CHAPTER IX

TOLSTOI'S TEACHING

1.--GENERAL

I. Lef Nikolayevitch Tolstoi was born in 1828 at Yasnaya Polyana, district of Krapivna, government of Tula. From 1843 to 1846 he studied in Kazan at first oriental languages, then jurisprudence; from 1847 to 1848, in St. Petersburg, jurisprudence. After a lengthy stay at Yasnaya Polyana, he entered an artillery regiment in the Caucasus, in 1851; he became an officer, remained in the Caucasus till 1853, then served in the Crimean war, and left the army in 1855.

Tolstoi now lived at first in St. Petersburg. In 1857 he took a lengthy tour in Germany, France, Italy, and Switzerland. After his return he lived mostly in Moscow till 1860. In 1860-1861 he traveled in Germany, France, Italy, England, and Belgium; in Brussels he made the acquaintance of Proudhon.

Since 1861 Tolstoi has lived almost uninterruptedly at Yasnaya Polyana, as at once agriculturist and author.

Tolstoi has published numerous works; his works up to 1878 are mostly stories, among which the two novels "War and Peace" and "Anna Karenina" are notable; his later works are mostly of a philosophical nature.

2. Of special importance for Tolstoi's teaching about law, the State, and property are his works "My Confession" (1879), "The Gospel in Brief" (1880), "What I Believe" (1884) [also known in English as "My Religion"], "What Shall We Do Then?" (1885), "On Life" (1887), "The Kingdom of God is Within You; or, Christianity not a mystical doctrine, but a new life-conception" (1893).

3. Tolstoi does not call his teaching about law, the State, and property "Anarchism." He designates as "Anarchism" the teaching which sets up as its goal a life without government and wishes to see this realized by the application of force.[859]

2.--BASIS

_According to Tolstoi our supreme law is love; from this he derives the commandment not to resist evil by force._

1. Tolstoi designates "Christianity"[860] as his basis; but by Christianity he means not the doctrine of one of the Christian churches, neither the Orthodox nor the Catholic nor that of any of the Protestant bodies,[861] but the pure teaching of Christ.[862]

"Strange as it may sound, the churches have always been not merely alien but downright hostile to the teaching of Christ, and they must needs be so. The churches are not, as many think, institutions that are based on a Christian origin and have only erred a little from the right way; the churches as such, as associations that assert their infallibility, are anti-Christian institutions. The Christian churches and Christianity have no fellowship except in name; nay, the two are utterly opposite and hostile elements. The churches are arrogance, violence, usurpation, rigidity, death; Christianity is humility, penitence, submissiveness, progress, life."[863] The church has "so transformed Christ's teaching to suit the world that there no longer resulted from it any demands, and that men could go on living as they had hitherto lived. The church yielded to the world, and, having yielded, followed it. The world did everything that it chose, and left the church to hobble after as well as it could with its teachings about the meaning of life. The world led its life, contrary to Christ's teaching in each and every point, and the church contrived subtleties to demonstrate that in living contrary to Christ's law men were living in harmony with it. And it ended in the world's beginning to lead a life worse than the life of the heathen, and the church's daring not only to justify such a life but even to assert that this was precisely what corresponded to Christ's teaching."[864]

Particularly different from Christ's teaching is the church "creed,"[865]--that is, the totality of the utterly incomprehensible and therefore useless "dogmas."[866] "Of a God, external creator, origin of all origins, we know nothing";[867] "God is the spirit in man,"[868] "his conscience,"[869] "the knowledge of life";[870] "every man recognizes in himself a free rational spirit independent of the flesh: this spirit is what we call God."[871] Christ was a man,[872] "the son of an unknown father; as he did not know his father, in his childhood he called God his father";[873] and he was a son of God as to his spirit, as every man is a son of God,[874] he embodied "Man confessing his sonship of God."[875] Those who "assert that Christ professed to redeem with his blood mankind fallen by Adam, that God is a trinity, that the Holy Spirit descended upon the apostles and that it passes to the priest by the laying on of hands, that seven mysteries are necessary to salvation, and so forth,"[876] "preach doctrines utterly alien to Christ."[877] "Never did Christ with a single word attest the personal resurrection and the immortality of man beyond the grave,"[878] which indeed is "a very low and coarse idea";[879] the Ascension and the Resurrection are to be counted among "the most objectionable miracles."[880]

Tolstoi accepts Christ's teaching as valid not on the ground of faith in a revelation, but solely for its rationality. Faith in a revelation "was the main reason why the teaching was at first misunderstood and later mutilated outright."[881] Faith in Christ is "not a trusting in something related to Christ, but the knowledge of the truth."[882]

"'There is a law of evolution, and therefore one must live only his own personal life and leave the rest to the law of evolution,' is the last word of the refined culture of our day, and, at the same time, of that obscuration of consciousness to which the cultured classes are a prey."[883] But "human life, from getting up in the morning to going to bed at night, is an unbroken series of actions; man must daily choose out from hundreds of actions possible to him those actions which he will perform; therefore, man cannot live without something to guide the choice of his actions."[884] Now, reason alone can offer him this guide. "Reason is that law, recognized by man, according to which his life is to be accomplished."[885] "If there is no higher reason,--and such there is not, nor can anything prove its existence,--then my reason is the supreme judge of my life."[886] "The ever-increasing subjugation"[887] "of the bestial personality to the rational consciousness"[888] is "the true life,"[889] is "life"[890] as opposed to mere "existence."[891]

"It used to be said, 'Do not argue, but believe in the duty that we have prescribed to you; reason will deceive you; faith alone will bring you the true happiness of life.' And the man exerted himself to believe, and he believed. But intercourse with other men showed him that in many cases these believed something quite different, and asserted that this other faith bestowed the highest happiness. It has become unavoidable to decide the question which of the many faiths is the right one; and only reason can decide this."[892] "If the Buddhist who has learned to know Islam remains a Buddhist, he is no longer a Buddhist in faith but in reason. As soon as another faith comes up before him, and with it the question whether to reject his faith or this other, reason alone can give him an answer. If he has learned to know Islam and has still remained a Buddhist, then rational conviction has taken the place of his former blind faith in Buddha."[893] "Man recognizes truth only by reason, not by faith."[894]

"The law of reason reveals itself to men gradually."[895] "Eighteen hundred years ago there appeared in the midst of the pagan Roman world a remarkable new teaching, which was not comparable to any that had preceded it, and which was ascribed to a man called Christ."[896] This teaching contains "the very strictest, purest, and completest"[897] apprehension of the law of reason to which "the human mind has hitherto raised itself."[898] Christ's teaching is "reason itself";[899] it must be accepted by men because it alone gives those rules of life "without which no man ever has lived or can live, if he would live as a man,--that is, with reason."[900] Man has, "on the basis of reason, no right to refuse allegiance to it."[901]

2. Christ's teaching sets up love as the supreme law for us.

What is love? "What men who do not understand life call 'love' is only the giving to certain conditions of their personal comfort a preference over any others. When the man who does not understand life says that he loves his wife or child or friend, he means by this only that his wife's, child's, or friend's presence in his life heightens his personal comfort."[902]

"True love is always renunciation of one's personal comfort"[903] for a neighbor's sake. True love "is a condition of wishing well to all men, such as commonly characterizes children but is produced in grown men only by self-abnegation."[904] "What living man does not know the happy feeling, even if he has felt it only once and in most cases only in earliest childhood, of that emotion in which one wishes to love everybody, neighbors and father and mother and brothers and bad men and enemies and dog and horse and grass; one wishes only one thing, that it were well with all, that all were happy; and still more does one wish that he were himself capable of making all happy, one wishes he might give himself, give his whole life, that all might be well off and enjoy themselves. Just this, this alone, is that love in which man's life consists."[905]

True love is "an ideal of full, infinite, divine perfection."[906] "Divine perfection is the asymptote of human life, toward which it constantly strives, to which it draws nearer and nearer, but which can be attained only at infinity."[907] "True life, according to previous teachings, consists in the fulfilling of commandments, the fulfilling of the law; according to Christ's teaching it consists in the maximum approach to the divine perfection which has been exhibited, and which is felt in himself by every man."[908]

According to the teaching of Christ, love is our highest law. "The commandment of love is the expression of the inmost heart of the teaching."[909] There are "three conceptions of life, and only three: first the personal or bestial, second the social or heathenish,"[910] "third the Christian or divine."[911] The man of the bestial conception of life, "the savage, acknowledges life only in himself; the mainspring of his life is personal enjoyment. The heathenish, social man recognizes life no longer in himself alone, but in a community of persons, in the tribe, the family, the race, the State; the mainspring of his life is reputation. The man of the divine conception of life acknowledges life no longer in his person, nor yet in a community of persons, but in the prime source of eternal, never-dying life--in God; the mainspring of his life is love."[912]

