chapter 2: Believers and Unbelievers on Nonresistance to Evil by Violence

The criticisms of my book left me with the same impression: of a wish to hide, to pass over in silence, what I had tried to say in it.

When the book came out it was, as I had expected, banned, and by law it should have been burned. But instead of being burned it was carried off by the officials themselves, and it spread in a great many handwritten and lithographed copies, and in translations printed abroad.

And very soon criticisms of the book appeared, from the clergy and from laymen too, which the government not only permitted but encouraged. Indeed, the refutation of a book that was supposed to be unknown to anyone was even set as a subject for theological dissertations in the academies.

The criticisms of my book, Russian and foreign alike, fall into two main kinds: the religious criticisms, by people who consider themselves believers, and the secular criticisms, by freethinkers.

I will begin with the first.

In my book I accuse the teachers of the Church of teaching against the commandments of Christ, which are clearly and definitely expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, and above all against the commandment of nonresistance to evil, and of robbing Christ's teaching, in this way, of all its meaning. The teachers of the Church recognize the Sermon on the Mount, with its commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence, as divine revelation. And so, once they had found it necessary to write about my book, it would seem that they had first of all to answer this, the chief point of the accusation, and to say plainly whether or not they hold the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount and the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence binding on a Christian. And they had to answer not in the usual way, that is, by saying that although on the one hand it cannot exactly be denied, on the other hand, again, it cannot be affirmed, all the more so since, and so on, but in the same way the question is put in my book. Did Christ really require his disciples to do what he taught in the Sermon on the Mount? And so can a Christian, while remaining a Christian, or can he not, go to law, taking part in the courts, condemning people or seeking protection there by force? Can a Christian, while remaining a Christian, or can he not, take part in government, using violence against his neighbors? And the chief question of all, the one that now faces everyone with universal military service: can a Christian, while remaining a Christian, or can he not, against Christ's direct command, make promises about his future conduct that run directly against the teaching, and, by taking part in military service, prepare himself to kill people, or kill them?

The questions were put clearly and directly, and one would have thought they had to be answered clearly and directly. But nothing of the kind was done in any of the criticisms of my book, just as nothing of the kind was ever done in reply to all those charges that the teachers of the Church have departed from the law of Christ, of which history has been full since the time of Constantine.

A very great deal was said, on the occasion of my book, about how wrongly I interpret this or that passage of the Gospel, and about how I err in not recognizing the Trinity, the Redemption and the immortality of the soul. A very great deal was said, but not the one thing that for every Christian is the chief and essential question of life: how to reconcile the teaching of forgiveness, humility, self-denial and love for all, for neighbors and enemies alike, which is so clearly expressed in the words of the teacher and in the heart of each of us, with the demand for military violence against people of our own nation or another.

Everything that can be called a semblance of an answer to this question can be brought under the following five heads. I have tried to collect all I could on this score, not only from the criticisms of my book but from everything written on the subject in earlier times as well.

The first and crudest way of answering consists in the bold assertion that violence does not contradict the teaching of Christ, that it is permitted and even prescribed for Christians by the Old Testament and the New.

Assertions of this kind come for the most part from people who stand on the higher rungs of the government or Church hierarchy, and who are therefore quite sure that nobody will dare to contradict them, and that if anybody does, they will not hear it. These people, stupefied by power, have for the most part so far lost any idea of what that Christianity is in whose name they hold their positions, that everything Christian in Christianity looks to them like sectarianism, while everything in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the New that can be twisted into an anti-Christian, pagan sense they take to be the foundation of Christianity. In support of their assertion that Christianity is not opposed to violence, these people usually bring forward, with the greatest boldness, the most offensive passages of the Old and New Testaments, interpreting them in the most un-Christian way: the punishment of Ananias and Sapphira, the punishment of Simon Magus, and so on. They cite every word of Christ that can be twisted into a justification of cruelty: the driving of the traders out of the temple; "It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom … than for that city"; and so on.

As these people see it, a Christian government is not in the least obliged to be guided by the spirit of humility, of forgiving injuries and of loving enemies.

To refute such an assertion is useless, because the people who make it refute themselves, or rather cut themselves off from Christ, by inventing a Christ and a Christianity of their own in place of the one in whose name the Church exists, and with it the position they hold in the Church. If everyone knew that the Church preaches a Christ who executes, who does not forgive and who makes war, nobody would believe in that Church, and there would be no one left to prove what it sets out to prove.

The second way, somewhat less crude, consists in asserting that although Christ did indeed teach us to turn the other cheek and give up our coat, and although this is a very lofty moral demand, still… there are evildoers in the world, and if these evildoers are not subdued by force, the whole world will perish, and the good with it. I first came across this argument in St. John Chrysostom, and I show how unsound it is in my book "What I Believe."

The argument is groundless. First, if we allow ourselves to set any people apart as evildoers (to call our brother "Raca," as Christ forbids in Matthew 5:22), we destroy by that very act the whole meaning of Christian teaching, by which we are all equal and brothers, as sons of one Father in heaven. Second, even if God had permitted violence to be used against evildoers, there is no way to find a sure and certain definition by which an evildoer could be told without fail from one who is not; and so every man and every society of men would come to regard one another as evildoers, which is just what happens now. Third, even if it were possible to tell evildoers from the rest without any doubt, it would still be impossible in a Christian society to execute these evildoers, or maim them, or lock them up in prisons, because in a Christian society there would be no one to do it, since every Christian, as a Christian, is commanded to do no violence to the evildoer.

The third way of answering, subtler still than the one before, consists in asserting that although the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence is binding on a Christian when the evil is aimed at him personally, it ceases to be binding when the evil is aimed at his neighbors; and that then a Christian is not only not obliged to keep the commandment but is obliged, against the commandment, to use violence against those who use violence, in order to defend his neighbors.

This assertion is entirely arbitrary, and nothing in the whole of Christ's teaching can be found to confirm such an interpretation. Such an interpretation is not merely a limitation of the commandment but its outright denial and abolition. If everyone has the right to use violence when another is threatened with danger, then the question of using violence comes down to the question of defining what is to be considered a danger to another. And if my private judgment decides what is a danger to another, then there is no case of violence that could not be explained by a danger threatening someone else. They executed and burned witches, they executed aristocrats and Girondins, and they executed the enemies of these too, because those in power considered them dangerous to the people.

If this important limitation, which cuts the meaning of the commandment off at the root, had been part of Christ's thought, it would have had to be mentioned somewhere. But in the whole of the teacher's preaching and life, not only is no such limitation made; on the contrary, a warning is given against exactly this false and tempting limitation, which destroys the commandment. The error and the impossibility of such a limitation are shown with special vividness in the Gospel, in the story of the reasoning of Caiaphas, who made precisely this limitation. He granted that it was not good to put the innocent Jesus to death, but he saw in him a danger, not to himself but to the whole people, and so he said: "It is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not." And the denial of such a limitation is expressed more vividly still in the words spoken to Peter when he tried to resist by violence the evil aimed at Jesus (Matthew 26:52). Peter was defending not himself but his beloved and divine teacher. And Christ forbade him outright, telling him that they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.

Besides, the justification of violence used against one neighbor to defend another neighbor from worse violence is always false, because when violence is used against an evil not yet done, one can never know which evil will be the greater, the evil of my violence or the evil I want to defend against. We execute a criminal, ridding society of him, and we cannot possibly know whether the criminal of yesterday would not have changed tomorrow, and whether our execution is not useless cruelty. We lock up a member of society whom we consider dangerous, but from tomorrow on that man might have ceased to be dangerous, and his imprisonment is in vain. I see a robber whom I know pursuing a girl; I have a gun in my hand; I kill the robber and save the girl. But the robber's death or wounding has certainly happened, while what would have happened if it had not, I do not know. And what an enormous amount of evil must come, as it does come, from people claiming for themselves the right to prevent an evil that might happen. Ninety-nine hundredths of the world's evil, from the Inquisition to dynamite bombs, and the executions and sufferings of tens of thousands of so-called political criminals, rest on this reasoning.

The fourth answer to the question of how a Christian ought to treat Christ's commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence, more refined still, consists in asserting that they do not deny the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence but recognize it like any other; only they do not ascribe to it any special, exclusive importance, as the sectarians do. To treat this commandment as an unalterable condition of Christian life, as Garrison, Ballou, Dymond, the Quakers, the Mennonites and the Shakers (the celibate American sect that held all its property in common) do, and as the Moravian Brethren, the Waldensians, the Albigensians, the Bogomils and the Paulicians did, is one-sided sectarianism. This commandment has neither more nor less importance than all the others, and a man who out of weakness breaks any commandment whatever, the commandment of nonresistance among them, does not cease to be a Christian, provided that his faith is right.

This dodge is very clever, and many people who wish to be deceived are easily deceived by it. The dodge consists in turning a direct, conscious denial of the commandment into an occasional breach of it. But one need only compare how the teachers of the Church treat this commandment and how they treat the others they really do recognize to be convinced that their attitude to the commandments they recognize and their attitude to this one are entirely different.

The commandment against fornication they really do recognize, and so they never, in any case, admit that fornication is not an evil. Church preachers never point to cases in which the commandment against fornication ought to be broken, and they always teach that one must avoid the occasions of temptation that lead to fornication. Not so with the commandment of nonresistance. Every church preacher knows cases in which this commandment may be broken. And that is how they teach people. And not only do they not teach people to avoid the occasions of this temptation, the chief of which is the oath; they administer it themselves. Church preachers never, in any case, preach the breaking of any other commandment. But of the commandment of nonresistance they teach outright that this prohibition must not be taken too literally; that not only need the commandment not always be kept, but that there are conditions and situations in which one must do the direct opposite, that is, judge, make war, execute. Thus, on the occasion of the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence, what is preached in most cases is how not to keep it. To keep this commandment, they say, is very hard and belongs only to perfection. But how could it not be hard, when breaking it is not only not forbidden but positively encouraged, when courts, prisons, cannon, guns, armies and battles are openly blessed?

It is not true, then, that church preachers recognize this commandment on a level with the other commandments. Church preachers simply do not recognize it, and only because they do not dare to confess it do they try to hide that they do not recognize it.

Such is the fourth way of answering.

The fifth way, the subtlest, the most widely used and the most powerful, consists in evading an answer: in pretending that the question was settled by somebody long, long ago, quite clearly and satisfactorily, and that it is not worth talking about.

This way is used by all the more or less cultivated religious writers, that is, by those who feel themselves bound by the laws of logic. They know that the contradiction between the teaching of Christ, which we profess in words, and the whole order of our life cannot be untangled with words, and that touching it can only make it more obvious still. And so, with more or less skill, they pretend that the question of reconciling Christianity with violence has already been settled, or does not exist at all, and they walk around it.⁵

Most of the clerical critics of my book use this method. I could cite dozens of such criticisms in which, without exception, the same thing is repeated: everything is discussed except what makes up the chief subject of the book. As a characteristic example of such criticisms I will take an article by Farrar, the famous and refined English writer and preacher, a great master, like many learned theologians, of evasions and silences. The article was printed in the American journal "The Forum" for October 1888.

After conscientiously giving a short account of the contents of my book, Farrar says:⁶

"Tolstoy came to the conclusion that a coarse deceit had been palmed upon the world when the words of Christ, 'Resist not evil,' or 'him that is evil,' were held by civil society to be compatible with war, courts of justice, capital punishment, divorce, oaths, national prejudice, and indeed with most of the institutions of civil and social life. He now believes that the kingdom of God would come if all men kept these five commandments of Christ, viz.: 1. Live in peace with all men. 2. Be pure. 3. Take no oaths. 4. Never resist evil. 5. Renounce national distinctions."

"Tolstoy," he says, "rejects the divine inspiration of the Old Testament and of the Epistles; he rejects all the dogmas of the Church, that of the Trinity, that of the Atonement, that of the descent of the Holy Ghost, that of the priesthood, and recognizes only the words and commandments of Christ." "But is this interpretation of Christ a true one?" he says. "Are all men bound to act as Tolstoy teaches, that is, to fulfil the five commandments of Christ?"

One fully expects that to this essential question, the only one that could have moved a man to write an article about the book, he will say either that this interpretation of Christ's teaching is true and must be followed, or that it is false, and will prove why, and will give another, correct interpretation of the words I interpret wrongly. But nothing of the kind is done. Farrar only expresses his "belief" that, "though actuated by the noblest sincerity, Tolstoy has been misled by partial and one-sided interpretations of the meaning of the Gospel and the mind and will of Christ."

What this error consists in is not explained; all he says is: "To enter into the proof of this is impossible in this article, for I have already exceeded the space at my command."

And with an easy mind he concludes:

"Meanwhile the reader who feels troubled lest it should be his duty also to forsake all the conditions of his life, and to take up the position and work of a common laborer, may rest for the present on the principle, Securus judicat orbis terrarum. With few and rare exceptions," he goes on, "the whole of Christendom, from the days of the apostles down to our own, has come to the firm conclusion that it was the object of Christ to lay down great eternal principles, but not to disturb the bases and revolutionize the institutions of all human society, which themselves rest on divine sanctions as well as on inevitable conditions. Were it my object to prove how untenable is the doctrine of communism, based by Tolstoy upon the divine paradoxes (sic), which can be interpreted on only historical principles in accordance with the whole method of the teaching of Jesus, it would require an ampler canvas than I have here at my disposal."

What a pity, he has no room! And it is a strange thing: for fifteen centuries now nobody has had room to prove that Christ, whom we profess, said something quite different from what he said. And they could prove it, if they wanted to. Though, then again, there is no point in proving what everybody knows. It is enough to say: "Securus judicat orbis terrarum."

And such, without exception, are all the criticisms by believers who are cultivated, and who therefore understand the danger of their position. The one way out of it for them is the hope that by using the authority of the Church, of antiquity, of sanctity, they can confuse the reader and turn him away from the thought of reading the Gospel himself and thinking the question through with his own mind. And it works.

For who, indeed, would ever imagine that everything repeated with such confidence and solemnity from age to age by all these archdeacons, bishops, archbishops, most holy synods and popes is a vile lie and a slander they bring against Christ in order to secure the money they need for a sweet life on other people's backs? A lie and a slander so obvious, especially now, that the only way to keep it going is to browbeat people with their own confidence, their own shamelessness.

It is just what has been happening these last years at the recruiting boards. At a table, behind the zertsalo, the three-sided emblem of the law that stands in every Russian government office, under a full-length portrait of the emperor, sit old, important officials in their decorations, in the places of honor, chatting freely and easily, writing, giving orders, calling out names. Beside them, wearing a pectoral cross and a silk cassock, his gray hair spread out over his stole, stands a venerable old priest at a lectern, on which lies a gold cross and a Gospel bound in gold.

They call out: "Ivan Petrov." A young man comes forward, badly and shabbily dressed, frightened, the muscles of his face trembling, his eyes shining and darting about, and in a broken voice, almost in a whisper, he says: "I… by the law… I, as a Christian… I can't…"

"What's he mumbling?" asks the chairman impatiently, raising his head from his book, screwing up his eyes and listening.

"Speak up!" the colonel with the shining epaulettes shouts at him.

"I… I… as a Christian…"

And at last it comes out that the young man is refusing military service because he is a Christian.

"Don't talk nonsense. Stand him under the measure. Doctor, be so good as to measure him. Fit?"

"Fit."

"Father, administer the oath."

Nobody is the least bit troubled; nobody even pays attention to what this frightened, pitiful young man is babbling. "They all babble something or other, and we have no time, we have so many more to take in."

The recruit wants to say something more: "It's against the law of Christ."

"Go on, go on, we know without your help what's according to the law and what isn't; you just get along. Father, talk some sense into him. Next: Vasily Nikitin."

And the trembling young man is led away. And would it ever occur to anyone, to the guards, or to Vasily Nikitin as he is brought in, or to any of those who watched the scene from the side, that those few unclear words of the young man's, at once hushed up by the authorities, hold the truth, while the loud, solemnly delivered speeches of the self-assured, calm officials and the priest are a lie, a deception?

The same impression is made not only by Farrar's articles but by all the solemn sermons, articles and books that appear from every side the moment some truth shows itself anywhere that exposes the reigning lie. At once there begin long, clever, elegant, solemn discussions or writings about questions closely touching the subject, with an artful silence about the subject itself.

This is the fifth and most effective way of getting rid of the contradiction in which church Christianity has placed itself by professing Christ in words while denying his teaching in life and teaching people to do the same.

Those who justify themselves in the first way, asserting bluntly and crudely that Christ permitted violence, wars and killing, cut themselves off from the teaching of Christ. Those who defend themselves in the second, third and fourth ways get themselves tangled up, and it is easy to convict them of their untruth. But these last, who do not reason, who do not deign to reason, but hide behind their own grandeur and pretend that all this was settled long ago by them or by somebody else and is no longer open to any doubt: these seem invulnerable, and they will be invulnerable as long as people remain under the hypnotic suggestion that governments and churches induce in them, and do not shake it off.

That is how the clergy, that is, those who profess faith in Christ, treated my book. And they could not have treated it otherwise. They are bound by the contradiction they live in, faith in the divinity of the teacher and disbelief in his plainest words, and they have to wriggle out of it somehow; and so one could not expect from them free judgments about the very heart of the question, about the change in people's lives that follows from applying Christ's teaching to the existing order. Judgments of that kind I expected from the secular, freethinking critics, who are not bound to Christ's teaching in any way and can look at it freely. I expected the freethinking writers to look at Christ not only as the founder of a religion of worship and personal salvation (as the churchmen understand him), but also, to put it in their own language, as a reformer who destroys the old foundations of life and gives new ones, a reformer whose reform has not yet been accomplished but is still going on to this day.

That view of Christ and his teaching follows from my book. But to my surprise, among the great many criticisms of my book that appeared, there was not one, Russian or foreign, that treated the subject from the side from which the book sets it out, that is, that looked at Christ's teaching as a philosophical, moral and social teaching (to use the language of scientific people once again). There was not a single criticism that did.

The Russian secular critics took my book to mean that its whole content comes down to nonresistance to evil, and took the teaching of nonresistance to evil itself to mean (probably because that made it easier to argue against) that it forbids every kind of struggle against evil. And having understood it so, the Russian secular critics fell upon this teaching in irritation, and for several years proved very successfully that Christ's teaching is wrong, since it forbids us to resist evil. Their refutations of this supposed teaching of Christ were all the more successful because they knew beforehand that their arguments could be neither refuted nor corrected, since the censorship, having not let the book through, did not let through articles in its defense either.

What is remarkable here is that in our country, where one cannot say a word about Holy Scripture without the censorship forbidding it, for several years every journal distorted, criticized, condemned and ridiculed a commandment of Christ expressed directly and exactly (Matthew 5:39).

The Russian secular critics, plainly not knowing anything of all that had been done to work out the question of nonresistance to evil, and sometimes even seeming to suppose that I had personally invented the rule of nonresistance to evil by violence, attacked the very idea. They refuted it and distorted it, and, putting forward with great heat arguments that had long, long ago been examined from every side and refuted, they proved that a man is absolutely bound to defend (by violence) all the injured and oppressed, and that the teaching of nonresistance to evil by violence is therefore an immoral teaching.

To all the Russian critics the whole meaning of Christ's preaching seemed to lie only in this: that, as if to spite them, it hinders a certain activity directed against whatever they regard as evil at the moment. And so it turned out that the principle of nonresistance to evil by violence was attacked by two opposite camps: by the conservatives, because the principle hindered their activity of resisting the evil done by the revolutionaries, their persecutions and executions; and by the revolutionaries, because the principle hindered resistance to the evil done by the conservatives, and their overthrow. The conservatives were indignant that the teaching of nonresistance to evil by violence hinders the vigorous suppression of the revolutionary elements, which may destroy the people's well-being; the revolutionaries were indignant that the teaching of nonresistance to evil by violence hinders the overthrow of the conservatives, who are destroying the people's well-being. What is remarkable here is that the revolutionaries attacked the principle of nonresistance to evil by violence even though it is the most terrible and dangerous of all principles for every despotism, since ever since the world began, every violence, from the Inquisition to the Shlisselburg Fortress, where the tsars keep their political prisoners, has been founded and is founded on the opposite principle, the necessity of resisting evil by violence.

Besides this, the Russian critics also pointed out that applying the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence to life would turn mankind aside from the road of civilization along which it is traveling. And the road of civilization along which European mankind is traveling is, in their opinion, the very one that all mankind ought always to travel.

That was the main character of the Russian critics.

The foreign critics started from the same premises, but their discussions of my book differed somewhat from those of the Russian critics, not only in being less irritable and more cultivated, but in substance as well.

Discussing my book, and the Gospel teaching in general as it is expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, the foreign critics asserted that such a teaching is not really Christian (Christian teaching, in their opinion, is Catholicism and Protestantism), and that the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount is merely a string of very charming, impractical dreams of "the charming doctor" (du charmant docteur), as Renan puts it, fit for the naive and half-savage people of Galilee who lived eighteen hundred years ago, and for half-savage Russian peasants, Sutaev and Bondarev, and for the Russian mystic Tolstoy, but in no way applicable to the high level of European culture.

The foreign secular critics, in a delicate manner and without offending me, tried to let me feel that my belief that mankind can be guided by so naive a teaching as the Sermon on the Mount comes partly from my ignorance: my ignorance of history, and of all the vain attempts that have been made in history to carry the principles of the Sermon on the Mount into life and that came to nothing; and partly from my failure to understand the full significance of the high culture on which European mankind now stands, with its Krupp guns, its smokeless powder, its colonization of Africa, its government of Ireland, its parliaments, journalism, strikes, constitutions and Eiffel Tower.

That is how Vogüé wrote, and Leroy-Beaulieu, and Matthew Arnold, and the American writer Savage, and Ingersoll, the popular American freethinking preacher, and many others.

"Christ's teaching will not do, because it does not fit our industrial age," Ingersoll says naively, and in saying so he expresses with perfect precision and naivety exactly what the refined, educated people of our time think of Christ's teaching. The teaching will not do for our industrial age, exactly as though the existence of an industrial age were something sacred that must not and cannot be changed. It is as if drunkards, given advice on how to bring themselves to a sober state, were to reply that the advice is out of place in their alcoholic state.

The arguments of all the secular writers, Russian and foreign alike, however different their tone and their manner of argument, all come down in essence to one and the same strange misunderstanding: that Christ's teaching, one of whose consequences is nonresistance to evil by violence, is unsuitable for us because it requires a change in our life.

Christ's teaching is unsuitable because if it were carried out our life could not go on. In other words: if we began to live well, as Christ taught us, we could not go on living badly, as we live and are used to living. As for the question of nonresistance to evil by violence, not only is it not discussed: the mere mention that Christ's teaching includes the demand of nonresistance to evil by violence is already taken as sufficient proof that the whole teaching cannot be applied.

And yet, one would think, it is necessary to point to at least some solution of this question, since it lies at the root of almost all the affairs that occupy us.

For the question is this: how are conflicts between people to be resolved, when some people consider evil what others consider good, and the other way round? And so to hold that evil is what I consider evil, although my opponent considers it good, is no answer. There can be only two answers: either to find a true and indisputable criterion of what evil is, or not to resist evil by violence.

The first way out has been tried since the beginning of historical times, and, as we all know, it has not so far led to any success.

The second answer, not to resist by violence what we consider evil until we have found a common criterion: this answer was proposed by Christ.

One may find the answer Christ gave wrong; one may put forward another and better one in its place, by finding a criterion that would define evil for everyone, without doubt and at once; one may simply fail to be aware of the essence of the question, as savage peoples are not aware of it. But one cannot, as the learned critics of Christian teaching do, pretend that there is no question at all, or that granting to certain persons or assemblies (least of all when those people are ourselves) the right to define evil and resist it by violence settles the question. For we all know that such a grant does not settle the question in the least, since there are always people who do not grant this right to those persons or assemblies.

And it is precisely this assumption, that what seems evil to us is evil, or else a complete failure to understand the question, that underlies the secular critics' judgments of Christian teaching. And so the judgments of my book, by the critics of the Church and the secular critics alike, showed me that most people simply do not understand, not only Christ's teaching itself, but even the questions to which it is the answer.

I know of only one piece, not a criticism in the strict sense of the word but an article treating the same subject with my book in view, that departs a little from this general rule. It is Troitsky's pamphlet "The Sermon on the Mount" (Kazan). The author plainly recognizes the teaching of Christ in its true meaning. He says that the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence means just what it says, and the same of the commandment on swearing. He does not deny the meaning of Christ's teaching, as others do, but unfortunately he does not draw from this recognition the inevitable conclusions that force themselves on us in our life when Christ's teaching is understood in this way. If one must not resist evil by violence, and must not swear, then everyone naturally asks: what about military service? The oath? And this is the question the author does not answer, and it must be answered. And if it cannot be answered, it is better not to speak at all, because silence breeds error. ↩
Translator's note. Farrar's article, "Count Leo Tolstoi," is printed here in his own words from "The Forum" (New York, October 1888), keeping only what Tolstoy kept; where Tolstoy compresses or rewords (the list of rejected dogmas, the question that follows it), his version is translated, and "(sic)" is Tolstoy's. "Securus judicat orbis terrarum," "the judgment of the whole world is secure," is a sentence of St. Augustine's against the Donatists: what the Church throughout the world has settled needs no further argument. ↩

Chapter 3: How Believers Misunderstand Christianity

And so both the information that reached me after my book came out, about how the Christian teaching has been understood without a break, and is understood now, by a minority of people in its direct and true sense, and the criticisms of the book, church and secular alike, which deny that the teaching of Christ can be understood in its direct sense, convinced me of this: that while on the one side, for the minority, the true understanding of this teaching never ceased but grew clearer and clearer, on the other side, for the majority, its meaning grew darker and darker, until at last it reached such a degree of darkness that people now simply do not understand the plainest propositions of the Gospel, though they are expressed in the plainest words.

In our time the light of this teaching has already reached into all the darkest corners of human consciousness; what Christ spoke in the ear, as he said, is now shouted from the housetops; the teaching is entering every side of human life, the family, the economic, the civil, the political and the international. In such a time this failure to understand the teaching of Christ in its true, simple and direct sense would be inexplicable if there were not causes for it.

One of these causes is that believers and unbelievers alike are firmly convinced that they understood the teaching of Christ long ago, and understood it so fully, so certainly and so finally, that it cannot possibly have any meaning but the one they give it. The reason for this lies in how long a false understanding of it, and therefore a failure to understand it, has been handed down.

The strongest stream of water cannot add a single drop to a vessel that is already full.

The most complicated matters can be explained to the slowest man, if he has not yet formed any idea of them; but the simplest thing cannot be explained to the cleverest man, if he is firmly convinced that he already knows, and knows beyond any doubt, what is being put before him.

The Christian teaching appears to the people of our world as exactly such a teaching: one known long ago, known beyond doubt to everyone down to its smallest details, and impossible to understand in any other way than the way it is understood.

Christianity is now understood by those who profess the church teachings as a supernatural, miraculous revelation of everything set down in the Creed. Unbelievers understand it as a manifestation of mankind's need to believe in the supernatural, a need mankind has outlived: a historical phenomenon that found its full expression in Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Protestantism and has no living meaning for us any longer. For believers the meaning of the teaching is hidden by the Church; for unbelievers, by science.

I will speak first of the believers.

Eighteen hundred years ago, in the midst of the pagan Roman world, there appeared a strange new teaching, unlike any that had gone before, which was ascribed to a man, Christ.

This new teaching was entirely new, in its form and in its content alike, both for the Jewish world in which it arose and above all for the Roman world in which it was preached and spread.

Among the elaborate religious rules of Judaism, where, in Isaiah's words, there was "precept upon precept," and among the laws of Rome, worked out to a high degree of perfection, there appeared a teaching that rejected not only every deity, every fear of the gods and all belief in them, all divination, but every human institution as well, and every need for them.

In place of all the rules of the former faiths, this teaching set forth only a pattern of inner perfection, of truth and love, in the person of Christ, and the consequence of this inner perfection when people attain it: the outer perfection foretold by the prophets, the kingdom of God, in which all people will unlearn enmity, will all be taught of God and united by love, and the lion will lie down with the lamb.

The former laws, religious and civil alike, had threatened punishment for breaking their rules and held out the bait of reward for keeping them. In place of threats and rewards, this teaching drew people to itself only by being the truth. "If any man will know of this teaching, whether it be of God, let him do it" (John 7:17). "If I say the truth, why do ye not believe me? Why seek ye to kill a man that hath told you the truth? Only the truth shall make you free. God must be worshipped in truth alone. The whole teaching will be revealed and made plain by the spirit of truth. Do what I say, and ye shall know whether what I say is true" (John 8).

No proofs of the teaching were offered except the truth, except the agreement of the teaching with the truth. The whole teaching consisted in knowing the truth and following it, in grasping more and more of the truth and coming nearer and nearer to it in the deeds of one's life.

By this teaching there are no acts that can justify a man and make him righteous. There is only a pattern of truth that draws hearts to itself: for inner perfection, in the person of Christ; for outer perfection, in the coming of the kingdom of God. The teaching is fulfilled only in moving along the path it points out, in drawing nearer to inner perfection, which is the imitation of Christ, and to outer perfection, which is the establishment of the kingdom of God. A man's greater or lesser good depends, by this teaching, not on the degree of perfection he has reached but on how much his movement quickens or slows.

By this teaching the movement toward perfection of Zacchaeus the publican, of the harlot, of the thief on the cross, is a greater good than the motionless righteousness of the Pharisee. The one sheep that went astray is dearer than the ninety and nine that did not. The prodigal son, the coin that was lost and found again, are dearer and more beloved by God than those that were never lost.

By this teaching every condition is only a certain step on the way to an inner and outer perfection that can never be reached, and therefore it has no importance in itself. The good is only in the movement toward perfection; to stop at any condition whatever is to cease from the good.

"Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," and "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." "Rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven." "Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." "Seek ye the kingdom of God, and his righteousness."

The teaching is fulfilled only in unceasing movement: in grasping a higher and ever higher truth, in realizing it more and more fully within oneself through a greater and ever greater love, and outside oneself through a greater and ever greater realization of the kingdom of God.

Plainly, a teaching that appeared in the midst of the Jewish and pagan world could not be accepted by the majority of people, who lived an entirely different life from the one it demanded. And even by those who did accept it, it could not be understood in all its meaning, since it was the direct opposite of all their former views.

Only through a series of misunderstandings, mistakes and one-sided explanations, corrected and filled out by generation after generation, did the meaning of the Christian teaching grow clearer and clearer to people. The Christian view of the world acted upon the Jewish and the pagan, and the pagan and Jewish upon the Christian. And the Christian, being alive, penetrated more and more deeply into the dying Jewish and pagan views, and stood out more and more clearly as it freed itself from the false admixtures laid upon it. People grasped the meaning of Christianity further and further, and realized it more and more in their lives.

The longer mankind lived, the clearer the meaning of Christianity became to it, as it could not and cannot be otherwise with any teaching about life. Each generation corrected the mistakes of the one before it and came nearer and nearer to understanding its true meaning.

That is how it was from the very first times of Christianity. And it was then, from those very first times, that people appeared who began to assert that the meaning they gave the teaching was the one true meaning, and that the proof of it was the supernatural events that confirmed their understanding was right.

This was the chief cause, first of the failure to understand the teaching, and then of its complete distortion.

It was supposed that the teaching of Christ is handed down to people not as any other truth is, but in a special, supernatural way. The truth of an understanding of the teaching was therefore proved not by whether what was handed down agreed with the demands of reason and of the whole of human nature, but by the miraculous manner of its handing down, which served as an unanswerable proof that the understanding was true. This supposition arose from a failure to understand, and its consequence was that understanding became impossible.

It began in the very first times, when the teaching was still so imperfectly and often so wrongly understood, as we can see from the Gospels and the Acts. The less the teaching was understood, the more obscure it seemed, and the more it needed outward proofs of its truth. The proposition that we should not do to others what we would not want done to ourselves had no need to be proved by miracles, and had no need to demand belief, because it is convincing in itself, answering as it does to both the reason and the nature of man. But the proposition that Christ was God had to be proved by miracles that were utterly beyond understanding.

The darker the understanding of Christ's teaching, the more of the miraculous was mixed into it; the more of the miraculous was mixed into it, the further the teaching strayed from its meaning and the darker it grew; and the further it strayed from its meaning and the darker it grew, the more forcefully its infallibility had to be asserted, and the less understandable the teaching became.

From the Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles one can see how, from the very first times, the failure to understand the teaching created the need for proofs by means of the miraculous and the incomprehensible.

According to the book of Acts, it began with the assembly at which the disciples gathered in Jerusalem to settle a question that had arisen: whether or not to baptize the uncircumcised, and what of those who ate meat offered to idols.

The very way the question was put showed that those who debated it did not understand the teaching of Christ, which rejects all outward rites: washings, purifications, fasts, Sabbaths. It is said in so many words: "Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man, but that which cometh out of the heart." And so the question of baptizing the uncircumcised could have arisen only among people who loved their teacher and dimly sensed the greatness of his teaching, but who still understood the teaching itself very unclearly. And so it was.

The less the members of the assembly understood the teaching, the more they needed an outward confirmation of their imperfect understanding. And so, to settle a question whose very framing shows a failure to understand the teaching, there were spoken at this assembly, as the book of Acts describes, for the first time, those terrible words that have done so much harm and were meant to confirm from outside the rightness of certain assertions: "It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us." That is, it was asserted that the rightness of what they had decided was attested by the miraculous share of the Holy Ghost, that is, of God, in the decision. But the assertion that the Holy Ghost, that is, God, spoke through the apostles had in its turn to be proved. And so it became necessary to assert that at Pentecost the Holy Ghost had come down, in the form of tongues of fire, upon those who asserted this. (In the account the descent of the Holy Ghost comes before the council, but the Acts were written long after both.) But the descent of the Holy Ghost had also to be confirmed for those who had not seen the tongues of fire (though it is hard to see why a tongue of fire kindled above a man's head should show that what the man is about to say is undoubted truth). And so still more miracles were needed, healings, raisings from the dead, strikings dead, and all the miracles that fill the Acts and that give such offense, which not only can never convince anyone of the truth of the Christian teaching but can only drive people away from it. The consequence of this way of establishing the truth was that the more these confirmations of truth by stories of miracles were heaped one upon another, the further the teaching itself strayed from its original meaning, and the less understandable it became.

That is how it was from the first times, and that is how it went on, growing steadily stronger, until in our time it arrived, by its own logic, at the dogmas of transubstantiation and of the infallibility of the Pope, or of the bishops, or of Scripture: that is, at something utterly incomprehensible, which has reached the point of nonsense and of the demand for blind faith, not in God, not in Christ, not even in the teaching, but in a person, as in Catholicism, or in persons, as in Orthodoxy, or in a book, as in Protestantism. The wider Christianity spread and the larger the crowd of unprepared people it took in, the less it was understood, the more decisively the infallibility of its understanding was asserted, and the less possible it became to understand the true meaning of the teaching. Already by the time of Constantine the whole understanding of the teaching had been reduced to a summary approved by the secular power, a summary of the disputes that took place at the council: to the Creed, which says, I believe in this, and this, and this, and at the end, in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church, that is, in the infallibility of the persons who call themselves the Church. And so it all came down to this: a man no longer believes in God, or in Christ, as they have revealed themselves to him, but in what the Church tells him to believe.

But the Church is holy; the Church was founded by Christ. God could not leave people to interpret his teaching as they pleased, and so he established the Church. All these propositions are so false and so groundless that one is ashamed to refute them. Nowhere, and by nothing but the churches' own assertion, is it shown that God or Christ ever founded anything like what churchmen mean by the Church. In the Gospel there is a warning against the Church as an outward authority, the most obvious and clear one possible, in the place where it says that Christ's disciples are to call no one teacher and father. But nowhere is anything said about establishing what churchmen call the Church.

The word "church" is used twice in the Gospels: once in the sense of a gathering of people who settle a dispute; the other time in connection with the obscure words about the rock, Peter, and the gates of hell. From these two mentions of the word "church," which means nothing more than a gathering, is derived everything we now mean by the word "Church."

But Christ could not possibly have founded a church, that is, what we now understand by the word, because nothing like the idea of a church as we now know it, with sacraments, a hierarchy and, above all, its claim to infallibility, existed either in Christ's words or in the ideas of the people of that time.

People gave the same name to what took shape later that Christ had used for something else. That gives them no right at all to assert that Christ founded the one true Church.

Besides, if Christ had really founded such an institution as the Church, on which the whole teaching and the whole faith rest, he would probably have declared it so definitely and clearly, and would have given the one true Church, besides stories of miracles of the kind used by every superstition, such marks that there could be no doubt of its truth. Nothing of the kind exists. Instead there were then, and there are now, various institutions, each calling itself the one true Church.

The Catholic catechism says: "The Church is the society of the faithful established by our Lord Jesus Christ, spread over the whole earth, and subject to the authority of the lawful pastors, chiefly our Holy Father the Pope." And by the lawful pastors, pasteurs légitimes, it means a human institution with the Pope at its head, made up of particular persons bound to one another by a particular organization.

The Orthodox catechism says: "The Church is a society founded on earth by Jesus Christ, united into one whole by one divine teaching and by the sacraments, under the government and guidance of a hierarchy established by God." And by a hierarchy established by God it means precisely the Greek hierarchy, made up of such-and-such particular persons, living in such-and-such places.

The Lutheran catechism says: "The Church is holy Christendom, or the assembly of all believers under Christ, their head, in which the Holy Ghost, through the Gospel and the sacraments, offers, imparts and appropriates divine salvation." By this it means that the Catholic Church has gone astray and fallen away, and that the true tradition is kept in Lutheranism.

For Catholics the divine Church coincides with the Roman hierarchy and the Pope. For the Orthodox the divine Church coincides with the institution of the Eastern and Russian hierarchy.⁷

For Lutherans the divine Church coincides with the assembly of people who recognize the Bible and Luther's catechism.

People who belong to one of the existing churches, when they speak of the origin of Christianity, usually use the word "church" in the singular, as if there had been and still were only one church. But this is entirely false. The Church, as an institution asserting that it possesses undoubted truth, appeared only when it was not one but when there were at least two of them.

As long as the believers agreed among themselves and the assembly was one, it had no reason to assert that it was the Church. Only when the believers split into opposing parties, each denying the other, did each side feel the need to assert that it was the true one, and to claim infallibility for itself. The idea of the one Church arose solely from this: when two sides disagreed and quarreled, each called the other a heresy and recognized only its own side as the infallible Church.

If we know that there was a church that decided in the year 51 to receive the uncircumcised, that church came into being only because there was another church, the church of the Judaizers, which decided not to receive them.

If there is now a Catholic Church asserting its infallibility, it is only because there are churches, the Greco-Russian Orthodox and the Lutheran, each asserting its own infallibility and by that very act denying all the other churches. The one Church, then, is only a fantasy, without the slightest trace of reality.

As an actual historical phenomenon there have existed, and there exist, only many assemblies of people, each asserting of itself that it is the one Church founded by Christ and that all the others calling themselves churches are heresies and schisms.

The catechisms of the most widespread churches, the Catholic, the Orthodox and the Lutheran, say so outright.

The Catholic catechism says: "Who are those outside the Church? The infidels, the heretics, the schismatics." The schismatics are the so-called Orthodox. The heretics are the Lutherans. By the Catholic catechism, then, only the Catholics are in the Church.

The so-called Orthodox catechism says: By the one Church of Christ is meant only the Orthodox, which remains in full agreement with the universal Church. As for the Roman Church and the other confessions (the Lutherans and the rest it does not even call churches), they cannot be counted as part of the one true Church, since they have separated themselves from it.

By this definition the Catholics and the Lutherans are outside the Church, and only the Orthodox are in it.

The Lutheran catechism, for its part, declares: "The true Church is known by this, that in it the Word of God is taught clearly and purely, without human additions, and the sacraments are faithfully kept as Christ instituted them."

By this definition all those who have added anything to the teaching of Christ and the apostles, as the Catholic and Greek churches have done, are outside the Church. And only the Protestants are in it.

The Catholics assert that the Holy Ghost has acted without a break in their hierarchy. The Orthodox assert that the same Holy Ghost has acted without a break in theirs. The Arians asserted that the Holy Ghost acted in their hierarchy (and asserted it with exactly as much right as the reigning churches assert it now). Protestants of every kind, Lutherans, the Reformed, Presbyterians, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Mormons, assert that the Holy Ghost acts only in their own assemblies.

If the Catholics assert that at the division between the Arian and the Greek churches the Holy Ghost left the churches that fell away and stayed in the one true Church, then Protestants of every denomination may assert with exactly the same right that when their church separated from the Catholic, the Holy Ghost left the Catholic Church and passed into the one they recognize. And that is just what they do.

Every church traces its profession back through an unbroken tradition to Christ and the apostles. And it is true that every Christian profession, coming from Christ, must have reached the present generation through some tradition. But that does not prove that any one of these traditions, to the exclusion of all the others, is undoubtedly the true one.

Every twig on a tree goes back without a break to the root. But the fact that every twig comes from one root in no way proves that each twig is the only one. The same is true of the churches. Every church offers exactly the same proofs of its succession, and even of miracles in favor of its truth, as every other. And so there is only one strict and exact definition of what a church is (not as something fanciful that we might wish for, but as what actually is and has been): a church is an assembly of people who assert of themselves that they are in full and sole possession of the truth.

It was these very assemblies, later turned into mighty institutions with the support of the state power, that were the chief obstacles to the spread of the true understanding of Christ's teaching.

It could not have been otherwise. What chiefly set Christ's teaching apart from all earlier teachings was that the people who accepted it strove more and more to understand it and to fulfill it, whereas the teaching of the Church asserted that it had understood and fulfilled it fully and finally.

Strange as it may seem to us, who were brought up in the false teaching that the Church is a Christian institution, and in contempt for heresy, it was only in what was called heresy that there was true movement, that is, true Christianity. And it ceased to be that only when, in these heresies too, it stopped moving and hardened into the same motionless forms of a church.

What, in fact, is a heresy? Read all the theological works that deal with heresies, the subject that is the first to call for a definition, since every theology speaks of the true teaching among the false ones around it, that is, among heresies, and nowhere will you find so much as the semblance of a definition of heresy.

As a specimen of this complete absence of anything resembling a definition of what is meant by the word "heresy," take the judgment on the subject of the learned historian of Christianity E. de Pressensé, in his "Histoire du Dogme" (Paris, 1869), which bears the epigraph "Ubi Christus, ibi Ecclesia," Where Christ is, there is the Church. Here is what he says in his preface (page 3): "I know that our right to describe in this way" (that is, to call heresies) "the tendencies so vigorously combated by the first Fathers is disputed. The very word heresy seems an attack on liberty of conscience and of thought. We cannot share these scruples, for they would lead to nothing less than taking from Christianity all distinctive character."

And having said that after Constantine the Church did indeed abuse its power of declaring dissenters heretics and persecuting them, he says, in discussing the earliest times:

"The Church is a free association; there is everything to be gained by leaving it. The polemic against error has no resources but thought and feeling. A uniform type of doctrine has not yet been worked out; secondary differences arise in the East and in the West with entire freedom; theology is not bound to invariable formulas. If in the midst of this diversity there appears a common store of beliefs, have we not the right to see in it, not a system formulated and composed by the representatives of a school's authority, but faith itself, in its surest instinct and its most spontaneous expression? If this same unanimity that shows itself in the essential beliefs is found again in rejecting this or that tendency, shall we not have the right to conclude that those tendencies were in flagrant disagreement with the fundamental principles of Christianity? And will not this presumption turn into certainty if we recognize, in the teaching universally rejected by the Church, the characteristic features of one of the religions of the past? To say that Gnosticism or Ebionitism are legitimate forms of Christian thought, one must boldly say that there is no Christian thought at all, nor any specific character by which it can be recognized. On the pretext of enlarging it, one dissolves it. No one in the time of Plato would have dared to cover with his name a doctrine that made no room for the theory of Ideas, and one would have earned the just mockery of Greece by trying to make Epicurus or Zeno a disciple of the Academy. Let us recognize, then, that if there exists a religion or a doctrine called Christianity, it may have its heresies" (page 4).

The author's whole argument comes down to this: every judgment that disagrees with the body of dogmas we profess at a given time is a heresy. But at any given time and in any given place people profess something or other, and the profession of something, somewhere, at some time, cannot be the criterion of truth.

It all comes down to this: ubi Christus, ibi ecclesia, where Christ is, there is the Church. And Christ is where we are.

Every so-called heresy, holding what it professes to be the truth, can in exactly the same way find in the history of the churches a consistent unfolding of what it professes, can use for itself all of Pressensé's arguments, and can call its own profession alone truly Christian. That is what every heresy has done and still does.

The only definition of heresy (the word αἵρεσις, hairesis, means "a part") is this: it is the name an assembly of people gives to any judgment that rejects a part of the teaching the assembly professes. The narrower meaning most often given to heresy is that of an opinion rejecting the church teaching established and upheld by the secular power.

There is a remarkable, little-known, enormous work, Gottfried Arnold's "Unparteiische Kirchen- und Ketzer-Historie" (An Impartial History of the Churches and the Heretics, 1729), which treats this very subject and shows how unlawful, arbitrary, senseless and cruel it is to use the word "heresy" as a sentence of rejection. The book is an attempt to tell the history of Christianity as a history of heresies.

In his introduction the author poses a series of questions: (1) about those who make heretics (von den Ketzermachern selbst, about the heretic-makers themselves); (2) about those who were made heretics; (3) about the matters of heresy themselves; (4) about the way heretics are made; and (5) about the aims and consequences of making heretics.

Under each of these points he poses dozens more questions, to which he afterward gives answers from the writings of well-known theologians, though above all he leaves the reader to draw his own conclusion from the account the whole book gives. As samples of these questions, which partly contain their answers, I will quote the following. Under the fourth point, on how heretics are made, he says in one of the questions (the seventh): "Does not all history show that the greatest makers of heretics, and the masters of this craft, were precisely those wise men from whom the Father hid his secrets, that is, the hypocrites, Pharisees and lawyers, or else wholly godless and perverted men?" (Questions 20 and 21): "And in the corrupt times of Christianity, were not those very men who had been especially endowed by God with great gifts, and who in the times of pure Christianity would have been highly honored, cast out by hypocrites and the envious? And on the contrary, would not those men who, when Christianity declined, raised themselves above everything and declared themselves the teachers of the purest Christianity, would not those men, in the times of the apostles and of Christ's disciples, have been held the most shameful heretics and antichrists?"

Among other things, he expresses in these questions the thought that the verbal statement of the substance of faith, which the Church demanded and from which any departure was held to be heresy, could never fully cover the believer's whole view of the world, and that the demand that faith be expressed in particular words was therefore just what produced heresies. In Questions 21 and 33 he says:

"And if divine works and thoughts seem to a man so great and so deep that he can find no fitting words to express them, must he be declared a heretic because he cannot express his idea with perfect exactness? And was it not for this reason that there was no heresy in the first times, because Christians judged one another not by verbal expressions but by the heart and by deeds, with complete freedom to express their thoughts and without fear of being declared heretics? Was it not the commonest and easiest method of the Church" (he says in Question 31) "when the clergy wished to be rid of someone or to ruin him, to make that person suspect in his teaching, to throw over him the cloak of heresy, and so to condemn him and get him out of the way?"

"Though it is true that among the so-called heretics there were sins and errors," he says further on, "it is no less true, and plain from the countless examples given here" (that is, in the history of the Church and of heresy), "that there is not and never has been one sincere and conscientious man of any standing who was not ruined by the churchmen, out of envy or for other reasons."

That is how the meaning of heresy was understood almost two hundred years ago, and yet the idea has lasted to this day. Nor can it fail to last as long as the idea of a church exists. Heresy is the reverse side of the Church. Where there is a church, there must also be the idea of heresy. A church is an assembly of people who assert of themselves that they possess undoubted truth. Heresy is the opinion of people who do not recognize that the Church's truth is beyond doubt.

Heresy is the sign of movement in the Church. It is an attempt to break up the Church's frozen assertions, an attempt at a living understanding of the teaching. Every step forward, in understanding the teaching and in fulfilling it, has been taken by heretics. Tertullian was a heretic, and Origen, and Augustine, and Luther, and Hus, and Savonarola, and Chelčický, and others. It could not have been otherwise.

A disciple of Christ, whose teaching consists in an endless growth in understanding the teaching and an endless growth in fulfilling it, in movement toward perfection, cannot, for the very reason that he is a disciple of Christ, assert of himself or of anyone else that he understands Christ's teaching fully and fulfills it. Still less can he assert this of any assembly.

At whatever stage of understanding and perfection a disciple of Christ may stand, he always feels how short his understanding and his fulfillment fall, and always strives for more of both. And so to assert of oneself, or of any assembly, that I or we possess a perfect understanding and fulfillment of Christ's teaching is to renounce the spirit of Christ's teaching.

Strange as it may seem, the churches, as churches, have always been, and cannot help being, institutions not merely alien but directly hostile to the teaching of Christ. Not for nothing did Voltaire call the Church "l'infâme," the infamous thing; not for nothing have all, or nearly all, the so-called Christian sects held and still hold the Church to be the whore of whom the Revelation prophesies; not for nothing is the history of the Church a history of the greatest cruelties and horrors.

The churches, as churches, are not institutions with a Christian principle at their base which have strayed a little from the straight path, as many people think. The churches, as churches, as assemblies asserting their own infallibility, are anti-Christian institutions. Between the churches, as churches, and Christianity there is not only nothing in common but the name: they are two principles directly opposed and hostile to each other. The one is pride, violence, self-assertion, stagnation and death; the other is humility, repentance, meekness, movement and life.

One cannot serve these two masters together. One must choose the one or the other.

The servants of the churches of every confession, especially of late, try to present themselves as partisans of movement in Christianity. They make concessions; they wish to correct the abuses that have crept into the churches; and they say that the abuses are no reason to reject the very principle of the Christian Church, which alone can unite all people into one and be the mediator between people and God. But all this is false. Far from ever uniting people, the churches have always been one of the chief causes of their division, of their hatred for one another, of wars, massacres, inquisitions, St. Bartholomew's nights and the like. And the churches never serve as mediators between people and God. No such mediator is needed, and Christ directly forbade one, for he revealed his teaching directly and immediately to every human being. Instead the churches put dead forms in the place of God, and so far from revealing God to people, they hide him from them. The churches arose from a failure to understand, and they uphold that failure by their stagnation; and so they cannot help persecuting and hounding every real understanding of the teaching. They try to hide this, but they cannot, because every step forward along the path Christ pointed out destroys their existence.

You listen to and read the articles and sermons in which the church writers of modern times, of every confession, speak of Christian truths and virtues. You listen to and read these skillful arguments, exhortations and professions, worked out over centuries, sometimes sounding almost sincere, and you are ready to doubt that the churches could be hostile to Christianity. "Surely," you think, "the people who brought forth men like Chrysostom, Fénelon, Butler and other preachers of Christianity cannot be hostile to it." You want to say, "The churches may have strayed from Christianity, may have been mistaken, but they cannot have been hostile to it." But then you look at the fruits, to judge the tree by them, as Christ taught, and you see that their fruits were evil, that the outcome of their activity was the distortion of Christianity; and you cannot help admitting that however good the people were, the work of the Church, in which they took part, was not Christian. The goodness and worth of all these people who served the churches were the goodness and worth of the people, not of the work they served. All these good men, the two Francises, of Assisi and de Sales, our own Tikhon of Zadonsk, Thomas à Kempis and others, were good men in spite of serving a cause hostile to Christianity, and they would have been better and worthier still had they not fallen into the error they served.

But why speak of the past and pass judgment on the past, which may be falsely represented to us and is little known? The churches, with their foundations and their activity, are not a thing of the past. The churches are before us now, and we can judge them by their actual deeds, by their influence on people.

What, then, does the activity of the churches consist of now? How do they influence people? What is done by the churches in our country, among the Catholics, among Protestants of every denomination? What is their activity, and what are its consequences?

The activity of our Russian, so-called Orthodox, Church is there for all to see. It is an enormous fact, which cannot be hidden and cannot be disputed.

What does the activity of this Russian Church consist of, this enormous institution working at full strain, made up of a horde half a million strong that costs the people tens of millions?

The activity of this Church consists in instilling, by every possible means, into the mass of the hundred million Russian people, those backward, outworn beliefs that have no justification now, which were once professed by peoples foreign to our nation and which hardly anyone believes any longer, often not even those whose duty it is to spread these false beliefs.

One part of the activity of the Russian Church consists in instilling into the people the formulas of the Byzantine clergy about the Trinity, about the Mother of God, about the sacraments, about grace and so on, formulas that are foreign to the people, outworn, and without any meaning for the people of our time. The other part consists in keeping up idolatry, in the most literal sense of the word: the veneration of holy relics and icons, the offering of sacrifices to them, and the expectation that they will grant one's wishes. I will not speak of what the clergy say and write, with a tinge of scholarship and liberalism, in the church journals. I will speak of what the clergy actually do over the whole vast Russian land, among a people of a hundred million. What do they teach the people, diligently, unfailingly, strenuously, the same everywhere? What do they demand of them in the name of the so-called Christian faith?

I will begin at the beginning, with the birth of a child. When a child is born, they teach that a prayer must be read over the child and the mother to purify them, since without this prayer the mother who has given birth is unclean. For this the priest takes the child in his arms before the images of the saints, which the people call simply gods, and reads words of exorcism, and so purifies the mother. Next the parents are told, and even required on pain of punishment, to have the child baptized without fail, that is, dipped three times in water by the priest, while words are read that no one understands and acts are performed that are understood still less: the anointing of various parts of the body with oil, the cutting of the hair, and the godparents' blowing and spitting at an imaginary devil. All this is supposed to purify the child and make him a Christian. Next the parents are told that the child must be given communion, that is, made to eat, in the form of bread and wine, a particle of the body of Christ, by which the child will receive the grace of Christ, and so on. Next they are told that as the child grows he must be taught to pray. To pray means to stand directly in front of the boards on which the faces of Christ, the Mother of God and the saints are painted, to bow the head and the whole body, and with the right hand, its fingers folded in a particular way, to touch the forehead, the shoulders and the belly, while uttering words in Church Slavonic, of which the most used, the ones taught to every child, are "Mother of God, Virgin, rejoice," and so on. Next the child being brought up is taught that at the sight of every church and every icon he must do the same thing again, that is, cross himself. Next he is taught that on feast days (feast days are the days on which Christ was born, though no one knows when that was; on which he was circumcised; on which the Mother of God died; on which a cross was brought, on which an icon was carried in, on which a holy fool saw a vision, and so on), on feast days he must put on his best clothes and go to church, and buy candles there and set them before the images of the saints, and hand in slips of paper and lists of names to be remembered, and little loaves for the priest to cut triangles out of, and then pray many times for the health and well-being of the Tsar and the bishops, and for himself and his own affairs, and then kiss the cross and the priest's hand.

Besides this prayer, they teach that every year, at least once, a person must make his confession and take communion. This means going into the church and telling the priest one's sins, on the supposition that telling one's sins to a stranger cleanses one of them entirely, and then eating from a little spoon a morsel of bread with wine, which cleanses one still more. Next they teach that if a man and a woman want their carnal union to be holy, they must come to church, put metal crowns on their heads, drink a drink, and walk three times around a table to the sound of singing, and that then the carnal union of the man and the woman will become holy and quite unlike any other.

In daily life they teach that the following rules must be kept: not to eat meat or milk on certain days; on certain other days to have prayers of thanksgiving and requiems for the dead said; on feast days to receive the priest and give him money; and several times a year to take boards with pictures on them out of the church and carry them on towels through the fields and the houses. Before death they teach that a person must without fail eat bread with wine from a little spoon, and that it is better still if he manages to be anointed with oil. This secures his welfare in the life to come. After his death his family are taught that it helps to save the dead man's soul to put into his hands a printed paper with a prayer on it; that it helps, too, to have a certain book read over the dead body, and to have the dead man's name spoken in church at certain times.

