xxiv. 36), is what Christ says, for it may come any time, at any

moment, even when we do not expect it.

In reply to the question when this hour shall arrive, Christ says that we cannot know it; but for the very reason that we do not know the time of its coming, we should not only be at all times prepared to meet it, as must be the goodman watching the house, and the virgins with their lamps going forth to meet the bridegroom, but also we should work with all our strength for the coming of that hour, as the servants had to work for the talents given to them (Matt. xxiv. 43; xxv. 1-30). In reply to the question when this hour should come, Christ admonished all men to work with all their strength for its quicker coming.

There can be no other answer. People can nowise know when the day and the hour of the kingdom of God shall arrive, because the coming of that hour depends on no one but the men themselves.

The answer is the same as that of the sage, who in reply to the question of a passer-by, how far it was to the city, answered, "Go."

How can we know how far it is to the goal toward which humanity is moving, since we do not know how humanity, on whom it depends whether to go or not, to stop, to temper the motion, or to accelerate it, will move toward that goal?

All we can know is, what we, who compose humanity, must do, and what not, in order that the kingdom of God may come. That we all know. And every one need but begin to do what we must do, and stop doing what we must not do; every one of us need only live by all that light which is within us, in order that the promised kingdom of God, toward which the heart of every man is drawn, may come at once.

XII.

CONCLUSION

1

I had ended this two years' labour, when, on the ninth of September, I happened to travel on a train to a locality in the Governments of Túla and Ryazán, where the peasants had been starving the year before, and were starving still more in the present year. At one of the stations the train in which I was travelling met a special train which, under the leadership of the governor, was transporting troops with guns, cartridges, and rods for the torture and killing of those very famine-stricken peasants.

The torturing of the peasants with rods for the purpose of enforcing the decision of the authorities, although corporal punishment was abolished by law thirty years ago, has of late been applied more and more freely in Russia.

I had heard of it, had even read in newspapers of the terrible tortures of which the Governor of Nízhni-Nóvgorod, Baránov, is said to have boasted, of the tortures which had taken place in Chernígov, Tambóv, Sarátov, Astrakhán, Orél, but not once had I had a chance to see men in the process of executing these deeds.

Here I saw with my own eyes good Russians, men who are permeated with the Christian spirit, travelling with guns and rods, to kill and torture their starving brothers.

The cause that brought them out was the following:

In one of the estates of a wealthy landowner the peasants had raised a forest on a pasture which they owned in common with the proprietor (had raised, that is, had watched it during its growth), and had always made use of it, and so regarded this forest as their own, at least as a common possession; but the proprietor, appropriating to himself this forest, began to cut it down. The peasants handed in a complaint. The judge of the first instance irregularly (I say "irregularly," using the word employed by the prosecuting attorney and the governor, men who ought to know the case) decided the case in favour of the proprietor. All the higher courts, among them the senate, though they could see that the case had been decided irregularly, confirmed the decision, and the forest was adjudged to the proprietor. The proprietor began to cut down the forest, but the peasants, unable to believe that such an obvious injustice could be done them by a higher court, did not submit to the decree, and drove away the workmen who were sent to cut down the forest, declaring that the forest belonged to them, and that they would petition the Tsar, but would not allow the proprietor to cut down the forest.

The case was reported to St. Petersburg, whence the governor was ordered to enforce the decree of the court. The governor asked for troops, and now the soldiers, armed with bayonets, ball-cartridges, and, besides, a supply of rods, purposely prepared for this occasion and carried in a separate car, were travelling to enforce this decree of the higher authorities.

The enforcement of the decree of the higher authorities is accomplished by means of killing, of torturing men, or by means of a threat of doing one or the other, according as to whether any opposition is shown or not.

In the first case, if the peasants show any opposition, the following takes place in Russia (the same things happen wherever there are a state structure and property rights): the chief makes a speech and demands submission. The excited crowd, generally deceived by its leaders, does not understand a word that the representative of the power says in official book language, and continues to be agitated. Then the chief declares that if they do not submit and disperse, he will be compelled to have recourse to arms. If the crowd does not submit even then, the chief commands his men to load their guns and shoot above the heads of the crowd. If the crowd does not disperse even then, he commands the soldiers to shoot straight into the crowd, at haphazard, and the soldiers shoot, and in the street fall wounded and killed men, and then the crowd generally runs away, and the troops at the command of the chiefs seize those who present themselves to them as the main rioters, and lead them away under guard.

After that they pick up the blood-stained, dying, maimed, killed, and wounded men, frequently also women and children; the dead are buried, and the maimed are sent to the hospital. But those who are considered to be the plotters are taken to the city and tried by a special military court. If on their part there was any violence, they are sentenced to be hanged. Then they put up a gallows and with the help of ropes choke to death a few defenceless people, as has many times been done in Russia and as is being done, and must be done where the public structure is based on violence. Thus they do in case of opposition.

In the second case, when the peasants submit, there takes place something special and peculiarly Russian. What happens is this: the governor arrives at the place of action, makes a speech to the people, rebuking them for their disobedience, and either stations troops in the farms of the village, where the soldiers, quartering at times as much as a month at a time, ruin the peasants, or, satisfied with threatening them, graciously pardons the people and returns home, or, which happens more frequently than anything else, announces to them that the instigators ought to be punished, and arbitrarily, without trial, selects a certain number of men, who are declared to be the instigators and in his presence are subjected to tortures.

In order to give an idea as to how these things are done, I will describe an affair which took place at Orél and received the approval of the higher authorities.

What happened in Orél was this: just as here, in the Government of Túla, a proprietor wanted to take away some property from certain peasants, and the peasants opposed him, just as they did here. The point was that the landed proprietor wanted without the consent of the peasants to keep the water in his mill-pond at so high a level that their fields were inundated. The peasants objected. The proprietor entered a complaint before the County Council chief. The County Council chief illegally (as was later declared by the court) decided the case in favour of the proprietor, by permitting him to raise the water. The proprietor sent his workmen to raise the ditch through which the water ran down. The peasants were provoked by this irregular decision, and called out their wives, to prevent the proprietor's workmen from raising the ditch. The women went to the dam, overturned the carts, and drove off the workmen. The proprietor entered a complaint against the women for taking the law into their hands. The County Council chief ordered one woman from each peasant farm in the whole village to be locked up ("in the cold room"). The decision could not well be carried out; since there were several women on each farm, it was impossible to determine which of them was liable to arrest, and so the police did not carry out the decree. The proprietor complained to the governor of the inactivity of the police, and the governor, without looking into the matter, gave the rural chief the strict order immediately to enforce the decision of the County Council chief. Obeying the higher authorities, the rural chief arrived in the village and, with a disrespect for men which is characteristic of the Russian authorities, commanded the policemen to seize one woman from each house. But since there was more than one woman in each house, and it was impossible to tell which one of them was subject to incarceration, there began quarrels, and opposition was shown. In spite of these quarrels and this opposition, the rural chief commanded that one woman, no matter who she be, be seized in each house and led to a place of confinement. The peasants began to defend their wives and mothers, did not give them up, and upon this occasion beat the police and the rural chief. There appeared the first terrible crime,--an assault on the authorities,--and this new crime was reported to the city. And so the governor, like the Governor of Túla, arrived on a special train with a battalion of soldiers, with guns and rods, having made use of the telegraph, of telephones, and of the railway, and brought with him a learned doctor, who was to watch the hygienic conditions of the flogging, thus fully personifying Dzhingis Khan with the telegraphs, as predicted by Herzen.

Near the township office stood the troops, a squad of policemen with red cords, to which is attached the revolver, official persons from among the peasants, and the accused. Round about stood a crowd of one thousand people or more. Upon driving up to the township office, the governor alighted from his carriage, delivered a speech previously prepared, and called for the guilty and for a bench. This command was not understood at first. But a policeman, whom the governor always took with him, and who attended to the preparation of the tortures, which had more than once been employed in the Government, explained that what was meant was a bench for flogging. A bench was brought, the rods, which had been carried on the train, were piled up, and the executioners were called for. These had been previously chosen from among the horse-thieves of the village, because the soldiers refused to perform this duty.

When everything was ready, the governor commanded the first of the twelve men pointed out by the proprietor as the most guilty to step forward. The one that came out was the father of a family, a respected member of society of about forty years of age, who had bravely defended the rights of society and so enjoyed the respect of the inhabitants. He was led up to the bench, his body was bared, and he was ordered to lie down.

The peasant tried to beg for mercy, but when he saw that this was useless, he made the sign of the cross and lay down. Two policemen rushed forward to hold him down. The learned doctor stood near by, ready to offer learned medical aid. The prisoners, spitting into their hands, swished the rods and began to strike. However, it turned out that the bench was too narrow and that it was too difficult to keep the writhing, tortured man upon it. Then the governor ordered another bench to be brought and to be cleated to the first. Putting their hands to their visors and muttering: "Yes, your Excellency," some men hurriedly and humbly fulfilled the commands; meanwhile the half-naked, pale, tortured man, frowning and looking earthward, waited with trembling jaws and bared legs. When the second bench was attached, he was again put down, and the horse-thieves began to beat him again. The back, hips, and thighs, and even the sides of the tortured man began more and more to be covered with wales and bloody streaks, and with every blow there were heard dull sounds, which the tortured man was unable to repress. In the surrounding crowd were heard the sobs of the wives, mothers, children, relatives of the tortured man and of all those who were selected for the punishment.

The unfortunate governor, intoxicated by his power, thought that he could not do otherwise, and, bending his fingers, counted the blows, and without stopping smoked cigarettes, to light which several officious persons hastened every time to hand him a lighted match. When fifty blows had been dealt, the peasant stopped crying and stirring, and the doctor, who had been educated in a Crown institution for the purpose of serving his Tsar and country with his scientific knowledge, walked over to the tortured man, felt his pulse, listened to the beating of his heart, and announced to the representative of power that the punished man had lost consciousness and that according to the data of science it might be dangerous to his life to continue the punishment. But the unfortunate governor, who was now completely intoxicated by the sight of blood, commanded the men to go on, and the torture lasted until they had dealt seventy blows, to which number it for some reason seemed to him necessary to carry the number of the blows. When the seventieth blow was dealt, the governor said, "Enough! The next!" And the disfigured man, with his swollen back, was lifted up and carried away in a swoon, and another was taken up. The sobs and groans of the crowd became louder; but the representative of the governmental power continued the torture.

Thus they flogged the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth man,--each man receiving seventy blows. All of them begged for mercy, groaned, cried. The sobs and groans of the mass of women grew louder and more heartrending, and the faces of the men grew gloomier and gloomier; but the troops stood all about them, and the torture did not stop until the work was accomplished in the measure which for some reason appeared indispensable to the caprice of the unfortunate, half-drunken, deluded man, called a governor.

Not only were officials, officers, soldiers present, but with their presence they took part in this matter and kept this order of the fulfilment of the state act from being impaired on the part of the crowd.

When I asked one of the governors why these tortures are committed on men, when they have already submitted and troops are stationed in the village, he replied to me, with the significant look of a man who has come to know all the intricacies of state wisdom, that this is done because experience has shown that if the peasants are not subjected to torture they will again counteract the decrees of the power, while the performance of the torture in the case of a few men for ever confirms the decrees of the authorities.

And so now the Governor of Túla was travelling with his officials, officers, and soldiers, in order to perform just such a work. In just the same manner, that is, by means of murder or torture, were to be carried out the decree of the higher authorities, which consisted in this, that a young fellow, a landed proprietor, who had an income of one hundred thousand roubles per year, was to receive another three thousand roubles, for a forest which he had in a rascally manner taken away from a whole society of hungry and cold peasants, and be able to spend this money in two or three weeks in the restaurants of Moscow, St. Petersburg, or Paris. It was to do such a deed that the men whom I met were travelling.

Fate, as though on purpose, after my two years' tension of thought in one and the same direction, for the first time in my life brought me in contact with this phenomenon, which showed me with absolute obviousness in practice what had become clear to me in theory, namely, that the whole structure of our life is not based, as men who enjoy an advantageous position in the existing order of things are fond of imagining, on any juridical principles, but on the simplest, coarsest violence, on the murder and torture of men.

Men who own large tracts of land or have large capitals, or who receive large salaries, which are collected from the working people, who are in need of the simplest necessities, as also those who, as merchants, doctors, artists, clerks, savants, coachmen, cooks, authors, lackeys, lawyers, live parasitically about these rich people, are fond of believing that those prerogatives which they enjoy are not due to violence, but to an absolutely free and regular exchange of services, and that these prerogatives are not only not the result of assault upon people, and the murder of them, like what took place this year in Orél and in many other places in Russia, and continually takes place in all of Europe and of America, but has even no connection whatsoever with these cases of violence. They are fond of believing that the privileges which they enjoy exist in themselves and take place and are due to a voluntary agreement among people, while the violence exerted against people also exists in itself and is due to some universal and higher juridical, political, and economical laws. These men try not to see that they enjoy the privileges which they enjoy only by dint of the same thing which now would force the peasants, who raised the forest and who were very much in need of it, to give it up to the rich proprietor, who took no part in the preservation of the forest and had no need of it, that is, that they would be flogged or killed if they did not give up this forest.

And yet, if it is quite clear that the Orél mill began to bring greater returns to the proprietor, and that the forest, which the peasants raised, is turned over to the proprietor, only in consequence of assaults or murders, or the threat of them, it must be just as clear that all the other exclusive rights of the rich, which deprive the poor of their prime necessities, are based on the same thing. If the peasants, who are in need of the land for the support of their families, do not plough the land which adjoins their very farms, while this land, which is capable of supporting something like one thousand families, is in the hands of one man,--a Russian, Englishman, Austrian, or some large landed proprietor,--who does not work on this land, and if the merchant, buying up the corn from the needy agriculturists, can securely keep this corn in his granaries, amidst starving people, and sell it at three times its price to the same agriculturists from whom he bought it at one-third its present worth, it is evident that this takes place from the same causes. And if one man cannot buy cheap goods, which are sold to him from beyond a conventional line called a border, without paying customs dues to people who had no share whatsoever in the production of the goods; and if people cannot help but give up their last cow for taxes, which are distributed by the government to officials and are used for the maintenance of soldiers who will kill these very taxpayers, it would seem to be obvious that even this does not take place in consequence of some abstract rights, but in consequence of the same that happened in Orél and that now may happen in the Government of Túla, and periodically in one form or another takes place in the whole world, wherever there is a state structure and there are the rich and the poor.

Because not all human relations of violence are accompanied by tortures and murders, the men who enjoy the exclusive prerogatives of the ruling classes assure themselves and others that the privileges which they enjoy are not due to any tortures or murders, but to other mysterious common causes, abstract rights, and so forth. And yet, it would seem, it is clear that, if people, though they consider this to be an injustice (all working people now do), give the main portion of their work to the capitalist, the landed proprietor, and pay taxes, though they know that bad use is made of them, they do so first of all, not because they recognize any abstract rights, of which they have never heard, but only because they know that they will be flogged and killed, if they do not do so.

But if there is no occasion to imprison, flog, and kill men, every time the rent for the land is collected by the landed proprietor, and the man in need of corn pays to the merchant who has cheated him a threefold price, and the factory hand is satisfied with a wage which represents proportionately half the master's income, and if a poor man gives up his last rouble for customs dues and taxes, this is due to the fact that so many men have been beaten and killed for their attempts to avoid doing what is demanded of them, that they keep this well in mind. As the trained tiger in the cage does not take the meat which is placed under his mouth, and does not lie quiet, but jumps over a stick, whenever he is ordered to do so, not because he wants to do so, but because he remembers the heated iron rod or the hunger to which he was subjected every time he did not obey,--even so men who submit to what is not advantageous for them, what even is ruinous to them, do so because they remember what happened to them for their disobedience.

But the men who enjoy prerogatives which are the result of old violence, frequently forget, and like to forget, how these prerogatives were obtained. We need, however, only think of history, not the history of the successes of various dynasties of rulers, but real history, the history of the oppression of the majority by a small number of men, to see that the bases of all the prerogatives of the rich over the poor have originated from nothing but switches, prisons, hard labour, murders.

We need but think of that constant, stubborn tendency of men to increase their well-being, which guides the men of our time, to become convinced that the prerogatives of the rich over the poor could not and cannot be maintained in any other way.

There may be oppressions, assaults, prisons, executions, which have not for their purpose the preservation of the prerogatives of the wealthy classes (though this is very rare), but we may boldly say that in our society, for each well-to-do, comfortably living man, there are ten who are exhausted by labour, who are envious and greedy, and who frequently suffer with their whole families,--all the prerogatives of the rich, all their luxury, all that superfluity which the rich enjoy above the average labourer, all that is acquired and supported only by tortures, incarcerations, and executions.

2

The train which I came across the ninth of September, and which carried soldiers, with their guns, cartridges, and rods, to the starving peasants, in order to secure to the rich proprietor the small forest, which he had taken from the peasants and which the peasants were in dire need of, showed me with striking obviousness to what extent men have worked out the ability of committing acts which are most revolting to their convictions and to their conscience, without seeing that they are doing so.

The special train with which I fell in consisted of one car of the first class for the governor, the officials, and the officers, and of several freight-cars, which were cram-full of soldiers.

The dashing young soldiers, in their clean new uniforms, stood crowding or sat with dangling legs in the wide-open doors of the freight-cars. Some smoked, others jostled one another, jested, laughed, displaying their teeth; others again cracked pumpkin seeds, spitting out the shells with an air of self-confidence. Some of them were running up and down the platform, toward the water-barrel, in order to get a drink, and, upon meeting an officer, tempered their gait, went through the stupid gesture of putting their hands to their brows, and with serious faces, as though they were doing not only something sensible, but even important, walked past them, seeing them off with their eyes, and then raced more merrily, thumping with their feet on the planks of the platform, laughing, and chattering, as is characteristic of healthy, good lads, who in good company travel from one place to another.

They were travelling to slay their hungry fathers and grandfathers, as though going to some very jolly, or at least very usual, piece of work.

The same impression was conveyed by the officials and officers in gala-uniform, who were scattered on the platform and in the hall of the first class. At the table, which was covered with bottles, dressed in his semi-military uniform, sat the governor, the chief of the expedition, eating something, and speaking calmly about the weather with an acquaintance whom he had met, as though the matter which he was about to attend to were so simple and so common that it could not impair his calm and his interest in the change of the weather.

At some distance away from the table, not partaking of any food, sat a general of gendarmes, with an impenetrable, but gloomy look, as though annoyed by the tedious formality. On all sides moved and chattered officers, in their beautiful, gold-bedecked uniforms: one, sitting at the table, was finishing a bottle of beer; another, standing at the buffet, munched at an appetizing patty, shaking off the crumbs, which had lodged on the breast of his uniform, and throwing the money on the table with a self-confident gesture; a third, vibrating both legs, was walking past the cars of our train, ogling the feminine faces.

All these men, who were on their way to torture or kill hungry, defenceless men, the same that fed them, had the appearance of men who know conclusively that they are doing what is right, and even are proud, "stuck up," at what they are doing.

What is this?

All these men are one half-hour's ride away from the place where, to secure to a rich fellow some three thousand useless roubles, which he has taken away from a whole community of starving peasants, they may be compelled to perform the most terrible acts that one can imagine, may begin, just as in Orél, to kill or to torture innocent men, their brothers, and they calmly approach the place and time where and when this may happen.

It is impossible to say that these men, all these officials, officers, and soldiers, do not know what awaits them, because they prepared themselves for it. The governor had to give his orders concerning the rods, the officials had to purchase birch switches, to haggle for them, and to enter this item as an expense. The military gave and received and executed commands concerning the ball-cartridges. All of them know that they are on the way to torture and, perhaps, to kill their famished brothers, and that they will begin to do this, perhaps, within an hour.

It would be incorrect to say that they do this from conviction,--as is frequently said and as they themselves repeat,--from the conviction that they do this because it is necessary to maintain the state structure, in the first place, because all these men have hardly ever even thought of the state structure and of its necessity; in the second place, they can in no way be convinced that the business in which they take part maintains the state, instead of destroying it, and, in the third place, in reality the majority of these men, if not all, will not only never sacrifice their peace and pleasure for the purpose of supporting the state, but will even never miss a chance of making use, for their peace and pleasure, of everything they can, even though it be to the disadvantage of the state. Consequently they do not do so for the sake of the abstract principle of the state.

What is it, then?

I know all these men. If I do not know them personally, I know approximately their characters, their past, their manner of thought. All of them have mothers, and some have wives and children. They are, for the most part, good-hearted, meek, frequently tender men, who despise every cruelty, to say nothing of the murder of men, and many of them would be incapable of killing or torturing animals; besides, they are all people who profess Christianity and consider violence exerted against defenceless men a low and disgraceful matter. Not one of these men would be able for the sake of his smallest advantage to do even one-hundredth part of what the Governor of Orél did to those people; and any of them would even be offended, if it were assumed that in his private life he would be capable of doing anything like it.

And yet, here they are, within half an hour's ride from the place, where they may be led inevitably to the necessity of doing it.

What is it, then?

But, besides these people who are travelling on the train, and who are ready to commit murder and tortures, how could those people with whom the whole matter began,--the proprietor, the superintendent, the judges, and those who from St. Petersburg prescribed this matter and by their commands are taking part in it,--how could these men, the minister, the emperor, also good men, who are professing the Christian religion, have undertaken and ordered such a thing, knowing its consequences? How can even those who do not take part in this matter, the spectators, who are provoked at every special case of violence or at the torture of a horse, admit the performance of so terrible a deed? How can they help being provoked at it, standing on the road, and shouting, "No, we shall not allow hungry people to be killed and flogged for not giving up their property, which has been seized from them by force"? But not only does no one do so,--the majority of men, even those who were the instigators of the whole thing, like the superintendent, the proprietor, the judges, and those who were the participants in it and who gave the orders, like the governor, the minister, the emperor, are calm, and do not even feel any pangs of conscience. Just as calm are apparently all those men who are travelling to commit this evil deed.

The spectators, too, it seemed, who were not in any way interested in the matter, for the most part looked with sympathy, rather than with disapproval, upon the men who were getting ready for this execrable deed. In the same car with me there was travelling a merchant, a lumber dealer from the peasant class, and he loudly proclaimed his sympathy for those tortures to which the peasants were about to be subjected: "It is not right not to obey the authorities," he said; "that's what the authorities are for. Just wait, they will have their fleas driven out of them,--they won't think of rioting after that. Serves them right."

What is it, then?

It is equally impossible to say that all these men--the instigators, participants, abettors of this matter--are such rascals that, knowing all the baseness of what they are doing, they, either for a salary, or for an advantage, or out of fear of being punished, do a thing which is contrary to their convictions. All these men know how, in certain situations, to defend their convictions. Not one of these officials would steal a purse, or read another person's letter, or bear an insult without demanding satisfaction from the insulter. Not one of these officers would have the courage to cheat at cards, not to pay his card debts, to betray a friend, to run away from the field of battle, or to abandon his flag. Not one of these soldiers would have the courage to spit out the sacrament or to eat meat on Good Friday. All these men are prepared to bear all kinds of privations, sufferings, and dangers, rather than do something which they consider to be bad. Consequently, there is in these men a counteracting force, whenever they have to do something which is contrary to their convictions.

Still less is it possible to say that all these men are such beasts that it is proper and not at all painful for them to do such things. We need but have a talk with these men, to see that all of them, the proprietor, the judges, the minister, the Tsar, the governor, the officers, and the soldiers not only in the depth of their hearts do not approve of such deeds, but even suffer from the consciousness of their part in them, when they are reminded of the significance of this matter. They simply try not to think of it.

We need but have a talk with them, with all the participants in this matter, from the proprietor to the last policeman and soldier, to see that all of them in the depth of their hearts know that this is a bad thing and that it would be better not to take part in it, and that they suffer from it.

A lady of liberal tendencies, who was travelling on the same train with us, upon noticing the governor and the officers in the hall of the first class, and learning of the purpose of their journey, began on purpose in a loud voice, so as to be heard, to curse the orders of our time and to put to shame the men who were taking part in this matter. All persons present felt ill at ease. Nobody knew whither to look, but no one dared to answer her. The passengers looked as though it were not worth while to reply to such empty talk. But it was evident from the faces and fugitive eyes that all felt ashamed. This also I noticed in the case of the soldiers. They, too, knew that the business for which they were travelling was a bad one, but they did not wish to think of what awaited them.

When the lumber dealer began insincerely, as I thought, merely to show his culture, to speak of how necessary such measures were, the soldiers who heard it turned away from him, as though they did not hear him, and frowned.

All these men, both those who, like the proprietor, the superintendent, the minister, the Tsar, participated in the performance of this act, and those who are just now travelling on the train, and even those who, without taking part in this matter, look on at the accomplishment of it, know every one of them that this is a bad business, and are ashamed of the part which they are taking in it and even of their presence during its execution.

Why, then, have they been doing and tolerating it?

Ask those who, like the proprietor, started this matter, and those who, like the judges, handed down a formally legal, but obviously unjust decision, and those who ordered the enforcement of the decree, and those who, like the soldiers, the policemen, and the peasants, will with their own hands carry it into execution,--who will beat and kill their brothers,--all of them, the instigators, and the accomplices, and the executors, and the abettors of these crimes, and all will give you essentially the same answer.

The men in authority, who provoked the matter and coöperated in it and directed it, will say that they are doing what they are doing because such matters are necessary for the maintenance of the existing order; and the maintenance of the existing order is necessary for the good of the country and of humanity, for the possibility of a social life and a forward movement of progress.

The men from the lower spheres, the peasants and the soldiers, those who will be compelled with their own hands to exercise the violence, will say that they are doing what they are doing because this is prescribed by the higher authorities, and that the higher authorities know what they are doing. That the authorities consist of the very men who ought to be the authorities and that they know what they are doing, presents itself to them as an incontestable truth. If these lower executors even admit the possibility of an error or delusion, they admit it only in the case of the lower authorities; but the highest power, from whom all this proceeds, seems to them to be unquestionably infallible.

Though explaining the motives for their activities in a different manner, both the rulers and the ruled agree in this, that they do what they do because the existing order is precisely the one which is indispensable and which must exist at the present time, and which, therefore, it is the sacred duty of every person to maintain.

On this recognition of the necessity, and so of the unchangeableness of the existing order, is based the reflection, which has always been adduced by all the participants in state violence in their justification, that, since the present order is unchangeable, the refusal of a single individual to perform the duties imposed upon him will not change the essence of the matter, and will have no other effect than that in place of the person refusing there will be another man, who may perform the duty less well, that is, more cruelly, more harmfully for those men against whom the violence is practised.

This conviction that the existing order is indispensable, and so unchangeable, and that it is the sacred duty of every man to maintain it, is what gives to good people and, in private life, to moral people the possibility of participating with a more or less calm conscience in such affairs as the one which took place in Orél and the one which the people who were travelling in the Túla train were getting ready to act in.

But on what is this conviction based?

It is naturally agreeable and desirable for the proprietor to believe that the existing order is indispensable and unchangeable, because it is this very existing order which secures for him the income from his hundreds and thousands of desyatínas, thanks to which he leads his habitual idle and luxurious life.

Naturally enough, the judge, too, readily believes in the necessity of the order in consequence of which he receives fifty times as much as the most industrious labourer. This is just as comprehensible in the case of the supreme judge, who receives a salary of six or more thousand, and in the case of all the higher officials. Only with the present order can he, as a governor, prosecutor, senator, member of various councils, receive his salary of several thousands, without which he would at once perish with all his family, because, except by the position which he holds, he would not be able, with his ability, industry, and knowledge, to earn one hundredth part of what he is getting. In the same situation are the minister, the emperor, and every higher authority, but with this difference, that, the higher they are and the more exclusive their position is, the more indispensable it is for them to believe that the existing order is the only possible order, because outside of it they not only cannot get an equal position, but will have to stand much lower than the rest of mankind. A man who voluntarily hires himself out as a policeman at a salary of ten roubles, which he can easily get in any other position, has little need of the preservation of the existing order, and so can get along without believing in its unchangeableness. But a king or an emperor, who in his position receives millions; who knows that all around him there are thousands of men who are willing to depose him and take his place; who knows that in no other position will he get such an income and such honours; who in the majority of cases, with a more or less despotic rule, knows even this, that, if he should be deposed, he would be tried for everything he did while in possession of his power, cannot help but believe in the unchangeableness and sacredness of the existing order. The higher the position which a man occupies, the more advantageous and, therefore, the more unstable it is, and the more terrible and dangerous a fall from it is, the more does a man who holds that position believe in the unchangeableness of the existing order, and with so much greater peace of mind can such a man, as though not for himself, but for the support of the existing order, do bad and cruel deeds.