That love is our supreme law according to Christ's teaching means nothing else than that it is such according to reason. As early as 1852 Tolstoi gives utterance to the thought "That love and beneficence are truth is the only truth on earth,"[913] and much later, in 1887, he calls love "man's only rational activity,"[914] that which "resolves all the contradictions of human life."[915] Love abolishes the insensate activity directed to the filling of the bottomless tub of our bestial personality,[916] does away with the foolish fight between beings that strive after their own happiness,[917] gives a meaning independent of space and time to life, which without it would flow off without meaning in the face of death.[918]

3. From the law of love Christ's teaching derives the commandment not to resist evil by force. "'Resist not evil' means 'never resist the evil man', that is, 'never do violence to another', that is, 'never commit an act that is contrary to love'."[919]

Christ expressly derived this commandment from the law of love. He gave numerous commandments, among which five in the Sermon on the Mount are notable; "these commandments do not constitute the teaching, they only form one of the numberless stages of approach to perfection";[920] they "are all negative, and only show"[921] what "at mankind's present age"[922] we "have already the full possibility of not doing, along the road by which we are striving to reach perfection."[923] The first of the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount reads "Keep the peace with all, and if the peace is broken use every effort to restore it";[924] the second says "Let the man take only one woman and the woman only one man, and let neither forsake the other under any pretext";[925] the third, "make no vows";[926] the fourth, "endure injury, return not evil for evil";[927] the fifth, "break not the peace to benefit thy people."[928] Among these commandments the fourth is the most important; it is enunciated in the fifth chapter of Matthew, verses 38-9: "Ye have heard that it was said, Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth. But I say to you, Resist not evil."[929] Tolstoi tells how to him this passage "became the key of the whole."[930] "I needed only to take these words simply and downrightly, as they were spoken, and at once everything in Christ's whole teaching that had seemed confused to me, not only in the Sermon on the Mount but in the Gospels altogether, was comprehensible to me, and everything that had been contradictory agreed, and the main gist appeared no longer useless but a necessity; everything formed a whole, and the one confirmed the other past a doubt, like the pieces of a shattered column that one has rightly put together."[931] The principle of non-resistance binds together "the entire teaching into a whole; but only when it is no mere dictum but a peremptory rule, a law."[932] "It is really the key that opens everything, but only when it goes into the inmost of the lock."[933]

We must necessarily derive the commandment not to resist evil by force from the law of love. For this demands that either a sure, indisputable criterion of evil be found, or all violent resistance to evil be abandoned.[934] "Hitherto it has been the business now of the pope, now of an emperor or king, now of an assembly of elected representatives, now of the whole nation, to decide what was to be rated as an evil and combated by violent resistance. But there have always been men, both without and within the State, who have not acknowledged as binding upon them either the decisions that were given out as divine commandments or the decisions of the men who were clothed with sanctity or the institutions that were supposed to represent the will of the people; men who regarded as good what to the powers that be appeared evil, and who, in opposition to the force of these powers, likewise made use of force. The men who were clothed with sanctity regarded as an evil what appeared good to the men and institutions that were clothed with secular authority, and the combat grew ever sharper and sharper. Thus it came to what it has come to to-day, to the complete obviousness of the fact that there is not and cannot be a generally binding external definition of evil."[935] But from this follows the necessity of accepting the solution given by Christ.[936]

According to Tolstoi, the precept of non-resistance must not be taken "as if it forbade every combat against evil."[937] It forbids only the combating of evil by force.[938] But this it forbids in the broadest sense. It refers, therefore, not only to evil practised against ourselves, but also to evil practised against our fellow-men;[939] when Peter cut off the ear of the high priest's servant, he was defending "not himself but his beloved divine Teacher, but Christ forbade him outright and said 'All who take the sword will perish by the sword.'"[940] Nor does the precept say that only a part of men are under obligation "to submit without a contest to what is prescribed to them by certain authorities,"[941] but it forbids "everybody, therefore even those in whom power is vested, and these especially, to use force in any case against anybody."[942]

3.--LAW

I. _For love's sake, particularly on the ground of the commandment not to resist evil by force, Tolstoi rejects law; not unconditionally, indeed, but as an institution for the more highly developed peoples of our time._ To be sure, he speaks only of enacted laws; but he means all law,[943] for he rejects on principle every norm based on the will of men,[944] upheld by human force,[945] especially by courts,[946] capable of deviating from the moral law,[947] of being different in different territories,[948] and of being at any time arbitrarily changed.[949]

Perhaps once upon a time law was better than its non-existence. Law is "upheld by violence";[950] on the other hand, it guards against violence of individuals to each other;[951] perhaps there was once a time when the former violence was less than the latter.[952] Now, at any rate, this time is past for us; manners have grown milder; the men of our time "acknowledge the commandments of philanthropy, of sympathy with one's neighbor, and ask only the possibility of quiet, peaceable life."[953]

Law offends against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[954] Christ declared this. The words "Judge not, that ye be not judged" (Matt. 7.1), "Condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned" (Luke 6.37), "mean not only 'do not judge your neighbor in words,' but also 'do not condemn him by act; do not judge your neighbor according to your human laws by your courts.'"[955] Christ here speaks not merely "of every individual's personal relation to the court,"[956] but rejects "the administration of law itself."[957] "He says, 'You believe that your laws better the evil; they only make it greater; there is only one way to check evil, and this consists in returning good for evil, doing good to all without discrimination.'"[958] And "my heart and my reason"[959] say to me the same as Christ says.

But this is not the only objection to be made against law. "Authority condemns in the rigid form of law only what public opinion has in most cases long since disallowed and condemned; withal, public opinion disallows and condemns all actions that are contrary to the moral law, but the law condemns and prosecutes only the actions included within certain quite definite and very narrow limits, and thereby, in a measure, justifies all similar actions that do not come within these limits. Ever since Moses's day public opinion has regarded selfishness, sensuality, and cruelty as evils and has condemned it; it has repudiated and condemned every form of selfishness, not only the appropriation of others' property by force, fraud, or guile, but exploitation altogether; it has condemned every sort of unchastity, be it with a concubine, a slave, a divorced woman, or even with one's own wife; it has condemned all cruelty, as it finds expression in the ill-treating, starving, and killing not only of men but of animals too. But the law prosecutes only particular forms of selfishness, like theft and fraud, and only particular forms of unchastity and cruelty, like marital infidelity, murder, and mayhem; therefore, in a measure, it permits all the forms of selfishness, unchastity, and cruelty that do not come under its narrow definitions inspired by a false conception."[960]

"The Jew could easily submit to his laws, for he did not doubt that they were written by God's finger; likewise the Roman, as he thought they originated from the nymph Egeria; and man in general so long as he regarded the princes who gave him laws as God's anointed, or believed that the legislating assemblies had the wish and the capacity to make the best laws."[961] But "as early as the time when Christianity made its appearance men were beginning to comprehend that human laws were written by men; that men, whatever outward splendor may enshroud them, cannot be infallible, and that erring men do not become infallible even by getting together and calling themselves 'Senate' or something else."[962] "We know how laws are made; we have all been behind the scenes; we all know that the laws are products of selfishness, deception, partisanship, that true justice does not and cannot dwell in them."[963] Therefore "the recognition of any special laws is a sign of the crassest ignorance."[964]

II. _Love requires that in place of law it itself be the law for men._ From this it follows that instead of law Christ's commandments should be our rule of action.[965] But this is "the Kingdom of God on earth."[966]

"When the day and the hour of the Kingdom of God appear, depends on men themselves alone."[967] "Each must only begin to do what we must do, and cease to do what we must not do, and the near future will bring the promised Kingdom of God."[968] "If only everybody would bear witness, in the measure of his strength, to the truth that he knows, or at least not defend as truth the untruth in which he lives, then in this very year 1893 there would take place such changes toward the setting up of truth on earth as we dare not dream of for centuries to come."[969] "Only a little effort more, and the Galilean has won."[970]

The Kingdom of God is "not outside in the world, but in man's soul."[971] "The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither will men say, 'Lo here!' or, 'There!' for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you (Luke 17.20)."[972] The Kingdom of God is nothing else than the following of Christ's commandments, especially the five commandments of the Sermon on the Mount,[973] which tell us how we must act in our present stage in order to correspond to the ideal of love as much as possible,[974] and which command us to keep the peace and do everything for its restoration when it is broken, to remain true to one another as man and wife, to make no vows, to forgive injury and not return evil for evil, and, finally, not to break the peace with anybody for our people's sake.[975]

But what form will outward life take in the Kingdom of God? "The disciple of Christ will be poor; that is, he will not live in the city but in the country; he will not sit at home, but work in wood and field, see the sunshine, the earth, the sky, and the beasts; he will not worry over what he is to eat to tempt his appetite, and what he can do to help his digestion, but will be hungry three times a day; he will not roll on soft cushions and think upon deliverance from insomnia, but sleep; he will be sick, suffer, and die like all men--the poor who are sick and die seem to have an easier time of it than the rich--";[976] he "will live in free fellowship with all men";[977] "the Kingdom of God on earth is the peace of men with each other; thus it appeared to the prophets, and thus it appears to every human heart."[978]