This is held to be the faith binding on everyone.

But if anyone wishes to take special care of his soul, then by this faith he is taught that the greatest security for his soul's bliss in the other world is gained by giving money to churches and monasteries, and thereby obliging holy men to pray for him. Saving for the soul, by this faith, are also pilgrimages to monasteries and kissing wonder-working icons and relics.

By this faith, wonder-working icons and relics concentrate in themselves a special holiness, power and grace, and nearness to these objects, touching them, kissing them, setting candles before them, crawling under them, does much toward salvation, as do the prayer services ordered before these holy things.

And it is this faith and no other, called Orthodox, that is, the right faith, that has been instilled into the people under the name of Christian, with all their might, for many centuries, and with particular intensity now.

And let no one say that the Orthodox teachers place the essence of the teaching in something else, and that these are only ancient forms which it is not thought necessary to destroy. That is untrue. Over all Russia, by the whole Russian clergy, and of late with particular intensity, only this faith is instilled. There is nothing else. Other things are talked of and written about in the capitals; but among a people of a hundred million only this is done, only this is instilled, and nothing more. Churchmen talk about other things; this is what they instill by every possible means.

All this, and the worship of persons and icons, has been written into theology and into the catechisms. The people are diligently taught it, in theory and in practice. They are hypnotized by every means of solemnity, splendor, authority and violence, made to believe it, and this faith is jealously guarded against every attempt to free the people from these savage superstitions.

Before my own eyes, as I have said, on account of my book, the teaching of Christ and his own words about nonresistance to evil were for many years the object of mockery and of fairground jokes, and the churchmen not only did not oppose this but encouraged the blasphemy. But try saying one disrespectful word about the hideous idol called the Iverskaya, which drunken men cart blasphemously about Moscow, and a groan of indignation will go up from these same Orthodox churchmen. Only the outward cult of idolatry is preached. And let no one say that the one does not hinder the other, that "these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone," that "all therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not" (Matthew 23:23, 3). This was said of the Pharisees, who kept all the outward prescriptions of the law. And so the words "whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe" refer to works of mercy and goodness, while the words "do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not" refer to the keeping of rites and the neglect of good works. They have the exact opposite of the meaning the churchmen want to give the passage when they interpret it to mean that we are commanded to keep the rites. An outward cult and the service of mercy and justice hardly go together; for the most part the one excludes the other. It was so with the Pharisees, and it is so now with church Christians.

If a man can be saved by redemption, by the sacraments, by prayer, he has no further need of good works.

The Sermon on the Mount or the Creed: one cannot believe both. And the churchmen have chosen the Creed. The Creed is taught, and read in the churches as a prayer, while the Sermon on the Mount is left out even of the Gospel readings in the churches, so that the congregation never hears it in church, except on the days when the whole Gospel is read. Nor can it be otherwise. People who believe in a wicked and senseless God, who cursed the human race, doomed his own son to be a sacrifice and doomed part of mankind to eternal torment, cannot believe in a God of love. A man who believes in a God, Christ, who will come again in glory to judge and punish the living and the dead, cannot believe in the Christ who commands us to turn the other cheek to the one who strikes us, not to judge, to forgive and to love our enemies. A man who believes that the Old Testament is inspired by God, and in the holiness of David, who on his deathbed charged his son to murder an old man who had insulted him and whom he could not kill himself because he was bound by an oath (1 Kings 2:8), and in the like abominations of which the Old Testament is full, cannot believe in the moral law of Christ. A man who believes the teaching and preaching of the Church that executions and wars are compatible with Christianity can no longer believe in the brotherhood of all people.

Above all, a man who believes that people are saved by faith in the redemption or in the sacraments can no longer put all his strength into fulfilling Christ's moral teaching in his life.

A man taught by the Church the blasphemous teaching that he cannot be saved by his own strength, but that there is another means, will inevitably resort to that means and not to his own strength, on which, he is assured, it is a sin to rely. Every church teaching, with its redemption and its sacraments, excludes the teaching of Christ; and the Orthodox teaching, with its idolatry, does so all the more.

"But the people themselves have always believed this way, and believe this way now," they will say to this. "The whole history of the Russian people proves it. One cannot take from the people their tradition." And this is just where the deception lies. The people did once profess something like what the Church professes now, though far from the same thing. (Among the people, besides this fanaticism of icons, house spirits, relics, and the Semik feast with its wreaths and birch boughs, there was always a deep moral understanding of Christianity as a way of life, which the Church as a whole never had and which was found only in its best representatives.) But the people, in spite of every obstacle the state and the Church put in their way, have long since outgrown this crude stage of understanding, in their best representatives. They show it by the rationalist sects springing up of their own accord everywhere, which Russia now swarms with and which the churchmen fight so unsuccessfully. The people are moving forward in their consciousness of the moral, living side of Christianity. And here the Church comes on the scene, not merely upholding but strenuously instilling an outlived paganism in its finished form, striving to push the people back into the darkness from which they are struggling so hard to escape.

"We teach the people nothing new, only what they believe already, but in a more perfect form," the priests say. That is just what a man would be doing if he tied up a growing chick and stuffed it back into the shell it had come out of.

I have often been struck by this observation, which would be comic if its consequences were not so terrible: how people, hooked together in a ring, deceive one another and cannot get out of this enchanted circle.

The first question, the first doubt of a Russian who begins to think, is about the wonder-working icons and above all about the relics: is it true that they are incorrupt, and that miracles are worked by them? Hundreds and thousands of people put these questions to themselves, and what chiefly makes them hard to settle is that the bishops, the metropolitans and all the people of high rank kiss the relics and the wonder-working icons. Ask the bishops and the people of high rank why they do it, and they will say they do it for the sake of the people; and the people kiss them because the bishops and the people of high rank do.

The activity of the Russian Church, for all the outward gloss of modernity, learning and spirituality that its members are now beginning to take on in their books, articles, church journals and sermons, consists only in this: not merely keeping the people in the state of crude and savage idolatry they were in, but strengthening and spreading superstition and religious ignorance, and driving out of the people the living understanding of Christianity that dwells in them side by side with their idolatry.

I remember once, in the monastery bookshop at Optina Pustyn, being present while an old peasant chose religious books for his grandson, who could read. The monk kept pressing on him accounts of relics, of feast days, of the appearances of icons, a psalter, and so on. I asked the old man whether he had the Gospel. No. "Give him the Gospel in Russian," I said to the monk. "That's not for the likes of them," the monk said to me.

That, in brief, is the activity of our Church.

But that is only in barbarous Russia, the European or American reader will say. And the judgment will be fair, but only insofar as it applies to the government, which helps the Church do its stupefying and corrupting work in Russia.

It is true that nowhere in Europe is there so despotic a government, or one so much in accord with the reigning church. And so the share of the state power in corrupting the people is greatest in Russia. But it is not true that the Russian Church differs in its influence on the people from any other church.

The churches are the same everywhere. And if the Catholic, the Anglican and the Lutheran churches do not have so obedient a government at hand as the Russian Church has, that is not for want of the wish to make use of one.

A church as a church, whatever it may be, Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, any church whatever, insofar as it is a church, cannot help striving for the same thing as the Russian Church: to hide the real meaning of Christ's teaching and to replace it with its own teaching, which binds no one to anything, rules out any understanding of the true, active teaching of Christ, and above all justifies the existence of priests who feed at the people's expense.

What else has Catholicism done, and what else does it do, with its ban on reading the Gospel and its demand for unreasoning obedience to the Church's guides and to an infallible Pope? Does Catholicism preach anything different from the Russian Church? The same outward cult, the same relics, miracles and statues, the wonder-working Notre-Dames and the processions. The same lofty and misty discourses on Christianity in books and sermons, and, when it comes to practice, the upholding of the crudest idolatry.

And is not the same thing done in Anglicanism, in Lutheranism, in every Protestantism that has settled into a church? The same demand that the flock believe dogmas formulated in the fourth century, which have lost all meaning for the people of our time, and the same demand for idolatry, if not before relics and icons, then before the Sabbath day and the letter of the Bible. Always the same activity, aimed at hiding the real demands of Christianity and putting in their place an outward show that binds no one to anything, and cant, as the English so well name the very occupation to which they are especially given. Among the Protestants this activity is particularly striking, because their profession lacks even the excuse of antiquity. And is not the same thing happening in the revivalism of today, the renewed Calvinism, the evangelicalism whose degenerate offspring is the Salvation Army?

As the position of all the church teachings in relation to the teaching of Christ is the same, so are their methods.

Their position is such that they cannot help straining every effort to hide the teaching of Christ, whose name they use.

The disagreement between all the church professions and the teaching of Christ is, after all, so great that special efforts are needed to hide it from people. Indeed, one need only think of the position of any grown man of our time, not only an educated one but the simplest, who has picked up the ideas that are in the air about geology, physics, chemistry, cosmography and history, when for the first time he looks consciously at the beliefs instilled into him in childhood and upheld by the churches: that God created the world in six days; that there was light before the sun; that Noah crammed all the animals into his ark, and so on; that Jesus is also God the Son, who created all things before time began; that this God came down to earth for Adam's sin; that he rose again, ascended, sits at the right hand of the Father, and will come on the clouds to judge the world, and so on.

All these propositions, worked out by the people of the fourth century, had a certain meaning for the people of that time, but for the people of our time they have none. The people of our time may repeat these words with their lips, but they cannot believe them, because such words as that God lives in heaven, that the heavens opened and a voice from there said something, that Christ rose again and flew off somewhere into heaven and will come again from somewhere on the clouds, and so on, have no meaning for us.

A man who thought of the sky as a finite, solid vault could believe or not believe that God created the sky, that the sky opened, that Christ flew away into the sky. But for us all these words have no meaning at all. The people of our time can only believe that this must be believed, and that is what they do; but they cannot believe in what has no meaning for them.

And if all these expressions are supposed to have an allegorical meaning and to be figures, then we know, first, that not all churchmen agree on this; on the contrary, most of them insist on understanding Holy Scripture in its literal sense. And second, we know that these interpretations are very various and that nothing confirms them.

But even if a man wants to force himself to believe the teaching of the churches as it is taught, there is another, still more insurmountable obstacle: the spread of literacy and of the Gospels everywhere, and the contact between people of different confessions.

A man of our time need only buy a Gospel for three kopecks and read Christ's clear words, which allow no reinterpretation, to the Samaritan woman: that the Father seeks worshippers not in Jerusalem, not on this mountain or that, but worshippers in spirit and in truth. Or the words that a Christian must pray not as the pagans do, in temples and in public view, but in secret, that is, in his closet. Or that a disciple of Christ must call no one father or teacher. He need only read these words to be convinced that no spiritual pastors, who call themselves teachers in defiance of Christ's teaching and quarrel among themselves, have any authority, and that what the churchmen teach us is not Christianity. But even that is not all. If a man of our time did go on believing in miracles and did not read the Gospel, contact alone with people of other confessions and faiths, which has become so easy in our time, would make him doubt the truth of his own faith. It was easy for a man who had never seen people of a confession other than his own to believe that his was the one true confession. But a thinking man need only come up against people of different confessions, good and bad alike, each condemning the others' faiths, as now happens constantly, to begin doubting the truth of the faith he professes. In our time only a man who is completely ignorant, or completely indifferent to the questions of life that religion hallows, can remain in the church faith.

What cunning and what efforts the churches need, then, if in spite of all these conditions that destroy faith they are to go on building churches, saying Mass, preaching, teaching, converting, and above all receiving enormous salaries for it, as all these priests, pastors, intendants, superintendents, abbots, archdeacons, bishops and archbishops do.

Special, supernatural efforts are needed. And the churches use such efforts, straining them harder and harder. Here in Russia (besides all the other means) the plain, crude violence of a state power obedient to the Church is used. People who depart from the outward expression of the faith and say so are either punished outright or deprived of their rights; people who keep strictly to the outward forms of the faith are rewarded and given rights.

That is how the Orthodox act. But all churches without exception use every means to this end, and the chief of them is what is now called hypnotism.

Every art, from architecture to poetry, is brought into play to act on people's souls and to stupefy them, and this action goes on without ceasing. The need to act hypnotically on people in order to bring them into a state of stupefaction is especially plain in the activity of the Salvation Army, which uses methods new and unfamiliar to us: trumpets, drums, songs, banners, uniforms, processions, dances, tears and theatrical effects.

But this strikes us only because the methods are new. Are not the old methods the very same: churches with their special lighting, with gold, glitter, candles, choirs, organs, bells, vestments, tearful sermons and so on?

But however strong this hypnotizing action may be, it is not the chief and most harmful activity of the churches. The chief and most harmful activity of the Church is the one directed at deceiving children, those very children of whom Christ said, woe to him who shall offend one of these little ones. From the first awakening of a child's consciousness they begin to deceive him, to instill into him with solemnity what those who instill it do not themselves believe, and to go on instilling it until, through habit, the deception has grown into the child's nature. The child is carefully deceived about the most important thing in life; and when the deception has grown so deep into his life that it is hard to tear it out, then the whole world of science and reality is opened before him, a world that can in no way be reconciled with the beliefs instilled into him, and he is left to sort out these contradictions for himself as best he can.

If one set oneself the task of so entangling a human being that he could never, with a sound mind, find his way out of the two opposite views of the world instilled into him from childhood, one could not devise anything more effective than what is done to every young person brought up in our so-called Christian society.

What the churches do to people is terrible. But if one thinks about their position, the people who make up the institution of the churches cannot act otherwise. The churches face a dilemma: the Sermon on the Mount or the Nicene Creed. The one excludes the other. If a man sincerely believes in the Sermon on the Mount, the Nicene Creed will inevitably lose its meaning and importance for him, and with it the Church and its representatives. If a man believes in the Nicene Creed, that is, in the Church, that is, in those who call themselves its representatives, the Sermon on the Mount becomes superfluous to him. And so the churches cannot help using every possible effort to obscure the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount and to draw people to themselves.

Only thanks to the churches' strenuous activity in this direction has their influence held until now. Let the Church stop this action on the masses, by hypnotizing them and deceiving children, for even the shortest time, and people will understand the teaching of Christ. And the understanding of the teaching destroys the churches and their importance. And so the churches never for a moment let up their strenuous activity of hypnotizing adults and deceiving children. And it is this activity of the churches, instilling into people a false understanding of Christ's teaching, that is the obstacle to its being understood by the majority of people, the so-called believers.

Khomyakov's definition of the Church, which has had a certain success among Russians, does not mend matters if one holds with Khomyakov that the one true Church is the Orthodox. Khomyakov asserts that the Church is an assembly of people (all of them, with no distinction between clergy and flock) united by love; that the truth is revealed only to people united by love ("Let us love one another, that with one mind," and so on); and that such a Church is the one which, first, recognizes the Nicene Creed and, second, since the division of the churches, does not recognize the Pope and the new dogmas. But with such a definition of the Church there arises an even greater difficulty: to make the Church united by love the same, as Khomyakov wants to, as the Church that recognizes the Nicene Creed and the rightness of Photius. Thus Khomyakov's assertion that this Church, united by love and therefore holy, is the very Church professed by the Greek hierarchy is even more arbitrary than the assertion of the Catholics and of the Orthodox of the old school. If one accepts the idea of the Church in the meaning Khomyakov gives it, that is, as an assembly of people united by love and truth, then all anyone can say about such an assembly is that it is very desirable to be a member of it, if it exists, that is, to be in love and truth. But there are no outward marks by which one could count oneself or another among this holy assembly, or exclude anyone from it, since no outward institution can answer to this idea. ↩

Chapter 4: How Men of Science Misunderstand Christianity

I will now speak of the other supposed understanding of Christianity that stands in the way of the true one: the scientific understanding.

Churchmen take for Christianity the idea of it that they have formed for themselves, and they hold this understanding of Christianity to be the one and only, the indubitably true one.

Men of science take for Christianity only what the various churches have professed and still profess; and, supposing that these professions exhaust the whole meaning of Christianity, they pronounce it a religious teaching that has outlived its time.

To see clearly how impossible it is, from such a standpoint, to understand the Christian teaching, we must form some idea of the place that religions in general, and the Christian religion in particular, have actually held and still hold in the life of mankind, and of the significance that science ascribes to them.

A single man cannot live without some idea of the meaning of his life, and he always measures his actions, though often without knowing it, against the meaning he gives his life. In just the same way an aggregate of people living in the same conditions, a nation, cannot help having an idea of the meaning of its common life and of the activity that follows from it. And as a single man, entering a new period of his life, inevitably changes his understanding of life, so that a grown man sees its meaning in something other than a child does, so too an aggregate of people, a nation, inevitably changes its understanding of life, and the activity that follows from that understanding, according to its age.

In this the single man differs from mankind as a whole. When a man has to determine the understanding of life, and the activity that follows from it, proper to the new period of life he is entering, he can make use of the guidance of people who lived before him and have already passed through the age he is entering. Mankind can have no such guidance, because it is always moving along a road not yet explored, and there is no one to ask how life must be understood, and how one must act, in the new conditions it is entering and in which no one has ever lived before.

And yet, just as a married man with children cannot go on understanding life as he understood it when he was a child, so mankind, after all the changes that have taken place, in the density of population, in the intercourse now established between different peoples, in the improvement of the means of struggling with nature, in the accumulation of knowledge, can no longer go on understanding life as before. It must establish a new understanding of life, from which there would also flow an activity suited to the new condition it has entered or is entering.

It is to this need that mankind's peculiar capacity answers: the capacity to bring forth from itself people who give a new meaning to the whole of human life, a meaning from which there follows a whole activity different from the old. The establishing of the understanding of life proper to mankind in the new conditions it is entering, and of the activity that follows from it, is what is called religion.

And therefore religion, in the first place, is not, as science supposes, a phenomenon that once accompanied the development of mankind and was afterward outgrown. It is a phenomenon always inherent in the life of mankind, and in our time just as inevitably inherent in mankind as in any other. In the second place, religion is always a determination of the activity of the future, not of the past; and it is therefore plain that the study of past phenomena can in no case grasp the essence of religion.

The essence of every religious teaching does not lie in a wish to express the forces of nature symbolically, or in fear of them, or in a craving for the miraculous, or in the outward forms in which religion shows itself, as men of science think. The essence of religion lies in the capacity of men to foresee prophetically, and to point out, the road of life along which mankind must go: in a new determination of the meaning of life, different from the old, from which there follows the whole future activity of mankind, likewise different from the old.

This capacity for foreseeing the road along which mankind must go is common in greater or lesser degree to all people. But at all times there have been people in whom it showed itself with particular strength; and these people expressed clearly and exactly what all people dimly felt, and established a new understanding of life, from which there followed, for many hundreds and thousands of years, an activity different from the old.

We know three such understandings of life: two that mankind has already lived through, and a third that we are living through now, in Christianity. There are three such understandings, and only three, not because we have arbitrarily gathered the various understandings of life into these three, but because the actions of all people always rest on one of these three understandings of life, since we cannot understand life in any other way than these three.

The three understandings of life are these: first, the personal, or animal; second, the social, or pagan; and third, the universal, or divine.

According to the first understanding of life, the life of man lies in his own person alone, and the aim of his life is the satisfaction of the will of that person. According to the second, the life of man lies not in his own person alone but in an aggregate and succession of persons, in the tribe, the family, the clan, the state, and the aim of life is the satisfaction of the will of that aggregate of persons. According to the third, the life of man lies neither in his own person nor in an aggregate and succession of persons, but in the origin and source of life, in God.

These three understandings of life are the foundation of all the religions that have ever existed or exist now.

The savage recognizes life only in himself, in his personal desires. The good of his life is centered in him alone. The highest good for him is the fullest satisfaction of his lust. The mainspring of his life is personal pleasure. His religion consists in winning the favor of the deity toward his own person, and in worshiping imagined persons, gods who live only for personal ends.

The pagan, social man recognizes life no longer in himself alone but in an aggregate of persons, in the tribe, the family, the clan, the state, and for these aggregates he sacrifices his personal good. The mainspring of his life is glory. His religion consists in exalting the heads of these unions, the founders of the clan, the ancestors, the sovereigns, and in worshiping gods who are the exclusive protectors of his family, his clan, his nation, his state.⁸

The man of the divine understanding of life recognizes life no longer in his own person, nor in an aggregate of persons (in the family, the clan, the nation, the fatherland or the state), but in the source of eternal, undying life, in God; and to do the will of God he sacrifices his personal good, and the good of his family, and the good of society. The mainspring of his life is love. And his religion is the worship, in deed and in truth, of the beginning of all things, God.

The whole historical life of mankind is nothing but a gradual passage from the personal, animal understanding of life to the social, and from the social understanding of life to the divine. The whole history of the ancient peoples, which went on for thousands of years and ends with the history of Rome, is the history of the replacing of the animal, personal understanding of life by the social and state understanding. The whole of history since imperial Rome and the appearance of Christianity is the history, which we are still living through, of the replacing of the state understanding of life by the divine.

And it is this last understanding of life, and the Christian teaching founded on it, which guides the whole of our life and lies at the foundation of all our activity, practical and scientific alike, that the men of a would-be science, looking at it only by its outward marks, pronounce something outlived and of no importance to us.

This teaching, in the opinion of men of science, consists only of its dogmatic side, the teaching of the Trinity, the redemption, miracles, the Church, the sacraments and so on. It is only one of the enormous number of religions that have arisen among mankind, and now, having played its part in history, it is outliving its time and vanishing before the light of science and true enlightenment.

What happens here is what in most cases is the source of the crudest human errors. People who stand on a lower level of understanding, when they meet phenomena of a higher order, do not make the effort to understand them, to rise to the point of view from which the subject must be looked at. Instead they judge it from their own lower point of view, and with all the more boldness and decision the less they understand what they are talking about.

For the majority of men of science, who look at Christ's moral teaching for life from the lower point of view of the social understanding of life, this teaching is only a very vague, ill-assorted mixture of Indian asceticism, Stoic and Neoplatonic teaching, and utopian antisocial dreams of no serious importance for our time; and its whole significance, for them, is concentrated in its outward manifestations: in Catholicism, Protestantism, the dogmas, the struggle with the secular power. In judging the significance of Christianity by these phenomena they are like deaf men who would judge the meaning and worth of music by the look of the musicians' movements.

Hence all these people, beginning with Comte, David Strauss, Spencer and Renan, do not understand the meaning of Christ's sayings. They do not understand what they were said for and why, they do not even understand the question to which they are an answer, and they do not even take the trouble to go into their meaning. If they are hostile, they flatly deny that the teaching is reasonable; if they wish to be indulgent toward it, they correct it from the height of their own greatness, supposing that Christ meant to say exactly what they think but did not manage to say it. They treat his teaching the way self-assured people usually talk to someone they consider far beneath them, when they correct what he has just said: "Yes, what you actually mean to say is this and that." And the correction is always made in one direction: so as to bring down the teaching of the higher, divine understanding of life to the lower, social one.

It is usually said that the moral teaching of Christianity is good but exaggerated, and that to be wholly good it must be stripped of what is superfluous, of what does not fit our order of life. "For a teaching that demands too much, the impossible, is worse than one that demands of people what is possible, in keeping with their strength," the learned interpreters of Christianity think and declare. And in saying so they repeat what was long ago declared about the Christian teaching, what is still declared and could not help being declared, by those who did not understand it and crucified the teacher for it: the Jews.

It turns out that before the tribunal of the learned men of our time the Jewish law, a tooth for a tooth and an eye for an eye, the law of just retribution, known to mankind five thousand years ago, is more expedient than the law of love preached by Christ eighteen hundred years ago in place of that very law of justice.

It turns out that everything that was done by the people who understood Christ's teaching directly and lived by that understanding, everything that all true Christians and all Christian ascetics did and said, everything that is now transforming the world in the guise of socialism and communism, is all exaggeration, not worth talking about.

People brought up in Christianity for eighteen centuries have convinced themselves, in the persons of their advanced people, the learned, that the Christian teaching is a teaching about dogmas, while its teaching for life is a misunderstanding, an exaggeration that violates the true, legitimate demands of morality, the ones that correspond to human nature; and that the very teaching of justice which Christ rejected, and in whose place he set his own teaching, suits us far better.

To the learned, the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence seems an exaggeration, even a folly. It would be much better to throw it out, they think, without noticing that they are not discussing Christ's teaching at all, but what they imagine it to be.

They do not notice that to say that the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence is an exaggeration in Christ's teaching is the same as saying that in the theory of the circle the proposition that its radii are equal is an exaggeration. And those who say it are doing exactly what would be done by a man who had no idea what a circle is and who asserted that the requirement that all the points of the circumference be at an equal distance from the center is an exaggeration. To advise throwing out or moderating the proposition that the radii of a circle are equal is not to understand what a circle is. To advise throwing out or moderating the commandment of nonresistance to evil by violence in Christ's teaching for life is not to understand the teaching.

And those who do so really do not understand it at all. They do not understand that this teaching is the establishment of a new understanding of life, suited to the new condition that people entered eighteen hundred years ago, and the determination of the new activity that follows from it. They do not believe that Christ meant to say what he said; or it seems to them that what he said in the Sermon on the Mount and in other places he said out of enthusiasm, out of folly, out of his own lack of development.⁹¹⁰

"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." (Matthew 6:25-34)

"Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." (Luke 12:33-34)

"Sell that thou hast, and follow me; and whosoever forsaketh not father or mother, and children and brethren, and fields and house, cannot be my disciple."

"Deny thyself, take up thy cross daily, and follow me. My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work. Not my will, but thine, be done; not what I will, but what thou wilt; and not as I will, but as thou wilt." Life lies in doing not one's own will but the will of God.

To people who stand on the lower understanding of life, all these propositions seem the expression of some ecstatic enthusiasm with no direct application to life. And yet these propositions follow from the Christian understanding of life just as strictly as the propositions about giving one's labor to the common cause, and about sacrificing one's life in defense of the fatherland, follow from the social understanding of life.

The man of the social understanding of life says to the savage: "Come to your senses, think again! The life of your own person cannot be the true life, because that life is wretched and passing. Only the life of an aggregate and succession of persons, of the tribe, the family, the clan, the state, goes on and lives; and therefore a man must sacrifice his own person for the life of the family and the state." In exactly the same way the Christian teaching speaks to the man of the aggregate, social understanding of life: "Repent, μετανοεῖτε, that is, think again, or you will perish. Understand that this carnal, personal life, which arises today and is destroyed tomorrow, can be made secure by nothing; that no outward measures, no arrangement of it, can give it firmness or reason. Think again, and understand that the life you are living is not the real life: the life of the family, the life of society, the life of the state will not save you from perishing." A true, reasonable life is possible for a man only insofar as he can be a sharer not in the family or the state but in the source of life, the Father; insofar as he can merge his life with the life of the Father. Such, beyond doubt, is the Christian understanding of life, and it can be seen in every saying of the Gospel.

One may not share this understanding of life; one may deny it; one may try to prove that it is inexact or wrong. But one cannot judge a teaching without first taking in the understanding of life from which it follows; still less can one judge a subject of a higher order from a lower point of view, judging the bell tower by looking at the foundations. And that is exactly what the men of science of our time are doing. They do it because they are under a delusion like that of the churchmen: they believe they possess such methods of studying a subject that, once these methods, called scientific, have been applied, there can be no further doubt that the subject under discussion has been truly understood.

It is this possession of a supposedly infallible instrument of knowledge that is the chief obstacle to an understanding of the Christian teaching for unbelievers and for the so-called men of science, by whose opinion the whole enormous majority of unbelieving, so-called educated people are guided. From this supposed understanding come all the errors of the men of science about the Christian teaching, and in particular two strange misunderstandings which, more than anything else, stand in the way of understanding it rightly.

One of these misunderstandings is that the Christian teaching for life cannot be carried out, and is therefore either not binding at all, that is, not to be taken as a guide, or else must be altered and moderated to the limits within which it can be carried out in our society. The other misunderstanding is that the Christian teaching of love for God, and therefore of service to him, is a vague, mystical demand with no definite object of love, and must therefore be replaced by a more exact and comprehensible teaching of love for people and service to humanity.

The first misunderstanding, about the impossibility of carrying out the teaching, consists in this. People of the social understanding of life do not understand the way in which the Christian teaching guides people, and they mistake the Christian pointing toward perfection for rules that govern life. And so they think and say that it is impossible to follow Christ's teaching, because to fulfill its demands completely would destroy life. "If a man did what Christ preaches, he would destroy his own life; and if all people did it, the human race would come to an end," they say.

"If a man takes no thought for the morrow, for what he shall eat and what he shall drink and wherewithal he shall be clothed; if he does not defend his life, does not resist evil by violence, lays down his life for his friends and keeps complete chastity, then neither he nor the human race can exist," they think and say.

And they are perfectly right, if one takes the pointers toward perfection given by Christ's teaching for rules that every man is bound to obey, in the way that under the social teaching every man is bound to obey the rule of paying taxes, of taking part in the courts, and so on.

The misunderstanding lies precisely in this: Christ's teaching guides people in a different way from the teachings founded on the lower understanding of life. The teachings of the social understanding of life guide people only by requiring the exact fulfillment of rules or laws. Christ's teaching guides people by pointing them to the infinite perfection of the heavenly Father, toward which it is natural for every man to strive of his own free will, at whatever stage of imperfection he may stand.

The misunderstanding of those who judge the Christian teaching from the point of view of the social understanding of life is this. Supposing that the perfection Christ points to can be fully attained, they ask themselves (just as they ask themselves, on the supposition that the laws of society will be obeyed) what will happen when all of it has been fulfilled. The supposition is false, because the perfection held out to Christians is infinite and can never be attained. Christ gives his teaching knowing that complete perfection will never be attained, but that the striving toward complete, infinite perfection will steadily increase the good of people, and that this good can therefore be increased without end.

Christ teaches not angels but people, who live an animal life and are moved by it. And to this animal force of motion Christ, as it were, applies a new and different force, the consciousness of divine perfection, and in this way directs the motion of life along the resultant of the two forces.

To suppose that human life will go in the direction Christ points to is like supposing that a boatman crossing a swift river, and heading almost straight against the current, will travel in that direction.

Christ recognizes both sides of the parallelogram, both of the eternal, indestructible forces of which a man's life is composed: the force of his animal nature and the force of the consciousness of being a son of God. He says nothing of the animal force, which asserts itself, always stays equal to itself and lies outside a man's power. Christ speaks only of the divine force, calling on man to become as fully conscious of it as he can, to free it as fully as he can from whatever holds it back, and to bring it to the highest pitch of intensity.

In this freeing, this increase, of that force, lies the true life of man, according to Christ's teaching. True life, under the old conditions, lay in keeping rules, the law. According to Christ's teaching it lies in coming as near as possible to the divine perfection that is pointed out to every man and that every man is conscious of in himself; in coming nearer and nearer to the merging of one's will with the will of God, a merging toward which man strives and which would be the destruction of life as we know it.

Divine perfection is the asymptote of human life, toward which it always strives and which it always approaches, and which it can reach only at infinity.

The Christian teaching seems to exclude the possibility of life only when people mistake the pointing out of an ideal for a rule. Only then do the demands that Christ's teaching makes appear to destroy life. On the contrary, these demands alone make true life possible. Without them true life would be impossible.

"One must not demand too much," people usually say when they discuss the demands of the Christian teaching. "One cannot demand that a man take no thought at all for the future, as it says in the Gospel; he must only not take too much thought. One cannot give everything to the poor; one must give a certain definite part. One need not strive for virginity, but one must avoid debauchery. One need not leave wife and children, but one must not be too attached to them," and so on.

But to talk like this is like telling a man who is swimming across a swift river, and heading against the current, that one cannot cross a river by heading against the current, and that to cross it he must swim in the direction he wants to go.

Christ's teaching differs from the teachings before it in that it guides people not by outward rules but by the inward consciousness that divine perfection can be attained. And what is in the soul of man is not moderate rules of justice and philanthropy, but the ideal of complete, infinite, divine perfection. Only the striving toward this perfection turns the direction of a man's life away from the animal state toward the divine, as far as that is possible in this life.

To land at the place you want, you must steer with all your strength far above it.

To lower the demands of the ideal is not only to lessen the possibility of perfection but to destroy the ideal itself. The ideal that acts on people is not an ideal someone has invented, but the ideal that every man carries in his soul. Only this ideal of complete, infinite perfection acts on people and moves them to act. A moderate perfection loses its power to act on people's souls.

Christ's teaching has power only when it demands complete perfection, that is, the merging of the divine essence that dwells in every man's soul with the will of God, the union of the son with the Father. Only this freeing of the son of God, who lives in every man, from the animal, and his drawing near to the Father, make up life according to Christ's teaching.

The existence in man of the animal, and only the animal, is not human life. Life by the will of God alone is not human life either. Human life is a compound of the animal life and the divine life. And the nearer this compound comes to the divine life, the more life there is.

Life according to the Christian teaching is movement toward divine perfection. By this teaching no one state can be higher or lower than another. Every state, by this teaching, is only a particular step, indifferent in itself, toward an unattainable perfection, and therefore in itself it makes no greater or lesser degree of life. The increase of life, by this teaching, is only a quickening of the movement toward perfection. And therefore the movement toward perfection of Zacchaeus the publican, of the harlot, of the thief on the cross, is a higher degree of life than the motionless righteousness of the Pharisee. And for that very reason there can be no binding rules for this teaching. A man who stands on a lower step but is moving toward perfection lives more morally, lives better, fulfills the teaching more, than a man who stands on a far higher step of morality but is not moving toward perfection.

It is in this sense that the lost sheep is dearer to the father than those that never strayed. The prodigal son, the coin lost and found again, are dearer than those that were never lost.

The fulfillment of the teaching lies in the movement from oneself toward God. Plainly, for such a fulfillment of the teaching there can be no fixed laws and rules. Every degree of perfection and every degree of imperfection are equal before this teaching; no keeping of laws amounts to fulfilling the teaching; and therefore there are not and cannot be binding rules and laws for this teaching.

From this fundamental difference between Christ's teaching and all the teachings before it, founded on the social understanding of life, there follows the difference between the commandments of society and the commandments of Christ. The commandments of society are for the most part positive: they prescribe certain acts, which justify people and give them righteousness. The Christian commandments, on the other hand (the commandment of love is not a commandment in the narrow sense of the word but an expression of the very essence of the teaching), the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount, are all negative, and show only what people at a certain stage of mankind's development can now cease to do. These commandments are like markers on the infinite road of perfection along which mankind is moving: markers of the degree of perfection that is possible at a given period of mankind's development.

In the Sermon on the Mount Christ expressed both the eternal ideal toward which it is natural for people to strive, and the degree of its attainment that people can already reach in our time.

The ideal is to bear ill will toward no one, to provoke ill will in no one, to love everyone. The commandment that marks the level below which it is quite possible not to fall in attaining this ideal is not to insult people by word. And this is the first commandment.

The ideal is complete chastity, even in thought. The commandment that marks the level of attainment below which it is quite possible not to fall in attaining this ideal is purity of married life, abstaining from fornication. And this is the second commandment.

The ideal is to take no thought for the future, to live in the present hour. The commandment that marks the level of attainment below which it is quite possible not to fall is not to swear oaths, not to promise people anything in advance. And this is the third commandment.

The ideal is never, for any purpose whatever, to use violence. The commandment that marks the level below which it is quite possible not to fall is not to repay evil with evil, to bear injuries, to give up one's coat. And this is the fourth commandment.

The ideal is to love our enemies who hate us. The commandment that marks the level of attainment below which it is quite possible not to fall is to do no harm to our enemies, to speak well of them, to make no distinction between them and our own fellow citizens.

All these commandments are indications of what, on the road of striving toward perfection, we are now fully able to stop doing; of what we must work at now; of what we must little by little carry over into the realm of habit, of the unconscious. But these commandments, far from making up the teaching or exhausting it, are only one of its countless steps in the approach to perfection.

These commandments must and will be followed by higher and higher ones, along the road of perfection that the teaching points out.

And therefore it is in the nature of the Christian teaching to put forward demands higher than those expressed in these commandments; but in no way to lessen the demands either of the ideal itself or of these commandments, as is done by people who judge the Christian teaching from the point of view of the social understanding of life.

Such is one misunderstanding of the men of science about the meaning and sense of Christ's teaching. The other, which flows from the same source, consists in replacing the Christian demand to love God and serve him with love and service of people, of humanity.

The Christian teaching of love for God and service of him and (only as a consequence of that love and service) of love and service of one's neighbor seems to men of science vague, mystical and arbitrary. They exclude entirely the demand to love and serve God, supposing that the teaching of love for people, for humanity, is far more comprehensible, firmer and better grounded.

Men of science teach in theory that the only meaningful and good life is a life of service to all humanity, and in this very teaching they see the meaning of the Christian teaching. They reduce the Christian teaching to this teaching; they look in the Christian teaching for confirmation of this teaching of their own, supposing that their teaching and the Christian one are one and the same.

This opinion is entirely mistaken. The Christian teaching and the teaching of the positivists, the communists and all the preachers of a universal brotherhood of man founded on the profitableness of that brotherhood have nothing in common with each other. They differ above all in this: the Christian teaching has firm, clear foundations in the human soul, while the teaching of love for humanity is only a theoretical conclusion drawn by analogy.

The teaching of love for humanity alone rests on the social understanding of life.

The essence of the social understanding of life lies in the transfer of the meaning of one's personal life to the life of an aggregate of persons: the tribe, the family, the clan, the state. In its first forms this transfer was made, and is made, easily and naturally: the transfer of the meaning of life from one's own person to the tribe, the family. The transfer to the clan or the nation is harder, and requires a special education for it; and the transfer of consciousness to the state is already the limit of such transfer.

It is natural for everyone to love himself, and everyone loves himself without being encouraged to. It is natural to love my tribe, which supports and protects me; to love my wife, the joy and help of my life; my children, the comfort and hope of my life; and my parents, who gave me life and upbringing. And this love, though far from as strong as love of oneself, is met with fairly often.

To love one's clan, one's nation, for one's own sake, for one's pride, though no longer so natural, is still met with. Love for one's own nation, of one tribe, one language, one faith, is still possible, though the feeling is far from as strong, not only as love of oneself, but as love of one's family or clan. But love for a state, such as Turkey, Germany, England, Austria, Russia, is already almost an impossibility, and, in spite of the strenuous education directed toward it, is only presumed and does not exist in reality. With this aggregate the possibility ends of a man's transferring his consciousness, and feeling any direct emotion toward this fiction. But the positivists and all the preachers of a scientific brotherhood, not taking into account the weakening of feeling as its object widens, reason on in theory in the same direction. "If it was more profitable for the individual," they say, "to transfer his consciousness to the tribe, the family, and then to the nation and the state, it will be more profitable still to transfer his consciousness to the aggregate of all mankind, and for everyone to live for humanity, just as people live for the family and the state."

In theory it really does come out that way.

Having transferred the consciousness and love of the individual to the family, from the family to the clan, the nation, the state, it would be perfectly logical, and the most natural thing in the world, for people to transfer their love to humanity, so as to deliver themselves from the strife and calamities that come from the division of mankind into nations and states. It would seem the most logical thing of all, and it is preached in theory, without anyone's noticing that love is a feeling which one can have but cannot preach; and that, besides, love must have an object, and humanity is not an object but only a fiction.

The tribe, the family, even the state were not invented by people; they formed of themselves, like a swarm of bees or a colony of ants, and they really exist. A man who for the sake of his animal person loves his family knows whom he loves: Anna, Marya, Ivan, Pyotr and so on. A man who loves his clan and is proud of it knows that he loves all the Guelphs or all the Ghibellines. A man who loves his state knows that he loves France up to the bank of the Rhine, and the Pyrenees, and her capital, Paris, and her history, and so on. But what does the man who loves humanity love? There is the state, there is the nation, there is the abstract notion of man; but humanity as a real notion does not and cannot exist.

Humanity? Where are the limits of humanity? Where does it end or begin? Does humanity end with the savage, the idiot, the alcoholic, the madman, inclusive? If we draw a line marking off humanity, so as to exclude the lowest representatives of the human race, then where shall we draw it? Shall we exclude Black people, as the Americans exclude them, and the Indians, as some Englishmen exclude them, and the Jews, as some exclude them? And if we take in all people without exception, why should we take in only people, and not the higher animals, many of which stand higher than the lowest representatives of the human race?

We do not know humanity as an outward object; we do not know its limits. Humanity is a fiction, and it cannot be loved. It really would be very profitable if people could love humanity as they love their family. It would be very profitable, as the communists keep saying, to replace the competitive direction of human activity with a communal one, or the individual with the universal, so that each would be for all and all for one; only there are no motives whatever for it. The positivists, the communists and all the preachers of a scientific brotherhood preach the extension to all mankind of the love that people have for themselves, for their families and for the state. They forget that the love they preach is a personal love, which could, growing thinner, spread to the family; growing thinner still, spread to the natural fatherland; which vanishes entirely when it touches an artificial state such as Austria, England, Turkey; and which we cannot even imagine when it comes to the whole of humanity, an entirely mystical object.

"A man loves himself (his animal life), he loves his family, he even loves his fatherland. Why should he not love humanity too? How good that would be. And Christianity, as it happens, preaches the very same thing." That is what the preachers of a positivist, communist, socialist brotherhood think. It really would be very good, but it can never be, because love founded on the personal and the social understanding of life cannot go further than love for the state.

The error in the reasoning is that the social understanding of life, on which love for the family and the fatherland is founded, is built on love for one's own person; and that this love, as it is transferred from the person to the family, the clan, the nationality, the state, grows weaker and weaker, and in the state reaches its last limit, beyond which it cannot go.

The necessity of widening the sphere of love is beyond doubt. But at the same time this very necessity of widening it in reality destroys the possibility of love, and proves the insufficiency of personal, human love.

And it is here that the preachers of a positivist, communist, social brotherhood come to the rescue of this human love, which has proved bankrupt, by offering Christian love, but only in its consequences, not in its foundations: they offer love for humanity alone, without love for God.

But there can be no such love. There is no motive for it. Christian love flows only from the Christian understanding of life, according to which the meaning of life lies in loving and serving God.

By its natural course, from love of oneself to love of the family, the clan, the nation, the state, the social understanding of life has brought people to a consciousness that they must love humanity, which has no limits and merges with everything that exists: that is, to something that awakens no feeling in a man at all. It has brought them to a contradiction which the social understanding of life cannot resolve.

Only the Christian teaching, in its full meaning, resolves it, by giving a new meaning to life. Christianity recognizes love of oneself, and of the family, and of the nation, and of humanity, and not only of humanity but of every living thing, of everything that exists. It recognizes the necessity of widening the sphere of love without end. But the object of this love it finds not outside oneself, not in an aggregate of persons, in the family, the clan, the state, humanity, the whole outward world, but within oneself, in one's own person: the divine person, whose essence is that very love which the animal person, fleeing the consciousness that it must perish, was driven to widen.

The difference between the Christian teaching and those before it is this. The old social teaching said: live against your nature (meaning the animal nature alone), subject it to the outward law of the family, society, the state. Christianity says: live according to your nature (meaning the divine nature), subjecting it to nothing, neither to your own animal nature nor to anyone else's, and you will reach the very thing you strive for when you subject your outward nature to outward laws.

The Christian teaching brings man back to his original consciousness of himself; only not of himself as an animal, but of himself as God, a spark of God, of himself as a son of God, God just as the Father is, but enclosed in an animal shell. And the consciousness of himself as this son of God, whose chief property is love, also satisfies all those demands for widening the sphere of love to which the man of the social understanding of life was driven. As the sphere of love was widened further and further to save the person, love was a necessity and was attached to particular objects: oneself, the family, society, humanity. In the Christian view of the world love is not a necessity, and is attached to nothing; it is the essential property of the human soul. A man loves not because it is profitable to him to love this one or those, but because love is the essence of his soul, because he cannot help loving.

The Christian teaching shows man that the essence of his soul is love; that his good comes to him not from loving this one or that one, but from loving the beginning of all things, God, whom he is conscious of in himself as love; and that therefore he will love everyone and everything.

In this lies the fundamental difference between the Christian teaching and the teaching of the positivists and of all the theorists of a non-Christian universal brotherhood.

Such are the two chief misunderstandings about the Christian teaching, from which most of the false judgments of it follow. One is that Christ's teaching instructs people, as the earlier teachings did, in rules that people are bound to follow, and that these rules cannot be carried out. The other is that the whole meaning of Christianity lies in a teaching about the profitable living together of mankind as one family, for which one need only follow the rule of love for humanity, without any mention of love for God.

The false opinion of the men of science, that the teaching about the supernatural is the essence of the Christian teaching and that its teaching for life cannot be applied, together with the misunderstanding that flows from this false opinion, is the other cause of the failure of the people of our time to understand Christianity.

That so many different orders of life rest on this social or pagan understanding of life, the life of the tribe, of the family, of the clan, of the state, and even the life of mankind as the positivists imagine it in theory, does not break the unity of this understanding of life. All these different forms of life rest on one idea: that the life of the individual person is not a sufficient aim of life, and that the meaning of life can be found only in an aggregate of persons. ↩
Here, for example, is a characteristic judgment of this kind, from an article in the American magazine "Arena," October 1890, "A New Basis of Church Life." Discussing the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount, and in particular nonresistance to evil, the author, who has no need, as churchmen have, to hide its meaning, says: "Christ really did preach complete communism and anarchy; but one must know how to look at Christ in his historical and psychological significance. … Devout common sense must gradually come to look upon Christ as a philanthropic teacher who, like every enthusiast who ever taught, went to an Utopian extreme of his own philosophy. Every great agitation for the betterment of the world has been led by men who beheld their own mission with such absorbing intensity that they could see little else. It is no reproach to Christ to say that he had the typical reformer's temperament; that his precepts cannot be literally accepted as a complete philosophy of life; and that men are to analyze them reverently, but, at the same time, in the spirit of ordinary, truth-seeking criticism," and so on. Christ would have been glad to say it well, but he did not know how to express himself as exactly and clearly as we do, in the spirit of criticism, and so we will correct him. Everything he said about humility, sacrifice, poverty, taking no thought for the morrow, he said by accident, for want of knowing how to express himself scientifically. ↩
Translator's note. The magazine was "The Arena" of Boston. From "Devout common sense" on, the article is printed in its own English, as Leo Wiener recovered it for his translation of 1904; Tolstoy's Russian follows it closely, shortening its first sentence. The sentence before it, on communism and anarchy, is not in the article, Wiener reports, and is translated from Tolstoy's Russian. ↩

Chapter 5: The Contradiction Between Our Life and Our Christian Consciousness

There are many causes for the failure to understand the teaching of Christ. One cause is that people suppose they have understood this teaching when they have decided, as the churchmen do, that it was handed down to them by supernatural means; or, as the men of science do, that they have understood it once they have studied a part of the outward phenomena in which it found expression. Another cause lies in the misunderstandings about the teaching's being impossible to carry out, and about its needing to be replaced by a teaching of love for humanity. But the chief cause, the one that gave birth to all these misunderstandings, is that the teaching of Christ is held to be a teaching that a man can accept or not accept without changing his life.

People who are used to the existing order of things, who love it and are afraid to change it, try to understand the teaching as a collection of revelations and rules that can be accepted without any change in their lives. But the teaching of Christ is not only a teaching about rules a man must follow. It is the disclosure of a new meaning of life, a meaning that determines the whole activity of humanity, entirely different from its activity until now, in the period it is now entering.

The life of humanity moves on, and passes, like the life of a single man, through ages; each age has the understanding of life proper to it, and that understanding of life is inevitably taken in by people. Those who do not take in the understanding of life proper to their age consciously are brought to it unconsciously. What happens with the change in the views of life of individual men happens also with the change in the views of life of nations and of all humanity. If a man with a family goes on being guided in what he does by a child's understanding of life, his life will grow so hard for him that he will be driven, whether he likes it or not, to look for another understanding of life, and will gladly take in the one proper to his age.

The same is happening now in our humanity, in the transition we are living through from the pagan understanding of life to the Christian one. The social man of our time is brought by life itself to the necessity of renouncing the pagan understanding of life, which no longer fits the present age of humanity, and of submitting to the demands of the Christian teaching. However distorted and reinterpreted its truths may be, he still knows them, and they alone offer a way out of the contradictions in which he is entangled.

If the demands of the Christian teaching seem strange and even dangerous to a man of the social understanding of life, then the demands of the social teaching seemed just as strange, just as incomprehensible and dangerous, to the savage in ancient times, when he did not yet fully understand them and could not foresee their consequences.

"It is unreasonable," says the savage, "to sacrifice my peace or my life to defend something incomprehensible, intangible, conventional: the family, the clan, the fatherland. And above all, it is dangerous to put myself at the disposal of a power not my own." But a time came for the savage when, on the one hand, he understood, if only dimly, the meaning of social life and of its chief mainspring, public approval or censure, which is to say glory; and when, on the other hand, the sufferings of his personal life grew so great that he could no longer go on believing in the truth of his old understanding of life. And he accepted the social teaching, the teaching of the state, and submitted to it.

Exactly the same is happening now with the social man, the man of the state.

"It is unreasonable," says the social man, "to sacrifice my own good, the good of my family and of my fatherland, in order to fulfill the demands of some higher law, which requires me to renounce the most natural and good feelings there are: love for myself, for my family, for my native land, for my fatherland. And above all, it is dangerous to reject the security of life that the order of the state provides."

But the time comes when, on the one hand, a dim consciousness in his soul of a higher law of love for God and for his neighbor, and on the other hand, the sufferings that flow from the contradictions of life, force a man to renounce the social understanding of life and to take in the new one that is offered to him, the one that resolves all the contradictions and removes the sufferings of his life: the Christian understanding of life. And that time has now come.

To us, who lived through the transition from the animal, personal understanding of life to the social one thousands of years ago, that transition seems to have been necessary and natural, while this one, the one we have been living through for the last eighteen hundred years, seems arbitrary, unnatural and frightening. But it only seems so to us, because that transition has already been accomplished, and its working has passed into the unconscious, whereas the present transition is not yet finished, and we must accomplish it consciously.

The social understanding of life entered the consciousness of people over centuries, over thousands of years. It passed through various forms, and now for humanity it has risen into the realm of the unconscious, handed down by heredity, upbringing and habit; and that is why it seems natural to us. But five thousand years ago it seemed just as unnatural and frightening to people as the Christian teaching, in its true meaning, seems to them now.

It seems to us now that the demands of the Christian teaching, universal brotherhood, no distinction of nationality, the absence of property, and nonresistance to evil by violence, which seems so strange, are demands for the impossible. But in the same way, thousands of years ago, in still more ancient times, demands that were not only political but belonged to the family seemed just as impossible: for instance, the demand that parents feed their children, that the young feed the old, that husband and wife be faithful to each other. Stranger still, even mad, seemed the demands of the state: that citizens submit to the authority set over them, pay taxes, go to war to defend the fatherland, and so on. All such demands seem simple to us now, understandable, natural, with nothing mystical or even strange about them; but five or three thousand years ago they seemed demands for the impossible.

The social understanding of life served as the foundation of religions precisely because, at the time it was presented to people, it seemed to them wholly incomprehensible, mystical and supernatural. Now that we have lived through this phase of the life of humanity, we understand the reasonable causes for people's uniting into families, communities and states; but in antiquity the demands for such a union were presented in the name of the supernatural and confirmed by it.

The patriarchal religions deified families, clans, nations; the state religions deified kings and states. Even now most people of little education, like our peasants, who call the Tsar "God on earth," submit to the laws of society not from a reasonable consciousness of their necessity, not because they have any notion of the idea of the state, but from religious feeling.

In just the same way, the Christian teaching now presents itself to people of the social, or pagan, view of the world as a supernatural religion, when in reality there is nothing secret, nothing mystical, nothing supernatural in it. It is only a teaching about life that answers to the degree of material development, to the age, that humanity has reached, and that humanity must therefore inevitably accept.

The time will come, and it is coming already, when the Christian foundations of life, the equality and brotherhood of men, the community of goods, nonresistance to evil by violence, will become as natural and simple as the foundations of family, social and state life seem to us now.

Neither a man nor humanity can go backward in its movement. The social, family and state understanding of life has been outlived by people, and we must go forward and take in the next and higher understanding of life; and that is what is happening now.

This movement goes on from two sides: consciously, as a result of spiritual causes, and unconsciously, as a result of material causes.

A single man very rarely changes his life only because his reason directs him to. For the most part, in spite of the new meaning and the new aims that reason points out to him, he goes on living his old life, and changes it only when his life has come into complete contradiction with his consciousness and has therefore become a torment. In just the same way humanity, having learned through its religious guides the new meaning of life and the new aims it must strive for, goes on for a long time even after this knowledge, in the majority of its people, living its old life, and is brought to accept the new understanding of life only by the consciousness that the old life can no longer be continued.

In spite of the demands for a change of life, recognized and spoken by the religious guides and accepted by the most reasonable people, the majority, in spite of their religious reverence for these guides, that is, their faith in their teaching, go on being guided in a life that has grown more complex by the old teaching. They act as a family man would act if, knowing how a man of his age ought to live, he went on from habit and thoughtlessness living a child's life.

This is just what is happening in the transition of humanity from one age to another that we are living through now. Humanity has outgrown its social, state age and has entered a new one. It knows the teaching that must be laid at the foundation of the life of this new age, but out of inertia it goes on holding to the old forms of life. From this discord between the understanding of life and the practice of life flows a series of contradictions and sufferings that poison our life and demand that it be changed.

One need only set the practice of life beside its theory to be horrified at the glaring contradiction between the conditions of our life and our consciousness, the contradiction in which we live.

Our whole life is one unbroken contradiction of everything we know and everything we hold to be necessary and right. The contradiction is in everything: in economic life, in the life of the state, and in international life. As though we had forgotten what we know, and had put aside for the time being what we believe (we cannot help believing it, because it is the only foundation of our life we have), we do everything exactly the reverse of what our conscience and our common sense demand of us.

In our economic, political and international relations we are guided by foundations that were fit for people three and five thousand years ago, and that flatly contradict both our present consciousness and the conditions of life in which we find ourselves now.

It was all very well for the man of antiquity to live among a division of people into slaves and masters, when he believed that this division came from God and could not be otherwise. But is such a division possible in our time?

The man of the ancient world could think himself entitled to enjoy the goods of this world at the expense of other people, making them suffer for generations, because he believed that people are born of different breeds, of common clay and of noble blood, the seed of Japheth and the seed of Ham. The greatest sages of the world, the teachers of humanity, Plato and Aristotle, not only justified the existence of slaves and proved its lawfulness; even three centuries ago, the men who wrote about an imaginary society of the future, a utopia, could not picture it without slaves.

The people of antiquity, and even of the Middle Ages, believed, truly believed, that people are not equal, that the only real people are the Persians, or only the Greeks, or only the Romans, or only the French. But we can no longer believe this. And those people of our time who wear themselves out championing aristocracy and patriotism do not believe, cannot believe, what they are saying.

We all know, and cannot help knowing, even if we had never heard or read this thought plainly expressed and had never expressed it ourselves, we who have breathed in this consciousness that hangs in the Christian air, we all know with our whole heart, and cannot help knowing, that fundamental truth of the Christian teaching: that we are all sons of one Father, all of us, wherever we live and whatever language we speak; that we are all brothers, and are subject to one law only, the law of love, which our common Father has put into our hearts.

Whatever the way of thinking and the degree of education of a man of our time, whether he is an educated liberal of whatever shade, a philosopher of whatever persuasion, a man of science, an economist of whatever school, or an uneducated man, even a religious man of whatever confession, every man of our time knows that all people have the same right to life and to the goods of the world, that some people are neither better nor worse than others, that all people are equal. Everyone knows this beyond doubt, firmly, with his whole being. And at the same time he not only sees around him the division of all people into two castes, one laboring, oppressed, in want and suffering, the other idle, oppressing, living in luxury and amusing itself; he not only sees it, but willingly or unwillingly takes part, on one side or the other, in this division of people that his consciousness rejects. And he cannot help suffering from the consciousness of this contradiction and of his part in it.