Thus it is in the case of all the men of the ruling classes who hold positions that are more advantageous than those which they could hold without the existing order,--beginning with the lowest police officials and ending with the highest authorities. All these men more or less believe in the unchangeableness of the existing order, because, above all else, it is advantageous for them.

But what is it that compels the peasants, the soldiers, who stand on the lowest rung of the ladder, who have no profit from the existing order, who are in a condition of the most abject submission and humiliation, to believe that the existing order, in consequence of which they are in a most disadvantageous and humble state, is the very order which must be, and which, therefore, must be maintained, even by performing the basest and most unconscionable acts for it.

What is it that compels these men to make the false reflection that the existing order is invariable and, therefore, must be maintained, whereas it is evident that, on the contrary, it is unchangeable only because it is maintained as such?

What is it that compels the men who were but yesterday taken from the plough, and who are dressed up in these monstrous, indecent garments with blue collars and gilt buttons, to travel with guns and swords, in order to kill their hungry fathers and brothers? They certainly have no advantages, and are in no danger of losing the position which they hold, because their condition is worse than the one from which they are taken.

The men of the higher ruling classes, the proprietors, ministers, kings, officers, take part in these matters, thus supporting the existing order, because it is advantageous for them. Besides, these frequently good, meek men feel themselves able to take part in these things for this other reason, that their participation is limited to instigations, decrees, and commands. None of these men in authority do themselves those things which they instigate, determine upon, and order to be done. For the most part they do not even see how all those terrible things which they provoke and prescribe are carried out.

But the unfortunate people of the lower classes, who derive no advantage from the existing order, who, on the contrary, in consequence of this order are held in the greatest contempt, why do they, who, for the maintenance of this order, with their own hands tear people away from their families, who bind them, who lock them up in prisons and at hard labour, who watch and shoot them, do all these things?

What is it that compels these men to believe that the existing order is unchangeable and that it is necessary to maintain it?

All violence is based only on them, on those men who with their own hands beat, bind, lock up, kill. If these men did not exist,--these soldiers and policemen,--the armed men in general, who are prepared on command to commit violence and to kill all those whom they are commanded to kill, not one of the men who sign the decrees for executions, life imprisonment, hard labour, would ever have the courage himself to hang, lock up, torture to death one thousandth part of those whom now, sitting quietly in their studies, they order to be hung and to be tortured in every way, only because they do not see it and it is not done by them, but somewhere far away by obedient executors.

All those injustices and cruelties which have entered into the curriculum of the existing life, have entered there only because there exist these people, who are always prepared to maintain these injustices and cruelties. If these men did not exist, there would not be any one to offer violence to all these enormous masses of violated people, and those who give orders would never even dare either to command or even to dream of what they now command with so much self-assurance. If there were no people who would be ready at the command of those whom they obey to torture or to kill him who is pointed out to them, no one would ever dare to affirm, what is with so much self-confidence asserted by the non-working landowners, that the land which surrounds the peasants, who are dying for lack of land, is the property of a man who does not work on it, and that the supply of corn, which has been garnered in a rascally manner, ought to be kept intact amidst a starving population, because the merchant needs some profit, and so forth. If there were no men who would be ready at the will of the authorities to torture and kill every person pointed out to them, it could never occur to a landed proprietor to take away from the peasants a forest which had been raised by them, nor to the officials to consider legal the payment to them of salaries, which are collected from the hungry masses, for oppressing them, to say nothing of executing men, or locking them up, or exiling them, because they overthrow the lie and preach the truth. All this is demanded and done only because these ruling people are firmly convinced that they have always at hand submissive people, who will be ready to carry any of their demands into execution by means of tortures and murders.

The only reason why they commit deeds like those committed by all the tyrants from Napoleon down to the last commander of a company, who shoots into a crowd, is because they are stupefied by the power behind them, consisting of subservient men who are ready to do anything they are commanded. The whole strength, therefore, lies in the men who with their hands do acts of violence, in the men who serve with the police, among the soldiers, more especially among the soldiers, because the police do their work only when they have an army behind them.

What is it, then, that has led these good men, who derive no advantage from it, who are compelled with their hands to do all these terrible things, men on whom the whole matter depends, into that remarkable delusion that assures them that the existing disadvantageous, pernicious, and for them painful order is the one which must be?

Who has led them into this remarkable delusion?

They have certainly not assured themselves that they must do what is not only painful, disadvantageous, and pernicious to them and their whole class, which forms nine-tenths of the whole population, and what is even contrary to their conscience.

"How are you going to kill men, when in God's law it says, 'Thou shalt not kill'?" I frequently asked soldiers, and, by reminding them of what they did not like to think about, I always made them feel awkward and embarrassed. Such a soldier knew that there was an obligatory law of God, "Thou shalt not kill," and he knew that there was an obligatory military service, but it had never occurred to him that there was any contradiction there. The sense of the timid answers that I always received to this question consisted approximately in this, that murder in war and the execution of criminals at the command of the government were not included in the common prohibition of murders. But when I told them that no such limitation was made in God's law, and reminded them of the doctrine of brotherhood, of the forgiveness of offences, of love, which are obligatory for all Christians and which could in no way be harmonized with murder, the men of the people generally agreed with me, and on their side put the question to me as to how it happened that the government, which, according to their ideas, could not err, commanded the armies, when necessary, to go to war, and ordered the execution of prisoners. When I answered them that the government acted incorrectly when it commanded these things to be done, my interlocutors became even more embarrassed, and either broke off the conversation or grew provoked at me.

"There must be such a law. I guess the bishops know better than we," I was told by a Russian soldier. And, having said this, the soldier apparently felt his conscience eased, being fully convinced that his guides had found a law, the same under which his ancestors had served, and the kings and the kings' heirs, and millions of people, and he himself served, and that what I was telling him was some piece of cunning or cleverness, like a riddle.

All the men of our Christian world know, know firmly, from tradition, and from revelation, and from the irrefutable voice of conscience, that murder is one of the most terrible crimes which a man can commit, as the Gospel says, and that this sin cannot be limited to certain men, that is, that it is a sin to kill some men, but not a sin to kill others. All know that if the sin of murder is a sin, it is always a sin, independently of what men are the victims of it, just like the sin of adultery and thieving and any other; at the same time men have seen, since childhood, since youth, that murder is not only admitted, but even blessed by all those whom they are accustomed to respect as their spiritual guides, ordained by God; they see that their worldly guides with calm assurance institute murders, bear arms of murder, of which they are proud, and demand of all, in the name of the civil and even the divine law, that they shall take part in murder. Men see that there is here some contradiction, and, being unable to solve it, they involuntarily assume that this contradiction is due only to their ignorance. The very coarseness and obviousness of the contradiction sustains them in this conviction. They cannot imagine that their enlighteners, learned men, should be able with such confidence to preach two such seemingly contradictory propositions,--the obligatoriness for every one of the law and of murder. A simple, innocent child, and later a youth, cannot imagine that men who stand so high in his opinion, whom he considers to be either holy or learned, should for any reason be deceiving him so unscrupulously. But it is precisely this that has been done to him all the time. This is accomplished, in the first place, by impressing all the labouring people, who have not themselves any time to solve moral and religious questions, from childhood, and up to old age, by example and direct teaching, with the idea that tortures and murders are compatible with Christianity, and that, for certain purposes of state, tortures and murders are not only admissible, but even peremptory; in the second place, by impressing some of them, who are chosen by enlistment or levy, with the idea that the performance of tortures and murders with their own hands forms a sacred duty and even an act which is valorous and worthy of praise and of reward.

The common deception, which is disseminated among all men, consists in this, that in all the catechisms, or the books which have taken their place and which are now the subject of obligatory instruction for the children, it says that violence, that is, tortures, imprisonments, and executions, as also murders in civil or external wars for the purpose of maintaining and defending the existing order of the state (whatever it be, autocratic, monarchical, a convention, a consulship, an empire of either Napoleon or of Boulanger, a constitutional monarchy, a commune, or a republic), is quite legitimate, and does not contradict either morality or Christianity.

This it says in all the catechisms or books used in the schools. And men are so convinced of it that they grow up, live, and die in this conviction, without doubting it even once.

This is one deception, a common deception, which is practised on all men; there is another, a private deception, which is practised on soldiers or policemen, who are chosen in one way or another and who perform the tortures and the murders which are needed for the support and the defence of the existing order.

In all the military codes it says in so many words what in the Russian military code is expressed as follows: "(Art. 87) Precisely and without discussion to carry out the commands of the authorities means to carry out precisely the command given by the authorities, without discussing whether it is good or bad, and whether it is possible to carry it out. The chief himself answers for the consequences of a command given out by him. (Art. 88) The subject may refuse to carry out the commands of his superior only when he sees clearly that by carrying out his superior's command he"--one involuntarily imagines that what will follow is "when he sees clearly that by carrying out his superior's command he violates the law of God;" but that is not at all the case: "when he sees clearly that he is violating the oath of allegiance and fidelity, and his service to the emperor."

It says that a man, being a soldier, must carry out all the commands of his chief without any exception whatever, which for a soldier mainly means murder, and so must violate all divine and human laws, except his fidelity and service to him who at the given moment happens to be in power.

Thus it says in the Russian military code, and precisely the same, though in different words, is said in all the military codes, as indeed it cannot be otherwise, because in reality upon this deception of emancipating men from their obedience to God or to their conscience, and of substituting for this obedience the obedience to the accidental superior, is all the power of the army and the state based.

So it is this on which is founded that strange conviction of the lower classes that the existing order, which is pernicious for them, is as it ought to be, and that they are, therefore, obliged to support it with tortures and murders.

This conviction is based on a conscious deception, which is practised upon them by the upper classes.

Nor can it be otherwise. To compel the lower, most numerous classes of men to oppress and torment themselves, committing with this such acts as are contrary to their conscience, it was necessary to deceive these lower, most numerous classes. And so it was done.

The other day I again saw an open practice of this shameless deceit, and I was again surprised to see with what boldness and freedom it was practised.

In the beginning of November, as I was passing through Túla, I again saw at the gate of the County Council Office the familiar dense crowd of people, from which proceeded drunken shouts and the pitiful wail of mothers and of wives. This was a levy of recruits.

As upon other occasions, I was unable to drive past this spectacle: it attracts me as by some evil charm. I again entered among the crowd, stood, looked, asked questions, and marvelled at the freedom with which this most terrible crime is perpetrated in broad daylight and in a populous city.

As in former years, the elders in all the villages of Russia, with its one hundred millions of inhabitants, on the first of November selected from lists a given number of lads, frequently their own sons, and took them to the city.

On the way the recruits went on an uninterrupted spree, in which they were not interfered with by their elders, who felt that going to such a mad business as the one to which the recruits were going, abandoning their wives and mothers and renouncing everything holy to them, in order to become somebody's senseless instruments of murder, was too painful a matter, if they did not intoxicate themselves with liquor.

And so they travelled, drinking, cursing, singing, fighting, and maiming themselves. The nights they passed in inns. In the morning they again became drunk and gathered in front of the County Council Office.

One part of them, in new short fur coats, with knitted shawls about their necks, with moist drunken eyes or with savage self-encouraging shouts, or quiet and dejected, crowd at the gate amidst weeping mothers and wives, waiting for their turns (I fell in with them on the very day of the levy, that is, when those who were sent up were to be examined); another part at this time crowds in the waiting-room of the Office.

In the Office they are busy working. The door is opened, and the janitor calls Peter Sídorov. Peter Sídorov is startled, makes the sign of the cross, and enters into a small room with a glass door. Here the prospective recruits undress themselves. A naked recruit, a companion of Peter Sídorov, just accepted, comes in from the Office, with trembling jaws, and puts on his clothes. Peter Sídorov has heard and sees by his face that he is accepted. Peter Sídorov wants to ask him something, but he is told to hurry and undress himself as quickly as possible. He throws off his fur coat, pulls off his boots with his feet, takes off his vest, draws his shirt over his head, and with protruding ribs, naked, with shivering body, and emitting an odour of liquor, tobacco, and perspiration, with bare feet, enters into the Office, without knowing what to do with his bared muscular arms.

In the Office there hangs in full sight and in a large gilt frame the portrait of the emperor in a uniform with a sash, and in the corner a small portrait of Christ in a shirt and a crown of thorns. In the middle of the room there stands a table covered with green cloth, upon which lie papers and stands a triangular thing with an eagle, which is called the Mirror of Laws. Around the table sit the chiefs, with confident, calm looks. One of them smokes, another examines some papers. The moment Sídorov has entered, a janitor comes up to him, and he is put on the measuring-scale, receives a knock under his chin, and has his legs straightened out. There walks up a man with a cigarette. It is the doctor, and he, without looking into the recruit's face, but somewhere past him, loathingly touches his body, and measures and feels, and tells the janitor to open the recruit's mouth wide, and commands him to breathe and to say something. Somebody makes some notes. Finally, without looking once into his eyes, the doctor says, "Able-bodied! Next!" and with a fatigued expression again seats himself at the table. Again soldiers push the lad and hurry him off. He somehow manages in his hurry to pull the shirt over him, after missing the sleeves, somehow puts on his trousers and leg-rags, draws on his boots, looks for his shawl and cap, grasps his fur coat, and is led into the hall, where he is placed behind a bench. Beyond this bench wait all the accepted recruits. A village lad, like him, but from a distant Government, a full-fledged soldier with a gun, with a sharp bayonet attached to it, keeps watch on him, ready to run the bayonet through him, if he should think of running away.

Meanwhile the crowd of fathers, mothers, wives, pushed by the policemen, press close to the gate, to find out who is accepted, and who not. There appears one of the rejected, and he announces that Peter has been accepted, and there is heard the wail of Peter's wife, for whom the word "accepted" means a separation of four or five years, and the life of a soldier's wife as a cook, in debauchery.

But just then a long-haired man in a special attire, which distinguishes him from all other men, drives up and, getting down from the carriage, walks up to the house of the County Council Office. The policemen clear a path for him through the crowd. "The father has come to administer the oath." And this father, who has been assured that he is a special, exclusive servant of Christ, who for the most part does not himself see the deception under which he is, enters into the room where the accepted recruits are waiting, puts on a gold-embroidered apron, draws his hair out from underneath it, opens the very Gospel in which taking an oath is prohibited, lifts up a cross, the very cross on which Christ was crucified for not doing what this His imaginary servant orders to be done, and puts it on the pulpit, and all these defenceless and deceived lads repeat after him the lie which he pronounces boldly and by habit. He reads, and they repeat after him: "I promise and swear by the Almighty God, before His holy Gospel ... etc., to defend, that is, to kill all those whom I am commanded to kill, and to do everything I am ordered to do by those people whom I do not know, and who need me for nothing else but that I should commit the evil deeds by which they are kept in their positions, and by which they oppress my brothers." All the accepted recruits senselessly repeat these wild words, and the so-called "father" drives away with the consciousness of having correctly and scrupulously done his duty, and all these deceived lads think that all those insipid, incomprehensible words, which they have just pronounced, have now, for the whole time of their military service, freed them from their human obligations and have bound them to new, more obligatory military obligations.

And this is done publicly, and no one will shout to the deceivers and to the deceived: "Bethink yourselves and scatter, for this is the basest and meanest lie, which ruins not only our bodies, but also our souls."

No one does so; on the contrary, when all are accepted, and it becomes necessary to let them out, the military chief, as though to scorn them, enters with self-confident, majestic mien into the hall where the deceived, drunken lads are locked up, and boldly exclaims to them in military fashion, "Your health, boys! I congratulate you on your Tsar's service." And the poor fellows (somebody has instructed them what to do) babble something with an unaccustomed, half-intoxicated tongue to the effect that they are glad of it.

In the meantime, the crowd of fathers, mothers, and wives stand at the door and wait. The women look with tearful, arrested eyes through the door. And the door opens, and out come, staggering, and with a look of bravado, the accepted recruits,--Petrúkha, and Vanyúkha, and Makár,--trying not to look at their relatives. The wail of the mothers and wives is heard. Some embrace one another and weep; others try to look brave; others again console their people. Mothers and wives, knowing that now they will be orphaned for three, four, or five years, without a supporter, wail and lament at the top of their voices. The fathers do not speak much, and only pitifully smack their tongues and sigh, knowing that now they will no longer see their helpers, whom they have raised and instructed, and that there will return to them, not those peaceful, industrious agriculturists that they have been, but generally debauched, dandyish soldiers, who are no longer used to a simple life.

And now the whole crowd take up seats in their sleighs and start down the street, in the direction of inns and restaurants, and still louder are heard, interfering with one another, songs, sobs, drunken shouts, the laments of the mothers and wives, the sounds of the accordion, and curses. All make for saloons and restaurants, the revenue from which goes to the government, and they abandon themselves to intoxication, which drowns in them the percepted consciousness of the illegality of what is being done to them.

For two or three weeks they live at home, and for the most part are having a good time, that is, are out on a spree.

On a set day they are collected, and driven like cattle to one place, and are taught military methods and exercises. They are instructed by just such deceived and bestialized men as they, who entered the service two or three years ago. The means of instruction are deception, stupefaction, kicks, vódka. And not a year passes but that spiritually sound, bright, good fellows are turned into just such wild beings as their teachers.

"Well, and if the prisoner, your father, runs away?" I asked a young soldier.

"I can run the bayonet through him," he replied, in the peculiar, senseless voice of a soldier. "And if he 'removes himself,' I must shoot," he added, apparently proud of his knowledge of what to do when his father "removes himself."

When he, the good young man, is brought to a condition lower than an animal, he is such as those who use him as an instrument of violence want him to be. He is all ready: the man is lost, and a new instrument of violence has been created.

And all this takes place every year, every autumn, everywhere, in the whole of Russia, in broad daylight, in a populous city, in the sight of all men, and the deception is so clever, so cunning, that all see it and in the depth of their hearts know all its baseness, all its terrible consequences, and are unable to free themselves from it.

3

When the eyes shall be opened to this terrible deception which is practised on men, one must marvel how preachers of the religion of Christianity and morality, educators of youth, simply good, intelligent parents, who always exist in every society, can preach any doctrine of morality amidst a society in which all the churches and governments openly acknowledge that tortures and murders form an indispensable condition of the life of all men, and that amidst all men there must always be some special men, who are prepared to kill their brothers, and that every one of us may be such.

How can children and youths be taught and men in general be enlightened, to say nothing of the enlightenment in the Christian spirit, how can they be taught any morality by the side of the doctrine that murder is indispensable for the maintenance of the common, consequently of our own, well-being, and so is legitimate, and that there are men (any of us may be these men) whose duty it is to torture and kill our neighbours and to commit all kinds of crime at the will of those who have the power in their hands? If it is possible and right to torture and kill and commit all kinds of crimes by the will of those who have the power in their hands, there is, and there can be, no moral teaching, but there is only the right of the stronger. And so it is. In reality, such a teaching, which for some men is theoretically justified by the theory of the struggle for existence, does exist in our society.

Really, what kind of a moral teaching can there be, which would admit murder for any purposes whatsoever? This is as impossible as any mathematical doctrine, which would admit that two is equal to three.

With the admission of the fact that two is equal to three there may be a semblance of mathematics, but there can be no real mathematical knowledge. With the admission of murder in the form of executions, wars, self-defence, there may be a semblance of morality, but no real morality. The recognition of the sacredness of every man's life is the first and only foundation of all morality.

The doctrine of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life was put aside by Christianity for the very reason that this doctrine is only a justification of immorality, only a semblance of justice, and is devoid of sense. Life is a quantity which has no weight and no measure and which cannot be equalized to any other, and so the destruction of one life for another can have no meaning. Besides, every social law is a law which has for its purpose the improvement of human life. But in what way can the destruction of the lives of a few individuals improve the lives of men? The destruction of life is not like its improvement, but an act of suicide.

The destruction of another man's life for the purpose of preserving justice is like what a man would do who, to mend the calamity which consists in his having lost one arm, should for the sake of justice cut off his other arm.

But, to say nothing of the sin of deception, with which the most terrible crime presents itself to men as their duty; to say nothing of the terrible crime of using Christ's name and authority for the purpose of legalizing what is most denied by this same Christ, as is done in the case of the oath; to say nothing of the offence by means of which not only the bodies, but even the souls of "these little ones" are ruined; to say nothing of all that, how can men, even in view of their personal security, men who think highly of their forms of life, their progress, admit the formation among them of that terrible, senseless, cruel, pernicious force which is established by every organized government that rests on the army? The most cruel and terrible of robber bands is not so terrible as such a state organization. Every leader of robbers is none the less limited in his power, because the men who form his band retain at least a small part of their human liberty and may oppose the performance of acts contrary to their conscience. But for men forming a part of a regularly organized government with an army, with discipline carried to the point to which it is at the present time, there are no barriers whatsoever. There are no crimes so terrible that they would not be committed by men forming a part of the government and of the army, by the will of him who accidentally (Boulanger, Pugachév, Napoleon) may stand at its head.

Frequently, when I see, not only the levies of recruits, the military exercises, the manœuvres, but also the policemen with loaded revolvers, the sentries standing with guns and adjusted bayonets; when I hear (as I do in the Khamóvniki, where I live) for whole days the whistling and the pinging of bullets striking the target; and when I see, in the very city where every attempt at self-help and violence is prohibited, where there is a prohibition against the sale of powder, medicines, fast driving, unlicensed medical practice, and so forth, when I see in this same city thousands of disciplined men, who have been taught to commit murder and who are subject to one man,--I ask myself: "How can the men who think so highly of their security bear all this?" To say nothing of the harmfulness and immorality, nothing can be more dangerous than this. How can all men, I do not say Christians, Christian pastors, but all philanthropists, moralists, all those men who value their lives, their security, their well-being, quietly look on? This organization will certainly act in the same way, no matter in whose hands it may be: to-day, let us say, this power is in the hands of an endurable ruler; to-morrow a Biron, an Elizabeth, a Catherine, a Pugachév, a Napoleon the First, a Napoleon the Third may usurp it. And again, the man in whose hands is the power, and who to-day may be endurable, may to-morrow turn into a beast, or his place may be taken by an insane or half-witted heir of his, as was the case with the King of Bavaria and Paul.

And not only these higher rulers, but also all those minor satraps, who are distributed everywhere like so many Baránovs, chiefs of police, even rural officers, commanders of companies, under-officers, may commit terrible crimes before there has been time to depose them, as happens constantly.

Involuntarily one asks himself: "How can men permit such things to happen, if not for the sake of higher considerations of state, at least for the sake of their security?"

The answer to this question is this, that it is not all men who permit this to happen (one part of them,--the great majority of men,--the deceived and the subjected, cannot help but permit anything to be done), but those who with such an organization hold an advantageous position; they permit it, because for them the risk of suffering, because at the head of the government or the army there may be a senseless or cruel man, is always less than the disadvantages to which they would be subjected in case of the destruction of the organization itself.

The judge, policeman, governor, officer will hold his position equally under Boulanger, or a republic, or Pugachév or Catherine; but he will certainly lose his position, if the existing order, which secures for him his advantageous position, falls to pieces. And so all these men are not afraid of who will stand at the head of the organization of violence,--they adapt themselves to anybody,--but only of the destruction of the organization itself, and so they always support it, often unconsciously.

One often marvels why free men, who are not urged to it by anything, the so-called flower of society, enter the army, in Russia, in England, Germany, Austria, even France, and why they seek an opportunity for becoming murderers. Why do parents, moral men, send their children to institutions which prepare them for military matters? Why do mothers buy their children helmets, guns, swords as their favourite toys? (The children of peasants never play soldier.) Why do good men, and even women, who are in no way connected with military affairs, go into ecstasies over the exploits of a Skobelévski and of others, and why do they take so much pains to praise them? Why do men, who are not urged to do so, who do not receive any salary for it, like the marshals of nobility in Russia, devote whole months of assiduous work to performing a physically hard and morally agonizing piece of business,--the reception of recruits? Why do all the emperors and kings wear military costumes, attend manœuvres and parades, distribute rewards to soldiers, erect monuments to generals and conquerors? Why do free, wealthy men consider it an honour to perform lackeys' duties to crowned heads, why do they humble themselves, and flatter them, and pretend that they believe in the special grandeur of these persons? Why do men, who have long ago stopped believing in the mediæval superstitions of the church, and who are unable to believe in them, seriously and invariably pretend that they believe, thus maintaining the offensive and blasphemous religious institution? Why is the ignorance of the masses so zealously guarded, not only by the governments, but also by the free men from the higher classes? Why do they with such fury attack every attempt at destroying the religious superstitions, and every true enlightenment of the masses? Why do men,--historians, novelists, poets,--who can certainly receive nothing for their flattery, describe as heroes long deceased emperors, kings, or generals? Why do men who call themselves learned devote their whole lives to the formation of theories, from which it follows that violence which is exerted by the power against the nation is not violence, but some especial right?

One often marvels why, for what reason a lady of the world or an artist, who, it would seem, is interested neither in social, nor in military questions, condemns labour strikes and preaches war, and always definitely attacks one side and defends the other?

But one marvels at this only so long as one does not know that this is all done so because all the men of the ruling classes feel instinctively what it is that maintains and what destroys the organization under which they can enjoy the privileges they are enjoying.

The lady of the world has not even made the reflection that, if there are no capitalists, and no armies to defend them, her husband will have no money, and she will have no salon and no costumes; and the artist has not made the reflection as to this, that he needs the capitalists, who are protected by the armies, to buy his pictures; but the instinct, which in this case takes the place of reason, guides them unerringly. It is precisely the same instinct that with few exceptions guides all those men who support all those political, religious, economic establishments, which are advantageous to them.

But can the men of the upper classes maintain this order of things, only because it is advantageous for them? These men cannot help but see that this order of things is in itself irrational, no longer corresponds to the degree of men's consciousness, not even to public opinion, and is full of dangers. The men of the ruling classes--the honest, good, clever men among them--cannot help but suffer from these internal contradictions, and cannot help but see the dangers with which this order threatens them. Is it possible the men of the lower classes, all the millions of these people, can with a calm conscience perform all these obviously bad acts, tortures, and murders, which they are compelled to perform, only because they are afraid of punishment? Indeed, that could not have been, and neither the men of the one class nor of the other could help but see the irrationality of their activity, if the peculiarity of the state structure did not conceal from them the whole unnaturalness and irrationality of the acts committed by them.

This irrationality is concealed by the fact that in the commission of each of these acts there are so many instigators, accomplices, abettors, that not one of the men taking part in it feels himself to be morally responsible.

Murderers compel all the persons who are present at a murder to strike the dead victim, so that the responsibility may be distributed among the largest possible number of men. The same thing, having assumed definite forms, has established itself in the structure of the state in the commission of all those crimes, without the constant commission of which no state organization is thinkable. The rulers of the state always try to draw as large a number of citizens as possible into the greatest possible participation in all the crimes committed by them and indispensable for them.

Of late this has found a most lucid expression in the drafting of the citizens into the courts in the form of jurors, into the armies in the form of soldiers, and into the local government and into the legislative assembly in the form of electors and representatives.

In the structure of the state, in which, as in a basket made of rods, all the ends are so concealed that it is not possible to find them, the responsibility for crimes committed is so concealed from men that they, in committing the most awful deeds, do not see their own responsibility in them.

In olden times the tyrants were blamed for the commission of evil deeds, but in our time most awful crimes, unthinkable even in the time of a Nero, are committed, and there is no one to blame.

Some men demanded, others decreed, others again confirmed, others proposed, others reported, others prescribed, others executed. Women, old men, innocent people, are killed, hanged, flogged to death, as lately happened in Russia in the Yúzov Plant, and as happens everywhere in Europe and in America, in the struggle with anarchists and all kinds of violators of the existing order; hundreds, thousands of men will be shot to death, killed, and hanged, or, as is done in wars, millions of men will be killed or ruined, or, as is constantly done, the souls of men are ruined in solitary confinement, in the debauched condition of militarism,--and no one is to blame.