4.--THE STATE

II. _Together with law Tolstoi necessarily has to reject also, for the more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of the State._

"Perhaps there was once a time when, in a low state of morality with a general inclination of men to mutual violence, the existence of a power limiting this violence was advantageous--that is, in which the State violence was less than that of individuals against each other. But such an advantage of State violence over its non-existence could not last; the more the individuals' inclination to violence decreased and manners grew milder, and the more the governments degenerated by having nothing to check them, the more worthless did State violence grow. In this change--in the moral evolution of the masses on the one hand and the degeneration of the governments on the other--lies the whole history of the last two thousand years."[979] "I cannot prove either the general necessity of the State or its general perniciousness,"[980] "I know only that on the one hand the State is no longer necessary for me, and that on the other hand I can no longer do the things that are necessary for the existence of the State."[981]

"Christianity in its true significance abolishes the State,"[982] annihilates all government.[983] The State offends against love, particularly against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[984] And not only this; in founding a dominion[985] the State furthermore offends against the principle that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them all";[986] it is therefore to be rejected even aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal institution. "That the Christian teaching has an eye only to the redemption of the individual, and does not relate to public questions and State affairs, is a bold and unfounded assertion."[987] "To every honest, earnest man in our time it must be clear that true Christianity--the doctrine of humility, forgiveness, love--is incompatible with the State and its haughtiness, its deeds of violence, its capital punishments and wars."[988] "The State is an idol";[989] its objectionableness is independent of its form, be this "absolute monarchy, the Convention, the Consulate, the empire of a first or third Napoleon or yet of a Boulanger, constitutional monarchy, the Commune, or the republic."[990]--Tolstoi carries this out into detail.

1. The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch.

The State is rule. Government in the State is "an association of men who do violence to the rest."[991]

"All governments, the despotic and the liberal alike, have in our time become what Herzen has so aptly called a Jenghis Khan with telegraphs."[992] The men in whom the power is vested "practise violence not in order to overcome evil, but solely for their advantage or from caprice; and the other men submit to the violence not because they believe that it is practised for their good,--that is, in order to liberate them from evil,--but only because they cannot free themselves from it."[993] "If Nice is united with France, Lorraine with Germany, Bohemia with Austria, if Poland is divided, if both Ireland and India are subjected to the English dominion, if people fight with China, kill the Africans, expel the Chinese from America, and persecute the Jews in Russia, it is not because this is good or necessary or useful for men and the opposite would be evil, but only because it so pleases those in whom the power is vested."[994]

The State is the rule of the bad.[995] "'If the State power were to be annihilated, the wicked would rule over the less wicked,' say the defenders of State rule."[996] But has the power, when it has passed from some men to some others in the State, really always come to the better men? "When Louis the Sixteenth, Robespierre, Napoleon, came to power, who ruled then, the better or the worse? When did the better rule, when the power was vested in the Versaillese or in the Communards, when Charles the First or Cromwell stood at the head of the government? When Peter the Third was czar, and then when after his murder the authority of czar was exercised in one part of Russia by Catharine and in another by Pugatcheff, who was wicked then and who was good? All men who find themselves in power assert that their power is necessary in order that the wicked may not do violence to the good, and regard it as self-evident that they are the good and are giving the rest of the good protection against the bad."[997] But in reality those who grasp and hold the power cannot possibly be the better.[998] "In order to obtain and retain power, one must love it. But the effort after power is not apt to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities, pride, craft, and cruelty. Without exalting self and abasing others, without hypocrisy, lying, prisons, fortresses, penalties, killing, no power can arise or hold its own."[999] "It is downright ridiculous to speak of Christians in power."[1000] To this it is to be added "that the possession of power depraves men."[1001] "The men who have the power cannot but misuse it; they must infallibly be unsettled by such frightful authority."[1002] "However many means men have invented to hinder the possessors of power from subordinating the welfare of the whole to their own advantage, hitherto not one of these means has worked. Everybody knows that those in whose hands is the power--be they emperors, ministers, chiefs of police, or common policemen--are, just because the power is in their hands, more inclined to immorality, to the subordinating of the general welfare to their advantage, than those who have no power; nor can it be otherwise."[1003]

The State is the rule of the bad, raised to the highest pitch. We shall always find "that the scheming of the possessors of authority--nay, their unconscious effort--is directed toward weakening the victims of their authority as much as possible; for, the weaker the victim is, the more easily can he be held down."[1004] "To-day there is only one sphere of human activity left that has not been conquered by the authority of government: the sphere of the family, of housekeeping, private life, labor. And even this sphere, thanks to the fighting of the Communists and Socialists, the governments are already beginning to invade, so that soon, if the reformers have their way, work and rest, housing, clothing, and food, will likewise be fixed and regulated by the governments."[1005] "The most fearful band of robbers is not so horrible as a State organization. Every robber chief is at any rate limited by the fact that the men who make up his band retain at least a part of human liberty, and can refuse to commit acts which are repugnant to their consciences."[1006] But in the State there is no such limit; "no crime is so horrible that it will not be committed by the officials and the army at the will of him--Boulanger, Pugatcheff, Napoleon--who accidentally stands at the head."[1007]

2. The rule in the State is based on physical force.

Every government has for its prop the fact that there are in the State armed men who are ready to execute the government's will by physical force, a class "educated to kill those whose killing the authorities command."[1008] Such men are the police[1009] and especially the army.[1010] The army is nothing else than a collectivity of "disciplined murderers",[1011] its training is "instruction in murdering",[1012] its victories are "deeds of murder."[1013] "The army has always formed the basis of power, and does to this day. The power is always in the hands of those who command the army, and, from the Roman Caesars to the Russian and German emperors, all possessors of power have always cared first and foremost for their armies."[1014]

In the first place, the army upholds the government's rule against external assaults. It protects it against having the rule taken from it by another government.[1015] War is nothing but a contest of two or more governments for the rule over their subjects. It is "impossible to establish international peace in a rational way, by treaty or arbitration, so long as the insensate and pernicious subjection of nations to governments continues to exist."[1016] In consequence of this importance of armies "every State is compelled to increase its army to face the others, and this increase has the effect of a contagion, as Montesquieu observed a hundred and fifty years since."[1017]

But, if one thinks armies are kept by governments only for external defence, he forgets "that governments need armies particularly to protect them against their oppressed and enslaved subjects."[1018] "In the German Reichstag lately, in reply to the question why money was needed in order to increase the pay of the petty officers, the chancellor made the direct statement that reliable petty officers were necessary for the combating of Socialism. Caprivi merely said out loud what everybody knows, carefully as it is concealed from the peoples,--the reason why the French kings and the popes kept Swiss and Scots, why in Russia the recruits are so introduced that the interior regiments get their contingents from the frontiers and the frontier regiments theirs from the interior. Caprivi told, by accident, what everybody knows or at least feels,--to wit, that the existing order exists not because it must exist or because the people wills its existence, but because the government's force, the army with its bribed petty-officers and officers and generals, keeps it up."[1019]

3. The rule in the State is based on the physical force of the ruled.

It is peculiar to government that it demands from the citizens the very force on which it is based, and that consequently in the State "all the citizens are their own oppressors."[1020] The government demands from the citizens both force and the supporting of force. Here belongs the obligation, general in Russia, to take an oath at the czar's accession to the throne, for by this oath one vows obedience to the authorities,--that is, to men who are devoted to violence; likewise the obligation to pay taxes, for the taxes are used for works of violence, and the compulsory use of passports, for by taking out a passport one acknowledges his dependence on the State's institution of violence; withal the obligation to testify in court and to take part in the court as juryman, for every court is the fulfilment of the commandment of revenge; furthermore, the obligation to police service which in Russia rests upon all the country people, for this service demands that we do violence to our brother and torment him; and above all the general obligation to military service,--that is, the obligation to be executioners and to prepare ourselves for service as executioners.[1021] The unchristianness of the State comes to light most plainly in the general obligation to military service: "every man has to take in hand deadly weapons, a gun, a knife; and, if he does not have to kill, at least he does have to load the gun and sharpen the knife,--that is, be ready for killing."[1022]