Whether he is master or slave, the man of our time cannot help feeling a constant, tormenting contradiction between his consciousness and reality, and the sufferings that flow from it.

The laboring mass, the great majority of people, suffer from constant, senseless, unrelieved toil and privation that swallow up their whole life; but most of all they suffer from the consciousness of the glaring contradiction between what is and what ought to be according to everything professed both by themselves and by those who have put them in this position and keep them there.

They know that they are in slavery, and that they are perishing in want and darkness in order to serve the lusts of the minority that holds them in slavery. They know it and they say it. And this consciousness not only increases their suffering: it is the very essence of their suffering.

The slave of antiquity knew that he was a slave by nature. Our worker feels himself a slave and knows that he need not be one, and so he endures the torments of Tantalus, forever desiring and never getting what not only could be but ought to be. The sufferings of the working classes that come from the contradiction between what is and what ought to be are multiplied tenfold by the envy and hatred that flow from this consciousness.

Even if his work were much lighter than the work of the ancient slave, even if he won the eight-hour day and a wage of three dollars a day, the worker of our time would not stop suffering. He makes things he will never use; he works not for himself and by his own choice but from need, to satisfy the whims of luxurious and idle people in general, and in particular to enrich one rich man, the owner of a factory or a mill. And he knows that all this is happening in a world that recognizes the scientific proposition that labor alone is wealth, and that using other people's labor is an injustice, an illegality punished by the laws; and, more than that, in a world that professes the teaching of Christ, according to which we are all brothers, and a man's worth and merit lie only in serving his neighbor, not in making use of him.

He knows all this, and he cannot help suffering bitterly from this glaring contradiction between everything that ought to be and what is. "By every sign, and by everything I know that everyone professes," the working man says to himself, "I ought to be free, equal to all other people, and loved; and instead I am a slave, I am humiliated and hated." And he hates in his turn, and looks for means to escape from his position, to throw off the enemy who has piled himself on top of him and to sit on him himself. People say, "The workers are wrong to want to take the place of the capitalists, the poor to take the place of the rich." That is not true. The workers and the poor would be wrong to want this in a world that recognized slaves and masters, rich and poor, as established by God; but they want it in a world that professes the teaching of the Gospel, whose first principle is the sonship of men to God, and therefore the brotherhood and equality of all men. And however hard people try, they cannot hide the fact that one of the first conditions of a Christian life is love, not in words, but in deed.

The man of the so-called educated class lives in a still greater contradiction and still greater suffering. Every such man, if he believes in anything, believes, if not in the brotherhood of men, then in humanitarianism; if not in humanitarianism, then in justice; if not in justice, then in science. And at the same time he knows that his whole life is built on conditions directly opposed to all of these, to every principle of Christianity, of humanitarianism, of justice and of science.

He knows that all the habits in which he was brought up, habits he could not give up without torment, can be satisfied only by the tormenting, often ruinous labor of oppressed workers, that is, by the most obvious and crude violation of those very principles of Christianity, humanitarianism, justice, and even of science (I mean the demands of political economy) that he professes. He professes the principles of brotherhood, humanitarianism, justice and science; and he not only lives in such a way that he needs the oppression of the workers that he condemns, but in such a way that his whole life is an exploitation of that oppression. And he not only lives so, but directs his activity to upholding this order of things, which is directly opposed to everything he believes in.

We are all brothers, and yet every morning a brother or a sister carries out my chamber pot. We are all brothers, and yet every morning I must have a cigar, sugar, a mirror and other such things, in the making of which my brothers and sisters, my equals, have lost and are losing their health; and I use these things and even demand them. We are all brothers, and yet I live by working in a bank, or a trading house, or a shop, at making all the goods my brothers need more expensive. We are all brothers, and yet I live by drawing a salary for charging, trying and punishing the thief or the prostitute, whose existence is conditioned by the whole structure of my own life, and who, as I myself know, ought not to be punished but reformed. We are all brothers, but I live by drawing a salary for collecting taxes from poor working people, to be spent on the luxury of the idle and the rich. We are all brothers, and yet I draw a salary for preaching to people a sham Christian faith in which I do not myself believe, and which keeps them from coming to know the true one. I draw my salary as a priest or a bishop for deceiving people in the matter that is most important of all to them. We are all brothers, but I give the poor my labors as a teacher, a doctor, a writer, only for money. We are all brothers, and yet I draw a salary for preparing myself for murder, for learning to kill, or for making weapons, gunpowder, fortresses.

The whole life of our upper classes is one unbroken contradiction, and the more sensitive a man's moral consciousness, the more tormenting it is.

A man with a sensitive conscience cannot help suffering if he lives this life. The one means he has of ridding himself of this suffering is to stifle his conscience; but even when such people do manage to stifle their conscience, they cannot stifle their fear.

The people of the upper, oppressing classes who are insensitive, or who have stifled their conscience, suffer, if not from conscience, then from fear and hatred. And they cannot help suffering. They know of the hatred against them that lives, and cannot help living, in the working classes. They know that the workers know they have been deceived and done violence to, and are beginning to organize in order to throw off their oppression and pay their oppressors back. The upper classes see the unions, the strikes, the First of May, and they sense the disaster that threatens them, and this fear poisons their life. They sense the disaster that threatens them, and the fear they feel turns into a feeling of self-defense and into hatred. They know that if they weaken for a moment in their struggle with the slaves they oppress, they themselves will perish, because the slaves are embittered, and the bitterness grows with every day of oppression. Even if they wished to, the oppressors cannot stop oppressing. They know they will perish themselves the moment they not only stop oppressing but even slacken in it. And so they go on doing it, for all their pretended concern for the workers' welfare, the eight-hour day, the prohibition of work for children and women, pensions and compensation. All this is deception, or else concern that the slave should not lose his strength for work; but the slave remains a slave, and the master, who cannot live without the slave, is less ready than ever to set him free.

In relation to the workers, the ruling classes are in the position of a man who has thrown his opponent down and is holding him under him, not letting him go, not so much because he does not want to let him go as because he knows that he has only to let the man under him go for a moment to have his own throat cut on the spot: for the man he holds down is embittered, and there is a knife in his hand. And so, whether they are sensitive or insensitive, our rich classes cannot enjoy the goods they have stolen from the poor, as the ancients did, who believed in their right. Their whole life and all their pleasures are poisoned by the reproaches of conscience or by fear.

Such is the economic contradiction. Still more striking is the contradiction of the state.

All people are brought up, first of all, in habits of obedience to the laws of the state. The whole life of the people of our time is determined by the law of the state. A man marries and is divorced, brings up his children, even professes his faith (in many states), according to the law. What, then, is this law that determines the whole life of people? Do people believe in this law? Do they hold it to be true? Not in the least. In most cases the people of our time do not believe in the justice of this law, they despise it, and still they obey it. It was all very well for the people of antiquity to keep their laws. They believed, truly believed, that their law (which for the most part was also a religious one) was the one true law, to which all people ought to submit. But we? We know, and cannot help knowing, that the law of our state is not only not the one eternal law, but merely one of many laws of many states, all equally imperfect, and often plainly false and unjust, laws that have been picked over from every side in the newspapers. It was all very well for the Jew to submit to his laws when he did not doubt that God had written them with his finger; or for the Roman, when he thought the nymph Egeria had written them; or even when people believed that the kings who gave the laws were the Lord's anointed; or even when they believed that legislative assemblies had both the wish and the ability to find the best laws. But we know how laws are made. We have all been behind the scenes; we all know that laws are the products of greed, deception and party struggle, that there is not and cannot be any true justice in them. And so the people of our time cannot believe that obedience to civil or state laws satisfies the demands of the reasonableness of human nature. People have long known that it is unreasonable to obey a law whose truth may be doubted, and so they cannot help suffering when they obey a law whose reasonableness and binding force they do not recognize.

A man cannot help suffering when his whole life is determined in advance by laws that he must obey under threat of punishment, laws in whose reasonableness and justice he does not believe, and whose injustice, cruelty and unnaturalness he often plainly sees. We recognize that customs houses and import duties are unnecessary, and we must pay them; we recognize that the expenses of keeping up the court and many ranks of officials are useless; we recognize that the preaching of the Church is harmful, and we must take part in maintaining these institutions; we recognize that the punishments imposed by the courts are cruel and shameless, and we must take part in them; we recognize that the distribution of landed property is wrong and harmful, and we must submit to it; we do not recognize the necessity of armies and of war, and we must bear terrible burdens to maintain armies and wage wars; and so on.

But even this contradiction is nothing beside the contradiction that has now risen before people in international relations, and that demands to be resolved under threat of the ruin of both human reason and human life. This is the contradiction between the Christian consciousness and war.

We, all the Christian nations, live one spiritual life, so that every good and fruitful thought that arises at one end of the world is at once communicated to the whole of Christian humanity and calls up the same feelings of joy and pride, whatever the nationality. We love not only the thinkers, benefactors, poets and scholars of other nations; we are proud of the deed of Father Damien among the lepers as though it were our own; we simply love people of other nationalities, the French, the Germans, the Americans, the English; we not only respect their qualities, but are glad when we meet them and smile at them with joy. We cannot think a war with these people a heroic deed; we cannot even think without horror that some disagreement could arise between these people and ourselves that would have to be settled by killing one another. And we are all called to take part in a killing that must inevitably come, if not today, then tomorrow.

It was all very well for the Jew, the Greek, the Roman, not only to defend the independence of his nation by killing, but also by killing to subdue other nations to himself, when he firmly believed that his nation was the one real, good and kind nation, beloved of God, and that all the rest were Philistines and barbarians. People of the Middle Ages could still believe this; people could believe it not long ago, at the end of the last century and the very beginning of this one. But we, however much we may be goaded, can no longer believe it; and for the people of our time this contradiction is so terrible that it has become impossible to live without resolving it.

"We live in a time full of contradictions," writes Count Komarovsky, professor of international law, in his learned treatise. "In the press of every country a universal longing for peace, and its necessity for all nations, is constantly put forward. The representatives of governments and private persons speak in the same sense, both as official organs, in parliamentary speeches, in diplomatic negotiations, and even in treaties with one another. At the same time, however, the governments raise the military strength of their countries every year, impose new taxes, take out loans, and leave to future generations, as a bequest, the duty of bearing the mistakes of the present senseless policy. What a crying contradiction between word and deed!

"Of course, to justify these measures the governments point to the exclusively defensive character of all these expenditures and armaments. But it still remains incomprehensible to any disinterested person where an attack can be expected from, when all the great powers are unanimous in pursuing in their policy the one aim of defense. In reality it looks as though each of the powers expects every minute to be attacked by the others, and the consequences are these: universal distrust, and a preternatural effort by each government to surpass the strength of the other powers. Such a competition in itself increases the danger of war. The nations cannot bear their swollen armaments for long, and sooner or later they will prefer war to all the disadvantages of the present position and its constant threat. The most trifling pretext will then be enough to light the fire of a general war across the whole of Europe. It is wrong to think that such a crisis could cure us of the political and economic calamities that oppress us. The experience of the wars waged in recent years teaches us that every war has only sharpened the hostility of the nations, increased the weight and unbearableness of the pressure of militarism, and made the political and economic situation of Europe only sadder and more tangled."

"Modern Europe keeps under arms an active army of 9 million men," writes Enrico Ferri, "and a reserve army of 15 million more, spending 4 billion francs a year on them. By arming herself more and more, she paralyzes the sources of social and individual well-being, and may fairly be compared to a man who, in order to provide himself with weapons, condemns himself to anemia, losing at the same time the very strength he would need to use the weapons he is laying up, until at last he falls under their weight."

Charles Booth says the same in a speech read in London, on July 26, 1887, to the Association for the Reform and Codification of the Law of Nations. Having pointed out the same figures, 9 million and more in the active armies and 17 million in the reserves, and the enormous expenses of the governments in maintaining these armies and armaments, he says: "But this forms only a small part of the actual cost, for besides the figures mentioned, which constitute merely the war budgets of the nations, we have to take into account the enormous loss to society by the withdrawal of so many able-bodied men … from the occupations of productive industry, together with the prodigious capital invested in all warlike preparations and appliances, and which is absolutely unproductive.… One necessary result of the expenditure on wars and preparations for war is the steady growth of national debts." The greater part of the national debts of Europe, he goes on, was contracted for war; together they come to 4 billion pounds, or 40 billion rubles, and they grow every year.¹¹

The same Komarovsky says elsewhere: "We are living in hard times. Everywhere one hears complaints of the stagnation of trade and industry and of the bad economic situation in general; people point to the hard conditions of life of the working classes and to the general impoverishment of the masses. And yet, in spite of this, the governments, in their striving to maintain their independence, go to the utmost limits of unreason. Everywhere new taxes and duties are being invented, and the financial oppression of the nations knows no bounds. If we look at the budgets of the European states over the last hundred years, what strikes us first of all is their constant, progressive and rapid growth. How are we to explain this extraordinary phenomenon, which sooner or later threatens us all with inevitable bankruptcy?

"It comes, beyond dispute, from the expenditure called for by the maintenance of armies, which swallows a third and even a half of the budgets of all the European states. The saddest thing of all is that no end can be foreseen to this growth of budgets and impoverishment of the masses. What is socialism, if not a protest against this utterly abnormal situation in which the greater part of the population of our part of the world finds itself?"

"We are ruining ourselves," says Frédéric Passy in a paper read at the last Universal Peace Congress, in London in 1890, "we are ruining ourselves so as to be able to take part in the mad butcheries of the future, or to pay the interest on debts left to us by the mad and criminal butcheries of the past. We are starving ourselves to death so as to be able to kill."

Further on, speaking of how France looks on the matter, he says: "We believe that, a hundred years after the proclamation of the rights of man and of the citizen, the time has come to recognize the rights of nations, and to renounce once and for all those enterprises of deception and violence which, under the name of conquests, are true crimes against humanity, and which, whatever the ambition of monarchs and the pride of nations may think of them, weaken even those who triumph."

"I am always very much surprised at the way religion is carried on in this country," says Sir Wilfrid Lawson at the same congress. "You send a boy to the Sunday school, and you tell him, 'My dear boy, you must love your enemies; if any boy strikes you, don't strike him again; try to reform him by loving him.' Well, the boy stays in the Sunday school till he is fourteen or fifteen years of age, and then his friends say, 'Put him in the army.' What has he to do in the army? Why, not to love his enemies, but whenever he sees an enemy to run him through the body with a bayonet. That is the nature of all religious teaching in this country. I do not think that that is a very good way of carrying out the precepts of religion. I think if it is a good thing for the boy to love his enemy, it is a good thing for the man to love his enemy."

And further on: "The nations of Europe … keep somewhere about twenty-eight millions of armed men to settle quarrels by killing one another, instead of by arguing. That is what the Christian nations of the world are doing at this moment. It is a very expensive way also; for this publication which I saw made out that since the year 1872 these nations had spent the almost incredible amount of £1,500,000,000 of money in preparing, and settling their quarrels by killing one another. Now it seems to me that with that state of things one of two positions must be accepted: either that Christianity is a failure or, that those who profess to expound Christianity have failed in expounding it properly."

"Until our ironclads are withdrawn, and our army disbanded, we are not entitled to call ourselves a Christian nation," says Mr. F. Jowet Wilson.

In a discussion that arose over the question whether Christian pastors are bound to preach against war, Mr. G. D. Bartlett said, among other things: "If I understand the Scriptures, I say that men are only playing with Christianity when they ignore this question," that is, when they keep silent about war. "I have lived a longish life … I never heard universal peace recommended from the pulpit half a dozen times in my life.… Some twenty years ago I happened to stand in a drawing-room where there were forty or fifty people, and I dared to moot the proposition that war was incompatible with Christianity. They looked upon me as an arrant fanatic. The idea that we could get on without war was regarded as unmitigated weakness and folly."

The Catholic priest the Abbé Defourny spoke in the same spirit. "One of the first precepts of the eternal law written in the conscience of all men," says the Abbé Defourny, "is the prohibition against taking the life of one's neighbor and shedding blood (without sufficient cause, and without being forced to it by necessity). It is one of the precepts cut more deeply than any other into the human heart.… But as soon as it is a question of war, that is, of shedding human blood in torrents, the people of the present day no longer trouble themselves about a sufficient cause. Those who take part in wars do not even think of asking themselves whether these countless killings have any justification: whether they are just or unjust, lawful or unlawful, innocent or criminal, whether or not they break the chief law, the one that forbids killing (without lawful cause). But their conscience is silent.… War has ceased to be a matter that has anything to do with morality. For military men there is no other joy in the labors and dangers they bear than to be victors, and no other grief than to be vanquished. Do not tell me that they serve their fatherland. Long ago a great genius answered you in words that have become a proverb: 'Take away justice, and what is a state but a great band of robbers? And is not a band of robbers a little state? Bands of robbers, too, have their laws. There, too, men fight to win booty, and even for honor.…'¹²

"The aim of this institution" (he is speaking of the founding of an international tribunal) "is that the European nations should stop being nations of thieves, and their armies bands of robbers; and, I must add, of slaves. Yes, our armies are crowds of slaves belonging to one or two rulers or ministers, who dispose of them tyrannically, without any responsibility, as we know.…

"What marks a slave is that in the hands of his master he is a thing, a tool, and not a man. Such are the soldiers, officers and generals who go to be killed and to kill at the will of the ruler or rulers. Military slavery exists, and it is the worst of slaveries, especially now, when by means of compulsory service it puts chains on the necks of all the free and strong men of a nation, in order to make them instruments of murder, executioners, butchers of human flesh; for that is the only thing they are recruited and drilled for.…

"Rulers, two or three of them, meeting in their cabinets, come to secret agreements without minutes, without publicity, and therefore without responsibility, and send men to the slaughter."

"The protests against armaments that weigh so heavily on the people did not begin in our time," says Signor E. T. Moneta. "Listen to what Montesquieu wrote in his day: 'France (one may now put Europe in its place) will be ruined by its soldiers. A new disease has spread through Europe. It has seized our princes and makes them keep an inordinate number of troops. It has its fits and flare-ups, and so it is contagious; for as soon as one state increases its troops, all the others at once do the same, so that nothing comes of it but the common ruin.

"'Every government keeps as many troops as it could keep if its people were threatened with extermination, and people call this state of strain of all against all peace. And so Europe is so ruined that if private persons were in the position of the governments of this part of the world, the richest of them would have nothing to live on. We are poor, though we have the wealth and the commerce of the whole world.'

"This was written almost 150 years ago. The picture seems to have been painted from the present day. Only one thing has changed: the form of government. In Montesquieu's time it was said that the cause of keeping great armies was the unlimited power of kings, who made war in the hope of increasing their private property by victories, and of covering themselves with glory.

"People said then: 'Ah, if only the nations could elect those who would have the right to refuse the governments soldiers and money, there would be an end of the politics of war.' Now there are representative governments in nearly all of Europe, and in spite of this, the expenditure on armies and on preparations for war has grown in a frightful proportion.

"Evidently the madness of the rulers has passed to the governing classes. Wars are no longer fought because one king failed in courtesy toward another king's mistress, as happened under Louis XIV. But by exaggerating the honorable and natural feelings of national dignity and patriotism, and by stirring up the public opinion of one nation against another, things have come at last to such a pass that it is enough for it to be said, even if the report is false, that the ambassador of your state was not received by the head of another state, for the most terrible and ruinous of all the wars there have ever been to break out. Europe now keeps more soldiers under arms than in the time of the great Napoleonic wars. All citizens on our continent, with few exceptions, are obliged to spend several years in barracks. Fortresses, arsenals and ships are being built; weapons are produced without end, and in the shortest time replaced by others, because science, which ought always to be directed to the good of humanity, unhappily lends its aid to the work of destruction, and devises ever new means of killing great numbers of people in the shortest time.

"And to maintain so many soldiers and make such enormous preparations for murder, hundreds of millions are spent every year: sums that would be enough to educate the people and carry out the greatest works for the public good, and that would make it possible to resolve the social question peacefully.

"In this respect, therefore, for all our scientific triumphs, Europe is in the same position as in the worst times of the savage Middle Ages. Everyone complains of this situation, which is not war but is not peace either, and everyone would like to get out of it. The heads of governments assert that they all want peace, and there is a competition among them as to which of them will make the most solemn declarations of peace. But on the same day, or the next, they lay before their legislative assemblies a proposal to increase their armaments, and say that they are taking such precautions precisely in order to secure peace.

"But this is not the peace we love. And the nations are not deceived by it. True peace has mutual trust at its foundation, whereas these enormous armaments show an open and extreme distrust, if not a hidden hostility, between the states. What would we say of a man who, wishing to show his friendly feelings to his neighbor, invited him to settle the questions between them with a loaded revolver in his hand?

"It is this glaring contradiction between the peaceable declarations and the military policy of the governments that all good citizens want to see ended, whatever it may cost."

People are astonished that 60,000 suicides take place in Europe every year, and those only the ones that are known and recorded, and not counting Russia and Turkey. But what should astonish us is not that there are so many suicides but that there are so few. Every man of our time, if one looks into the contradiction between his consciousness and his life, is in the most desperate position. Leaving aside all the other contradictions between life and consciousness that fill the life of a man of our time, this last, military situation in which Europe finds itself, together with his Christian profession, is enough by itself to bring a man to despair, to make him doubt the reasonableness of human nature, and to end his life in this mad and bestial world. This contradiction, the military one, which holds within it the quintessence of all the other contradictions, is so terrible that one can live and take part in it only if one does not think about it, if one can forget it.

What! We are all Christians; we not only profess love for one another, but actually live one common life; the pulse of our life beats with the same strokes; we help one another, learn from one another, and draw closer and closer to one another in love, to our mutual joy! In this drawing together lies the meaning of all life. And tomorrow some crazed head of a government will say something stupid, another will answer with something just as stupid, and I will go, exposing myself to being killed, to kill people who have not only done me no harm but whom I love. And this is no remote chance: it is the very thing we are all preparing for, an event that is not only probable but inevitable.

It is enough to be clearly conscious of this to go mad or shoot oneself. And that is just what does happen, and especially often among military men. One need only come to one's senses for a minute to be driven to such an end. This alone explains the terrible intensity with which the people of our time strive to stupefy themselves with wine, tobacco, opium, cards, newspaper reading, travel, every kind of spectacle and amusement. All these things are pursued as serious, important business. And they really are important business. If there were no outward means of dulling the mind, half of mankind would shoot itself at once, because to live against one's own reason is the most unbearable state there is. And all the people of our time are in that state. All the people of our time live in a constant, glaring contradiction between consciousness and life. These contradictions show themselves in economic and political relations; but the contradiction is sharpest of all between people's consciousness of the Christian law of the brotherhood of men and the necessity in which universal military service places every man: to be ready for enmity and for murder, to be at one and the same time a Christian and a gladiator.

Translator's note. This speech and the speeches of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr. Jowet Wilson and Mr. Bartlett below were made in English, and are printed here in their own English as Leo Wiener recovered it for his translation of 1904, cut as Tolstoy cut them, "…" at his cuts. Its last sentence, on the debts, is Tolstoy's own rounded summary of the speaker's (whose figure, in Wiener, is £4,680,000,000), and is translated from his Russian. Wiener also gives the speaker of 1887 as Henry Richard, the Welsh member of Parliament and secretary of the Peace Society, not Charles Booth. The other speakers in this chapter wrote in Russian, Italian or French, and are translated from Tolstoy's Russian. ↩
Translator's note. The great genius is St. Augustine, in "The City of God," Book 4, chapter 4. ↩

Chapter 6: How the People of Our World Regard War

The contradictions between life and consciousness can be resolved in two ways: by changing the life, or by changing the consciousness. And there would seem to be no doubt which of the two to choose.

A man can stop doing what he considers bad, but he cannot stop considering bad what is bad.

In just the same way, the whole of humanity can stop doing what it considers bad; but it cannot change, it cannot even hold back for a time, the consciousness, which grows ever clearer and spreads ever wider, of what is bad and therefore ought not to be. It would seem that the choice between changing the life and changing the consciousness ought to be clear and beyond all doubt.

And so it would seem inevitable that the Christian humanity of our time should renounce the pagan forms of life it condemns, and build its life on the Christian foundations it acknowledges.

It would be so, were it not for the law of inertia, which is as unchanging in the life of men and nations as in lifeless bodies. In people it takes the form of a psychological law, expressed so truly in the Gospel in the words, "And they came not to the light, because their deeds were evil." This law is that most people think not in order to know the truth, but in order to assure themselves that they are in the truth: to assure themselves that the life they lead, the life that is pleasant and habitual to them, is the very one that agrees with the truth.

Slavery was contrary to all the moral principles that Plato and Aristotle preached, and yet neither of them saw it, because to deny slavery would have destroyed the whole life they lived. The same thing is happening in our world.

The division of people into two castes, like the violence of the state and of the army, is contrary to all the moral principles by which our world lives; and yet the advanced, educated people of our time seem not to see it.

Most educated people of our time, if not all, are trying unconsciously to hold on to the old social understanding of life, which justifies their position, and to hide from themselves and from others its bankruptcy and, above all, the necessity of taking in the Christian understanding of life, which destroys the whole structure of existing life. They strive to uphold an order founded on the social understanding of life, but they do not believe in it themselves, because it has been outlived and it is no longer possible to believe in it.

The whole literature of our time, philosophical, political and imaginative alike, is astonishing in this respect. What wealth of ideas, of forms, of colors; what erudition, what elegance, what abundance of thought; and what an absence of serious content; more than that, what a kind of fear of any definiteness of thought or of its expression! Evasions, allegories, jokes, general considerations of the widest kind, and nothing simple and clear, nothing to the point, that is, to the question of life.

And it is not only graceful trifles that are written and spoken. Downright vileness and savagery are written and spoken too; arguments are written and spoken, in the most refined manner, that lead people back to primeval savagery, to the foundations of a life not merely pagan but animal, a life we outlived five thousand years ago.

Nor can it be otherwise. Shying away from the Christian understanding of life, which upsets an order that for some is only habitual and for others is habitual and profitable as well, people cannot help going back to the pagan understanding of life and to the teachings founded on it. In our time not only are patriotism and aristocracy preached as they were preached two thousand years ago, but the crudest Epicureanism, the life of the animal, is preached too, with this difference only: those who preached it then believed what they preached, whereas now the preachers themselves do not believe what they say, and cannot believe it, because what they preach no longer has any meaning. One cannot stand still when the ground is moving. If you do not go forward, you go back. And it is strange and terrible to say, but the educated people of our time, the advanced people, with their refined arguments, are in fact dragging society back, not even to a pagan state, but to a state of primeval savagery.

Nowhere is this direction in the activity of the advanced people of our time so plain as in their attitude to the phenomenon in which the whole bankruptcy of the social understanding of life has found concentrated expression in our time: war, universal armament and universal military service.

The vagueness, if not the dishonesty, of the educated people of our time in their attitude to this phenomenon is astonishing. In our educated society the attitude to it is of three kinds. Some regard it as something accidental, arising from the particular political situation of Europe, and think it can be put right without any change in the whole inner structure of the life of nations, by external, diplomatic, international measures. Others look on it as something terrible and cruel, but inevitable and fatal, like disease or death. A third group calmly and coolly considers war a necessary and beneficial phenomenon, and therefore a desirable one.

People look at the subject in different ways, but the first, the second and the third all reason about war as an event entirely independent of the will of the people who take part in it. And so they do not even allow the natural question that occurs to every simple man: "And do I need to take part in it?" In the opinion of all these people, questions of this kind do not even exist, and every man, however he may personally regard war, must in this matter slavishly submit to the demands of the authorities.

The attitude of the first group, those who see salvation from wars in diplomatic, international measures, is perfectly expressed in the results of the last peace congress in London, and in an article and letters on war by eminent writers in number 8 of the "Revue des Revues" for 1891.

Here are the results of the congress. Having gathered the opinions of learned men from every corner of the world, in person or in writing, the congress opened with a service of prayer in the cathedral and closed with a dinner and speeches; for five days it listened to a great many speeches, and it arrived at the following resolutions.¹³

First, the congress expressed its belief that the brotherhood of man involves as a necessary consequence a brotherhood of nations, in which the interests of every nation are acknowledged to be identical.

Second, the congress recognized that Christianity has an influence on the moral and political progress of mankind, and therefore reminded ministers of the Gospel, and others engaged in religious education, of the duty of spreading the principles of peace and good will among men. For this purpose the congress set apart the third Sunday of every December. On that day there is to be a special proclamation of the principles of peace.

Third, the congress expressed the wish that all teachers of history should call the attention of the young to the grave evils that war has always inflicted on mankind, and to the fact that wars have in most cases been waged for very inadequate causes.

Fourth, the congress condemned the teaching of military drill in schools in the form of physical exercise, and suggested that the military cadet companies now in existence be replaced by brigades for saving life. The congress further expressed the wish to impress on the boards of examiners, whose duty is to set the questions for pupils, the necessity of guiding the pupils' minds toward the principles of peace.

Fifth, the congress expressed its conviction that the doctrine of the rights of man requires that weak and savage peoples, their property and their liberty, be guarded from injustice and abuse, and that these peoples be shielded from the vices so prevalent among the so-called civilized peoples. In the congress's opinion, the nations ought to act in concert to this end. The congress expressed its hearty sympathy with the conclusions of the anti-slavery conference held lately in Brussels for the amelioration of the condition of the savages of Africa.

Sixth, the congress expressed its conviction that, since the warlike prejudices and traditions still so deeply rooted in some nations, and all the warlike speeches made in legislative assemblies by certain leaders of public opinion, with which the organs of the press are filled, are not infrequently indirect causes of war, it would be desirable to publish accurate information on the relations between nations. To this end the congress proposed founding an international newspaper that could meet the requirements set out above.

Seventh, the congress proposed that the committee advise its members to support, on every suitable occasion, projects for unifying weights, measures, coinage, postal and telegraph tariffs and so on, which could help bring about a real commercial, industrial and scientific union of the peoples.

Eighth, in view of the boundless moral and social influence of women, the congress urged them to give their support to everything that can further peace, since otherwise a large share of the responsibility for any continuance of the present military state of things must rest on them.

Ninth, the congress expressed the hope that the Financial Reform Association and other similar societies in Europe and America would unite to consider means of establishing just commercial relations between states by abolishing import duties. The congress expressed the thought that all civilized nations desire peace and are waiting impatiently for an end to the universal armaments. These armaments, made supposedly for defense, become in their turn an evil, since they keep mistrust alive and are at the same time the cause of that universal economic disturbance which prevents the questions of labor and poverty, which ought to come first of all, from being taken up under favorable conditions.

Tenth, the congress recognized universal disarmament as the best guarantee of peace and as the first step toward solving, to the general satisfaction, the questions that now divide states, and it expressed the wish that a congress of representatives of all the states of Europe might soon be assembled to consider the means that could lead to a gradual universal disarmament.

Eleventh, considering that the hesitation of any one state might hold up the convening of the congress just mentioned, the congress expressed the opinion that the state that first resolves to dismiss a considerable part of its army will do Europe and mankind the greatest service, because it will thereby oblige other states, under the pressure of public opinion, to follow its example. By its act it will without doubt not weaken but only strengthen the natural conditions of its country's defense.

Twelfth, considering that the question of disarmament, like the question of peace in general, depends in great measure on public opinion, the congress recommended that the peace societies, and all friends of peace, carry on an active propaganda for it, especially at the time of parliamentary elections, in order to persuade the electors to give their votes to candidates whose programs include peace, disarmament and arbitration.

Thirteenth, the congress congratulated the friends of peace on the resolution adopted by the International American Conference (Washington, April), which recommends obligatory arbitration in all disputes and other differences, whatever their origin, except only those points of dispute that might imperil the independence of one of the countries concerned.

Fourteenth, the congress commends this resolution to the attention of all the statesmen of Europe and America, in the hope that similar treaties will soon be signed by the other nations, so as to avoid all conflicts in future and at the same time to serve as an example to other states.

Fifteenth, the congress expressed its satisfaction at the adoption by the Spanish Senate (July 16) of a bill authorizing the government to seek ratification of treaties drawn up by arbitration for the settlement of all disputes, except those that concern the independence or the internal government of states.

The congress likewise expressed its satisfaction at the adoption of resolutions to the same effect by the Norwegian Storting and the Italian parliament in the present month.

Sixteenth, the congress resolved to address the principal political, religious and commercial organizations, and the labor unions, officially, with the request that they petition their governments to take the measures needed to set up a special commission, whose duties would include deciding international differences so as to prevent wars.

Seventeenth, seeing (1) that the object pursued by all peace societies is the establishment of a juridical order between nations, and (2) that neutralization by international treaties constitutes a step toward such a juridical state and toward reducing the number of countries in which war will be possible, the congress proposed extending the rules of neutralization, and expressed the wish that all treaties of neutralization now in existence remain in force in future, or, if necessary, be amended so that the neutrality is extended to the whole of the state, or so that the fortresses be demolished, which are rather a danger than a guarantee to any neutrality.

That new treaties be concluded (in harmony with the wishes of the peoples) for establishing the neutrality of the other states.

Eighteenth, the sub-committee of the congress recommended: (1) that the next meetings of the peace congress be held either immediately before the annual international conference or immediately after it, and in the same city; (2) that the question of an international emblem of peace be postponed indefinitely.

That the following resolutions be adopted: (1) To express satisfaction at the formal overture of the Presbyterian Church in the United States to the highest representatives of every religious body of the Christian profession, inviting them to unite in a common conference on measures that could lead to the substitution of international arbitration for war.

(2) To express, in the name of the congress, its profound reverence for the memory of Aurelio Saffi, the great Italian jurist, a member of the Committee of the International League of Peace and Liberty.

(3) That the reports of this congress, signed by the president, be presented, as far as practicable, to the heads of all civilized states by influential deputations.

(4) That the organizing committee be empowered to make the needful emendations in the papers and resolutions adopted here.

(5) That the following resolutions be adopted: (a) to express thanks to the presidents of all the separate sittings of the congress; (b) to express thanks to the chairman, the secretaries and the members of the bureau of the congress; (c) to express thanks to the members of the various sectional committees; (d) to express to Canon Scott Holland, Dr. Reuen Thomas and J. Morgan Gibbon thanks for their addresses before the opening of the congress, with the request that they furnish copies of these addresses for publication, and also to the authorities of St. Paul's Cathedral, the City Temple and Stamford Hill Congregational Church for the use of those buildings for public purposes; (e) to send an address of thanks to Her Majesty for permission to visit Windsor Castle; (f) and also to express thanks to the Lord Mayor and the Lady Mayoress, to Mr. Passmore Edwards and to the other friends who extended their hospitality to the members of the congress.

Nineteenth, the congress expressed its heartfelt gratitude to Almighty God for the remarkable harmony that prevailed at the meetings of the congress, at which so many men and women of the most varied nations and creeds gathered in closest cooperation, and for the successful conclusion of the congress's labors.

The congress expressed its firm and unshaken belief in the ultimate triumph of peace and of the principles advocated at these meetings.

The fundamental idea of the congress is that it is necessary, first, to spread among all people, by every means, the conviction that war is very unprofitable to people and that peace is a great good; and second, to work on the governments, impressing on them the superiority of an international tribunal over war, and therefore the advantages and the necessity of disarmament. To reach the first aim, the congress turns to the teachers of history, to women and to the clergy, with the advice that they preach the evil of war and the good of peace to people on every third Sunday of December. To reach the second, the congress turns to the governments, proposing that they disarm and replace war by arbitration.

To preach the evil of war and the good of peace to people! But the evil of war and the good of peace are so well known to people that, for as long as we have known anything of mankind, the best of all greetings has been "Peace be with you." Why, then, preach it?

Not only Christians, but all the pagans, thousands of years ago, knew the evil of war and the good of peace. And so the advice to ministers of the Gospel to preach the evil of war and the good of peace on the third Sunday of December is wholly superfluous.

A Christian cannot help preaching this always, on every day of his life. And if Christians and the preachers of Christianity do not do it, there must be causes for that; and until those causes are removed, no advice will have any effect. Still less effect can there be in advising governments to dismiss their armies and replace them with international tribunals. The governments too know very well all the difficulty and the burden of raising and maintaining armies; and if, in spite of that, they raise and keep armies with terrible effort and strain, then plainly they cannot act otherwise, and the advice of the congress can do nothing to change it. But the learned refuse to see this, and they keep hoping to find some combination by which the governments, the very governments that make the wars, would limit themselves.

"Is it possible to be rid of war?" writes a learned man in the "Revue des Revues." "Everyone agrees that if it breaks out in Europe, its consequences will be like those of the great invasions of the barbarians. In the coming war the very existence of whole nationalities will be at stake, and so it will be bloody, desperate, atrocious.

"It is this consideration, together with the terrible engines of destruction that modern science has at its disposal, that delays the moment when war is declared and keeps up the present provisional state of things. That state might go on indefinitely, were it not for the enormous expenses that crush the European nations and threaten to bring them to ruin and disaster no smaller than war itself would bring.

"Struck by this thought, people in every country have looked for means of stopping, or at least of softening, the effects of the terrible slaughter that threatens them.

"Such are the questions put on the agenda by the congress soon to meet in Rome and by the publication of pamphlets on disarmament.

"It is unfortunately certain that, with the present organization of most European states, isolated from one another and guided by different interests, the complete abolition of war is a dream with which it would be dangerous to console ourselves. Still, wiser laws and regulations, accepted by all, governing these duels between nations could considerably reduce the horrors of war.

"It is just as utopian to count on disarmament, which is made almost impossible by considerations of a national character that our readers will understand." (This probably means that France cannot disarm until she has had her revenge.) "Public opinion is not prepared to accept projects of disarmament, and, besides, international relations are not such as to allow their acceptance.

"A disarmament demanded by one nation of another would be equivalent to a declaration of war.

"All the same, it may be granted that an exchange of views between the nations concerned will help international agreement to a certain degree, and will make possible a considerable reduction of the military expenses that now crush the European nations, to the detriment of the solution of social questions. Every state, taken by itself, feels the need of that solution, under threat of bringing on a war within in its efforts to prevent one without.

"One can at least propose a reduction of the enormous expenses required by the present organization of war, whose aim is to be able to seize an adversary's territory within twenty-four hours and to fight a decisive battle a week after war is declared!"

What is needed is to arrange things so that states cannot fall on other states suddenly and seize foreign territory within twenty-four hours.

This practical idea was expressed by Maxime du Camp, and the conclusion of the article comes down to it.

M. du Camp's proposals are these:

"1. A diplomatic congress shall meet every year.

"2. No war may be declared until two months after the incident that provokes it." (The difficulty here will be to decide which incident it is that provokes the war, since every declaration of war has a great many such incidents, and one must decide from which of them the two months are to be counted.)

"3. No war may be declared until it has been put to the vote of the nations preparing for it.

"4. Hostilities may not begin until a month after war has been declared."

"No war may be begun … shall … and so on." But who is to see to it that war may not be begun? Who is to see to it that people shall do this and that? Who will compel a power to wait for the appointed term? All the others. But all the others are just such powers themselves, which must be restrained and kept within bounds and compelled. Who, then, will do the compelling? And how? Public opinion. But if there is a public opinion that can compel a power to wait for the appointed term, then the same public opinion can compel the power not to begin the war at all.

But, comes the answer, there can be such an equilibrium of forces, a pondération des forces, that the powers will restrain one another. But that very thing is being demanded even now. That is exactly what the Holy Alliance was; that is exactly what the League of Peace is, and so on.

But what if everyone agrees? comes the answer. But if everyone agrees, there will be no war, and no need for supreme tribunals, or courts of arbitration, or arbitration of any kind.

"A court of arbitration, arbitration, will replace war. Questions will be decided by a court of arbitration: the Alabama question was decided by a court of arbitration; it has been proposed that the question of the Caroline Islands be submitted to the arbitration of the Pope. Switzerland and Belgium, Denmark and Holland, have all declared that they prefer the decisions of a court of arbitration to war." Monaco too, I believe, has declared the same wish. The one vexing thing is that Germany, Russia, Austria and France have not so far declared the same.

It is astonishing what people can deceive themselves with when they need to deceive themselves.

The governments will agree to settle their disagreements by arbitration, and so they will disband their armies. The misunderstandings between Russia and Poland, England and Ireland, Austria and the Czechs, Turkey and the Slavs, the misunderstandings between France and Germany, will be resolved by voluntary agreement.

It is just as if one proposed to merchants and bankers that they sell nothing dearer than they bought it, that they occupy themselves with distributing wealth without profit, and that they consequently abolish money, which would have become unnecessary.

But trade and banking consist precisely in selling dearer than one buys, and so a proposal not to sell dearer than the purchase price and to abolish money is equivalent to a proposal that they abolish themselves. It is the same with governments. A proposal to governments that they use no violence but settle their misunderstandings justly is a proposal that they abolish themselves as governments; and that is the one thing no government can agree to.

Learned men gather in societies (there are many such societies, more than a hundred of them); they gather in congresses (there were congresses lately in Paris and London, and there is to be one now in Rome); they read papers, they dine, they make speeches, they publish journals devoted to the cause. And in all of them it is proved that the strain on the nations, forced to maintain armies of millions, has reached its utmost limit, and that this armament contradicts all the aims, the qualities and the wishes of all the nations; but that if a great deal of paper is covered with writing and a great many words are spoken, it will be possible to bring all people into agreement and arrange matters so that they have no opposing interests, and then there will be no war.

When I was little, I was assured that to catch a bird you had only to put salt on its tail. I went out to the birds with the salt, but I saw at once that if I could put salt on a bird's tail, I could just as well catch it; and I understood that they had been laughing at me.

The people who read articles and books about arbitration and disarmament must understand the same thing.

If you can put salt on a bird's tail, that means it does not fly, and there is no need to catch it. But if the bird has wings and does not want to be caught, it will not let you put salt on its tail, because it is the nature of a bird to fly. In just the same way, it is the nature of a government not to submit but to make others submit to it. A government is a government only so far as it can avoid submitting and can make others submit; and so it always strives for this, and can never voluntarily give up its power. Its power is given it by the army, and so it will never give up the army, or the use of the army for war.

The mistake rests on this: learned jurists, deceiving themselves and others, assert in their books that a government is not what it is, a gathering of some people who do violence to others, but that governments, as science makes it come out, are the representatives of the aggregate of citizens. The learned have assured others of this for so long that they have come to believe it themselves, and it often seems to them in all seriousness that justice can be binding on governments. But history shows that from Caesar to Napoleon, the first and the third, and to Bismarck, government is in its essence always a force that violates justice, as indeed it cannot help being. Justice cannot be binding on a man, or on men, who keep under their hand people deceived and trained for violence, the soldiers, and govern others by means of them. And so governments cannot agree to reduce the number of these trained men who obey them, since these men make up the whole of their strength and importance.

Such is the attitude of one set of the learned to the contradiction that weighs on our world, and such are their means of resolving it. Tell these people that the whole question lies only in the personal relation of each man to the moral and religious question that now stands before every man, whether it is lawful or unlawful for him to take part in universal military service, and these learned men will only shrug their shoulders and will not even favor you with an answer, or with their attention. For them the question is to be resolved by reading papers, writing books, electing presidents, vice-presidents and secretaries, and sitting and talking, now in one city, now in another. From these talks and writings, in their opinion, it will come about that the governments will stop conscripting the soldiers on whom their whole strength rests, will listen to their speeches and dismiss their soldiers, and will be left defenseless not only before their neighbors but before their own subjects: just as robbers who had tied up unarmed people in order to rob them would, on hearing speeches about the pain the rope causes the people tied up, untie them at once.

But there are people who believe in this; they busy themselves with peace congresses, read papers, write little books. And the governments, of course, express their sympathy with it and make a show of supporting it, just as they make a show of supporting temperance societies, while for the most part they live off the drunkenness of the people; just as they make a show of supporting education, while their strength rests only on ignorance; just as they make a show of supporting constitutional freedom, while their strength rests only on the absence of freedom; they make a show of caring for the improvement of the workers' lot, while their existence is founded on the workers' oppression; they make a show of supporting Christianity, while Christianity destroys every government.

To make this possible, there long ago came into being such cares for temperance as cannot disturb drunkenness; such cares for education as not only do not hinder ignorance but only strengthen it; such cares for freedom and the constitution as do not hinder despotism; such cares for the workers as do not free them from slavery; and such a Christianity as does not destroy governments but upholds them.

Now a concern for peace has been added to the rest. The governments, or simply the monarchs, who travel about these days with their ministers deciding, by their will alone, whether to begin the murder of millions this year or next, know very well that talk about peace will not stop them from sending millions to the slaughter whenever they please. The monarchs even listen to this talk with pleasure, encourage it, and take part in it.

All this is not only harmless to governments but useful to them, for it turns people's eyes away from the most important, the most essential question: whether or not each separate man called up as a soldier should go and do his military service.

"Peace will soon be arranged, thanks to alliances and congresses, books and pamphlets; in the meantime, go and put on the uniform and be ready to oppress and torment yourselves for our benefit," say the governments. And the learned men who organize the congresses and write the articles are in full agreement.

That is one attitude, the one most profitable to governments, and so encouraged by every intelligent government.

The other attitude is the tragic one: that of people who maintain that the contradiction between men's longing for peace, their love of it, and the necessity of war is terrible, but that such is the fate of man. These are for the most part sensitive, gifted people. They see and understand all the horror, all the senselessness and cruelty of war; but by some strange turn of thought they neither see nor look for any way out of this position, and, as though scratching at their wound, they dwell admiringly on the desperate position of humanity.

Here is a remarkable example of this attitude to war, from a remarkable French writer (Maupassant). Looking from his yacht at the drill and the firing practice of French soldiers, he has the following thoughts:¹⁴

"War! When I merely think of that word, a kind of horror and bewilderment comes over me, as if someone were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of something far off, finished, abominable, monstrous, against nature.

"When people speak of cannibals, we smile with pride, feeling our superiority over these savages. But who are the savages, the real savages? Those who fight in order to eat the vanquished, or those who fight to kill, only to kill?

"The little soldiers of the line running about over there are destined for death, like the flocks of sheep a butcher drives along the roads. They will fall somewhere on a plain, their heads split by a saber or their chests pierced by a bullet. And these are young men who could work, produce, be useful.

"Their fathers are old and poor; their mothers, who for twenty years have loved them, adored them as only mothers adore, will learn in six months or a year, perhaps, that the son, the child, the big child raised with so much trouble, so much money, so much love, was thrown into a hole like a dead dog, after being ripped open by a cannonball and trampled by the cavalry charging over him. And she will ask: why did they kill her boy, her dear boy, her hope, her pride, her life? She does not know. Yes, why?

"War! To fight! To cut throats! To massacre men! And today, in our age, with our civilization, with our science, with our philosophy, we have schools where people are taught to kill, to kill from very far off, with perfection, a great many at once; to kill poor devils of men, innocent men, with families to keep, and to kill them without any trial.

"And the most stupefying thing is that the people do not rise against the governments, whether in a monarchy or a republic. The most stupefying thing is that the whole of society does not revolt at the mere word war.

"Ah! We shall always live under the weight of the old and odious customs, the criminal prejudices, the ferocious ideas of our barbarous ancestors. We were beasts, and it seems we shall remain beasts, ruled by instinct alone.

"Hardly anyone but Victor Hugo could have raised that great cry of deliverance and truth without being reviled for it.

"'Today force is called violence and is beginning to be judged,' he said; 'war is put on trial. Civilization, at the complaint of the human race, is preparing the case and drawing up the great criminal indictment of the conquerors and the generals.

"'The peoples are coming to understand that the enlargement of a crime cannot be its diminution; that if to kill is a crime, to kill many cannot be an extenuating circumstance; that if to steal is a disgrace, to invade cannot be a glory.

"'Ah! Let us proclaim these absolute truths; let us dishonor war.'

"Vain anger," Maupassant goes on, "a poet's indignation. War is more venerated than ever. A skilled artist in this line, a genius of massacre, Herr von Moltke, once answered the delegates of a peace society with these terrible words: 'War is holy, of divine institution; it is one of the sacred laws of the world; it keeps alive in men all the great and noble feelings: honor, selflessness, virtue, courage. War alone keeps men from falling into the most hideous materialism.'

"To gather in herds of four hundred thousand men, to march day and night without rest, thinking of nothing, studying nothing, learning nothing, reading nothing, of use to no one, rotting in filth, sleeping in the mud, living like brutes in a continual stupor, sacking towns, burning villages, ruining peoples; then to meet another such mass of human meat, rush upon it, make lakes of blood, cover plains with pounded flesh mixed into the muddy, reddened earth, have one's arms or legs carried away, one's brains smashed, to no one's profit, and die like a dog at the edge of a field while your old parents, your wife and your children are dying of hunger: that is what is called not falling into the most hideous materialism.

"Men of war are the scourges of the world. We struggle against nature and ignorance to make our miserable life a little less hard. Men of learning wear out their lives in work, in searching for what can help, what can relieve the lot of their brothers. Bent on their useful labor, they go on piling up discovery on discovery, enlarging the human mind, widening science, giving the intelligence some new knowledge every day, every day adding to their nation's well-being, comfort and strength.

"War comes. In six months the generals have destroyed twenty years of effort, of patience and of genius. And that is what is called not falling into the most hideous materialism.

"We have seen it, war. We have seen men turned into brutes again, maddened, killing for pleasure, from terror, from bravado, for show. We have seen them, when right no longer existed and the law was dead, shoot innocent people found on a road who had become suspect because they were afraid. We have seen dogs chained at their masters' doors killed to try out new revolvers; we have seen cows lying in a field shot down for fun, for no reason at all, just for the sake of firing a gun. And that is what is called not falling into the most hideous materialism.

"To enter a country, to cut the throat of the man who defends his house because he is dressed in a smock and has no army cap on his head, to burn the houses of wretches who have no bread left, to smash furniture and steal more, to drink the wine found in the cellars, to rape the women found in the streets, to burn millions of francs' worth of powder, and to leave behind poverty and disease: that is what is called not falling into the most hideous materialism.

"What, after all, have they done, these men of war? What are their great deeds? Nothing. What have they invented? Cannon and rifles. That is all.

"What remains to us of Greece? Books, marbles. Is she great because she conquered, or because of what she produced? It was not the invasion of the Persians that kept the Greeks from falling into the most hideous materialism. Was it the invasions of the barbarians that saved Rome and regenerated her? Did Napoleon I carry on the great intellectual movement begun by the philosophers at the end of the last century?

"Well, then, since governments take for themselves the right of death over the peoples, there is nothing astonishing in the peoples sometimes taking the right of death over their governments.

"They defend themselves. They are right. No one has the right to govern others. One may govern others only for the good of those one governs. Whoever governs is as much bound to avoid war as the captain of a ship is bound to avoid shipwreck.

"When a captain has lost his ship, he is tried and sentenced, if he is found guilty of negligence or even of incompetence.

"Why should governments not be tried after every war they declare? If only the peoples understood this, if they brought to justice themselves the powers that lead them to murder, if they refused to go to their deaths for no reason, if they turned the arms they were given against those who gave them, if that ever came to pass, war would be dead.

"But that day will never come!" ("Sur l'eau," pp. 71-80.)

The author sees all the horror of war. He sees that its cause is that governments, by deceiving people, make them go and kill and die without any need of their own. He sees too that the men who make up the armies could turn their arms against the governments and call them to account. But the author thinks this will never happen, and that therefore there is no way out of this position. He thinks that the business of war is terrible, but that it is inevitable; that the governments' demand that men become soldiers is as inevitable as death; and that since governments will always demand it, there will always be wars.

Thus writes a gifted, sincere writer, endowed with that power of seeing into the essence of a thing which is the essence of the poetic gift. He sets before us all the cruelty of the contradiction between people's consciousness and their activity, and, without resolving it, seems to acknowledge that this contradiction must be, and that in it lies the poetic tragedy of life.

Another writer no less gifted (Édouard Rod) describes the cruelty and madness of the present position even more vividly, and in just the same way only in order to acknowledge its tragedy, without proposing or foreseeing any way out of it.

"What is the use of acting?" he says. "What is the use of undertaking anything? And how can one love men in these troubled times, when tomorrow is nothing but a threat? Everything we have begun, our ideas that are ripening, the works we have glimpsed, the little good we may have been able to do: will it not all be carried away by the hurricane that is gathering?

"Everywhere the ground trembles under our feet, and clouds are massing on our horizon that will not spare us.

"Ah! If it were only the Revolution we had to fear, the specter they hold up to us! Since I cannot imagine a society more detestable than ours, I feel more mistrust than fear of the one that will follow it. If I had to suffer from the transformation, I would console myself by thinking that the executioners of today were the victims of yesterday. I would bear the worse while waiting for the better. But it is not that distant danger that frightens me. I see another, nearer, and crueler above all; crueler, because it has no excuse whatever, because no good can come of it.

"Every day people weigh the chances of war tomorrow. And every day those chances become more inexorable.

"The mind recoils before a catastrophe that appears at the end of the century as the culmination of all the progress of our era; and yet we must get used to believing in it.

"For twenty years all the forces of knowledge have been exhausting themselves in inventing engines of destruction, and soon a few cannon shots will be enough to wipe out an army.¹⁵ It is no longer a few thousand poor devils whose blood was paid for in money, as it used to be, who are put under arms; whole peoples are under arms now, about to cut one another's throats.

"They steal men's time (by taking them for soldiers) in order to steal their lives more surely afterward. To prepare them for the massacre, they fan their hatred by persuading them that they are hated. And gentle, good men fall for the trick; and any moment now we shall see crowds of peaceful citizens throwing themselves upon one another with the ferocity of wild beasts, in obedience to a senseless order. And all for God knows what ridiculous border incident, or what commercial interests in the colonies.

"They will march like sheep to the slaughter, but knowing where they are going, knowing that they are leaving their wives, that their children will go hungry. They will march anxiously, and yet drunk on the sonorous words trumpeted into their ears. They will march without protest, passive and resigned, not knowing, not understanding, that they are the mass and the force, that power would be in their hands if only they wished it, if only they could and knew how to come to an understanding and establish good sense and brotherhood in place of the savage trickery of diplomacy.

"They will march so deceived, so duped, that they will believe the slaughter, the killing of men, to be a duty, and will ask God to bless their bloodthirsty appetites. They will march trampling the crops they sowed themselves, burning the towns they built themselves; they will march with songs of enthusiasm, with cries of joy, with festive music. And their sons will raise statues to the men who best massacred their fathers.

"The fate of a whole generation hangs on the hour at which some gloomy politician gives the signal that they will follow, and fall on one another.

"We all know that the best among us will be mown down and that our work will be destroyed in the bud.

"We know it, we shudder with rage, and we can do nothing. We have been caught in a net of offices and papers, and to tear it would take too violent a jolt.

"We belong to the laws we set up to protect ourselves, and which oppress us.

"We are no longer anything but things, the property of that fictitious something we call the state, which makes every individual a slave in the name of the will of all, when all, taken one by one, would want exactly the opposite of what they are made to do…

"And if it were only one generation that had to be sacrificed! But the matter is far graver. All these hired ranters, all the ambitious men who exploit the evil passions of the crowd, all the poor in spirit deceived by the sound of words, have so inflamed national hatreds that tomorrow's war will decide the fate of a whole people. The vanquished will have to disappear, and a new Europe will be formed on foundations so brutal, so bloody, so defiled by such crimes, that it cannot help being worse still, more wicked, more barbarous and more violent.

"And so one feels an immense hopelessness weighing on everyone. We are thrashing about in a blind alley, with rifles trained on us from every side. We work like sailors on a ship that is going down. Our pleasures are those of the condemned man who is offered any dish he likes a quarter of an hour before his execution. Dread paralyzes our thought, and the best effort it is capable of is to calculate, spelling out the vague speeches of ministers, twisting the words spoken by sovereigns, turning over the sayings of diplomats that fill the newspapers, whether it will be this year or next that they cut our throats.

"One would look in vain in history for a time when life was less secure and more full of oppressive dread." (E. Rod, "Le sens de la vie," pp. 208-213.)