On the lowest stage of the social ladder, soldiers with guns, pistols, swords, torture and kill men, and with the same tortures and murders compel men to enter the army, and are fully convinced that the responsibility for these acts is taken from them by those authorities who prescribe these acts to them.

On the highest stage, kings, presidents, ministers, Chambers, prescribe these tortures and murders and the enlistment of soldiers, and are fully convinced that, since they are put into their places by God, or since the society which they rule over demands from them precisely what they prescribe, they cannot be blamed.

In the middle between the two are the intermediate persons, who order the tortures and murders and the enlistment of soldiers, and they are fully convinced that their responsibility has been taken from them, partly by the commands from above, and partly because the same orders are demanded of them by all those who stand on the lower stages.

The administrative and the executive powers, which lie at the two extremes of the structure of the state, meet like two ends that are united into a ring, and one conditions and maintains the other and all the intervening links.

Without the conviction that there exists such a person, or such a number of persons, who take upon themselves the responsibility for the acts committed, not one soldier would be able to raise his hands for the purpose of torturing or killing. Without the conviction that this is demanded by the whole nation, not one emperor, king, president, not one assembly would be able to prescribe these same tortures and murders. Without the conviction that there are persons who stand above him and take upon themselves the responsibility for his act, and men who stand below him and demand the fulfilment of such acts for their own good, not one of the men who stand on the stages intermediate between the ruler and the soldier would be able to commit those acts which he is committing.

The structure of the state is such that, no matter on what rung of the social ladder a man may stand, his degree of irresponsibility is always one and the same: the higher he stands, the more is he subjected to the influence of the demand for orders from below and the less he is subjected to the influence of the prescriptions from above, and vice versa.

Thus, in the case before me, every one who had taken part in the matter was the more under the influence of the demand for orders from below and the less under the influence of prescriptions from above, the higher his position was, and vice versa.

But not only do all men who are connected with the structure of the state shift their responsibility for deeds committed upon others: the peasant who is drafted into the army, upon the nobleman or merchant who has become an officer; and the officer, upon the nobleman who holds the position of governor; and the governor, upon the son of an official or nobleman who occupies the position of minister; and the minister, upon a member of the imperial house who holds the position of emperor; and the emperor again, upon all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and peasants; not only do men in this manner free themselves from the consciousness of responsibility for acts committed by them,--they even lose the moral consciousness of their responsibility for this other reason, that, uniting into a political structure, they so constantly, continuously, and tensely convince themselves and others that they are not all identical men, but men who differ from one another as does "one star from another," that they begin themselves sincerely to believe so. Thus they convince one set of men that they are not simple men, identical with others, but a special kind of men, who have to be honoured, while they impress others with the idea that they stand beneath all other men and so must unflinchingly submit to what they are commanded to do by their superiors.

On this inequality and exaltation of one class of men and the annihilation of the other is mainly based the inability of men to see the irrationality of the existing order and its cruelty and criminality, and of that deception which is practised by some and to which the others submit.

Some, those who are impressed with the idea that they are vested with some supernatural significance and grandeur, are so intoxicated by this imaginary grandeur that they stop seeing their responsibility in the acts committed by them; the other men, who, on the contrary, are impressed with the idea that they are insignificant creatures, who must in everything submit to the higher, in consequence of this constant condition of humiliation fall into a strange condition of intoxication of servility, and under the influence of their intoxication also fail to see the significance of their acts, and lose the consciousness of their responsibility for them. The intermediate people, who, partly submitting to the higher, and partly considering themselves to be superior, succumb simultaneously to the intoxication of power and that of servility, and so lose the consciousness of their responsibility.

We need but look in any country at a superior chief, intoxicated by his grandeur, accompanied by his staff, all of them on magnificently caparisoned horses, in special uniforms and signs of distinction, as he, to the sound of the harmonious and festive music produced by wind-instruments, rides past a line of soldiers stiffened up from a sense of servility and presenting arms,--we need but look at him, in order that we may understand that at these moments the highest chief and the soldier and all the intermediate persons, being in a state of intoxication, are equally capable of committing acts which they would not think of committing under other circumstances.

But the intoxication experienced by men under such phenomena as are parades, imperial receptions, church solemnities, coronations, is a temporary and acute condition; there are also other, chronic, constant conditions of intoxication, which are equally experienced by all men who have any power, from the power of the emperor to that of a policeman in the street, and by men who submit to power and who are in a condition of intoxication through servility, and who in justification of this their condition always ascribe, as has always shown itself in the case of slaves, the greatest significance and dignity to him whom they obey.

On this deception of the inequality of men and the resulting intoxication of power and of servility is pre-eminently based the ability of men united into a political structure to commit, without experiencing any pangs of conscience, acts which are contrary to their conscience.

Under the influence of such an intoxication, both of power and of servility, men present themselves to themselves and to others, not as what they are in reality,--men,--but as especial, conventional beings,--noblemen, merchants, governors, judges, officers, kings, ministers, soldiers, who no longer are subject to common human obligations, but, above all else, and before all human, to nobiliary, commercial, gubernatorial, judicial, military, royal, ministerial obligations.

Thus, the proprietor who litigated concerning the forest did what he did only because he did not present himself to himself as a simple man, like any of the peasants who were living by his side, but as a large landed proprietor and a member of the gentry, and so, under the influence of the intoxication of power, he felt himself insulted by the pretensions of the peasants. It was only for this reason that, without paying any attention to the consequences which might arise from his demand, he handed in the petition requesting the restitution of his imaginary right.

Similarly, the judges who irregularly adjudged the forest to the proprietor did so only because they do not imagine themselves to be simple men, just like all other men, and so under obligation in all cases to be guided only by what is the truth, but under the intoxication of power they imagine themselves to be the guardians of justice, who cannot err; but under the influence of the intoxication of servility they imagine themselves to be men who are obliged to carry out certain words which are written in a certain book and are called the law. As just such conventional persons, and not as what they are in reality, present themselves, under the influence of the intoxication of power and of servility, to themselves and to others, all the other participants in this matter, from the highest representatives of power, who sign their approval on documents, from the marshal, who drafts recruits at the levy of soldiers, and the priest, who deceives them, to the last soldier, who is now getting ready to shoot at his brothers. They all did what they did, and are preparing themselves to do what awaits them, only because they present themselves to themselves and to others, not as what they are in reality,--men who are confronted with the question as to whether they should take part in a matter which is condemned by their conscience, or not,--but as different conventional persons,--one, as an anointed king, a special being, who is called upon to care for the well-being of one hundred million men; another, as a representative of nobility; a third, as a priest, who with his ordainment has received a special grace; a fourth, as a soldier, who is obliged by his oath to fulfil without reflection what he is commanded to do.

Only under the influence of the intoxication of power and servility, which result from their imaginary positions, can all these men do what they do.

If all these men did not have a firm conviction that the callings of kings, ministers, governors, judges, noblemen, landed proprietors, marshals, officers, soldiers, are something actually in existence and very important, not one of these men would think without terror and disgust of participating in the acts which he is committing now.

The conventional positions, which were established hundreds of years ago, which have been recognized through the ages, and which are now recognized by all men about us, and which are designated by especial names and particular attires, and which, besides, are maintained by means of every kind of magnificence and effects on the outer senses, are to such a degree instilled in people that they, forgetting the habitual conditions of life, common to all, begin to look upon themselves and upon all men only from this conventional point of view, and are guided by nothing but this conventional point of view in the valuation of other men's acts.

Thus a mentally sound old man, for no other reason than that some trinket or fool's dress is put over him, some keys on his buttocks, or a blue ribbon, which is proper only for a dressed-up little girl, and that he is on that occasion impressed with the idea that he is a general, a chamberlain, a Cavalier of St. Andrews, or some such silliness, suddenly becomes self-confident, proud, and even happy; or, on the contrary, because he loses or does not receive a desired trinket or name, becomes so sad and unhappy that he even grows sick. Or, what is even more startling, an otherwise mentally sound, free, and even well-to-do young man, for no other reason than that he calls himself, and others call him, an investigating magistrate or County Council chief, seizes an unfortunate widow away from her minor children, and locks her up, or has her locked up in a prison, leaving her children without a mother, and all that because this unfortunate woman secretly trafficked in liquor and thus deprived the Crown of twenty-five roubles of revenue, and he does not feel the least compunction about it. Or, what is even more startling, an otherwise intelligent and meek man, only because a brass plate or a uniform is put on him and he is told that he is a watchman or a customs soldier, begins to shoot with bullets at men, and neither he nor those who surround him consider him blameworthy for it, and would even blame him if he did not shoot; I do not even speak of the judges and jurors, who sentence to executions, and of the military, who kill thousands without the least compunction, only because they have been impressed with the idea that they are not simply men, but jurors, judges, generals, soldiers.

Such a constant, unnatural, and strange condition of men in the life of the state is generally expressed in words as follows: "As a man I pity him, but as a watchman, judge, general, governor, king, soldier, I must kill or torture him," as though there can exist a given position, acknowledged by men, which can make void duties which are imposed upon each of us by a man's position.

Thus, for example, in the present case, men are travelling to commit murder and tortures on hungry people, and they recognize that in the dispute between the peasants and the proprietor the peasants are in the right (all men in authority told me so), and know that the peasants are unfortunate, poor, and hungry; the proprietor is rich and does not inspire sympathy, and all these men none the less are on their way to kill the peasants, in order thus to secure three thousand roubles to the proprietor, for no other reason than that these men at this moment do not consider themselves to be men, but a governor, a general of gendarmes, an officer, a soldier, and think that not the eternal demands of their consciences, but the accidental, temporary demands of their positions as officers and soldiers are binding on them.

However strange this may seem, the only explanation for this remarkable phenomenon is this, that these men are in the same position as those hypnotized persons who are commanded to imagine and feel themselves in certain conventional positions, and to act like those beings whom they represent; thus, for example, when a hypnotized person receives the suggestion that he is lame, he begins to limp, or that he is blind, he does not see, or that he is an animal, he begins to bite. In this state are not only the men who are travelling on this train, but also all men who preferably perform their social and their political duties, to the disadvantage of their human duties.

The essence of this condition is this, that the men under the influence of the one idea suggested to them are not able to reflect upon their acts, and so do, without any reflection, what is prescribed to them in correspondence with the suggested idea, and what they are led up to through example, advice, or hints.

The difference between those who are hypnotized by artificial means and those who are under the influence of the political suggestion consists in this, that to the artificially hypnotized their imaginary condition is suggested at once, by one person, and for the briefest space of time, and so the suggestion presents itself to us in a glaring form, which sets us to wondering, while to the men who act under the political suggestion their imaginary position is suggested by degrees, slowly, imperceptibly, from childhood, at times not only in a certain number of years, but through whole generations, and, besides, is not suggested by one person, but by all those who surround them.

"But," I shall be told, "in all societies the majority of men,--all the children, all the women, who are absorbed in the labour of pregnancy, child-bearing, and nursing, all the enormous masses of the working people, who are placed under the necessity of tense and assiduous physical labour, all the mentally weak by nature, all abnormal men with a weakened spiritual activity in consequence of nicotine, alcohol, and opium poisoning, or for some other reason,--all these men are always in such a condition that, not being able to reason independently, they submit either to those men who stand on a higher stage of rational consciousness, or to family and political traditions, to what is called public opinion, and in this submission there is nothing unnatural or contradictory."

And, indeed, there is nothing unnatural in it, and the ability of unthinking people to submit to the indications of men standing on a higher stage of consciousness is a constant property of men, that property in consequence of which men, submitting to the same rational principles, are able to live in societies: some,--the minority,--by consciously submitting to the same rational principles, on account of their agreement with the demands of their reason; the others,--the majority,--by submitting unconsciously to the same principles, only because these demands have become the public opinion. Such a subjection of the unthinking to public opinion presents nothing unnatural so long as the public opinion is not split up.

But there are times when the higher truth, as compared with the former degree of the consciousness of the truth, which at first is revealed to a few men, in passing by degrees from one set to another, embraces such a large number of men that the former public opinion, which is based on a lower stage of consciousness, begins to waver, and the new is ready to establish itself, but is not yet established. There are times, resembling spring, when the old public opinion has not yet been destroyed and the new is not yet established, and when men begin to criticize their own acts and those of others on the basis of the new consciousness, and yet in life, from inertia, from tradition, continue to submit to principles which only in former times formed the higher degree of rational consciousness, but which now are already in an obvious contradiction to it. And then the men, feeling, on the one hand, the necessity of submitting to the new public opinion, and not daring, on the other, to depart from the former, find themselves in an unnatural, wavering state. It is in such a condition that, in relation to the Christian truths, are not only the men on this train, but also the majority of the men of our time.

In the same condition are equally the men of the higher classes, who enjoy exclusive, advantageous positions, and the men of the lower classes, who without opposition obey what they are commanded to obey.

Some, the men of the ruling classes, who no longer possess any rational explanation for the advantageous positions held by them, are put to the necessity, for the purpose of maintaining these positions, of suppressing in themselves the higher rational faculties of love and of impressing upon themselves the necessity for their exclusive position; the others, the lower classes, who are oppressed by labour and purposely stupefied, are in a constant state of suggestion, which is unflinchingly and constantly produced on them by the men of the higher classes.

Only thus can be explained those remarkable phenomena with which our life is filled, and as a striking example of which there presented themselves to me my good, peaceful acquaintances, whom I met on September 9th, and who with peace of mind were travelling to commit a most beastly, senseless, and base crime. If the consciences of these men had not been in some way put to sleep, not one of them would be able to do one hundredth part of what they are getting ready to do, and, in all probability, will do.

It cannot be said that they do not have the conscience which forbids them to do what they are about to do, as there was no such conscience in men four hundred, three hundred, two hundred, one hundred years ago, when they burned people at the stake, tortured people, and flogged them to death; it exists in all these men, but it is put to sleep in them,--in some, the ruling men, who are in exclusive, advantageous positions, by means of auto-suggestion, as the psychiaters call it; in the others, the executors, the soldiers by a direct, conscious suggestion, hypnotization, produced by the upper classes.

The conscience is in these men put to sleep, but it exists in them, and through the auto-suggestion and suggestion, which hold sway over them, it already speaks in them and may awaken any moment.

All these men are in a condition resembling the one a hypnotized man would be in, if it were suggested to him and he were commanded to do an act which is contrary to everything which he considers rational and good,--to kill his mother or child. The hypnotized man feels himself bound by the suggestion induced in him, and it seems to him that he cannot stop; at the same time, the nearer he comes to the time and the place of the commission of the crime, the stronger does the drowned voice of the conscience rise in him, and he begins to show more and more opposition and to writhe, and wants to wake up. And it is impossible to say in advance whether he will do the suggested act, or not, and what it is that will win, the rational consciousness or the irrational suggestion. Everything depends on the relative strength of the two.

Precisely the same is now taking place in all the men on this train, and in general in all the men who in our time commit political acts of violence and exploit them.

There was a time when men, who went out for the purpose of torturing and killing people, for the purpose of setting an example, did not return otherwise than having performed the act for which they had gone out, and, having performed the act, they were not tormented by repentance and doubt, but, having flogged men to death, calmly returned home to their family, and petted their children,--jested, laughed, and abandoned themselves to quiet domestic pleasures. It did not then occur even to those who gained by these acts of violence, to the landed proprietors and the rich men, that the advantages which they enjoyed had any direct connection with these cruelties. But now it is not so: men know already, or are very near to knowing, what they are doing, and for what purpose they are doing what they are doing. They may shut their eyes and cause their consciences to be inactive, but with eyes unshut and consciences unimpaired they--both those who commit the acts and those who gain by them--no longer can fail to see the significance which these acts have. It happens that men understand the significance of what they have done only after they have performed the act; or it happens that they understand it before the very act. Thus the men who had in charge the tortures in Nízhni-Nóvgorod, Sarátov, Orél, Yúzov Plant, understood the significance of what they did only after the commission of the act, and now they are tormented with shame before public opinion and before their consciences. Both those who ordered the tortures and those who executed them are tormented. I have spoken with soldiers who have executed such acts, and they have always cautiously evaded all conversation about it; when they spoke, they did so with perplexity and terror. Cases happen when men come to their senses immediately before the commission of the act. Thus I know a case of a sergeant, who during a pacification was beaten by two peasants, and who reported accordingly, but who the next day, when he saw the tortures to which the peasants were subjected, begged the commander of the company to tear up the report and to discharge the peasants who had beaten him. I know a case when the soldiers, who were commanded to shoot some men, declined to obey; and I know many cases where the commanders refused to take charge of tortures and murders. Thus it happens that the men who establish violence and those who commit acts of violence at times come to their senses long before the commission of the act suggested to them, at others before the very act, and at others again after the act.

The men who are travelling on this train have gone out to torture and kill their brothers, but not one of them knows whether he will do what he has set out to do, or not. No matter how hidden for each of them is the responsibility in this matter, no matter how strong the suggestion may be, in all these men, that they are not men, but governors, rural judges, officers, soldiers, and that, as such beings, they may violate their human obligations, the nearer they approach the place of their destination, the stronger will the doubt rise in them whether they should do what they have started out to do, and this doubt will reach the highest degree when they reach the very moment of the execution.

The governor, in spite of all the intoxication of the surrounding circumstance, cannot help but reflect for a moment, when he has to give his last decisive command concerning the murder or the torture. He knows that the case of the Governor of Orél provoked the indignation of the best men of society, and he himself, under the influence of the public opinion of those circles to which he belongs, has more than once expressed his disapproval of it; he knows that the prosecutor, who was to have gone with them, refused outright to take part in this business, because he considered it disgraceful; he knows also that changes may take place in the government at any time, and that in consequence of them that which was a desert to-day may to-morrow be the cause of disfavour; he knows, too, that there is a press, if not in Russia, at least abroad, which may describe this matter and so disgrace him for life. He already scents that new public opinion which is making void what the former public opinion demanded. Besides, he cannot be absolutely sure that at the last moment the executors will obey him. He wavers, and it is impossible to foretell what he will do.

The same thing, in a greater or lesser measure, is experienced by all the officials and officers who are travelling with him. They all know in the depth of their hearts that the deed which is to be done is disgraceful, that participation in it lowers and defiles a man in the eyes of a few men, whose opinion they already value. They know that it is a shame to appear after the torture or murder of defenceless men in the presence of their fiancées or wives, whom they treat with a show of tenderness. Besides, like the governor, they are in doubt whether the soldiers are sure to obey them. And, no matter how unlike it is to the self-confident look with which all these ruling men now move in the station and up and down the platform, they all in the depth of their hearts suffer and even waver. It is for this very reason that they assume this confident tone, in order to conceal their inner wavering. And this sensation increases in proportion as they come nearer to the place of action.

However imperceptible this may be, and however strange it may appear, all this mass of young soldiers, who seem so subservient, is in the same state.

They are all of them no longer the soldiers of former days, men who have renounced their natural life of labour, and who have devoted their lives exclusively to dissipation, rapine, and murder, like some Roman legionaries or the warriors of the Thirty-Years War, or even the late soldiers of twenty-five years of service; they are, for the most part, men who have but lately been taken away from their families, all of them full of recollections of that good, natural, and sensible life from which they have been taken away.

All these lads, who for the most part come from the country, know what business is taking them out on the train; they know that the proprietors always offend their brothers, the peasants, and that therefore the same thing is taking place here. Besides, the greater half of these men know how to read books, and not all books are those in which the business of war is lauded,--there are also those in which its immorality is pointed out. Amidst them frequently serve freethinking companions,--volunteer soldiers,--and just such liberal young officers, and into their midst has been thrown the seed of doubt as to the unconditional legality and valour of their activity. It is true, all of them have passed through that terrible, artificial drill, worked out by ages, which kills all independence in a man, and they are so accustomed to mechanical obedience that at the words of command, "Fire by company! Company, fire!" and so forth, their guns rise mechanically and the habitual motions take place. But "Fire!" will not mean now having fun while shooting at a target, but killing their tormented, offended fathers and brothers, who--here they are--are standing in crowds, with their women and children in the street, and shouting and waving their hands. Here they are,--one of them, with a sparse beard, in a patched caftan and in bast shoes, just like their own fathers at home in the Government of Kazán or of Ryazán; another, with a gray beard and stooping shoulders, carrying a large stick, just like their father's father, their grandfather; another, a young lad in boots and red shirt, exactly as the soldier who is now to shoot at him was a year ago. And here is a woman in bast shoes and linen skirt, just like mother at home----

Are they really going to shoot at them?

God knows what each soldier will do during this last moment. One slightest indication as to its not being right, above all as to the possibility of not doing it, one such word, one hint, will be sufficient, in order to stop them.

All men who are travelling on this train will, when they proceed to execute the deed for which they have set out, be in the same position in which a hypnotized person would be, who has received the suggestion to chop a log, and, having walked up to what has been pointed out to him as a log and having raised the axe to strike, suddenly sees or is told that it is not a log, but his sleeping brother. He may perform the act suggested to him, and he may wake up before its performance. Even so all these men may awaken, or not. If they do not, as terrible a deed as the one in Orél will be done, and in other men the auto-suggestion and the suggestion under which they act will be increased; if they awaken, such a deed will not only not be performed, but many others, upon finding out the turn which the affair has taken, will be freed from that suggestion in which they are, or at least will approach such a liberation.

But if not all men travelling on this train shall awaken and refrain from doing the deed which has been begun, if only a few of them shall do so and shall boldly express to other men the criminality of this affair, these few men even may have the effect of awakening all the other men from the suggestion, under which they are, and the proposed evil deed will not take place.

More than that: if only a few men, who do not take part in this affair, but are only present at the preparations for the same, or who have heard of similar acts previously committed, will not remain indifferent, but will frankly and boldly express their disgust with the participants in these matters, and will point out to them their whole senselessness, cruelty, and criminality, even that will not pass unnoticed.

Even so it was in the present case. A few persons, participants and non-participants in this affair, who were free from suggestion, needed but at the time when they were getting ready for this affair boldly to express their indignation with tortures administered in other places, and their disgust and contempt for those men who took part in them; in the present Túla affair a few persons needed but to express their unwillingness to take part in it; the lady passenger and a few other persons at the station needed but in the presence of those who were travelling on the train to express their indignation at the act which was about to be committed; one of the regimental commanders, a part of whose troops were demanded for the pacification, needed but to express his opinion that the military cannot be executioners,--and thanks to these and certain other, seemingly unimportant, private influences exerted against people under suggestion, the affair would take a different turn, and the troops, upon arriving on the spot, would not commit any tortures, but would cut down the forest and give it to the proprietor. If there should not be in certain men any clear consciousness as to their doing wrong, and if there should be, in consequence of this, no mutual influence of men in this sense, there would take place the same as in Orél. But if this consciousness should be even stronger, and so the amount of the interactions even greater than what it was, it is very likely that the governor and his troops would not even dare to cut down the forest, in order to give it to the proprietor. If this consciousness had been even stronger and the amount of interactions greater, it is very likely the governor would not even have dared to travel to the place of action. If the consciousness had been stronger still and the amount of interactions even greater, it is very likely that the minister would not have made up his mind to prescribe, and the emperor to confirm such a decree.

Everything, consequently, depends on the force with which the Christian truth is cognized by every individual man.

And so, it would seem, the activity of all the men of our time, who assert that they wish to continue to the welfare of humanity, should be directed to the increase of the lucidity of the demands of the Christian truth.

4

But, strange to say, those very men, who in our time assert more than any one else that they care for the amelioration of human life, and who are regarded as the leaders in public opinion, affirm that it is not necessary to do that, and that for the amelioration of the condition of men there exist other, more efficacious means. These men assert that the amelioration of human life does not take place in consequence of the internal efforts of the consciousness of individual men and the elucidation and profession of the truth, but in consequence of the gradual change of the common external conditions of life, and that the profession by every individual man of the truth which is not in conformity with the existing order is not only useless, but even harmful, because on the part of the power it provokes oppressions, which keep these individuals from continuing their useful activity in the service of society. According to this doctrine, all the changes in human life take place under the same laws under which they take place in the life of the animals.

Thus, according to this doctrine, all the founders of religions, such as Moses and the prophets, Confucius, Lao-tse, Buddha, Christ, and others preached their teachings, and their followers accepted them, not because they loved truth, elucidated it to themselves, and professed it, but because the political, social, and, above all, economic conditions of the nations among whom these teachings appeared and were disseminated were favourable for their manifestation and diffusion.

And so the chief activity of a man wishing to serve society and ameliorate the condition of humanity must according to this doctrine be directed, not to the elucidation of the truth and its profession, but to the amelioration of the external political, social, and, above all else, economic conditions. Now the change of these political, social, and economic conditions is accomplished partly by means of serving the government and of introducing into it liberal and progressive principles, partly by contributing to the development of industry and the dissemination of socialistic ideas, and chiefly by the diffusion of scientific education.

According to this teaching it is not important for a man to profess in life the truth that has been revealed to him, and so inevitably be compelled to realize it in life, or at least not to do acts which are contrary to the professed truth; not to serve the government and not to increase its power, if he considers this power to be deleterious; not to make use of the capitalistic structure, if he considers this structure to be irregular; not to show any respect for various ceremonies, if he considers them to be a dangerous superstition; not to take part in the courts, if he considers their establishment to be false; not to serve as a soldier; not to swear; in general, not to lie, not to act as a scoundrel, but, without changing the existing forms of life, and submitting to them, contrary to his opinion, he should introduce liberalism into the existing institutions; coöperate with industry, the propaganda of socialism, the advancement of what is called the sciences, and the diffusion of culture. According to this theory is it possible, though remaining a landed proprietor, a merchant, a manufacturer, a judge, an official, receiving a salary from the government, a soldier, an officer, to be, withal, not only a humane man, but even a socialist and revolutionist.

Hypocrisy, which formerly used to have a religious foundation in the doctrine about the fall of the human race, about redemption, and about the church, in this teaching received in our time a new scientific foundation, and so has caught in its net all those men who from the degree of their development can no longer fall back on the religious hypocrisy. Thus, if formerly only a man who professed the ecclesiastic religious doctrine could, considering himself with it pure from every sin, take part in all kinds of crimes committed by the government, and make use of them, so long as he at the same time fulfilled the external demands of his profession, now all men, who do not believe in the church Christianity, have the same kind of a worldly scientific basis for recognizing themselves as pure, and even highly moral men, in spite of their participation in the evil deeds of the state and of their making use of them.

There lives--not in Russia alone, but anywhere you please, in France, England, Germany, America--a rich landed proprietor, and for the right which he gives to certain people living on his land, to draw their sustenance from it, he fleeces these for the most part hungry people to their fullest extent. This man's right to the possession of the land is based on this, that at every attempt of the oppressed people at making use of the lands which he considers his own, without his consent, there arrive some troops which subject the men who have seized the lands to tortures and extermination. One would think that it is evident that a man who lives in this manner is an egotistical being and in no way can call himself a Christian or a liberal. It would seem to be obvious that the first thing such a man ought to do, if he only wants in some way to come near to Christianity or to liberalism, would be to stop plundering and ruining men by means of his right to the land, which is supported by murders and tortures practised by the government. Thus it would be if there did not exist the metaphysics of hypocrisy, which says that from a religious point of view the possession or non-possession of the land is a matter of indifference as regards salvation, and that from the scientific point of view the renunciation of the ownership of land would be a useless personal effort, and that the coöperation with the good of men is not accomplished in this manner, but through the gradual change of external forms. And so this man, without the least compunction, and without any misgivings as to his being believed, arranges an agricultural exhibition, or a temperance society, or through his wife and children sends jackets and soup to three old women, and in his family, in drawing-rooms, committees, the press, boldly preaches the Gospel or humane love of one's neighbour in general, and of that working agricultural class in particular which he constantly torments and oppresses. And the men who are in the same condition with him believe him, praise him, and with him solemnly discuss the questions as to what measures should be used for the amelioration of the condition of the working masses, on the spoliation of whom their life is based, inventing for the purpose all kinds of means, except the one without which no amelioration of the people's condition is possible, of ceasing to take away from these people the land, which is necessary for their maintenance.