But how comes it that the citizens fulfil these demands of the government, though the government is based on this very fulfilment, and so mutually oppress each other? This is possible only by "a highly artificial organization, created with the help of scientific progress, in which all men are bewitched into a circle of violence from which they cannot free themselves. At present this circle consists of four means of influence; they are all connected and hold each other, like the links of a chain."[1023] The first means is "what is best described as the hypnotization of the people."[1024] This hypnotization leads men to "the erroneous opinion that the existing order is unchangeable and must be upheld, while in reality it is unchangeable only by its being upheld."[1025] The hypnotization is accomplished "by fomenting the two forms of superstition called religion and patriotism";[1026] it "begins its influence even in childhood, and continues it till death."[1027] With reference to this hypnotization one may say that State authority is based on the fraudulent misleading of public opinion.[1028] The second means consists in "bribery; that is, in taking from the laboring populace its wealth, by money taxes, and dividing this among the officials, who, for this pay, must maintain and strengthen the enslavement of the people."[1029] The officials "more or less believe in the unchangeability of the existing order, mainly because it benefits them."[1030] With reference to this bribery one may say that State authority is based on the selfishness of those to whom it guarantees profitable positions.[1031] The third means is "intimidation. It consists in setting down the present State order--of whatever sort, be it a free republican order or be it the most grossly despotic--as something sacred and unchangeable, and imposing the most frightful penalties upon every attempt to change it."[1032] Finally, the fourth means is to "separate a certain part of all the men whom they have stupefied and bewitched by the three first means, and subject these men to special stronger forms of stupefaction and bestialization, so that they become will-less tools of every brutality and cruelty that the government sees fit to resolve upon."[1033] This is done in the army, to which, at present, all young men belong by virtue of the general obligation to military service.[1034] "With this the circle of violence is made complete. Intimidation, bribery, hypnosis, bring men to enlist as soldiers. The soldiers, in turn, afford the possibility of punishing men, plundering them in order to bribe officials with the money, hypnotizing them, and thus bringing them into the ranks of the very soldiers on whom the power for all this is based."[1035]

II. _Love requires that a social life based solely on its commandments take the place of the State._ "To-day every man who thinks, however little, sees the impossibility of keeping on with the life hitherto lived, and the necessity of determining new forms of life."[1036] "The Christian humanity of our time must unconditionally renounce the heathen forms of life that it condemns, and set up a new life on the Christian bases that it recognizes."[1037]

1. Even after the State is done away, men are to live in societies. But what is to hold them together in these societies?

Not a promise, at any rate. Christ commands us to make "no vows,"[1038] to "promise men nothing."[1039] "The Christian cannot promise that he will do or not do a particular thing at a particular hour, because he cannot know what the law of love, which it is the meaning of his life to obey, will demand of him at that hour."[1040] And still less can he "give his word to fulfil somebody's will, without knowing what the substance of this will is to be";[1041] by the mere fact of such a promise he would "make it manifest that the inward divine law is no longer the sole law of his life";[1042] "one cannot serve two masters."[1043]

Men are to be held together in societies in future by the mental influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced. "Mental influence is such a way of working upon a man that by it his wishes change and coincide with what is wanted of him; the man who yields to a mental influence acts according to his own wishes."[1044] Now, the force "by which men can live in societies"[1045] is found in the mental influence which the men who have made progress in knowledge exert upon the less advanced, in the "characteristic of little-thinking men, that they subordinate themselves to the directions of those who stand on a higher level of knowledge."[1046] In consequence of this characteristic "a body of men put themselves under the same rational principles, the minority consciously, because the principles agree with the demands of their reason, and the majority unconsciously, because the principles have become public opinion."[1047] "In this subordination there is nothing irrational or self-contradictory."[1048]

2. But in the future societary condition how shall the functions which the State at present performs be performed? Here people usually have three things in mind.[1049]

First, protection against the bad men in our midst.[1050] "But who are the bad men among us? If there once were such men three or four centuries ago, when people still paraded warlike arts and equipments and looked upon killing as a brilliant deed, they are gone to-day anyhow; nobody any longer carries weapons, everybody acknowledges the commands of philanthropy. But, if by the men from whom the State must protect us we mean the criminals, then we know that they are not special creatures like the wolf among the sheep, but just such men as all of us, who like committing crimes as little as we do; we know that the activity of governments with their cruel forms of punishment, which do not correspond to the present stage of morality, their prisons, tortures, gallows, guillotines, contributes more to the barbarizing of the people than to their culture, and hence rather to the multiplication than to the diminution of such criminals."[1051] If we are Christians and start from the principle that "what our life exists for is the serving of others, then no one will be foolish enough to rob men that serve him of their means of support or to kill them. Miklucho-Maclay settled among the wildest so-called 'savages', and they not only left him alive but loved him and submitted to his authority, solely because he did not fear them, asked nothing of them, and did them good."[1052]

Secondly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition we can find protection against external enemies.[1053] But we do know "that the nations of Europe profess the principles of liberty and fraternity, and therefore need no protection against each other; but, if it were a protection against the barbarians that was meant, a thousandth part of the armies that are now kept up would suffice. State authority not merely leaves in existence the danger of hostile attacks, but even itself provokes this danger."[1054] But, "if there existed a community of Christians who did evil to nobody and gave to others all the superfluous products of their labor, then no enemy, neither the German nor the Turk nor the savage, would kill or vex such men; all one could do would be to take from them what they were ready to give voluntarily without distinguishing between Russians, Germans, Turks, and savages."[1055]

Thirdly, the question is asked how in the future societary condition institutions for education, popular culture, religion, commerce, etc. are to be possible.[1056] "Perhaps there was once a time when men lived so far apart, when the means for coming together and exchanging thoughts were so undeveloped, that people could not, without a State centre, discuss and agree on any matter either of trade and economy or of culture. But to-day this separation no longer exists; the means of intercourse have developed extraordinarily; for the forming of societies, associations, corporations, for the gathering of congresses and the creation of economic and political institutions, governments are not needed; nay, in most cases they are rather a hindrance than a help toward the attainment of such ends."[1057]

3. But what form will men's life together in the future societary condition take in detail? "The future will be as circumstances and men shall make it."[1058] We are not at this moment able to get perfectly clear ideas of it.[1059]

"Men say, 'What will the new orders be like, that are to take the place of the present ones? So long as we do not know what form our life will take in future, we will not go forward, we will not stir from this spot.'"[1060] "If Columbus had gone to making such observations, he would never have weighed anchor. It was insanity to steer across an ocean that no man had ever yet sailed upon toward a land whose existence was a question. With this insanity, he discovered the New World. It would certainly be more convenient if nations had nothing to do but move out of one ready-furnished mansion into another and a better; only, by bad luck, there is nobody there to furnish the new quarters."[1061]

But what disquiets men in their imagining of the future is "less the question 'What will be?' They are tormented by the question 'How are we to live without all the familiar conditions of our existence, that are called science, art, civilization, culture?'"[1062] "But all these, bear in mind, are only forms in which truth appears. The change that lies before us will be an approach to the truth and its realization. How can the forms in which truth appears be brought to naught by an approach to the truth? They will be made different, better, higher, but by no means will they be brought to naught. Only that which was false in the forms of its appearance hitherto will be brought to naught; what was genuine will but unfold itself the more splendidly."[1063]

"If the individual man's life were completely known to him when he passes from one stage of maturity to another, he would have no reason for living. So it is with the life of mankind too; if at its entrance upon a new stage of growth a programme lay before it already drawn up, this would be the surest sign that it was not alive, not progressing, but that it was sticking at one point. The details of a new order of life cannot be known to us, they have to be worked out by us ourselves. Life consists only in learning to know the unknown, and putting our action in harmony with the new knowledge. In this consists the life of the individual, in this the life of human societies and of humanity."[1064]

5.--PROPERTY

I. _Together with law Tolstoi necessarily has to reject also, for the more highly developed nations of our time, the legal institution of property._

Perhaps there was once a time when the violence necessary to secure the individual in the possession of a piece of goods against all others was less than the violence which would have been practised in a general fight for the possession of the goods, so that the existence of property was better than its non-existence. But at any rate this time is past, the existing order has "lived out its time";[1065] among the men of to-day no wild fight for the possession of goods would break out even if there were no property; they all "profess allegiance to the commands of philanthropy,"[1066] each of them "knows that all men have equal rights in the goods of the world,"[1067] and already we see "many a rich man renounce his inheritance from a specially delicate sense of germinant public opinion."[1068]

Property offends against love, especially against the commandment not to resist evil by force.[1069] But not only this; in founding a dominion of possessors over non-possessors it also offends against the principle that for love "all men are God's sons and there is equality among them all";[1070] and it is therefore to be rejected, even aside from the violence on which it is based as a legal institution. The rich are under "guilt by the very fact that they are rich."[1071] It is "a crime"[1072] that tens of thousands of "hungry, cold, deeply degraded human beings are living in Moscow, while I with a few thousand others have tenderloin and sturgeon for dinner and cover horses and floors with blankets and carpets."[1073] I shall be "an accomplice in this unending and uninterrupted crime so long as I still have a superfluous bit of bread while another has no bread at all, or still possess two garments while another does not possess even one."[1074]--Tolstoi carries this out into detail.