It has been pointed out that the force is in the hands of those who are destroying themselves, in the hands of the individual men who make up the masses; it has been pointed out that the source of the evil is in the state. It would seem clear that the contradiction between consciousness and life has reached the limit beyond which it cannot go, and after which its resolution must come.

But the author does not think so. He sees in this the tragedy of human life, and, having shown all the horror of the position, he concludes that human life must go on in this horror.

Such is the second attitude to war: that of people who see in it something fatal and tragic.

The third attitude is that of people who have lost their conscience, and with it their common sense and human feeling.

To such people belongs Moltke, whose opinion Maupassant copied out, and most military men, who have been brought up in this cruel superstition, live by it, and are therefore often naively convinced that war is not only an inevitable business but a necessary and even a useful one. And civilians judge in the same way: so-called learned, educated, refined people.

Here is what the famous academician Camille Doucet writes, in the number of the "Revue des Revues" in which the letters on war are collected, in answer to the editor's question about his view of war:

"Dear Sir,

"When you ask the least warlike of academicians whether he is a partisan of war, his answer is ready in advance. Unfortunately, sir, you yourself call a dream the peaceful thoughts that inspire your generous compatriots today.

"For as long as I have been in the world, I have often heard a great many decent people protest against this frightful habit of international slaughter. Everyone acknowledges and deplores the evil; but how is it to be remedied? Very often, too, attempts have been made to abolish the duel: it seemed so easy! Well, no! Everything done toward that noble end has never been of any use and never will be.

"All the congresses of both worlds may vote against war, and against the duel too, as much as they like: above all arbitrations, all conventions, all legislations there will stand forever the honor of men, which has always demanded the duel, and the interest of nations, which will always demand war.

"I hope nonetheless, and with all my heart, that the Universal Peace Congress will succeed in its very difficult and very honorable undertaking.

"Accept, sir, the assurance, etc.

"C. Doucet."

The meaning is that the honor of men requires them to fight, and the interest of nations requires them to ruin and exterminate one another, while attempts to put an end to war deserve only a smile.

The opinion of another famous man, Jules Claretie, is of the same kind:

"Dear Sir," he writes, "for a sensible man there can be only one opinion on the question of peace and war.

"Mankind is made to live, and to live free to perfect and better its lot, its condition, by peaceful labor. The general concord that the Universal Peace Congress seeks and preaches is perhaps only a beautiful dream, but at any rate it is the most beautiful of dreams. Man always has the promised land of the future before his eyes, and on that land the harvests will ripen without fear of being cut down by shells or crushed by the wheels of cannon.

"Only… Ah! only… since the world is not ruled by philosophers and benefactors of mankind, it is a good thing that our soldiers keep watch over our frontiers and our hearths, and that their weapons, well aimed, are perhaps the surest guarantee of that peace we all love so dearly.

"Peace is given only to the resolute and the strong.

"Accept, sir, etc.

"J. Claretie."

The meaning is that there is no harm in talking about the very thing that no one intends to do and that ought on no account to be done. But when it comes to the point, one must fight.

And here is the most recent expression of opinion on the meaning of war, from the most popular novelist in Europe, Émile Zola.

"I consider war a fatal necessity, inevitable for us because of its close connection with human nature and the whole universe. I should like war to be put off for as long as possible. Nevertheless, a moment will come when we shall be forced to fight. I am taking, for the moment, the point of view of mankind as a whole, and I am in no way alluding to our quarrel with Germany, which is only a trifling incident in the history of mankind. I say that war is necessary and useful, because it is one of the conditions of mankind's existence. We meet war everywhere, not only between different tribes and nations, but in family and private life as well. It is one of the chief elements of progress, and every step forward that mankind has taken so far has been accompanied by bloodshed.

"People have talked, and still talk, of disarmament; yet disarmament is impossible, and even if it were possible we should have to reject it. Only an armed people is mighty and great. I am convinced that a general, worldwide disarmament would bring with it a kind of moral decline, which would show itself in a general feebleness and would block the progressive advance of mankind. A warlike nation has always enjoyed flourishing strength. The art of war has brought with it the development of all the other arts. History bears witness to it. Thus in Athens and in Rome, commerce, industry and literature never reached such development as in the time when those cities ruled the world then known by force of arms. To take an example from times nearer our own, let us remember the age of Louis XIV. The wars of the great king not only did not hold back the progress of the arts and sciences, but on the contrary seemed to help and favor their advance."

War, a useful business!

But best of all in this line is the opinion of the most gifted writer of this persuasion, the academician Vogüé. Here is what he writes in an article on the Exhibition, on visiting its military section:

"On the Esplanade des Invalides, amid the exotic and colonial encampments, one building of a severer style rises above the picturesque bazaar; all these fragments of the globe have come to cluster around the palace of war. A fine subject of antitheses for humanitarian rhetoric; and it does not fail to whine over these juxtapositions and to declare that ceci tuera cela, this will kill that,¹⁶ that the union of peoples through science and labor will get the better of the military instinct. Let us leave it to caress the chimera of a golden age, which, if it could come true, would very soon become an age of mud. All history teaches us that this was made by that: that blood is needed to hasten and to cement the union of peoples. The natural sciences have in our day ratified the mysterious law revealed to Joseph de Maistre by the intuition of his genius and by his meditation on the primordial dogmas. He saw the world redeeming its hereditary falls by sacrifice; the sciences show us the world perfecting itself by struggle and violent selection. On both sides it is the recording of the same decree, drawn up in different terms. An unpleasant finding, to be sure; but the laws of the world are not made for our pleasure, they are made for our perfection. Let us enter, then, this inevitable, this necessary palace of war; we shall have occasion to observe there how the most tenacious of our instincts, without losing any of its vigor, is transformed and bends to the various demands of historical moments."

This thought, that the proof of the necessity of war is to be found in two sayings of two thinkers, great thinkers in his opinion, de Maistre and Darwin, pleases Vogüé so much that he repeats it once more.

"Sir," he writes to the editor of the "Revue des Revues," "you ask my opinion on the possible success of the Universal Peace Congress. I believe with Darwin that violent struggle is a law of nature which governs all beings.

"I believe with Joseph de Maistre that it is a divine law: two different ways of naming the same thing. If, by some impossibility, a fraction of human society (let us say the whole civilized West) succeeded in suspending the working of this law, more instinctive races would take it upon themselves to apply it against us. In those races the voice of nature would prevail over the voice of human reason. And they would succeed, because the certainty of peace (I do not say peace, I say the complete certainty of peace) would breed in men a corruption and a decadence more destructive than the worst of wars. I hold that we must do for war, that criminal law, what we must do for all our other criminal laws: soften them, strive to make them unnecessary, and apply them as rarely as possible. But all the experience of history teaches us that these laws cannot be abolished as long as there remain on earth two men, and bread, money and a woman between them.

"I should be very happy if the congress proved me wrong. But I doubt that it can prove history, the law of nature and the law of God wrong.

"Accept, sir, etc.

"E. M. de Vogüé."

The meaning is that history, the nature of man and God all show us that as long as there are two men, and bread, money and a woman between them, there will be war. That is, no progress will ever bring people to move away from the savage understanding of life in which bread, money (the money is a fine touch) and a woman cannot be shared without a fight.

Strange are the people who gather in congresses and make speeches about how to catch birds by putting salt on their tails, when they cannot help knowing that it cannot be done. Astonishing are those who, like Maupassant, Rod and many others, see clearly all the horror of war, all the contradiction that comes from people's doing something other than what they need to do, what is to their advantage and what they ought to do; who lament the tragedy of life, and do not see that this whole tragedy will end the moment people stop reasoning about what they have no need to reason about and begin not doing what is painful, unpleasant and repugnant to them to do. These people are astonishing. But the people who, like Vogüé and others, professing the law of evolution, hold war to be not only inevitable but useful, and therefore desirable, are frightening, terrible in their moral perversion. The others at least say that they hate evil and love good; these openly admit that there is no good and no evil.

All the talk about the possibility of establishing peace in place of everlasting war is the harmful sentimentalizing of chatterers. There is a law of evolution, from which it follows that I must live and act badly. What is to be done? I am an educated man, I know the law of evolution, and so I shall act badly. "Entrons au palais de la guerre": "Let us enter the palace of war." There is a law of evolution, and so there is neither bad nor good, and one must live for one's own personal life alone, leaving the rest to the law of evolution. This is the last word of refined education, and at the same time of that darkening of consciousness with which the educated classes of our time are occupied.

The desire of the educated classes to hold on somehow to their cherished ideas, and to the life founded on them, has reached its utmost limit. They lie, they deceive themselves and others in the most refined forms, only in order somehow to darken and stifle consciousness.

Instead of changing their life to accord with their consciousness, they try by every means to darken and stifle consciousness. But the light shineth in darkness, and so it is beginning to shine in our time.

Translator's note. This was the Universal Peace Congress held in London in July 1890. Tolstoy reports its resolutions in his own Russian, in the third person and shortened; they are given here in his order and his reported form, in the congress's own English wherever his Russian follows it, as Leo Wiener recovered it for his translation of 1904. Where Tolstoy compresses or departs, his version is translated. The italics are Tolstoy's. ↩
Translator's note. Maupassant's "Sur l'eau" (1888), Rod's "Le sens de la vie" (1889), the letters of Doucet, Claretie and Vogüé, and Vogüé's article on the Exhibition are given here from their French originals, cut where Tolstoy cut them; where his Russian compresses or adds, his version is translated. Zola's interview, which was printed in Russian, is translated from Tolstoy's Russian. ↩
This book was published a year ago; in that year dozens more new engines of destruction have been invented: a new, smokeless powder. ↩
Words from Victor Hugo's novel "Notre-Dame," about printing, which will kill architecture. ↩

Chapter 7: The Meaning of Universal Military Service

The educated people of the upper classes try to stifle the consciousness, ever clearer, that the present order of life must be changed. But life goes on developing and growing more complex in its old direction, sharpening the contradictions and the sufferings of men, and brings them to that last limit beyond which they cannot go. That last limit of the contradiction, beyond which it is impossible to go, is universal military service: the conscription of every man.

It is usually thought that universal military service, with the ever-growing armaments that go with it, and the ever-growing taxes and national debts that follow from them in every nation, is an accidental phenomenon, arising from a certain political situation in Europe, and that it can be removed, likewise, by certain political arrangements, without any change in the inner order of life.

This is entirely wrong. Universal military service is nothing but the inner contradiction that crept into the social understanding of life, carried to its last limits and become plain to see at a certain stage of material development.

The social understanding of life, after all, consists in this: that the meaning of life is moved from the person to the aggregate and succession of persons, to the tribe, the family, the clan or the state.

The social understanding of life supposes that, since the meaning of life lies in the aggregate of persons, persons will sacrifice their own interests to the interests of the aggregate of their own free will. It was so, and it still is so in reality, in certain forms of aggregate: in the family or the tribe (it does not matter which came first), or in the clan, and even in the patriarchal state. Through custom, handed down by upbringing and confirmed by religious suggestion, persons merged their interests with the interests of the aggregate without compulsion, and sacrificed their own to the common good.

But the more complex societies became, and the larger, and above all the more often conquest was the cause of people's being united into societies, the more often persons strove to reach their own ends to the detriment of the common good, and the more often it became necessary to use power, that is, violence, to restrain these unsubmissive persons.

The defenders of the social understanding of life usually try to confuse the idea of power, that is, of violence, with the idea of spiritual influence; but the two cannot possibly be confused.

Spiritual influence is an action on a man by which the man's very desires are changed and come to coincide with what is required of him. A man who submits to spiritual influence acts in accordance with his own desires. Power, as the word is usually understood, is a means of compelling a man to act against his desires. A man who submits to power acts not as he wants to, but as power compels him to act. And only physical violence, or the threat of it, can make a man do not what he wants but what he does not want: that is, deprivation of liberty, beatings and mutilation, or threats of them that can easily be carried out. That is what power consists in, and what it has always consisted in.

In spite of the unceasing efforts of those in power to hide this and to give power another meaning, power is the application to a man of a rope or a chain with which he will be bound and dragged off, or of a whip with which he will be flogged, or of a knife or an axe with which his hands, feet, nose, ears or head will be cut off: the application of these means, or the threat of them. It was so under Nero and Genghis Khan, and it is so now, under the most liberal of governments, in the American and the French republics. If people submit to power, it is only because they are afraid that if they do not submit, these things will be done to them. All the demands of government, to pay taxes, to perform public duties, to submit to the punishments imposed, to banishment, to fines and so on, to which people seem to submit voluntarily, always rest at bottom on bodily violence or the threat of it.

The basis of power is bodily violence.

And what first of all makes it possible to commit bodily violence on people is an organization of armed men in which all the armed men act together, obeying a single will. Such gatherings of armed men, obeying a single will, make up an army. The army has always stood, and stands now, at the basis of power. Power is always in the hands of those who command the army, and all rulers, from the Roman Caesars to the Russian and German emperors, have always cared more for the army than for anything else, and have curried favor with the army alone, knowing that if the army is with them, power is in their hands.

It was precisely this formation and increase of the army, needed to uphold power, that brought into the social understanding of life the principle that is decomposing it.

The aim of power, and its justification, consists in restraining those people who would want to secure their own interests to the detriment of the interests of the aggregate. But whether power was acquired by forming a new army, by inheritance or by election, the people who held power by means of the army were no different from other people; and so, just like other people, they were inclined not to subordinate their interests to the interests of the aggregate. On the contrary, since they had the means of doing it in their hands, they were more inclined than anyone else to subordinate the common interests to their own. However many means people have devised for depriving those in power of the possibility of subordinating the common interests to their own, or for handing power only to infallible people, no means has yet been found of achieving either the one or the other.

All the methods used, divine blessing, and election, and heredity, and voting, and elections, and assemblies, and parliaments, and senates, all these measures have proved ineffective and still prove so. Everyone knows that not one of these methods either succeeds in handing power only to infallible people or prevents its abuse. Everyone knows that, on the contrary, people in power, whether emperors, ministers, chiefs of police or policemen, always become, because they have power, more inclined to immorality, that is, to subordinating the common interests to their personal ones, than people who have no power; as indeed it cannot be otherwise.

The social understanding of life was justified only as long as all people sacrificed their interests to the interests of the whole of their own free will. But as soon as people appeared who did not sacrifice their interests of their own free will, and power, that is, violence, became necessary to restrain these persons, there entered into the social understanding of life, and into the order founded on it, the principle that decomposes it: power, that is, the violence of some people over others.

For the power of some people over others to reach its aim of restraining people who pursued personal ends to the detriment of the common good, that power would have had to be in the hands of infallible people, as the Chinese suppose, or as was supposed in the Middle Ages, and is supposed now by those who believe in the sanctity of anointing. Only on that condition did the social order receive its justification.

But since this is not so, and on the contrary the people who hold power, precisely because they hold it, are never holy, the social order founded on power could no longer have any justification.

Even if there was a time when, at a certain low level of morality and with a general disposition among people to do violence to one another, the existence of a power that restrained these acts of violence was an advantage, that is, when the violence of the state was less than the violence of persons against one another, one cannot help seeing that such an advantage of the state over its absence could not last forever. The more the inclination of persons to violence diminished, the more manners softened, and the more power was corrupted by being unrestrained, the smaller this advantage became.

The whole history of the last two thousand years consists in this change in the relation between the moral development of the masses and the corruption of governments.

In its simplest form, this is how it went. People lived in tribes, families and clans, and were at enmity with one another, did violence to one another, plundered and killed one another. These acts of violence took place on a small scale and on a large: person fought with person, tribe with tribe, family with family, clan with clan, nation with nation. The larger and stronger aggregates took possession of the weaker ones; and the larger and stronger an aggregate of people became, the less internal violence went on within it, and the more secure the continued life of the aggregate seemed.

The members of a tribe or a family, joined into a single aggregate, are less at enmity with one another; and the tribe and the family do not die as a single man dies, but go on existing. Among the members of a single state, subject to a single power, the struggle seems weaker still, and the life of the state seems more secure still.

These unions into ever larger aggregates came about not because people consciously recognized that such unions were to their advantage, as the fable in the old Russian chronicle describes it, in which the Slavs summon the Varangians, Norse princes, to come and rule over them, but as a result of natural growth on the one hand, and of struggle and conquest on the other.

When the conquest has been accomplished, the power of the conqueror does indeed put an end to internal strife, and the social understanding of life receives confirmation. But the confirmation is only temporary. Internal strife ceases only to the degree that the pressure of power on the persons formerly at enmity with one another increases. The violence of the internal struggle, which power abolishes, is born again in power itself. Power is in the hands of people just like everyone else, that is, people who are always, or often, ready to sacrifice the common good to their own personal good, with this difference only: these people do not have the moderating counterforce of those they do violence to, and they are exposed to the whole corrupting influence of power. And so the evil of violence, passing into the hands of power, always grows and grows, and in time becomes greater than the evil it is supposed to abolish, while among the members of society the inclination to violence weakens more and more, and the violence of power becomes less and less necessary.

The power of the state, even if it abolishes internal violence, always brings new violence into people's lives, and always greater and greater violence, the longer it lasts and the stronger it grows.

Thus, although in the state the violence of power is less noticeable than the violence of the members of society against one another, since it expresses itself not in struggle but in submission, the violence nonetheless exists, and for the most part in a stronger degree than before. And it cannot be otherwise, because, besides the fact that the possession of power corrupts people, the calculation, or even the unconscious striving, of those who use violence will always be to reduce their victims to the greatest possible weakness, since the weaker the victim of violence, the less effort will be needed to hold him down.

And so the violence done to its victims always grows to the last limit it can reach without killing the hen that lays the golden eggs. And if the hen does not lay, as with the American Indians, the Fijians, the Black peoples, then it is killed, in spite of the sincere protests of philanthropists against such ways of acting.

The best confirmation of this is the position of the working classes of our time, who are in fact nothing other than a conquered people.

In spite of all the pretended efforts of the upper classes to ease the position of the workers, all the workers of our world are subject to an unchanging iron law, by which they have only so much as they need in order to be kept always driven to work by want, and to be strong enough to work for their masters, that is, for the conquerors.

That is how it has always been. Always, as power has lasted and grown stronger, its advantages to those who submitted to it have been lost, and its disadvantages have grown.

That is how it has been, and how it is, whatever the forms of government under which the nations have lived. The only difference is that under a despotic form of government power is concentrated in a small number of those who use violence, and the form of the violence is harsher; while under constitutional monarchies and republics, as in France and America, power is distributed among a larger number of those who use violence, and the forms in which it expresses itself are less harsh. But the business of violence, in which the disadvantages of power outweigh its advantages, and the process by which it brings its victims to the last limit of weakness to which they can be brought for the benefit of those who use the violence, are always one and the same.

Such has been, and such is, the position of all who suffer violence. But until now they did not know it, and in most cases naively believed that governments exist for their good; that without governments they would perish; that the thought that people can live without governments is a blasphemy that must not even be uttered; that this is the teaching of anarchism, terrible for some reason, with which every imaginable horror is associated.

People believed, as something fully proved and therefore needing no proof, that since all nations had so far developed in the form of the state, that form was a necessary condition of the development of humanity forever.

That is how it went on for hundreds, for thousands of years; and governments, that is, the people in power, tried, and are now trying more and more, to keep the nations in this error.

It was so under the Roman emperors, and it is so now. In spite of the fact that the thought of the uselessness, and even the harm, of the violence of the state is entering more and more into the consciousness of people, it would have gone on so forever, if governments had not been obliged to increase their armies in order to uphold their power.

It is usually thought that governments increase their armies only to defend the state from other states, forgetting that armies are needed by governments first of all to defend themselves against their own oppressed and enslaved subjects.

This was always necessary, and it became more and more necessary as education developed among the nations, and as intercourse grew between people of the same and of different nationalities; and it has become especially necessary now, with the communist, socialist and anarchist movements and the labor movement in general. And the governments feel it, and increase their chief strength, the disciplined army.¹⁷

Not long ago in the German Reichstag, answering a question as to why money was needed to raise the pay of noncommissioned officers, the German chancellor declared outright that reliable noncommissioned officers were needed in order to fight socialism. Caprivi said aloud only what everyone knows, though it is carefully hidden from the nations. He said why the kings of France and the popes hired guards of Swiss and Scots; why in Russia the recruits are carefully shuffled, so that regiments stationed in the center are made up of recruits from the borderlands, and regiments in the borderlands of men from the center of Russia. The meaning of Caprivi's speech, translated into plain language, is that the money is needed not to resist foreign enemies but to buy the noncommissioned officers, so that they will be ready to act against the oppressed working people.

Caprivi let slip what everyone knows very well, or, if he does not know it, feels: that the existing order of life is what it is, not because it must naturally be so, not because the people want it so, but because the violence of governments keeps it so, the army with its bought noncommissioned officers and generals.

If a working man has no land, no possibility of using the most natural right of every man, to draw from the land the means of feeding himself and his family, this is not because the people want it so, but because certain people, the landowners, have been given the right to admit or not to admit working people to it. And this unnatural order is upheld by the army. If the enormous wealth accumulated by the workers is considered to belong not to everyone but to a few exclusive persons; if the power to collect taxes from labor, and to spend the money on whatever they think necessary, has been given to certain people; if strikes of workers are opposed while strikes of capitalists are encouraged; if certain people are given the right to choose the manner of the religious and civil instruction and upbringing of children; if certain persons have been given the right to make laws that everyone must obey, and to dispose of people's property and lives: all this happens not because the people want it and because it must naturally be so, but because the governments and the ruling classes want it for their own advantage, and establish it by means of physical violence done to people's bodies.

Everyone who does not yet know this will learn it at his first attempt to disobey such an order of things, or to change it. And so armies are needed first of all by every government and by the ruling classes in order to uphold an order of things which not only does not arise from the needs of the people, but is often directly opposed to them, and is advantageous only to the government and the ruling classes.

Every government needs armies first of all to keep its subjects in submission and to make use of their labor. But a government is not alone. Next to it is another government, which in just the same way makes use of its subjects by violence, and is always ready to take away from the first government the labor of its subjects, already enslaved. And so every government needs an army not only for internal use but to guard its plunder from the neighboring predators. As a result every state is driven, whether it will or no, to increase its army in rivalry with the others. And the increase of armies is contagious, as Montesquieu observed a hundred and fifty years ago.

Every increase of the army in one state, aimed against its own subjects, becomes dangerous to its neighbor as well, and calls forth an increase in the neighboring states too.

Armies have grown to the millions they have reached today not only because states were threatened by their neighbors. It happened first of all because every attempt of the subjects at revolt must be put down. The increase of armies comes from two causes at once, each calling forth the other: armies are needed both against internal enemies and to hold one's position against one's neighbors. The one conditions the other. The despotism of a government always increases as its armies grow larger and stronger and as it succeeds abroad, and the aggressiveness of governments increases as their despotism at home grows stronger.

It was for this reason that the European governments, outdoing one another and strengthening their armies ever more, arrived at an inevitable necessity, universal military service, since universal military service was the means of obtaining the largest number of troops in time of war at the least expense. Germany was the first to think of it. And as soon as one state had done it, the others had to do the same. And as soon as this was done, the result was that all citizens took up arms to uphold all the injustices that were being committed against them; the result was that all citizens became their own oppressors.

Universal military service was an inevitable logical necessity, which could not fail to be reached; but at the same time it is the last expression of the inner contradiction of the social understanding of life, the contradiction that arose when violence became necessary to uphold it. In universal military service this contradiction has become plain to see. Consider: the meaning of the social understanding of life, after all, is that a man, aware of the cruelty of the struggle of persons with one another and of how surely the person himself must perish, moves the meaning of his life into the aggregate of persons. But under universal military service it turns out that people who have made all the sacrifices required of them in order to escape the cruelty of the struggle and the insecurity of life are called again, after all the sacrifices they have made, to face all the dangers they thought they had escaped. And besides, the aggregate, the state, in whose name persons renounced their own advantages, is again exposed to the same danger of destruction to which the person was formerly exposed himself.

Governments were to deliver people from the cruelty of the struggle of persons, and to give them confidence that the order of life in the state would not be broken. Instead, they lay on the person the necessity of the same struggle, only moved from a struggle with the persons nearest him to a struggle with the persons of other states, and they leave the same danger of destruction for both the person and the state.

The establishment of universal military service is like what would happen to a man propping up a house that is falling in. The walls bowed inward: they put in props. The ceiling sagged: they put in more. The boards sagged between the props: they put in still more props. In the end the props do hold the house up, but because of the props it is no longer possible to live in the house.

The same is true of universal military service. Universal military service destroys all the advantages of social life that it was called on to preserve.

The advantages of social life consist in the security of property and labor, and in working together for the improvement of life; universal military service destroys all of this.

The taxes collected from the people to prepare for war swallow up the greater part of the products of labor that the army is supposed to protect.

The tearing of all men away from the ordinary course of life destroys the very possibility of labor.

The threats of a war ready to break out at any moment make all the improvements of social life useless and vain.

If in former times a man was told that without submission to the power of the state he would be exposed to the attacks of evil men, of enemies within and without, would be forced to fight them himself and would risk being killed, and that it was therefore to his advantage to bear certain privations in order to be delivered from these evils, a man could believe it. The sacrifices he made to the state were only partial sacrifices, and gave him the hope of a quiet life in a state that would not be destroyed, the state in whose name he had made his sacrifices. But now, when these sacrifices have not only grown tenfold but the advantages promised him are absent, it is natural for every man to think that his submission to power is entirely useless.

But it is not in this alone that the fatal meaning of universal military service lies, as the manifestation of the contradiction contained in the social understanding of life. The chief manifestation of the contradiction is that under universal military service every citizen, becoming a soldier, becomes an upholder of the order of the state and a participant in everything the state does, though he does not recognize that it is lawful.

Governments maintain that armies are needed chiefly for defense against foreign enemies, but this is not true. They are needed first of all against their own subjects, and every man who does his military service becomes, whether he will or no, a participant in all the violence of the state against its subjects.

To convince oneself that every man who does his military service becomes a participant in such deeds of the state as he does not and cannot recognize, let everyone only remember what is done in every state in the name of order and of the good of the people, and what is always carried out by the army. All the civil strife of dynasties and of various parties, all the executions that go with these troubles, all the putting down of risings, all the use of military force to disperse crowds of the people and to put down strikes, all the extortion of taxes, all the injustices in the distribution of landed property, all the restrictions on labor: all this is done, if not by the army directly, then by the police, backed by the army. The man who does his military service becomes a participant in all these deeds, deeds that in some cases are doubtful to him but in many cases are flatly contrary to his conscience. People do not want to leave the land they have worked for generations; people do not want to disperse when the government demands it; people do not want to pay the taxes demanded of them; people do not want to acknowledge as binding on themselves laws they did not make; people do not want to be deprived of their nationality; and I, doing my military service, must come and beat these people. Being a participant in these deeds, I cannot help asking myself: are these deeds good? And ought I to help carry them out?

Universal military service is, for governments, the last degree of violence, needed to hold up the whole building; for subjects, it is the last limit of the possibility of obedience. It is the keystone of the arch, which holds up the walls, and whose removal brings down the whole building.

The time has come when the ever-growing abuses of governments, and their struggles with one another, have brought it about that every subject is required to make sacrifices, not material ones only but moral ones as well, of such a kind that every man has had to stop and think and ask himself: can I make these sacrifices? And in the name of what am I to make them? These sacrifices are demanded in the name of the state. In the name of the state I am required to renounce everything that can be dear to a man: peace, family, safety, human dignity. What, then, is this state, for which such terrible sacrifices are required? And why is it so absolutely necessary?

"The state," we are told, "is absolutely necessary: first, because without the state I, and all of us, would not be protected from the violence and the attacks of evil men; second, because without the state we would be savages, and would have no religious, educational, cultural, commercial or communications institutions, nor any other public institutions; and third, because without the state we would be exposed to enslavement by neighboring nations."

"Without the state," we are told, "we would be exposed to the violence and the attacks of evil men in our own country."

But who are these evil men among us, from whose violence and attacks the state and its army save us? If three or four centuries ago, when people prided themselves on their military skill and their weapons, when killing people was counted a valiant deed, there were such men, there are none now. People of our time neither use nor carry weapons; and all of them, professing the rules of humanity and compassion for their neighbors, want the same thing we want: only the possibility of a quiet and peaceful life. There are no longer, then, those special men of violence from whom the state could defend us. And if by the people from whose attacks the state saves us are meant those who commit crimes, we know that they are not special beings, like beasts of prey among sheep, but people just like all of us, who like committing crimes no more than those against whom they commit them do. We know now that threats and punishments cannot reduce the number of such people, and that it is reduced only by a change of surroundings and by moral influence on people. Thus the explanation that the violence of the state is necessary to protect people from men of violence, if it had any ground three or four centuries ago, has none now. Now one may rather say the reverse: that the activity of governments, with their cruel methods of punishment, which lag behind the general level of morality, their prisons, penal servitude, gallows and guillotines, does more to coarsen the people than to soften them, and so more to increase than to reduce the number of men of violence.

"Without the state," they say further, "there would not be all those institutions, educational, cultural, religious, of communications and the rest. Without the state people would not know how to set up the public undertakings everyone needs." But this argument too could have had a ground only several centuries ago.

If there was a time when people were so cut off from one another, and the means of drawing together and of passing on thoughts were so little developed, that they could not reach an understanding and agree on any common undertaking, commercial, economic or educational, without a state center, there is no such isolation now. The widely developed means of communication and of passing on thoughts have brought it about that, in forming societies, associations, corporations, congresses, scholarly, economic and political institutions, the people of our time can not only do perfectly well without governments, but that governments for the most part hinder rather than help the attainment of these aims.

Since the end of the last century there has hardly been a single step forward of humanity that government has not held back, let alone encouraged. That is how it was with the abolition of corporal punishment, of torture, of slavery, and with the establishment of freedom of the press and of assembly. And in our time the power of the state and the governments not only do not help, but directly obstruct all the activity by which people work out new forms of life for themselves. The solution of the labor question, the land question, the political question and the religious question is not only not encouraged but is directly held back by the power of the state.

"Without the state and the government, nations would be enslaved by their neighbors."

There is hardly any need to answer this last argument. The answer lies in the argument itself.

Governments, we are told, with their armies, are necessary for defense against the neighboring states that might enslave us. But all governments say this of one another; and at the same time we know that all the European nations profess the same principles of liberty and brotherhood, and therefore have no need of defense against one another. And if it is a question of defense against barbarians, then a thousandth part of the troops now under arms would be enough. It turns out, then, to be the reverse of what is said: the power of the state not only does not save us from the danger of attack by our neighbors, but on the contrary is the very thing that creates the danger of attack.

Thus for every man who has been placed, by military service, under the necessity of thinking about the meaning of the state in whose name he is required to sacrifice his peace, his safety and his life, it cannot fail to be clear that these sacrifices no longer have any ground in our time.

But it is not only that, reasoning theoretically, every man cannot help seeing that the sacrifices demanded by the state have no ground. Even reasoning practically, that is, weighing all the heavy conditions in which the state places a man, everyone cannot help seeing that for him personally, fulfilling the demands of the state and submitting to military service is in most cases less advantageous than refusing.

If most people prefer submission to refusal, this comes not from a sober weighing of advantages and disadvantages but because people are drawn into submission by the hypnotizing they undergo in the process. In submitting, people only yield to the demands made on them, without reasoning and without any effort of will; refusing requires independent reasoning and an effort that not everyone is capable of. But if we leave aside the moral meaning of submission and refusal and consider the advantages alone, refusal will on the whole always be more advantageous than submission.

Whoever I may be, whether I belong to the well-to-do, oppressing classes or to the working, oppressed ones, in either case the disadvantages of refusing are smaller than the disadvantages of submitting, and the advantages of refusing are greater than the advantages of submitting.

If I belong to the oppressing minority, the disadvantages of refusing to obey the demands of the government will be that I, as a man who has refused to carry out the government's demands, will be tried, and at best will either be acquitted, or, as is done in our country with the Mennonites, made to serve out my term at noncombatant work; at worst I will be sentenced to exile or to two or three years in prison (I speak from cases that have occurred in Russia), or perhaps to a longer imprisonment, perhaps even to death, though the likelihood of such a punishment is very small.

Such are the disadvantages of refusing. The disadvantages of submitting will be these. At best I will not be sent to murder people, and will not myself be exposed to a great likelihood of mutilation and death, but will only be enrolled in military slavery. I will be dressed up in a clown's costume; I will be ordered about by every man above me in rank, from the corporal to the field marshal; I will be made to twist my body about as they please; and after keeping me from one to five years, they will leave me for ten years more in readiness to appear again at any moment to do all these things. At worst, under all the same conditions of slavery, I will also be sent to war, where I will be forced to kill men of foreign nations who have done nothing to me, where I may be mutilated and killed, and where I may be sent to such a place as there was at Sevastopol, and as there is in every war, where men are sent to certain death; and, what is most tormenting of all, I may be sent against my own countrymen and have to kill my brothers for the sake of dynastic interests, or of government interests wholly foreign to me. Such are the comparative disadvantages.

The comparative advantages of submitting and of refusing are as follows.

For the man who has not refused, the advantages will be that, having undergone all the humiliations and carried out all the cruelties required of him, he may, if he is not killed, receive red and gold and tinsel decorations on his clown's costume; at best he may command hundreds of thousands of men as brutalized as himself, and be called a field marshal, and receive a great deal of money.

The advantages for the man who refuses will be that he keeps his human dignity, wins the respect of good people, and, above all, knows beyond doubt that he is doing the work of God, and therefore doing undoubted good to people.

Such are the advantages and disadvantages on both sides for a man of the rich classes, for an oppressor. For a man of the poor working class the advantages and disadvantages will be the same, but with an important addition to the disadvantages. For a man of the working class who has not refused military service, the disadvantages will also consist in this: that by entering the service he confirms, by his participation and, as it were, his consent, the very oppression under which he himself lives.

But it is not considerations of how necessary and useful to people is the state they are called upon to uphold by their participation in military service, still less considerations of the advantages and disadvantages to each man of submitting or not submitting to the demands of the government, that decide the question whether the state must exist or be abolished. What decides this question, irrevocably and without appeal, is the religious consciousness, or conscience, of each individual man, before whom, with universal military service, the question of the existence or nonexistence of the state inevitably arises.

Chapter 8: The People of Our World Must Inevitably Accept the Christian Teaching of Nonresistance to Evil by Violence

It is often said that if Christianity is the truth, it ought to have been accepted by all people as soon as it appeared, and ought then to have changed people's lives and made them better. But to say this is the same as saying that if a seed were sound, it ought at once to put out a shoot, a flower and a fruit.

The Christian teaching is not a piece of legislation which, once introduced by violence, can change people's lives at a stroke. Christianity is a new and higher understanding of life, different from the one that came before it. And a new understanding of life cannot be prescribed; it can only be freely made one's own.

A new understanding of life can be freely made one's own in only two ways: the spiritual way, which is inward, and the way of experience, which is outward.

Some people, a minority, see the truth of the teaching at once, by a prophetic sense, give themselves up to it and fulfill it. Others, the majority, are brought only by a long road of errors, trials and sufferings to know the truth of the teaching and the necessity of making it their own.

And it is to this necessity, of making the teaching their own by the outward way of experience, that the great majority of Christian humanity has now been brought.

One sometimes wonders why there had to be that perversion of Christianity which even now, more than anything else, stands in the way of its being accepted in its true meaning. And yet this very perversion of Christianity, by bringing people to the position they are in now, was the necessary condition for the majority of people to be able to receive it in its true meaning.

If Christianity had been offered to people in its true form, and not in a perverted one, it would not have been accepted by the majority, and that majority would have remained as much strangers to it as the peoples of Asia are now. But having accepted it in a perverted form, the nations that accepted it came under its influence, slow but sure, and by the long road of experience, of errors and the sufferings that flow from them, they have now been brought to the necessity of making it their own in its true meaning.

The perversion of Christianity, and its acceptance in a perverted form by the majority of people, was as necessary as it is for a sown seed to lie hidden in the earth for a time if it is to come up.

The Christian teaching is a teaching of truth, and at the same time a prophecy.

Eighteen hundred years ago the Christian teaching revealed to people the truth about how they ought to live. At the same time it foretold what human life would become if people did not live so, but went on living by the foundations they had lived by before it, and what it would become if they accepted the Christian teaching and fulfilled it in their lives.

Having set out in the Sermon on the Mount the teaching that is to guide people's lives, Christ said: "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it" (Matthew 7:24-27).

And now, after eighteen centuries, the prophecy has been fulfilled. By not following Christ's teaching in general, and its expression in social life, nonresistance to evil, people have come, without meaning to, to that position of inevitable ruin which Christ promised to those who would not follow his teaching.

People often think that the question of resisting or not resisting evil by violence is an invented question, one that can be got around. And yet it is a question set by life itself before all people and before every thinking man, and it inevitably demands an answer. For people in their social life, ever since the Christian teaching was preached, this question is the same as the question that faces a traveler who comes to a fork in the road he has been following: which of the two roads to take. He must go on, and he cannot say: I will not think about it, and I will go on as I went before. Before there was one road; now there are two; and he cannot go on as before, but must inevitably choose one of the two.

In just the same way, ever since Christ's teaching became known to people, no one can say: I will live as I lived before, without deciding the question of resisting or not resisting evil by violence. Whenever a struggle arises, one must inevitably decide: shall I, or shall I not, resist by violence the violence I consider evil?

The question of resisting or not resisting evil by violence arose when the first struggle between people appeared, since every struggle is nothing but resistance by violence to what each of the combatants considers evil. But before Christ people did not see that to resist by violence what each considers evil, merely because he considers evil what another considers good, is only one way of settling a struggle, and that there is another way, which consists in not resisting evil by violence at all.

Before Christ's teaching it seemed to people that there was only one way of settling a struggle, by resisting evil with violence, and so they acted, each of the combatants trying meanwhile to persuade himself and others that what he considered evil was real, absolute evil.

And for this purpose people began, from the most ancient times, to devise definitions of evil that would be binding on all. What was passed off as such a definition, binding on all, was sometimes the decrees of laws supposed to have been received by supernatural means, and sometimes the commands of men, or of assemblies of men, to whom the quality of infallibility was ascribed. People used violence against other people and assured themselves and others that they were using this violence against an evil recognized by all.

This means was used from the most ancient times, above all by those who had seized power, and for a long time people did not see how unreasonable it was.

But the longer people lived, and the more complex their relations became, the more obvious it grew that it is unreasonable to resist by violence what each man considers evil; that struggle is not lessened by it; and that no human definitions can make what some people consider evil be considered so by others too.

Already at the time when Christianity appeared, in the place where it appeared, in the Roman Empire, it was clear to a great many people that what Nero and Caligula considered an evil to be resisted by violence could not be considered evil by other people. Already then people were beginning to understand that human laws passed off as divine laws are written by men; that men cannot be infallible, whatever outward grandeur they are clothed in; and that men who make mistakes do not become infallible by gathering together and calling themselves a senate or some other such name. Even then many people felt and understood this. And it was then that Christ preached his teaching. It consisted not only in this, that one must not resist evil by violence: it was a teaching of a new understanding of life. A part of it, or rather its application to social life, was the teaching of a means of abolishing the struggle among all people: not by obliging one part of people to submit without a struggle to whatever certain authorities might prescribe for them, but by having no one, and so also those who rule (and they above all), use violence against anyone in any case whatever.

This teaching was accepted at the time by only a very small number of disciples. The majority of people, and especially all those who ruled over others, went on, even after their nominal acceptance of Christianity, holding for themselves to the rule of resisting by violence what they considered evil. Thus it went under the Roman and Byzantine emperors, and so it continued afterward.

The bankruptcy of the principle of defining by authority what is evil and resisting it by violence, already plain in the first centuries of Christianity, became plainer still when the Roman Empire broke up into many states of equal standing, with their enmity toward one another and the internal struggles that went on within them.

But people were not ready to accept the solution Christ had given, and the old means went on being applied: the evil to be resisted was defined by establishing laws binding on all and carried out by force. The judge of what was to be considered evil and resisted by violence was now the pope, now the emperor, now the king, now an assembly of elected men, now the whole people. But both within the state and outside it there were always people who did not acknowledge as binding on themselves the decrees passed off as the will of the deity, or the decrees of men clothed in holiness, or the institutions that were supposed to represent the will of the people. And those people who considered good what the existing authorities considered evil fought against the authorities with the same violence that was used against them.

Men clothed in holiness considered evil what men and institutions clothed in secular power considered good, and the reverse; and the struggle grew more and more cruel. And the longer people held to this way of settling struggle, the more obvious it became that this way would not do, because there is not and cannot be any outward authority for defining evil that would be recognized by all.

Thus it went on for eighteen centuries, and it has come to where it is now: it has become perfectly obvious that there is not and cannot be any outward definition of evil binding on all. It has come to this, that people have ceased to believe not only in the possibility of finding this general definition, binding on all, but even in the need to put such a definition forward. It has come to this, that those who hold power have stopped proving that what they consider evil is evil, and say straight out that they consider evil whatever they do not like; while those who obey power have begun to obey it no longer because they believe that the definitions of evil it gives are just, but only because they cannot help obeying. It is not because it is good, needful and useful to people, and its opposite evil, that Nice was joined to France, Lorraine to Germany, Bohemia to Austria; that Poland was partitioned; that Ireland and India are subject to English rule; that war is made on China and Africans are killed; that the Americans drive out the Chinese and the Russians oppress the Jews; that landowners enjoy land they do not till, and capitalists the products of labor done by others. It is only because those who have power want it to be so. What has come about is what we have now: some people commit violence no longer in the name of opposing evil but in the name of their own profit or whim, and others submit to violence not because they consider, as was supposed in the past, that the violence is done to them in the name of delivering them from evil and for their good, but only because they cannot escape from it.

The Roman, the man of the Middle Ages, our own Russian as I remember him fifty years ago, was undoubtedly convinced that the existing violence of power was indispensable for delivering him from evil, and that taxes, levies, serfdom, prisons, lashes, knouts, penal servitude, executions, soldiering and wars were just as they ought to be. But now you will rarely find a man who still believes that all the violence being done delivers anyone from any evil; you will rarely find a man who does not see clearly that most of the violence to which he is subject, and in which he partly takes part, is in itself a great and useless evil.

There is no one now who does not see the uselessness, and more than that, the absurdity, of collecting taxes from the working people to enrich idle officials; or the senselessness of punishing corrupted and weak people by banishing them from one place to another, or by locking them up in prisons, where, living in security and idleness, they only grow more corrupted and weaker; or, beyond uselessness and absurdity, the downright madness and cruelty of military preparations and wars, which ruin and destroy the people and have no explanation or justification whatever. And yet this violence goes on, and is even upheld by the very people who see its uselessness, absurdity and cruelty, and who suffer from it.

Fifty years ago the rich idle man and the illiterate working man were both equally sure that their state, a perpetual holiday for the one and perpetual labor for the other, was ordained by God himself. Now, not only in Europe but in Russia too, thanks to the movement of population, the spread of literacy and the printed book, it is hard to find a man, among the rich or among the poor, into whose mind some doubt about the justice of such an order has not crept from one side or another. Not only do the rich know that they are guilty by the mere fact of being rich, and try to atone for their guilt with gifts to science or art, as they once atoned for their sins with gifts to the churches; the larger half of the working people now openly declare the existing order to be false and due to be destroyed or changed. Some, the religious people, the so-called sectarians, of whom we have millions in Russia, declare this order false and due to be destroyed on the strength of the Gospel teaching understood in its true meaning; others consider it false on the strength of the socialist, communist and anarchist theories that have now reached even the lowest strata of the working people.

Violence is upheld now no longer because it is considered necessary, but only because it has existed a long time, and because the people who profit from it, that is, the governments and the ruling classes, have organized it in such a way that those who are under their power cannot break free of it.

Governments in our time, all governments, the most despotic and the liberal alike, have become what Alexander Herzen so aptly called Genghis Khan with telegraphs: organizations of violence that have nothing at their foundation but the crudest arbitrary will, and that at the same time make use of all the means science has worked out for the common, peaceful social activity of free and equal people, means which they use to enslave and oppress people.

Governments and the ruling classes rest now not on right, not even on a semblance of justice, but on an organization so skillful, thanks to the improvements of science, that all people are caught in a circle of violence from which there is no possibility of breaking out. This circle is made up now of four means of acting on people. These means are all linked together and hold one another up, like the links of a chain joined in a ring.

The first and oldest means is intimidation. It consists in presenting the existing order of the state (whatever it may be, a free republic or the most savage despotism) as something sacred and unchangeable, and so punishing every attempt to change it with the cruelest of executions. This means was used in the past and is used now, unchanged, wherever there are governments: in Russia against the so-called nihilists, in America against the anarchists, in France against imperialists, monarchists, Communards and anarchists. Railways, telegraphs, telephones, photography, the perfected method of removing people without killing them, forever, into solitary confinement, where, hidden from the world, they perish and are forgotten, and many other modern inventions, which governments use more than anyone else, give them such strength that once power has fallen into certain hands, and the police, open and secret, and the administration, and every kind of prosecutor, jailer and executioner work zealously, there is no possibility of overthrowing the government, however mad and cruel it may be.

The second means is bribery. It consists in taking the wealth of the working people from them by means of money taxes and distributing it among officials, who in return for this reward are bound to uphold and strengthen the enslavement of the people.

These bribed officials, from the highest ministers to the lowest clerks, make up one unbroken net of people bound by one and the same interest, that of feeding themselves on the labor of the people; and the more obediently they carry out the will of the governments, the richer they are made. Always and everywhere, stopping at no means, in every branch of activity, they defend by word and deed the violence of government, on which their own well-being is founded.

The third means is what I cannot call by any other name than the hypnotizing of the people. It consists in holding back people's spiritual development and, by means of various suggestions, keeping them in the understanding of life that humanity has already outlived, on which the power of governments rests. This hypnotizing is organized at the present time in the most complex way; it begins to work in childhood and is kept up over people until their death. It begins at the earliest age, in compulsory schools set up for the purpose, where children are instilled with views of the world that belonged to their ancestors and flatly contradict the present consciousness of humanity. In countries that have a state religion, children are taught the senseless blasphemies of the church catechisms, together with the necessity of obeying the authorities; in republican states they are taught the savage superstition of patriotism and the same supposed obligation to obey governments. In later years this hypnotizing is kept up by the encouragement of superstition, both religious and patriotic. Religious superstition is encouraged by building churches and arranging processions, monuments and festivals with money collected from the people, with the help of painting, architecture, music and incense, all of which stupefy the people; and above all by maintaining the so-called clergy, whose duty consists in clouding people's minds and keeping them in a constant state of stupefaction by their performances, the pathos of their services and sermons, and their interference in people's private lives, at births, at marriages, at deaths. Patriotic superstition is encouraged by governments and the ruling classes, which arrange, with money collected from the people, public celebrations, spectacles, monuments and festivals that dispose people to acknowledge the exclusive importance of their own nation and the greatness of their own state and its rulers, and to feel ill will and even hatred toward other nations. Besides this, despotic governments directly forbid the printing and distribution of books, and the making of speeches, that enlighten the people, and banish or lock up everyone who might wake the people from their sleep. And all governments without exception hide from the people everything that might free them, and encourage everything that corrupts them: the kind of writing that keeps the people in the savagery of religious and patriotic superstitions; every kind of sensual amusement, spectacles, circuses, theaters; and even physical means of stupefaction, such as tobacco and vodka, which make up the chief revenue of states. They even encourage prostitution, which most governments not only recognize but organize. Such is the third means.

The fourth means consists in using the three preceding means to pick out, from all the people thus shackled and stupefied, a certain further portion, in order to subject these people to special, intensified methods of stupefaction and brutalization and so make them will-less instruments of all the cruelties and atrocities the government may need. This stupefaction and brutalization is achieved in the following way. These people are taken at that youthful age when no clear notions of morality have yet had time to take firm shape in them; they are removed from all the natural human conditions of life, home, family, native place and rational work; they are shut up together in barracks, dressed in special clothes, and made, under the action of shouts, drums, music and shiny objects, to perform every day certain movements devised for the purpose; and by these methods they are brought into such a state of hypnosis that they cease to be human beings and become senseless machines, obedient to the hypnotizer. These hypnotized young men, physically strong (and now, with universal military service, all young men), supplied with instruments of murder, always obedient to the power of the government and ready at its order for any violence whatever, make up the fourth and chief means of enslaving people.

With this means the circle of violence is closed.

Intimidation, bribery and hypnotizing bring people to become soldiers; and the soldiers give the power and the possibility to execute people, to rob them (bribing the officials with the money so taken), to hypnotize them, and to recruit them as the very soldiers who give the power to do all this.

The circle is closed, and there is no possibility of breaking out of it by force.

Some people maintain that deliverance from violence, or at least a lessening of it, may come about if the oppressed overthrow the oppressing government by force and replace it with a new one, under which such violence and enslavement of people will no longer be needed; and some people try to do this. But these people only deceive themselves and others, and by doing it they do not improve people's position but only make it worse. Their activity only strengthens the despotism of governments. Their attempts at liberation only give governments a convenient pretext for strengthening their power, and call that strengthening forth.

Even if we allow that, through circumstances that had turned out particularly unfavorable for a government, as in France in 1870, some government were overthrown by force and power passed into other hands, this new power would in no case be less oppressive than the old. On the contrary, defending itself against all its embittered, overthrown enemies, it would always be more despotic and cruel than the old one, as has happened in every revolution.

If the socialists and communists consider the individualist, capitalist order of society an evil, and the anarchists consider government itself an evil, there are also the monarchists, the conservatives and the capitalists, who consider the socialist and communist order an evil, and anarchy too; and none of these parties has any means but violence of uniting people. Whichever of these parties triumphs, it will have to use, to bring its order into life and to keep its power, not only all the existing means of violence but new ones of its own devising. Other people will be enslaved, and people will be made to do other things; but there will be the same violence and enslavement, and a crueler one, because the struggle will heighten people's hatred of one another, and with it new means of enslavement will be strengthened and worked out.

That is how it has always been after every revolution and every attempt at revolution, after every conspiracy, every violent change of government. Every struggle only strengthens the means of enslavement in the hands of whoever happens at the time to hold power.

The position of the people of our Christian world, and above all the ideals most current among them, prove this with striking force.

There remains now only one field of human activity not yet seized by the power of government: the field of the family and of economics, the field of private life and labor. And this field too, thanks to the struggle of the communists and socialists, is now little by little being seized by governments, so that labor and rest, people's lodging, clothing and food, all of it, if only the reformers' wishes come true, will little by little be determined and assigned by governments.

The whole long course of the life of the Christian nations, eighteen hundred years of it, has inevitably brought them back to the necessity they had evaded: the necessity of deciding the question of accepting or not accepting Christ's teaching, and with it the question, whose answer for social life follows from that teaching, of resisting or not resisting evil by violence. The only difference is that before, people could accept or not accept the solution given by Christianity, while now that solution has become inevitable, because it alone delivers them from the state of slavery in which they have entangled themselves, as in a net.

But it is not only the misery of people's position that brings them to this necessity.

Alongside the negative proof of the falseness of the pagan order went a positive proof of the truth of the Christian teaching.

Not for nothing, through eighteen centuries, did the best people of all Christian humanity, having come to know the truths of the teaching by the inward, spiritual way, bear witness to them before people, in spite of every threat, privation, calamity and torment. These best people sealed the truth of the teaching with their martyrdom and handed it on to the masses.

Christianity entered the consciousness of humanity not only by the negative way, by proving that pagan life could not go on, but also by being simplified, made clear, freed of the superstitions that had mixed with it, and spread among all classes of the people.

Eighteen centuries of professing Christianity have not passed in vain for the people who accepted it, even outwardly. These eighteen centuries have brought it about that people now, while they go on living a pagan life that does not answer to the age humanity has reached, not only see clearly all the misery of the state they are in, but in the depths of their souls believe (they go on living only because they believe it) that salvation from this state lies only in fulfilling the Christian teaching in its true meaning. How and when this salvation will come about, everyone thinks differently, according to his mental development and the current prejudices of his surroundings; but every man of our world acknowledges that our salvation lies in fulfilling the Christian teaching. Some, the believers, who acknowledge the Christian teaching as divine, consider that salvation will come when all people believe in Christ and the second coming draws near. Others, who also acknowledge the divinity of Christ's teaching, consider that this salvation will come through the Church, which, by bringing all people under its rule, will train them in the Christian virtues and transform their lives. A third group, who do not acknowledge Christ as God, consider that people's salvation will come through slow, gradual progress, in which the foundations of pagan life will little by little be replaced by the foundations of liberty, equality and fraternity, that is, by Christian foundations. A fourth group, who preach the reconstruction of society, consider that salvation will come when people are compelled by a violent upheaval to community of property, the absence of governments, and collective rather than individual labor, that is, to the realization of one side of the Christian teaching.

One way or another, all the people of our time, in their consciousness, not only reject the existing pagan order of life, which has outlived itself, but acknowledge, often without knowing it and while considering themselves enemies of Christianity, that our salvation lies only in applying to life the Christian teaching, or a part of it, in its true meaning.

For the majority of people Christianity could not, as its teacher said, be realized all at once; it had to grow like the greatest of trees from the smallest of seeds. And that is how it grew, and it has now grown up, if not yet in reality, then in the consciousness of the people of our time.

It is not only the minority, who have always understood Christianity by the inward way, who now acknowledge it in its true meaning, but also that whole enormous majority of people who seem, by their social life, to stand so far from Christianity.

Look at the private life of individual people; listen to the judgments people pass on actions when they judge one another; listen not only to public sermons and speeches but to the instructions that parents and teachers give to those in their charge; and you will see that, however far the life of people in the state and in society, bound together by violence, may be from realizing Christian truths, in private life the only things considered good by everyone, for everyone, without exception and beyond dispute, are the Christian virtues, and the only things considered bad by everyone, for everyone, without exception and beyond dispute, are the anti-Christian vices. The best people are considered to be those who devote their lives selflessly to the service of humanity and sacrifice themselves for others; the worst are considered to be the selfish, who use the misfortunes of their neighbors for their own personal profit.

If some people, still untouched by Christianity, acknowledge non-Christian ideals, strength, courage, wealth, these are ideals lived by and shared not by all, and not by the people regarded as the best. Of ideals shared by all and always acknowledged as binding on everyone else, there are none but the Christian ones.

The position of our Christian humanity, if one looks at it from the outside, with its cruelty and its enslavement of people, is truly terrible. But if one looks at it from the side of its consciousness, the spectacle is entirely different.

All the evil of our life seems to exist only because it has been done for a long time, and the people who do it have not yet had time, have not yet learned, to stop doing it; but none of them wants to do it.

All this evil exists for some other cause, which seems to be independent of people's consciousness.

Strange and contradictory as it seems, all the people of our time hate the very order of things that they themselves uphold.

Max Müller, I believe, tells of the astonishment of an Indian, converted to Christianity, who had taken in the essence of the Christian teaching and then came to Europe and saw how Christians live. The man could not get over his astonishment at a reality that was the exact opposite of what he had expected to find among the Christian nations.

If we are not astonished at the contradiction between our beliefs, our convictions and our actions, that is only because the influences which hide this contradiction from people act on us too. We need only look at our life from the point of view of that Indian, who understood Christianity in its true meaning, without any concessions or adjustments, and look at the savage atrocities with which our life is filled, to be horrified at the contradictions among which we live, often without noticing them.

We need only recall the preparations for war, the machine guns, the silver-plated bullets, the torpedoes, and beside them the Red Cross; the building of solitary prisons, the experiments with electrical executions, and beside them the concern for the well-being of prisoners; the philanthropic activity of the rich, and beside it their life, which produces the very poor whom they benefit. And these contradictions do not arise, as it may seem, because people pretend to be Christians when they are pagans. On the contrary, they arise because people lack something, or because there is some force that keeps them from being what they already feel themselves to be in their consciousness, and what they truly want to be. The people of our time are not pretending when they say they hate oppression, inequality, the division of people, and every kind of cruelty, not only to people but even to animals. They truly hate all this; but they do not know how to abolish it, or they cannot bring themselves to part with what upholds it all and seems to them necessary.