A most striking example of such hypocrisy is to be found in the measures taken last year by the Russian landed proprietors in the struggle with the famine, which they themselves had produced, and which they immediately set out to exploit, when they not only sold the corn at the highest possible price, but even sold to the freezing peasants as fuel the potato-tops at five roubles per desyatína.

Or there lives a merchant, whose whole commerce, like any commerce, is based on a series of rascalities, by means of which, exploiting the ignorance and need of men, articles are bought of them below their value, and, again exploiting the ignorance, need, and temptation of men, are sold back at prices above their value. It would seem to be obvious that a man whose activity is based on what in his own language is called rascality, so long as these same acts are performed under different conditions, ought to be ashamed of his position, and is by no means able, continuing to be a merchant, to represent himself as a Christian or a liberal. But the metaphysics of hypocrisy says to him that he may pass for a virtuous man, even though continuing his harmful activity: a religious man need only be believed, but a liberal has only to coöperate with the change of external conditions,--the progress of industry. And so this merchant, who frequently, in addition, performs a whole series of direct rascalities, by selling bad wares for good ones, cheating in weights and measures, or trading exclusively in articles which are pernicious to the people's health (such as wine or opium), boldly considers himself, and is considered by others, so long as he in business does not directly cheat his fellows in deception, that is, his fellow merchants, to be a model of honesty and conscientiousness. If he spends one-thousandth of the money stolen by him on some public institution, a hospital, a museum, an institution of learning, he is also regarded as a benefactor of those very people on the deception and corruption of whom all his fortune is based; but if he contributes part of his stolen money to a church and for the poor, he is regarded even as a model Christian.

Or there lives a manufacturer, whose whole income consists of the pay which is taken away from the workmen, and whose whole activity is based on compulsory, unnatural labour, which ruins whole generations of men; it would seem to be obvious that first of all, if this man professes any Christian or liberal principles, he must stop ruining human lives for the sake of his profit. But according to the existing theory, he is contributing to industry, and he must not--it would even be injurious to men and to society--stop his activity. And here this man, the cruel slaveholder of thousands of men, building for those who have been crippled while working for him little houses with little gardens five feet square, and a savings-bank, and a poorhouse, and a hospital, is fully convinced that in this way he has more than paid for all those physically and mentally ruined lives of men, for which he is responsible, and quietly continues his activity, of which he is proud.

Or there lives a head of a department, or some civil, clerical, military servant of the state, who serves for the purpose of satisfying his ambition or love of power, or, what is most common, for the purpose of receiving a salary, which is collected from the masses that are emaciated and exhausted with labour (taxes, no matter from whom they come, always originate in labour, that is, in the labouring people), and if he, which is extremely rare, does not directly steal the government's money in some unusual manner, he considers himself and is considered by others like him to be a most useful and virtuous member of society.

There lives some judge, prosecutor, head of a department, and he knows that as the result of his sentence or decree hundreds and thousands of unfortunate people, torn away from their families, are lingering in solitary confinement, at hard labour, going mad and killing themselves with glass, or starving to death; he knows that these thousands of people have thousands of mothers, wives, children, who are suffering from the separation, are deprived of the possibility of meeting them, are disgraced, vainly implore forgiveness or even alleviation of the fates of their fathers, sons, husbands, brothers,--and the judge or head of a department is so hardened in his hypocrisy that he himself and his like and their wives and relatives are firmly convinced that he can with all this be a very good and sensitive man. According to the metaphysics of hypocrisy, it turns out that he is doing useful public work. And this man, having ruined hundreds, thousands of men, who curse him, and who are in despair, thanks to his activity, believing in the good and in God, with a beaming, benevolent smile on his smooth face, goes to mass, hears the Gospel, makes liberal speeches, pets his children, preaches to them morality, and feels meek of spirit in the presence of imaginary sufferings.

All these men and those who live on them, their wives, teachers, children, cooks, actors, jockeys, and so forth, live by the blood which in one way or another, by one class of leeches or by another, is sucked out of the working people; thus they live, devouring each day for their pleasures hundreds and thousands of work-days of the exhausted labourers, who are driven to work by the threat of being killed; they see the privations and sufferings of these labourers, of their children, old men, women, sick people; they know of the penalties to which the violators of this established spoliation are subjected, and they not only do not diminish their luxury, do not conceal it, but impudently display before these oppressed labourers, who for the most part hate them, as though on purpose to provoke them, their parks, castles, theatres, chases, races, and at the same time assure themselves and one another that they are all very much concerned about the good of the masses, whom they never stop treading underfoot; and on Sundays they dress themselves in costly attire and drive in expensive carriages into houses especially built for the purpose of making fun of Christianity, and there listen to men especially trained in this lie, who in every manner possible, in vestments and without vestments, in white neckties, preach to one another the love of men, which they all deny with their whole lives. And, while doing all this, these men so enter into their parts that they seriously believe that they actually are what they pretend to be.

The universal hypocrisy, which has entered into the flesh and blood of all the classes of our time, has reached such limits that nothing of this kind ever fills any one with indignation. Hypocrisy with good reason means the same as acting, and anybody can pretend,--act a part. Nobody is amazed at such phenomena as that the successors of Christ bless the murderers who are lined up and hold the guns which are loaded for their brothers; that the priests, the pastors of all kinds of Christian confessions, always, as inevitably as the executioners, take part in executions, with their presence recognizing the murder as compatible with Christianity (at an electrocution in America, a preacher was present).

Lately there was an international prison exhibition in St. Petersburg, where implements of torture were exhibited, such as manacles, models of solitary cells, that is, worse implements of torture than knouts and rods, and sensitive gentlemen and ladies went to look at all this, and they enjoyed the sight.

Nor is any one surprised at the way the liberal science proves, by the side of the assumption of equality, fraternity, liberty, the necessity of an army, of executions, custom-houses, the censorship, the regulation of prostitution, the expulsion of cheap labour, and the prohibition of immigration, and the necessity and justice of colonization, which is based on the poisoning, plundering, and destruction of whole tribes of men who are called savage, and so forth.

People talk of what will happen when all men shall profess what is called Christianity (that is, various mutually hostile professions); when all shall be well fed and well clothed; when all shall be united with one another from one end of the world to the other by means of telegraphs and telephones, and shall communicate with one another by means of balloons; when all the labourers shall be permeated with social teachings, and the labour-unions shall have collected so many millions of members and of roubles; when all men shall be cultured, and all shall read the papers and know the sciences.

But of what use or good can all these improvements be, if people shall not at the same time speak and do what they consider to be the truth?

The calamities of men are certainly due to their disunion, and the disunion is due to this, that men do not follow the truth, which is one, but the lies, of which there are many. The only means for the union of men into one is the union in truth; and so, the more sincerely men strive toward the truth, the nearer they are to this union.

But how can men be united in truth, or even approach it, if they not only do not express the truth which they know, but even think that it is unnecessary to do so, and pretend that they consider to be the truth what they do not regard as the truth.

And so no amelioration of the condition of men is possible, so long as men will pretend, that is, conceal the truth from themselves, so long as they do not recognize that their union, and so their good, is possible only in the truth, and so will not place the recognition and profession of the truth, the one which has been revealed to them, higher than anything else.

Let all those external improvements, of which religious and scientific men may dream, be accomplished; let all men accept Christianity, and let all those ameliorations, which all kinds of Bellamys and Richets wish for, take place, with every imaginable addition and correction--but let with all that the same hypocrisy remain as before; let men not profess the truth which they know, but continue to pretend that they believe in what they really do not believe, and respect what they really do not respect, and the condition of men will not only remain the same, but will even grow worse and worse. The more people shall have to eat, the more there shall be of telegraphs, telephones, books, newspapers, journals, the more means will there be for the dissemination of discordant lies and of hypocrisy, and the more will men be disunited and, therefore, wretched, as is indeed the case at present.

Let all these external changes take place, and the condition of humanity will not improve. But let each man at once in his life, according to his strength, profess the truth, as he knows it, or let him at least not defend the untruth, which he does, giving it out as the truth, and there would at once, in this present year 1893, take place such changes in the direction of the emancipation of men and the establishment of truth upon earth as we do not dare even to dream of for centuries to come.

For good reason Christ's only speech which is not meek, but reproachful and cruel, was directed to the hypocrites and against hypocrisy. What corrupts, angers, bestializes, and, therefore, disunites men, is not thieving, nor spoliation, nor murder, nor fornication, nor forgery, but the lie, that especial lie of hypocrisy which in the consciousness of men destroys the distinction between good and evil, deprives them of the possibility of avoiding the evil and seeking the good, deprives them of what forms the essence of the true human life, and so stands in the way of every perfection of men.

Men who do not know the truth and who do evil, awakening in others a sympathetic feeling for their victims and a contempt for their acts, do evil only to those whom they injure; but the men who know the truth and do the evil, which is concealed under hypocrisy, do evil to themselves and to those whom they injure, and to thousands of others who are offended by the lie, with which they attempt to conceal the evil done by them.

Thieves, plunderers, murderers, cheats, who commit acts that are recognized as evil by themselves and by all men, serve as an example of what ought not to be done, and deter men from evil. But the men who commit the same act of thieving, plundering, torturing, killing, mantling themselves with religious and scientific liberal justifications, as is done by all landed proprietors, merchants, manufacturers, and all kinds of servants of the government of our time, invite others to emulate their acts, and do evil, not only to those who suffer from it, but also to thousands and millions of men, whom they corrupt, by destroying for these men the difference between good and evil.

One fortune acquired by the trade in articles necessary for the masses or by corrupting the people, or by speculations on 'Change, or by the acquisition of cheap land, which later grows more expensive on account of the popular want, or by the establishment of plants ruining the health and the life of men, or by civil or military service to the state, or by any means which pamper to the vices of men--a fortune gained by such means, not only with the consent, but even with the approval of the leaders of society, corrupts people incomparably more than millions of thefts, rascalities, plunderings, which are committed outside the forms recognized by law and subject to criminal prosecution.

One execution, which is performed by well-to-do, cultured men, not under the influence of passion, but with the approval and coöperation of Christian pastors, and presented as something necessary, corrupts and bestializes men more than hundreds and thousands of murders, committed by uncultured labouring men, especially under the incitement of passion. An execution, such as Zhukóvski proposed to arrange, when men, as Zhukóvski assumed, would even experience a religious feeling of meekness of spirit, would be the most corrupting action that can be imagined. (See Vol. VI. of Zhukóvski's _Complete Works_.)

Every war, however short its duration, with its usual accompanying losses, destruction of the crops, thieving, admissible debauchery, looting, murders, with the invented justifications of its necessity and its justice, with the exaltation and eulogizing of military exploits, of love of flag and country, with the hypocritical cares for the wounded, and so forth, corrupts in one year more than do millions of robberies, incendiarisms, murders, committed in the course of hundreds of years by individual men under the influence of the passions.

One luxurious life, running temperately within the limits of decency, on the part of one respectable, so-called virtuous, family, which, none the less, spends on itself the products of as many labouring days as would suffice for the support of thousands of people living in misery side by side with this family, corrupts people more than do thousands of monstrous orgies of coarse merchants, officers, labouring men, who abandon themselves to drunkenness and debauchery, who for fun break mirrors, dishes, and so forth.

One solemn procession, Te Deum, or sermon from the ambo or pulpit, dealing with a lie in which the preachers themselves do not believe, produces incomparably more evil than do thousands of forgeries and adulterations of food, and so forth.

We talk of the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. But the hypocrisy of the men of our time far surpasses the comparatively innocent hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They had at least an external religious law, in the fulfilment of which they could overlook their obligations in relation to their neighbours, and, besides, these obligations were at that time not yet clearly pointed out; in our time, in the first place, there is no such religious law which frees men from their obligations to their neighbours, to all their neighbours without exception (I do not count those coarse and stupid men who even now think that sacraments or the decision of the Pope can absolve one from sins): on the contrary, that Gospel law, which we all profess in one way or another, directly points out these obligations, and besides these obligations, which at that time were expressed in dim words by only a few prophets, are now expressed so clearly that they have become truisms, which are repeated by gymnasiasts and writers of feuilletons. And so the men of our time, it would seem, cannot possibly pretend that they do not know these their obligations.

The men of our time, who exploit the order of things which is supported by violence, and who at the same time assert that they are very fond of their neighbours, and entirely fail to observe that they are with their whole lives doing evil to these their neighbours, are like a man who has incessantly robbed people, and who, being finally caught with his knife raised over his victim, who is calling for aid in a desperate voice, should assert that he did not know that what he was doing was unpleasant for him whom he was robbing and getting ready to kill. Just as this robber and murderer cannot deny what is obvious to all men, so, it would seem, it is impossible for the men of our time, who live at the expense of the sufferings of oppressed men, to assure themselves and others that they wish for the good of those men whom they rob incessantly, and that they did not know in what manner they acquire what they use as their own.

It is impossible for us to believe that we do not know of those one hundred thousand men in Russia alone, who are always locked up in prisons and at hard labour, for the purpose of securing our property and our peace; and that we do not know of those courts, in which we ourselves take part, and which in consequence of our petitions sentence the men who assault our property or endanger our security to imprisonment, deportation, and hard labour, where the men, who are in no way worse than those who sentence them, perish and are corrupted; that we do not know that everything we have we have only because it is acquired and secured for us by means of murders and tortures. We cannot pretend that we do not see the policeman who walks in front of the windows with a loaded revolver, defending us, while we eat our savoury dinner or view a new performance, or those soldiers who will immediately go with their guns and loaded cartridges to where our property will be violated.

We certainly know that if we shall finish eating our dinner, or seeing the latest drama, or having our fun at a ball, at the Christmas tree, at the skating, at the races, or at the chase, we do so only thanks to the bullet in the policeman's revolver and in the soldier's gun, which will at once bore a hole through the hungry stomach of the dispossessed man who, with watering mouth, is staying around the corner and watching our amusements, and is prepared to violate them the moment the policeman with the revolver shall go away, or as soon as there shall be no soldier in the barracks ready to appear at our first call.

And so, just as a man caught in broad daylight in a robbery can in no way assure all men that he did not raise his hand over the man about to be robbed by him, in order to take his purse from him, and did not threaten to cut his throat, so we, it would seem, cannot assure ourselves and others that the soldiers and policemen with the revolvers are all about us, not in order to protect us, but to defend us against external enemies, for the sake of order, for ornament, amusement, and parades; and that we did not know that men do not like to starve, having no right to make a living off the land on which they live, do not like to work underground, in the water, in hellish heat, from ten to fourteen hours a day, and in the night, in all kinds of factories and plants, for the purpose of manufacturing articles for our enjoyment. It would seem to be impossible to deny that which is so obvious. And yet it is precisely what is being done.

Though there are among the rich some honest people,--fortunately I meet more and more of them, especially among the young and among women,--who, at the mention of how and with what their pleasures are bought, do not try to conceal the truth, and grasp their heads and say, "Oh, do not speak of it. If it is so, it is impossible to go on living;" though there are such sincere people, who, unable to free themselves from their sin, none the less see it, the vast majority of the men of our time have so entered into their rôle of hypocrisy, that they boldly deny what is so startlingly obvious to every seeing person.

"All this is unjust," they say; "nobody compels the people to work for the proprietors and in factories. This is a question of free agreement. Large possessions and capital are indispensable, because they organize labour and give work to the labouring classes; and the work in the factories and plants is not at all as terrible as you imagine it to be. If there are some abuses in the factories, the government and society will see to it that they be removed and that the work be made still more easy and even more agreeable for the labourers. The working people are used to physical labour, and so far are not good for anything else. The poverty of the masses is not at all due to the ownership of land, nor to the oppression of capital, but to other causes: it is due to the ignorance, the coarseness, the drunkenness of the masses. We, the men of state, who are counteracting this impoverishment by wise enactments, and we, the capitalists, who are counteracting it by the dissemination of useful inventions, we, the clergy, by religious instruction, and we, the liberals, by the establishment of labour-unions, the increase and diffusion of knowledge, in this manner, without changing our position, increase the welfare of the masses. We do not want all men to be poor, like the poor, but want them to be rich, like the rich. The statement that men are tortured and killed to compel them to work for the rich is nothing but sophistry; troops are sent out against the masses only when they, misunderstanding their advantages, become riotous and disturb the peace, which is necessary for the common good. Just as much do we need the curbing of malefactors, for whom are intended the prisons, gallows, and hard labour. We should ourselves like to do away with them, and we are working in this direction."

The hypocrisy of our time, which is supported from two sides, by the quasi-religion and the quasi-science, has reached such a point that, if we did not live in the midst of it, we should not be able to believe that men could reach such a degree of self-deception. The people have in our time reached the remarkable state when their hearts are so hardened that they look and do not see, that they listen and do not hear or understand.

Men have long been living a life which is contrary to their consciousness. If it were not for hypocrisy, they would not be able to live this life. This order of life, which is contrary to their consciousness, is continued only because it is hidden under hypocrisy.

The more the distance is growing between reality and the consciousness of men, the more does hypocrisy expand, 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, which is involuntarily acquired by him, finds himself in a situation which is exactly like that of a sleeping man, who sees in his sleep that he must do what he knows even in his sleep is not right for him to do. He knows this in the very depth of his heart, and yet, as though unable to change his position, he cannot stop and cease doing what he knows he ought not to do. And, as happens in sleep, his condition, becoming more and more agonizing, finally reaches the utmost degree of tension, and then he begins to doubt the reality of what presents itself to him, and he makes an effort of consciousness, in order to break the spell that holds him fettered.

In the same condition is the average man of our Christian world. He feels that everything which is done by himself and about him is something insipid, monstrous, impossible, and contrary to his consciousness, that this condition is becoming more and more agonizing, and has reached the utmost limit of tension.

It cannot be: it cannot be that the men of our time, with our Christian consciousness of the dignity of man, the equality of men, which has permeated our flesh and blood, with our need for a peaceful intercourse and union among the nations, should actually be living in such a way that every joy of ours, every comfort, should be paid for by the sufferings, the lives of our brothers, and that we, besides, should every moment be within a hair's breadth of throwing ourselves, like wild beasts, upon one another, nation upon nation, mercilessly destroying labour and life, for no other reason than that some deluded diplomatist or ruler has said or written something stupid to another deluded diplomatist or ruler like himself.

It cannot be. And yet every man of our time sees that it is precisely what is being done, and that the same thing awaits him. The state of affairs is getting more and more agonizing.

As the man in his sleep does not believe that what presents itself to him as reality is actually real, and wants to awaken to the other, the actual reality, so also the average man of our time cannot in the depth of his heart believe that the terrible state in which he is, and which is getting worse and worse, is the reality, and he wants to awaken to the actual reality, the reality of the consciousness which already abides in him.

And as the man asleep needs but make an effort of his consciousness and ask himself whether it is not a dream, in order that what to him appeared as such a hopeless state may be at once destroyed, and he may awaken to a calm and joyous reality, even so the modern man needs only make an effort of his consciousness, needs only doubt in the reality of what his own and the surrounding hypocrisy presents to him, and ask himself whether it is not all a deception, in order that he may immediately feel himself at once passing over, like the awakened man, from the imaginary, terrible world to the real, to the calm and joyous reality.

This man need not perform any acts or exploits, but has only to make an internal effort of consciousness.

5

Cannot man make this effort?

According to the existing theory, indispensable for hypocrisy, man is not free and cannot change his life.

"Man cannot change his life, because he is not free; he is not free, because all of his acts are conditioned by previous causes. No matter what a man may do, there always exist these or those causes, from which the man has committed these or those acts, and so man cannot be free and himself change his life," say the defenders of the metaphysics of hypocrisy. They would be absolutely right, if man were an unconscious being, immovable in relation to truth; that is, if, having once come to know the truth, he always remained on the selfsame stage of his cognition. But man is a conscious being, recognizing a higher and still higher degree of the truth, and so, if a man is not free in the commission of this or that act, because for every act there exists a cause, the very causes of these acts, which for conscious man consist in his recognizing this or that truth as an adequate cause for his action, are within man's power.

Thus man, who is not free in the commission of these or those acts, is free as regards the basis for his acts, something as the engineer of a locomotive, who is not free as regards the change of an accomplished or actual motion of the locomotive, is none the less free in determining beforehand its future motions.

No matter what a conscious man may do, he acts in this way or that, and not otherwise, only because he either now recognizes that the truth is that he ought to act as he does, or because he formerly recognized it, and now from inertia, from habit, acts in a manner which now he recognizes to be false.

In either case the cause of his act was not a given phenomenon, but the recognition of a given condition as the truth and, consequently, the recognition of this or that phenomenon as an adequate cause of his act.

Whether a man eats or abstains from food, whether he works or rests, runs from danger or is subject to it, if he is a conscious man, he acts as he does only because he now considers this to be proper and rational: he considers the truth to consist in his acting this way, and not otherwise, or he has considered it so for a long time.

The recognition of a certain truth or the non-recognition of it does not depend on external causes, but on some others, which are in man himself. Thus with all the external, apparently advantageous conditions for the recognition of truth, one man at times does not recognize it, and, on the contrary, another, under all the most unfavourable conditions, without any apparent cause, does recognize it. As it says in the Gospel: "No man can come to me, except the Father draw him" (John vi. 44), that is, the recognition of the truth, which forms the cause of all the phenomena of human life, does not depend on external phenomena, but on some internal qualities of man, which are not subject to his observation.

And so a man, who is not free in his acts, always feels himself free in what serves as the cause of his actions,--in the recognition or non-recognition of the truth, and feels himself free, not only independently of external conditions taking place outside him, but even of his own acts.

Thus a man, having under the influence of passion committed an act which is contrary to the cognized truth, none the less remains free in its recognition or non-recognition, that is, he can, without recognizing the truth, regard his act as necessary and justify himself in its commission, and can, by recognizing the truth, consider his act bad and condemn it in himself.

Thus a gambler or a drunkard, who has not withstood temptation and has succumbed to his passion, remains none the less free to recognize his gambling or his intoxication either as an evil or as an indifferent amusement. In the first case, he, though not at once, frees himself from his passion, the more, as he the more sincerely recognizes the truth; in the second, he strengthens his passion and deprives himself of every possibility of liberation.

Even so a man, who could not stand the heat and ran out of a burning house without having saved his companion, remains free (by recognizing the truth that a man must serve the lives of others at the risk of his own life) to consider his act bad, and so to condemn himself for it, or (by not recognizing this truth) to consider his act natural, and necessary, and to justify himself in it. In the first case, in recognizing the truth, he, in spite of his departure from it, prepares for himself a whole series of self-sacrificing acts, which inevitably must result from such a recognition; in the second case, he prepares a whole series of egotistical acts, which are opposed to the first.

Not that a man is always free to recognize every truth, or not. There are truths which have long ago been recognized by a man himself or have been transmitted to him by education and tradition, and have been taken by him on faith, the execution of which has become to him a habit, a second nature; and there are truths which present themselves to him indistinctly, in the distance. A man is equally unfree in the non-recognition of the first and the recognition of the second. But there is a third class of truths, which have not yet become for man an unconscious motive for his activity, but which at the same time have already revealed themselves to him with such lucidity that he cannot evade them, and must inevitably take up this or that relation to them, by recognizing or not recognizing them. It is in relation to these same truths that man's freedom is manifested.

Every man finds himself in his life in relation to truth in the position of a wanderer who walks in the dark by the light of a lantern moving in front of him: he does not see what is not yet illuminated by the lantern, nor what he has passed over and what is again enveloped in darkness, and it is not in his power to change his relation to either; but he sees, no matter on what part of the path he may stand, what is illuminated by the lantern, and it is always in his power to select one side of the road on which he is moving, or the other.

For every man there always are truths, invisible to him, which have not yet been revealed to his mental vision; there are other truths, already outlived, forgotten, and made his own; and there are certain truths which have arisen before him in the light of his reason and which demand his recognition. It is in the recognition or non-recognition of these truths that there is manifested what we cognize as our freedom.

The whole difficulty and seeming insolubility of the question about man's freedom is due to this, that the men who decide this question present man to themselves as immovable in relation to truth.

Man is unquestionably not free, if we represent him to ourselves as immovable, if we forget that the life of man and of humanity is only a constant motion from darkness to the light, from the lower stage of the truth to the higher, from a truth which is mixed with errors to a truth which is more free from them.

Man would not be free, if he did not know any truth, and he would not be free and would not even have any idea about freedom, if the whole truth, which is to guide him in his life, were revealed to him in all its purity, without any admixture of errors.

But man is not immovable in relation to truth, and every individual man, as also all humanity, in proportion to its movement in life, constantly cognizes a greater and ever greater degree of the truth, and is more and more freed from error. Therefore men always are in a threefold relation to truth: one set of truths has been so acquired by them that these truths have become unconscious causes of their actions, others have only begun to be revealed to them, and the third, though not yet made their own, are revealed to them with such a degree of lucidity that inevitably, in one way or another, they must take up some stand in relation to them, must recognize them, or not.

It is in the recognition or non-recognition of these truths that man is free.

Man's freedom does not consist in this, that he can, independently of the course of his life and of causes already existing and acting upon him, commit arbitrary acts, but in this, that he can, by recognizing the truth revealed to him and by professing it, become a free and joyous performer of the eternal and infinite act performed by God or the life of the world, and can, by not recognizing the truth, become its slave and be forcibly and painfully drawn in a direction which he does not wish to take.

Truth not only indicates the path of human life, but also reveals that one path, on which human life can proceed. And so all men will inevitably, freely or not freely, walk on the path of life: some, by naturally doing the work of life destined for them, others, by involuntarily submitting to the law of life. Man's freedom is in this choice.

Such a freedom, within such narrow limits, seems to men to be so insignificant that they do not notice it: some (the determinists) consider this portion of freedom to be so small that they do not recognize it at all; others, the defenders of complete freedom, having in view their imaginary freedom, neglect this seemingly insignificant degree of freedom. The freedom which is contained between the limits of the ignorance of the truth and of the recognition of a certain degree of it does not seem to men to be any freedom, the more so since, whether a man wants to recognize the truth which is revealed to him or not, he inevitably will be compelled to fulfil it in life.

A horse that is hitched with others to a wagon is not free not to walk in front of the wagon; and if it will not draw, the wagon will strike its legs, and it will go whither the wagon goes, and will pull it involuntarily. But, in spite of this limited freedom, it is free itself to pull the wagon or be dragged along by it. The same is true of man.

Whether this freedom is great or not, in comparison with that fantastic freedom which we should like to have, this freedom unquestionably exists, and this freedom is freedom, and in this freedom is contained the good which is accessible to man.

Not only does this freedom give the good to men, but it is also the one means for the accomplishment of the work which is done by the life of the world.

According to Christ's teaching, the man who sees the meaning of life in the sphere in which it is not free, in the sphere of consequences, that is, of acts, has not the true life. According to the Christian teaching, only he has the true life who has transferred his life into that sphere in which it is free, into the sphere of causes, that is, of the cognition and the recognition of the truth which is revealing itself, of its profession, and so inevitably of its consequent fulfilment as the wagon's following the horse.

In placing his life in carnal things, a man does that work which is always in dependence on spatial and temporal causes, which are outside of him. He himself really does nothing,--it only seems to him that he is doing something, but in reality all those things which it seems to him he is doing are done through him by a higher power, and he is not the creator of life, but its slave; but in placing his life in the recognition and profession of the truth that is revealed to him, he, by uniting with the source of the universal life, does not do personal, private works, which depend on conditions of space and time, but works which have no causes and themselves form causes of everything else, and have an endless, unlimited significance.

By neglecting the essence of the true life, which consists in the recognition and profession of the truth, and by straining their efforts for the amelioration of their lives upon external acts, the men of the pagan life-conception are like men on a boat, who, in order to reach their goal, should put out the boiler, which keeps them from distributing the oarsmen, and, instead of proceeding under steam and screw, should try in a storm to row with oars that do not reach to the water.

The kingdom of God is taken by force and only those who make an effort get hold of it,--and it is this effort of the renunciation of the change of the external conditions for the recognition and profession of truth which is the effort by means of which the kingdom of God is taken and which must and can be made in our time.