1. Property means the dominion of the possessors over the non-possessors.

Property is the exclusive right to use some things, whether one actually uses them or not.[1075] "Many of the men who called me their horse," Tolstoi makes the horse Linen-Measurer say, "did not ride me; quite different men rode me. Nor did they feed me; quite different men fed me. Nor was it those who called me their horse that did me kindnesses, but coachmen, veterinary surgeons, strangers altogether. Later, when the circle of my observations grew wider, I convinced myself that the idea 'mine,' which has no other basis than men's low and bestial propensity which they call 'sense of ownership' or 'right of property,' finds application not only with respect to us horses. A man says 'this house is mine' and never lives in it, he only attends to the building and repair of the house. A merchant says 'my store, my dry-goods store,' and his clothing is not of the best fabrics he has in his store. There are men who call a piece of land 'mine' and have never seen this piece of land nor set foot on it. What men aim at in life is not to do what they think good, but to call as many things as possible 'mine.'"[1076]

But the significance of property consists in the fact that the poor man who has no property is dependent on the rich man who has property; in order to come by the things which he needs for his living, but which belong to another, he must do what this other wills--in particular, he must work for him. Thus property divides men into "two castes, an oppressed laboring caste that famishes and suffers and an idle oppressing caste that enjoys and lives in superfluity."[1077] "We are all brothers, and yet every morning my brother or my sister carries out my dishes. We are all brothers, but every morning I have to have my cigar, my sugar, my mirror, and other such things, in whose production healthy brothers and sisters, people like me, have sacrificed and are sacrificing their health."[1078] "I spend my whole life in the following way: I eat, talk, and listen; eat, write, and read--that is, talk and listen again; eat and play; eat, talk, and listen again; eat and go to bed; and so it goes on, one day like another. I cannot do, do not know how to do, anything beyond this. And, that I may be able to do this, the porter, the farmer, the cook, the cook's maid, the lackey, the coachman, the laundress, must work from morning till night, not to speak of the work of other men which is necessary in order that those coachmen, cooks, lackeys, and so on may have all that they need when they work for me--the axes, barrels, brushes, dishes, furniture, likewise the wax, the blacking, the kerosene, the hay, the wood, the beef. All of them have to work day by day, early and late, that I may be able to talk, eat, and sleep."[1079]

This significance of property makes itself especially felt in the case of the things that are necessary for the producing of other things, and so most notably in the case of land and tools.[1080] "There can be no farmer without land that he tills, without scythes, wagons, and horses; no shoemaker is possible without a house built on the earth, without water, air, and tools";[1081] but property means that in many cases "the farmer possesses no land, no horses, no scythe, the shoemaker no house, no water, no awl: that somebody is keeping these things back from them."[1082] This leads to the consequence "that for a large fraction of the workers the natural conditions of production are deranged, that this fraction is necessitated to use other people's stock,"[1083] and may by the owner of the stock be compelled "to work not on their own account, but for an employer."[1084] Consequently the workman works "not for himself, to suit his own wish, but under compulsion, to suit the whim of some idle persons who live in superfluity, for the benefit of some rich man, the proprietor of a factory or other industrial plant."[1085] Thus property means the exploitation of the laborer by those to whom the land and tools belong; it means "that the products of human labor pass more and more out of the hands of the laboring masses into the hands of the unlaboring."[1086]

Furthermore, the significance of property as making the poor dependent on the rich becomes especially prominent in the case of money. "Money is a value that remains always equal, that always ranks as correct and legal."[1087] Consequently, as the saying is, "he who has money has in his pocket those who have none."[1088] "Money is a new form of slavery, distinguished from the old solely by its impersonality, by the lack of any human relation between the master and the slave";[1089] for "the essence of all slavery consists in drawing the benefit of another's labor-force by compulsion, and it is quite immaterial whether the drawing of this benefit is founded upon property in the slave or upon property in money which is indispensable to the other man."[1090] "Now, honestly, of what sort is my money, and how have I come by it? I got part for the land that I inherited from my father. The peasant sold his last sheep, his last cow, to pay me this money. Another part of my assets consists of the sums which I have received for my literary productions, my books. If my books are harmful, then by them I have seduced the purchasers to evil and have acquired the money by bad means. If, on the contrary, my books are useful to people, the case is still worse; I have not given them without ceremony to those who had a use for them, but have said 'Give me seventeen rubles and you shall have them,' and, as in the other case the peasant sold his last sheep, so here the poor student or teacher, and many another poor person, have denied themselves the plainest necessities to give me the money. And thus I have piled up a quantity of such money, and what do I do with it? I bring it to the city and give it to the poor here on condition that they satisfy all my whims, that they come after me into the city to clean the sidewalks for me, and to make me lamps, shoes, and so forth, in the factories. With my money I take all their products to myself, and I take pains to give them as little as possible and get from them as much as possible for it. And then all at once, quite unexpectedly, I begin to distribute to the poor this same money gratis--not to all, but arbitrarily to any whom I happen to take up at random";[1091] that is, I take from the poor thousands of rubles with one hand, and with the other I distribute to some of them a few kopeks.[1092]

2. The dominion which property involves, of possessors over non-possessors, is based on physical force.

"If the vast wealth that the laborers have piled up ranks not as the property of all, but only as that of an elect few,--if the power of raising taxes from labor and using them at pleasure is reserved to some men,--this is not based on the fact that the people want to have it so or that by nature it must be so, but on the fact that the ruling classes see their advantage in it and determine it so by virtue of their power over men's bodies";[1093] it is based on "violence and slaying and the threat thereof."[1094] "If men hand over the greatest part of the product of their labor to the capitalist or landlord, though they, as do all laborers now, hold this to be unjust,"[1095] they do it "only because they know they will be beaten and killed if they do not."[1096] "One may even say outright that in our society, in which to every well-to-do man living an aristocratic life there are ten weary, ravenous, envious laborers, probably pining away with wife and children too, all the privileges of the rich, all their luxury and their abundance, are acquired and secured only by chastisement, imprisonment, and capital punishment."[1097]

Property is upheld by the police[1098] and the army.[1099] "We may act as if we did not see the policeman walking up and down before the window with loaded revolver to protect us while we eat a savory meal or look at a new play, and as if we had no inkling of the soldiers who are every moment ready to go with rifle and cartridges where any one tries to infringe on our property. Yet we well know, if we can finish our meal and see the new play in peace, if we can drive out or hunt or attend a festival or a race undisturbed, we have to thank for this only the policeman's bullet and the soldier's weapon, which are ready to pierce the poor victim of hunger who looks upon our enjoyments from his corner with grumbling stomach, and who would at once disturb them if the policeman with his revolver went away, or if in the barracks there were no longer any soldiers standing ready to appear at our first call."[1100]

3. The dominion which property involves, of the possessors over the non-possessors, is based on the physical force of the ruled.

Those very men of the non-possessing classes who through property are dependent on the possessing classes must do police duty, serve in the army, pay the taxes out of which police and army are kept up, and in these and other ways either themselves exercise or at least support the physical force by which property is upheld.[1101] "If there did not exist these men who are ready to discipline or kill any one whatever at the word of command, no one would dare assert what the non-laboring landlords now do all of them so confidently assert,--that the soil which surrounds the peasants who die off for lack of land is the property of a man who does not work on it";[1102] it would "not come into the head of the lord of the manor to take from the peasants a forest that has grown up under their eyes";[1103] nor would any one say "that the stores of grain accumulated by fraud in the midst of a starving population must remain unscathed that the merchant may have his profit."[1104]

II. _Love requires that a distribution based solely on its commandments take the place of property._ "The impossibility of continuing the life that has hitherto been led, and the necessity of determining new forms of life,"[1105] relate to the distribution of goods as well as to other things. "The abolition of property,"[1106] and its replacement by a new kind of distribution of goods, is one of the "questions now in order."[1107]

According to the law of love, every man who works as he has strength should have so much--but only so much--as he needs.

1. That every man who works as he has strength should have so much as he needs and no more is a corollary from two precepts which follow from the law of love.

The first of these precepts says, Man shall "ask no work from others, but himself devote his whole life to work for others. 'Man lives not to be served but to serve.'"[1108] Therefore, in particular, he is not to keep accounts with others about his work, or think that he "has the more of a living to claim, the greater or more useful his quantum of work done is."[1109] Following this precept provides every man with what he needs. This is true primarily of the healthy adult. "If a man works, his work feeds him. If another makes use of this man's work for himself, he will feed him for the very reason that he is making use of his work."[1110] Man assures himself of a living "not by taking it away from others, but by making himself useful and necessary to others. The more necessary he is to others, the more assured is his existence."[1111] But the following of the precept to serve others also provides the sick, the aged, and children with their living. Men "do not stop feeding an animal when it falls sick; they do not even kill an old horse, but give it work appropriate to its strength; they bring up whole families of little lambs, pigs, and puppies, because they expect benefit from them. How, then, should they not support the sick man who is necessary to them? How should they not find appropriate work for old and young, and bring up human beings who will in turn work for them?"[1112]