Indeed, ask each man of our time separately whether he considers it praiseworthy, or even worthy of a man of our time, to occupy himself, for a salary out of all proportion to his labor, with collecting taxes from the people, who are often destitute, in order to build with the money cannons, torpedoes and instruments of murder against people with whom we wish to be at peace, and who wish the very same toward us; or, again for a salary, to devote his whole life to making these instruments of murder, or to preparing himself for murder and preparing others for it. And ask whether it is praiseworthy, and worthy of a man, and proper to a Christian, to occupy himself, again for money, with catching unhappy, misguided, often illiterate and drunken people because they appropriate other people's property on a far smaller scale than we appropriate it, and kill people not in the way we are accustomed to kill them, and for this to put them in prisons, torment them and kill them. And whether it is praiseworthy, and worthy of a man and a Christian, again for money, to preach to the people, instead of Christianity, superstitions known to be absurd and harmful. And whether it is praiseworthy and worthy of a man to take from his neighbor, for his own whim, what the neighbor needs to satisfy his first needs, as the great landowners do; or to make him do work beyond his strength, work that destroys his life, to increase one's own wealth, as the factory and mill owners do; or to profit from people's need to increase one's wealth, as the merchants do. Every one of them, asked separately, especially if he is speaking of someone else, will say no. And at the same time this very man, who sees all the vileness of these acts, of his own accord, compelled by no one, sometimes even without the money advantage of a salary, of his own free will, out of childish vanity, for the sake of a porcelain trinket, a ribbon, a bit of gold braid that he will be allowed to wear, goes into military service, or becomes an examining magistrate, a justice of the peace, a minister, a village constable, a bishop, a sexton, taking posts in which he must necessarily do all these things, whose shamefulness and vileness he cannot help knowing.

I know that many of these people will set out with self-assurance to prove that they consider their position not only lawful but necessary. In their defense they will say that the powers are of God; that the offices of state are necessary for the good of humanity; that wealth is not contrary to Christianity; that the rich young man was told to give away his possessions only if he would be perfect; that the present distribution of wealth, and commerce, are just as they should be and profitable to all; and so on. But however they try to deceive themselves and others, all these people know that what they do is contrary to everything they believe in, everything in whose name they live; and in the depths of their souls, when they are left alone with their conscience, they are ashamed and pained to remember what they do, especially if the vileness of their activity has been pointed out to them. Whether or not he professes the divinity of Christ, no man of our time can fail to know what it is to take part, as tsar, minister, governor or village constable, in selling a poor family's last cow for taxes, in order to give the money for cannons or for the salaries and pensions of luxurious, idle and harmful officials; or to take part in putting the breadwinner of a family in prison for what we ourselves corrupted him into, and sending his family out to beg; or to take part in the plunder and murder of wars; or in instilling savage, idolatrous superstitions in place of the law of Christ; or to impound the cow of a landless man that has strayed onto one's land; or to dock a factory worker's pay for an article he spoiled by accident; or to charge a poor man double for a thing only because he is in dire need. No man of our time can fail to know that all these things are vile and shameful, and that they must not be done. And they all know it. They all know that what they do is wrong, and they would not do it for anything if they were able to stand against the forces that close their eyes to the criminality of their acts and draw them on to commit them.

Nowhere is the degree of contradiction that the life of the people of our time has reached so strikingly visible as in that very phenomenon which is at once the last means and the last expression of violence: universal military service.

It is only because this state of universal armament and military service came on step by step, unnoticed, and because governments use every means in their power, intimidation, bribery, stupefaction and violence, to maintain it, that we do not see how flagrantly it contradicts those Christian feelings and thoughts with which all the people of our time are truly imbued.

This contradiction has become so habitual to us that we do not see all the appalling senselessness and immorality of the acts not only of those people who choose of their own wish the profession of murder as something honorable, but also of those unhappy people who agree to do military service, or even of those who, in countries where military service has not been introduced, voluntarily give their labor to hire soldiers and prepare murder. All these people, after all, are either Christians or people who profess humanitarianism and liberalism. They know that by these acts they become accomplices in, and where military service is personal, the perpetrators of, the most senseless, aimless and cruel murders; and still they commit them.

But that is not all. In Germany, the very place where universal military service began, Caprivi said aloud what had formerly been carefully hidden: that the people who will have to be killed are not only foreigners but our own, those very working people from whom most of the soldiers are drawn. And this admission did not open people's eyes or horrify them. After it, as before, they go on walking like sheep to the call-up and submitting to everything that is demanded of them.

But that is not all either. Recently the German emperor explained the meaning and calling of a soldier still more precisely, by singling out, thanking and rewarding a soldier for killing a defenseless prisoner who was trying to escape. By thanking and rewarding a man for an act that has always been regarded, even by people standing at the lowest level of morality, as the meanest and basest of all, Wilhelm showed that the chief duty of a soldier, the one most valued by the authorities, is to be an executioner: and not an executioner like the professional ones, who kill only condemned criminals, but an executioner of all the innocent people whom his superiors order him to kill.

But even that is not all. In 1891 the same Wilhelm, the enfant terrible of state power, who says aloud what others think, was talking with some soldiers and said the following in public; and the next day thousands of newspapers reprinted his words:

"Recruits!" he says. "Before the consecrated servant of God and in sight of this altar you have sworn loyalty to me. You are still too young to understand the true meaning of what has just been said; but make it your first care always to follow the orders and instructions given you. You have sworn loyalty to me; that, children of my Guard, means that you are now my soldiers, that you have given yourselves to me body and soul. For you there is only one enemy, and that is my enemy. With the present socialist agitation it may happen that I shall order you to shoot down your own relatives, your brothers, even your parents, which God forbid, and even then you must carry out my orders without a murmur."

This man says out loud what all clever rulers know but carefully hide. He says straight out that the people who serve in the army serve him and his advantage, and must be ready, for his advantage, to kill their brothers and fathers.

Bluntly, in the crudest words, he expresses the whole horror of the crime that people who become soldiers are being made ready for, the whole abyss of degradation they reach when they promise obedience. Like a bold hypnotizer, he is testing how deep his subject's sleep goes: he puts a red-hot iron to the body; the body hisses and smokes, but the sleeper does not wake.

This pitiful, sick man, crazed with power, insults with his words everything that can be sacred to a man of our time; and people, Christians, liberals, the educated people of our time, all of them, not only are not outraged by the insult but do not even notice it. People are offered the very last, the extreme test, in the crudest, starkest form. And people seem not even to notice that it is a test, that a choice lies before them. It seems to them that there is no choice at all, and only one path, that of slavish submission. One would think these mad words, which insult everything a man of our time holds sacred, must rouse people to indignation; but nothing of the kind happens. All the young men of all Europe, year after year, are put to this test, and with the smallest exceptions they all renounce everything that is and can be sacred to a man. They all declare themselves ready to kill their brothers, even their fathers, at the order of the first misguided man to be dressed in a livery trimmed with red and gold, and they only ask whom they will be ordered to kill, and when. And they are ready.

Every savage, after all, has something sacred for which he is ready to suffer rather than give way. But where is this sacred thing in the man of our time? He is told: come into slavery to me, into a slavery in which you may have to kill even your own father; and he, very often a learned man who has gone through all the sciences at the university, meekly puts his neck into the yoke. They dress him in a clown's costume and order him to jump, to grimace, to bow, to kill, and he meekly does it all. And when they let him go, he shakes himself off, goes back to his former life, and goes on holding forth about the dignity of man, about liberty, equality and fraternity.

"Yes, but what is one to do?" people often ask, in sincere perplexity. "If everyone refused, that would be another matter. As it is, I alone shall suffer, and I shall do no good to anyone or anything."

And it is true: a man of the social understanding of life cannot refuse. The meaning of his life is the good of his person. For his person it is better to submit, and he submits.

Whatever is done to him, however he is tormented, however he is humiliated, he will submit, because alone he can do nothing; he has no foundation in whose name he could stand against violence alone. And those who govern such people will never let them unite. It is often said that the invention of terrible military instruments of murder will abolish war, that war will abolish itself. That is not true. Just as the means of slaughtering people can be increased, so can the means of bringing the people of the social understanding of life to submission. Let them be slaughtered by the thousand and the million, let them be torn to pieces: they will still go to the slaughterhouse, some like senseless cattle, because they are driven with the whip, others because in return they are allowed to wear ribbons and bits of gold braid, and they will even be proud of it.

And it is with such material, with people stupefied to the point of promising to kill their own parents, that the public men, conservatives, liberals, socialists, anarchists, discuss how to build a rational and moral society. What rational and moral society can be built out of such people? Just as you cannot build a house out of rotten and crooked logs, however you lay them, so you cannot build a rational and moral society out of such people. Out of such people only a herd of animals can be formed, driven by the shouts and the whips of herdsmen. And that is just what it is.

And so, on the one hand, people who are Christians by name and profess liberty, equality and fraternity are at the same time ready, in the name of liberty, for the most slavish and abject submission; in the name of equality, for the sharpest and most senseless divisions of people, by outward marks alone, into higher and lower, allies and enemies; and in the name of fraternity they are ready to kill these brothers.¹⁸

The contradictions of consciousness, and the misery of life that follows from them, have reached the last degree, beyond which there is nowhere to go. Life built on the principles of violence has arrived at the denial of the very foundations in whose name it was established. The organization of society on the principles of violence, which had as its aim the securing of the good of the person, the family and society, has brought people to the complete denial and destruction of these goods.

The first part of the prophecy has been fulfilled on the people, and the generations of people, who did not accept the teaching, and their descendants have now been brought to the necessity of testing the truth of its second part.

Chapter 9: Accepting the Christian Understanding of Life Frees People from the Miseries of Our Pagan Life

The position of the Christian nations in our time has remained as cruel as it was in the time of paganism. In many respects, especially in the enslavement of people, it has become even crueler than it was in the time of paganism.

But between the position of people then and in our time there is the same difference as there is, for plants, between the last days of autumn and the first days of spring. In autumn the outward lifelessness of nature corresponds to an inward state of dying away; in spring the outward lifelessness stands in the sharpest contradiction to a state of inward reviving, of passing over into a new form of life.

It is the same with the outward likeness between the pagan life of the past and the life of today. The likeness is only outward: the inward state of people in the time of paganism and in our time is entirely different.

Then, the outward state of cruelty and enslavement was in full agreement with people's inward consciousness, and every step forward increased that agreement; now, the outward state of cruelty and enslavement is in full contradiction with the Christian consciousness of people, and every step forward only increases the contradiction.

Sufferings are taking place that seem needless and useless. Something like childbirth is taking place. Everything is ready for the new life, but the new life still does not appear.

The position seems hopeless. And it would be hopeless, if man, and therefore all people, had not been given the possibility of another, higher understanding of life, which at once frees him from all the bonds that seemed to bind him beyond breaking.

And such is the Christian understanding of life, which was pointed out to humanity eighteen hundred years ago.

A man need only make this understanding of life his own, and the chains that seemed to bind him so unbreakably fall apart of themselves, and he feels himself entirely free, as a bird in a place fenced in all round would feel itself free once it opened its wings.

People talk of freeing the Christian church from the state, of granting or not granting freedom to Christians. There is a strange misunderstanding in these thoughts and expressions. Freedom cannot be granted to a Christian, or to Christians, or taken away from them. Freedom is an inalienable property of a Christian.

If people speak of granting freedom to Christians or taking it from them, they are evidently speaking not of real Christians but of people who only call themselves Christians. A Christian cannot help being free, because the attainment of the aim he has set himself cannot be prevented, or even held back, by anyone or anything.

A man need only understand his life as Christianity teaches him to understand it: understand, that is, that his life belongs not to himself, to his person, nor to his family or the state, but to him who sent him into life; understand that he must therefore fulfill not the law of his person, his family or the state, but the unlimited law of him from whom he came. Then he will not only feel himself entirely free of all human power, but will even cease to see that power as anything that could constrain anyone.

A man need only understand that the aim of his life is to fulfill the law of God, and this law, replacing all other laws for him and bringing him under itself, will by that very subjection deprive all human laws, in his eyes, of their binding and constraining force.

A Christian is freed from all human power by this: that he considers the divine law of love, implanted in the soul of every man and brought to consciousness by Christ, the one guide of his own life and of the lives of other people.

A Christian may be subjected to outward violence, may be deprived of bodily freedom, may be unfree of his passions ("whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin"); but he cannot be unfree in the sense of being compelled, by any danger or any outward threat, to commit an act contrary to his consciousness.

He cannot be compelled to it, because the privations and sufferings that violence produces, which make up so powerful a weapon against the people of the social understanding of life, have no compelling force over him. Privations and sufferings take from the people of the social understanding of life the good for which they live; but they not only cannot disturb the good of a Christian, which consists in the consciousness of fulfilling the will of God, they can only strengthen it, when they befall him for fulfilling that will.

And so a Christian, who submits to the one inward, divine law, not only cannot carry out the prescriptions of the outward law when they do not agree with the divine law of love that he is conscious of, as happens with the demands of governments; he cannot even acknowledge an obligation to obey anyone or anything whatever, cannot acknowledge what is called being a subject. For a Christian, the promise of allegiance to any government whatever, the very act that is considered the foundation of the life of the state, is a direct renunciation of Christianity. For a man who promises in advance, unconditionally, to submit to the laws that men make and will make, renounces by that promise, in the most positive way, Christianity, which consists in submitting, in every circumstance of life, only to the divine law of love that he is conscious of within himself.

Under the pagan view of the world it was possible to promise to carry out the will of the secular authorities without violating the will of God, which was taken to lie in circumcision, the Sabbath, prayer at fixed times, abstaining from certain kinds of food, and so on. The one did not contradict the other. But the Christian profession differs from the pagan precisely in this: it does not demand of a man certain outward, negative acts; it sets him in a new relation to people, different from the old, from which the most varied acts may flow, acts that cannot be determined in advance. And so a Christian not only cannot promise to carry out another's will without knowing what that will may demand of him; he not only cannot obey changing human laws; he cannot even promise to do anything definite at a given time, or to abstain from anything at a given time, because he cannot know what that Christian law of love, submission to which makes up the meaning of his life, will demand of him, and when. A Christian who promised in advance to carry out men's laws unconditionally would be declaring by that promise that the inward law of God is no longer the one law of his life.

For a Christian to promise obedience to men or to men's laws is the same as for a workman hired by a master to promise, at the same time, to carry out whatever strangers may order him to do as well. No man can serve two masters.

A Christian is freed from human power by acknowledging over himself the one power of God, whose law, revealed to him by Christ, he is conscious of in himself; and he submits to that power alone.

And this liberation comes about not through struggle, not by destroying the existing forms of life, but only by a change in the understanding of life. It comes about, first, because the Christian acknowledges the law of love, revealed to him by his teacher, as entirely sufficient for the relations of people, and so considers all violence superfluous and lawless; and, second, because those privations and sufferings, and threats of sufferings and privations, by which the social man is brought to the necessity of obeying, appear to the Christian, with his different understanding of life, only as unavoidable conditions of existence. These he bears patiently, without fighting them by violence, as he bears illness, hunger and every other calamity; but they can in no way serve as the guide of his actions. The guide of a Christian's actions is only the divine principle living in him, which nothing can constrain or direct.

A Christian acts according to the word of the prophecy that was applied to his teacher: "He shall not strive, nor cry; neither shall any man hear his voice in the streets. A bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench, till he send forth judgment unto victory" (Matthew 12:19-20).

A Christian disputes with no one, attacks no one, uses violence against no one; on the contrary, he himself bears violence without a word of protest. But by this very relation to violence he not only frees himself but frees the world from all outward power.

"Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32). If there were any doubt that Christianity is the truth, the complete freedom, which nothing can constrain, that a man experiences as soon as he makes the Christian understanding of life his own would be indubitable proof of its truth.

People in their present state are like swarming bees hanging in a cluster on a branch. The bees' position on the branch is temporary and must inevitably be changed. They must rise and find themselves a new home. Each of the bees knows this and wishes to change its own position and that of the others, but none of them can do it until the rest do. They cannot all rise at once, because one hangs on another and keeps it from leaving the swarm, and so they all go on hanging. It would seem that there is no way out of this position for the bees, just as it seems to worldly people entangled in the net of the social view of the world. But there would be no way out for the bees if each of them were not a separately living creature, endowed with wings. Nor would there be a way out for people, if each of them were not a living, separate being, endowed with the capacity to make the Christian understanding of life his own.

If each bee that can fly did not fly, the rest would never stir, and the swarm would never change its position. And if the man who has made the Christian understanding of life his own did not begin to live according to that understanding without waiting for others, humanity would never change its position. And just as one bee need only open its wings, rise and fly, and after it a second, a third, a tenth, a hundredth, for the cluster that hung motionless to become a freely flying swarm, so one man need only understand life as Christianity teaches him to understand it, and begin to live so, and after him a second, a third, a hundredth do the same, for the enchanted circle of social life, from which there seemed to be no way out, to be broken.

But people think that freeing all people in this way is too slow, and that some other means must be found and used by which all could be freed at once. It is as if bees that wanted to rise and fly away found it too long to wait until the whole swarm had risen one bee at a time, and thought a means must be found by which no single bee would need to open its wings and fly, and yet the swarm would fly where it needed to go. But that is impossible. Until the first, the second, the third, the hundredth bee freely opens its wings and flies, the swarm will not fly either, and will not find its new life. Until each individual man makes the Christian understanding of life his own and begins to live according to it, the contradiction of human life will not be resolved, and no new form of life will be established.

One of the striking phenomena of our time is the preaching of slavery that is spread among the masses not only by governments, which need it, but by those people who preach socialist theories and consider themselves champions of freedom.

These people preach that the improvement of life, the bringing of reality into agreement with consciousness, will come about not through the personal efforts of individual people but of itself, through a certain violent reconstruction of society carried out by someone or other. What is preached is that people need not go on their own feet where they want and need to go, but that a floor will be laid under them on which, without going on their own feet, they will arrive where they need to be. And so all their efforts are to be directed not at going, as far as their strength allows, where they need to go, but at standing still and constructing this imaginary floor.

In economics, a theory is preached whose essence is that the worse things are, the better: that the more capital accumulates, and with it the oppression of the worker, the nearer liberation is, and so every personal effort of a man to free himself from the pressure of capital is useless. In matters of the state, it is preached that the greater the power of the state, which by this theory is to seize the field of private life that it has not yet seized, the better it will be, and that government intervention in private life must therefore be called for. In political and international relations, it is preached that the increase in the means of destruction, the increase of armies, will lead to the necessity of disarmament by means of congresses, arbitrations and the like. And, remarkably, people's inertia is so great that they believe these theories, although the whole course of life, every step forward, exposes them as false.

People suffer from oppression, and to deliver them from this oppression they are advised to devise general means of improving their position, which are to be applied by the authorities, while they themselves go on submitting to the authorities. And plainly the only result is an ever greater increase of power, and with it an increase of oppression.

Of all people's errors, none takes them so far from the aim they are striving for as this one. To reach the aim they have set themselves, people do every kind of thing, the most varied things, except the one simple and direct thing that lies before each of them. People devise the most ingenious ways of changing the position that weighs on them, except the simplest of all: that each should stop doing what produces that position.

I was told of an incident that happened to a brave stanovoi, a rural police officer, who came to a village where the peasants had risen and where troops had been called in, and undertook to put down the rising in the spirit of Nicholas I: alone, by his personal influence. He had several cartloads of birch rods brought, gathered all the peasants into a threshing barn, went in with them, locked himself in, and so frightened the peasants at first with his shouting that, obeying him, they began at his order to flog one another. And they went on flogging one another until there turned up one simpleton who would not let himself be flogged, and shouted to his comrades not to flog one another. Only then did the flogging stop, and the stanovoi fled from the barn. It is this very advice of the simpleton that the social men can never bring themselves to follow. They go on flogging themselves without stopping, and teach people this self-flogging as the last word of human wisdom.

Indeed, can one imagine a more striking example of people flogging themselves than the submissiveness with which the people of our time carry out the very obligations laid on them that bring them into slavery, and above all military service? People plainly enslave themselves, suffer from this slavery, and believe that this is how it must be, that it does no harm and is no hindrance to the liberation of people, which is being prepared somewhere and somehow, in spite of a slavery that grows and grows.

Indeed, here is a man of our time, whoever he may be (I am speaking not of a true Christian but of the ordinary man of our time), educated or uneducated, believer or unbeliever, rich or poor, with a family or without. Such a man of our time lives doing his work or enjoying his pleasures, consuming the fruits of his own or other people's labor for himself and those close to him, and, like all people, he hates every kind of constraint and privation, enmity and suffering. Such a man lives in peace; and suddenly people come to him and say to him: First, promise and swear to us that you will obey us slavishly in everything we prescribe for you, and that you will consider indubitable truth, and submit to, everything that we devise, decide and call law. Second, give part of your labor into our hands; we shall use this money to keep you in slavery and to prevent you from resisting our orders by violence. Third, elect, and be elected yourself, as a sham participant in government, knowing all the while that the governing will be done entirely independently of the foolish speeches you will make with others like you, and will be done according to our will, the will of those who have the army in their hands. Fourth, at certain times appear in court and take part in all the senseless cruelties that we commit, in the form of imprisonment, exile, solitary confinement and executions, against people whom we ourselves have led astray and corrupted. And finally, fifth, on top of all this, though you may be on the friendliest terms with the people of other nations, be ready at once, whenever we tell you, to consider those of these people whom we point out to you as your enemies, and to help, in person or by hire, in the ruin, plunder and murder of their men, wives, children and old people, and perhaps of your own countrymen, perhaps even of your parents, if we should need it.

What, one would think, could any man of our time who has not been stupefied answer to such demands?

"But why should I do all this?" every sane man, one would think, must say in astonishment. "Why should I promise to obey whatever I am ordered to do today by Salisbury, tomorrow by Gladstone, today by Boulanger, tomorrow by a chamber full of Boulangers, today by Peter III, tomorrow by Catherine, the day after by Pugachev, today by the mad king of Bavaria, tomorrow by Wilhelm? Why should I promise to obey them, when I know them to be bad or empty men, or do not know them at all? Why should I hand over to them the fruits of my labor in the form of taxes, knowing that the money goes on bribing officials, on prisons, churches and armies, on bad deeds and on my own enslavement? Why should I flog myself? Why should I go, wasting my time, throwing dust in my own eyes and lending the men of violence a semblance of legality, and take part in elections and pretend that I take part in government, when I know very well that the government of the state is in the hands of those who have the army in their hands? Why should I go into the courts and take part in torturing and executing people because they have gone astray, when I know, if I am a Christian, that the law of vengeance has been replaced by the law of love, and, if I am an educated man, that punishments do not make the people subjected to them better, but only worse? And above all, why, only because the keys of the church at Jerusalem are to be held by this bishop and not that one, because this German and not that one is to be prince of Bulgaria, and because the seals are to be caught by English merchants and not American ones, should I acknowledge as my enemies the people of a neighboring nation, with whom I have lived till now and wish to live in love and harmony, and hire soldiers or go myself to kill and ruin them, and expose myself to their attack? And above all, why should I help, in person or by hiring military force, in the enslavement and murder of my own brothers and fathers? Why should I flog myself? I have no need of any of this; all of it is harmful to me; and all of it, from every side, is immoral, base and vile. Then why should I do it? If you say that without it I shall suffer harm from someone, then, first, I foresee no harm from anyone as bad as the harm you do me if I listen to you; and second, it is perfectly clear to me that if we do not flog ourselves, no one will flog us. The government, after all, means tsars, ministers and officials with pens, who can compel me to nothing, any more than that stanovoi could compel the peasants. The people who will take me by force to court, to prison, to execution are not the tsars and the officials with pens, but people in the same position as myself. And it is just as useless and harmful and unpleasant for them to be flogged as it is for me; and so, in all likelihood, if I open their eyes, not only should they not do violence to me, they should do the same as I.

"Third, even if it should happen that I had to suffer for this, it is still more to my advantage to be exiled or locked in prison for standing up for common sense and goodness, which must triumph, if not today or tomorrow, then in a very short time, than to suffer for folly and evil, which must come to an end any day now. And so even in that case it is more to my advantage to risk being exiled, locked up in prison, even executed, than to live my whole life, by my own fault, in slavery to bad men, liable to be ruined by an invading enemy, and maimed and killed by him like a fool, defending a cannon, or a scrap of land that no one needs, or a stupid rag called a flag.

"I do not want to flog myself, and I will not. There is no reason for me to do it. Do it yourselves, if you want to; I will not."

One would think that not only religious or moral feeling, but the simplest reasoning and calculation, must make every man of our time answer and act so. But no: the people of the social understanding of life find that to act so is unnecessary, and even harmful to the aim of freeing people from slavery. They find that one must go on flogging one another, like the stanovoi's peasants, consoling oneself with the thought that our chatter in the chambers and at meetings, the workers' unions we form, our marching through the streets on the first of May, our conspiracies and our sly teasing of the government that flogs us, will bring it about that we, while putting ourselves into bondage more and more, will very soon be free.

Nothing so hinders the liberation of people as this astonishing error. Instead of each man directing his strength to freeing himself, to changing his own understanding of life, people seek an outward, collective means of liberation, and by that put themselves in chains more and more.

It is as if people maintained that to make a fire give heat, it is not each coal that needs to be kindled, but the coals that need to be arranged in a certain way.

And yet it is becoming more and more obvious of late that the liberation of all people will come about precisely through the liberation of individuals. The liberation of individuals from enslavement by the state, in the name of the Christian understanding of life, which used to be an exceptional and unnoticed phenomenon, has lately taken on a significance that threatens the power of the state.

In the past, in the days of Rome and in the Middle Ages, it happened that a Christian, professing his teaching, refused to take part in sacrifices, to worship emperors and gods, or, in the Middle Ages, to worship icons or acknowledge the power of the pope. But these refusals, first, were a matter of chance: a man might be put in the position of having to profess his faith, and he might live out his life without ever being put in that position. Now all people without exception are put to these trials of faith. Every man of our time is put in the position of having either to acknowledge his share in the cruelties of pagan life or to reject it. And second, in those days refusals to worship the gods, the icons or the pope were of no consequence to the state: however many people worshiped or did not worship the gods, or the icons, or the pope, the state remained just as strong. Now, refusals to comply with the un-Christian demands of governments cut the very power of the state at its root, because the whole power of the state rests on the fulfillment of these un-Christian demands.

The course of life has brought the worldly authorities to a position in which, to maintain themselves, they must demand of all people acts that cannot be performed by people who profess true Christianity.

And so in our time every profession of true Christianity by an individual undermines the power of government in what is most essential to it, and inevitably brings with it the liberation of all.

What, one would think, can be important in such phenomena as the refusals of a few dozen cranks, as they are called, who will not take the oath to the government, will not pay taxes, will not take part in the courts or in military service? These people are punished and removed, and life goes on in the old way. It would seem there is nothing important in these phenomena; and yet it is these very phenomena, more than anything else, that undermine the power of the state and prepare the liberation of people. These are the single bees that are beginning to separate from the swarm and fly around it, waiting for what cannot be long delayed: for the whole swarm to rise after them. And governments know this, and fear these phenomena more than all the socialists, communists and anarchists, and their conspiracies with dynamite bombs.

A new reign begins. By the general rule and the established order, all subjects are required to take the oath to the new government. A general order is issued. Everyone is summoned to the cathedral to take the oath. Suddenly one man in Perm, another in Tula, a third in Moscow, a fourth in Kaluga declare that they will not take the oath; and all of them, without any agreement among themselves, explain their refusal in one and the same way: that swearing is forbidden by the Christian law, and that even if it were not forbidden, they could not, by the spirit of the Christian law, promise to do the bad things the oath requires of them, namely, to inform on everyone who acts against the interests of the government, and to defend their government with arms in their hands or to attack its enemies. They are summoned before the stanovoi, before the ispravnik, the district police chief, before priests, before governors; they are admonished, entreated, threatened and punished; but they hold to their decision and do not take the oath. And among the millions who took the oath live a few dozen who did not. And people ask them:

"How is it you did not take the oath?"

"We just didn't."

"And nothing happened?"

"Nothing."

The subjects of the state are all obliged to pay taxes. And everyone pays; but one man in Kharkiv, another in Tver, a third in Samara refuse to pay the tax, all saying, as if by agreement, one and the same thing. One says that he will pay only when he is told what the money taken from him is to be spent on. If on good deeds, he says, he will give of his own accord even more than is asked of him. If on evil ones, he will give nothing voluntarily, because by the law of Christ, which he follows, he cannot help in evil deeds. The others say the same, though in other words, and do not pay the tax voluntarily. From those who have something to take, their property is taken by force; those who have nothing to take are left in peace.

"You mean he never paid the tax?"

"He didn't."

"And nothing happened?"

"Nothing."

Passports are introduced. Everyone who leaves his place of residence is obliged to take one out and pay a fee for it. Suddenly in various places people appear who say that there is no need to take out passports, that one ought not to acknowledge one's dependence on a state that lives by violence; and these people do not take out passports and do not pay the fee for them. And again nothing can make these people do what is required. They are locked up in jails and let out again, and they live without passports.

All peasants are obliged to take their turn at police duty as sotskie and desyatskie, the peasant "hundredmen" and "tenmen", and the like. Suddenly in Kharkiv a peasant refuses to perform this duty, explaining his refusal by saying that by the Christian law he professes he cannot bind anyone, lock anyone up, or lead anyone from place to place. A peasant in Tver says the same, and one in Tambov. The peasants are cursed, beaten, locked up, but they hold to their decision and do not do what is contrary to their faith. And people stop electing them hundredmen; and again nothing happens.

All citizens must take part in the courts as jurors. Suddenly the most varied people, coachbuilders, professors, merchants, peasants, gentlemen, as if by agreement, refuse these duties, and not for reasons the law recognizes, but because the court itself, in their conviction, is an unlawful, un-Christian thing that ought not to exist. These people are fined, care being taken not to let them state the motives of their refusal in public, and others are put in their place. The same is done with those who, on the same grounds, refuse to appear in court as witnesses. And again nothing happens.

All men in their twenty-first year are obliged to draw lots. Suddenly one young man in Moscow, another in Tver, a third in Kharkiv, a fourth in Kyiv, as if by prior arrangement, appear before the recruiting board and declare that they will neither take the oath nor serve, because they are Christians. Here are the details of one of the first such cases, since refusals of this kind began to grow frequent, a case I know well.¹⁹ In all the other cases approximately the same thing was repeated. A young man of middling education refuses at the Moscow city council. No attention is paid to his words, and he is required, like the others, to pronounce the words of the oath. He refuses, pointing to the particular passage of the Gospel that forbids swearing. No attention is paid to his arguments, and he is required to carry out the order, but he does not carry it out. Then it is supposed that he is a sectarian and so understands Christianity wrongly, that is, not as the priests paid by the state understand it. And the young man is sent under escort to the priests, to be brought to reason. The priests begin to bring him to reason; but their exhortations to renounce Christ in the name of Christ plainly have no effect on him, and he is sent back to the army, declared incorrigible. The young man still does not take the oath and openly refuses to perform his military duties. This case is not provided for by the law. To allow a refusal to comply with the demands of the authorities is impossible; but to treat the case as simple disobedience is impossible too. After conferring among themselves, the military authorities decide, in order to be rid of the troublesome young man, to declare him a revolutionary, and they send him under escort to the office of the secret police. The police and the gendarmes question the young man, but nothing he says comes under any of the crimes within their jurisdiction, and there is no possibility of charging him either with revolutionary acts or with conspiracy, since he declares that he wishes to destroy nothing, but on the contrary rejects all violence, and that he hides nothing, but seeks occasion to say and do what he says and does in the most open way. And the gendarmes, though no laws bind them, find no pretext for charging the young man, any more than the clergy did, and send him back to the army. Again the chiefs confer, and they decide to accept the young man, though he has not taken the oath, and to enroll him as a soldier. He is put in uniform, enrolled, and sent under guard to where the troops are stationed. There the commander of the unit he joins again demands that he perform his military duties, and again he refuses to obey, and before the other soldiers he states the reason for his refusal: he says that as a Christian he cannot voluntarily prepare himself for murder, which was forbidden even by the law of Moses.

The affair takes place in a provincial town. The case arouses interest and even sympathy, not only among outsiders but among the officers, and so the chiefs do not venture to use the usual disciplinary measure for refusal to obey. For form's sake, however, the young man is locked up in prison, and a letter goes to the higher military administration asking what is to be done. From the official point of view, refusal to take part in military service, in which the tsar himself serves and which the Church blesses, looks like madness; and so the answer comes from Petersburg that, since the young man must be out of his mind, he is to be sent, before stronger measures are used against him, to a lunatic asylum, to have his mental health examined and to be cured. He is sent there in the hope that he will stay there, as happened ten years before with another young man, who had refused military service in Tver and was tormented in the madhouse until he gave in. But this measure does not save the military authorities from the awkward young man either. The doctors examine him, take a great interest in him, and, naturally, finding no signs of mental illness in him, send him back to the army. He is received back, and, with a show of having forgotten his refusal and its motives, they again order him to go to drill; and again, before the other soldiers, he refuses and states the reason for his refusal. The affair draws more and more attention, both from the soldiers and from the people of the town. Again a letter goes to Petersburg, and from there comes a decision to transfer the young man to the troops stationed on the borderlands, in places where the troops are under martial law, where he can be shot for refusing to obey, and where the affair may pass unnoticed, since in that distant region there are very few Russians and Christians, and most of the people are non-Russian natives and Muslims. That is what is done. The young man is transferred to the troops stationed in the Transcaspian region and sent, along with convicts, to a commander known for his decisiveness and severity.

All this time, through all these transfers from place to place, the young man is treated roughly, kept in cold, hunger and filth, and his life is in every way made a torment. But none of these torments makes him change his decision. In the Transcaspian region, when he is again ordered to go on guard with a weapon, he again refuses to obey. He does not refuse to go and stand by the haystacks where he is sent, but he refuses to take a weapon, declaring that he will in no case use violence against anyone. All this happens before the other soldiers. Such a refusal cannot be left unpunished, and the young man is put on trial for breach of discipline. The trial takes place, and he is sentenced to two years in a military prison. Again he is sent on with convicts, from stage to stage, this time to the Caucasus, and there shut up in a prison where he falls under the unchecked power of the jailer. There he is tormented for a year and a half, but he still does not change his decision not to take a weapon into his hands, and he explains to everyone he has dealings with why he will not; and at the end of the second year he is let out before his term, his time in prison being counted, against the law, as service, simply because they want to be rid of him as soon as possible.

Just as this young man did, and as if by agreement, other people act in various corners of Russia; and in all these cases the government's way of acting is the same: timid, uncertain and secretive. Some of these people are sent to madhouses, some are enrolled as clerks and transferred to service in Siberia, some are made foresters, some are locked up in prisons, some are fined. And at present several of these refusers are sitting in prisons, not for the substance of the matter, their denial of the lawfulness of the government's actions, but for not complying with particular demands of the authorities. Thus, recently, an officer of the reserve who had not reported his place of residence, and had declared that he would serve as a military man no longer, was fined thirty rubles for not complying with the orders of the authorities, and these too he refused to pay voluntarily. Thus, recently, several peasants and soldiers who had refused to take part in drill and to take rifles into their hands were put under arrest for disobedience and for answering back.

And cases of such refusals to comply with demands of the state that are contrary to Christianity, and especially refusals of military service, have been occurring of late not in Russia alone but everywhere. Thus I know that in Serbia people of the so-called sect of the Nazarenes constantly refuse military service, and that the Austrian government has been struggling with them in vain for several years, subjecting them to imprisonment. In 1885 there were 130 such refusals. In Switzerland, I know, people were held in the castle of Chillon in 1890 for refusing to do military service, and did not change their decision because of the punishment. There have been such refusals in Sweden as well, and there too the refusers were imprisoned, and the government carefully hid these cases from the people. There have been such refusals in Prussia too. I know of a noncommissioned officer of the Guard who in Berlin in 1891 declared to his superiors that as a Christian he would not continue to serve, and who, in spite of every admonition, threat and punishment, held to his decision. In France, in the south, there has lately arisen a community of people who bear the name of Hinschists (this information is taken from the "Peace Herald", July 1891), whose members refuse military service on the basis of their Christian profession. At first they were enrolled in the hospitals, but now, as their numbers grow, they are subjected to punishments for disobedience; and still they do not take weapons into their hands.

The socialists, communists and anarchists, with their bombs, riots and revolutions, are not nearly so frightening to governments as these scattered people, declaring their refusals from different countries, all on the basis of one and the same teaching, a teaching known to everyone. Every government knows how to defend itself against revolutionaries, and with what, and has the means for it, and so it does not fear these outward enemies. But what are governments to do against people who expose the uselessness, the superfluity and the harmfulness of all governments, and who do not fight them, but simply have no need of them, do without them, and so will not take part in them?

The revolutionaries say: "The order of the state is bad for this reason and that; it must be destroyed and replaced by this and that." But the Christian says: "I know nothing of the order of the state, of how good or bad it is, and I do not wish to destroy it, precisely because I do not know whether it is good or bad; but for that very reason I do not wish to uphold it either. And not only do I not wish to: I cannot, because what is demanded of me is contrary to my conscience."

And all the obligations of the state are contrary to the conscience of a Christian: the oath, the taxes, the courts and the army. Yet it is on these very obligations that the whole power of the state rests.

The revolutionary enemies fight the government from outside. Christianity does not fight at all, but destroys all the foundations of government from within.

Among the Russian people, among whom, especially since the time of Peter I, the protest of Christianity against the state has never ceased; among the Russian people, whose way of life is such that people go off in whole communities to Turkey, to China, to uninhabited lands, and not only have no need of government but always look on it as a needless burden and only endure it as a calamity, whether it be Turkish, Russian or Chinese; among the Russian people there have lately appeared more and more often cases of the conscious Christian liberation of individuals from subjection to the government. And these manifestations are especially frightening to the government now, because those who refuse often belong not to the so-called lower, uneducated classes but to people of middling and higher education, and because these people no longer explain their refusals by any mystical, exceptional beliefs, as was the case before, and do not link them with superstitions and fanaticisms, as the self-burners or the Runners among the Old Believers do. They put forward as the reasons for their refusal the simplest and clearest truths, accessible to all and acknowledged by all.

Thus they refuse to pay taxes voluntarily, because taxes go to the works of violence, to salaries for the men of violence, the military, to the building of prisons, fortresses and cannons, and they, as Christians, consider it sinful and immoral to take part in these works. Those who refuse the general oath refuse it because to promise obedience to the authorities, that is, to men given over to violence, is contrary to the meaning of the Christian teaching; they refuse the oath in the courts because swearing is directly forbidden by the Gospel. They refuse police posts because in these posts they would have to use violence against their brothers and torment them, and a Christian cannot do this. They refuse to take part in the courts because they consider every court the carrying out of the law of vengeance, which cannot be reconciled with the Christian law of forgiveness and love. They refuse to take any part in military preparations or in the army, because they do not wish to be executioners, and cannot be, and do not wish to prepare themselves for the executioner's trade.

All the motives of these refusals are such that governments, however autocratic, cannot openly punish them. To punish such refusals, the governments themselves would have to renounce reason and goodness irrevocably. And they assure people that they rule only in the name of reason and goodness.

What are governments to do against these people?

Governments can, indeed, kill off, execute, lock up for life in prisons and in penal servitude all their enemies who wish to overthrow them by violence; they can shower gold on half the people they need and buy them; they can bring under their command millions of armed men ready to destroy all the enemies of governments. But what can they do against people who wish neither to destroy anything nor to set anything up, who wish only, for themselves, for their own lives, to do nothing contrary to the Christian law, and so refuse to perform the most general obligations, and therefore those most necessary to governments?

If these were revolutionaries, preaching violence and murder and committing these deeds, it would be easy to oppose them: some of them would be bought, some deceived, some frightened; and those who could be neither bought nor deceived nor frightened would be held up as villains, enemies of society, and would be executed or locked up, and the crowd would approve the government's action. If they were fanatics of some sort, preaching some special faith, it would be possible, thanks to the superstitious falsehoods they mix into their teaching, to refute along with these the truth they profess. But what is to be done with people who preach neither revolution nor any special religious dogmas, but who, only because they do not wish to do evil to anyone, refuse the oath, the payment of taxes, taking part in the courts, military service, the very obligations on which the whole structure of the state rests? What is to be done with such people? To buy them is impossible: the very risk they take on of their own will shows that they are not out for gain. To deceive them by saying that God requires it is impossible too, because their refusal rests on the clear, indubitable law of God, which is professed even by those who want to make people act against it. To frighten them with threats is still less possible, because the privations and sufferings they will be subjected to for their profession only strengthen their wish to profess it; and their law says plainly that we ought to obey God rather than men, and that we should not fear them which can destroy the body, but him which is able to destroy both body and soul. To execute them or lock them up for life is not possible either. These people have a past, they have friends; their way of thinking and acting is known; everyone knows them as gentle, kind, peaceable people, and it is impossible to hold them up as villains who must be removed for the safety of society. And the execution of people whom everyone regards as good will call forth defenders, people who will explain the refusal. And the reasons for the refusal need only be made clear for everyone to see that the reasons for which these Christians refuse to comply with the demands of the state hold just as well for all other people, and that everyone ought long ago to have done the same.

Governments, faced with the refusals of Christians, are in a desperate position. They see that the prophecy of Christianity is coming true: it breaks the bonds of those in chains and sets free those who are in captivity; and they see that this liberation must inevitably destroy those who hold others in captivity. Governments see this, they know that their hours are numbered, and they can do nothing. All they can do to save themselves is to put off the hour of their ruin. And this they do; but their position is desperate all the same.

The position of governments is like that of a conqueror who wants to save a city that its own inhabitants are setting on fire. No sooner does he put out the fire in one place than it breaks out in two others; no sooner does he give way to the fire and break off the burning part from a great building than this building too catches fire at both ends. These fires are still few, but they burn with a fire that, having started from a spark, will not stop until it has burned everything.

And it is just now, when governments stand so defenseless before people who profess Christianity, and very little is lacking for this whole power, which seems so mighty and has been raised up over so many centuries, to collapse; it is just now that the public men preach that it is not only unnecessary but harmful, even immoral, for each person to free himself from slavery on his own. It is as if some people, wanting to free the water held back in a river, had worked a long time and dug the whole channel, and needed only to open the outlet for the water to rush out of itself and do the rest; and just then other people came and began advising them that it would be much better, instead of letting the water out, to build over the river a machine with buckets which, scooping the water up on one side, would pour it out on the other into the same pond.

But matters have already gone too far: governments already feel their defenselessness and weakness, and the people of Christian consciousness, waking from their sleep, are already beginning to feel their strength.

"I am come to send fire on the earth," said Christ, "and how I long for it to be kindled!"

And this fire is beginning to kindle.

Chapter 10: State Violence Cannot Abolish Evil; Humanity Moves Forward Morally Not Only by Knowing the Truth but by Forming Public Opinion

Christianity in its true meaning destroys the state. It was understood so from the very beginning, and it was for this that Christ was crucified; and it has always been understood so by people not bound by the need to justify a Christian state. Only from the time when the heads of states accepted a nominal, outward Christianity did people begin to invent all those impossible, intricately spun theories by which Christianity can be reconciled with the state. But to every sincere and serious person of our time the incompatibility of true Christianity, the teaching of humility, of forgiving injuries, of love, with the state, with its pomp, its violence, its executions and its wars, cannot fail to be obvious. The profession of true Christianity not only rules out any recognition of the state; it destroys the state's foundations.

But if this is so, and it is true that Christianity is incompatible with the state, then the question naturally arises: which is more necessary for the good of humanity, which better secures the good of people, the state form of life, or its destruction and replacement by Christianity?

Some people say that the state is what humanity most needs; that the destruction of the state form would bring with it the destruction of everything humanity has worked out; that the state has been, and still is, the only form in which humanity can develop; and that all the evil we see among the nations living in the state form comes not from that form but from abuses, which can be corrected without destroying it, so that humanity, without breaking up the state form, can develop and reach a high level of well-being. And the people who think so bring forward in support of their opinion philosophical, historical and even religious arguments that seem to them irrefutable. But there are people who hold the opposite: that since there was a time when humanity lived without the state form, this form is a temporary one, and a time must come when people will need a new form, and that this time has come now. And the people who think so bring forward in support of their opinion philosophical, historical and religious arguments that seem to them irrefutable too.

One can write volumes in defense of the first opinion (they were written long ago and are still being written), but one can also write a great deal against it (and a great deal has been written, brilliantly too, though only lately).

And it is impossible to prove either what the defenders of the state assert, that the destruction of the state would bring with it social chaos, mutual robbery, murder, the destruction of all social institutions and the return of humanity to barbarism; or what the opponents of the state assert, that people have already become so reasonable and good that they do not rob or kill one another, that they prefer peaceful intercourse to enmity, that they will set up for themselves, without the help of the state, everything they need, and that therefore the state not only does not help with any of this but, on the contrary, under the guise of protecting people, has a harmful and embittering influence on them. Neither the one nor the other can be proved by abstract reasoning. Still less can it be proved by experiment, since the question is precisely whether the experiment ought or ought not to be made. The question whether or not the time has come to abolish the state would be insoluble, if there did not exist another way, a way of life itself, of settling it beyond dispute.

Quite independently of anyone's judgment as to whether the chicks are mature enough for the hen to be driven from the nest and the chicks let out of their eggs, or whether they are not yet mature enough, the indisputable judge of the question will be the chicks themselves, when, no longer finding room in their eggs, they begin to break the shells with their beaks and come out of them by themselves.

It is the same with the question whether or not the time has come for people to destroy the state form and replace it with a new one. If a man, because of the higher consciousness that has grown up in him, can no longer fulfill the demands of the state, no longer finds room in it, and at the same time no longer needs the protection of the state form, then the question whether or not people are mature enough for the state form to be abolished is settled from quite another side, and settled as indisputably as it is for the chick hatched from the egg, into which no power in the world can put it back: it is settled by the people themselves, who have already outgrown the state and whom no power can bring back into it.

"It may very well be that the state was necessary, and is necessary now, for all the purposes you ascribe to it," says the man who has taken the Christian understanding of life for his own. "I know only that, on the one hand, I no longer need the state, and on the other, I can no longer do the things that are necessary for the existence of the state. Arrange for yourselves whatever you need for your lives. I cannot prove either the general necessity or the general harm of the state; I know only what I need and do not need, what I may and may not do. I know for myself that I do not need to separate myself from other nations, and so I cannot acknowledge that I belong exclusively to any one nation or state, or that I am the subject of any government. I know for myself that I do not need all the government institutions that are set up within states, and so I cannot take my labor from the people who need it and give it, in the form of taxes, to institutions I do not need and which, as far as I know, are harmful. I know for myself that I need neither administrations nor courts carried on by violence, and so I can take part in neither the one nor the other. I know for myself that I need neither to attack other nations and kill their people nor to defend myself against them with weapons in my hands, and so I cannot take part in wars or in preparations for them. It may very well be that there are people who cannot help considering all this needful and necessary. I cannot argue with them; I know only about myself, but about myself I know beyond doubt that I do not need it and cannot do it. And I do not need it, and cannot do it, not because I, my own person, wish it so, but because he who sent me into life, and gave me an unquestionable law to guide me in that life, does not wish it."

Whatever arguments people may bring forward to show that it would be harmful to abolish the power of the state and that its abolition might give rise to calamities, the people who have already outgrown the state form can no longer fit inside it. And however many arguments, and of whatever kind, are brought before the man who has outgrown the state form to show that it is necessary, he cannot go back to it, cannot take part in deeds his consciousness rejects, just as the full-grown chicks cannot go back into the shell they have outgrown.

"But even if this is so," say the defenders of the existing order, "the abolition of state violence would still be possible and desirable only when all people had become Christians. Until that happens, so long as among people who merely call themselves Christians there are people who are not Christians, wicked people, ready to harm others to gratify their own appetites, the abolition of the power of the state would not only be no blessing for everyone else but would only increase their misery. The abolition of the state form of life is undesirable not only while true Christians are a small minority; it is undesirable even when all are Christians, if among them or around them, in other nations, there remain people who are not Christians, because those who are not Christians will rob, do violence to and kill the Christians with impunity and make their lives a torment. All that will happen is that the wicked will rule over the good with impunity and do violence to them. And so the power of the state must not be abolished until all the wicked, rapacious people in the world have been destroyed. And since this cannot happen for a long time, if ever, then, in spite of the attempts of individual Christians to free themselves from the power of the state, that power must be upheld for the majority of people." Thus say the defenders of the state. "Without the state the wicked do violence to the good and rule over them. The power of the state makes it possible for the good to restrain the wicked," they say.

But in asserting this, the defenders of the existing order decide in advance the truth of the very proposition they need to prove. In saying that without the power of the state the wicked would rule over the good, they take it as proved that the good are the very people who hold power at present, and the wicked the very people who submit to it. But that is exactly what has to be proved. It would be true only if in our world there happened what, though it does not happen, is at least supposed to happen in China: that the good always rule, and that as soon as the people at the head of the government are no better than those they rule over, the citizens are obliged to overthrow them. That is what is supposed in China; in reality it is not so and cannot be so, because to overthrow the power of a government that uses violence it is not enough to have the right to do it, one must have the strength. Thus even in China it is only supposed. But in our Christian world it has never even been supposed. In our world there is not even any ground for supposing that the better or the best rule, and not those who seized power and held on to it for themselves and their heirs. And seizing power and holding on to it is something the better people simply cannot do.

To acquire power and hold on to it, one must love power. And the love of power goes together not with goodness but with the qualities opposite to goodness: with pride, cunning and cruelty.

Without exalting oneself and humiliating others, without hypocrisy and deception, without prisons, fortresses, executions and murders, no power can either arise or last.

"If the power of the state is abolished, the more wicked will rule over the less wicked," say the defenders of the state. But if the Egyptians conquered the Jews, the Persians conquered the Egyptians, the Macedonians conquered the Persians, the Romans conquered the Greeks, and the barbarians conquered the Romans, were all those who conquered really better than those they conquered?

And in just the same way, when power has passed within one state from some persons to others, has it always passed to the better ones? When Louis XVI was overthrown and Robespierre came to power, and then Napoleon, who ruled? The better or the more wicked? And when did the better rule, when the Versaillais were in power or when the Communards were? When Charles I was at the head of the government, or when Cromwell was? And when Peter III was tsar, or when he was killed and Catherine became tsarina in one part of Russia and Pugachev in the other: who was wicked then, and who good?

All people in power assert that their power is needed so that the wicked may not do violence to the good, meaning by this that they themselves are those very good people who protect other good people from the wicked.

But to rule means to do violence; to do violence means to do what the one to whom it is done does not want, and what the one who does it would surely not want done to himself. Consequently, to rule means to do to another what we would not want done to us, that is, to do evil.

To submit means to prefer suffering to violence. And to prefer suffering to violence means to be good, or at least less wicked than those who do to others what they would not want for themselves.

And so all the probability is that it has always been, and is now, not the better who rule, but, on the contrary, people more wicked than those they rule over. There may be wicked people among those who submit to power too; but it cannot be that the better rule over the more wicked.

This could not be supposed even under the inexact pagan definition of the good; under the clear and exact Christian definition of good and evil it is quite impossible to think it. If in the pagan world the more or less good and the more or less wicked could fail to be told apart, the Christian conception of good and evil has marked out the signs of the good and the wicked so clearly that they can no longer be confused. By Christ's teaching, the good are those who humble themselves, endure, do not resist evil by violence, forgive injuries and love their enemies; the wicked are those who exalt themselves, rule, fight and do violence to people. And so, by Christ's teaching, there is no doubt where the good are, among the rulers or the ruled, and where the wicked are, among the ruled or the rulers. It is even somehow laughable to speak of Christians who rule.

Those who are not Christians, that is, those who place their life in worldly goods, must always rule over the Christians, those who place their life in renouncing these goods.

That is how it has always been, and it has become more and more definite as the Christian teaching has spread and grown clearer.

The more true Christianity spread and entered people's consciousness, the less possible it was for Christians to be among the rulers, and the easier it became for those who were not Christians to rule over the Christians.

"The removal of state violence, when not all the people in a society have become true Christians, will only bring it about that the wicked rule over the good and do violence to them with impunity!" say the defenders of the existing order of life.

"The wicked will rule over the good and do violence to them."

But nothing else has ever been, or can be. Thus it has always been since the beginning of the world, and so it is to this day. The wicked always rule over the good and always do violence to them. Cain did violence to Abel, crafty Jacob ruled over trusting Esau, Laban, who deceived him, ruled over Jacob, Caiaphas and Pilate ruled over Christ, the Roman emperors ruled over the Senecas, the Epictetuses and the good Romans who lived in their time. Ivan the Terrible with his oprichniki, his corps of terror, the drunken syphilitic Peter with his jesters, the harlot Catherine with her lovers ruled over the hardworking, religious Russian people of their time and did violence to them. Wilhelm rules over the Germans, Stambolov over the Bulgarians, Russian officials over the Russian people. The Germans ruled over the Italians, and now rule over the Hungarians and the Slavs; the Turks ruled, and rule, over the Slavs and the Greeks; the English rule over the people of India, the Mongols over the Chinese.

Thus, whether state violence is abolished or not, the position of good people, who suffer violence from wicked people, will not be changed by it.

To frighten people with the prospect that the wicked will rule over the good is quite impossible, because what they are frightened with is the very thing that always has been, and is, and cannot be otherwise.

The whole pagan history of humanity consists only of the events by which the more wicked seized power over the less wicked and, having seized it, kept it by cruelty and cunning, and, setting themselves up as guardians of justice and defenders of the good against the wicked, ruled over the good. All the revolutions in history are only the seizing of power by the more wicked and their rule over the good. When those in power say that if their power did not exist, the more wicked would begin to do violence to the good, it means only that the men of violence who are in power do not want to yield this power to other men of violence who would like to take it from them. And in saying it, those in power only expose themselves. They say that their power, that is, violence, is needed to defend people from some other men of violence, or from men of violence yet to appear.²⁰

This is just what makes the use of violence dangerous: as soon as it has been used, all the arguments the men of violence bring forward for themselves can be brought forward against them, with the same and with more reason. They speak of past violence, and most often of imagined future violence, while they themselves never cease to commit actual violence. "You say that people used to rob and kill, and you are afraid that they will rob and kill one another if your power is not there. That may be, or it may not; but that you destroy thousands of people in prisons, in penal servitude, in fortresses and in exile, that you ruin millions of families and destroy millions of people, physically and morally, in the soldiery: that is not supposed violence but actual violence, which by your own reasoning must be fought with violence. And so the wicked people against whom, by your own reasoning, violence must without doubt be used are you yourselves." This is what the people who suffer violence must say to the men of violence. And people who are not Christians always do say and think and act so. If those who suffer violence are more wicked than those who do violence to them, they attack them and try to overthrow them, and when circumstances favor them they do overthrow them; or, what is most common of all, they join the ranks of those who do violence and take part in their violence.

Thus the very thing the defenders of the state frighten people with, that if there were no power using violence the wicked would rule over the good, is the very thing that has been happening, and is happening, without pause, in the life of humanity; and so the abolition of state violence can in no case be the cause of an increase in the violence of the wicked against the good.

If the violence of governments is destroyed, acts of violence will perhaps be committed by other people, not by those who committed them before; but the sum of violence can in no case increase because power passes from some people to others.

"State violence can be ended only when the wicked people in society are destroyed," say the defenders of the existing order, meaning by this that since there will always be wicked people, violence will never end. And this would be true, but only if what they suppose were so: that those who use violence are the better people, and that violence is the only means of delivering people from evil. Then indeed violence could never end. But since this is not so, and the opposite is so, that it is not the better who do violence to the wicked but the more wicked who do violence to the good, and since, besides violence, which never ends evil, there is another means of destroying violence, the assertion that violence will never end is not true. Violence grows less and less, and must evidently end; but not in the way some defenders of the existing order imagine it, by the people subject to violence becoming better and better under the influence of governments (from that influence, on the contrary, they always become worse), but by this: that since all people are constantly becoming better and better, even the most wicked people, those in power, becoming less and less wicked, will at last become so good that they will be incapable of using violence.