Men need but understand this: they need but stop troubling themselves about external and general matters, in which they are not free, and use but one hundredth part of the energy, which they employ on external matters, on what they are free in, on the recognition and profession of the truth which stands before them, on the emancipation of themselves and of men from the lie and hypocrisy which conceal the truth, in order that without effort and struggle there should at once be destroyed that false structure of life which torments people and threatens them with still worse calamities, and that there should be realized that kingdom of God or at least that first step of it, for which men are already prepared according to their consciousness.

Just as one jolt is sufficient for a liquid that is saturated with salt suddenly to become crystallized, thus, perhaps, the smallest effort will suffice for the truth, which is already revealed to men, to take hold of hundreds, thousands, millions of men,--for a public opinion to be established to correspond to the consciousness, and, in consequence of its establishment, for the whole structure of the existing life to be changed. And it depends on us to make this effort.

If every one of us would only try to understand and recognize the Christian truth which surrounds us on all sides in the most varied forms, and begs for admission into our souls; if we only stopped lying and pretending that we do not see that truth, or that we wish to carry it out, only not in what it first of all demands of us; if we only recognized the truth which calls us and boldly professed it, we should immediately see that hundreds, thousands, millions of men are in the same condition that we are in, that they see the truth, just as we do, and that, like us, they are only waiting for others to recognize it.

If men only stopped being hypocritical, they would see at once that the cruel structure of life, which alone binds them and which presents itself to them as something firm, indispensable, and sacred, as something established by God, is shaking already and is holding only by that lie of hypocrisy by means of which we and our like support 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 shall be destroyed?

"What will be there, beyond the walls of the world which we leave behind?" (Herzen's words.)

"Terror seizes us,--the void, expanse, freedom.... How can we go, without knowing whither? How can we lose, without seeing any acquisition?

"If Columbus had reflected thus, he would never have weighed anchor. It is madness to sail the sea without knowing the way, to sail the sea no one has traversed before, to make for a country, the existence of which is a question. With this madness he discovered a new world. Of course, if the nations could move from one _hôtel garni_ into another, a better one, it would be easier, but unfortunately there is no one to arrange the new quarters. In the future it is worse than on the sea,--there is nothing,--it will be what circumstances and men make it.

"If you are satisfied with the old world, try to preserve it,--it is very decrepit and will not last long; but if it is unbearable for you to live in an eternal discord between convictions and life, to think one thing and do another, come out from under the whited mediæval vaults at your risk. I know full well that this is not easy. It is not a trifling matter to part from everything a man is accustomed to from the day of his birth, with what he has grown up with from childhood. Men are prepared for terrible sacrifices, but not for those which the new life demands of them. Are they prepared to sacrifice modern civilization, their manner of life, their religion, the accepted conventional morality? Are they prepared to be deprived of all the fruits which have been worked out with such efforts, of the fruits we have been boasting of for three centuries, to be deprived of all the comforts and charms of our existence, to prefer wild youth to cultured debility, to break up their inherited palace from the mere pleasure of taking part in laying the foundation for the new house, which will, no doubt, be built after us?" (Herzen, Vol. V., p. 55.)

Thus spoke almost half a century ago a Russian author, who with his penetrating mind even at that time saw very clearly what now is seen by the least reflecting man of our time,--the impossibility of continuing life on its former foundations, and the necessity for establishing some new forms of life.

From the simplest, lowest, worldly point of view it is already clear that it is madness to remain under the vault of a building, which does not sustain its weight, and that it is necessary to leave it. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a state which is more wretched than the one in which is now the Christian world, with its nations armed against each other, with the ever growing taxes for the support of these ever growing armaments, with the hatred of the labouring class against the rich, which is being fanned more and more, with Damocles's sword of war hanging over all, and ready at any moment to drop down, and inevitably certain to do so sooner or later.

Hardly any revolution can be more wretched for the great mass of the people than the constantly existing order, or rather disorder, of our life, with its habitual sacrifices of unnatural labour, poverty, drunkenness, debauchery, and with all the horrors of an imminent war, which is in one year to swallow up more victims than all the revolutions of the present century.

What will happen with us, with all humanity, when each one of us shall perform what is demanded of him by God through the conscience which is implanted in him? Will there be no calamity, because, finding myself entirely in the power of the Master, I in the establishment built up and guided by Him shall do what He commands me to do, but what seems strange to me, who do not know the final ends of the Master?

But it is not even this question as to what will happen that troubles men, when they hesitate to do the Master's will: they are troubled by the question as to how they could live without those conditions of their life which they have become accustomed to, and which we call science, art, civilization, culture. We feel for ourselves personally the whole burden of the present life, we even see that the order of this life, if continued, will inevitably cause our ruin; but, at the same time, we want the conditions of this our life, which have grown out of it, our arts, sciences, civilizations, cultures, to remain unharmed in the change of our life. It is as though a man living in an old house, suffering from the cold and the inconveniences of this house, and knowing, besides, that this house is about to fall in, should consent to its rebuilding only on condition that he should not come out of it: a condition which is equal to a refusal to rebuild the house. "What if I leave the house, for a time am deprived of all comforts, and the new house will not be built at all or will be built in such a way that it will lack what I am used to?"

But, if the material is on hand and the builders are there, all the probabilities are in favour of the new house being better than the old one, and at the same time there is not only a probability, but even a certainty, that the old house will fall in and will crush those who are left in it. Whether the former, habitual conditions of life will be retained, whether they will be destroyed, or whether entirely new ones, better ones, will arise, it is inevitably necessary to leave the old conditions of our life, which have become impossible and pernicious, and to go ahead and meet the future conditions.

"The sciences, arts, civilizations, and cultures will disappear!"

All these are only different manifestations of the truth, and the imminent change is to take place only in the name of an approximation to truth and its realization. How, then, can the manifestations of the truth disappear in consequence of its realization? They will be different, better, and higher, but they will by no means be destroyed. What will be destroyed in them is what is false; but what there was of truth in them will only blossom out and be strengthened.

6

Come to your senses, men, and believe in the Gospel, in the teaching of the good. If you shall not come to your senses, you will all perish, as perished the men who were killed by Pilate, as perished those who were crushed by the tower of Siloam, as perished millions and millions of men, slayers and slain, executioners and executed, tormentors and tormented, and as foolishly perished that man who filled up his granaries and prepared himself to live for a long time, and died the same night on which he wanted to begin his new life. "Come to your senses and believe in the Gospel," Christ said eighteen hundred years ago, and says now with even greater convincingness, through the utter wretchedness and irrationality of our life, predicted by Him and now an accomplished fact.

Now, after so many centuries of vain endeavours to make our life secure by means of the pagan institution of violence, it would seem to be absolutely obvious to everybody that all the efforts which are directed toward this end only introduce new dangers into our personal and social life, but in no way make it secure.

No matter what we may call ourselves; what attires we may put on; what we may smear ourselves with, and in the presence of what priests; how many millions we may have; what protection there may be along our path; how many policemen may protect our wealth; how much we may execute the so-called revolutionary malefactors and anarchists; what exploits we ourselves may perform; what kingdoms we may found, and what fortresses and towers we may erect, from that of Babel to that of Eiffel,--we are all of us at all times confronted by two inevitable conditions of our life, which destroy its whole meaning: (1) by death, which may overtake any of us at any moment, and (2) by the impermanency of all the acts performed by us, which are rapidly and tracklessly destroyed. No matter what we may do, whether we found kingdoms, build palaces, erect monuments, compose poems, it is but for a short time, and everything passes, without leaving a trace. And so, no matter how much we may conceal the fact from ourselves, we cannot help but see that the meaning of our life can be neither in our personal, carnal existence, which is subject to inevitable sufferings and inevitable death, nor in any worldly institution or structure.

Whoever you, the reader of these lines, may be, think of your condition and of your duties,--not of the condition of landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, soldier, which people temporarily ascribe to you, nor of those imaginary duties, which these positions impose upon you, but of that real, eternal condition of existence, which by somebody's will after a whole eternity of non-existence has issued forth from unconsciousness, and at any moment by somebody's will may return to where you come from. Think of your duties,--not of your imaginary duties as a landowner to your estate, of a merchant to your capital, of an emperor, minister, official to the state,--but of those real duties of yours, which result from your real condition of existence, which is called into life and is endowed with reason and love. Are you doing what is demanded of you by Him who has sent you into the world, and to whom you will very soon return? Are you doing what He is demanding of you? Are you doing what is right, when, being a landowner, manufacturer, you take away the productions of labour from the poor, building up your life on this spoliation, or when, being a ruler, a judge, you do violence to people and sentence them to capital punishment, or when, being a soldier, you prepare yourself for wars, and wage war, plunder, and kill?

You say that the world is constructed that way, that this is unavoidable, that you are not doing this of your own will, but that you are compelled to do so. But is it possible that the aversion for human sufferings, for tortures, for the killing of men should be so deeply implanted in you; that you should be so imbued with the necessity for loving men and the still more potent necessity of being loved by them; that you should clearly see that only with the recognition of the equality of all men, with their mutual service, is possible the realization of the greatest good which is accessible to men; that your heart, your intellect, the religion professed by you should tell you the same; that science should tell you the same,--and that, in spite of it, you should be by some very dim, complex considerations compelled to do what is precisely opposed to it? that, being a landowner or a capitalist, you should be compelled to construct all your life on the oppression of the masses? or that, being an emperor or a president, you should be compelled to command troops, that is, to be the leader and guide of murderers? or that, being a government official, you should be compelled by violence to take from poor people their hard-earned money, in order to use it yourself and give it to the rich? or that, being a judge, a juror, you should be compelled to sentence erring men to tortures and to death, because the truth has not been revealed to them? or that,--a thing on which all the evil of the world is chiefly based,--you, every young man, should be compelled to become a soldier and, renouncing your own will and all human sentiments, should promise, at the will of men who are alien to you, to kill all those men whom they may command you to kill?

It cannot be.

Even though men tell you that all this is necessary for the maintenance of the existing structure of life; that the existing order, with its wretchedness, hunger, prisons, executions, armies, wars, is indispensable for society; that, if this order should be impaired, there would come worse calamities,--it is only those to whom this structure of life is advantageous that tell you this, while those--and there are ten times as many of them--who are suffering from this structure of life think and say the very opposite. You yourself know in the depth of your heart that this is not true, that the existing structure of life has outlived its time and soon must be reconstructed on new principles, and that, therefore, there is no need to maintain it, while sacrificing human sentiments.

Above all else, even if we admit that the existing order is necessary, why do you feel yourself obliged to maintain it, while trampling on all better human sentiments? Who has engaged you as a nurse to this decaying order? Neither society, nor the state, nor any men have ever asked you to maintain this order, by holding the place of landowner, merchant, emperor, priest, soldier, which you now hold; and you know full well that you took up your position, not at all with the self-sacrificing purpose of maintaining an order of life which is indispensable for the good of men, but for your own sake,--for the sake of your greed, love of glory, ambition, indolence, cowardice. If you did not want this position, you would not be doing everything it is necessary for you to do all the time, in order to keep your place. Just try to stop doing those complex, cruel, tricky, and mean things, which you are doing without cessation in order to keep your place, and you will immediately lose it. Just try, while being a ruler or an official, to stop lying, committing base acts, taking part in acts of violence, in executions; being a priest, to stop deceiving; being a soldier, to stop killing; being a landowner, a manufacturer, to stop protecting your property by means of the courts and of violence,--and you will at once lose the position which, you say, is imposed upon you, and which, you say, weighs heavily upon you.

It cannot be that a man should be placed against his will in a position which is contrary to his consciousness.

If you are in this position, it is not because that is necessary for anybody, but because you want it. And so, knowing that this position is directly opposed to your heart, your reason, your faith, and even to science, in which you believe, you cannot help but meditate on the question as to whether you are doing right by staying in this position and, above all, by trying to justify it.

You might be able to risk making a mistake, if you had time to see and correct your mistake, and if that in the name of which you should take your risk had any importance. But when you know for certain that you may vanish any second, without the slightest chance of correcting the mistake, either for your own sake or for the sake of those whom you will draw into your error, and when you know, besides, that, no matter what you may do in the external structure of the world, it will disappear very soon, and just as certainly as you yourself, without leaving any trace, it is obvious to you that you have no reason to risk such a terrible mistake.

This is all so simple and so clear, if only we did not with hypocrisy bedim the truth which is revealed to us.

"Share with others what you have, do not amass any wealth, do not glorify yourself, do not plunder, do not torture, do not kill any one, do not do unto others what you do not wish to have done to yourself," was said, not eighteen hundred, but five thousand years ago, and there could be no doubt as to the truth of this law, if there were no hypocrisy: it would have been impossible, if not to do so, at least not to recognize that we ought always to do so, and that he who does not do so is doing wrong.

But you say that there also exists a common good, for which it is possible and necessary to depart from these rules,--for the common good it is right to kill, torture, rob. It is better for one man to perish, than that a whole nation should perish, you say, like Caiaphas, and you sign one, two, three death-warrants, load your gun for that man who is to perish for the common good, put him in prison, take away his property. You say that you do these cruel things, because you feel yourself to be a man of society, the state, under obligation to serve it and to carry out its laws, a landowner, a judge, an emperor, a soldier. But, besides your belonging to a certain state, and the obligations resulting therefrom, you also belong to the infinite life of the world and to God, and have certain obligations resulting from this relation.

And as your duties, which result from your belonging to a certain family, a certain society, are always subordinated to the higher duties, which result from your belonging to the state, so also your obligations, which result from your belonging to the state, must necessarily be subordinated to the duties which result from your belonging to the life of the world, to God.

And as it would be senseless to cut down the telegraph-posts, in order to provide fuel for the family or society, and to increase its well-being, because this would violate the laws which preserve the good of the state, so it would be senseless, for the purpose of making the state secure and increasing its well-being, to torture, execute, kill a man, because this violates the unquestionable laws which preserve the good of the world.

Your obligations, which result from your belonging to the state, cannot help but be subordinated to the higher eternal duty, which results from your belonging to the infinite life of the world, or to God, and cannot contradict them, as Christ's disciples 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 iv. 19), and, "We ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts v. 29).

You are assured that, in order not to violate the constantly changing order, which was yesterday established by some men in some corner of the world, you must commit acts of torture and murder separate men, who violate the eternal, invariable order of the universe, which was established by God, or by reason. Can that be?

And so you cannot help but meditate on your position as a landowner, merchant, judge, emperor, president, minister, priest, soldier, which is connected with oppression, violence, deception, tortures, and murders, and you cannot help but recognize their illegality.

I do not say that, if you are a landowner, you should at once give your land to the poor; if you are a capitalist, you should at once give your money, your factory to the labourers; if you are a king, a minister, an official, a judge, a general, you should at once give up your advantageous position; if you are a soldier (that is, occupy a position on which all violence is based), you should, in spite of all the dangers of a refusal to obey, at once throw up your position.

If you do so, you will do the very best possible; but it may happen--and this is most likely--that you will not have the strength to do so: you have connections, a family, inferiors, superiors; you may be under such a strong influence of temptations that you will not be able to do so,--but you are always able to recognize the truth as a truth, and to stop lying. Do not assert that you remain a landed proprietor, a manufacturer, a merchant, an artist, a writer, because this is useful for men; that you are serving as a governor, a prosecutor, a king, not because that gives you pleasure and you are used to it, but for the good of humanity; that you continue to be a soldier, not because you are afraid of punishment, but because you consider the army indispensable for the security of human life; you can always keep from lying thus to yourself and to men, and you are not only able, but even must do so, because in this alone, in the liberation of oneself from the lie and in the profession of the truth, does the only good of your life consist.

You need but do this, and your position will inevitably change of its own accord. There is one, only one thing in which you are free and almighty in your life,--everything else is beyond your power. This thing is, to recognize the truth and to profess it.

Suddenly, because just such miserable, erring people like yourself have assured you that you are a soldier, emperor, landed proprietor, rich man, priest, general, you begin to do evil, which is obviously and unquestionably contrary to your reason and heart: you begin to torture, rob, kill men, to build up your life on their sufferings, and, above all, instead of doing the one work of your life,--recognizing and professing the truth which is known to you,--you carefully pretend that you do not know it, and conceal it from yourself and from others, doing thus what is directly opposed to the one thing to which you have been called.

And under what conditions do you do that? You, who are likely to die at any moment, sign a sentence of death, declare war, go to war, sit in judgment, torture, fleece the labourers, live luxuriously among the poor, and teach weak, trustful people that this must be so, and that in this does the duty of men consist, and you are running the chance that, at the moment that you are doing this, a bacterium or a bullet will fly into you, and you will rattle in your throat and die, and will for ever be deprived of the possibility of correcting and changing the evil which you have done to others and, above all, to yourself, losing for nothing the life which is given to you but once in a whole eternity, without having done the one thing which you ought unquestionably to have done.

However simple and old this may be, and however much we may have stupefied ourselves by hypocrisy and the auto-suggestion resulting from it, nothing can destroy the absolute certainty of that simple and clear truth that no external efforts can safeguard our life, which is inevitably connected with unavoidable sufferings and which ends in still more unavoidable death, that may come to each of us at any moment, and that, therefore, our life can have no other meaning than the fulfilment, at any moment, of what is wanted from us by the power that sent us into life and gave us in this life one sure guide,--our rational consciousness.

And so this power cannot want from us what is irrational and impossible,--the establishment of our temporal, carnal life, the life of society or of the state. This power demands of us what alone is certain and rational and possible,--our serving the kingdom of God, that is, our coöperation in the establishment of the greatest union of everything living, which is possible only in the truth, and, therefore, the recognition of the truth revealed to us, and the profession of it, precisely what 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 consists in serving the world by coöperating in the establishment of the kingdom of God; but this service can be rendered only through the recognition of the truth, and the profession of it, by every separate individual.

"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."

_Yásnaya Polyána, May 14, 1893._

CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM

1894

CHRISTIANITY AND PATRIOTISM

The Franco-Russian celebrations which took place in France, in the month of October of last year, provoked in me, as no doubt in many other people, at first a feeling of amusement, then of perplexity, and at last of indignation, which I intended to express in a short article in a periodical; but, the more I dwelt on the chief causes of this strange phenomenon, the more did I arrive at the considerations which I now offer to my readers.

I.

Russians and Frenchmen have lived for many centuries, knowing one another, entering with one another at times into friendly, more often, I am sorry to say, into very hostile relations, which have been provoked by their governments; suddenly, because two years ago a French squadron arrived at Kronstadt, and the officers of the squadron, upon landing, ate and drank a lot of wine in various places, hearing and uttering upon these occasions many lying and stupid words, and because, in the year 1893, a similar Russian squadron arrived at Toulon, and the officers of the Russian squadron ate and drank a lot in Paris, hearing and uttering upon that occasion more lying and stupid words than before, it happened that not only the men who ate, drank, and talked, but even those who were present, and even those who were not present, but only heard and read of it in newspapers, all these millions of Russians and Frenchmen suddenly imagined that they somehow were particularly in love with one another, that is, that all the French loved all the Russians, and all the Russians loved all the French.

These sentiments were last October expressed in France in a most unusual manner.

Here is the way the reception of the Russian sailors is described in the _Rural Messenger_, a newspaper which collects its information from all the others:

"At the meeting of the Russian and French vessels, both, besides the salvos of guns, greeted one another with hearty, ecstatic shouts, 'Hurrah,' 'Long live Russia,' 'Long live France!'

"These were joined by bands of music (which came on many private steamers), playing the Russian hymn, 'God save the Tsar,' and the French Marseillaise; the public on the private vessels waved their hats, flags, handkerchiefs, and bouquets; on many barques there were peasants with their wives and children, and they all had bouquets in their hands, and even the children waved the bouquets and shouted at the top of their voices, '_Vive la Russie!_' Our sailors, upon seeing such national transport, were unable to restrain their tears....

"In the harbour all the ships-of-war which were then at Toulon were drawn out in two lines, and our squadron passed between them; in front was the ironclad of the admiralty, and this was followed by the rest. There ensued a most solemn minute.

"On the Russian ironclad, fifteen salvos were fired in honour of the French squadron, and a French ironclad replied with double the number, with thirty salvos. From the French vessels thundered the sounds of the Russian hymn. The French sailors climbed up on the sail-yards and masts; loud exclamations of greeting proceeded uninterruptedly from the two squadrons and from the private vessels; the caps of the sailors, the hats and handkerchiefs of the public,--all were thrown up triumphantly in honour of the dear guests. On all sides, on the water and on the shore, there boomed one common call, 'Long live Russia! Long live France!'

"In conformity with naval law, Admiral Avelán and the officers of his staff landed, in order to greet the local authorities. On the quay the Russian sailors were met by the chief marine staff of France and the superior officers of the port of Toulon. There ensued a universal friendly hand-shaking, accompanied by the boom of cannon and the ringing of bells. A band of marine music played the hymn 'God save the Tsar,' drowned by the thunderous shouts of the public, 'Long live the Tsar! Long live Russia!' These exclamations blended into one mighty sound, which drowned the music and the salvos from the guns.

"Eye-witnesses declare that at this moment the enthusiasm of the innumerable mass of people reached its highest limits, and that it is impossible to express in words with what sensations the hearts of all those present were filled. Admiral Avelán, with bared head, and accompanied by Russian and French officers, directed his steps to the building of the Marine Office, where the French minister of marine was waiting for him.

"In receiving the admiral, the minister said: 'Kronstadt and Toulon are two places which bear witness to the sympathy between the Russian and the French nations; you will everywhere be met as dear friends. The government and all of France welcome you upon your arrival and that of your companions, who represent a great and noble nation.'

"The admiral replied that he was not able to express all his gratitude. 'The Russian squadron and all of Russia,' he said, 'will remember the reception you have given us.'

"After a short conversation, the admiral, saying good-bye to the minister, a second time thanked him for the reception, and added, 'I do not want to part from you before pronouncing those words which are imprinted in all Russian hearts: "Long live France!"'" (_Rural Messenger_, 1893, No. 41.)

Such was the meeting at Toulon. In Paris the meeting and the celebrations were more remarkable still.

Here is the way the meeting in Paris was described in the newspapers: "All eyes were directed to the Boulevard des Italiens, whence the Russian sailors were to appear. Finally the boom of a whole hurricane of exclamations and applauses is heard in the distance. The boom grows stronger and more audible. The hurricane is apparently approaching. A mighty motion takes place on the square. Policemen rush forward to clear a path toward the Cercle Militaire, but this is by no means an easy task. There is an incredible crush and pressure in the crowd.... Finally the head of the procession appears in the square. At the same moment a deafening shout, '_Vive la Russie! Vive les Russes!_' rises over it. All bare their heads, the public, packed close in the windows, on the balconies, perched even on the roofs, wave handkerchiefs, flags, and hats, applaud madly, and from the windows of the upper stories throw clouds of small many-coloured cockades. A whole sea of handkerchiefs, hats, and flags surges above the heads of the crowd in the square: '_Vive la Russie! Vive les Russes!_' shouts this mass of one hundred thousand people, trying to get a look at the dear guests, extending their hands to them, and in every way expressing their sympathies" (_New Time_).

Another correspondent writes that the transport of the crowd bordered on delirium. A Russian publicist, who was in Paris at that time, describes this entrance of the sailors in the following manner: "They tell the truth,--it was an incident of world-wide import, wondrous, touching, soul-stirring, making the heart quiver with that love which discerns the brothers in men, and which detests bloodshed and concomitant acts of violence, the tearing away of the children from their beloved mother. I have been in some kind of an intoxication for several hours. I felt so strange, and even so weak, as I stood at the station of the Lyons Railway, among the representatives of the French administration in their gold-embroidered uniforms, among the members of the municipality in full dress, and heard the shouts, '_Vive la Russie! Vive le Czar!_' and our national hymn, which was played several times in succession. Where am I? What has happened? What magic stream has united all this into one feeling, into one mind? Does one not feel here the presence of the God of love and brotherhood, the presence of something higher, something ideal, which descends upon men only in lofty moments? The heart is so full of something beautiful and pure and exalted, that the pen is not able to express it all. Words pale before what I saw, what I felt. It is not transport,--the word is too banal,--it is something better than transport. It is more picturesque, profounder, more joyous, more varied. It is impossible to describe what happened at the Cercle Militaire, when Admiral Avelán appeared on the balcony of a second story. Words will not tell anything here. During the Te Deum, when the choristers sang in the church 'Save, O Lord, thy people,' there burst through the open door the solemn sounds of the Marseillaise, which was played in the street by an orchestra of wind-instruments. There was something astounding and inexpressible in the impression conveyed" (_New Time_, October, 1893).

II.

After arriving in France, the Russian sailors for two weeks went from one celebration to another, and in the middle or at the end of every celebration they ate, drank, and talked; and the information as to what they ate and drank on Wednesday and where and what on Friday, and what was said upon that occasion, was wired home and conveyed to the whole of Russia. The moment some Russian captain drank the health of France, this at once became known to the whole world, and the moment the Russian admiral said, "I drink to fair France!" these words were immediately borne over the whole world. But more than that: the scrupulousness of the newspapers was such that they reported not only the toasts, but even many dinners, with the cakes and appetizers which were used at these dinners.

Thus it said in one issue of a newspaper that the dinner was "an artistic production:"

"Consommé de volailles, petits pâtés Mousse de hommard parisienne Noisette de bœuf à la béarnaise Faisans à la Périgord Casseroles de truffes au champagne Chaufroid de volailles à la Toulouse Salade russe Croute de fruits toulonaise Parfait à l'ananas Desserts"

In the next number it said:

"In a culinary sense the dinner left nothing to be desired. The menu consisted of the following:

"Potage livonien et St. Germain Zéphyrs Nantua Esturgeon braisé moldave Selle de daguet grand veneur,"

and so forth.

The next number described another menu. With every menu a detailed description was given of the wines which the fêted men consumed,--such and such "voodka" such and such _Bourgogne vieux, Grand Moët_, and so forth. In an English paper there was an account of all the intoxicants consumed by the celebrators. This amount is so enormous that it is doubtful if all the drunkards of Russia and of France could have drunk so much in so short a time.

They reported also the speeches which were made by the celebrators, but the menus were more varied than the speeches. The speeches consisted invariably of the same words in all kinds of combinations and permutations. The meaning of these words was always one and the same: "We love one another tenderly, we are in transport, because we have so suddenly fallen in love with one another. Our aim is not war and not _revanche_, and not the return of provinces taken, but only _peace_, the benefaction of _peace_, the security of _peace_, the rest and _peace_ of Europe. Long live the Emperor of Russia and the empress,--we love them and we love _peace_. Long live the president of the republic and his wife,--we love them, too, and we love _peace_. Long live France, Russia, their fleets, and their armies. We love the army, too, and _peace_, and the chief of the squadron." The speeches generally ended, as in couplets, with the words, "Toulon, Kronstadt," or "Kronstadt, Toulon." And the names of these places, where so much food was eaten and so many kinds of wine were consumed, were pronounced like words reminding one of the loftiest, most valorous of acts of the representatives of both nations, words after which there was nothing else to be said, because everything was comprehensible. "We love one another, and we love peace. Kronstadt, Toulon!" What else can be added to this? Especially with the accompaniment of solemn music, playing simultaneously two hymns, one--praising the Tsar and asking God for all kinds of benefactions for him, and the other--cursing all kings and promising their ruin.

The men who expressed their sentiments of love particularly well received decorations and rewards; other men for the same services, or simply out of a superabundance of feelings, were given the strangest and most unexpected presents,--thus the Emperor of Russia received from the French squadron some kind of a golden book, in which, I think, nothing was written, and if there was, it was something that nobody needed to know, and the chief of the Russian squadron received, among other presents, a still more remarkable object, an aluminum plough, covered with flowers, and many other just as unexpected presents.

Besides, all these strange acts were accompanied by still stranger religious ceremonies and public prayers, which, it would seem, the French had long ago outlived. Since the days of the Concordat there had hardly been offered so many prayers as in that short time. All the French suddenly became unusually pious, and carefully hung up in the rooms of the Russian sailors those very images which they had just as carefully removed from their schools, as being harmful tools of superstition, and they kept praying all the time. Cardinals and bishops everywhere prescribed prayers, and themselves prayed, uttering the strangest prayers. Thus the Bishop of Toulon at the launching of the ironclad _Joriguiberi_ prayed to the God of peace, making people feel, however, that, if it came to a pinch, he could address also the God of war.