The second precept that follows from the law of love, and of which a corollary is that every man who works as he has strength should have as much as he needs and no more, bids us "Share what you have with the poor; gather no riches."[1113] "To the question of his hearers, what they were to do, John the Baptist gave the short, clear, simple answer, 'He who hath two coats, let him share with him who hath none; and he who hath food let him do likewise' (Luke 3.10-11). And Christ too made the same declaration several times, only still more unambiguously and clearly. He said, 'Blessed are the poor, woe to the rich.' He said that one could not serve God and Mammon at once. He not only forbade his disciples to take money, but also to have two garments. He told the rich young man that because he was rich he could not enter into the Kingdom of God, and that a camel should sooner go through a needle's eye than a rich man come into heaven. He said that he who did not forsake everything--house, children, lands--to follow him could not be his disciple. He told his hearers the parable of the rich man who did nothing bad except that he--like our rich men--clothed himself in costly apparel and fed himself on savory food and drink, and who plunged his soul into perdition by this alone, and of the poor Lazarus who did nothing good and who entered into the Kingdom of Heaven only because he was a beggar."[1114]

2. But what form can such a distribution of goods take in detail?

This is best shown us by "the Russian colonists. These colonists arrive on the soil, settle, and begin to work, and no one of them takes it into his head that any one who does not begin to make use of the land can have any right to it; on the contrary, the colonists regard the ground _a priori_ as common property, and consider it altogether justifiable that everybody plows and reaps where he chooses. For working the fields, for starting gardens, and for building houses, they procure implements; and here too it does not suggest itself to them that these could of themselves produce any income--on the contrary, the colonists look upon any profit from the means of labor, any interest for grain lent, etc., as an injustice. They work on masterless land with their own means or with means borrowed free of interest, either each for himself or all together on joint account."[1115]

"In talking of such fellowship I am not setting forth fancies, but only describing what has gone on at all times, what is even at present taking place not only among the Russian colonists but everywhere where man's natural condition is not yet deranged by some circumstances or other. I am describing what seems to everybody natural and rational. The men settle on the soil and go each one to work, make their implements, and do their labor. If they think it advantageous to work jointly, they form a labor company."[1116] But, in individual business as well as in collective industry, "neither the water nor the ground nor the garments nor the plow can belong to anybody save him who drinks the water, wears the garments, and uses the plow; for all these things are necessary only to him who puts them to use."[1117] One can call "only his labor his own";[1118] by it one has as much as one needs.[1119]

6.--REALIZATION

_The way in which the change required by love is to take place, according to Tolstoi, is that those men who have learned to know the truth are to convince as many others as possible how necessary the change is for love's sake, and that they, with the help of the refusal of obedience, are to abolish law, the State, and property, and bring about the new condition._

I. The prime necessity is that the men who have learned to know the truth should convince as many others as possible that love demands the change.

1. "That an order of life corresponding to our knowledge may take the place of the order contrary to it, the present antiquated public opinion must first be replaced by a new and living one."[1120]

It is not deeds of all sorts that bring to pass the grandest and most significant changes in the life of humanity, "neither the fitting out of armies a million strong nor the construction of roads and engines, neither the organization of expositions nor the formation of trade-unions, neither revolutions, barricades, and explosions nor inventions in aerial navigation--but the changes of public opinion, and these alone."[1121] Liberation is possible only "by a change in our conception of life";[1122] "everything depends on the force with which each individual man becomes conscious of Christian truth";[1123] "know the truth and the truth shall make you free."[1124] Our liberation must necessarily take place by "the Christian's recognizing the law of love, which his Master has revealed to him, as entirely sufficient for all human relations, and his perceiving the superfluousness and illegitimateness of all violence."[1125]

The bringing about of this revolution in public opinion is in the hands of the men who have learned to know the truth.[1126] "A public opinion does not need hundreds and thousands of years to arise and spread; it has the quality of working by contagion and swiftly seizing a great number of men."[1127] "As a jarring touch is enough to change a fluid saturated with salts to crystals in a moment, so now the slightest effort may perhaps suffice to cause the unveiled truth to seize upon hundreds, thousands, millions of men so that a public opinion corresponding to knowledge shall be established and that hereby the whole order of life shall become other than it is. It is in our hands to make this effort."[1128]

2. The best means for bringing about the necessary revolution in public opinion is that the men who have learned to know the truth should testify to it by deed.

"The Christian knows the truth only in order to testify to it before those who do not know it,"[1129] and that "by deed."[1130] "The truth is imparted to men by deeds of truth, deeds of truth illuminate every man's conscience, and thus destroy the force of deceit."[1131] Hence you ought properly, "if you are a landlord, to give your land at once to the poor, and, if you are a capitalist, to give your money or your factory to the workingmen; if you are a prince, a cabinet minister, an official, a judge, or a general, you ought at once to resign your position, and, if you are a soldier, you ought to refuse obedience without regard to any danger."[1132] But, to be sure, "it is very probable that you are not strong enough to do this; you have connections, dependents, subordinates, superiors, the temptations are powerful, and your force gives out."[1133]

3. But there is still another means, though a less effective one, for bringing about the necessary revolution in public opinion, and this "you can always"[1134] employ. It is that the men who have learned to know the truth should "speak it out frankly."[1135]

"If men--yes, if even a few men--would do this, the antiquated public opinion would at once fall of itself, and a new, living, present-day one would arise."[1136] "Not billions of rubles, not millions of soldiers, no institutions, wars, or revolutions, have so much power as the simple declaration of a free man that he considers something to be right or wrong. If a free man speaks out honestly what he thinks and feels, in the midst of thousands who in word and act stand for the very contrary, one might think he must remain isolated. But usually it is otherwise; all, or most, have long been privately thinking and feeling in the same way; and then what to-day is still an individual's new opinion will perhaps to-morrow be already the general opinion of the majority."[1137] "If we would only stop lying and acting as if we did not see the truth, if we would only testify to the truth that summons us and boldly confess it, it would at once turn out that there are hundreds, thousands, millions, of men in the same situation as ourselves, that they see the truth like us, are afraid like us of remaining isolated if they confess it, and are only waiting, like us, for the rest to testify to it."[1138]

II. To bring about the change and put the new condition in the place of law, the State, and property, it is further requisite that the men who have learned to know the truth should conform their lives to their knowledge, and, in particular, that they should refuse obedience to the State.

1. Men are to bring about the change themselves. They are "no longer to wait for somebody to come and help them, be it Christ in the clouds with the sound of the trumpet, be it a historic law or a differential or integral law of forces. Nobody will help us if we do not help ourselves."[1139]

"I have been told a story that happened to a courageous commissary of police. He came into a village where they had applied for soldiers on account of an outbreak among the peasants. In the spirit of Nicholas the First he proposed to make an end of the rising by his personal presence alone. He had a few cart-loads of sticks brought, gathered all the peasants in a barn, and shut himself in with them. By his shouts he succeeded in so cowing the peasants that they obeyed him and began to beat each other at his command. So they beat each other till there was found a simple-minded peasant who did not obey, and who called out to his fellows that they should not beat each other either. Only then did the beating cease, and the official made haste to get away. The advice of this simple-minded peasant" should be followed by the men of our time.[1140]

2. But it is not by violence that men are to bring about the change. "Revolutionary enemies fight the government from outside; Christianity does not fight at all, but wrecks its foundations from within."[1141]

"Some assert that liberation from force, or at least its diminution, can be effected by the oppressed men's forcibly shaking off the oppressing government; and many do in fact undertake to act on this doctrine. But they deceive themselves and others: their activity only enhances the despotism of governments, and the attempts at liberation are welcomed by the governments as pretexts for strengthening their power."[1142]

However, suppose that by the favor of circumstances (as, for instance, in France in 1870) they succeed in overthrowing a government, the party which had won by force would be compelled, "in order to remain at the helm and introduce its order into life, not only to employ all existing violent methods, but to invent new ones in addition. It would be other men that would be enslaved, and they would be coerced into other things, but there would exist not merely the same but a still more cruel condition of violence and enslavement; for the combat would have fanned the flames of hatred, strengthened the means of enslavement, and evolved new ones. Thus it has been after all revolutions, insurrections, and conspiracies, after all violent changes of government. Every fight only puts stronger means of enslavement in the hands of the men who at a given time are in power."[1143]

3. Men are to bring about the change by conforming their lives to their knowledge. "The Christian frees himself from all human authority by recognizing as sole plumb-line for his life and the lives of others the divine law of love that is implanted in man's soul and has been brought into consciousness by Christ."[1144]

This means that one is to return good for evil,[1145] give to one's neighbor all that one has that is superfluous and take away from him nothing that one does not need,[1146] especially acquire no money and get rid of the money one has,[1147] not buy nor rent,[1148] and, without shrinking from any form of work, satisfy one's needs with one's own hands;[1149] and particularly does it mean that one is to refuse obedience to the unchristian demands of State authority.[1150]

That obedience to these demands is refused we see in many cases in Russia at present. Men are refusing the payment of taxes, the general oath, the oath in court, the exercise of police functions, action as jurymen, and military service.[1151] "The governments find themselves in a desperate situation as they face the Christians' refusals."[1152] They "can chastise, put to death, imprison for life, and torture, any one who tries to overthrow them by force; they can bribe and smother with gold the half of mankind; they can bring into their service millions of armed men who are ready to annihilate all their foes. But what can they do against men who do not destroy anything, do not set up anything either, but only, each for himself, are unwilling to act contrary to the law of Christ, and therefore refuse to do what is most necessary for the governments?"[1153] "Let the State do as it will by such men, inevitably it will contribute only to its own annihilation,"[1154] and therewith to the annihilation of law and property and to the bringing in of the new order of life. "For, if it does not persecute people like the Dukhobors, the Stundists, etc., the advantages of their peaceable Christian way of living will induce others to join them--and not only convinced Christians, but also such as want to get clear of their obligations to the State under the cloak of Christianity. If, on the other hand, it deals cruelly with men against whom there is nothing except that they have endeavored to live morally, this cruelty will only make it still more enemies, and the moment must at last come when there can no longer be found any one who is ready to back up the State with instrumentalities of force."[1155]

4. In the conforming of life to knowledge the individual must make the beginning. He must not wait for all or many to do it at the same time with him.