The forward movement of humanity is not accomplished, as both the conservatives and the revolutionaries think, by the best elements of society seizing power and making the people in their power better by using violence against them. It is accomplished, first and chiefly, by all people in general taking the Christian understanding of life for their own, steadily and without pause, more and more consciously; and second, by people being led, even apart from their conscious spiritual activity, unconsciously and against their will, to a more Christian relation to life, through the very process by which some people seize power and are replaced by others. This process goes on in such a way that the worst elements of society, having seized power and being in possession of it, under the influence of the sobering quality that always goes with power, themselves become less and less cruel, become incapable of using the cruel forms of violence, and in consequence give up their place to others, upon whom the same process of softening and, so to speak, of unconscious Christianization is worked again.

Something like the process of boiling takes place among people. All the people of the majority, those of the un-Christian understanding of life, strive for power and struggle to reach it. In this struggle the most cruel, the coarsest, the least Christian elements of society, doing violence to the meekest people, those most sensitive to the good, the most Christian, rise by means of their violence into the upper layers of society. And here, upon the people in this position, there is fulfilled what Christ foretold when he said: "Woe unto you that are rich, that are full, that are praised!" What is fulfilled is that people in power, in possession of the fruits of power, glory and wealth, having reached the various goals they set themselves in their desires, come to know the vanity of these goals and return to the position they came from. Charles V, Ivan the Terrible, Alexander I, having come to know all the vanity and evil of power, renounced it, because they had now seen all its evil and could no longer calmly use violence as a good deed, as they had done before.

But it is not only the Charleses and the Alexanders who travel this road and acknowledge the vanity and evil of power. Every man who has gained the power he strove for passes through this unconscious process of softening: not only every minister, general, millionaire and merchant, but the head clerk who has got the post he wanted for ten years, and every well-off peasant who has put by a hundred rubles or two.

Not only individual people pass through this process, but bodies of people, whole nations.

The temptations of power, and of all it gives, of wealth, of honors, of a luxurious life, seem a worthy goal for people's activity only so long as they have not been attained. As soon as a man attains them, they show their emptiness and little by little lose their power to attract, like clouds, which have shape and beauty only from far off: one need only enter them for all that seemed beautiful in them to vanish.

The people who have taken possession of power and wealth, sometimes the very people who acquired them, but for the most part their heirs, cease to be so greedy for power and so cruel in acquiring it.

Having learned by experience, under the working of Christianity, the vanity of the fruits of violence, people lose, sometimes in one generation, sometimes over several, the vices aroused by the passion for acquiring power and wealth; and, becoming less cruel, they do not keep their position, and are pushed out of power by other people, less Christian and more wicked, and go back to the layers of society that are lower in position but higher in morality, raising by their presence the average level of the Christian consciousness of all people. But immediately after them the worse, the coarser, the less Christian elements of society rise to the top again, undergo the same process as their predecessors, and again, after one generation or several, having learned the vanity of the fruits of violence and become steeped in Christianity, go down among those who suffer violence, and are replaced again by new men of violence, less coarse than the earlier ones, but coarser than those they do violence to. Thus, although power remains in its outward form what it was, with every change of the people in power the number of people whom the experience of life brings to the necessity of taking the Christian understanding of life for their own grows greater and greater; and with every change those who come into possession of power, though they are the coarsest, the cruelest and the least Christian of all, are less and less coarse and cruel, and more Christian, than those who held power before them.

Violence selects and draws to itself the worst elements of society, works them over, and, having improved and softened them, gives them back to society.

Such is the process by which Christianity, in spite of the violence used by the power of the state, which hinders the forward movement of humanity, takes hold of people more and more. Christianity penetrates people's consciousness not only in spite of the violence used by power, but by means of it.

And so the assertion of the defenders of the state order, that if state violence is abolished the wicked will rule over the good, not only does not prove that this (the rule of the wicked over the good) is a danger, since it is the very thing that happens now; it proves, on the contrary, that state violence, which makes it possible for the wicked to rule over the good, is itself the evil that ought to be destroyed, and that life itself is constantly destroying.

"But even if it were true," say the defenders of the existing order, "that state violence will end when those who hold power have become so Christian that they renounce it themselves, and no more people are found ready to take their places, and true that this process is going on, then when will it be? If eighteen hundred years have passed and there are still so many people eager to rule and so few eager to submit, there is no likelihood that it will happen very soon, or indeed that it will ever happen.

"Even if there are, as there always have been among all peoples, some who prefer renouncing power to using it, the store of people who prefer ruling to submitting is so great that it is hard to imagine a time when it could run out.

"For this process of the Christianization of all people to take place, for all people, one after another, to pass from the pagan understanding of life to the Christian, renounce power and wealth of their own will, and for no one to wish to use them, it would be necessary that not only all those coarse, half-savage people, wholly incapable of receiving Christianity and following it, of whom there are always many within every Christian society, should be converted to Christianity, but also all the savage and in general non-Christian nations, of whom there are still so many outside it. And so, even if we grant that the process of Christianization will one day be accomplished in all people, then, judging by how far the work has advanced in eighteen hundred years, it will happen only after several times eighteen hundred years. And so it is neither possible nor of any use to think now of the impossible destruction of power; all that is needed is to see to it that this power is in the best hands."

Thus the defenders of the existing order object. And this reasoning would be perfectly just if the passage of people from one understanding of life to another came about only through that one process, in which each man separately, one after another, learns by experience the vanity of power and arrives at the Christian truths by the inward way.

This process goes on without ceasing, and by this path people pass, one after another, over to the side of Christianity.

But people pass over to the side of Christianity not only in this one inward way, but in another way as well, an outward one, in which the gradualness of the passage is done away with.

The passage of people from one order of life to another does not always come about the way sand runs through an hourglass, grain after grain, from the first to the last. It comes about rather the way water enters a vessel lowered into water: at first the vessel lets the water in slowly and evenly over one side only, and then, from the weight of the water already in it, it suddenly sinks fast and takes in, almost at once, all the water it can hold.

The same happens with societies of people in their passage from one understanding of life, and so from one order of life, to another. Only at first do people take in the new truth gradually and evenly, one after another, by the inward way, and follow it in their lives; once the truth has spread to a certain point, they take it in no longer by the inward way, no longer evenly, but all at once, almost involuntarily.

And so the reasoning of the defenders of the existing order is not just, when they say that if in the course of eighteen hundred years only a small part of humanity has passed over to the side of Christianity, then several times eighteen hundred years more are needed before all the rest pass over to it. It is not just because this reasoning leaves out of account another way, besides the inward grasping of the truth, by which people take in a new truth and pass from one form of life to another.

This other way in which people take in a newly revealed truth and pass to a new order of life is this: people take in a truth not only because they come to know it by prophetic feeling or by the experience of life, but also because, once the truth has spread to a certain degree, people standing at a lower stage of development accept it all at once, simply by trust in those who have accepted it in the inward way and apply it in their lives.

Every new truth that changes the form of human life and moves humanity forward is received at first only by the very smallest number of people, who understand it by the inward way. The rest, who have accepted on trust the preceding truth, the one on which the existing order is founded, always resist the spread of the new truth.

But, first, people do not stand still; they move continually, coming to know the truth more and more and drawing nearer to it in their lives; and second, all of them, by their age, their upbringing and their stock, are ranged in a gradual scale, from the people most capable of understanding newly revealed truths by the inward way to the people least capable of it. And so the people who stand nearer than others to those who have taken in the truth by the inward way pass over one after another to the side of the new truth, at first at long intervals, and then more and more often; and the number of people who acknowledge the new truth grows greater and greater, and the truth grows more and more understandable.

And the more people take in the new truth, and the more understandable the truth becomes, the more trust is aroused in the rest, those standing lower in their capacity to understand; and the easier it becomes for them to grasp it, and the greater the number who take it in. And so the movement goes on, faster and faster, wider and wider, like a snowball, until there is born a public opinion in agreement with the new truth, and the whole remaining mass of people, no longer one by one but all at once, under the pressure of this force, passes over to the side of the new truth, and a new form of life in keeping with this truth is established.

The people who pass over to the side of a new truth that has spread to a certain degree always pass over all at once, in masses. They are like the ballast that is always loaded into every ship all at once, to keep it steady and balanced and on its right course. Without ballast the ship would not sit in the water, and would change its course at the slightest change of conditions. This ballast, though at first it seems superfluous and even a drag on the ship's progress, is a necessary condition of its proper movement.

The same is true of that mass of people which always passes from one order of life to another not one by one but all at once, under the influence of a new public opinion. By its inertia this mass always hinders frequent, rapid passages from one order of life to another that human wisdom has not tested, and for a long time it holds on to every truth that has been tested by long experience of struggle and has entered the consciousness of humanity.

And so the reasoning is not just which says that if only a small, the very smallest, part of humanity has taken in the Christian truth in the course of eighteen centuries, then all humanity will take it in only after many, many times eighteen hundred years, that is, so far off that we who are living now cannot even think of it. It is not just because the people standing at the lower stage of development, the very nations and people whom the defenders of the existing order put forward as the obstacle to realizing the Christian order of life, are the very people who always pass over all at once, in masses, to the side of a truth that public opinion has accepted.

And so the change in the life of humanity by which the people who use power will renounce it, and no more people will be found among those who submit to power wishing to seize it, will come not only when all people, one by one, to the last, have consciously taken the Christian understanding of life for their own, but when there arises a Christian public opinion so definite and so understandable to all that it will subdue the whole of that inert mass, which is incapable of taking in truths by the inward way and for that very reason is always subject to the working of public opinion.

And public opinion, to arise and spread, does not need hundreds and thousands of years. It has the property of acting on people contagiously and of taking hold of great numbers of people with great speed.

"But even if it is true," the defenders of the existing order will say, "that public opinion, once it has reached a certain definiteness and clearness, can compel the inert mass of people outside Christian societies, the non-Christian nations, and the corrupt and coarse people living within societies, to submit to it, then what are the signs that this Christian public opinion has arisen and can take the place of the working of violence?

"We cannot take the risk of throwing off the violence by which the existing order is maintained and relying on the intangible and indefinite force of public opinion, leaving savage people outside and inside our societies to rob, kill and in every way do violence to Christians with impunity.

"If even with the help of power we barely keep back the non-Christian elements that are always ready to flood over us and destroy all the achievements of Christian civilization, then, first, is there any likelihood that public opinion could take the place of this force and make us secure; and second, how are we to find the moment when public opinion has become strong enough to take the place of power? To abolish power and rely on public opinion alone to defend ourselves would be to act as madly as a man in a menagerie who threw away his weapons and let all the lions and tigers out of their cages, relying on the fact that the beasts seemed tame in their cages and under the red-hot rods.

"And so the people who have power, who have been placed by fate or by God in the position of rulers, have no right to risk the ruin of all the achievements of civilization merely because they would like to make an experiment to see whether public opinion can or cannot take the place of the protection of power, and so they must not put an end to violence."

The French writer Alphonse Karr, now forgotten, once said somewhere, arguing that capital punishment could not be abolished: "Que Messieurs les assassins commencent par nous donner l'exemple", let the gentlemen murderers begin by setting us the example. And many times since then I have heard this joke repeated by people who thought these words expressed a convincing and witty argument against abolishing capital punishment. And yet the whole falsehood of the argument of those who hold that governments cannot give up violence so long as people are capable of it could not be expressed more clearly than by this very joke.

"Let the murderers," say the defenders of government violence, "set us the example by giving up murder, and then we too will give it up." But the murderers say just the same thing, and with far more right. The murderers say: "Let those who have undertaken to teach us and guide us set us the example of giving up murder, and then we too will follow it." And they say it not as a joke but in earnest, because that really is how matters stand.

"We cannot stop using violence, because we are surrounded by men of violence."

Nothing in our time hinders the forward movement of humanity, and the establishment among people of the order of life already proper to their present consciousness, more than this false reasoning.

People who hold power are convinced that only violence moves and guides people, and so, to maintain the existing order, they use violence boldly. But the existing order is held together not by violence but by public opinion, whose working violence disturbs.

And so the activity of violence weakens and disturbs the very thing it wants to maintain.

Violence, at best, when it does not pursue merely the personal aims of the people in power, always rejects and condemns, in the single fixed form of the law, what for the most part was rejected and condemned by public opinion long before; but with this difference. Public opinion rejects and condemns all acts contrary to the moral law, and so takes the most varied situations into its condemnation; the law upheld by violence condemns and prosecutes only a certain, very narrow range of acts, and by that very fact seems to justify all acts of the same order that do not come within its definition. Public opinion, since the time of Moses, has held covetousness, lust and cruelty to be evil, and has condemned them. And it rejects and condemns every kind of covetousness: not only acquiring another's property by violence, by deception, by cunning, but using one's own property cruelly. It condemns every kind of lust, whether fornication with a concubine, with a slave woman, with a divorced woman, or even with one's own wife. It condemns every cruelty, whether it shows itself in beatings, in ill treatment, or in killing, not only of people but of animals. But the law founded on violence prosecutes only certain kinds of covetousness, such as theft and fraud, and certain kinds of lust and cruelty, such as adultery, murder and maiming; and by this it seems to permit all those manifestations of covetousness, lust and cruelty that do not come under its narrow definition, a definition open to false interpretation.

But it is not enough that violence distorts public opinion. It also produces in people the pernicious conviction that people are moved not by the spiritual force that draws them to grasp the truth and to realize it, the spiritual force that is the source of every forward movement of humanity, but by violence, the very action that not only does not bring people nearer to the truth but always takes them further from it. This error is pernicious because it makes people neglect the fundamental force of their life, their spiritual activity, and turn all their attention and energy to the activity of violence, which is superficial, idle and for the most part harmful.

This error is like the one people would be in if they wanted to make a locomotive move by turning its wheels with their hands, not guessing that the fundamental cause of its movement is the expansion of steam, not the movement of the wheels. People who set about turning the wheels with their hands and with levers would only produce a semblance of movement, and meanwhile they would bend the wheels, and so prevent any possibility of real movement.

The same is done by people who think to move people by outward violence.

People say that a Christian life without violence cannot be established, because there are savage peoples outside Christian society, in Africa, in Asia (some represent the Chinese as such a threat to our civilization), and because within Christian societies there are people so savage and corrupt that they are, by the new theory of heredity, born criminals; and that to keep both the one and the other from destroying our civilization, violence is necessary.

But the savage people, both outside our societies and inside them, with whom we frighten ourselves and others, have never submitted to violence, and are not subdued by it now.

Nations have never subdued other nations by violence alone. If the nation that conquered another stood at a lower stage of development, what happened, again and again, was that it did not bring in its own order of life by violence, but, on the contrary, itself always submitted to the order of life that existed among the conquered nation. If any of the nations held down by force is subdued, or near to being subdued, it is so only by public opinion, and not at all by violence, which, on the contrary, rouses a nation more and more to revolt.

If people have ever, whole nations at a time, submitted to a new religious profession, and whole nations have been baptized or gone over to Islam, these upheavals came about not because the people who held power compelled them to it (violence, on the contrary, more often spurred these movements on in the opposite direction) but because public opinion compelled them. And the nations that were compelled by force to accept the faiths of their conquerors never accepted them.

The same holds for the savage elements living within societies. Neither increasing nor lessening the severity of punishments, nor changing the prisons, nor enlarging the police, either lessens or increases the number of crimes: that number lessens only through a change in public opinion. No severities have rooted out dueling and blood vengeance in certain countries. However many Circassians are executed for stealing, they go on stealing out of bravado, because no girl will marry a young man who has not shown his daring by stealing a horse, or at least a ram. If people stop fighting duels, and the Circassians stop stealing, it will not be from fear of executions (the fear of execution only adds to the charm of bravado) but because public opinion will have changed. The same is true of all other crimes. Violence can never destroy what public opinion approves. On the contrary, public opinion need only set itself squarely against violence, and it destroys the whole working of violence, as has happened, and always happens, with every martyrdom.

What would happen if violence were not used against hostile nations and the criminal elements of society, we do not know. But that the use of violence does not now subdue either the one or the other, this we know from long experience.

And indeed, how can one subdue by force nations whose whole upbringing, all their traditions, even their religious teaching, lead them to see the highest virtue in fighting their enslavers and in striving for freedom? And how can one root out crime by violence within our societies, when what governments consider a crime public opinion considers a deed of valor? Such nations and such people can be exterminated by violence, and are being exterminated; but they cannot be subdued. The decider of everything, the fundamental force that has moved and moves people and nations, always has been and is only one invisible, intangible force: the resultant of all the spiritual forces of a given body of people and of all humanity, expressed in public opinion.

Violence only weakens this force, holds it back, distorts it, and replaces it with another activity, one not merely useless for the forward movement of humanity but harmful.

To bring the savage people of the non-Christian world, all the Zulus and Manchus, and the Chinese, whom many consider savages, and the savage people living within the Christian world, under the sway of Christianity, there is only one, one means: the spreading among these peoples of a Christian public opinion, which is established only by Christian life, Christian acts, Christian examples. And to win over those who have remained unsubdued by Christianity, having only this one, this one only means, the people of our time do exactly the opposite of what could reach the goal.

To bring under Christianity the savage peoples, who do not touch us, and whom we have no provocation to oppress, we do not first of all leave them in peace, and, if need or desire for closer relations should arise, act on them only by a Christian relation to them, by the Christian teaching proved by true Christian deeds of patience, humility, temperance, purity, brotherhood and love. Instead we begin by setting up among them new markets for our trade, aimed only at our own profit; we seize their land, that is, rob them; we sell them wine, tobacco and opium, that is, corrupt them; and we establish our own ways among them, teach them violence and all its methods, that is, teach them to follow only the animal law of struggle, below which man cannot sink. We do everything needed to hide from them everything Christian there is in us. And after this, having sent them a couple of dozen missionaries babbling hypocritical church nonsense, we bring forward these experiments of ours in converting savages to Christianity as irrefutable proof that the Christian truths cannot be applied to life.

The same holds for the so-called criminals living within our societies. To bring these people under Christianity there is only one, and one only, means: a Christian public opinion, which can be established among these people only by the true Christian teaching, confirmed by a true Christian example of life.

And so, to preach this Christian teaching and confirm it by a Christian example, we set up among these people torturing prisons, guillotines, gallows, executions and preparations for murder, on which we spend all our strength. We set up for the common people idolatrous creeds meant to stupefy them. We set up the government sale of stupefying poisons: wine, tobacco, opium. We even institute prostitution. We give the land to those who have no need of it. We put on spectacles of insane luxury in the midst of poverty. We destroy every possibility of anything resembling a Christian public opinion, and we carefully demolish the Christian public opinion that is forming. And then these very people, whom we ourselves have so carefully corrupted, we lock up like wild beasts in places they cannot escape from and where they grow more beastly still, or we kill them; and these very people, corrupted by us on every side, we bring forward as proof that there is no acting on people except by crude violence.

Something happens here like what happens when well-meaning, ignorant doctors put a patient who is recovering by the force of nature into the most unfavorable hygienic conditions and stuff him with poisonous medicines, and then assert that the patient survived only thanks to their hygiene and their treatment, when the patient would long since have been completely well if they had left him alone.

Violence, which is put forward as the instrument for maintaining the Christian order of life, not only does not produce this effect but, on the contrary, is the very thing that hinders the social order from being what it could and should be. The social order is what it is not thanks to violence, but in spite of it.

And so the assertion of the defenders of the existing order is not just, when they say that if violence barely holds back the wicked, non-Christian elements of humanity from attacking us, then the abolition of violence and its replacement by public opinion will not protect humanity. It is not just because violence does not protect humanity; on the contrary, it deprives humanity of the only possibility of real protection, the establishment and spread of a Christian public opinion over the existing order of life. Only when violence is abolished will Christian public opinion cease to be distorted and gain the possibility of spreading unhindered; and people will no longer direct their strength to what they do not need, but will direct it to that one spiritual force that moves them.

But how can we throw away the obvious, tangible protection of the policeman with his pistol and rely on something invisible and intangible, public opinion? Does it even exist yet, or not? Above all, the order of things we live in, we know. Good or bad, we know its shortcomings and are used to it; we know how to behave, what to do in present conditions. But what will happen when we give it up and rely on something invisible, intangible and wholly unknown? And the unknown they would be entering by giving up the familiar orders of life seems terrible to people.

But it is all very well to fear the unknown when our known position is firm and secure. And our position is not only not secure: we know beyond doubt that we stand on the brink of ruin.

If we must be afraid, let us be afraid of what is truly terrible, and not of what we only suppose to be terrible.

Fearing to make the effort to tear ourselves free of the conditions that are destroying us, only because the future is not fully known to us, we are like the passengers of a sinking ship who, afraid to get into the boat that would carry them to shore, shut themselves up in their cabin and refuse to come out of it; or like those sheep who, in fear of the fire that has caught the farmyard, huddle under the shed and will not go out through the open gate.

Can we, who stand on the threshold of a war of internal revolutions, terrible in its calamity and destructiveness, before which, as those preparing it say, the horrors of 1793 will be child's play, really talk of the danger that threatens us from the Dahomeans, the Zulus and the like, who live at the far ends of the earth and have no thought of attacking us, and from those few thousand swindlers, thieves and murderers, stupefied and corrupted by ourselves, whose number does not grow less for all our courts, prisons and executions?

Besides, this fear of abolishing the visible protection of the policeman on the beat is chiefly the fear of townspeople, that is, of people living in abnormal and artificial conditions. People living in the natural conditions of life, not in towns but amid nature, struggling with it, live without this protection, and know how little violence can protect them from the real dangers around them.

There is something morbid in this fear, something that depends chiefly on the false conditions in which many of us live and have grown up.

A psychiatrist used to tell how once, in summer, as he was leaving the hospital, the patients went with him to the gate onto the street. "Come with me into town," the doctor suggested. The patients agreed, and a small band followed the doctor. But the farther they went along the street, where healthy people moved about freely, the more timid they grew, and pressed closer and closer to the doctor, holding him back. And at last they all began begging to go back to their hospital, to their mad but familiar way of life, to their keepers, their beatings, their straitjackets, their solitary cells.

In just the same way the people whom Christianity calls out into freedom, into the free and reasonable life of the coming age, huddle together and pull back toward their mad order of life, their factories, courts, prisons, executions and wars.

People say: "What will make us secure when the existing order is destroyed? What exactly will the new orders be that will take the place of the present ones, and in what will they consist? Until we know exactly how our life will be arranged, we will not go forward, we will not stir from the spot."

This demand is like the one an explorer of new lands would make if he required a detailed description of the country he was entering.

If the life of a single man, in passing from one age to another, were wholly known to him, he would have no reason to live. It is the same with the life of humanity: if it had a program of the life awaiting it as it enters on a new age, that would be the surest sign that it was not living, not moving, but marking time.

The conditions of a new order of life cannot be known to us, because we ourselves must work them out. Life consists in just this: in coming to know the unknown and bringing our activity into harmony with this new knowledge.

In this is the life of every single man, and in this is the life of human societies and of humanity.

Chapter 11: A Christian Public Opinion Has Already Been Born in Our Society and Will Inevitably Destroy the Violent Order of Our Life; When That Will Be

The position of Christian humanity, with its prisons, its penal servitude and its gallows, with its factories and its accumulations of capital, with its taxes, churches, taverns and brothels, its ever-growing armaments and its millions of stupefied people, ready, like chained dogs, to throw themselves on whomever their masters set them on, would be terrible if it were the product of violence; but it is, above all, the product of public opinion. And what has been established by public opinion not only can be destroyed by public opinion, but is being destroyed by it.

Hundreds of millions in money, tens of millions of disciplined men, weapons of destruction of astonishing power, an organization brought to the last degree of perfection, a whole army of people called upon to deceive and hypnotize the people, and all of it subordinated, by means of electricity, which abolishes distance, to people who consider such an order of society not only advantageous for themselves but one without which they must inevitably perish, and who therefore spend all the powers of their minds on maintaining it: what an invincible force, one would think.

And yet one need only imagine what things are coming to, and what no one can prevent: that a Christian public opinion should be established among people with the same force and universality as the pagan public opinion, and take its place; that the majority of people should be as ashamed of taking part in violence and profiting by it as people are now ashamed of fraud, theft, begging and cowardice. And at once, of itself, without struggle and without violence, this complex and seemingly so mighty order of life is destroyed. And for this to happen, nothing new needs to enter people's consciousness. All that is needed is for the fog to vanish that hides from people the true meaning of certain acts of violence, for the growing Christian public opinion to overpower the dying pagan public opinion, which allowed and justified acts of violence. All that is needed is for people to become as ashamed of doing acts of violence, of taking part in them and profiting by them, as they are ashamed now of being, and being known as, a swindler, a thief, a coward, a beggar. And this very thing is beginning to happen.

Only we do not notice it, as people do not notice movement when they are moving themselves along with everything around them.

It is true that the order of life remains, in its main features, just as violent as it was a thousand years ago; and not only just as violent, but in some respects, especially in the preparations for war and in wars themselves, it appears even crueler. But the Christian public opinion now being born, the very one that, at a certain stage of its development, must change the whole pagan order of life, is already beginning to act. A dead tree stands, to look at, just as firmly as it stood before; it even seems firmer, because it has grown harder; but it is already rotting at the core and getting ready to fall. It is the same with the present violent order of life. The outward position of people is the same: some are men of violence, as before, and others suffer violence; but the view that both those who do violence and those who suffer it take of the meaning and dignity of their two positions is no longer the same.

The people who do violence, that is, those who take part in governing, and the people who profit by violence, that is, the rich, no longer represent, as they did before, the flower of society and that ideal of human well-being and greatness toward which all who suffered violence used to strive. Now, very often, it is not those who suffer violence who strive for the position of those who do it and try to imitate them; on the contrary, those who do violence often renounce of their own will the advantages of their position, choose the position of those who suffer violence, and try in simplicity of life to become like them.

Not to speak of the posts and positions now openly despised, such as those of spies, agents of the secret police, moneylenders and tavern keepers, a great number of the positions of men of violence that used to be thought honorable, such as those of the police, the imperial court, the judiciary, the administration, the clergy, the army, the tax farmers and the bankers, are not only no longer thought desirable by everyone, but are already condemned by a certain circle of the most respected people. There are already people who renounce of their own will these positions, once thought irreproachable, and prefer to them positions that are less profitable but not bound up with violence.

And it is not only men in government. There are already rich men too who, not from religious feeling, as used to happen, but only from a particular sensitiveness to the public opinion now being born, renounce the fortunes they have inherited, considering it just to use only what they have earned by their own labor.

The position of a man who takes part in government, or of a rich man, no longer appears, as it did before, and as it does now among non-Christian nations, an unquestionably honorable position, worthy of respect, and a blessing of God. The most sensitive and moral people (for the most part they are also the most educated) avoid these positions and prefer to them more modest positions, not dependent on violence.

The best young people, at the age when they are not yet spoiled by life and are choosing a career, prefer the work of doctors, engineers, teachers, artists, writers, even plain farmers living by their own labor, to positions in the courts, the administration, the clergy and the army, paid by the government, or to the position of people living on their incomes.

Most of the monuments put up now are put up no longer to statesmen, nor to generals, and certainly not to rich men, but to scientists, artists, inventors, people who not only had nothing in common with governments or with power, but very often fought against it. It is not so much statesmen and rich men as scientists and artists who are celebrated in poetry, portrayed in sculpture and painting, honored with solemn jubilees…

The best people of our time strive for these most honored positions, and so the circle from which the men of government and the rich are drawn grows smaller and smaller and lower and lower; so that in intelligence, in education, and above all in moral qualities, the people at the head of government, and the rich, are already not, as in the old days, the flower of society, but, on the contrary, stand below the average level.

In Russia and Turkey, as in America and France, however often governments change their officials, the majority of them are self-seeking and venal people, standing at so low a level of morality that they do not meet even those low demands of simple incorruptibility that governments make of them. One can often hear now the naive complaints of government men that the best people, by some strange accident, as it seems to them, are always to be found in the camp hostile to them. It is as if people were to complain that, by some strange accident, the men who become executioners are always people who are not refined and not especially kind.

In just the same way, the majority of the rich in our time are made up no longer of the most refined and educated people in society, as used to be the case, but either of coarse amassers of wealth, occupied only with enriching themselves, for the most part by dishonest means, or of the degenerate heirs of these amassers, who not only play no prominent part in society but are, in most cases, held in general contempt.

But it is not only that the circle from which the servants of government and the rich are drawn grows smaller and smaller and lower and lower. These people themselves no longer ascribe to the positions they hold their former importance, and often, ashamed of them, and to the detriment of the cause they serve, do not do what their position calls on them to do. Kings and emperors govern almost nothing any longer; they almost never venture on their own to make internal changes or to enter into new foreign political arrangements, but for the most part leave the decision of these questions to the institutions of the state or to public opinion. All their duties come down to being the representatives of the unity and might of the state. But even this duty they perform worse and worse. Most of them not only do not keep up their former unapproachable grandeur but, on the contrary, become more and more democratic, even make themselves common, throwing off their last outward prestige, that is, undermining the very thing they are called on to maintain. The same is happening with the military. Military men of the highest ranks, instead of encouraging the coarseness and cruelty in their soldiers that their business requires, themselves spread education among the military class, preach humanity, and often even share the socialist convictions of the masses themselves and reject war. In the latest conspiracies against the Russian government many of those implicated were military men. And such military conspirators are growing more and more numerous. And it very often happens, as it did the other day, that troops called out to put down the inhabitants refuse to fire on them. Military swagger is openly condemned by military men themselves, and is often an object of ridicule. It is the same with judges and prosecutors. Judges, whose duty is to try and sentence criminals, conduct the proceedings so as to acquit them, so that the Russian government, to have convicted those it needs convicted, never now submits them to the ordinary courts, but hands them over to the so-called court-martial, which is only a semblance of a court. It is the same with prosecutors, who often refuse to prosecute, and even, getting round the law, defend instead of prosecuting those they are supposed to accuse. Learned jurists, whose duty is to justify the violence of power, more and more deny the right to punish, and put in its place theories of irresponsibility, and even of the treatment, not the correction, of those who are called criminals. Jailers and the wardens of convicts for the most part become the defenders of those they are supposed to torment. Gendarmes and detectives constantly save those they are supposed to destroy. The clergy preach tolerance, sometimes even the rejection of violence, and the more educated among them try in their sermons to get round the very falsehood that is the whole meaning of their position and which they are called on to preach. Executioners refuse to carry out their duties, so that in Russia death sentences often cannot be carried out for lack of executioners, since, in spite of all the advantages offered to these men, who are chosen from among the convicts, fewer and fewer are willing to become executioners. Governors, ispravniks, stanovois, tax collectors, the publicans, as the Gospel calls them, often take pity on the people and try to find pretexts for not collecting the taxes from them. The rich do not venture to use their wealth for themselves alone, but distribute it to public causes. Landowners build hospitals and schools on their land, and some even renounce the ownership of land and hand it over to those who till it, or set up communities on it. Mill owners and factory owners build hospitals, schools, savings funds, pensions and housing for the workers; some found cooperative associations in which they themselves become equal with the other members. Capitalists give part of their capital to public, educational, artistic and philanthropic institutions. And many of them who cannot bring themselves to part with their wealth in their lifetime still renounce it after their death, by their wills, in favor of public institutions.

All these phenomena might seem accidental, if they did not all come down to one common cause; just as it might seem accidental that in spring a bud begins to swell on some of the trees, if we did not know that the cause of it is the spring, common to all, and that if on some trees the branches have begun to soften, the same will surely happen with all of them.

It is the same with the manifestation of Christian public opinion about the meaning of violence and of what is founded on it. If this public opinion is already influencing some of the most sensitive people, and making each of them, in his own work, renounce the advantages that violence gives, or not make use of them, then it will go on influencing others, and will go on until it has changed the whole activity of people and brought it into agreement with the Christian consciousness that already lives in the advanced people of humanity.

And if there are already rulers who do not venture to undertake anything on their own authority and try to be as much like the simplest mortals as possible, and not like monarchs, and who declare themselves ready to give up their prerogatives and become the first citizens of their republic; and if there are already military men who understand all the evil and sin of war and do not wish to shoot people either of another nation or of their own; and judges and prosecutors who do not want to accuse and sentence criminals; and clergymen who renounce their falsehood; and publicans who try to do as little as they can of what they are called on to do; and rich men who renounce their wealth; then the same thing will inevitably happen with other governments, other military men, other judges, clergymen, publicans and rich men. And when there are no people ready to fill these positions, there will be no positions, and no violence.

But it is not only by this path that public opinion leads people to destroy the existing order and replace it with a new one. In proportion as the positions of violence become less and less attractive, and fewer and fewer people are found willing to fill them, their uselessness too becomes clearer and clearer.

There are the same rulers and governments in the Christian world, the same armies, the same courts, the same publicans, the same clergy, the same rich landowners, factory owners and capitalists as before; but people's relation to them, and their relation to their own positions, is quite different now.

There are still the same rulers, with the same visits to one another, the same meetings, and hunts, and banquets, and balls, and uniforms, and the same diplomats, and talk of alliances and wars; the same parliaments, in which the Eastern and African questions are debated in the same way, and alliances, and ruptures, and Home Rule, and the eight-hour day. And ministries replace one another in the same way, with the same speeches and incidents. But to people who see how a single article in a newspaper changes the state of affairs more than dozens of meetings of monarchs and sessions of parliaments, it becomes clearer and clearer that it is not these meetings, and visits, and talks in parliaments that guide the affairs of people, but something independent of all this and concentrated nowhere.

There are the same generals, and officers, and soldiers, and cannons, and fortresses, and reviews, and maneuvers; but there is no war for a year, ten years, twenty years; and besides, less and less reliance can be placed on the military for putting down riots, and it becomes clearer and clearer that the generals and officers and soldiers are therefore only members of solemn processions, objects of amusement for rulers, a great, far too costly corps de ballet.

There are the same prosecutors and judges, and the same sessions; but it becomes clearer and clearer that, since civil cases are decided for the most varied reasons, but never for the sake of justice, and since criminal courts have no meaning at all, because punishments do not attain any purpose that even the judges themselves admit, these institutions have no other meaning than as a means of feeding people who are capable of nothing more useful.

There are the same priests, and bishops, and churches, and synods; but it becomes clearer and clearer to everyone that these people have long ceased to believe themselves in what they preach, and so can no longer convince anyone of the need to believe in what they themselves do not believe.

There are the same tax collectors; but they are less and less able to take people's property from them by force, and it becomes clearer and clearer that people can collect everything they need by voluntary subscription, without tax collectors.

There are the same rich men; but it becomes clearer and clearer that they can be useful only insofar as they cease to be the personal managers of their wealth and give to society all, or at least part, of their fortune.

And when all this has become fully clear, and clear to everyone, it will be natural for people to ask themselves: "But why should we feed and keep all these kings, emperors, presidents, and members of various chambers and ministries, when nothing comes of all their visits and talk? Would it not be better, as some joker said, to make a queen out of gutta-percha?

"And what do we want with armies, with their generals and their bands, their cavalry and their drums? What are they needed for, when there is no war, when no one wishes to conquer anyone, and when, even if there is a war, other nations will not let us profit by it, and the troops refuse to fire on their own people?

"And what do we want with judges and prosecutors who in civil cases do not decide by justice, and in criminal cases know themselves that all punishments are useless?

"And what do we want with tax collectors who collect the taxes unwillingly, when what is needed is collected without them anyway?

"And what do we want with a clergy who have long ceased to believe in what they are supposed to preach?

"And what do we want with capital in private hands, when it can be of use only by becoming the common possession?"

And once people have asked themselves this, they cannot help coming to the decision to stop keeping up all these institutions, which have become useless.

But it is not only that the people who keep up these institutions will come to the decision to abolish them. The very people who fill these positions will, at the same time or even before, be brought to the necessity of renouncing them.

Public opinion more and more condemns and rejects violence, and so people, submitting more and more to public opinion, are less and less willing to fill the positions upheld by violence; and those who do fill these positions are less and less able to use violence. And not using violence, yet remaining in positions that depend on violence, the people who fill these positions become more and more unnecessary. And this uselessness, felt more and more both by those who uphold these positions and by those who hold them, will at last become such that no more people will be found to uphold these positions, nor any who would venture to fill them.

Once, in Moscow, I was present at the disputes about faith that are usually held during St. Thomas's week, the week after Easter, by the church in Okhotny Ryad. A little crowd had gathered on the pavement, about twenty people, and a serious conversation about religion was going on. At the same time there was some concert in the building next door, the Assembly of the Nobility, and the police officer, noticing the little crowd gathered by the church, sent a mounted gendarme with an order to disperse. The officer did not really need them to disperse. The twenty people gathered there were in nobody's way; but the officer had been standing there the whole morning, and he had to do something. The gendarme, a young fellow, rode up to us with his right hand jauntily on his hip and his saber rattling, and ordered sternly: "Disperse! What are you gathered here for?" Everyone looked round at the gendarme, and one of the speakers, a modest man in a long cloth coat, said calmly and kindly: "We are talking about something that matters, and there is no reason for us to disperse; but you, young man, had better get down and listen to what people are saying. It will do you good too." And he turned away and went on with the conversation. The gendarme turned his horse without a word and rode off.

The same thing must happen in all the affairs of violence. The officer is bored, he has nothing to do; the poor fellow has been put in a position in which he must give orders. He is cut off from all human life; all he can do is watch and give orders, give orders and watch, though his orders and his watching are of no use for anything. All these unhappy rulers, ministers, members of parliament, governors, generals, officers, bishops, priests, even rich men, are already in part in the same position, and soon will be wholly in it. There is nothing left for them to do but give orders, and they give orders: they send their messengers, as the officer sent the gendarme, to get in people's way; and since the people they get in the way of turn to them with requests not to get in their way, it seems to them that they are absolutely necessary.

But the time is coming, and will come, when it will be perfectly clear to everyone that they are of no use for anything and only get in people's way; and the people whose way they get in will say to them, kindly and meekly, like that man in the long coat: "Please do not get in our way." And all these messengers and those who send them will have to follow this good advice, that is, stop riding about among people, hands on hips, getting in their way, and, getting down off their high horses and taking off their finery, listen to what people are saying, and join them, and set to work with everyone else at the real work of human beings.

The time is coming, and will inevitably come, when all the violent institutions of our time will be destroyed, because their uselessness, their absurdity, even their indecency, will have become too obvious to everyone.

The time must come when there will happen to the people of our world who hold the positions that violence gives what happened to the king in Andersen's tale "The Emperor's New Clothes", when a little child, seeing the king naked, cried out innocently, "Look, he is naked!" and everyone who had seen it before, but had not said so, could hide it no longer.

The tale is that tailors come to a king who loves new clothes, and promise to sew him an extraordinary garment. The king hires the tailors, and they begin to sew; but they say that the special property of their garment is that anyone who is useless in his post cannot see it.

The courtiers come to look at the tailors' work and see nothing, since the tailors are drawing their needles through empty air. But, remembering the condition, all the officials say that they see the clothes, and praise them. The king does the same. The time comes for the procession in which the king is to walk in his new clothes. The king undresses and puts on the new clothes, that is, stays naked, and walks naked through the town. But, remembering the condition, no one ventures to say that there are no clothes, until a little child cries out: "Look, he is naked!"

The same must happen with all who, from inertia, hold positions that have long since become useless, when the first man who has no interest in hiding the uselessness of these institutions, in the spirit of the proverb "one hand washes the other", points to their uselessness and cries out innocently: "But these people have long been of no use for anything!"

The position of Christian humanity, with its fortresses, cannons, dynamite, rifles, torpedoes, prisons, gallows, churches, factories, customs houses and palaces, is truly terrible. But the fortresses and cannons and rifles do not fire at anyone by themselves, the prisons lock no one up by themselves, the gallows hang no one, the churches deceive no one by themselves, the customs houses detain no one, the palaces and factories do not build themselves or keep themselves going: people do all this. And if people understand that they ought not to do it, none of it will be.

And people are already beginning to understand it. If not everyone understands it yet, the advanced people understand it, those whom the rest follow. And what the advanced people have once understood they can by no means cease to understand. And what the advanced people have understood, the rest not only can understand but inevitably must.

Thus the prophecy that the time will come when all men shall be taught of God, shall learn war no more, and shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruninghooks, that is, to put it in our own language, when all the prisons, fortresses, barracks, palaces and churches will stand empty, and all the gallows, rifles and cannons will be left unused, is no longer a dream. It is a definite, new form of life, which humanity is approaching with ever-increasing speed.

But when will it be?

Eighteen hundred years ago Christ answered this question: the end of the present age, that is, of the pagan order of the world, will come when the calamities of people have increased to the utmost (Matthew 24:3-28), and when at the same time the good news of the kingdom of God, that is, of the possibility of a new order of life without violence, has been preached in all the world.

"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36), Christ says in the same place. For it may come at any time, at any moment, and when we do not expect it.

To the question when this hour will come, Christ says that we cannot know; but just because we cannot know the time of its coming, we must not only be always ready to meet it, as the master who watches over his house must always be ready, as the virgins with their lamps who go out to meet the bridegroom must be ready, but we must also work with all the strength given us for the coming of this hour, as the servants had to work with the talents given them (Matthew 24:43; 25:1-30). To the question when this hour will come, Christ exhorts people to work with all their strength for its swiftest coming.

And there can be no other answer. People can by no means know when the day and hour of the kingdom of God will come, because its coming depends on no one but people themselves.

The answer is the same as that of the sage who, when a passerby asked him how far it was to the town, answered: "Walk."

How can we know how far it is to the goal humanity is approaching, when we do not know how humanity will move toward it, humanity on which it depends whether to go on or not, to stop, to slow its pace or to quicken it?

All we can know is what we, who make up humanity, must do and must not do for the kingdom of God to come. And this we all know. And each of us need only begin to do what we must do and stop doing what we must not do, each of us need only live by all the light there is in us, for the promised kingdom of God, toward which every human heart is drawn, to come at once.

Chapter 12: Conclusion

I was finishing this book, the work of two years, when on the ninth of September I happened to be traveling by rail to the district where the peasants of Tula and Ryazan provinces had gone hungry last year and are going hungrier still this year. At one of the stations the train I was on met a special train carrying troops, under the command of the governor, with rifles, live cartridges and birch rods, for the torture and murder of these very starving peasants.

The torture of people with birch rods to carry out the decisions of the authorities, though corporal punishment was abolished by law thirty years ago, has lately been used in Russia more and more often.

I had heard of it; I had even read in the newspapers of the terrible tortures that Baranov, the governor of Nizhny Novgorod, seemed almost to boast of, and of tortures in Chernihiv, Tambov, Saratov, Astrakhan and Oryol; but never once had I had occasion, as now, to see people in the act of carrying out these deeds.

And now I saw with my own eyes Russian people, good people imbued with the Christian spirit, with rifles and rods, going to kill and torture their hungry brothers.

The occasion of their journey was this.

On one of the estates of a rich landowner the peasants had grown a wood on the pasture they shared with the landowner (grown it, that is, guarded it while it grew), and they had always used it, and so considered the wood theirs, or at least held in common. The owner, however, took the wood for himself and began to cut it down. The peasants lodged a complaint. The judge of the first instance decided the case, wrongly, in favor of the landowner (I say "wrongly" on the word of the prosecutor and of the governor, people who ought to know the case). All the higher instances, the Senate among them, though they could see that the case had been wrongly decided, confirmed the decision, and the wood was awarded to the landowner. The landowner began to cut the wood; but the peasants, unable to believe that so obvious an injustice could be done them by the supreme authority, did not submit to the decision. They drove away the workmen sent to cut the wood, declaring that the wood belonged to them, and that they would go to the tsar himself but would not let the wood be cut.

The case was reported to the minister in Petersburg. The minister reported it to the sovereign; the sovereign ordered the minister to carry out the court's decision. The minister instructed the governor. The governor called for troops. And now soldiers, armed with rifles and bayonets and live cartridges, and with a supply of birch rods besides, specially prepared for the occasion and carried in one of the cars, are on their way to carry out this decision of the supreme authority.

And the carrying out of a decision of the supreme authority is accomplished by the murder or the torture of people, or by the threat of one or the other, depending on whether or not they offer resistance.

In the first case, if the peasants offer resistance, what is done in Russia (and the same is done wherever there is a state order and the right of property) is this. The officer in command makes a speech and demands submission. The excited crowd, for the most part misled by its leaders, understands nothing of what the representative of power says in his bureaucratic, bookish language, and goes on seething. Then the officer announces that if they do not submit and disperse, he will be compelled to resort to arms. If the crowd still does not submit and disperse, the officer orders the rifles loaded and a volley fired over the heads of the crowd. If the crowd still does not disperse, the officer orders the soldiers to fire straight into the crowd, at whoever they hit; and the soldiers fire, and wounded and dead people fall in the street; and then the crowd usually scatters, and the troops, on their officers' orders, seize those who seem to them to be the chief instigators and take them into custody.

After this they pick up the bloodied, dying, maimed, killed and wounded men, and sometimes women and children; the dead are buried and the maimed sent to the hospital. Those regarded as the instigators are taken to the town and tried by a special military court. And if there was violence on their side, they are sentenced to hang. And then a gallows is put up and several defenseless people are strangled with ropes, as has been done many times in Russia, and as is done, and cannot help being done, wherever the social order rests on violence. That is how it is done in the case of resistance.

In the second case, if the peasants submit, something peculiar and specifically Russian is done. What is done is this. The governor arrives on the scene and makes a speech to the people, reproaching them for their disobedience; and either he quarters troops in the households of the village, where the soldiers, sometimes for a month, ruin the peasants by their billeting; or, satisfied with the threat, he graciously pardons the people and drives away; or, what happens most often of all, he announces to them that the instigators must be punished for this, and arbitrarily, without trial, picks out a certain number of people, declared to be the instigators, and has them tortured in his presence.

To give an idea of how these things are done, I will describe one such case, carried out in Oryol and approved by the supreme authority.

What happened in Oryol was this. Just as here in Tula province, a landowner wished to take the peasants' property from them, and just as here, the peasants resisted. The matter was that the owner, without the peasants' consent, wished to keep the water at his mill at so high a level that it flooded their meadows. The peasants resisted this. The landowner lodged a complaint with the land captain, the government official set over the peasants. The land captain unlawfully (as the court too later acknowledged) decided the case in favor of the landowner, allowing him to raise the water. The landowner sent workmen to dam the ditch through which the water ran off. The peasants were indignant at this wrongful decision and sent out their women to stop the landowner's workmen from damming the ditch. The women went out onto the dam, overturned the carts and drove the workmen away. The landowner lodged a complaint against the women for taking the law into their own hands. The land captain issued an order that one woman from every household in the whole village be put in jail (in the "cold room", the village lockup). The order could hardly be carried out, since there were several women in every household: there was no knowing which one was subject to arrest, and so the police did not carry the order out. The landowner complained to the governor of the negligence of the police. And the governor, without looking into the matter, sternly ordered the ispravnik to carry out the land captain's decision at once. Obeying his superiors, the ispravnik came to the village and, with the disrespect for people characteristic of Russian authority, ordered the policemen to take one woman from every house. But since there was more than one woman in every house, and there was no knowing which one was subject to confinement, quarrels and resistance began. In spite of these quarrels and this resistance, the ispravnik ordered the women seized, one from each household, whichever came to hand, and taken to the place of confinement. The peasants began to defend their wives and mothers, would not give them up, and in doing so beat the policemen and the ispravnik. A new and terrible crime had appeared: resistance to the authorities. And this new crime was reported to the town. And so the governor, just as the governor of Tula was traveling now, with a battalion of soldiers with rifles and rods, using the telegraph and the telephone and the railway, in a special train, with a learned doctor whose duty was to see to the hygiene of the flogging, the very image of the Genghis Khan with telegraphs that Herzen foretold, arrived on the scene.

In front of the volost office, the office of the rural district, stood the troops, a squad of policemen with red cords from which their revolvers hang, the assembled officials chosen from among the peasants, and the accused. Around them stood a crowd of a thousand people or more. Driving up to the volost office, the governor got out of his carriage, made a preparatory speech, and demanded the guilty and a bench. At first this demand was not understood. But the policeman whom the governor always took about with him, and who looked after the organizing of the tortures, which had been carried out more than once already in the province, explained that what was meant was a bench for flogging. A bench was brought, the rods that had been brought along were brought out, and the executioners were called. The executioners had been got ready beforehand from among the horse thieves of the same village, since the soldiers had refused to perform this duty.

When everything was ready, the man in command ordered the first of the twelve men whom the landowner had pointed out as the most guilty to step forward. The first to step forward was the father of a family, a man of forty, respected in the community, who had stood up manfully for the community's rights and was respected by the villagers for it. He was led to the bench, stripped, and told to lie down.

The peasant tried to beg for mercy, but, seeing that it was useless, he crossed himself and lay down. Two policemen rushed to hold him down. The learned doctor stood by, ready to give whatever scientific medical help might be needed. The jailbirds spat on their hands, swung the rods and began to beat him. It turned out, however, that the bench was too narrow, and it was hard to keep the writhing man on it. Then the governor ordered another bench brought and a plank laid across. The men, putting their hands to their caps and saying, "Yes, Your Excellency," hastily and obediently carried out the orders; and meanwhile the half-naked, pale man, frowning and looking at the ground, his jaw and his bared legs trembling, waited. When the second bench had been put alongside, they laid him down again, and the horse thieves began to beat him again. The back, the buttocks, the thighs and even the sides of the man being tortured were covered more and more with welts and bruises, and at every blow came muffled sounds that he could not hold back. From the crowd standing round came the wailing of the wives, mothers, children and relatives of the man being tortured and of all those who had been picked out for punishment.

The unhappy governor, drunk with power, who thought he could not act otherwise, counted the blows on his fingers and smoked cigarettes without stopping, and each time several obliging people hurried to hold out a lighted match for him. When more than fifty blows had been given, the peasant stopped crying out and moving; and the doctor, brought up in a state institution to serve his sovereign and his fatherland with his scientific knowledge, went up to the man, felt his pulse, listened to his heart, and reported to the representative of power that the man being punished had lost consciousness, and that, according to the data of science, continuing the punishment might endanger his life. But the unhappy governor, by now completely drunk with the sight of blood, ordered them to go on, and the torture went on to seventy blows, the number to which for some reason it seemed to him necessary to bring it. When the seventieth blow had been given, the governor said: "Enough! Next!" And the maimed man, his back swollen, unconscious, was lifted and carried away, and another was brought. The sobbing and groaning of the crowd grew louder. But the representative of the power of the state went on with the torture.

In the same way they beat the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, the eighth, the ninth, the tenth, the eleventh, the twelfth, each of them seventy blows. All of them begged for mercy, groaned, cried out. The sobbing and groaning of the crowd of women grew louder and more heartrending, and the faces of the men grew darker and darker. But troops stood all around, and the torture did not stop until the deed had been done to the very measure that, for some reason, seemed necessary to the whim of the unhappy, half-drunk, misguided man called the governor.

The officials, the officers and the soldiers not only were present at this, but by their presence took part in it, and guarded the proper conduct of this act of state against any interference from the crowd.

When I asked one of the governors why these tortures are inflicted on people when they have already submitted and the troops are stationed in the village, he answered me, with the meaningful air of a man who has mastered all the subtleties of statecraft, that it is done because experience has shown that if the peasants are not subjected to torture, they will begin to oppose the orders of the authorities again; while torture inflicted on some of them makes the decision of the authorities secure for good.

And now the governor of Tula, with officials, officers and soldiers, was on his way to do the same thing. In just the same way, that is, by murder or torture, a decision of the supreme authority was to be carried out: the decision that a young fellow, a landowner with an income of a hundred thousand a year, might get another three thousand rubles for a wood he had swindled from a whole community of hungry and cold peasants, and might squander the money in two or three weeks in the restaurants of Moscow, Petersburg or Paris. This was the very business on which the people I had met were now traveling.

Fate, as if on purpose, after two years of my thinking strenuously in one and the same direction, brought me up for the first time in my life against this phenomenon, which showed me in practice, with complete obviousness, what had long been clear to me in theory: that the whole order of our life rests not on any principles of law, as the people who enjoy an advantageous position in the existing order of things like to imagine, but on the simplest, crudest violence, on the murder and torture of people.

The people who own great quantities of land and capital, or who receive large salaries collected from working people who lack the barest necessities, and likewise those who, like merchants, doctors, artists, clerks, scholars, coachmen, cooks, writers, footmen and lawyers, feed around these rich people, like to believe that the advantages they enjoy come not from violence but from a perfectly free and fair exchange of services; and that these advantages not only do not come from the beatings and murders inflicted on people, like those in Oryol and in many places in Russia this summer, and like those that go on constantly all over Europe and America, but have no connection with these acts of violence at all. They like to believe that the advantages they enjoy exist of themselves and come about by the voluntary agreement of people, and that the acts of violence inflicted on people also exist of themselves and come about by some general and higher laws, juridical, political and economic. These people try not to see that they enjoy the advantages they enjoy always and only for the same reason for which the peasants who grew the wood, and who are in dire need of it, will now be compelled to give it up to a rich landowner who took no part in guarding it while it grew and has no need of it: that is, because if they do not give up this wood, they will be beaten or killed.

And yet, if it is perfectly clear that the Oryol mill came to bring the landowner a bigger income, and that the wood grown by the peasants is handed over to the landowner, only because of beatings and murders, or the threat of them, then it ought to be just as clear that all the other exclusive rights of the rich, which deprive the poor of what they need, must rest on the same thing. If peasants who need land to feed their families do not plow the land right next to their homesteads, and this land, enough to feed a thousand families, is used by one man, a Russian, English, Austrian or any other great landowner, who does not work on it; and if a merchant who has bought up grain from the farmers in their need can keep this grain safely in his granaries among starving people and sell it at three times the price to the same farmers from whom he bought it at a third of what he now asks: then obviously this happens for the same reasons. And if one man cannot buy from another cheap goods sold to him from beyond a certain conventional line called a frontier without paying a customs duty to people who had no part in producing the goods; and if people cannot help giving up their last cow for the taxes, which the government hands out to its officials and spends on keeping the soldiers who will kill these very taxpayers: then it would seem obvious that this too came about not at all from any abstract rights, but from the very thing that was done in Oryol, that may be done now in Tula province, and that is done periodically, in one form or another, all over the world, wherever there is a state order and there are rich and poor.

Because torture and murder do not accompany all the relations of violence among people, the people who enjoy the exclusive advantages of the ruling classes assure themselves and others that the advantages they enjoy come not from torture and murder but from some other mysterious general causes, abstract rights and the like. And yet it would seem clear that if people who consider it unjust (as all working people consider it now) give the chief share of their labor to the capitalist and the landowner, and pay taxes knowing that these taxes are badly spent, they do it, first of all, not from any awareness of abstract rights they have never even heard of, but only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they do not do it.

And if it is not necessary every time to put people in prison, beat them and kill them, when the landowner collects the rent for his land, and the man who needs bread pays the merchant who has cheated him three times the price, and the factory hand is satisfied with a wage that is proportionately half his master's income, and when the poor man gives his last ruble for customs duties and taxes, that is because people have already been beaten and killed so many times for their attempts not to do what is demanded of them that they remember it well. Just as a tamed tiger in a cage does not take the meat laid under its nose, and does not lie quietly, but jumps over the stick when it is told to, not because it wants to, but because it remembers the red-hot iron rod or the hunger it was subjected to every time it disobeyed, in just the same way people who submit to what is unprofitable for them, even ruinous, and what they consider unjust, do so because they remember what happened to them when they opposed it.