"What her fate will be," said the bishop, in reference to the ironclad, "God alone knows. No one knows whether she will belch forth death from her appalling bosom. But if, invoking now the God of peace, we should later have occasion to invoke the God of war, we are firmly convinced that the _Joriguiberi_ will go forth side by side with the mighty boats whose crews have this day entered into such a close fraternal union with our own. Far from us be such a prospect, and may the present festivity leave nothing but a peaceful recollection, like the recollection of the _Grand Duke Constantine_, which was present here (in 1857) at the launching of the ship _Quirinal_, and may the friendship of France and of Russia make these two nations the guardians of peace."

In the meantime tens of thousands of telegrams flew from Russia to France, and from France to Russia. French women greeted Russian women. Russian women expressed their gratitude to the French women. A troupe of Russian actors greeted some French actors, and the French actors informed them that they harboured deeply in their hearts the greeting of the Russian actors. Some Russian candidates for judicial positions, who served in a Circuit Court of some town or other, expressed their enthusiasm for the French nation. General So and So thanked Madame So and So, and Madame So and So assured General So and So of her sentiments for the Russian nation; Russian children wrote verses of welcome to French children, and the French children answered in verse and in prose; the Russian minister of education assured the French minister of education of the sentiments of sudden love for the French, which were experienced by all the children, scholars, and authors subject to his ministry; members of a society for the protection of animals expressed their ardent attachment for the French, and so did the Council of the City of Kazán.

The canon of the eparchy of Arras informed his Worship, the chief priest of the Russian court clergy, that he could affirm that deep in the hearts of all the French cardinals and archbishops there was imprinted a love for Russia and his Majesty Alexander III. and his most august family, and that the Russian and French clergy professed almost the selfsame religion and equally honoured the Virgin; to which his Worship, the chief priest, replied that the prayers of the French clergy for the most august family reëchoed joyfully in the hearts of the whole Russian Tsar-loving family, and that, since the Russian people also worshipped the Holy Virgin, it could count on France in life and in death. Almost the same information was vouchsafed by different generals, telegraph operators, and dealers in groceries. Everybody congratulated somebody on something and thanked somebody for something.

The excitement was so great that the most unusual acts were committed, but no one observed their unusual character, and all, on the contrary, approved of them, went into ecstasies over them, and, as though fearing lest they should be too late, hastened to commit similar acts, so as not to fall behind the rest. If protests were expressed in words and in writing and in printing against these mad acts, pointing out their irrationality, such protests were concealed or squelched.[17]

[17] Thus I know of the following protest of students, sent to Paris, which was not accepted by a single newspaper:

"OPEN LETTER TO THE FRENCH STUDENTS

"Lately a group of Moscow students of law, with the university authorities at their head, took it upon themselves to speak in behalf of all the student body of Moscow University in respect to the Toulon festivities.

"We, the representatives of the association of student societies, protest in the most emphatic manner possible both against the arrogation of this group and substantially against the exchange of civilities between it and the French students. We, too, look with ardent love and profound respect upon France, and we do so, because we see in it a great nation, which formerly used to appear before the whole world as the herald and proclaimer of great ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity; and which was also the first in the matter of bold endeavour for the materialization of these great ideals,--and the best part of the Russian youth has always been ready to welcome France as the leading champion for the best future of humanity; but we do not consider such festivities as those of Kronstadt and Toulon a suitable occasion for such civilities.

"On the contrary, these festivities signal a sad but, let us hope, temporary phenomenon,--the disloyalty of France to its former great historic rôle: the country, which once called the whole world to break the fetters of despotism and offered its fraternal aid to every nation that revolted for the sake of its freedom, now burns incense before the Russian government, which systematically trigs the normal, organic, and vital growth of the national life, and mercilessly crushes, without stopping at anything, all the strivings of Russian society toward the light, toward freedom, and toward independence. The Toulon manifestations are one of the acts of that drama which is presented by the antagonism--the creation of Napoleon III. and Bismarck--between two great nations, France and Germany. This antagonism keeps all of Europe under arms, and makes the Russian absolutism, which has always been the stay of despotism and arbitrariness against freedom, of the exploiters against the exploited, the executor of the political destinies of the world. A sensation of anguish for our country, of pity for the blindness of a considerable part of French society, such are the sensations evoked in us by these festivities.

"We are fully convinced that the young generation of France will not be carried away by the national Chauvinism, and that, prepared to struggle for that better social structure toward which humanity is marching, it will know how to render to itself an account of the present events and to take the proper stand about them; we hope that our fervent protest will find a sympathetic echo in the hearts of the French youth.

"The union council of twenty-four united Moscow student societies."--_Author's Note._

To say nothing of all the millions of work-days which were wasted on these festivities, of the wholesale drunkenness of all the participants, which was encouraged by all the powers, to say nothing of the insipidity of the speeches made, the maddest and most cruel things were done, and no one paid any attention to them.

Thus several dozens of men were crushed to death, and no one found it necessary to mention this fact. One correspondent wrote that a Frenchman told him at a ball that now there could hardly be found a woman in Paris who would not be false to her duties, in order to satisfy the wishes of some Russian sailor--and all this passed by unnoticed, as something that ought to be. There occurred cases of distinct madness. Thus one woman, dressing herself in a garment of the colours of the Franco-Russian flags, waited for the sailors and, exclaiming, "_Vive la Russie!_" jumped from the bridge into the river and was drowned.

Women in general played in these festivities a prominent part and even guided the men. Besides throwing flowers and all kinds of ribbons, and offering presents and addresses, French women made for the Russian sailors and kissed them; some of them for some reason brought their children to them, to be kissed by them, and when the Russian sailors complied with their wish, all persons present went into ecstasies and wept.

This strange excitement was so infectious that, as one correspondent tells, an apparently absolutely sound Russian sailor, after two days of contemplation of what took place around him, in the middle of the day jumped from the ship into the sea and, swimming, shouted, "_Vive la France!_" When he was taken aboard and asked why he had done so, he replied that he had made a vow that in honour of France he would swim around the ship.

Thus the undisturbed excitement grew and grew, like a ball of rolling wet snow, and finally reached such dimensions that not only the persons present, not only predisposed, weak-nerved, but even strong, normal men fell a prey to the general mood and became abnormally affected.

I remember how I, absent-mindedly reading one of these descriptions of the solemnity of the reception of the sailors, suddenly felt a feeling, akin to meekness of spirit, even a readiness for tears, communicated to me, so that I had to make an effort to overcome this feeling.

III.

Lately Sikórski, a professor of psychiatry, described in the _Kíev University Record_ the psychopathic epidemic, as he calls it, of the Malévannians, as manifested in a few villages of Vasilkóv County of the Government of Kíev. The essence of this epidemic, as Mr. Sikórski, the investigator of it, says, consisted in this, that certain persons of these villages, under the influence of their leader, by the name of Malévanny, came to imagine that the end of the world was at hand, and so, changing their whole mode of life, began to distribute their property, to dress up, and to eat savoury food, and stopped working. The professor found the condition of these men to be abnormal. He says: "Their unusual good nature frequently passed into exaltation, a joyous condition, which was devoid of external motives. They were sentimentally disposed: excessively polite, talkative, mobile, with tears of joy appearing easily and just as easily disappearing. They sold their necessaries, in order to provide themselves with umbrellas, silk kerchiefs, and similar objects, and at that the kerchiefs served them only as ornaments for their toilet. They ate many sweet things. They were always in a cheerful mood, and they led an idle life,--visited one another, walked together.... When the obviously absurd character of their refusal to work was pointed out to them, one every time heard in reply the stereotyped phrase, 'If I want to, I shall work, and if I do not want to, why should I compel myself?'"

The learned professor considers the condition of these men a pronounced case of a psychopathic epidemic, and, advising the government to take certain measures against its spread, ends his communication with the words: "Malévannism is the wail of a morbidly sick population and a supplication to be freed from liquor and to have education and sanitary conditions improved."

But if Malévannism is the wail of a morbidly sick population and a supplication to be freed from liquor and from harmful social conditions, then this new disease, which has appeared in Paris and has with alarming rapidity embraced a great part of the city population of France and almost the whole of governmental and cultured Russia, is just such an alarming wail of a morbid population and just such a supplication to be freed from liquor and from false social conditions.

And if we must admit that the psychopathic suffering of Malévannism is dangerous, and that the government has done well to follow the professor's advice and remove the leaders of Malévannism by confining some of them in lunatic asylums and monasteries and by deporting others to distant places, how much more dangerous must be considered to be this new epidemic, which appeared in Toulon and Paris and from there spread over the whole of France and of Russia, and how much more necessary it is, if not for the government, at least for society, to take decisive measures against the spread of such epidemics!

The resemblance between the diseases is complete. There is the same good nature, passing into causeless and joyful exaltation, the same sentimentality, excessive politeness, talkativeness, the same constant tears of meekness of spirit, which come and go without cause, the same festive mood, the same walking for pleasure and visiting one another, the same dressing up in the best clothes, the same proneness for sweet food, the same senseless talks, the same idleness, the same singing and music, the same leadership of the women, and the same clownish phase of _attitudes passionelles_, which Mr. Sikórski has noticed in the case of the Malévannians; that is, as I understand this word, those different, unnatural poses, which men assume during solemn meetings, receptions, and after-dinner speeches.

The resemblance is complete. The only difference is this,--and the difference is very great for the society in which these phenomena are taking place,--that there it is the aberration of a few dozen peaceful, poor village people, who live on their small means and, therefore, cannot exert any violence on their neighbours, and who infect others only by the personal and oral transmission of their mood, while here it is the aberration of millions of people, who possess enormous sums of money and means for exerting violence against other people,--guns, bayonets, fortresses, ironclads, melinite, dynamite, and who, besides, have at their command the most energetic means for the dissemination of their madness, the post, the telegraph, an enormous number of newspapers, and all kinds of publications, which are printed without cessation and carry the infection to all the corners of the globe. There is also this difference, that the first not only do not get themselves drunk, but even do not use any intoxicating liquor, while the second are constantly in a state of semi-intoxication, which they never stop maintaining in themselves. And so for a society in which these phenomena are taking place, there is the same difference between the Kíev epidemic, during which, according to Mr. Sikórski's information, it does not appear that they commit any violence or murders, and the one which made its appearance in Paris, where in one procession twenty women were crushed to death, as there is between a piece of coal, which has leaped out of the stove and is glowing on the floor without igniting it, and a fire which is already enveloping the door and walls of the house. In the worst case the consequences of the Kíev epidemic will consist in this, that the peasants of one millionth part of Russia will spend what they have earned by hard labour, and will be unable to pay the Crown taxes; but the consequences from the Toulon-Paris epidemic, which is embracing men who are in possession of a terrible power, of vast sums of money, and of implements of violence and of the dissemination of their madness, can and must be terrible.

IV.

We can with pity listen to the delirium of a feeble, defenceless, crazy old man, in his cap and cloak, and even not contradict him, and even jestingly agree with him; but when it is a whole crowd of sound insane people, who have broken away from their confinement, and these people bristle from head to foot with sharp daggers, swords, and loaded revolvers, and madly flourish these death-dealing weapons, we can no longer agree with them, and we cannot be at rest even for a minute. The same is true of that condition of excitement, provoked by the French celebrations, in which Russian and French society finds itself at the present time.

It is true, in all the speeches, in all the toasts, pronounced at these celebrations, in all the articles concerning these celebrations, they never stopped talking of the importance of everything which was taking place for the guarantee of peace. Even the advocates of war did not speak of hatred of those who snatch away provinces, but of some kind of a love which somehow hates.

But we know of the slyness of all men who are mentally diseased, and it is this most persistent repetition of our not wanting war, but peace, and the reticence regarding that of which all think, that form a most menacing phenomenon.

In answering a toast at a dinner given in the Palace of the Elysées, the Russian ambassador said: "Before drinking a toast to which will respond from the depth of their hearts, not only those who are within these walls, but even those--and, that, too, with equal force--whose hearts near by and far away, at all the points of great, fair France, as also in all of Russia, at the present moment are beating in unison with ours,--permit me to offer to you the expression of our profoundest gratitude for the words of welcome which were addressed by you to our admiral, whom our Tsar has charged with the mission of paying back your visit at Kronstadt. Considering the high importance which you enjoy, your words characterize the true significance of the magnificent _peaceful_ festivities, which are celebrated with such wonderful unanimity, loyalty, and sincerity."

The same unjustifiable mention of peace is found in the speech of the French president: "The ties of love, which unite Russia and France," he said, "and which two years ago were strengthened by touching manifestations, of which our fleet was the object at Kronstadt, become tighter and tighter with every day, and the honourable exchange of our amicable sentiments must inspire all those who take to heart the benefactions of peace, confidence, and security," and so forth.

Both speeches quite unexpectedly and without any cause refer to the benefactions of peace and to peaceful celebrations.

The same occurs in the telegrams which were exchanged between the Emperor of Russia and the President of France. The Emperor of Russia telegraphed:

"_Au moment où l'escadre russe quitte la France, il me tient à cœur de vous exprimer combien je suis touché et reconnaissant de l'accueil chaleureux et splendide, que mes marins ont trouvé partout sur le sol français. Les témoignages de vive sympathie qui se sont manifestés encore une fois avec tant d'éloquence, joindront un nouveau lien à ceux qui unissent les deux pays et contribueront, je l'espère, à l'affermissement de la paix générale, objet de leurs efforts et de leurs vœux les plus constants_," etc.

The President of France in his reply telegraphed as follows:

"_La dépêche dont je remercie votre Majesté m'est parvenue au moment ou je quittais Toulon pour rentrer à Paris. La belle escadre sur laquelle j'ai eu la vive satisfaction de saluer le pavillon russe dans les eaux françaises, l'accueil cordial et spontané que vos braves marins ont rencontré partout en France affirment une fois de plus avec éclat les sympathies sincères qui unissent nos deux pays. Ils marquent en même temps une foi profonde dans l'influence bienfaisante que peuvent exercer ensemble deux grandes nations devouées à la cause de la paix._"

Again there is in both telegrams a gratuitous mention of peace, which has nothing in common with the celebrations of the sailors.

There is not one speech, not one article, in which mention is not made of this, that the aim of all these past orgies is the peace of Europe. At a dinner, which is given by the representatives of the Russian press, everybody speaks of peace. Mr. Zola, who lately wrote about the necessity and even usefulness of war, and Mr. Vogüé, who more than once expressed the same idea, do not say one word about war, but speak only of peace. The meetings of the Chambers are opened with speeches respecting the past celebrations, and the orators affirm that these festivities are the declaration of the peace of Europe.

It is as though a man, coming into some peaceful society, should go out of his way on every occasion to assure the persons present that he has not the slightest intention of knocking out anybody's teeth, smashing eyes, or breaking arms, but means only to pass a peaceable evening. "But nobody has any doubts about that," one feels like saying to him. "But if you have such base intentions, at least do not dare speak of them to us."

In many articles, which were written about these celebrations, there is even a direct and naïve expression of pleasure, because during the festivities no one gave utterance to what by tacit consent it had been decided to conceal from everybody, and what only one incautious man, who was immediately removed by the police, dared to shout, giving expression to the secret thought of all, namely, "_A bas l'Allemagne!_" Thus children are frequently so happy at having concealed their naughtiness, that their very joy gives them away.

Why should we so rejoice at the fact that no mention was made of war, if we indeed are not thinking of it?

V.

No one is thinking of war, but yet milliards are wasted on military preparations, and, millions of men are under arms in Russia and in France.

"But all this is being done for the security of peace. _Si vis pacem, para bellum. L'empire c'est la paix, la republique c'est la paix._"

But if it is so, why are the military advantages of our alliance with France in case of a war with Germany explained, not only in all the periodicals and newspapers published for the so-called cultured people, but also in the _Rural Messenger_, a newspaper published by the Russian government for the masses, by means of which these unfortunate masses, deceived by the government, are impressed with this, that "to be friendly with France is also useful and profitable, because, if, beyond all expectation, the above-mentioned powers (Germany, Austria, Italy) should decide to violate the peace with Russia, Russia, though able with God's aid to protect itself and handle a very powerful alliance of adversaries, would not find this to be an easy task, and for a successful struggle great sacrifices and losses would be needed," and so forth (_Rural Messenger_, No. 43, 1893).

And why do they in all the French colleges teach history from a text-book composed by Mr. Lavisse, twenty-first edition, 1889, in which the following passage is found:

"_Depuis que l'insurrection de la Commune a été vaincue, la France n'a plus été troublée. Au lendemain de la guerre, elle s'est remise au travail. Elle a payé aux Allemands sans difficulté l'énorme contribution de guerre de cinq milliards. Mais la France a perdu sa renommée militaire pendant la guerre de 1870. Elle a perdu une partie de son territoire. Plus de quinze cents mille hommes, qui habitaient nos departements du Haut Rhin, du Bas Rhin et de la Moselle, et qui étaient de bons Français, ont été obligés de devenir Allemands. Ils ne sont pas resignés à leur sort. Ils détestent l'Allemagne; ils espèrent toujours redevenir Français. Mais l'Allemagne tient à sa conquête, et c'est un grand pays, dont tous les habitants aiment sincèrement leur patrie et dont les soldats sont braves et disciplinés. Pour reprendre à l'Allemagne ce qu'elle nous a pris, il faut que nous soyons de bons citoyens et de bons soldats. C'est pour que vous deveniez de bons soldats, que vos maîtres vous apprennent l'histoire de la France. L'histoire de la France montre que dans notre pays les fils ont toujours vengé les désastres de leurs pères. Les Français du temps de Charles VII. ont vengé leurs pères vaincus à Crécy, à Poitiers, à Azincourt. C'est à vous, enfants élèves aujourd'hui dans nos écoles, qu'il appartient de venger vos pères, vaincus à Sédan et à Metz. C'est votre devoir, le grand devoir de votre vie. Vous devez y penser toujours,_" etc.

At the foot of the page there is a whole series of questions, to correspond to the articles. The questions are as follows: "What did France lose when she lost part of her territory? How many Frenchmen became German with the loss of this territory? Do the French love Germany? What must we do, in order to regain what was taken away from us by Germany?" In addition to these there are also "_Réflexions sur le Livre VII._," in which it says that "the children of France must remember our defeats of 1870," that "they must feel on their hearts the burden of this memory," but that "this memory must not discourage them: it should, on the contrary, incite them to bravery."

Thus, if in official speeches peace is mentioned with great persistency, the masses, the younger generations, yes, all the Russians and Frenchmen in general, are imperturbably impressed with the necessity, legality, profitableness, and even virtue of war.

"We are not thinking of war,--we are concerned only about peace."

One feels like asking "_Qui, diable, trompe-t-on ici?_" if it were necessary to ask this, and if it were not quite clear who the unfortunate cheated are.

The cheated are the same eternally deceived, stupid, labouring masses, the same who with their callous hands have built all these ships, and fortresses, and arsenals, and barracks, and guns, and steamboats, and quays, and moles, and all these palaces, halls, and platforms, and triumphal arches; and have set and printed all these newspapers and books; and have secured and brought all those pheasants, and ortolans, and oysters, and wines, which are consumed by all those men, whom they, again, have nurtured and brought up and sustained,--men who, deceiving the masses, prepare the most terrible calamities for them; the same good-natured, stupid masses, who, displaying their sound, white teeth, have grinned in childish fashion, naïvely enjoying the sight of all the dressed-up admirals and presidents, of the flags fluttering above them, the fireworks, the thundering music, and who will hardly have time to look around, when there shall be no longer any admirals, nor presidents, nor flags, nor music, but there will be only a wet, waste field, hunger, cold, gloom, in front the slaying enemy, behind the goading authorities, blood, wounds, sufferings, rotting corpses, and a senseless, useless death.

And the men like those who now are celebrating at the festivities in Toulon and Paris, will be sitting, after a good dinner, with unfinished glasses of good wine, with a cigar between their teeth, in a dark cloth tent, and will with pins mark down the places on the map where so much food for cannon, composed of the masses, should be left, in order to seize such and such a fortress, and in order to obtain such or such a ribbon or promotion.

VI.

"But there is nothing of the kind, and there are no warlike intentions," we are told. "All there is, is that two nations feeling a mutual sympathy are expressing this sentiment to one another. What harm is there in this, that the representatives of a friendly nation were received with especial solemnity and honour by the representatives of the other nation? What harm is there in it, even if it be admitted that the alliance may have the significance of a protection against a dangerous neighbour, threatening the peace of Europe?"

The harm is this, that all this is a most palpable and bold lie, an unjustifiable, bad lie. The sudden outburst of an exclusive love of the Russians for the French, and of the French for the Russians, is a lie; and our hatred for the Germans, our distrust of them, which is understood by it, is also a lie. And the statement that the aim of all these indecent and mad orgies is the guarantee of European peace, is a still greater lie.

We all know that we have experienced no particular love for the French, neither before, nor even now, even as we have not experienced any hostile feeling toward the Germans.

We are told that Germany has some intentions against Russia, that the Triple Alliance threatens the peace of Europe and us, and that our alliance with France balances the forces, and so guarantees the peace. But this assertion is so obviously absurd, that it makes one feel ashamed to give it a serious denial. For this to be so, that is, for the alliance to guarantee peace, it is necessary that the forces be mathematically even. If now the excess is on the side of the Franco-Russian alliance, the danger is still the same. It is even greater, because, if there was a danger that William, who stood at the head of the European alliance, would violate the peace, there is a much greater danger that France, which cannot get used to the loss of her provinces, will do so. The Triple Alliance was called a league of peace, but for us it was a league of war. Even so now the Franco-Russian alliance cannot present itself as anything else than what it is,--a league of war.

And then, if peace depends on the balance of the powers, how are the units to be determined, between whom the balance is to be established? Now the English say that the alliance between Russia and France menaces them, and that they must, therefore, form another alliance. And into how many units of alliances must Europe be divided, in order that there be a balance? If so, then every man stronger than another in society is already a danger, and the others must form into alliances, to withstand him.

They ask, "What harm is there in this, that France and Russia have expressed their mutual sympathies for the guarantee of peace?" What is bad is, that it is a lie, and a lie is never spoken with impunity, and does not pass unpunished.

The devil is a slayer of men and the father of lies. And the lies always lead to the slaying of men,--in this case more obviously than ever.

In just the same manner as now, the Turkish war was preceded by a sudden outburst of love of our Russians for their brothers, the Slavs, whom no one had known for hundreds of years, while the Germans, the French, the English have always been incomparably nearer and more closely related to us than Montenegrins, Servians, or Bulgarians. And there began transports, receptions, and festivities, which were fanned by such men as Aksákov and Katkóv, who are mentioned now in Paris as models of patriotism. Then, as now, they spoke of nothing but the mutual sudden outburst of love between the Russians and the Slavs. In the beginning they ate and drank in Moscow, even as now in Paris, and talked nonsense to one another, becoming affected by their own exalted sentiments, spoke of union and peace, and did not say anything about the chief thing, the intentions against Turkey. The newspapers fanned the excitement, and the government by degrees entered into the game. Servia revolted. There began an exchange of diplomatic notes and the publication of semiofficial articles; the newspapers lied more and more, invented and waxed wroth, and the end of it all was that Alexander II., who really did not want any war, could not help but agree to it, and we all know what happened: the destruction of hundreds of thousands of innocent people and the bestialization and dulling of millions.

What was done in Toulon and in Paris, and now continues to be done in the newspapers, obviously leads to the same, or to a still more terrible calamity. Just so all kinds of generals and ministers will at first, to the sounds of "God save the Tsar" and the Marseillaise drink the health of France, of Russia, of the various regiments of the army and the navy; the newspapers will print their lies; the idle crowd of the rich, who do not know what to do with their powers and with their time, will babble patriotic speeches, fanning hatred against Germany, and no matter how peaceful Alexander III. may be, the conditions will be such that he will be unable to decline a war which will be demanded by all those who surround him, by all the newspapers, and, as always seems, by the public opinion of the whole nation. And before we shall have had time to look around, there will appear in the columns of the newspapers the usual, ominous, stupid proclamation:

"By God's grace, we, the most autocratic great Emperor of all Russia, the King of Poland, the Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., inform all our faithful subjects that for the good of these dear subjects, entrusted to us by God, we have considered it our duty before God to send them out to slaughter. God be with them," and so forth.

The bells will be rung, and long-haired men will throw gold-embroidered bags over themselves and will begin to pray for the slaughter. And there will begin again the old, well-known, terrible deed. The newspaper writers, who under the guise of patriotism stir people up to hatred and murder, will be about, in the hope of double earnings. Manufacturers, merchants, purveyors of military supplies, will bestir themselves joyfully, expecting double profits. All kinds of officials will bestir themselves, foreseeing a chance to steal more than they usually do. The military authorities will bestir themselves, for they will receive double salaries and rations, and will hope to get for the killing of people all kinds of trifles, which they value very much,--ribbons, crosses, galloons, stars. Idle gentlemen and ladies will bestir themselves, inscribing themselves in advance in the Red Cross, preparing themselves to dress the wounds of those whom their own husbands and brothers will kill, and imagining that they are thus doing a most Christian work.

And, drowning in their hearts their despair by means of songs, debauches, and vódka, hundreds of thousands of simple, good people, torn away from peaceful labour, from their wives, mothers, children, will march, with weapons of murder in their hands, whither they will be driven. They will go to freeze, to starve, to be sick, to die from diseases, and finally they will arrive at the place where they will be killed by the thousand, and they will kill by the thousand, themselves not knowing why, men whom they have never seen and who have done them and can do them no harm.

And when there shall be collected so many sick, wounded, and killed that nobody will have the time to pick them up, and when the air shall already be so infected by this rotting food for cannon that even the authorities will feel uncomfortable, then they will stop for awhile, will somehow manage to pick up the wounded, will haul off and somewhere throw into a pile the sick, and will bury the dead, covering them with lime, and again they will lead on the whole crowd of the deceived, and will continue to lead them on in this manner until those who have started the whole thing will get tired of it, or until those who needed it will get what they needed.

And again will men become infuriated, brutalized, and bestialized, and love will be diminished in the world, and the incipient Christianization of humanity will be delayed for decades and for centuries. And again will the people, who gain thereby, begin to say with assurance that, if there is a war, this means that it is necessary, and again they will begin to prepare for it the future generations, by corrupting them from childhood.

VII.

And so, when there appear such patriotic manifestations as were the Toulon celebrations, which, though still at a distance, in advance bind the wills of men and oblige them to commit those customary malefactions which always result from patriotism, every one who understands the significance of these celebrations cannot help but protest against everything which is tacitly included in them. And so, when the journalists say in print that all the Russians sympathize with what took place at Kronstadt, Toulon, and Paris; that this alliance for life and death is confirmed by the will of the whole nation; and when the Russian minister of education assures the French ministers that his whole company, the Russian children, the learned, and the authors, share his sentiments; or when the commander of the Russian squadron assures the French that the whole of Russia will be grateful to them for their reception; and when the chief priests speak for their flocks and assure the French that their prayers for the life of the most august house have reëchoed joyfully in the hearts of the Russian _Tsar-loving_ nation; and when the Russian ambassador in Paris, who is considered to be the representative of the Russian nation, says after a dinner of _ortolans à la soubise et logopédes glacés_, with a glass of champagne _Grand Moët_ in his hand, that all Russian hearts are beating in unison with his heart, which is filled with a sudden outburst of exclusive love for fair France (_la belle France_),--we, the people who are free from the stultification, consider it our sacred duty, not only for our own sakes, but also for the sake of tens of millions of Russians, in the most emphatic manner to protest against it and to declare that our hearts do not beat in unison with the hearts of the journalists, ministers of education, commanders of squadrons, chief priests, and ambassadors, but, on the contrary, are full to the brim with indignation and loathing for that harmful lie and that evil which they consciously and unconsciously disseminate with their acts and their speeches. Let them drink _Moët_ as much as they please, and let them write articles and deliver addresses in their own name, but we, all the Christians, who recognize ourselves as such, cannot admit that we are bound by everything that these men say and write. We cannot admit it, because we know what is concealed beneath all these drunken transports, speeches, and embraces, which do not resemble the confirmation of peace, as we are assured, but rather those orgies and that drunkenness to which evil-doers abandon themselves when they prepare themselves for a joint crime.