The individual must not think it will be useless if he alone conforms his life to Christ's teaching.[1156] "Men in their present situation are like bees that have left their hive and are hanging on a twig in a great mass. The situation of the bees on the twig is a temporary one, and absolutely must be changed. They must take flight and seek a new abode. Every bee knows that, and wishes to make an end of its own suffering condition and that of the others; but this cannot be done by one so long as the others do not help. But all cannot rise at once, for one hangs over another and hinders it from letting go; therefore all remain hanging. One might think that there was no way out of this situation for the bees";[1157] if and really there would be none, were it not that each bee is an independent living being. But it is only needful "that one bee spread its wings, rise and fly, and after it the second, the third, the tenth, the hundredth, for the immobile hanging mass to become a freely flying swarm of bees. Thus it is only needful that one man comprehend life as Christianity teaches it, and take hold of it as Christianity teaches him to, and then that a second, a third, a hundredth follow him, and the magic circle from which no escape seemed possible is destroyed."[1158]

Neither may the individual let himself be deterred by the fear of suffering. "'If I alone,' it is commonly said, 'fulfil Christ's teaching in the midst of a world that does not follow it, give away my belongings, turn my cheek without resistance, yes, and refuse the oath and military service, then I shall have the last bit taken from me, and, if I do not die of hunger, they will beat me to death, and, if they do not beat me to death, they will jail me or shoot me; and I shall have given all the happiness of my life, nay, my life itself, for nothing.'"[1159] Be it so. "I do not ask whether I shall have more trouble, or die sooner, if I follow Christ's teaching. That question can be asked only by one who does not see how meaningless and miserable is his life as an individual life, and who imagines that he shall 'not die'. But I know that a life for the sake of one's own happiness is the greatest folly, and that such an aimless life can be followed only by an aimless death. And therefore I fear nothing. I shall die like everybody, like even those who do not fulfil Christ's teaching, but my life and my death will have a meaning for me and for others. My life and my death will contribute to the rescue and life of others--and that is just what Christ taught."[1160]

If once enough individuals have conformed their lives to their knowledge, the multitude will soon follow. "The passage of men from one order of life to another does not take place steadily, as the sand in the hour-glass runs out, one grain after another from the first to the last, but rather as a vessel that has been sunk into water fills itself. At first the water gets in only on one side, slowly and uniformly; but then its weight makes the vessel sink, and now the thing takes in, all at once, all the water that it can hold."[1161] Thus the impulse given by individuals will provoke a movement that goes on faster and faster, wider and wider, avalanche-like, suddenly sweeps along the masses, and brings about the new order of life.[1162] Then the time is come "when all men are filled with God, shun war, beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; that is, in our language, when the prisons and fortresses are empty, when the gallows, rifles, and cannon are out of use. What seemed a dream has found its fulfilment in a new form of life."[1163]

FOOTNOTES:

[859] To. "Kingdom" pp. 244-5, 280, 315, 325.

[860] _Ib._ pp. 263, 285-6, To. "Gospel" p. 25, "Religion and Morality" p. 14.

[861] To. "What I Believe" p. 251.

[862] To. "Gospel" pp. 13-14, 16-17.

[863] To. "Kingdom" p. 96-7.

[864] To. "What I Believe" pp. 247-8.

[865] To. "Reason and Dogma" p. 5.

[866] To. "What I Believe" p. 196.

[867] To. "Gospel" pp. 51, 29-30.

[868] _Ib._ p. 47.

[869] To. "Patriotism" p. 118.

[870] To. "Gospel" p. 29.

[871] To. "Gospel" p. 50; To. "Religion and Morality" p. 27.

[872] To. "On Life" p. 214.

[873] To. "Gospel" p. 31.

[874] _Ib._ pp. 32, 31, 40, 112.

[875] To. "What I Believe" p. 164.

[876] To. "Gospel" p. 21.

[877] _Ib._ p. 21.

[878] To. "What I Believe" pp. 160, 174.

[879] _Ib._ p. 166.

[880] To. "Confession" p. 92.

[881] To. "Kingdom" pp. 75-7, 79.

[882] To. "What I Believe" pp. 195, 272, "Kingdom" pp. 72-3, "Gospel" p. 5.

[883] To. "Kingdom" p. 234.

[884] To. "On Life" p. 48.

[885] _Ib._ pp. 72, 66.

[886] To. "Confession" p. 54.

[887] To. "On Life" p. 101.

[888] _Ib._ p. 100.

[889] _Ib._ p. 100.

[890] _Ib._ pp. 160, 101.

[891] _Ib._ pp. 160, 101.

[892] _Ib._ pp. 262-3.

[893] To. "On Life" p. 263.

[894] _Ib._ p. 263.

[895] To. "Religion and Morality" pp. 21-2.

[896] To. "Kingdom" p. 71.

[897] To. "Gospel" p. 25.

[898] _Ib._ p. 25.

[899] To. "What I Believe" pp. 138-9

[900] _Ib._ p. 268.

[901] _Ib._ p. 148.

[902] To. "On Life" pp. 159-60.

[903] _Ib._ p. 165.

[904] _Ib._ p. 164.

[905] _Ib._ pp. 170-71.

[906] To. "Kingdom" p. 140.

[907] _Ib._ p. 139.

[908] _Ib._ p. 138.

[909] To. "Kingdom" p. 142, "What I Believe" p. 17.

[910] To. "Kingdom" p. 123.

[911] To. "Religion and Morality" p. 12.

[912] To. "Kingdom" pp. 124-5.

[913] To. "Morning" pp. 70-71.

[914] To. "On Life" p. 148.

[915] _Ib._ pp. 147, 148.

[916] _Ib._ pp. 122, 133-5, 174, 176.

[917] _Ib._ pp. 121, 174.

[918] To. "On Life" pp. 26, 122-3, 196, 206.

[919] To. "What I Believe" p. 17.

[920] To. "Kingdom" p. 144.

[921] _Ib._ pp. 142-3.

[922] _Ib._ p. 160.

[923] _Ib._ p. 144.

[924] To. "What I Believe" p. 122.

[925] _Ib._ p. 123.

[926] _Ib._ p. 123.

[927] _Ib._ p. 123.

[928] _Ib._ p. 123.

[929] To. "What I Believe" p. 12.

[930] _Ib._ p. 12.

[931] _Ib._ p. 15.

[932] _Ib._ pp. 21-2.

[933] _Ib._ p. 22.

[934] To. "Kingdom" pp. 68-9.

[935] To. "Kingdom" pp. 269-70.

[936] _Ib._ p. 282.

[937] _Ib._ p. 63.

[938] To. "What I Believe" pp. 17, 20; "Kingdom" p. 268. [Has Tolstoi compared in a Greek concordance the other occurrences of the word translated "resist"?]

[939] To. "Kingdom" pp. 49-50.

[940] _Ib._ p. 50.

[941] To. "Kingdom" pp. 268-9.

[942] _Ib._ p. 269.

[943] ["He speaks only of the _Gesetz_, but he means all _Recht_"; see footnote on page 145 of the present book.]

[944] To. "Kingdom" pp. 268, 300-301.

[945] _Ib._ pp. 361-2.

[946] To. "What I Believe" pp. 29, 32.

[947] To. "Kingdom" pp. 361-2, 172.

[948] _Ib._ p. 172.

[949] _Ib._ p. 300.

[950] _Ib._ p. 361.

[951] _Ib._ p. 241.

[952] _Ib._ p. 240.

[953] _Ib._ p. 256.

[954] To. "What I Believe" p. 29.

[955] _Ib._ pp. 28-9.

[956] _Ib._ p. 32.

[957] _Ib._ p. 32.

[958] _Ib._ pp. 45-6.

[959] _Ib._ p. 29.

[960] To. "Kingdom" pp. 361-2.

[961] _Ib._ p. 172.

[962] _Ib._ p. 268.

[963] _Ib._ p. 172.

[964] To. "What I Believe" p. 120.

[965] _Ib._ pp. 180, 235.

[966] _Ib._ pp. 235, 180.

[967] To. "Kingdom" p. 393, "What I Believe" p. 121.

[968] To. "Kingdom" pp. 393-4.