And the people who enjoy advantages produced by acts of violence long past often forget, and like to forget, how these advantages were acquired. And yet one need only recall history, not the history of the successes of the various dynasties of rulers, but real history, the history of the oppression of the majority by a small number of people, to see that the foundations of all the advantages of the rich over the poor have all come from nothing else than rods, prisons, penal servitude and murder.

One need only think of the unceasing, stubborn striving of all people to increase their well-being, which guides the people of our time, to be convinced that the advantages of the rich over the poor could not, and cannot, be maintained by anything else.

There may be oppressions, beatings, prisons and executions that do not have the advantages of the rich classes as their aim (though this is very rare); but one may boldly say that in our society, where for every well-to-do man living like a gentleman there are ten working people, worn out by labor, envious, greedy, and often suffering outright along with their families, all the advantages of the rich, all their luxury, everything the rich enjoy beyond what the average working man has, all of it has been acquired, and is maintained, only by torture, imprisonment and execution.

The train I met on the ninth of September, carrying soldiers, rifles, live cartridges and birch rods to the hungry peasants, in order to secure to a rich landowner a small wood he had taken from the peasants, a wood he did not need and the peasants needed terribly, proved with striking obviousness to what a degree people have developed the capacity to do the deeds most contrary to their convictions and their conscience without seeing it.

The special train I had met consisted of one first-class car for the governor, the officials and the officers, and several freight cars crammed with soldiers.

The soldiers, smart young fellows in their new, clean uniforms, crowded standing in the wide-open doors of the freight cars, or sat there with their legs hanging down. Some smoked, others jostled one another, joked, laughed and grinned, others cracked sunflower seeds and spat out the husks with self-assurance. Some of them ran along the platform to the water tub to get a drink, and, meeting officers, slowed their pace, made their silly gesture of raising the hand to the forehead, and with serious faces, as though they were doing something not only reasonable but very important, went past them, following them with their eyes; and then they set off at a trot more cheerfully still, stamping on the planks of the platform, laughing and chattering, as healthy, good-natured young fellows do when they travel in cheerful company from one place to another.

They were on their way to murder their hungry fathers and grandfathers just as if it were some merry business, or at least the most ordinary one.

The smartly dressed officials and officers scattered over the platform and the first-class waiting room made the same impression. At a table set with bottles sat the governor, the head of the whole expedition, in his half-military uniform, eating something and talking calmly about the weather with acquaintances he had met, as though the business he was going on were so simple and ordinary that it could not disturb his calm or his interest in the change of the weather.

A little way from the table, eating nothing, sat a general of the gendarmes, with an impenetrable but dejected air, as though he were weary of a formality that bored him. On all sides officers in their handsome gold-trimmed uniforms moved about noisily: one, sitting at a table, was finishing a bottle of beer; another, standing at the buffet, was chewing a little pie, shaking the crumbs off the breast of his uniform and tossing a coin down with a self-assured gesture; another, bouncing a little at each step, strolled up and down in front of the cars of our train, peering at the women's faces.

All these people, on their way to murder or torture the hungry and defenseless, the very people who feed them, had the look of people who know for certain that they are doing what has to be done, and who are even a little proud of it, "showing off", as they do this deed.

What does this mean?

All these people are half an hour's ride from the place where, to get for a rich young fellow three thousand rubles he does not need, taken by him from a whole community of hungry peasants, they may be compelled to begin doing the most terrible deeds one can imagine: they may begin to kill or torture innocent people, their brothers, as in Oryol; and they are calmly approaching the place and the time where and when this may begin.

To say that these people, all these officials, officers and soldiers, do not know what lies before them and what they are going to do is impossible, because they have prepared for it. The governor had to give orders about the rods; officials had to buy the birch switches, haggle over them, and enter the item in the accounts. The military gave, received and carried out orders about live cartridges. All of them know that they are going to torture, and perhaps kill, their brothers, worn out with hunger, and that they may begin doing it within the hour.

To say that they do it from conviction, as is usually said and as they themselves repeat, from conviction of the need to maintain the order of the state, would be unjust. First, because all these people have hardly ever even thought about the order of the state and its necessity. Second, because they cannot possibly be convinced that the business they are taking part in serves to maintain the state rather than to destroy it. And third, because in reality the majority of these people, if not all, not only would never sacrifice their own peace and pleasure to maintain the state, but never miss a chance of using everything they can for their own peace and pleasure, to the detriment of the state. Consequently it is not for the abstract principle of the state that they do it.

What does this mean?

I know all these people, after all. If I do not know all of them personally, I know roughly their characters, their past, their way of thinking. They all have mothers, after all, and some have wives and children. For the most part these are people good at heart, gentle, often tender people, who hate every cruelty, to say nothing of killing people, and many of whom could not kill or torture an animal; besides, they are all people who profess Christianity and consider violence against defenseless people a vile and shameful thing. Not one of these people, in ordinary life, would be capable of doing, for his own small gain, a hundredth part of what the governor of Oryol did to people; and every one of them would be offended if anyone supposed him capable of anything of the kind in private life.

And yet here they are, half an hour's ride from the place where they may be brought, inevitably, to the necessity of doing it.

What does this mean?

And not only these people riding in this train, ready for murder and torture. How could the people with whom the whole business began, the landowner, the steward, the judge, and those in Petersburg who ordered the business and take part in it by their orders, how could these people, the minister, the sovereign, also good people who profess Christianity, how could they set going and order such a business, knowing its consequences? How can even the onlookers who take no part in it, people who are indignant at every private case of violence, even at the torturing of a horse, permit such a terrible deed to be done? How can they not rise against it, not stand across the road and cry out: "No, this, killing and flogging hungry people because they will not give up the last thing they own, which is being swindled from them, this we will not allow!" But not only does no one do it; on the contrary, the majority of people, even those who were the instigators of the business, like the steward, the landowner and the judge, and those who took part in it and gave the orders for it, like the governor, the minister and the sovereign, are perfectly calm and do not even feel the reproaches of conscience. All these people on their way to commit this crime appear just as calm.

The onlookers, too, who would seem to have no interest in the matter, for the most part looked on all these people preparing to commit this vile deed with sympathy rather than disapproval. In the same car with me was traveling a merchant, a timber dealer who had come up from the peasantry, and he openly and loudly expressed his sympathy with the tortures intended for the peasants. "You can't disobey the authorities," he said. "That's what the authorities are for. Just you wait, they'll knock the fleas out of them. They'll stop rioting, sure enough. Serves them right."

What does this mean?

To say that all these people, the instigators, the participants and those who permit this business, are such scoundrels that, knowing all the vileness of what they are doing, they do a thing contrary to their convictions, some for pay and gain, others for fear of punishment, is also quite impossible. All these people know how to stand up for their convictions in certain situations. Not one of these officials would steal a purse, read another man's letter, or put up with an insult without demanding satisfaction from the man who insulted him. Not one of these officers would agree to cheat at cards, to leave a gambling debt unpaid, to betray a comrade, to run from the field of battle or abandon the flag. Not one of these soldiers would dare to spit out the Sacrament, or even eat beef on Good Friday. All these people are ready to bear every kind of privation, suffering and danger rather than agree to do something they consider wrong. Consequently there is in these people a power of resistance when they have to do something contrary to their convictions.

To say that all these people are such brutes that such deeds come naturally to them and cost them no pain is still less possible. One need only talk to these people to see that all of them, the landowner, and the judge, and the minister, and the tsar, and the governor, and the officers, and the soldiers, not only do not in the depths of their souls approve of such deeds, but suffer from the consciousness of their share in them when they are reminded of what the business means. They only try not to think about it.

One need only talk with them, with all who take part in this business, from the landowner down to the last policeman and soldier, to see that all of them know in the depths of their souls that it is a bad business, and that it would be better not to take part in it, and that they suffer from it.

A liberal lady traveling with us on the same train, seeing the governor and the officers in the first-class waiting room and learning the purpose of their journey, began on purpose, loudly, so that they could hear, to abuse the ways of our time and to shame the people taking part in this business. Everyone grew uncomfortable. No one knew where to look, but no one answered her. The people in the train pretended that such empty talk was not worth answering. But one could see by their faces and their shifting eyes that they were all ashamed. I noticed the same in the soldiers. They too knew that the business they were going on was a bad one, but did not want to think about what lay before them.

When the timber dealer, and he, I think, not sincerely, but only to show how civilized he was, began to talk about how necessary such measures were, the soldiers who heard him all turned away from him, pretending not to hear, and frowned.

All these people, both those who, like the landowner, the steward, the minister and the tsar, helped to bring this business about, and those who are now riding in this train, and even those who, without taking part in it, see it done from outside, all know that it is a bad business, and are ashamed of their part in it, and even of their presence at it.

Then why have they done it, and why do they do it and tolerate it?

Ask about it those who, like the landowner, set the business going; and those who, like the judges, pronounced a decision that was formally lawful but plainly unjust; and those who ordered the decision carried out; and those who, like the soldiers, the policemen and the peasants, will carry out these deeds with their own hands, beating and killing their brothers: all of them, the instigators, the accomplices, the executors and those who permit these crimes, will all say in substance one and the same thing.

Those in authority, who stirred the business up, helped it along and gave the orders for it, will say that they do what they do because such deeds are necessary to maintain the existing order; and that maintaining the existing order is necessary for the good of the fatherland and of humanity, for the possibility of social life and for the movement of progress.

People of the lower classes, peasants and soldiers, those who will have to carry out the violence with their own hands, will say that they do what they do because it is ordered by the higher authorities, and the higher authorities know what they are doing. That the authorities consist of the very people who ought to be the authorities, and know what they are doing, seems to them an unquestionable truth. If these lower executors admit the possibility of a mistake or an error at all, it is only in the lower officials; the supreme power from which everything proceeds seems to them unquestionably infallible.

Though they explain the motives of their activity differently, both the one and the other, those in authority and those who submit, agree that they do what they do because the existing order is the very order that is necessary and must exist at the present time, and that to maintain it is therefore the sacred duty of every man.

On this recognition of the necessity, and therefore the unchangeableness, of the existing order rests also the reasoning that all who take part in the violence of the state always bring forward in their own justification: that since the existing order is unchangeable, the refusal of an individual to perform the duties laid on him will not change the essence of the matter, but can only bring it about that in the place of the man who refused there will be another man, who may do the business worse, that is, more cruelly still, more harmfully still for the people on whom the violence is done.

It is just this certainty that the existing order is a necessary and therefore an unchangeable order, which it is the sacred duty of every man to maintain, that makes it possible for people who are good, and moral in their private lives, to take part with a more or less easy conscience in such deeds as the one done in Oryol, and the one the people riding in the Tula train were preparing to do.

But what is this certainty founded on?

It is understandable that the landowner should find it pleasant and desirable to believe that the existing order is necessary and unchangeable, because it is this very existing order that secures him the income from his hundreds and thousands of acres, by which he leads his accustomed, idle and luxurious life.

It is understandable too that the judge should readily believe in the necessity of the order by virtue of which he receives fifty times more than the most hardworking laborer. The same is understandable for the higher judge, who receives a salary of six thousand or more, and for all the higher officials. Only under this order can he, as a governor, a prosecutor, a senator, a member of various councils, receive his several thousand in salary, without which he and his family would perish at once, since outside the post he holds he could not, with his abilities, his industry and his knowledge, earn a thousandth part of what he receives. In the same position are the minister, and the sovereign, and every higher authority, with only this difference: that the higher they are and the more exceptional their position, the more necessary it is for them to believe that the existing order is the only possible order, since outside it they not only could not obtain an equal position but would have to fall lower than all other people. A man who has hired himself out as a policeman for ten rubles' wages, which he could easily earn in any other place, has little need of preserving the existing order, and so may even not believe in its unchangeableness. But a king or an emperor, who receives millions in his place, who knows that around him there are thousands of people wishing to push him off and take his place, who knows that in no other place will he receive such an income and such honor, and who knows in most cases, under a more or less despotic government, that if he is overthrown he will even be tried for everything he did while using his power: no king or emperor can help believing in the unchangeableness and sacredness of the existing order. The higher the position a man stands in, the more profitable it is and therefore the more unsteady, and the more terrible and dangerous the fall from it, the more the man who holds this position believes in the unchangeableness of the existing order; and so with all the easier a conscience can such a man do bad and cruel deeds, as though not for himself, but for the maintenance of this order.

Thus it is for all people in authority who hold positions more profitable than those they could hold without the existing order, from the lowest police officials up to the supreme power. All these people believe more or less in the unchangeableness of the existing order chiefly because it is profitable to them.

But what makes the peasants and the soldiers, who stand on the lowest rung of the ladder, who have no profit at all from the existing order, who are in a position of the very last subjection and humiliation, believe that the existing order, through which they find themselves in their unprofitable and humiliating position, is the very order that ought to be, and that must therefore be maintained, even by doing bad deeds against their conscience?

What makes these people reason so falsely, that the existing order is unchangeable and must therefore be maintained, when it is obvious that, on the contrary, it is unchangeable only because they themselves maintain it?

What makes men taken only yesterday from the plow, and dressed up in these ugly, indecent clothes with blue collars and gold buttons, go with rifles and sabers to murder their hungry fathers and brothers? These men have no advantages at all, and no danger of losing the position they hold, because their position is worse than the one they were taken from.

The people in authority from the upper classes, the landowners, merchants, judges, senators, governors, ministers, tsars and officers, take part in such deeds, maintaining the existing order, because this order is profitable to them. Besides, they, who are often good and gentle people, feel able to take part in such deeds also because their part is limited to instigations, decisions and orders. None of these people in authority do with their own hands what they provoke, decide on and order to be done. For the most part they do not even see how all the terrible deeds they have provoked and ordered are done.

But the unhappy people of the lower classes, who receive no profit from the existing order, who, on the contrary, are held in the greatest contempt because of this order: they are the ones who, to maintain this order so unprofitable to them, with their own hands tear people from their families, bind them, lock them up in prisons and penal servitude, guard them and shoot them. Why do they do it?

What makes these people believe that the existing order is unchangeable and that it must be maintained?

All violence rests, after all, only on them, on these people who with their own hands beat, bind, lock up and kill. If there were not these people, soldiers or police, armed men in general, ready at a command to do violence and to kill anyone they are told to, not one of the people who sign sentences of execution, of imprisonment for life and of penal servitude would ever bring himself to hang, lock up or torture a thousandth part of those whom he now calmly orders, sitting in his study, to be hanged and tortured in every way, only because he does not see it, and it is done not by him but by obedient executors somewhere far away.

All the injustices and cruelties that have become customary in our present life have become customary, after all, only because these people exist, always ready to uphold those injustices and cruelties. If these people did not exist, not only would there be no one to do violence to all the enormous masses of people who now suffer it, but those who give the orders would never dare to prescribe, would never dare even to dream of, what they now prescribe with such assurance. If there were not these people, ready at the will of those they obey to torture and to kill whomever they are told to, no one would ever dare to assert what all the landowners who do no work assert with such assurance: that the land around the peasants, who are dying for want of land, is the property of a man who does not work on it, and that stores of grain gathered by fraud must be kept intact in the midst of a population dying of hunger, because the merchant needs his profits, and so on. If it were not for these people, ready at the will of their superiors to torture and kill anyone they are told to, it could never have entered the landowner's head to take from the peasants a wood they had grown themselves, or the officials' heads to consider it lawful to draw their salaries, collected from a hungry people for oppressing them, to say nothing of executing, or locking up, or exiling people for refuting lies and preaching the truth. All of this is demanded and done only because all these people in authority are certain beyond doubt that they always have obedient people at hand, ready to carry out every one of their demands by means of torture and murder.

Such deeds as were done by every tyrant, from Napoleon down to the last company commander who fires into a crowd, are done only because the tyrant is stupefied by the power that stands behind him, made up of obedient people ready to carry out everything they are ordered to do. All the strength, then, is in the people who carry out the deeds of violence with their own hands: in the men who serve in the police, in the soldiers, above all in the soldiers, because the police do their work only when there are troops standing behind them.

What, then, has brought these good people, who have no profit from any of it, who are compelled to do all these terrible deeds with their own hands, and on whom the whole business depends, what has brought these good people into the astonishing delusion in which they have come to be certain that the existing order, unprofitable, ruinous and tormenting to them as it is, is the very order that ought to exist?

Who led them into this astonishing delusion?

Surely it was not they themselves who persuaded themselves that they must do what is not only tormenting, unprofitable and ruinous for them and for their whole class, which makes up nine-tenths of the whole population, but also contrary to their conscience.

"How can you kill people, when it is said in the law of God, Thou shalt not kill?" I have asked many different soldiers, and I always put the man I asked, by reminding him of what he would rather not think about, into an awkward and embarrassed position. He knew that there was a binding law of God, Thou shalt not kill, and he knew that there was binding military service, but he had never thought that there was a contradiction here. The sense of the timid answers I received to this question was always roughly that killing in war and the execution of criminals by order of the government are not included in the general prohibition of killing. But when I said that no such limitation is made in the law of God, and spoke of the Christian teaching, binding on all, of brotherhood, of forgiveness of injuries, of love, which could in no way be reconciled with killing, the men of the people usually agreed, but then put a question to me in their turn. How does it happen, they asked, that the government, which in their notion cannot be mistaken, directs the troops when it needs to, sending them to war, and directs the execution of criminals? And when I answered that the government, in directing such things, acts wrongly, the man I was talking with fell into still greater embarrassment, and either broke off the conversation or grew irritated with me.

"They must have found a law for it, then. The bishops, I reckon, know as much as we do," one Russian soldier said to me in reply. And having said it, the soldier evidently felt reassured, fully confident that his guides had found a law, the very one by which his forefathers had served, and tsars and the heirs of tsars serve, and millions of people, and he himself, and that what I had been telling him was some sort of trick or subtlety, like a riddle.

All the people of our Christian world know, know beyond doubt, from tradition, from revelation and from the indisputable voice of conscience, that murder is one of the most terrible crimes a man can commit, as the Gospel says too, and that this sin of murder cannot be limited to particular people, that is, that it cannot be a sin to kill some people and no sin to kill others. Everyone knows that if the sin of murder is a sin, it is always a sin, whoever it is committed upon, like the sin of adultery, of theft, or any other. And yet from childhood, from their earliest years, people see that murder is not only admitted but blessed by all those whom they are accustomed to revere as their spiritual guides, appointed by God; they see that their worldly guides institute murders with calm assurance, wear the weapons of murder on their persons and are proud of them, and demand from everyone, in the name of the civil law and even of the law of God, a share in murder. People see that there is some contradiction here, and, unable to untangle it, they involuntarily suppose that the contradiction comes only from their own ignorance. The very crudeness and obviousness of the contradiction confirms them in this belief. They cannot imagine that their teachers, learned men, could preach with such assurance two propositions that seem so opposed: that people are bound by the Christian law, and that they are bound to murder. A simple, unspoiled child, and then a youth, cannot imagine that people who stand so high in his opinion, whom he considers either holy or learned, could, for any purpose whatever, deceive him so shamelessly. Yet this is just what has been done to him, and is done to him without ceasing. It is done, first, by instilling into all working people, who have no time to examine moral and religious questions for themselves, from childhood to old age, by example and by direct instruction, that torture and murder are compatible with Christianity, and that for certain purposes of state, torture and murder not only may be permitted but must be used; and second, by instilling into some of them, chosen by levy, by military service or by hire, that to torture and murder with their own hands is a sacred duty, and even a valiant act, worthy of praise and reward.

The general deception, spread over all people, consists in this: that in all the catechisms, or the books that have replaced them and now serve for the compulsory instruction of children, it is said that violence, that is, torture, imprisonment and execution, as well as murder in civil or foreign war for the maintenance and defense of the existing order of the state (whatever it may be: autocracy, monarchy, Convention, Consulate, the empire of this Napoleon or that, or of Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, Commune or republic), is perfectly lawful and contrary neither to morality nor to Christianity.

This is said in all the catechisms, in all the books used in the schools. And people are so persuaded of it that they grow up, live and die in this belief without once doubting it.

That is one deception, the general one, practiced on all people. The other is a particular deception, practiced on the soldiers or police, chosen by one means or another, who carry out the torture and murder needed to maintain and defend the existing order.

In all military regulations it is said, in one set of words or another, what the Russian military regulations say in the following words (Article 87): "To carry out the orders of one's superiors exactly and without question means: to carry out exactly an order received from a superior, without considering whether it is good or not and whether it is possible to carry it out. The superior himself answers for the consequences of the order he has given." (Article 88): "A subordinate must not carry out the order of his superior only in the case when he clearly sees that by carrying out the order of his superior he…" You cannot help thinking it will say: when he clearly sees that by carrying out the order of his superior he is breaking the law of God. Not a bit of it: "if he clearly sees that he is violating his oath, and his fidelity, and his service to the sovereign."

It is said that a man, being a soldier, can and must carry out all the orders of his superior without exception, orders that for a soldier consist above all in killing, and consequently can and must break all the laws of God and man, but only not his fidelity and service to whoever happens at a given moment to be in possession of power.

That is what the Russian military regulations say, and exactly the same, though in other words, is said in all military regulations; nor can it be otherwise, because the whole might of the army and the state rests, in essence, on this deception: on freeing people from obedience to God, or to their own conscience, and putting in the place of that obedience obedience to whatever superior happens to be over them.

This, then, is what the strange certainty of the lower classes rests on: their certainty that the existing order, ruinous to them as it is, is the very one that ought to be, and that they must therefore uphold it by torture and murder.

This certainty rests on a conscious deception practiced on them by the upper classes.

Nor can it be otherwise. To make the lower classes, the most numerous classes of people, oppress and torment themselves, committing in the process acts contrary to their conscience, it was necessary to deceive these lower, most numerous classes. And that is just what has been done.

The other day I again saw this shameless deception practiced openly, and again I marveled at how unhindered and how brazen it is.

At the beginning of November, driving through Tula, I again saw at the gates of the building of the zemstvo board, the elected council that runs the district's local affairs, the dense crowd of people I knew well, from which came drunken voices together with the piteous wailing of mothers and wives. It was the recruiting levy.

As always, I could not drive past this spectacle; it draws me to it by some evil spell. Again I went into the crowd, stood, watched, asked questions, and marveled at how unhindered this most terrible of crimes is committed in broad daylight in a large town.

As in all former years, by the first of November, in every village and hamlet of a Russia of a hundred million, the village elders had picked out from their lists the lads assigned, often their own sons, and carried them off to town.

On the road there was unrestrained drunkenness, which the elders did not hinder, feeling that to go to so senseless a business as the one these lads were going to, leaving wives and mothers, renouncing everything holy, only to become someone's senseless instruments of murder, is too tormenting unless one has fuddled oneself with drink.

And on they rode, drinking, swearing, singing, fighting, maiming themselves. They spent the night at the inns. In the morning they drank again to cure their hangovers and gathered at the zemstvo board.

Some of them, in new sheepskin coats, with knitted scarves around their necks, with moist drunken eyes, or with wild shouts to keep their spirits up, or quiet and dejected, push and jostle about the gates among their tear-stained mothers and wives, waiting their turn (I had come on the very day of the reception proper, that is, the examination of those assigned to the call-up); meanwhile another part of them crowd the anteroom of the recruiting board.

Inside the recruiting board the work goes on in haste. The door opens, and the watchman calls Pyotr Sidorov. Pyotr Sidorov starts, crosses himself, and goes into a little room with a glass door. In this little room those called up undress. A comrade of Pyotr Sidorov's, a recruit just accepted, who has come out of the board room naked, is hurriedly dressing, his jaw trembling. Pyotr Sidorov has already heard, and sees by his face, that he has been accepted. Pyotr Sidorov wants to ask him something, but they hurry him and tell him to undress quickly. He throws off his sheepskin, pulls off his boots one foot against the other, takes off his waistcoat, drags his shirt over his head, and, his ribs sticking out, naked, his body shivering, smelling of drink, tobacco and sweat, goes barefoot into the board room, not knowing what to do with his bare, sinewy arms.

In the board room, in full view, hangs a portrait of the sovereign in a large gilt frame, in uniform with a sash, and in the corner a little portrait of Christ in a shirt and a crown of thorns. In the middle of the room stands a table covered with green baize, on which papers are laid out, and on which stands a little three-sided thing with an eagle on it, called the zertsalo. Around the table, with an assured and calm air, sit the officials. One is smoking, another leafing through papers. As soon as Sidorov comes in, the watchman goes up to him, and they stand him under the measuring rod, push his chin up, set his feet straight. A man with a cigarette comes up, the doctor, and, without looking at the recruit's face but somewhere past it, touches his body with distaste, and measures, and feels, and tells the watchman to open his mouth, tells him to breathe, to say something. Someone writes something down. At last, without once looking him in the eye, the doctor says, "Fit! Next!" and with a weary air sits down at the table again. Again soldiers push the lad and hurry him. Somehow, in haste, he pulls on his shirt, missing the sleeves, somehow wraps up his trousers and foot cloths, puts on his boots, looks for his scarf and cap, grabs his sheepskin in an armful, and he is led out into the hall, where he is fenced off by a bench. Behind this bench wait those accepted. A young village lad just like him, but from a distant province, already a finished soldier with a rifle and a sharp bayonet fixed, keeps guard over him, ready to run him through if he should take it into his head to run away.

Meanwhile the crowd of fathers, mothers and wives, pushed about by policemen, presses at the gates, finding out whose man has been accepted and whose has not. One of the rejected comes out and announces that Petrukha has been taken, and the shriek of Petrukha's young wife rings out: for her this word "taken" means a separation of four or five years, and the life of a soldier's wife, as a cook, in debauchery.

But now a man with long hair, in a peculiar dress that sets him apart from everyone else, has driven up the street, and, getting down from his droshky, approaches the zemstvo building. The policemen clear a way for him through the crowd. "The 'Father' has come to swear them in." And this "Father," who has been assured that he is a special, exceptional servant of Christ, and who for the most part does not himself see the deception he is under, goes into the room where the accepted men are waiting, puts on a brocade curtain, freeing his long hair from behind it, opens the very Gospel in which the oath is forbidden, takes the cross, the very cross on which Christ was crucified because he would not do what this supposed servant of his is telling people to do, lays them on the lectern, and all these unhappy, defenseless and deceived lads repeat after him the lie that he pronounces boldly and from habit. He reads, and they repeat: "I promise and swear by Almighty God, before his holy Gospel…" and so on, to defend, that is, to kill everyone I am told to kill, and to do everything I am told to do by people I do not know, who need me only to commit the crimes by which they keep themselves in their position and by which they oppress my brothers. All the accepted lads senselessly repeat these savage words, and the so-called "Father" drives away with the consciousness of having correctly and conscientiously done his duty; and all these deceived lads believe that those absurd words they have just spoken, which they do not understand, have now, for the whole time of their soldiering, freed them from their human duties and bound them with new soldier's duties, more binding still.

And this is done in public, and no one will cry out to the deceivers and the deceived: "Come to your senses and go home. This is all the vilest and most insidious lie, which ruins not only your bodies but your souls."

No one does it. On the contrary, when they have all been accepted and the time has come to let them out, the district military commander, as though in mockery of them, comes with assured and majestic manners into the hall where the deceived, drunken lads are shut up, and boldly, in military fashion, shouts at them: "Good health to you, lads! I congratulate you on entering the tsar's service!" And the poor fellows (someone has already taught them) babble something in an unaccustomed, half-drunken tongue, to the effect that they are glad of it.

Meanwhile the crowd of fathers, mothers and wives stands at the doors and waits. The women look at the door with tear-stained, fixed eyes. And now it opens, and out come the accepted recruits, staggering, their heads swimming, Petrukha and Vanyukha and Makar, trying not to look at their own people and not to see them. The wailing of mothers and wives breaks out. Some embrace and weep, others put on a brave face, others give comfort. Mothers and wives, knowing that they are now left orphans for three, four, five years, without a breadwinner, wail and keen aloud. The fathers say little; they only click their tongues in pity and sigh, knowing that now they will not see the helpers they reared and trained, and that what will come back to them will not be the quiet, hardworking farmers these lads were, but for the most part corrupted soldier dandies who have lost the habit of a simple life.

And now the whole crowd settles into the sledges and moves off down the street to the inns and taverns, and louder still, all together, interrupting one another, ring out the songs, the sobbing, the drunken shouts, the keening of mothers and wives, the sounds of the accordion and the oaths. They all go off to the pothouses and taverns, whose revenue goes to the government, and the drinking begins that drowns in them their felt awareness of the lawlessness of what is being done to them.

For two or three weeks they live at home, and for the most part make merry, that is, drink.

At the appointed time they are collected, driven like cattle to one place, and set to learning soldiers' drill and exercises. They are taught by people just like themselves, only deceived and brutalized earlier, two or three years before. The means of instruction: deceptions, stupefaction, kicks, vodka. And not a year passes before lads who were sound of soul, intelligent and kind have become creatures as savage as their teachers.

"Well, and if the prisoner is your father, and he runs?" I asked one young soldier.

"I can run him through with the bayonet," he answered in the peculiar, senseless voice of a soldier. "And if he 'makes off,' I'm bound to shoot," he added, obviously proud that he knew what had to be done when his father began to make off.

And when he, a good young man, has been brought to this state, lower than a beast's, he is what is needed by those who use him as an instrument of violence. He is ready: a man has been destroyed, and a new instrument of violence has been made.

And all this is done every year, every autumn, everywhere, all over Russia, in broad daylight and in large towns, in full view of everyone; and the deception is so skillful, so cunning, that everyone sees it, knows in the depths of his soul all its vileness and all its terrible consequences, and cannot free himself from it.

Once one's eyes are opened to this terrible deception practiced on people, one marvels: how can preachers of the Christian religion and of morality, educators of the young, simply good and reasonable parents, such as are always to be found in every society, preach any moral teaching whatever in a society in which it is openly acknowledged by all the churches and governments that torture and murder are a necessary condition of the life of all people, that among all people there must always be special people ready to kill their brothers, and that any one of us may be such a person?

How can one teach children and youths, how can one enlighten people at all, to say nothing of enlightening them in the spirit of Christianity, how can one teach children, youths, people in general, any morality whatever, side by side with the teaching that murder is necessary for maintaining the general welfare, and consequently our own, and is therefore lawful, and that there are people, and any one of us may be among them, who are obliged to torture and kill their neighbors and to commit every kind of crime at the will of those who hold power in their hands? If one may and must torture and kill and commit every kind of crime at the will of those who hold power, then there is not and cannot be any moral teaching at all, but only the right of the strongest. And that is just how it is. In essence such a teaching, justified for some in theory by the theory of the struggle for existence, reigns in our society.

And indeed, what moral teaching can there be under which killing may be admitted for any purpose whatever? It is as impossible as a mathematical teaching under which it may be admitted that 2 equals 3.

Admit that 2 equals 3 and there may be a semblance of mathematics, but there can be no real mathematical knowledge. And admit killing, in the form of execution, war or self-defense, and there may be only a semblance of morality, but no real morality at all. The recognition that the life of every man is sacred is the first and only foundation of all morality.

The teaching of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life, was abolished by Christianity for the very reason that it is only a justification of immorality, only a semblance of justice, and has no meaning whatever. Life is a quantity that has neither weight nor measure and cannot be equated with any other; and therefore to destroy a life for a life has no meaning. Besides, every social law is a law whose aim is to improve the life of people. How can destroying the life of some people improve the life of people? The destruction of life is not an act that improves life; it is an act of suicide.

To destroy another's life for the sake of justice is like what a man would do if, to remedy the misfortune of having lost one arm, he cut off the other too, for the sake of justice.

But not to speak of the sin of deception, by which the most terrible crime is made to seem to people their duty; not to speak of the terrible sin of using the name and authority of Christ to sanction the very deed this Christ most condemned, as is done in the oath; not to speak of the temptation by which not only the bodies but the souls of "these little ones" are ruined; not to speak of all this, how can people, even for the sake of their personal safety, allow to be formed in their midst, people who prize their forms of life and their progress as they do, this terrible, senseless, cruel and ruinous force that every organized government resting on an army constitutes? The cruelest, most terrible band of robbers is not so dreadful as such an organization of the state. Every robber chief is still limited by the fact that the men who make up his band keep at least a share of human freedom and can refuse to commit deeds contrary to their conscience. But for the people who form part of a regularly organized government with an army, under the discipline to which it has now been brought, for such people there are no barriers at all. There is no horrifying crime that the people who form part of the government and the army would not commit at the will of whoever may happen (a Boulanger, a Pugachev, a Napoleon) to come to stand at their head.

Often, when one sees not only the recruiting levies, the drill of the troops, the maneuvers, but policemen with loaded revolvers, sentries standing with rifles and fixed bayonets; when one hears (as I hear in Khamovniki, the part of Moscow where I live) all day long the whistle and the slap of bullets striking the target; and when one sees, in the middle of a city where every attempt to take the law into one's own hands, every act of violence, is forbidden, where the sale of gunpowder and of medicines is not permitted, nor fast driving, nor medical practice without a diploma, and so on, when one sees in that same city thousands of disciplined men taught to kill and subject to one man, one asks oneself: how can people who prize their own safety calmly permit and put up with this? To say nothing of the harm and the immorality of it, nothing can be more dangerous than this. What are they all looking at? Leave aside Christians and Christian pastors: what are all the lovers of mankind, all the moralists, all the people who prize even only their own life, safety and well-being, looking at? This organization, after all, will act just the same whoever's hands it is in. Today this power, let us suppose, is in the hands of a tolerable ruler; but tomorrow it may be seized by a Biron, Empress Anna's dreaded favorite, by an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pugachev, a Napoleon the First or the Third. And even the man who holds the power, tolerable today, may become a beast tomorrow, or his place may be taken by a mad or half-mad heir, like the king of Bavaria, or Paul.

And not only the highest rulers. All the little satraps spread everywhere, the various Baranovs among our governors, the chiefs of police, even the stanovois, the company commanders, the village constables, may commit terrible atrocities before anyone has time to remove them, as indeed happens all the time.

One asks oneself involuntarily: how do people permit this, not for the sake of high considerations of government, but for the sake of their own safety?

The answer to this question is that not all people permit it (some, the greater part of people, deceived and subjected, cannot help permitting anything whatever); it is permitted by those people who hold an advantageous position in society only under such an organization. They permit it because for these people the risk of suffering from a mad or cruel man's coming to stand at the head of the government or the army is always smaller than the disadvantages they would be exposed to if the organization itself were destroyed.

The judge, the policeman, the governor, the officer will keep his position equally under Boulanger or a republic, under Pugachev or Catherine. But he will certainly lose his position if the existing order, which secures him his advantageous position, falls apart. And so none of these people is afraid of whoever may stand at the head of the organization of violence; they will accommodate themselves to anyone; they fear only the destruction of the organization itself, and so they always, often even unconsciously, uphold it.

One often marvels that free people, under no compulsion whatever, the so-called flower of society, enter military service in Russia, in England, Germany, Austria, even France, and seek the chance of becoming murderers! Why do parents, moral people, send their children to schools that prepare them for the military profession? Why do mothers buy their children shakos, guns and sabers as favorite toys? (Peasant children never play at soldiers.) Why do good men, and even women, who have nothing to do with the military profession, go into raptures over the various exploits of a Skobelev and others, and zealously sing their praises? Why do people who are under no compulsion and receive no salary for it, like the marshals of the nobility in Russia, devote whole months of assiduous labor to the physically heavy and morally most tormenting business of receiving recruits? Why do all the emperors and kings go about in military dress? Why do they hold maneuvers and parades, hand out awards to the military, put up monuments to generals and conquerors? Why do free and rich people consider it an honor to take lackeys' posts with crowned heads, abase themselves, flatter them and pretend that they believe in the special greatness of these persons? Why do people who have long ceased to believe in the medieval superstitions of the Church, and cannot believe in them, seriously and unswervingly pretend to believe, upholding a corrupting and blasphemous religious institution? Why is the ignorance of the people guarded with such zeal, not only by governments but by free people of the upper classes? Why do they attack with such fury every attempt to destroy religious superstitions, and every attempt at the true enlightenment of the people? Why do people, historians, novelists, poets, who can no longer get anything for their flattery, paint as heroes emperors, kings or commanders long dead? Why do people who call themselves learned devote whole lives to composing theories from which it would follow that the violence done by power to the people is not violence but some special right?

One often marvels: why, for what earthly reason, should a society woman or an artist, who would seem to have no interest in either social or military questions, condemn workers' strikes and preach war, and always attack the one side and defend the other so definitely?

But one marvels at all this only until one understands that it is done only because all the people of the ruling classes always feel instinctively what upholds and what destroys the organization under which they can enjoy the privileges they enjoy.

The society lady has not reasoned that if there are no capitalists, and no troops to defend them, her husband will have no money, and she will have no salon and no gowns; and the artist has not reasoned in the same way that he needs capitalists defended by troops so that there may be someone to buy his pictures; but instinct, which in this case takes the place of reasoning, guides them unerringly. And exactly the same instinct guides, with few exceptions, all the people who uphold all those political, religious and economic institutions that are advantageous to them.

But can the people of the upper classes really uphold this order of things only because it is advantageous to them? These people cannot fail to see that this order of things is in itself unreasonable, no longer corresponds to the level of people's consciousness, or even to public opinion, and is full of dangers. The people of the ruling classes, the honest, good and intelligent among them, cannot fail to suffer from these inner contradictions, and cannot fail to see the dangers with which this order threatens them. And can the people of the lower classes, all the millions of them, really commit with a calm spirit all the plainly evil deeds, the tortures and murders, that they are compelled to commit, only because they fear punishment? And indeed this could not be; neither the one nor the other could fail to see the unreasonableness of what they do, if a peculiarity of the organization of the state did not hide from both the whole unnaturalness and unreasonableness of the deeds they commit.

This unreasonableness is hidden by the fact that in the doing of each such deed there are so many instigators, accomplices and abettors that not one of those taking part in it feels himself morally responsible for it.

Murderers make everyone present at a murder strike the victim already dead, so that the responsibility may be shared among the greatest possible number of people. This same thing, having taken definite forms, has become established in the organization of the state as well, in the commission of all those crimes without whose constant commission no organization of the state is conceivable. The rulers of states always strive to draw the greatest possible number of citizens into the greatest possible share in all the crimes they commit and need.

In recent times this has found particularly vivid expression in drawing citizens into the courts as jurors, into the armies as soldiers, and into local government and the legislative assembly as electors and representatives.

Through the organization of the state, in which, as in a basket woven of twigs, all the ends are so hidden that one cannot find them, responsibility for the crimes committed is so concealed from people that people, committing the most terrible deeds, do not see their responsibility for them.

In the old days tyrants were blamed for atrocities; but in our time the most terrible crimes are committed, crimes unthinkable under the Neros, and there is no one to blame.

Some demanded, others decided, still others confirmed, a fourth set proposed, a fifth reported, a sixth prescribed, a seventh carried out. They will kill, hang, flog to death women, old men, the innocent, as was done here in Russia not long ago at the Yuzovka ironworks, and as is done everywhere in Europe and America in the struggle with the anarchists and all kinds of violators of the existing order; they will shoot, kill, hang hundreds, thousands of people; or, as is done in wars, they will kill and destroy millions of people; or, as is done constantly, they ruin people's souls in solitary confinement and in the corrupted state of soldiering; and no one is to blame.

On the lowest rung of the social ladder, soldiers with rifles, pistols and sabers torture and kill people, and by these same tortures and murders compel people to become soldiers, and are fully certain that the responsibility for these acts has been taken off them by the superiors who order them to do these things.

On the highest rung, tsars, presidents, ministers, parliaments order these tortures and murders and the enlistment of soldiers, and are fully certain that, since they have either been put in their place by God, or the society they govern demands of them the very thing they order, they cannot be to blame.

In the middle, between the one and the other, are the intermediate persons, who direct the tortures and murders and the enlistment of soldiers, and are fully certain that the responsibility has been taken off them partly by the orders from above, partly by the fact that these very directions are demanded of them by all who stand on the lower rungs.

The power that orders and the power that executes, lying at the two extremes of the organization of the state, meet like two ends joined in a ring, and each conditions and upholds the other and all the intermediate links.

Without the conviction that there is a person, or persons, who take upon themselves the whole responsibility for the deeds done, not one soldier could raise his hand to torture or kill. Without the conviction that the whole people demands it, no emperor, king or president, no assembly, could ever order these same tortures and murders. Without the conviction that there are persons standing above him who take upon themselves the responsibility for his act, and people standing below him who demand for their own good that such deeds be done, not one of the people on the rungs between the ruler and the soldier could do the deeds he does.

The organization of the state is such that, whatever rung of the social ladder a man stands on, the degree of his irresponsibility is always the same: the higher he stands on the social ladder, the more he is subject to the pressure of demands for orders from below, and the less he is subject to the pressure of orders from above; and the other way round.

Thus, in the case I had before me, each of the people taking part in the business was the more under the pressure, from below, of demands for orders, and the less under the pressure of commands from above, the higher his position was; and the other way round.

But it is not enough that all the people bound together by the organization of the state shift onto one another the responsibility for the deeds they commit: the peasant taken as a soldier onto the nobleman or merchant who has become an officer; the officer onto the nobleman who holds the post of governor; the governor onto the son of an official or nobleman who holds the post of minister; the minister onto the member of the royal house who holds the post of tsar; and the tsar, again, onto all these officials, noblemen, merchants and peasants. It is not enough that by this means people rid themselves of the consciousness of responsibility for the deeds they commit. They lose the moral consciousness of their responsibility for another reason too: in combining into the organization of the state, they so long, so constantly and so strenuously assure themselves and others that they are not all equal people, but people who differ from one another "as one star differeth from another star", that they begin sincerely to believe it. Thus some people are assured that they are not simple people, equal to others, but special people, who must be especially exalted; while into others it is instilled by every means that they are lower than all other people and must therefore submit without a murmur to whatever their superiors prescribe.

It is on this inequality, on the exalting of some people and the abasing of others, that there chiefly rests people's capacity not to see the unreasonableness of the existing order of life, its cruelty and its criminality, and the deception that some practice and others undergo.

Some, those into whom it has been instilled that they are invested with a special, supernatural importance and greatness, are so intoxicated by this imagined greatness of theirs that they cease to see their responsibility for the deeds they commit. Others, those into whom, on the contrary, it is instilled that they are insignificant creatures who must obey their superiors in everything, fall, from this constant state of humiliation, into a strange state of the intoxication of servility, and under the influence of this intoxication they too fail to see the meaning of their acts and lose the consciousness of responsibility for them. And the people in the middle, partly submitting to those above them, partly considering themselves above others, fall at once under the intoxication both of power and of servility, and so lose the consciousness of their responsibility.

One need only look, in any nation, at a high commander intoxicated with greatness, accompanied by his staff, all of them on magnificent, richly caparisoned horses, in special uniforms and decorations, as he rides, to the sound of harmonious and solemn music of trumpets, past the front of soldiers frozen with servility and presenting arms: one need only look at this to understand that at such moments, in this highest state of intoxication, the high commander and the soldier and all those between them are equally capable of committing acts they would never think of committing in other circumstances.

But the intoxication people feel at such events as parades, royal processions, church festivals and coronations is a temporary and acute state. There are other states of intoxication, chronic and constant, which are felt alike by people who hold any power at all, from the power of the tsar to that of the policeman standing in the street, and by people who submit to power and are in a state of intoxication with servility, and who, to justify this state of theirs, always ascribe, as all slaves have done and still do, the greatest importance and dignity to those whom they obey.

It is on this deception of the inequality of people, and the intoxication of power and of servility that flows from it, that there chiefly rests the capacity of people combined into the organization of the state to commit, without feeling the reproaches of conscience, deeds contrary to it.

Under the influence of such intoxication, alike of power and of servility, people appear to themselves and to others no longer as what they are in reality, human beings, but as special, conventional creatures: noblemen, merchants, governors, judges, officers, tsars, ministers, soldiers, who are subject no longer to ordinary human duties, but first of all, and in preference to human duties, to the duties of a nobleman, a merchant, a governor, a judge, an officer, a tsar, a minister, a soldier.

Thus the landowner who went to law over the wood did what he did only because he did not appear to himself as a simple human being, with the same rights to life as all those people, the peasants living beside him, but appeared to himself as a large proprietor and a member of the noble estate, and as a result, under the influence of the intoxication of power, felt himself insulted by the peasants' claims. Only for this reason, regardless of the consequences his demand might have, did he send in his petition for the restoration of his supposed right.

In just the same way the judges who wrongly awarded the wood to the landowner did what they did only because they appear to themselves not simply as people like all others, and therefore obliged in every matter to be guided only by what they consider the truth, but, under the intoxication of power, as guardians of justice who cannot err, and, under the influence of the intoxication of servility as well, as people obliged to carry out certain words written in a certain book and called the law. All the other participants in this business, too, under the influence of the intoxication of power or of servility, appear to people and to themselves as just such conventional persons, and not as what they really are: from the tsar who signed his consent to the report of the minister, and the marshal of the nobility who took the soldiers in the recruiting levy, and the priest who deceived them, down to the last soldier now preparing to shoot at his brothers. All of them did what they did, and are preparing to do what lies before them, only because they appear to themselves and to others not as what they are in reality, human beings faced with the question whether or not to take part in a bad deed condemned by their conscience, but as various conventional persons: one as the Lord's anointed tsar, a special being called to care for the good of a hundred million people; another as the representative of the nobility; another as a priest who has received special grace through his ordination; another as a soldier obliged by his oath to carry out without reasoning everything he is ordered to do.

Only under the influence of the intoxication of power and of servility that flows from their imagined positions could all these people have done, and can they still do, what they do.

If all these people did not hold the firm conviction that the ranks of tsars, ministers, governors, judges, noblemen, landowners, marshals of the nobility, officers and soldiers are something really existing and very important, not one of them would think without horror and disgust of taking part in such deeds as they now do.

Conventional positions established hundreds of years ago, acknowledged for centuries and acknowledged now by everyone around, marked by special names and special dress, and confirmed besides by every kind of solemnity, by working on the outward senses, are so instilled into people that they forget the ordinary conditions of life common to all, begin to look at themselves and at all people only from this conventional point of view, and are guided only by this conventional point of view in judging their own acts and those of others.

Thus a man perfectly sound in mind, and already old, merely because some bauble or fool's costume has been put on him, keys on his backside or a blue ribbon fit only for a little girl dressing up, and because he has been told at the same time that he is a general, a chamberlain, a Knight of St. Andrew, or some such nonsense, suddenly becomes self-assured, proud and even happy because of it; or, the other way round, because he loses or fails to receive the bauble and title he expected, he becomes sad and unhappy, so much so that he even falls ill. Or, more striking still, a young man, free and even well provided for, perfectly sound in mind in every other respect, merely because he has called himself and been called an examining magistrate or a land captain, seizes an unhappy widow from her little children and locks her up, or has her locked up, in prison, leaving her children without a mother, and all because this unhappy woman secretly sold vodka and so deprived the treasury of twenty-five rubles of revenue; and he feels not the slightest remorse in doing it. Or, more astonishing still, a man reasonable and gentle in other respects, merely because a badge or a uniform has been put on him and he has been told that he is a watchman or a customs guard, begins to fire bullets at people; and neither he nor those around him think him guilty for it, but would think him guilty if he did not fire. I say nothing of the judges and jurors who sentence people to execution, and of the military men who kill thousands without the slightest remorse, only because it has been instilled into them that they are not simply human beings but jurors, judges, generals, soldiers.

This constant, unnatural and strange condition of people in the life of the state is usually expressed in words like these: "As a man, I pity him; but as a watchman, a judge, a general, a governor, a tsar, a soldier, I must kill or torture him." As though there could be any position, given or recognized by people, that could abolish the duties laid on each of us by the position of a human being.

Thus, for example, in the present case people are on their way to murder and torture hungry people, and they admit that in the dispute between the peasants and the landowner the peasants are in the right (all the officials told me so). They know that the peasants are unhappy, poor and hungry; the landowner is rich and inspires no sympathy; and all these people are on their way nonetheless to kill peasants in order to get three thousand rubles for the landowner by it, only because at this moment these people imagine themselves to be not human beings but one a governor, another an official, another a general of the gendarmes, another an officer, another a soldier, and consider binding on themselves not the eternal demands of a man's conscience but the chance, temporary demands of their positions as officers and soldiers.

Strange as it is to say, the only explanation of this astonishing phenomenon is that these people are in the same state as those hypnotized people who, we are told, are ordered to imagine or feel themselves in certain conventional positions and to act as the creatures they represent would act: as, for example, when it is suggested to a hypnotized person that he is lame, and he begins to limp; that he is blind, and he does not see; that he is a beast, and he begins to bite. Not only the people riding in this train are in such a state, but all people who carry out their social and political duties in preference to their human duties and to the detriment of them.

The essence of this state is that people, under the influence of one idea suggested to them, are unable to weigh their acts, and therefore do without reasoning everything that is prescribed to them in accordance with the suggested idea, and everything they are led to by example, by advice or by a hint.

The difference between those hypnotized by artificial means and those who are under the influence of the suggestion of the state is this: to the artificially hypnotized their imagined position is suggested suddenly, by one person, and in the shortest interval of time, and so the suggestion appears to us in a sharp form that astonishes us; whereas to people acting under the suggestion of the state their imagined position is suggested gradually, little by little, imperceptibly, from childhood, sometimes not over years only but over whole generations, and, besides, it is suggested not by one person but by everyone around them.

"But," it will be said in reply, "in all societies the majority of people, all children, all women absorbed in the labor of bearing, giving birth to and nursing children, all the enormous masses of working people, placed under the necessity of strenuous and unceasing physical labor, all those weak in spirit by nature, all abnormal people whose spiritual activity has been weakened by poisoning with nicotine, alcohol and opium, or by other causes, all these people are always in the position of being unable to think for themselves, and so they submit either to those who stand on a higher level of rational consciousness, or to the traditions of family or state, to what is called public opinion; and in this submission there is nothing unnatural or contradictory."

And indeed there is nothing unnatural in it. The capacity of people who think little to submit to the guidance of people who stand on a higher level of consciousness is a permanent property of human beings: the property by virtue of which people, submitting to the same rational principles, can live in societies. Some, the minority, submit to the same rational principles consciously, because those principles agree with the demands of their reason; others, the majority, submit to the same principles unconsciously, only because these demands have become public opinion. Such submission of people who think little to public opinion presents nothing unnatural so long as public opinion is not split in two.

But there are times when a higher level of consciousness of truth than the former one, revealed at first to a few people, passes steadily from one to another and takes hold of so great a number of people that the former public opinion, founded on a lower level of consciousness, begins to waver, and the new one is ready to be established but is not yet established. There are such times, like spring, when the old public opinion has not yet been destroyed and the new one not yet established, when people are already beginning to weigh their own acts and those of others on the basis of the new consciousness, while in their lives, from inertia, from tradition, they go on submitting to principles that were the highest level of rational consciousness only in former times, but that are now plainly in contradiction with it. And then people, feeling on the one hand the necessity of submitting to the new public opinion, and on the other not daring to depart from the old, find themselves in an unnatural, wavering state. And it is in such a state, in relation to the truths of Christianity, that not only the people of this train but the majority of the people of our time find themselves.

The people of the upper classes, who enjoy exceptionally advantageous positions, and the people of the lower classes, who obey without question whatever is prescribed to them, are alike in this state.

The first, the people of the ruling classes, no longer having any rational explanation of the advantageous positions they hold, are placed under the necessity, in order to keep these positions, of suppressing in themselves their higher, rational, loving faculties, and of suggesting to themselves the necessity of their exceptional position. The others, the lower classes, crushed by labor and deliberately stupefied, are in a constant state of suggestion, practiced on them unswervingly and constantly by the people of the upper classes.

Only by this can one explain the astonishing phenomena that fill our life, of which a striking example appeared to me in those good, quiet people I had met on the ninth of September, people I knew, who were riding with a calm spirit to commit the most brutal, senseless and base of crimes. If the conscience in these people had not been lulled to sleep by some means or other, not one of them could have done a hundredth part of what they are preparing to do, and, very possibly, will do.

It is not that there is no conscience in them forbidding them to do what they are preparing to do, as there was no such conscience in people even four hundred, three hundred, two hundred, a hundred years ago, people who burned others at the stake, tortured them and flogged them to death. The conscience is there in all these people; only it has been lulled to sleep in them: in some, in those in authority, those who are in exceptionally advantageous positions, by self-suggestion, as the psychiatrists call it; in others, in the executors, the soldiers, by direct, conscious suggestion, by hypnotizing practiced by the upper classes.

Conscience is lulled to sleep in these people, but it is there in them, and through the self-suggestion and suggestion that possess them it already speaks in them, and may at any moment awaken.

All these people are in a position like that of a hypnotized man who had been given the suggestion, and the order, to commit a deed contrary to everything he considers reasonable and good: to kill his mother or his child. The hypnotized man feels himself bound by the suggestion laid upon him; it seems to him that he cannot stop; but at the same time, the nearer he comes to the time and place of committing the act, the more strongly the stifled voice of conscience rises in him, and the more and more he begins to resist, to writhe, and wants to awaken. And no one can say in advance whether he will or will not commit the act suggested to him, which will gain the upper hand, the rational consciousness or the irrational suggestion. Everything depends on the relative strength of the one and the other.

Exactly the same is happening now in the people of this train, and in general in all people who in our time commit the violence of the state and profit by it.

There was a time when people who set out to torture and kill, to make an example, did not come back without having done the deed they set out for; and having done such a deed, they were not tormented by remorse and doubt, but, having flogged people to death, calmly went back to their families and caressed their children, joked, laughed and gave themselves up to quiet family pleasures. In those days it never entered the heads of those who profited by this violence, the landowners and the rich, that the advantages they enjoyed had any direct connection with these cruelties. But now it is different. People know already, or are close to knowing, what they are doing and why they are doing what they do. They can shut their eyes, they can make their conscience lie idle; but with eyes not shut and conscience not stifled they can no longer fail to see the meaning these deeds have, neither those who commit them nor those who profit by them. It happens that people understand the meaning of what they have done only after the deed is done; it happens too that they understand it just before doing it. Thus the people who directed the tortures in Nizhny Novgorod, Saratov, Oryol and at the Yuzovka works understood the meaning of what they had done only after the deed was done, and are now tormented with shame before public opinion and before their own conscience. Those who gave the orders and those who carried them out are tormented alike. I have talked with soldiers who carried out such deeds, and they always studiously turned the conversation away from it; and when they did speak of it, they spoke with bewilderment and horror. And there are cases when people come to their senses just before the deed is done. Thus I know of the case of a sergeant major who was beaten by two peasants during a pacification and sent in a report about it, but who on the next day, when he saw the tortures inflicted on other peasants, begged his company commander to tear up the report and let the peasants who had beaten him go. I know of a case when soldiers ordered to shoot refused to obey; and I know of many cases when men in authority refused to direct tortures and killings. Thus the people who institute violence and those who commit it sometimes come to their senses long before committing the deed suggested to them, sometimes just before committing it, and sometimes after.

The people riding in this train set out to torture and kill their brothers, but no one knows whether they will or will not do what they are going to do. However hidden from each of them his responsibility in this business may be, however strong in all these people the suggestion may be that they are not human beings but governors, ispravniks, officers, soldiers, and that as such creatures they may break their human duties, the nearer they come to their destination, the more strongly the doubt will rise in them whether they ought to do the deed they are going to do; and this doubt will reach its highest pitch when they come to the very moment of carrying it out.

The governor, in spite of all the intoxicating fumes of his surroundings, cannot help stopping to think at the moment when he has to give the last, decisive order to kill or torture. He knows that the affair of the governor of Oryol provoked the indignation of the best people in society, and he himself, under the influence of the public opinion of the circles he moves in, has more than once expressed his disapproval of it. He knows that the prosecutor who was supposed to come flatly refused to take part in the business, because he considers it shameful. He knows too that changes may take place in the government any day, as a result of which what won men promotion yesterday may tomorrow become the cause of disgrace. He knows that there is a press, if not the Russian then the foreign press, which may describe this business and disgrace him forever. He already scents the new public opinion that is repealing what the old one demanded. Besides, he cannot be perfectly sure whether those who are to carry out his orders will obey him at the last moment. He wavers, and no one can foretell what he will do.