VIII.

About four years ago,--the first swallow of the Toulon spring,--a certain French agitator in favour of a war with Germany came to Russia for the purpose of preparing the Franco-Russian alliance, and he visited us in the country. He arrived at our house when we were working in the mowing. At breakfast, as we returned home, we made the acquaintance of the guest, and he immediately proceeded to tell us how he had fought, had been in captivity, had run away from it, and how he had made a patriotic vow, of which he was apparently proud, that he would not stop agitating a war against Germany until the integrity and glory of France should be reëstablished.

In our circle all the convictions of our guest as to how necessary an alliance between Russia and France was for the reëstablishment of the former borders of France and its might and glory, and for making us secure against the malevolent intentions of Germany, were of no avail to him. In reply to his arguments that France could not be at peace so long as the provinces taken from it were not returned to it, we said that similarly Prussia could not be at rest, so long as it had not paid back for Jena, and that, if the French "_revanche_" should now be successful, the Germans would have to pay them back, and so on without end.

In reply to his arguments that the French were obliged to save their brothers, who had been torn away from them, we said that the condition of the inhabitants, of the majority of the inhabitants, of the working people in Alsace-Lorraine, was hardly any worse under German rule than it had been under France, and that, because some Alsatians preferred to belong to France rather than to Germany, and he, our guest, found it desirable to reestablish the glory of French arms, it was not worth while, either to begin those terrible calamities which result from war, or even to sacrifice one single human life.

In reply to his arguments that it was all very well for us to speak thus, since we had not experienced the same, and that we should be speaking differently, if we had the Baltic provinces and Poland taken away from us, we said that even from the political standpoint the loss of Poland and of the Baltic provinces could not be a calamity for us, but might rather be considered an advantage, since it would diminish the necessity for a military force and the expenses of state; and from the Christian point of view we never could permit a war, since a war demanded the killing of men, whereas Christianity not only forbade every murder, but even demanded that we do good to all men, considering all, without distinction of nationalities, as our brothers. The Christian state, we said, which enters upon war, to be consistent, must not only haul down the crosses from the churches, turn all the churches into buildings for different purposes, give the clergy other offices, and, above all, prohibit the Gospel, but must also renounce all the demands of morality which result from the Christian law. "_C'est à prendre ou à laisser_," we said. But until Christianity was abolished, it would be possible to entice men to war only by cunning and deceit, as indeed is being done nowadays. We see this cunning and deception, and so cannot submit to it. As there was no music, no champagne, nothing intoxicating about us, our guest only shrugged his shoulders and with customary French amiability remarked that he was very thankful for the fine reception accorded to him in our house, but that he was sorry that his ideas were not treated in the same way.

IX.

After this conversation we went to the mowing, and there he, in the hope of finding more sympathy for his ideas among the masses, asked me to translate to the peasant Prokófi, an old, sickly man, with an enormous rupture, who none the less stuck to his work, and was my companion in the mowing, his plan of attacking the Germans, which was to squeeze the Germans, who were between the French and the Russians, from both sides. The Frenchman gave an ocular demonstration of this to Prokófi, by touching from two sides Prokófi's sweaty hempen shirt with his white fingers. I recall Prokófi's good-naturedly scornful surprise, when I explained to him the Frenchman's words and gestures. The proposition to squeeze the Germans from both sides was apparently taken by Prokófi as a joke, for he would not admit the idea that a grown man and a scholar should calmly and when he was sober talk of the desirability of war.

"Well, if we squeeze the German from both sides," he replied jestingly to what he thought was a joke, "he will have no place to go to. We must give him room."

I translated this to my guest.

"_Dites lui que nous aimons les Russes_," he said.

These words obviously startled Prokófi even more than the proposition to squeeze the German, and provoked a certain sentiment of suspicion.

"Who is he?" Prokófi asked me, with mistrust, indicating my guest with his head.

I told him that he was a Frenchman, a rich man.

"What is his business?" Prokófi asked me.

When I explained to him that he had come to invite the Russians to form an alliance with France in case of a war with Germany, Prokófi apparently became quite dissatisfied, and, turning to the women, who were sitting near a haycock, he shouted at them in a strong voice, which involuntarily betrayed the feelings which this conversation had provoked in him, that they should go and rake up the unraked hay.

"Come now, you crows! Have you fallen asleep? Come! Much time we have to squeeze the German! We have not finished the mowing yet, and it looks likely that we shall be mowing on Wednesday," he said. And then, as though fearing to offend the stranger by such a remark, he added, displaying his half-worn-off teeth in a good-natured smile, "You had better come and work with us, and send the German, too. When we get through working, we shall have a good time. Well take the German along. They are just such folk as we." And, having said this, Prokófi took his muscular arm out of the crotch of the fork, on which he had been leaning, threw the fork over his shoulders, and went away to the women.

"_Oh, le brave homme!_" the polite Frenchman exclaimed, smiling. And with this he then concluded his diplomatic mission to the Russian people.

The sight of these so radically different men,--the one beaming with freshness, alacrity, elegance, the well-fed Frenchman, in a silk hat and long overcoat of the latest fashion, energetically illustrating with his white hands, unused to labour, how to squeeze the Germans, and the sight of the dishevelled Prokófi, with hay-seed in his hair, dried up from work, sunburnt, always tired and always working, in spite of his immense rupture, with fingers swollen from work, with his loosely hanging homespun trousers, battered bast shoes, jogging along with an immense forkful of hay over his shoulder in that indolent pace of a labouring man, which economizes motion,--the sight of these two so radically different men elucidated to me then many things, and has occurred to me now, after the Toulon-Paris celebrations. One of them personified all those men, nurtured by the labours of the masses, who later use these masses as food for cannon; and Prokófi personified to me that food for cannon, which nurtures and makes secure the men who dispose of it.

X.

"But France has been deprived of two provinces,--two children have been violently removed from their mother. But Russia cannot permit Germany to prescribe laws to it and to deprive it of its historic destiny in the East,--it cannot tolerate the chance of having its provinces, the Baltic provinces, Poland, the Caucasus, taken from it, as was done in the case of France. But Germany cannot tolerate the possibility of losing its prerogatives, which it has gained through so many sacrifices. But England cannot yield its supremacy on the seas to any one." And, having spoken such words, it is generally assumed that a Frenchman, a Russian, a German, an Englishman must be prepared to sacrifice everything in order to regain the lost provinces, to establish their predominance in the East, to maintain their unity and power, their supremacy on the seas, and so forth.

It is assumed that the sentiment of patriotism is, in the first place, a sentiment which is always inherent in men, and, in the second, such an exalted moral sentiment that, if it is absent, it has to be evoked in those who do not have it. But neither is correct. I have passed half a century among the Russian masses, and among the great majority of the real Russian people I have in all that time never seen or heard even once any manifestation or expression of this sentiment of patriotism, if we do not count those patriotic phrases, which are learned by rote during military service or are repeated from books by the most frivolous and spoiled men of the nation. I have never heard any expression of patriotic sentiments from the people; but, I have, on the contrary, frequently heard the most serious and respectable men from among the masses giving utterance to the most absolute indifference and even contempt for all kinds of manifestations of patriotism. The same thing I have observed among the labouring classes of other nations, and I have often been assured of the same by cultured Frenchmen, Germans, and Englishmen concerning their own working people.

The working people are too busy with the all-absorbing business of supporting themselves and their families, to be interested in those political questions, which present themselves as the chief motive of patriotism,--the questions of Russia's influence in the East, the unity of Germany, or the restitution of the lost provinces to France, or the acts of this or that part of one state toward another, and so forth, do not interest them, not only because they hardly ever know the conditions under which these questions have arisen, but also because the interests of their lives are quite independent of the political interests. It is always very much a matter of indifference to a man from the masses, where certain borders will be marked down, or to whom Constantinople will belong, or whether Saxony or Brunswick will be a member of the German union, or whether Australia or Matabeleland will belong to England, or even to what government he will have to pay taxes and to what army he will have to send his sons; but it is always very important for him to know how much he will have to pay in taxes, how long he has to serve, and how much he will receive for his labour,--and these are questions that are quite independent of the common political interests. It is for this reason that, in spite of all the intensified means used by the governments for the inoculation of the masses with a patriotism which is alien to them and for the suppression of the ideas of socialism, which are developing among them, the socialism more and more penetrates into the masses, and the patriotism, which is so carefully inoculated by the governments, is not only not adopted by the masses, but is disappearing more and more, maintaining itself only among the upper classes, to whom it is advantageous. If it happens that at times patriotism takes hold of the popular crowd, as was the case in Paris, this is only so when the masses are subjected to an intensified hypnotic influence by the governments and the ruling classes, and the patriotism is maintained among the masses only so long at this influence lasts.

Thus, for example, in Russia, where patriotism, in the form of love and loyalty for the faith, the Tsar, and the country, is inoculated in the masses with extraordinary tension and with the use of all the tools at the command of the governments, such as the church, the school, the press, and all kinds of solemnities, the Russian labouring classes,--one hundred millions of the Russian nation,--in spite of Russia's unearned reputation as a nation that is particularly devoted to its faith, its Tsar, and its country, are most free from the deception of patriotism and from loyalty to faith, the Tsar, and country. The men of the masses for the most part do not know their Orthodox, state faith, to which they are supposed to be so loyal, and when they come to know it, they immediately give it up and become rationalists, that is, accept a faith which it is impossible to attack or to defend; on their Tsar they, in spite of the constant and persistent influences brought to bear upon them, look as upon all the powers of violence, if not with condemnation, at least with absolute indifference; but their country, if by that we do not mean their village or township, they do not know at all, or, if they do, they do not distinguish it from any other countries, so that, as Russian colonists used to go to Austria and to Turkey, they now with just as much indifference settle in Russia, outside of Russia, in Turkey or in China.

XI.

My old friend D----, who in the winter lived alone in the country, while his wife, whom he went to see but rarely, lived in Paris, used to talk during the long autumn evenings with an illiterate, but very clever and respectable peasant, an elder, who came in the evening to report, and my friend told him, among other things, of the superiority of the French political order over our own. This was on the eve of the last Polish insurrection and the interference of the French government in our affairs. The patriotic Russian newspapers at that time burned with indignation on account of such interference, and so heated up the ruling classes that they talked of a war with France.

My friend, who had read the papers, told the elder also of these relations between Russia and France. Submitting to the tone of the papers, my friend said that if there should be any war (he was an old soldier), he would serve and fight against France. At that time the "_revanche_" against the French seemed necessary to the Russians on account of Sevastopol.

"But why should we wage war?" asked the elder.

"How can we permit France to manage our affairs?"

"But you say yourself that things are better arranged with them than with us," the elder said, quite seriously. "Let them arrange matters in our country, too."

My friend told me that this reflection so startled him that he was absolutely at a loss what to say, and only laughed, as laugh those who awaken from a deceptive dream.

Such reflections one may hear from any sober Russian labouring man, if only he is not under any hypnotic influence of the government. They talk of the love of the Russian masses for their faith, their Tsar, and their government, and yet there will not be found one commune of peasants in the whole of Russia, which would hesitate for a moment, which of the two places to choose for its colonization,--Russia, with the Tsar, the little father, as they write in books, and with the holy Orthodox faith in its adored country, but with less and worse land, or without the little father, the white Tsar, and without the Orthodox faith, somewhere outside of Russia, in Prussia, China, Turkey, Austria, but with some greater and better advantages, as indeed we have seen before and see at present. For every Russian peasant the question as to what government he will be under (since he knows that, no matter under what government he may be, he will be fleeced just the same) has incomparably less meaning than the question as to whether, I will not say the water is good, but as to whether the clay is soft and as to whether there will be a good crop of cabbage.

But it may be thought that the indifference of the Russians is due to this, that any other government under whose power they may come will certainly be better than the Russian, because in Europe there is not one that is worse than the Russian; but that is not so: so far as I know, we have seen the same in the case of the English, Dutch, German immigrants in America, and of all the other colonists in Russia.

The transference of the European nations from the power of one government to another, from the Turkish to the Austrian, or from the French to the German, changes the condition of the nations so little that in no case can they provoke the dissatisfaction of the working classes, so long as they are not artificially subjected to the suggestions of the governments and the ruling classes.

XII.

People generally adduce, in proof of the existence of patriotism, the manifestations of patriotic sentiments in a nation during a time of all kinds of celebrations, as, for example, in Russia during a coronation or the meeting of the emperor after the calamity of the seventeenth of October, or in France during the proclamation of war against Prussia, or in Germany during the festivities of victory, or during the Franco-Russian celebrations.

But it ought to be known how these manifestations are prepared. In Russia, for example, people are especially dressed up by the village commune and the owners of factories to meet and welcome the emperor whenever he passes through a given locality.

The transports of the masses are generally prepared artificially by those who need them, and the degree of transport expressed by the crowd shows only the degree of the art of the arrangers of these transports. This business has long been practised, and so the specialists in arranging such transports have reached a high degree of virtuosity in these arrangements. When Alexander II. was still an heir apparent, and was in command, as is usually the case, of the Preobrázhenski regiment, he once drove out after dinner to the regiment in camp. The moment his carriage appeared, the soldiers, coatless as they were, rushed out to meet him, and with such transport welcomed, as they say, their most august commander, that all ran a race behind his carriage, and many of them made the sign of the cross while on a run, looking all the time at the heir apparent. All those who saw this meeting were deeply touched by this naïve loyalty and love of the Russian soldiers for their Tsar and his heir, and by that sincere religious and apparently unprepared transport which was expressed in the faces, the motions, and especially in the signs of the cross, which the soldiers made. However, all that was done artificially and prepared in the following manner: after the inspection of the previous day the heir said to the brigade commander that he would drive up the next day to the regiment.

"When are we to expect your Imperial Majesty?"

"In all probability in the evening. Only, please, no preparations."

The moment the heir drove off, the brigade commander called together the commanders of the companies and gave the order that on the following day all the soldiers were to appear in clean shirts, and, as soon as they saw the heir's carriage, which the signallers were to announce, they were to run at haphazard after the carriage, shouting "Hurrah!" and that, at the same time, every tenth man in the company was to run and make the sign of the cross. The sergeants drew up the companies, and, counting the soldiers, stopped at every tenth man: "One, two, three ... eight, nine, ten,--Sidorénko--the sign of the cross; one, two, three, four ... Ivánov--the sign of the cross...." Everything was carried out as by command, and the impression of transport was complete, both on the heir apparent and on all the persons present, even on the soldiers and the officers, and even on the commander of the brigade, who had invented all that. Just so, though less coarsely, they do in all places, wherever there are any patriotic manifestations. Thus the Franco-Russian celebrations, which present themselves to us as free expressions of the people's sentiments, did not originate with the people, but were, on the contrary, very artfully and quite obviously prepared and provoked by the French government.

"The moment the arrival of the Russian sailors became known," I am again quoting the same _Rural Messenger_, the official organ, which collects its information from all the other newspapers, "committees for the arrangement of celebrations were being formed, not only in all the large and small cities lying on the route from Toulon to Paris, a considerable distance, but also in a large number of towns and villages which lie quite to either side of this route. Everywhere a subscription was opened for contributions to meet the expenses for these celebrations. Many cities sent deputations to Paris to our imperial ambassador, imploring him to let the sailors visit their cities even for one day or even for one hour. The municipal governments of all those cities in which our sailors were ordered to stay set aside vast sums, averaging more than one hundred thousand roubles, for the arrangement of all kinds of festivities and amusements, and expressed their willingness to expend even greater sums, as much as should be needed, provided the welcome and the celebrations should be as magnificent as possible.

"In Paris itself a private committee collected, in addition to the sum set aside by the city government for this purpose, an immense sum by private subscription, also for the arrangement of amusements, and the French government assigned more than one hundred thousand roubles for expenses incurred by the ministers and other authorities in welcoming the guests. In many cities, where our sailors will not set foot at all, they none the less decided to celebrate the first of October with all kinds of festivities in honour of Russia. A vast number of cities and provinces decided to send special deputations to Toulon and Paris, in order to welcome the Russian guests and to offer them presents to remember France by, or to send to them addresses and telegrams of welcome. It was decided everywhere to consider the first of October a national holiday and to dismiss the pupils of all the educational institutions for that day, and in Paris for two days. Officials of lower rank had their penalties remitted, that they might gratefully remember the joyful day for France,--the first of October.

"To make it easier for those who wished to visit Toulon and take part in the welcome to the Russian squadron, the railways lowered the rates to one-half and sent out special trains."

And thus, when by means of a whole series of universal, simultaneous measures, which the government can always take by dint of the power which it has in its hands, a certain part of the nation, preëminently the scum of the people, the city crowd, is brought to a condition of abnormal excitement, they say: "Behold, this is the free expression of the will of the whole nation." Manifestations like those which just took place in Toulon and in Paris, which in Germany take place at the meeting of the emperor or of Bismarck, or at manœuvres in Lorraine, and which are constantly repeated in Russia at every meeting circumstanced with solemnity, prove only this, that the means of an artificial excitation of the people, which now are in the hands of the governments and the ruling classes, are so powerful that the governments and the ruling classes, which are in possession of them, are always able at will to provoke any kind of a patriotic manifestation they may wish by rousing the patriotic sentiments of the masses. Nothing, on the contrary, proves the absence of patriotism in the masses with such obviousness as those tense efforts which now are made by the governments and the ruling classes for the artificial excitation of patriotism, and the insignificant results which are obtained in spite of all the efforts.

If patriotic sentiments are so proper to the nations, they should be permitted to manifest themselves freely, and should not be provoked by all kinds of exclusive and artificial means, applied on every possible occasion. Let them even for a time, for one year, stop in Russia compelling all the people, as they are doing now, upon the accession of every Tsar, to swear allegiance to him; let them at every divine service stop solemnly repeating several times the customary prayers for the Tsar; let them stop celebrating his birthdays and name-days with ringing of bells, illumination, and the prohibition to work; let them stop everywhere hanging out and displaying representations of him; let them stop, in prayer-books, almanacs, text-books, printing his name and the names of his family, and even the pronouns referring to him, in capitals; let them stop glorifying him in special books and newspapers printed for the purpose; let them stop imprisoning men for the slightest disrespectful word uttered concerning the Tsar,--let them stop doing all that for a time only, and then we should see how proper it is for the masses, for the real labouring masses, for Prokófi, for elder Iván, and for all the men of the Russian masses,--as the nation is made to believe and as all the foreigners are convinced of it,--to worship the Tsar, who in one way or another turns them over into the hands of a landed proprietor or of the rich in general. So it is in Russia; but let them similarly stop in Germany, France, Italy, England, America doing all that which is done there with the same tension by the ruling classes in order to rouse patriotism and loyalty and submission to the existing government, and we should see in how far this imaginary patriotism is characteristic of the nations of our time.

But, as it is, the masses are stultified from childhood by all possible means, by school-books, divine services, sermons, books, newspapers, verses, monuments, which all tend in one and the same direction; then they select by force or bribery a few thousands of the people, and when these assembled thousands, joined by all the loafers who are always happy to be present at any spectacle, to the sounds of cannon-shots and of music, and at the sight of every kind of splendour and light begin to shout what the leaders shout to them, we are told that this is an expression of the sentiments of the whole nation. But, in the first place, these thousands, or, if it is a great crowd, these tens of thousands, who shout something at such celebrations, form but a tiny, a ten-thousandth part of the whole nation; in the second place, out of these tens of thousands of shouting men, who wave their hats, the greater part are either collected by force, as is the case with us in Russia, or artificially provoked by some enticement; in the third place, among all these thousands, there are scarcely tens who know what it is all about, and all the rest would as gladly shout and wave their hats if the very opposite took place; and, in the fourth place, the police are always present, and they will make any one shut up if he does not shout what the government wants and demands shall be shouted, and lock him up at once, as was done with much force during the Franco-Russian festivities.

In France they welcomed with equal enthusiasm the war with Russia under Napoleon I., and then Alexander I., against whom the war was waged, and then again Napoleon, and again the allies, and Bourbon, and Orleans, and the Republic, and Napoleon III., and Boulanger; and in Russia they acclaim with the same enthusiasm, to-day Peter, to-morrow Catherine, the next day Paul, Alexander, Constantine, Nicholas, the Duke of Leuchtenberg, the brother Slavs, the King of Prussia, the French sailors, and all those whom the government wants them to welcome. The same happens in England, America, Germany, Italy.

What in our time is called patriotism is, on the one hand, only a certain mood, which is constantly produced and maintained in the masses by the schools, the religion, the venal press, having such a tendency as the government demands, and, on the other, a temporary excitation, produced with exclusive means by the ruling classes, in the masses, who stand on a lower moral and even mental plane,--an excitation, which later is given out as a constant expression of the will of the whole nation. The patriotism of the oppressed nationalities does not form an exception to this. It is as little characteristic of the working classes, and is artificially inculcated upon them by the upper classes.

XIII.

"But if the men of the masses do not experience the sentiment of patriotism, this is due to the fact that they have not yet reached that exalted sentiment, which is characteristic of every cultured man. If they do not experience this exalted sentiment, it has to be educated in them. It is this that the government is doing."

Thus generally speak the men of the ruling classes, with such full confidence that patriotism is an exalted sentiment, that the naïve men of the masses, who do not experience it, consider themselves at fault, because they do not experience this sentiment, and try to assure themselves that they experience it, or at least pretend that they do.

But what is this exalted sentiment, which, in the opinion of the ruling classes, ought to be educated in the nations?

This sentiment is in its most precise definition nothing but a preference shown to one's own state or nation in comparison with any other state or nation, a sentiment which is fully expressed in the German patriotic song, "_Deutschland, Deutschland über alles_," in which we need only substitute _Russland_, _Frankreich_, _Italien_, or any other state for _Deutschland_, and we shall get the clearest formula of the exalted sentiment of patriotism. It may be that this sentiment is very desirable and useful for the governments and the integrity of the state, but one cannot help but observe that this sentiment is not at all exalted, but, on the contrary, very stupid and very immoral: stupid, because, if every state will consider itself better than any other, it is obvious that they will all be in the wrong; and immoral, because it inevitably leads every man who experiences the feeling to try to obtain advantages for his own state and nation, at the expense of other states and nations--a tendency which is directly opposed to the fundamental moral law recognized by all men: not to do unto another what we do not wish to have done to ourselves.

Patriotism may have been a virtue in the ancient world, when it demanded of man that he serve the highest ideal accessible to him at the time,--the ideal of his country. But how can patriotism be a virtue in our time, when it demands of men what is directly opposed to what forms the ideal of our religion and morality,--not the recognition of the equality and brotherhood of all men, but the recognition of one state and nationality as predominating over all the others. This sentiment is in our time not only not a virtue, but unquestionably a vice; no such sentiment of patriotism in its true sense does or can exist in our time, because the material and moral foundations for it are lacking.

Patriotism could have some sense in the ancient world, when every nation, more or less homogeneous in its structure, professing one and the same state religion, and submitting to the same unlimited power of its supreme, deified ruler, appeared to itself as an island in the ocean of the barbarians, which ever threatened to inundate it.

We can see how with such a state of affairs, patriotism, that is, the desire to ward off the attacks of the barbarians, who were not only prepared to destroy the social order, but who also threatened wholesale plundering and murder, with the enslavement of men and the rape of women, was a natural feeling, and we can see why a man, to free himself and his compatriots from such calamities, could have preferred his nation to all the others, and could experience a hostile feeling toward the barbarians around him, and could kill them, in order to protect his nation.

But what significance can this sentiment have in our Christian time? On what ground and for what purpose can a man of our time, a Russian, go and kill Frenchmen or Germans, or a Frenchman Germans, when he knows full well, no matter how little educated he may be, that the men of the other state and nation, against which they are rousing his patriotic hostility, are not barbarians, but just such Christians as he, frequently of the same faith and profession with him, desiring like him nothing but peace and a peaceful exchange of labour, and that, besides, they are for the most part united with him either by the interests of common labour, or by commercial or spiritual interests, or by all together? Thus frequently the men of another country are nearer and more indispensable to a man than his own countrymen, as is the case with labourers who are connected with employers of other nationalities, and as is the case with commercial people, and especially with scholars and artists.

Besides, the conditions of life themselves have so changed now that what we call our country, what we are supposed to distinguish from everything else, has ceased to be something clearly defined, as it was with the ancients, where the men forming one country belonged to one nationality, one state, and one faith. We can understand the patriotism of an Egyptian, a Jew, a Greek, who, defending his country, was at the same time defending his faith, and his nationality, and his home, and his state.

But in what way will in our time be expressed the patriotism of an Irishman in the United States, who by his faith belongs to Rome, by his nationality to Ireland, by his state allegiance to the United States? In the same condition are a Bohemian in Austria, a Pole in Russia, Prussia, and Austria, a Hindoo in England, a Tartar and an Armenian in Russia and in Turkey. But, even leaving out these men of the separate conquered nationalities, the men of the most homogeneous states, such as are Russia, France, Prussia, can no longer experience that sentiment of patriotism, which was peculiar to the ancients, because frequently all the chief interests of their life (sometimes their domestic ones,--they are married to women of another nation; the economic ones,--their capital is abroad; their spiritual, scientific, or artistic ones) are not in their own country, but outside it, in that state against which the government is rousing his patriotic hatred.

But most of all is patriotism impossible in our time, because, no matter how much we have tried for eighteen hundred years to conceal the meaning of Christianity, it has none the less trickled through into our life, and is guiding it in such a way that the coarsest and most stupid of men cannot help but see the absolute incompatibility of patriotism with those moral rules by which they live.

XIV.

Patriotism was necessary for the formation, out of heterogeneous nationalities, of strong, united kingdoms, protected against the barbarians. But as soon as the Christian enlightenment transformed all these kingdoms alike from within, by giving them the same foundations, patriotism not only became unnecessary, but was also the one barrier against that union of the nations for which they are prepared by dint of their Christian consciousness.

Patriotism is in our time the cruel tradition of a long-gone-by period of time, which holds itself only through inertia and because the governments and the ruling classes feel that with this patriotism is connected not only their power, but also their existence, and so with care and cunning and violence rouse and sustain it in the nations. Patriotism is in our time like the scaffolding, which at one time was necessary for the construction of the walls of a building, but which now, though it only interferes with the proper use of the building, is not taken down, because its existence is advantageous for some persons.

Among the Christian nations there has for a long time ceased to exist any cause for discord, and there can be no such cause. It is even impossible to imagine why and how Russian and German labourers, who peacefully work together near the border and in the capital cities, should begin to quarrel among themselves. And much less can we imagine any hostility between, let us say, a Kazán peasant, who supplies a German with corn, and the German, who supplies him with scythes and machines, and similarly among French, German, and Italian labourers. It is even ridiculous to talk of quarrels among the scholars, artists, writers of various nationalities, who live by the same interests, that are independent of nationality and the state structure.

But the governments cannot leave the nations alone, that is, in peaceful relations among themselves, because the chief, if not the only justification of the existence of the governments consists in making peace between the nations, that is, in allaying their hostile relations. And so the governments provoke these hostile relations under the guise of patriotism, and then make it appear that they are making peace among the nations. It is something like what a gipsy does, who pours some pepper under his horse's tail, and lashes it in the stall, and then leads it out, while hanging on to the bridle, pretending that he has the hardest time to restrain the mettled horse.

We are assured that the governments are concerned about preserving the peace among the nations. In what way do they preserve this peace?

People are living along the Rhine in peaceful intercourse among themselves,--suddenly, in consequence of all kinds of disputes and intrigues between the kings and emperors, war breaks out, and the French government finds it necessary to recognize some of these inhabitants as Frenchmen. Ages pass, men have become accustomed to this state of affairs; again there begin hostilities between the governments of the great nations, and war breaks out on the slightest pretence, and the Germans find it necessary to recognize these inhabitants once more as Germans, and in all the French and the Germans ill-will flames up toward one another. Or Germans and Russians are living peacefully near the border, peacefully exchanging their labour and the products of labour, and suddenly the same institutions which exist only in the name of the pacification of the nations begin to quarrel, to do one foolish thing after another, and are not able to invent anything better than the coarsest childish method of self-inflicted punishment, if only they can thus have their will and do something nasty to their adversary (which in this case is especially advantageous, since not those who start a customs war, but others, suffer from it); thus the Customs War between Russia and Germany was lately started. Then, with the aid of the newspapers, there flames up a malevolent feeling, which is still farther fanned by the Franco-Russian celebrations, and which, before we know it, may lead to a sanguinary war.