[969] _Ib._ pp. 486-7.

[970] To. "Persecutions" p. 47.

[971] To. "Gospel" p. 50.

[972] To. "Kingdom" p. 526.

[973] To. "What I Believe" p. 121.

[974] To. "Kingdom" pp. 142-3, 144.

[975] To. "What I Believe" pp. 122-3, 179, 124, 219-20; "Gospel" pp. 59-60; "Kingdom" pp. 143-4.

[976] To. "What I Believe" p. 225.

[977] _Ib._ p. 225.

[978] _Ib._ p. 121.

[979] To. "Kingdom" pp. 240-41.

[980] _Ib._ p. 336.

[981] _Ib._ pp. 335-6.

[982] _Ib._ p. 332.

[983] _Ib._ p. 211.

[984] To. "What I Believe" p. 21; "Persecutions" p. 46.

[985] To. "Kingdom" pp. 209-10.

[986] _Ib._ pp. 167, 164.

[987] To. "What I Believe" p. 25.

[988] To. "Kingdom" p. 332.

[989] To. "What I Believe" p. 50.

[990] To. "Kingdom" pp. 429-30, 244.

[991] _Ib._ pp. 209-10.

[992] _Ib._ p. 274.

[993] _Ib._ pp. 271-2.

[994] To. "Kingdom" p. 271.

[995] _Ib._ pp. 341, 339.

[996] _Ib._ p. 340.

[997] _Ib._ p. 340.

[998] _Ib._ p. 339.

[999] To. "Kingdom" pp. 339-40.

[1000] _Ib._ p. 342.

[1001] _Ib._ p. 243.

[1002] To. "Patriotism" p. 91.

[1003] To. "Kingdom" p. 239.

[1004] _Ib._ p. 243.

[1005] To. "Kingdom" p. 281.

[1006] _Ib._ p. 442.

[1007] _Ib._ p. 442.

[1008] To. "Persecutions" p. 41.

[1009] To. "Kingdom" p. 327.

[1010] _Ib._ p. 238.

[1011] To. "Patriotism" p. 120.

[1012] To. "Kingdom" p. 443.

[1013] To. "Patriotism" p. 119.

[1014] To. "Kingdom" p. 238.

[1015] To. "Kingdom" pp. 248-9.

[1016] To. "Patriotism" p. 91.

[1017] To. "Kingdom" p. 249.

[1018] _Ib._ p. 245.

[1019] To. "Kingdom" p. 246-7.

[1020] _Ib._ pp. 250, 423-4.

[1021] _Ib._ pp. 314-28.

[1022] To. "What I Believe" pp. 26-7.

[1023] To. "Kingdom" p. 274.

[1024] _Ib._ p. 276.

[1025] _Ib._ p. 422.

[1026] _Ib._ p. 277.

[1027] _Ib._ p. 276.

[1028] To. "Patriotism" pp. 40-41, 100-102; "Kingdom" pp. 429-32.

[1029] To. "Kingdom" p. 275.

[1030] To. "Kingdom" p. 422.

[1031] _Ib._ pp. 275-6, 420-22, 444-5.

[1032] _Ib._ p. 278.

[1033] _Ib._ p. 278.

[1034] _Ib._ p. 279.

[1035] _Ib._ p. 279.

[1036] To. "Kingdom" p. 511; "Patriotism" p. 117.

[1037] To. "Kingdom" p. 189.

[1038] To. "What I Believe" p. 123.

[1039] To. "Kingdom" pp. 143-4.

[1040] _Ib._ pp. 300-301.

[1041] _Ib._ p. 300.

[1042] _Ib._ p. 301.

[1043] _Ib._ p. 301.

[1044] _Ib._ p. 236.

[1045] _Ib._ p. 461.

[1046] To. "Kingdom" p. 461.

[1047] _Ib._ pp. 461-2.

[1048] _Ib._ p. 461.

[1049] _Ib._ p. 255.

[1050] _Ib._ p. 255.

[1051] To. "Kingdom" pp. 255-6.

[1052] To. "What I Believe" p. 290.

[1053] To. "Kingdom" pp. 255, 258.

[1054] _Ib._ p. 258.

[1055] To. "What I Believe" p. 289.

[1056] To. "Kingdom" pp. 255, 257.

[1057] _Ib._ p. 257.

[1058] _Ib._ p. 510.

[1059] To. "Persecutions" pp. 46-7.

[1060] To. "Kingdom" p. 372.

[1061] To. "Kingdom" p. 510.

[1062] _Ib._ p. 512.

[1063] _Ib._ pp. 513-14.

[1064] To. "Kingdom" pp. 372-3.

[1065] _Ib._ p. 518.

[1066] _Ib._ p. 256.

[1067] _Ib._ p. 164.

[1068] _Ib._ p. 376.

[1069] To. "What I Believe" p. 21; "What Shall We Do" pp. 157-8.

[1070] To. "Kingdom" pp. 167, 164.

[1071] _Ib._ p. 273.

[1072] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 19.

[1073] _Ib._ pp. 18-19.

[1074] _Ib._ p. 19.

[1075] To. "Money" p. 18.

[1076] To. "Linen-Measurer" pp. 602-3.

[1077] To. "Kingdom" p. 164.

[1078] _Ib._ p. 168.

[1079] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 143.

[1080] To. "Money" p. 18.

[1081] _Ib._ p. 13.

[1082] _Ib._ p. 13.

[1083] _Ib._ p. 16.

[1084] _Ib._ p. 15.

[1085] To. "Kingdom" p. 166.

[1086] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 139.

[1087] _Ib._ p. 152.

[1088] To. "Money" p. 6.

[1089] To. "What Shall We Do" pp. 151-2.

[1090] _Ib._ p. 160.

[1091] To. "What Shall We Do" pp. 134-5.

[1092] _Ib._ p. 135.

[1093] To. "Kingdom" pp. 247-8.

[1094] _Ib._ p. 406.

[1095] _Ib._ p. 407.

[1096] _Ib._ p. 407.

[1097] _Ib._ p. 409.

[1098] _Ib._ p. 492.

[1099] _Ib._ pp. 247, 447.

[1100] To. "Kingdom" pp. 492-3.

[1101] _Ib._ pp. 314-28.

[1102] _Ib._ pp. 424-5.

[1103] _Ib._ p. 425.

[1104] _Ib._ p. 425.

[1105] To. "Kingdom" p. 511.

[1106] To. "What I Believe" p. 249.

[1107] _Ib._ p. 249.

[1108] _Ib._ p. 228.

[1109] _Ib._ pp. 227-8.

[1110] _Ib._ p. 227.

[1111] _Ib._ p. 229.

[1112] To. "What I Believe" p. 230.

[1113] To. "Kingdom" p. 520.

[1114] To. "What Shall We Do" pp. 157-8.

[1115] To. "Money" p. 10.

[1116] To. "Money" p. 11.

[1117] _Ib._ pp. 11-12.

[1118] "Kernel" p. 89.

[1119] _Ib._ p. 89.

[1120] "Patriotism" p. 116.

[1121] To. "Patriotism" pp. 108-9.

[1122] To. "Kingdom" p. 301.

[1123] _Ib._ p. 474.

[1124] _Ib._ p. 302.

[1125] _Ib._ p. 301.

[1126] To. "Patriotism" pp. 116-17.

[1127] To. "Kingdom" p. 358.

[1128] To. "Kingdom" p. 508.

[1129] To. "What I Believe" p. 290.

[1130] _Ib._ p. 290.

[1131] _Ib._ p. 293.

[1132] To. "Kingdom" p. 523.

[1133] _Ib._ p. 523.

[1134] _Ib._ p. 523.

[1135] To. "Patriotism" p. 116.

[1136] _Ib._ p. 109.

[1137] To. "Patriotism" pp. 112-13.

[1138] To. "Kingdom" p. 509.

[1139] To. "What I Believe" pp. 147-8.

[1140] To. "Kingdom" pp. 306-7.

[1141] _Ib._ p. 326.

[1142] _Ib._ pp. 279-80.

[1143] To. "Kingdom" pp. 280-81.

[1144] _Ib._ p. 298.

[1145] To. "What I Believe" p. 292.

[1146] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 164; "What I Believe" p. 291.

[1147] To. "What Shall We Do" p. 162.

[1148] _Ib._ p. 161.

[1149] To "What Shall We Do" p. 161.

[1150] To. "Kingdom" p. 314.

[1151] _Ib._ pp. 327-8.

[1152] _Ib._ p. 330.

[1153] _Ib._ p. 328.

[1154] To. "Persecutions" p. 44.

[1155] To. "Persecutions" p. 44.

[1156] To. "Kingdom" p. 293.

[1157] _Ib._ pp. 302-3.

[1158] To. "Kingdom" pp. 303-4.

[1159] "What I Believe" p. 148.

[1160] _Ib._ pp. 179-80.

[1161] To. "Kingdom" p. 353.

[1162] _Ib._ p. 356.

[1163] _Ib._ p. 392.