All the officials and officers traveling with him feel the same, to a greater or lesser degree. All of them know in the depths of their souls that the business being done is shameful, that taking part in it lowers and soils a man in the eyes of certain people whose opinion they already value. They know that it is shameful to go to one's fiancée, or to a woman one is flirting with, after murdering or torturing defenseless people. And besides, like the governor, they are not sure whether the soldiers will certainly obey them. And however little this may seem to go with the assured air with which all these men in authority now move about the station and the platform, all of them in the depths of their souls not only suffer but waver. It is even to hide this inner wavering that they put on this self-assured tone. And this feeling grows as they draw nearer the scene of action.

And however imperceptible it may be, and however strange to say, the whole mass of young lads, the soldiers, who seem so submissive, are in the same position.

They are none of them soldiers such as there used to be, men who had renounced a natural, working life and devoted their lives exclusively to carousing, plunder and murder, like some Roman legionaries, or the soldiers of the Thirty Years' War, or even the soldiers of not long ago who served twenty-five years. They are now for the most part men lately taken from their families, still full of memories of the good, natural and reasonable life from which they were taken.

All these lads, peasant lads for the most part, know what business they are going on; they know that the landowners always wrong their brothers, the peasants, and that therefore it must be the same in this business too. Besides, more than half of these men already read books, and not all of them books that glorify the military profession: there are also books that prove its immorality. Among them there often serve freethinking comrades, volunteers, and young liberal officers like them, and among them the seed of doubt has already been sown about the unconditional lawfulness and valor of what they do. It is true that all of them have gone through that terrible, skillful drilling, worked out over centuries, which kills all initiative in a man, and they are so trained to mechanical obedience that at the words of command, "Volley by rank!… Rank… Fire!…" and so on, their rifles rise of themselves and the habitual movements are performed. But "Fire!" will mean now not amusing themselves by shooting at a target, but killing their tormented, wronged fathers and brothers, who are there, standing in a crowd in the street with their women and children, shouting something and waving their arms. There they are: one with a scanty beard, in a patched coat and bast shoes, just like the father left at home in Kazan or Ryazan province; another with a gray beard and a bent back, with a big stick, just like the father's father, the grandfather; another a young lad in boots and a red shirt, just like the soldier himself a year ago, the soldier who must now shoot at him. And there is a woman in bast shoes and a homespun skirt, just like the mother left at home…

Are they really to shoot at them?

And God knows what each soldier will do at this last moment. The slightest indication that this must not be done, above all that it is possible not to do it, a single such word, a single hint, will be enough then to stop them.

All the people riding in this train, when they set about the deed they are going to do, will be in the same position as a hypnotized man to whom it has been suggested to chop up a log, and who, having already come up to what has been pointed out to him as a log and already raised the axe, should see for himself, or be shown, that it is not a log but his sleeping brother. He may carry out the deed prescribed to him, and he may come to himself before carrying it out. Just so, all these people may come to themselves or may not. If they do not come to themselves, a deed as terrible as the one in Oryol will be done, and the self-suggestion and suggestion under whose influence they act will grow stronger in other people. If they come to themselves, then not only will such a deed not be done, but many of those who learn of the turn the business has taken will be freed from the suggestion they were under, or at least will come nearer to such freedom.

And not only if all the people riding in this train come to themselves and refrain from the deed begun: if even some of them come to themselves and refrain, and boldly tell other people how criminal this business is, then the influence of these few people may bring it about that the rest too come to themselves from the suggestion they were under, and the intended crime will not be committed.

More than that: if even a few people who take no part in this business, but are only present at the preparations for it, or have learned of similar deeds already done before, do not remain indifferent, but plainly and boldly express their disgust to those who take part in such deeds, and point out to them all their unreasonableness, cruelty and criminality, this too will not pass without a trace.

That is just what happened in the present case. It was enough that some people, both participants in this business and others who took no part, people free of the suggestion, boldly expressed, while the business was still only being prepared, their indignation at the tortures committed in other places, and their disgust and contempt for the people who took part in them; it was enough that in the present Tula affair certain persons expressed their unwillingness to take part in it; it was enough that the lady traveling through, and other persons, there at the station, expressed to those riding in this train their indignation at the deed they were doing; it was enough that one of the regimental commanders from whom units were demanded for the pacification expressed his opinion that military men cannot be executioners: thanks to these and certain other private influences on people under suggestion, influences that seem unimportant, the business took quite another turn, and the troops, on arriving at the place, did not commit any tortures, but only cut down the wood and gave it to the landowner.

If there had not been in some people a clear consciousness that what they are doing is bad, and if there had not been, as a result, influences of people on one another in this direction, what happened in Oryol would have happened here. Had this consciousness been stronger still, and the number of these influences therefore greater than it was, it is very possible that the governor with his troops would not even have ventured to cut down the wood and give it to the landowner. Had this consciousness been stronger still, and these influences more numerous still, it is very possible that the governor would not even have ventured to go to the scene of action. Had the consciousness been stronger still, and the influences more numerous still, it is very possible that the minister would not have ventured to order, nor the sovereign to confirm, such a decision.

Everything depends, therefore, on the strength of each individual man's consciousness of Christian truth.

And therefore, one would think, the activity of all the people of our time who assert that they wish to promote the welfare of mankind ought to be directed to strengthening, in themselves and in others, the clearness of the demands of Christian truth.

But here is an astonishing thing: the very people who in our time talk more than anyone else of caring for the improvement of human life, and who are considered the leaders of public opinion, assert that this is just what need not be done, and that there are other, more effective means of improving the condition of people. These people assert that the improvement of human life comes about not through the inner efforts of individual people to become conscious of the truth, to make it clear to themselves and to profess it, but through a gradual change in the general outward conditions of life. And so, they say, the powers of each individual man should be directed not to becoming conscious of the truth, making it clear to himself and professing it, but to gradually changing the general outward conditions of life in a direction useful to mankind; while every profession by an individual of a truth not in agreement with the existing order is not only useless but harmful, because it provokes restrictions on the part of the authorities that hinder these individuals from continuing their activity, so useful in the service of society. According to this teaching all changes in human life come about by the same laws by which they come about in the life of animals.

According to this teaching, then, all the founders of religions, such as Moses and the prophets, Confucius, Lao-tzu, the Buddha, Christ and others, preached their teachings, and their followers accepted them, not because they loved the truth, made it clear to themselves and professed it, but because the political, social and, above all, economic conditions of the nations among whom these teachings appeared and spread were favorable to their appearing and spreading.

And therefore the chief activity of a man who wishes to serve society and improve the condition of mankind must, according to this teaching, be directed not to making the truth clear and professing it, but to improving the outward political, social and, above all, economic conditions. And these political, social and economic conditions are changed partly by serving the government and introducing liberal and progressive principles into it, partly by promoting the development of industry and the spread of socialist ideas, and, above all, by spreading scientific education.

According to this teaching what matters is not that you should profess in your life the truth that has been revealed to you, and should therefore be inevitably compelled to carry it out in your life, or at least not commit acts contrary to the truth you profess: not serve the government and not strengthen its power, if you consider that power harmful; not profit by the capitalist order, if you consider that order wrong; not show respect for various rites, if you consider them harmful superstition; not take part in the courts, if you consider their organization false; not serve as a soldier; not take the oath; and in general not lie and not act basely. What matters, according to this teaching, is that without changing the existing forms of life, and submitting to them against your convictions, you should introduce liberalism into the existing institutions: promote industry, the propaganda of socialism, and the successes of what are called the sciences, and the spread of education. According to this theory one may remain a landowner, a merchant, a manufacturer, a judge, an official drawing a salary from the government, a soldier, an officer, and be at the same time not only a humane man but even a socialist and a revolutionary.

Hypocrisy, which used to have only one foundation, the religious one, in the teaching of the fall of the human race, of redemption and of the Church, has in our time received in this teaching a new, scientific foundation, and as a result has caught in its nets all those people who, by the level of their development, can no longer lean on religious hypocrisy. Formerly, then, only a man who professed the religious teaching of the Church could take part in all the crimes committed by the state and profit by them, while considering himself clean of every sin, provided only that he fulfilled the outward demands of his profession of faith. Now all the people who do not believe in church Christianity have an equally firm secular, scientific foundation for considering themselves clean, and even highly moral, in spite of their part in the crimes of the state and their profit from them.

There lives, not in Russia alone but anywhere you like, in France, England, Germany, America, a rich landowner, who, in return for the right he grants the people living on his land to feed themselves from it, strips these people, hungry for the most part, of everything he can strip from them. This man's right of property in the land rests on this: that at every attempt of the oppressed people to use, without his consent, the lands he considers his, troops come and subject the people who seize these lands to torture and murder. It would seem obvious that a man who lives like this is a wicked and selfish creature, and can in no way consider himself a Christian or a liberal. It would seem obvious that the first thing such a man must do, if he wishes to come even a little nearer to Christianity or liberalism, is to stop robbing and ruining people by means of his right to the land, which the government upholds by murder and torture. That is how it would be, were it not for the metaphysics of hypocrisy, which says that from the religious point of view owning or not owning land is a matter of indifference for salvation, and from the scientific point of view, that giving up the ownership of land would be a useless personal effort, and that the good of people is promoted not by this path but by a gradual change of outward forms. And so this man, not in the least embarrassed and not doubting in the least that he will be believed, having organized an agricultural exhibition, or a temperance society, or sent flannel vests and broth to three old women through his wife and children, boldly preaches, in his family, in drawing rooms, in committees and in the press, the Gospel or humane love of one's neighbor in general, and in particular of the working people on the land whom he never ceases to torment and oppress. And people in the same position as he believe him, praise him, and gravely discuss with him by what further measures they might improve the condition of the working people on whose plunder their life is founded, devising every possible means for it except the one thing without which no improvement in the condition of the people is possible: to stop taking from these people the land they need to feed themselves.

The most striking example of such hypocrisy was the concern of the Russian landowners during the past year for the struggle against the famine, the famine they themselves had produced and from which they profited on the spot, selling not only grain at the highest price but even potato tops, at about two rubles an acre, for fuel to the freezing peasants.

Or there lives a merchant, all of whose trade, like all trade, is founded on a series of frauds, by which, taking advantage of people's ignorance and need, goods are bought from them below their value, and, taking advantage again of ignorance, need and temptation, are sold back above their value. It would seem obvious that a man whose whole activity is founded on what in his own language is called fraud, whenever the same deeds are done under other conditions, ought to be ashamed of his position, and can in no way, while remaining a merchant, set himself up as a Christian or a liberal. But the metaphysics of hypocrisy tells him that he may pass for a virtuous man while continuing his harmful activity: a religious man need only believe, and a liberal need only promote the change of outward conditions, the progress of industry.

And so this merchant (who besides often commits a whole series of outright frauds as well, selling bad goods for good, giving short weight and short measure, or trading exclusively in things that ruin the life of the people, such as vodka and opium) boldly considers himself, and is considered by others, a model of honesty and conscientiousness, provided only that he does not directly cheat in his dealings his fellows in deception, that is, his brother merchants. And if he spends a thousandth part of the money he has stolen on some public institution, a hospital, a museum, a school, he is considered a benefactor besides of the very people on whose deception and corruption his whole prosperity is founded; and if he has given a part of the stolen money to the Church and the poor, he is considered an exemplary Christian too.

Or there lives a manufacturer, whose whole income is made up of pay taken from the workers, and whose whole activity is founded on forced, unnatural labor that ruins whole generations of people. It would seem obvious that first of all, if this man professes any Christian or liberal principles at all, he must stop ruining human lives for the sake of his profits. But according to the existing theory he is promoting industry, and he need not stop his activity; indeed it would be harmful to people and to society if he did. And so this man, cruel, the slave owner of thousands of people, having built for those crippled at his works little houses with gardens a few feet square, and a savings fund, and an almshouse and a hospital, is perfectly certain that by this he has more than paid for all the human lives he has ruined and is ruining, in body and in soul, and calmly, and proudly, carries on his activity.

Or there lives a ruler, or any servant of the state you please, civil, spiritual or military, who serves in order to satisfy his ambition or his love of power, or, as most often happens, simply in order to receive his salary, collected from a working people exhausted and tormented by labor (taxes, whoever pays them, always come from labor, that is, from the working people); and if he does not, which very rarely happens, also steal the state's money outright by some unusual method, he considers himself, and is considered by others like him, a most useful and most virtuous member of society.

There lives some judge, prosecutor or ruler, and he knows that by his sentence or decision hundreds and thousands of unhappy people, torn from their families, are sitting at this moment in solitary cells and in penal servitude, going out of their minds and killing themselves with broken glass or by starvation; he knows that these thousands of people have thousands more mothers, wives and children, suffering from the separation, deprived of visits, disgraced, vainly begging for pardon, or at least for some easing of the lot of fathers, sons, husbands and brothers. And this judge and ruler has grown so callous in his hypocrisy that he himself, and others like him, and their wives and households, are perfectly certain that he can be at the same time a very kind and feeling man. According to the metaphysics of hypocrisy it turns out that he is doing useful social work. And this man, having ruined hundreds and thousands of people, who curse him and who, thanks to his activity, despair of any faith in goodness and in God, goes to the liturgy with a radiant, good-humored smile on his smooth face, hears the Gospel, makes liberal speeches, caresses his children, preaches morality to them, and is moved to tears by imaginary sufferings.

All these people live, and those who feed around them, their wives, tutors, children, cooks, actors, jockeys and so on, live on the blood that by one means or another, by one leech or another, is sucked out of the working people. They live so, each of them swallowing up every day, for his pleasures, hundreds and thousands of the working days of tormented workers, compelled to work by threats of murder. They see the privations and sufferings of these workers, of their children, their old people, their wives, their sick; they know of the executions to which those who break this established robbery are subjected; and not only do they not lessen their luxury, not only do they not hide it, but they brazenly display before these oppressed workers, who for the most part hate them, as though to tease them on purpose, their parks, palaces, theaters, hunts and races. And at the same time they never cease assuring themselves and one another that they are all greatly concerned for the welfare of the people they never cease trampling underfoot; and on Sundays, in rich clothes and rich carriages, they drive to houses built as if on purpose to mock Christianity, and there they listen while people trained on purpose for this lie, in vestments or without them, in white ties, preach to one another in every key the love of people that all of them deny with their whole lives. And doing all this, these people enter so far into their part that they seriously believe they really are what they pretend to be.

The universal hypocrisy that has entered into the flesh and blood of every class of our time has reached such limits that nothing of the kind outrages anyone any longer. It is not for nothing that the word hypocrisy means play-acting, and in pretending one can play any part at all. Such phenomena as these: that those who stand in the place of Christ bless murderers standing in ranks, holding rifles loaded for their brothers and presented for prayer; that priests, pastors of every Christian confession, always take part in executions as inevitably as the hangmen do, recognizing by their presence that killing is compatible with Christianity (in America a pastor was present at the experiment of killing by electricity): all such phenomena no longer surprise anyone.

Not long ago there was an international prison exhibition in Petersburg, where instruments of torture were exhibited, shackles, models of solitary cells, that is, instruments of torture worse than knouts and birch rods; and sensitive ladies and gentlemen went to look at them and were amused.

Nor is anyone surprised at the way liberal science, side by side with recognizing the equality, brotherhood and freedom of people, proves the necessity of armies, executions, customs houses, censorship, the regulation of prostitution, the expulsion of cheap foreign labor, the prohibition of emigration, the necessity and justice of colonization, founded on the poisoning, plunder and extermination of whole races of people called savages, and so on.

People talk of what will be when all people profess what is called Christianity (that is, various confessions hostile to one another); when all are fed and clothed; when all are connected with one another from one end of the earth to the other by telegraphs and telephones, and communicate by balloons; when all the workers are imbued with social teachings, and the workers' unions have gathered so many millions of members and of rubles; and when all people are educated, all read the newspapers and know all the sciences.

But what useful or good thing can come of all these improvements, if people do not at the same time say and do what they consider the truth?

The calamities of people come, after all, from disunion. And disunion comes from people's following not the truth, which is one, but lies, which are many. The only means of uniting people into one is union in the truth. And therefore the more sincerely people strive toward the truth, the nearer they are to this union.

But how can people unite in the truth, or even come near to it, if they not only do not speak out the truth they know, but consider that there is no need to do so, and pretend that they consider true what they do not consider true?

And therefore no improvement in the condition of people is possible so long as people pretend, that is, hide the truth from themselves; so long as they do not recognize that their union, and therefore their good, is possible only in the truth; and so long, therefore, as they do not set above everything else the recognition and profession of the truth, the truth that has been revealed to them.

Let all the outward improvements be made that religious and scientific people can only dream of; let all people accept Christianity, and let all the improvements be made that the various Bellamys and Richets desire, with every possible addition and correction; but let the hypocrisy that exists now remain along with them; let people not profess the truth they know, but go on pretending that they believe what they do not believe and respect what they do not respect; and the condition of people will not only remain the same but will grow worse and worse. The better fed people are, the more telegraphs, telephones, books, newspapers and journals there are, the more means there will only be of spreading lies and hypocrisy at odds with one another, and the more disunited, and therefore the more wretched, people will be, as indeed they are now.

Let all these outward changes be made, and the condition of mankind will not improve. But let only each man at once, in his own life, according to his strength, profess the truth he knows, or at least not defend the untruth he does, passing it off as truth, and at once, in this present year of 1893, such changes would be made toward the liberation of people and the establishment of truth on earth as we dare not dream of even centuries from now.

It is not for nothing that Christ's only speech that was not gentle but accusing and harsh was addressed to hypocrites and against hypocrisy. What corrupts people, embitters them, turns them into beasts, and therefore disunites them, is not theft, not robbery, not murder, not fornication, not forgery, but the lie, that special lie of hypocrisy which destroys in people's consciousness the distinction between good and evil, and thereby deprives them of the possibility of avoiding evil and seeking good, deprives them of what makes up the essence of true human life, and therefore stands in the way of every perfecting of people.

People who do not know the truth and do evil, rousing in others compassion for their victims and disgust at their acts, do evil only to those on whom they inflict it. But people who know the truth and do evil covered by hypocrisy do evil to themselves, and to those on whom they inflict it, and to thousands upon thousands of other people besides, led astray by the lie with which they try to cover the evil they do.

Thieves, robbers, murderers and cheats, who do deeds recognized as evil by themselves and by all people, serve as an example of what must not be done, and turn people away from evil. But people who do the same deeds of theft, robbery, torture and murder, covering themselves with religious and scientific liberal justifications, as all the landowners, merchants, manufacturers and every kind of servant of the government of our time do, call on others to imitate their acts, and do evil not only to those who suffer from it but to thousands and millions of people whom they corrupt, destroying for these people the distinction between good and evil.

A single fortune made by trading in things the people need, or things that corrupt the people, or by operations on the stock exchange, or by buying up cheap lands that afterward grow dear through the people's need, or by setting up factories that ruin people's health and lives, or by civil or military service to the state, or by any dealings that pander to people's temptations, a fortune acquired by such deeds not only with the permission but with the approval of the leaders of society, and embellished besides by a show of charity, corrupts people beyond comparison more than millions of thefts, frauds and robberies committed outside the forms recognized by law and liable to criminal prosecution.

A single execution, carried out by well-to-do, educated people who are not under the sway of passion, with the approval and participation of Christian pastors, and presented as something necessary and even just, corrupts and brutalizes people more than hundreds and thousands of murders committed by working people, uneducated people, and in the heat of passion besides.

Such an execution as the poet Zhukovsky proposed to arrange, one at which people would even feel, as Zhukovsky proposed, a religious tenderness, would be the most corrupting act one could possibly imagine. (See volume 6 of Zhukovsky's Complete Works.)

Every war, even the shortest, with the waste that usually goes with war, the destruction of crops, the thefts, the licensed debauchery, the plunder and the murders, with the justifications devised for its necessity and justice, with the exalting and glorifying of military exploits, of love of the flag and of the fatherland, with the pretense of care for the wounded and so on, corrupts more people in one year than millions of robberies, arsons and murders committed in the course of a hundred years by individuals under the influence of passion.

A single luxurious life, led sedately within the bounds of decency, of a respectable, so-called virtuous family, which nevertheless consumes on itself as many working days as would suffice to feed thousands of people living in poverty next door to that family, corrupts people more than thousands of wild orgies of coarse merchants, officers and workmen given over to drunkenness and debauchery, smashing mirrors, crockery and so on for fun.

A single solemn procession, a single public prayer, or a single sermon from the ambo or the pulpit, of a lie in which the preachers themselves do not believe, does beyond comparison more evil than thousands of forgeries and adulterations of food and so on.

People talk of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But the hypocrisy of the people of our time far surpasses the comparatively innocent hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They had at least an outward religious law, and for the sake of fulfilling it they could fail to see their duties toward those near them; and besides, those duties were still only vaguely pointed out in those days. In our time, first, there is no such religious law that would free people from their duties toward those near them, toward all without distinction (I do not count those coarse and stupid people who think even now that the sacraments or the pope's dispensation can absolve their sins); on the contrary, the law of the Gospel, which we all profess in one form or another, points directly to these duties. And besides, these very duties, which were then spoken only by a few prophets, in vague expressions, are now so clearly spoken that they have become truisms, repeated by schoolboys and newspaper columnists. And therefore the people of our time, one would think, can in no way pretend that they do not know these duties of theirs.

The people of our time who profit by an order of things held together by violence, and who at the same time assure us that they love their neighbors very much, and do not notice at all that by their whole lives they are doing evil to these neighbors, are like a man who has robbed people without ceasing and who, caught at last with his knife raised over a victim crying out in despair for help, should assure us that he did not know that what he was doing was disagreeable to the man he was robbing and was about to cut down. As this robber and murderer cannot deny what is in plain sight of everyone, just so, one would think, the people of our time, living at the expense of the sufferings of oppressed people, can no longer assure themselves and others that they wish good to the people they never cease robbing, and that they did not know how they come by what they enjoy.

We can no longer assure anyone that we did not know of the hundred thousand people in Russia alone who are always sitting in the prisons and in penal servitude to secure our property and our peace; that we do not know of the courts in which we ourselves take part, and which, on our petitions, sentence people who make attempts on our property and safety to prisons, exile and penal servitude, in which people no worse than those who judge them perish and are corrupted; that we did not know that everything we have, we have only because it is got for us and guarded for us by murder and torture. We cannot pretend that we do not see the policeman who walks with a loaded revolver past our windows, protecting us while we eat our tasty dinner or watch the new play, or that we do not know of the soldiers who will set out at once with rifles and live cartridges for any place where our property is infringed.

We know, after all, that if we finish our dinner, and see the new play to the end, and enjoy ourselves to the end at the ball, at the Christmas tree, at the sleigh ride, the races or the hunt, it is only thanks to the bullet in the policeman's revolver and in the soldier's rifle, which will pierce the hungry belly of the disinherited man who, licking his lips, watches our pleasures from around the corner, and who would break in on them at once as soon as the policeman with his revolver went away, or there was no soldier in the barracks ready to appear at our first call.

And therefore, just as a man caught in the act of robbery in broad daylight can in no way assure everyone that he did not raise his hand against the man he was robbing in order to take his purse, and did not threaten to cut his throat, so we, one would think, can no longer assure ourselves and others that the soldiers and the policemen with revolvers are around us not at all to protect us, but for defense against foreign enemies, for order, for ornament, for amusement and for parades; and that we did not know that people do not like to die of hunger, having no right to earn their food from the land they live on, and do not like to work underground, in water, in scorching heat, ten to fourteen hours a day, and at night, in various factories and works, to make the objects of our pleasures. It would seem impossible to deny what is so obvious. And yet this is just what is done.

And although there are among the rich living people, whom I happily meet more and more often, especially among the young and among women, who, when reminded of how and with what their pleasures are bought, do not try to hide the truth, but clutch their heads and say, "Oh, don't talk about it. If that's how it is, then it's impossible to live"; although there are such sincere people, who see their sin even though they cannot free themselves from it, the enormous majority of the people of our time have entered so far into their part of hypocrisy that they boldly deny what stares every seeing man in the face.

"All this is untrue," they say. "No one compels the people to work for the landowners and in the factories. It is a matter of free contract. Large property and capital are necessary, because they organize work and give it to the working class. And work in the factories and mills is not at all so terrible as you make it out. If there are certain abuses in the factories, the government and society are taking measures to remove them and to make the labor of the workers easier still, and even pleasant. The working people are used to physical labor, and are not yet fit for anything else. And the poverty of the people does not come at all from the ownership of land, or from oppression by the capitalists, but from other causes: it comes from the ignorance, coarseness and drunkenness of the people. And we, the men of government, who counteract this impoverishment by wise administration, and we, the capitalists, who counteract it by spreading useful inventions, we, the clergy, by religious instruction, and we, the liberals, by organizing workers' unions and by increasing and spreading education, by this path, without changing our own position, increase the welfare of the people. We do not want everyone to be poor, as the poor are; we want everyone to be rich, as the rich are. As for the claim that people are tortured and killed to make them work for the rich, that is a sophism. Troops are sent against the people only when the people, not understanding their own advantage, riot and disturb the peace needed for the general welfare. Just as necessary is the restraint of evildoers, for whom prisons, gallows and penal servitude are set up. We ourselves would like to abolish them, and we are working in that direction."

Hypocrisy in our time, upheld from two sides, by quasi-religion and quasi-science, has reached such proportions that if we did not live in the midst of it, it would be impossible to believe that people could reach such a degree of self-deception. People have come in our time to that astonishing condition in which their heart is waxed so gross that seeing they see not, and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.

People have long been living a life contrary to their consciousness. If there were no hypocrisy, they could not live this life. This order of life, contrary to their consciousness, goes on only because it is covered by hypocrisy.

And the greater the distance between reality and the consciousness of people grows, the more hypocrisy stretches too. But there are limits even to hypocrisy. And it seems to me that in our time we have reached that limit.

Every man of our time, with the Christian consciousness he has absorbed without willing it, is in a position exactly like that of a sleeping man who dreams that he must do what, as he knows even in his dream, he must not do. He knows it in the very depths of his consciousness, and yet he seems unable to change his position, unable to stop and cease doing what he knows he must not do. And, as happens in dreams, his position, growing more and more tormenting, reaches at last the utmost pitch of strain, and then he begins to doubt the reality of what appears to him, and makes an effort of consciousness to break the spell that binds him.

The average man of our Christian world is in the same position. He feels that everything done by himself and around him is something absurd, monstrous, impossible and contrary to his consciousness; he feels that this position is growing more and more tormenting, and has already reached the utmost pitch of strain.

It cannot be. It cannot be that we, the people of our time, with our Christian consciousness of the dignity of man and the equality of people, which has already entered into our flesh and blood, with our need of peaceful intercourse and the union of nations, should really live in such a way that our every joy and every comfort is paid for by the sufferings and lives of our brothers, and that we should, moreover, be at every moment within a hair's breadth of throwing ourselves on one another like wild beasts, nation on nation, mercilessly destroying the labors and lives of people, only because some misguided diplomat or ruler says or writes some piece of foolishness to another misguided diplomat or ruler like himself.

It cannot be. And yet every man of our time sees that this very thing is being done, and that this very thing awaits him. And the position grows more and more tormenting.

And as a man in a dream does not believe that what appears to him as reality is really reality, and wants to wake up to another, true reality, just so the average man of our time cannot believe in the depths of his soul that the terrible position he is in, which grows worse and worse, is reality, and wants to wake up to the true reality, to the reality of the consciousness that already lives in him.

And as a man in a dream need only make an effort of consciousness and ask himself, "Is this not a dream?" for the position that seemed to him so hopeless to be destroyed in an instant, and for him to wake up to a calm and joyful reality, just so the modern man need only make an effort of consciousness, doubt the reality of what his own hypocrisy and the hypocrisy around him present to him, and ask himself, "Is this not a deception?" and he will feel himself at once carried over, like the man who wakes, from an imagined and terrible world into the true, calm and joyful reality.

And for this a man need do no heroic deeds or acts; he need make only an inner effort of consciousness.

But can a man make this effort?

According to the theory that prevails, the theory hypocrisy needs, man is not free and cannot change his life.

"Man cannot change his life because he is not free; and he is not free because all his acts are conditioned by preceding causes. Whatever a man does, there are always these or those causes for which he did this or that act; and therefore man cannot be free and change his life himself," say the defenders of the metaphysics of hypocrisy. And they would be perfectly right if man were a creature without consciousness and motionless in relation to truth, that is, if, having once come to know the truth, he always remained on one and the same level of knowing it. But man is a conscious creature, who comes to know a greater and greater degree of truth; and therefore, even if a man is not free in committing this or that act, because every act has its cause, the very causes of these acts, which for a conscious man consist in his recognizing this or that truth as a sufficient cause for the act, are within the man's power.

A man who is not free in committing this or that act, then, is free in what his acts are grounded on. It is like the engineer on a locomotive, who is not free to change the movement the locomotive has already made or is now making, but is free to determine its future movements in advance.

Whatever a conscious man does, he acts so and not otherwise only because he either recognizes now that the truth lies in acting as he acts, or because he recognized it once before and now acts only from inertia, from habit, as he once recognized that he ought to act.

In either case the cause of his act was not a particular phenomenon, but the recognition of a particular proposition as the truth, and, as a result, the recognition of this or that phenomenon as a sufficient cause for the act.

Whether a man eats or abstains from food, works or rests, flees danger or exposes himself to it, if he is a conscious man he acts as he acts only because he now considers it right and reasonable: he considers that the truth lies in acting so and not otherwise, or he considered it so long ago.

And the recognition or non-recognition of a particular truth depends not on outward causes but on certain other causes that lie within the man himself. Thus sometimes, with all the outward conditions apparently favorable to recognizing the truth, one man does not recognize it, and, on the contrary, another, with all the conditions most unfavorable to it, recognizes it without any visible cause. As is said in the Gospel too: "No man can come to me, except the Father draw him" (John 6:44); that is, the recognition of truth, which is the cause of all the phenomena of human life, depends not on outward phenomena but on certain inner qualities of the man that are beyond his observation.

And therefore a man, not free in his acts, always feels himself free in what serves as the cause of his acts: in recognizing or not recognizing the truth. And he feels himself free not only independently of outward events taking place outside him, but even of his own acts.

Thus a man who under the influence of passion has committed an act contrary to the truth he has become conscious of remains free nonetheless to recognize it or not: that is, by not recognizing the truth he may consider his act necessary and justify himself for committing it, and by recognizing the truth he may consider his act bad and condemn himself for it.

Thus a gambler or a drunkard who has not withstood temptation and has given way to his passion remains free nonetheless to recognize gambling and drunkenness either as an evil or as a harmless amusement. In the first case, even if he does not free himself from his passion at once, he frees himself from it the more, the more sincerely he recognizes the truth; in the second, he strengthens his passion and deprives himself of every possibility of freedom.

In just the same way a man who could not bear the heat and ran out of a burning house without saving his comrade remains free (recognizing the truth that a man must serve the lives of others at the risk of his own) to consider his act bad and therefore condemn himself for it; or (not recognizing this truth) to consider his act natural and necessary, and justify himself for it. In the first case, when he recognizes the truth in spite of his departure from it, he prepares for himself a whole series of self-sacrificing acts that must inevitably flow from such a recognition; in the second case, he prepares a whole series of selfish acts, the opposite of the first.

It is not that a man is always free to recognize or not to recognize every truth. There are truths long since recognized, either by the man himself or handed down to him by upbringing and tradition and taken by him on faith, truths whose following has become a habit for him, a second nature; and there are truths that appear to him only vaguely, in the distance. A man is equally unfree in not recognizing the first and in recognizing the second. But there is a third kind of truth: truths that have not yet become for a man an unconscious motive of his activity, but that have at the same time been revealed to him with such clearness that he cannot pass them by, and must inevitably take up some attitude toward them, recognize them or not recognize them. It is in relation to these truths that a man's freedom shows itself.

Every man in his life is placed, in relation to truth, like a traveler walking in the dark by the light of a lantern moving ahead of him. He does not see what is not yet lit by the lantern; nor does he see what he has passed and what darkness has already covered; and he has no power to change his relation either to the one or to the other. But wherever on the road he stands, he sees what the lantern lights, and he always has the power to choose one side or the other of the road he is moving along.

For every man there are always truths not visible to him, not yet revealed to his mind's eye; there are other truths already lived through, forgotten and absorbed by him; and there are certain truths that have risen up before him in the light of his reason and demand his recognition. And it is in recognizing or not recognizing these truths that what we are conscious of as our freedom shows itself.

The whole difficulty and seeming insolubility of the question of man's freedom comes from the fact that the people who try to settle this question picture man as motionless in relation to truth.

Man is unquestionably not free if we picture him as motionless, if we forget that the life of man and of mankind is only a constant movement from darkness to light, from a lower level of truth to a higher, from truth more mixed with errors to truth more freed from them.

Man would not be free if he knew no truth at all; and in just the same way he would not be free, and would not even have any notion of freedom, if the whole truth that ought to guide him in life had been revealed to him once and for all, in all its purity, without any admixture of error.

But man is not motionless in relation to truth. Constantly, as he moves on through life, each individual man, like all mankind, comes to know a greater and greater degree of truth and frees himself more and more from errors. And therefore people always stand in a threefold relation to truth: some truths they have already so absorbed that these have become the unconscious causes of their acts; others are only beginning to be revealed to them; and a third kind, though not yet absorbed by them, have been revealed to them with such clearness that they must inevitably take up some attitude toward them, must recognize them or not recognize them.

And it is in recognizing or not recognizing these truths that a man is free.

The freedom of man lies not in his being able to commit arbitrary acts independently of the course of life and of the causes that already exist and act upon him, but in his being able, by recognizing the truth revealed to him and professing it, to become a free and joyful worker in the eternal and infinite work that is being done by God, or by the life of the world; and in his being able, by not recognizing this truth, to become its slave and be dragged by force, and in torment, where he does not want to go.

Truth not only points out the way of human life; it reveals the one and only way by which human life can go. And therefore all people will inevitably go by the way of truth, freely or unfreely: some doing of their own accord the work of life appointed for them, others submitting unwillingly to the law of life. Man's freedom lies in this choice.

Such freedom, within such narrow limits, seems to people so insignificant that they do not notice it. Some (the determinists) consider this portion of freedom so small that they do not recognize it at all; others, the defenders of complete freedom, having in view their own imaginary freedom, disdain this degree of freedom, which seems to them insignificant. Freedom enclosed between the limits of ignorance of the truth and the recognition of a certain degree of it seems to people no freedom at all, the more so because, whether a man wants to recognize the truth revealed to him or not, he will inevitably be compelled to carry it out in his life.

A horse harnessed with others to a cart is not free not to walk in front of the cart. And if it does not pull, the cart will strike it on the legs, and it will go where the cart goes, and will pull it against its will. But in spite of this limited freedom, it is free to pull the cart itself or to be dragged along by it. It is the same with man.

Whether this freedom is great or small in comparison with the fantastic freedom we should like to have, this freedom alone unquestionably exists, and this freedom is freedom, and in this freedom lies the good that is open to man.

And it is not enough that this freedom gives people their good: it is also the only means of doing the work that the life of the world is doing.

According to the teaching of Christ, a man who sees the meaning of life in the realm where life is not free, in the realm of consequences, that is, of acts, does not have true life. True life, according to the Christian teaching, is had only by the man who has carried his life over into the realm where it is free, the realm of causes, that is, of knowing and recognizing the truth as it is revealed, of professing it, and therefore of carrying it out, which follows inevitably, as the cart follows the horse.

Placing his life in the deeds of the flesh, a man does deeds that always depend on causes in space and time lying outside him. He himself does nothing at all; it only seems to him that he does; in reality all the deeds he seems to himself to do are done through him by a higher power, and he is not the maker of life but its slave. But placing his life in the recognition and profession of the truth revealed to him, he unites himself with the source of all life and does deeds that are no longer personal and private, dependent on the conditions of space and time, but deeds that have no cause, that are themselves the causes of everything else, and that have an infinite meaning, limited by nothing.

Neglecting the essence of true life, which consists in recognizing and professing the truth, and straining their efforts to improve their life by outward acts, the people of the pagan understanding of life are like people on a steamship who, to reach their goal, should shut down the boiler because it was in the way of seating the rowers, and in a storm should try, instead of going ahead by the steam and the screw already there, to row with oars that do not reach the water.

The kingdom of God is taken by effort, and only those who make the effort lay hold of it; and this effort, the effort of renouncing the change of outward conditions for the sake of recognizing and professing the truth, is the very effort by which the kingdom of God is taken, the effort that must and can be made in our time.

People need only understand this: they need only stop concerning themselves with outward and general affairs, in which they are not free, and use only a hundredth part of the energy they spend on outward affairs on that in which they are free, on recognizing and professing the truth that stands before them, on freeing themselves and others from the lies and hypocrisy that have hidden the truth; and at once, without effort or struggle, the false order of life that torments people and threatens them with worse calamities still would be destroyed, and the kingdom of God would be realized, or at least that first step of it for which people are already ready by their consciousness.

As a single jolt is sometimes enough for a liquid saturated with salt to turn into crystals in an instant, so perhaps now the smallest effort is enough for the truth already revealed to people to take hold of hundreds, thousands, millions of people; for a public opinion in keeping with their consciousness to be established; and, as a result of its establishment, for the whole order of existing life to change. And it depends on us to make this effort.

If only each of us would try to understand and recognize the Christian truth that surrounds us on every side, in the most varied forms, and asks to be let into our souls; if only we would stop lying and pretending that we do not see this truth, or that we wish to carry it out, only not in what it demands of us first of all; if only we would recognize this truth that calls us, and boldly profess it, we should see at once that hundreds, thousands, millions of people are in the same position as we, see the truth as we do, and, like us, are only waiting for others to recognize it.

If only people would stop being hypocrites, they would see at once that the cruel order of life that alone binds them, and that seems to them something firm, necessary and sacred, established by God, is already tottering all over and is held up only by the lie of hypocrisy with which we, together with those like us, uphold it.

But if this is so, if it is true that it depends on us to destroy the existing order of life, have we the right to destroy it without knowing clearly what we shall put in its place? What will become of the world if the existing order of things is abolished?

"What will be there, beyond the walls of the world we are leaving?"²¹

"Fear takes hold of us: emptiness, breadth, freedom… How can one go without knowing where, how can one lose without seeing what one will gain!…

"If Columbus had reasoned so, he would never have weighed anchor. It is madness to sail across the ocean without knowing the way, across an ocean no one has sailed, to sail for a country whose very existence is in question. By this madness he discovered a new world. Of course, if nations moved from one ready-furnished hotel garni to another, better one, it would be easier; but the trouble is that there is no one to get the new lodgings ready. In the future there is worse than in the ocean, there is nothing; it will be what circumstances and people make it.

"If you are content with the old world, try to preserve it; it is very feeble and will not last long. But if you find it unbearable to live in eternal discord between convictions and life, thinking one thing and doing another, come out from under the whitewashed medieval vaults at your own risk. I know very well that it is not easy. Is it a small matter to part with everything a man has been used to from the day of his birth, everything he has grown up with and grown into? People are ready for terrible sacrifices, but not for those the new life demands of them. Are they ready to sacrifice modern civilization, their way of life, their religion, the accepted conventional morality? Are they ready to lose all the fruits worked out with such efforts, the fruits we have been boasting of for three centuries; to lose all the comforts and charms of our existence; to prefer savage youth to educated decrepitude; to pull down their inherited castle for the mere pleasure of taking part in laying the foundations of a new house, which will no doubt be built far better after we are gone?" (Herzen, vol. 5, p. 55.)

These were the words, almost half a century ago, of a Russian writer whose penetrating mind already saw clearly then what every man of our time, even the least reflective, now sees: the impossibility of continuing life on the old foundations, and the necessity of establishing some new forms of life.

From the simplest, lowest, most worldly point of view it is already clear that it is madness to stay under the vault of a building that cannot bear its own weight, and that one must come out of it. And indeed it is hard to imagine a position more calamitous than the one in which the Christian world now finds itself, with its nations armed against one another; with its taxes, growing constantly and irresistibly to maintain these ever-growing armaments; with the hatred of the working class for the rich flaring up more and more; with the sword of Damocles of war hanging over everyone, ready at any second to fall, and bound to fall sooner or later.

Hardly any revolution could be more calamitous for the great mass of the people than the order, or rather the disorder, of our life as it constantly exists, with its usual victims of unnatural labor, poverty, drunkenness and debauchery, and with all the horrors of the coming war, which is to swallow up more victims in a single year than all the revolutions of the present century.

What will become of us, of all mankind, if each of us does what God demands of him through the conscience he has put into him? Will any harm come of it if I, who am wholly in the power of the master, do, in the establishment he has set up and directs, what he tells me to do, though it seems strange to me, since I do not know the master's final purposes?

But it is not even this question, "What will happen?", that troubles people when they delay to do the master's will. What troubles them is the question of how to live without those accustomed conditions of our life that we call science, art, civilization, culture. We feel for ourselves personally the whole burden of our present life; we see too that the order of this life, if it continues, will inevitably destroy us; but at the same time we want the conditions of this life of ours that have grown out of it, our sciences, arts, civilizations and cultures, to remain intact when our life is changed. It is as though a man living in an old house, suffering from the cold and the discomforts of that house, and knowing besides that the house is about to collapse, should agree to its being rebuilt only on condition that he need not move out of it: a condition equal to refusing to rebuild the house. "But what if I move out of the house and lose all my comforts for a time, and the new house is not built, or is built differently, and there is nothing in it of what I am used to?"

But when there is material, and there are builders, all the probabilities are that the new house will be built better than the old; and at the same time there is not merely a probability but a certainty that the old house will collapse and crush those who stay in it. Whether the former, accustomed conditions of life hold out, whether they are destroyed, whether quite new and better ones arise, we must inevitably come out of the old conditions of our life, which have become impossible and ruinous, and go out to meet the future.

"Science, art, civilization and culture will vanish!"

But all these are only different manifestations of the truth, after all; and the coming change is being made only in the name of drawing nearer to the truth and realizing it. How, then, can the manifestations of truth vanish as a result of its being realized? They will be different, better and higher, but they will in no way be destroyed. What was false in them will be destroyed; but what was of the truth in them will only flourish and grow stronger.

Come to your senses, people, and believe the gospel, the teaching of the good. If you do not come to your senses, you will all perish just as the people perished whom Pilate killed, as those perished on whom the tower in Siloam fell, as millions and millions of people have perished, killing and killed, executing and executed, tormenting and tormented, and as foolishly as that man perished who filled his barns and meant to live a long time, and died the very night he had meant to begin his life. "Come to your senses, people, and believe the gospel," Christ said eighteen hundred years ago, and he says it with still greater persuasiveness now, through the calamity and unreason of our life that he foretold and that has now come to pass, a life that has now reached the utmost limits of calamity and unreason.

Now, after so many centuries of vain efforts to make our life secure by the pagan order of violence, it would seem that it cannot fail to be obvious to everyone that all the efforts directed to this end only bring new dangers into life, both personal and social, and in no way make it secure.

Whatever we call ourselves, whatever dress we put on, whatever we anoint ourselves with and whatever priests stand by while we do it, however many millions we have, however many guards stand along our road, however many policemen fence in our wealth, however many so-called criminal revolutionaries and anarchists we execute, whatever exploits we ourselves perform, whatever states we found and whatever fortresses and towers we raise, from the tower of Babel to the Eiffel Tower, there always stand before all of us two inescapable conditions of our life that destroy its whole meaning: first, death, which may overtake each of us at any moment; and second, the impermanence of all the works we do, which are destroyed very quickly and without a trace. Whatever we do, whether we found states, build palaces and monuments, or compose poems and songs, all of it lasts only a little while, and all of it passes, leaving no trace. And therefore, however we hide it from ourselves, we cannot fail to see that the meaning of our life can lie neither in our personal existence in the flesh, subject to inescapable sufferings and inevitable death, nor in any worldly institution or organization.

Whoever you may be, reading these lines, think of your position and of your duties: not of the position of landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest or soldier that people ascribe to you for a time, and not of the imaginary duties these positions lay on you, but of your true, eternal position as a being who, by someone's will, after a whole eternity of nonexistence, has come out of unconsciousness, and who at any moment, by someone's will, may go back to where you came from. Think of your duties: not of your imaginary duties as a landowner to your estate, as a merchant to your capital, as an emperor, a minister, an official to the state, but of those true duties of yours that flow from your true position as a being called into life and endowed with reason and love. Are you doing what he demands of you who sent you into the world, and to whom you will very soon return? Are you doing what he wants of you? Are you doing it when, as a landowner or a manufacturer, you take away the products of the labor of the poor and build your life on this plunder; or when, as a ruler or a judge, you do violence to people and sentence them to execution; or when, as a military man, you prepare for wars, make war, plunder and kill?

You say that the world is so arranged, that it is inevitable, that you do this not of your own will but because you are compelled to. But can it be that there should have been planted in you, with such strength, a revulsion from the sufferings of people, from their torture and murder; that there should have been put into you such a need to love people, and a still stronger need to be loved by them; that you should see clearly that only by recognizing the equality of all people, and by their serving one another, can the greatest good open to people be realized; that the same thing should be told you by your heart, your reason and the faith you profess, and that science should tell you this very thing; and that, in spite of this, you should be compelled by some very foggy and complicated reasonings to do everything directly opposite to it? That, being a landowner or a capitalist, you should have to build your whole life on the oppression of the people; or, being an emperor or a president, should be compelled to command troops, that is, to be the chief and leader of murderers; or, being an official of the government, should be compelled to take from poor people by force their hard-earned money, so as to profit by it and hand it out to the rich; or, being a judge or a juror, should be compelled to sentence people who have gone astray to torture and to death because the truth was not revealed to them; or, the chief thing, on which all the evil of the world rests, that you, every young man, should have to go into the army and, renouncing your own will and all human feelings, promise at the will of people who are strangers to you to kill everyone they order you to kill?

It cannot be.

Even if people tell you that all this is necessary to maintain the existing order of life, and that the existing order, with its poverty, hunger, prisons, executions, armies and wars, is necessary to society, and that if this order were broken, worse calamities would follow, it is only those to whom this order of life is profitable who say so; all the others, and there are ten times as many of them, who suffer from this order of life, all think and say the opposite. And you yourself know in the depths of your soul that this is untrue, that the existing order of life has outlived its time and must inevitably be rebuilt on new principles, and that there is therefore no need whatever to sacrifice human feelings to maintain it.

But the chief thing is this: even if we grant that the existing order is necessary, why is it you, precisely, who feel obliged to maintain it, trampling on all the best human feelings? Who appointed you nurse to this crumbling order? Neither society, nor the state, nor all people have ever asked you to maintain this order by holding the place of landowner, merchant, emperor, priest or soldier that you hold; and you know very well that you took, that you accepted, your position not at all with the self-sacrificing aim of maintaining an order of life necessary for the good of people, but for yourself: for your greed, your love of glory, your ambition, your laziness, your cowardice. If you did not want this position, you would not be doing all the things that constantly have to be done to keep your position. Only try to stop doing the complicated, cruel, insidious and base deeds you never cease doing to keep your position, and you will lose it at once. Only try, if you are a ruler or an official, to stop lying, acting basely, taking part in violence and executions; if you are a priest, to stop deceiving; if you are a military man, to stop killing; if you are a landowner or a manufacturer, to stop defending your property by the courts and by violence; and you will at once lose the position that, you say, has been forced on you, and that you supposedly find such a burden.

It cannot be that a man should be placed against his will in a position contrary to his consciousness.

If you are in this position, it is not because it is necessary for someone, but only because you want it. And therefore, knowing that this position is directly contrary to your heart, your reason, your faith, and even to the science you believe in, you cannot help pondering the question whether you are doing what you ought to do, if you remain in this position and, above all, try to justify it.

One might risk making a mistake, after all, if one had time to see the mistake and correct it, and if what one was taking such a risk for had any importance. But when you know for certain that you may vanish at any second, without the slightest possibility, either for yourself or for those you draw into your mistake, of correcting it; and when you know besides that whatever you may do in the outward ordering of the world will very soon, and just as certainly as you yourself, vanish without leaving a trace, it is obvious that you have nothing for which to risk so terrible a mistake.

It is all so simple and clear, after all, if only we did not darken for ourselves by hypocrisy the truth that has unquestionably been revealed to us.

"Share what you have with others, do not gather riches, do not exalt yourself, do not rob, do not torment, do not kill anyone, do not do to another what you would not have done to you": this was said not eighteen hundred but five thousand years ago, and there could be no doubt of the truth of this law if there were no hypocrisy. It would be impossible, if not to do this, then at least not to recognize that this must always be done, and that he who does not do it does wrong.

But you say that there is also the common good, for whose sake one may and must depart from these rules: for the common good one may kill, torture and rob. It is better for one man to perish than for the whole people, you say, like Caiaphas, and you sign the death sentence of one man, and of another, and of a third; you load your rifle for this man who must perish for the common good; you put him in prison; you take away his property. You say that you do these cruel deeds because you feel yourself a man of society, of the state, obliged to serve it and carry out its laws: a landowner, a judge, an emperor, a military man. But besides your belonging to a particular state, and the duties that flow from it, you also belong to the infinite life of the world and to God, and you have the duties that flow from this belonging.

And just as your duties that flow from your belonging to a particular family or society are always subordinated to the higher duties that flow from your belonging to the state, so your duties that flow from your belonging to the state must necessarily be subordinated to the duties that flow from your belonging to the life of the world, to God.

And just as it would be unreasonable to cut down the telegraph poles to provide heating for a family or a society and increase its welfare, because this would break the laws that safeguard the good of the state, so it is just as unreasonable, in order to make the state secure and increase its welfare, to torture, execute or kill a man, because this breaks the unquestionable laws that safeguard the good of the world.

Your duties that flow from your belonging to the state cannot help being subordinated to the higher, eternal duty that flows from your belonging to the infinite life of the world, or to God, and they cannot contradict it, as the disciples of Christ said eighteen hundred years ago: "Whether it be right in the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye" (Acts 4:19), and "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29).

They assure you that, in order not to disturb an ever-changing order set up yesterday by a few people in a particular corner of the world, you must commit acts of torture, torment and murder of individual people, acts that break the eternal, unchanging order of the world established by God or by reason. Can that be?

And therefore you cannot help pondering your position as a landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest or soldier, bound up as it is with oppression, violence, deception, torture and murder, and you cannot help recognizing that they are unlawful.

I do not say that if you are a landowner you should give your land to the poor at once; that if you are a capitalist you should give your money, your factory, to the workers at once; that if you are a tsar, a minister, an official, a judge, a general, you should renounce your advantageous position at once; that if you are a soldier (that is, if you hold the position on which all violence rests), you should, in spite of all the dangers of refusing obedience, renounce your position at once.

If you do this, you will do the best thing of all; but it may happen, and it is the most likely thing, that you will not have the strength to do it. You have ties, a family, subordinates, superiors; you may be under so strong an influence of temptations that you will not have the strength to do it. But to recognize the truth as truth, and not to lie, you can always do. Not to assert that you remain a landowner, a manufacturer, a merchant, an artist, a writer because it is useful to people; that you serve as governor, prosecutor or tsar not because it is pleasant to you and you are used to it, but for the good of people; that you go on being a soldier not because you fear punishment but because you consider the army necessary to make people's lives secure: not to lie like this before yourself and before people you always can; and not only can, but must, because in this alone, in freeing yourself from lies and professing the truth, lies the only good of your life.

And you need only do this, and your position too will change of itself, inevitably.

One thing, only one thing, in which you are free and all-powerful, is given you in life; everything else is beyond your power. That thing is to come to know the truth and to profess it.

And suddenly, because pitiful, misguided people like yourself have assured you that you are a soldier, an emperor, a landowner, a rich man, a priest, a general, you begin to do evil plainly and unquestionably contrary to your reason and your heart: you begin to torture, rob and kill people, to build your life on their sufferings, and, above all, instead of doing the one work of your life, recognizing and professing the truth you know, you studiously pretend that you do not know it, and hide it from yourself and others, doing by this the direct opposite of the one work to which you are called.

And in what conditions do you do it? You, who may die at any moment, sign a death sentence, declare war, go to war, sit in judgment, torment people, fleece the workers, live in luxury among the destitute, and teach weak people who trust you that this is how it must be and that in this lies the duty of people; and you run the risk that at the very moment you have done it a bacterium or a bullet will fly into you, and you will give a death rattle and die, and lose forever the possibility of correcting and changing the evil you have done to others and, above all, to yourself, having wasted for nothing the life given you once in a whole eternity, without having done in it the one thing you unquestionably ought to have done.

However simple this is, and however old, and however we may stupefy ourselves with hypocrisy and the self-suggestion that flows from it, nothing can destroy the certainty of this simple and clear truth: that no outward efforts can make secure our life, which is inevitably bound up with inescapable sufferings and ends in a death more inescapable still, a death that may come to each of us at any moment; and that therefore our life can have no other meaning than to do, at every moment, what is wanted of us by the power that sent us into life and gave us in this life one unquestionable guide: our rational consciousness.

And therefore this power cannot want of us what is unreasonable and impossible: the ordering of our temporary life in the flesh, the life of society or of the state. This power demands of us what alone is certain, and reasonable, and possible: the service of the kingdom of God, that is, our help in establishing the greatest union of all that lives, a union possible only in the truth; and therefore the recognition of the truth revealed to us, and its profession, the very thing that alone is always in our power.

"Seek ye the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you." The only meaning of man's life lies in serving the world by helping to establish the kingdom of God. And this service can be done only through the recognition of the truth and its profession by each individual man.

"The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you."

Three Books to Read Next

Toward Perpetual Peace by Immanuel Kant

The case for the road Tolstoy rejects. Kant's 1795 treaty in miniature asks states to abolish their standing armies in time and bind themselves by law into a league, and the London peace congress whose resolutions Tolstoy lists in Chapter 6 is its heir. Tolstoy thought no government would ever disarm itself; Kant thought the spirit of commerce would bring them to peace.
Essays by Henry David Thoreau Standard Ebooks

"Civil Disobedience" (1849) is the American refusal Tolstoy does not mention: a night in the Concord jail for an unpaid poll tax, in protest at slavery and the Mexican War. Gandhi read it too. The same collection holds Thoreau's defense of John Brown, who took up the arms that Garrison and Ballou renounced.
Hadji Murad by Leo Tolstoy Standard Ebooks

The argument of this book told as a story, written between 1896 and 1904 and published after Tolstoy's death. Russia's war in the Caucasus, where Tolstoy had served, seen from both sides, and Nicholas I sentencing a medical student to twelve thousand blows with rods while congratulating himself that Russia has no death penalty.

Editor's Introduction

Preface

Chapter 1: The Teaching of Nonresistance to Evil by Violence Has Been and Still Is Professed by a Minority of People from the Very Beginning of Christianity

Declaration of Sentiments Adopted by the Peace Convention

Catechism of Nonresistance23

Chapter 2: Believers and Unbelievers on Nonresistance to Evil by Violence

Chapter 3: How Believers Misunderstand Christianity

Chapter 4: How Men of Science Misunderstand Christianity

Chapter 5: The Contradiction Between Our Life and Our Christian Consciousness

Chapter 6: How the People of Our World Regard War

Chapter 7: The Meaning of Universal Military Service

Chapter 8: The People of Our World Must Inevitably Accept the Christian Teaching of Nonresistance to Evil by Violence

Chapter 9: Accepting the Christian Understanding of Life Frees People from the Miseries of Our Pagan Life

Chapter 10: State Violence Cannot Abolish Evil; Humanity Moves Forward Morally Not Only by Knowing the Truth but by Forming Public Opinion

Chapter 11: A Christian Public Opinion Has Already Been Born in Our Society and Will Inevitably Destroy the Violent Order of Our Life; When That Will Be

Chapter 12: Conclusion

Three Books to Read Next

Catechism of Nonresistance²³