I have cited the last two examples of the manner in which the governments affect the people by rousing in them a hostile feeling toward other nations, because they are contemporary; but there is not one war in all history, which was not provoked by the governments, by the governments alone, independently of the advantages to the nations, to which war, even if it is successful, is always harmful.

The governments assure the nations that they are in danger of an incursion from other nations and from internal enemies, and that the only salvation from this danger consists in the slavish obedience of the nations to their governments. This is most obvious in the time of revolutions and dictatorships, and this takes place at all times and in all places, wherever there is power. Every government explains its existence and justifies all its violence by insisting that, if it did not exist, things would be worse. By assuring the nations that they are in danger, the governments subject them to themselves. When the nations submit to the governments, these governments compel these nations to attack the other nations. In this manner the nations find confirmed the assurances of their governments in regard to the danger from being attacked by other nations.

_Divide et impera._

Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most unquestionable significance is for the rulers nothing but a tool for attaining their ambitious and selfish ends, and for the ruled a renunciation of human dignity, reason, conscience, and a slavish submission to those who are in power. Thus is patriotism actually preached, wherever it is preached.

Patriotism is slavery.

The advocates of peace through arbitration judge like this: two animals cannot divide their prey otherwise than by fighting, as do children, barbarians, and barbarous nations. But sensible people settle their differences by discussion, conviction, the transmission of the solution of the question to disinterested, sensible men. Even thus must the sensible nations of our time act. These reflections seem quite correct. The nations of our time have reached an age of discretion, are not hostile to one another, and should be able to settle their differences in a peaceable manner. But the reflection is correct only in reference to the nations, to the nations alone, if they were not under the power of their governments. But the nations which submit to their governments cannot be sensible, because submission to the governments is already a sign of the greatest senselessness.

How can we talk of the sensibleness of men who promise in advance to do everything (including the murder of men) which the government, that is, certain men who have accidentally come to hold this position, may command them to do?

Men who are able to accept such a duty of unflinching submission to what certain strangers will, from St. Petersburg, Vienna, Paris, command them to do, cannot be sensible, and the governments, that is, the men who possess such power, can still less be sensible, and cannot help abusing it,--they cannot help losing their minds from such a senselessly terrible power. For that reason the peace among the nations cannot be attained by any sensible means, through conventions, through arbitrations, so long as there exists a submission to the governments, which is always senseless and always pernicious.

But the submission of men to the governments will always exist, so long as there is any patriotism, because every power is based on patriotism, that is, on the readiness of men, for the sake of defending their nation, their country, that is, the state, against supposed dangers that are threatening it, to submit to the power.

On this patriotism was based the power of the French kings over the whole nation previous to the Revolution; on the same patriotism was based the power of the Committee of Public Safety after the Revolution; on the same patriotism was reared the power of Napoleon (as consul and as emperor); and on the same patriotism, after the downfall of Napoleon, was established the power of the Bourbons, and later of the Republic, and of Louis Philippe, and again of the Republic, and again of Bonaparte, and again of the Republic, and on the same patriotism came very near being established the power of Mr. Boulanger.

It is terrible to say so, but there does not exist, and there has not existed, a case of aggregate violence committed by one set of men against another which has not been committed in the name of patriotism. In the name of patriotism the Russians fought with the French, and the French with the Russians, and in the name of patriotism the Russians and the French are now preparing themselves to wage war against the Germans,--to fight from two flanks. But war is not all,--in the name of patriotism the Russians crush the Poles, and the Germans the Slavs; in the name of patriotism the Communists killed the Versaillians, and the Versaillians, the Communists.

XV.

It would seem that with the dissemination of culture, of improved means of locomotion, of frequent intercourse among the men of the various nations, in connection with the diffusion of the press, and, above all, in connection with the complete absence of danger from other nations, the deception of patriotism ought to become harder and harder, and ought in the end to become impossible.

But the point is, that these same means of a universal external culture, of improved methods of locomotion, and of intercommunication, and above all, of the press, which the governments have seized upon and seize upon more and more, give them now such a power of exciting in the nations hostile feelings toward one another, that, though on the one hand the obviousness of the uselessness and harm of patriotism has increased, there has, on the other, increased the power of the governments and of the ruling classes to influence the masses, by rousing patriotism in them.

The difference between what was and what now is consists only in this, that, since now a much greater number of men share in the advantages which patriotism affords to the upper classes, a much greater number of men take part in the dissemination and maintenance of this wonderful superstition.

The more difficult it is to maintain the power, the greater and greater is the number of men with whom the government shares it.

Formerly a small group of rulers had the power,--emperors, kings, dukes, their officials, and warriors; but now the participants in this power and in the advantages which it affords are not only the officials and the clergy, but also capitalists, great and small, the landowners, bankers, members of Chambers, teachers, rural officers, scholars, even artists, and especially journalists. And all these persons consciously and unconsciously spread the deception of patriotism, which is indispensable to them for the maintenance of their advantageous position. And the deception, thanks to the fact that the means of deception have become more powerful and that now an ever-growing number of men are taking part in it, is produced so successfully that, in spite of the great difficulty of deceiving, the degree of the deception remains the same.

One hundred years ago, the illiterate masses, who had no conception as to who composed their government and as to what nations surrounded them, blindly obeyed those local officials and gentry, whose slaves they were. And it sufficed for the government by means of bribes and rewards to keep these officials and this gentry in their power, in order that the masses might obediently do what was demanded of them. But now, when the masses for the most part can read and more or less know of whom their government is composed, and what nations surround them; when the men of the masses constantly move about with ease from one place to another, bringing to the masses information about what is going on in the world, a mere demand to carry out the commands of the government no longer suffices: it becomes necessary to obscure the true conceptions which the masses have concerning life, and to impress them with improper ideas concerning the conditions of their life and concerning the relation of other nations toward them.

And so, thanks to the diffusion of the press, of the rudiments, and of the means of communication, the governments, having their agents everywhere, by means of decrees, church sermons, the schools, the newspapers inculcate on the masses the wildest and most perverse conceptions about their advantages, about the relation of the peoples among themselves, about their properties and intentions; and the masses, which are so crushed by labour that they have no time and no chance to understand the significance and verify the correctness of those conceptions which are inculcated upon them, and of those demands which are made on them in the name of their good, submit to them without a murmur.

But the men from the masses who free themselves from constant labour and who educate themselves, and who, it would seem, should be able to understand the deception which is practised upon them, are subjected to such an intensified effect of menaces, bribery, and hypnotization by the governments, that they almost without an exception pass over to the side of the governments and, accepting advantageous and well-paid positions as teachers, priests, officers, officials, become participants in the dissemination of the deception which ruins their fellow men. It is as though at the door of education stood a snare, into which inevitably fall those who in one way or another leave the masses that are absorbed in labour.

At first, as one comes to understand the cruelty of the deception, there involuntarily rises an indignation against those who for their personal, selfish, ambitious advantage produce this cruel deception, which destroys, not only men's bodies, but also their souls, and one feels like showing up these cruel deceivers. But the point is, that the deceivers do not deceive because they want to deceive, but because they almost cannot do otherwise. And they do not deceive in any Machiavellian way, with a consciousness of the deception which they practise, but for the most part with the naïve assurance that they are doing something good and elevated, in which opinion they are constantly maintained by the sympathy and approval of all the men who surround them. It is true that, feeling dimly that their power and their advantageous position is based on this deception, they are involuntarily drawn toward it; but they do not act because they wish to deceive the masses, but because they think that the work which they are doing is useful for the masses.

Thus emperors and kings and their ministers, performing their coronations, manœuvres, inspections, mutual visits, during which time they, dressing themselves up in all kinds of uniforms and travelling from one place to another, consult with one another with serious faces about how to pacify presumably hostile nations (who will never think of fighting with one another), are absolutely convinced that everything they do is exceedingly sensible and useful.

Similarly all the ministers, diplomatists, and all kinds of officials, who dress themselves up in their uniforms, with all kinds of ribbons and little crosses, and with preoccupation write on fine paper their obscure, twisted, useless numbered reports, communications, prescriptions, projects, are absolutely convinced that without this their activity the whole life of the nations will come to a standstill or will be entirely destroyed.

Similarly the military, who dress themselves up in their ridiculous costumes and who seriously discuss with what guns or cannon it is better to kill people, are fully convinced that their manœuvres and parades are most important and necessary for the nation.

The same conviction is held by the preachers, journalists, and writers of patriotic verses and text-books, who receive a liberal reward for preaching patriotism. Nor is any doubt concerning this harboured by the managers of celebrations, like the Franco-Russian ones, who are sincerely affected when they utter their patriotic speeches and toasts. All people do unconsciously what they do, because that is necessary, or because their whole life is based on this deception and they are unable to do anything else, while these same acts evoke the sympathy and the approval of all those men among whom they are committed. Not only do they, being all connected with one another, approve and justify the acts and the activities of one another,--the emperors and kings, the acts of the soldiers, the officials, and the clergy; and the military, the officials, and the clergy, the acts of the emperors, the kings, and one another,--the popular crowd, especially the city crowd, which sees no comprehensible meaning in everything which is being done by these men, involuntarily ascribes a special, almost a supernatural significance to them. The crowd sees, for example, that triumphal arches are being erected; that men masquerade in crowns, uniforms, vestments; that fireworks are displayed, cannon are fired, bells are rung, regiments are marching with music, documents, telegrams, and couriers fly from one place to another, and strangely masquerading men with preoccupation keep riding from one place to another, saying and writing something, and so forth,--and, not being able to verify whether there is the slightest need for what is being done (as, indeed, there is none), ascribes to all this a special, mysterious, and important meaning, and with shouts of transport or with silent awe meets all these manifestations. But in the meantime these expressions of transport and the constant respect of the crowd still more strengthen the assurance of the men who are doing all these foolish things.

Lately William II. ordered a new throne for himself, with some special ornaments, and, dressing himself up in a white uniform with patches, in tight trousers, and in a helmet with a bird on it, and throwing a red mantle over all, came out to his subjects and seated himself on this throne, with the full assurance that this was a very necessary and important act, and his subjects not only did not see anything funny in all this, but even found this spectacle to be very majestic.

XVI.

The power of the governments has now for a long time ceased to be based on force, as it was based in those times when one nationality conquered another and by force of arms held it in subjection, or when the rulers, amidst a defenceless people, maintained separate armed troops of janissaries, opríchniks, or guardsmen. The power of the governments has now for a long time been based on what is called public opinion.

There exists a public opinion that patriotism is a great moral sentiment, and that it is good and right to consider one's own nation, one's own state, the best in the world, and from this there naturally establishes itself a public opinion that it is necessary to recognize the power of the government over ourselves and to submit to it; that it is good and right to serve in the army and to submit to discipline; that it is good and right to give up our savings in the shape of taxes to the government; that it is good and right to submit to the decisions of the courts; that it is good and right to believe without verification in what is given out as a divine truth by the men of the government.

Once such a public opinion exists, there establishes itself a mighty power, which in our time has command of milliards of money, of an organized mechanism of government, the post, the telegraphs, the telephones, disciplined armies, courts, the police, a submissive clergy, the school, even the press, and this power maintains in the nations that public opinion which it needs.

The power of the governments is maintained through public opinion; but, having the power, the governments by means of all their organs, the officers of the courts, the school, the church, even the press, are always able to keep up the public opinion which they need. Public opinion produces power,--power produces public opinion. There seems to be no way out from this situation.

Thus it would, indeed, be, if public opinion were something stable and unchanging, and if the governments were able to produce the public opinion which they need.

But fortunately this is not the case, and public opinion is, in the first place, not something which is constant, unchanging, stable, but, on the contrary, something eternally changing, moving together with the motion of humanity; and, in the second, public opinion not only cannot be produced by the will of the governments, but is that which produces the governments and gives them power or takes it away from them.

It may appear that public opinion remains immovable and now is such as it was decades ago, and it may appear that public opinion wavers in relation to certain special cases, as though going back, so that, for example, it now destroys the republic, putting the monarchy in its place, and now again destroys the monarchy, putting the republic in its place; but that only seems so when we view the external manifestations of that public opinion which is artificially produced by the governments. We need only take public opinion in its relation to the whole life of men, and we shall see that public opinion, just like the time of the day or year, never stands in one place, but is always in motion, always marching unrestrictedly ahead along the path on which humanity proceeds, just as, in spite of retardations and waverings, day or spring moves on unrestrictedly along the path over which the sun travels.

Thus, though by the external signs the condition of the nations of Europe in our time is nearly the same that it was fifty years ago, the relation of the nations toward it is now entirely different from what it was fifty years ago. Though there exist, even as fifty years ago, the same rulers, armies, wars, taxes, luxury, and misery, the same Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Lutheranism, these existed before because the public opinion of the nations demanded them, but now they all exist because the governments artificially maintain that which formerly was a living public opinion.

If we frequently do not notice this motion of public opinion, as we do not notice the motion of water in the river, with the current of which we are swimming, this is due to the fact that those imperceptible changes of public opinion which form its motion are taking place in ourselves.

The property of public opinion is that of constant and unrestricted motion. If it seems to us that it is standing in one place, this is due to the fact that everywhere there are people who have established an advantageous position for themselves at a certain moment of public opinion, and so with all their strength try to maintain it and not to admit the manifestation of the new, the present public opinion which, though not yet fully expressed, is living in the consciousness of men. Such people, who retain the obsolete public opinion and conceal the new, are all those who at the present time form the governments and the ruling classes, and who profess patriotism as an indispensable condition of human life.

The means which are at the command of these people are enormous, but since public opinion is something eternally flowing and increasing, all their efforts cannot help but be vain: the old grows old, and the youthful grows.

The longer the expression of the new public opinion shall be retained, the more it will grow, and the greater will be the force with which it will express itself. The government and the ruling classes try with all their strength to retain that old public opinion of patriotism, on which their power is based, and to retard the manifestation of the new, which will destroy it. But it is possible only within certain limits to retain the old and retard the new, just as running water can be held back by a dam only within certain limits.

No matter how much the governments may try to rouse in the nations the past public opinion, now no longer characteristic of them, concerning the dignity and virtue of patriotism, the men of our time no longer believe in patriotism, but more and more believe in the solidarity and brotherhood of the nations. Patriotism now presents to men nothing but the most terrible future; but the brotherhood of the nations forms that ideal which more and more grows to be comprehensible and desirable for humanity. And so the transition of men from the former obsolete public opinion to the new must inevitably be accomplished. This transition is as inevitable as the falling of the last sere leaves in autumn and the unfolding of the young leaves in swelling buds.

The longer this transition is delayed, the more imperative does it become, and the more obvious is its necessity.

Indeed, we need only recall what it is we are professing, as Christians, and simply as men of our time, we need but recall those moral bases which guide us in our public, domestic, and private life, and that position in which we have placed ourselves in the name of patriotism, in order that we may see what degree of contradiction we have reached between our consciousness and that which among us, thanks to the intensified influence of the government in this respect, is regarded as our public opinion.

We need only reflect on those very usual demands of patriotism, which present themselves to us as something very simple and natural, in order that we may understand to what extent these demands contradict that real public opinion which we all share now. We all consider ourselves free, cultured, humane men, and even Christians, and at the same time we are in such a position that if to-morrow William takes umbrage at Alexander, or Mr. N---- writes a clever article on the Eastern question, or some prince robs the Bulgarians or the Servians, or some queen or empress takes offence at something, we all, the cultured, humane Christians, must go out to kill men, whom we do not know, and toward whom we are friendly disposed, as toward all men. If this has not yet happened, we owe this, as we are assured, to the peaceful mind of Alexander III., or to this, that Nicholas Aleksándrovich is going to marry Victoria's grandchild. But let another man be in the place of Alexander, or let Alexander himself change his mood, or Nicholas Aleksándrovich marry Amalia, and not Alice, and we shall throw ourselves like bloodthirsty animals upon one another, to take out one another's guts. Such is the supposed public opinion of our time. Such opinions are calmly repeated in all the leading and liberal organs of the press.

If we, the Christians of one thousand years' standing, have not yet cut one another's throats, it is because Alexander III. does not let us do so.

This is, indeed, terrible.

XVII.

For the greatest and most important changes to take place in the life of humanity, no exploits are needed,--neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the establishment of exhibitions, nor the establishment of labour-unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the invention of aerial motion, and so forth, but only a change in public opinion. But for public opinion to change, no efforts of the mind are needed, nor the rejection of anything existing, nor the invention of anything unusual and new; all that is needed is, that every separate man should say what he actually thinks and feels, or at least should not say what he does not think. Let men, even a small number of them, do so, and the obsolete public opinion will fall of its own accord and there will be manifested the youthful, live, present public opinion. And let public opinion change, and the inner structure of men's life, which torments and pains them, will be changed without any effort. It is really a shame to think how little is needed for all men to be freed from all those calamities which now oppress them; they need only stop lying. Let men only not succumb to that lie which is inculcated on them, let them not say what they do not think or feel, and immediately a revolution will take place in the whole structure of our life, such as the revolutionists will not accomplish in centuries, even if all the power were in their hands.

If men only believed that the strength is not in strength, but in the truth, and if they boldly expressed it, or at least did not depart from it in words and deeds,--if they did not say what they do not think, and did not do what they consider bad and stupid.

"What harm is there in crying '_Vive la France!_' or 'Hurrah!' to some emperor, king, victor, or in going in a uniform, with the chamberlain's key, to wait for him in the antechamber, to bow, and to address him by strange titles, and then to impress all young and uncultured men with the fact that this is very praiseworthy?" Or, "What harm is there in writing an article in defence of the Franco-Russian alliance or the Customs War, or in condemnation of the Germans, Russians, Frenchmen, Englishmen?" Or, "What harm is there in attending some patriotic celebration and eulogizing men whom you do not care for and have nothing to do with, and drinking their health?" Or even, "What harm is there in recognizing, in a conversation, the benefit and usefulness of treaties, or alliances, or even in keeping silent, when your nation and state is praised in your presence, and other nationalities are cursed and blackened, or when Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Lutheranism are praised, or when some war hero or ruler, like Napoleon, Peter, or the contemporary Boulanger or Skóbelev, are praised?"

All that seems so unimportant, and yet in these seemingly unimportant acts, in our aloofness from them, in our readiness to point out, according to our strength, the irrationality of what is obviously irrational,--in this does our great, invincible power consist, the power which composes that insuperable force which forms the real, actual, public opinion, which, moving itself, moves the whole of humanity. The governments know this, and tremble before this force, and with all the means at their command try to counteract it and to get possession of it.

They know that the force is not in force, but in thought and in its clear enunciation, and so they are more afraid of the expression of independent thought than of armies, and establish censorships, bribe newspapers, take possession of the management of religion and of schools. But the spiritual force which moves the world slips away from them: it is not even in a book, a newspaper,--it is intangible and always free,--it is in the depth of men's consciousness. The most powerful, intangible, freest force is the one which is manifested in man's soul, when he by himself reflects on the phenomena of the world, and then involuntarily expresses his thoughts to his wife, brother, friend, to all those men with whom he comes together, and from whom he considers it a sin to conceal what he regards as the truth. No milliards of roubles, millions of soldiers, no institutions, nor wars, nor revolutions will produce what will be produced by the simple expression of a free man as to what he considers just, independently of what exists and what is inculcated upon him.

One free man will truthfully say what he thinks and feels, amidst thousands of men, who by their acts and words affirm the very opposite. It would seem that the man who frankly expressed his thought would remain alone, while in reality it happens that all those men, or the majority of them, have long been thinking and feeling the same, but have not expressed their thought. And what yesterday was the new opinion of one man, to-day becomes the common opinion of all men. And as soon as this opinion has established itself, men's acts begin to change imperceptibly, slowly, but irresistibly.

For, as it is, every free man says to himself: "What can I do against all this sea of evil and deceit, which inundates me? Why should I give expression to my thought? Why even give form to it? It is better not to think of these obscure and intricate questions. Maybe these contradictions form an inevitable condition of all the phenomena of life. And why should I alone struggle against all this evil of the world? Would it not be better if I abandoned myself to the current which sweeps me along? If anything can be done, it can be done only in conjunction with other men."

And, abandoning that powerful instrument of thought and its expression, which moves the world, this man takes up the instrument of public activity, without noticing that all public activity is based on the very principles against which he has to struggle, that in entering upon any public activity which exists amidst our world, he must at least partially depart from the truth, make such concessions as will destroy the whole force of that powerful instrument of the struggle which is given to him. It is as though a man, into whose hands an unusually sharp dagger is given, one that cuts everything, should drive in nails with the blade.

We all deplore the senseless order of life which contradicts all our existence, and yet not only fail to make use of the one most powerful tool, which is in our hands,--the recognition of the truth and its expression,--but, on the contrary, under the pretext of struggling with evil, destroy this tool and sacrifice it to the imaginary struggle against this order.

One man does not tell the truth which he knows, because he feels himself under obligation to the men with whom he is connected; another,--because the truth might deprive him of the advantageous position by means of which he is supporting his family; a third,--because he wants to attain glory and power, to use them later in the service of men; a fourth,--because he does not wish to violate the ancient sacred traditions; a fifth,--because the expression of the truth will provoke persecution and will impair that good public activity to which he is devoting himself, or intends to devote himself.

One man serves as an emperor, king, minister, official, soldier, and assures himself and others that the deviation from the truth which is necessary in his position is more than redeemed by his usefulness.

Another exercises the office of a spiritual pastor, though in the depth of his heart he does not believe in what he teaches, permitting himself a deviation from the truth in view of the good which he does. A third instructs men in literature and, in spite of the suppression of the whole truth, in order not to provoke the government and society against himself, has no doubt as to the good which he does; a fourth simply struggles against the existing order, as do the revolutionists and anarchists, and is fully convinced that the aim which he pursues is so beneficent that the suppression of the truth, which is indispensable in his activity, and even lying will not destroy the good effect of his activity.

For the order of life which is contrary to the consciousness of men to give way to one in accord with it, it is necessary for the obsolete public opinion to give way to a live and new one.

For the old, obsolete public opinion to give way to the new, live one, it is necessary that the men who are conscious of the new demands of life should clearly express them. Meanwhile all the men who recognize all these new demands, one in the name of one thing, and another in the name of another, not only repress them, but even in words and deeds confirm what is directly opposed to these demands. Only the truth and its expression can establish that new public opinion which will change the obsolete and harmful order of life; we, however, not only do not express the truth which we know, but frequently even express precisely what we consider to be an untruth.

If free men would only not depend on what has no force and is never free,--on external power,--and would always believe in what is always powerful and free,--in the truth and its expression. If men only expressed boldly the truth, already revealed to them, about the brotherhood of all the nations and about the criminality of the exclusive membership in one nation, the dead, false public opinion, on which the whole power of the governments is based, and all the evil produced by them, would fall off by itself like a dried-up skin, and there would appear that new, live public opinion, which is only waiting for the sloughing off of the hampering old opinion, in order clearly and boldly to proclaim its demands and establish the new forms of life in accordance with the consciousness of men.

XVIII.

Men need but understand that what is given out to them as public opinion, what is maintained by such complex and artificial means, is not public opinion, but only the dead consequence of the quondam public opinion; they need only, above all, believe in themselves, in this, that what is cognized by them in the depth of their hearts, what begs for recognition and finds no expression only because it contradicts public opinion, is that force which changes the world, and the manifestation of which forms man's destiny; men need but believe that the truth is not what men about him say, but what his conscience, that is, God, says to him, and immediately there will disappear the false, artificially sustained public opinion, and the true one will be established.

If men only said what they believe, and did not say what they do not believe, there would immediately disappear the superstitions that result from patriotism, and all the evil feelings and all the violence, which are based on them. There would disappear the hatred and hostility of states against states and of nationalities against nationalities, which are fanned by the governments; there would disappear the eulogizing of military exploits, that is, of murder; there would, above all else, disappear the respect for the authorities, the surrender of people's labours and the submission to them, for which there are no foundations outside of patriotism.

Let all this be done, and immediately all that vast mass of weak men, who are always guided from without, will sweep over to the side of the new public opinion. And the new public opinion will become the ruling one in the place of the old public opinion.

Let the governments have possession of the school, the church, the press, milliards of roubles, and millions of disciplined men turned into machines,--all that apparently terrible organization of rude force is nothing in comparison with the recognition of the truth, which arises in the heart of one man who knows the force of the truth, and is communicated by this man to another, a third man, just as an endless number of candles are lighted from one. This light need only burn, and, like the wax before the face of the fire, all this seemingly so powerful organization will waste away.

If men only understood that terrible power which is given them in the word which expresses the truth. If men only did not sell their birthright for a mess of pottage. If men only made use of this power of theirs,--the rulers would not only not dare, as they dare now, to threaten men with universal slaughter, to which they will drive men or not, as they may see fit, but would not even dare in the sight of peaceable citizens to bring the disciplined murderers out on parade or in manœuvres; the governments would not dare for their own profit, for the advantage of their accomplices, to make and unmake customs treaties, and they would not dare to collect from the people those millions of roubles which they distribute to their accomplices and for which they prepare themselves for the commission of murder.

And so the change is not only possible, but it is even impossible for it not to take place, as it is impossible for an overgrown, dead tree not to rot, and for a young one not to grow. "Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give I unto you; let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid," said Christ. And this peace is actually already among us, and it depends on us to attain it.

If only the hearts of separate men did not grow faint from those temptations with which they are tempted every hour, and if they were not frightened by those imaginary fears with which they are terrified. If men only knew in what their mighty, all-conquering force consists, the peace for which men have always wished, not the one which is obtained by means of diplomatic treaties, journeys of emperors and kings from one city to another, dinners, speeches, fortresses, cannon, dynamite, and melenite, but the one which is obtained not by the exhaustion of the masses by taxes, not by tearing the flower of the population away from work and debauching them, but by the free profession of the truth by every separate individual, would long ago have come to us.

_Moscow, March 17, 1894._

REASON AND RELIGION

1895

REASON AND RELIGION

You ask me:

1. Should people who are not particularly advanced mentally seek an expression in words for the truths of the inner life, as comprehended by them?

2. Is it worth while in one's inner life to strive after complete consciousness?

3. What are we to be guided by in moments of struggle and wavering, that we may know whether it is indeed our conscience that is speaking in us, or whether it is reflection, which is bribed by our weakness? (The third question I for brevity's sake expressed in my own words, without having changed its meaning, I hope.)

These three questions in my opinion reduce themselves to one,--the second, because, if it is not necessary for us to strive after a full consciousness of our inner life, it will be also unnecessary and impossible for us to express in words the truths which we have grasped, and in moments of wavering we shall have nothing to be guided by, in order to ascertain whether it is our conscience or a false reflection that is speaking within us. But if it is necessary to strive after the greatest consciousness accessible to human reason (whatever this reason may be), it is also necessary to express the truths grasped by us in words, and it is these expressed truths which have been carried into full consciousness that we have to be guided by in moments of struggle and wavering. And so I answer your radical question in the affirmative, namely, that every man, for the fulfilment of his destiny upon earth and for the attainment of the true good (the two things go together), must strain all the forces of his mind for the purpose of elucidating to himself those religious bases by which he lives, that is, the meaning of his life.

I have frequently met among illiterate earth-diggers, who have to figure out cubic contents, the wide-spread conviction that the mathematical calculation is deceptive, and that it is not to be trusted. Either because they do not know any mathematics, or because the men who figured things out mathematically for them had frequently consciously or unconsciously deceived them, the opinion that mathematics was inadequate and useless for the calculation of measures has established itself as an undoubted truth which they think it is even unnecessary to prove. Just such an opinion has established itself among, I shall say it boldly, irreligious men,--an opinion that reason cannot solve any religious questions,--that the application of reason to these questions is the chief cause of errors, that the solution of religious questions by means of reason is criminal pride.

I say this, because the doubt, expressed in your questions, as to whether it is necessary to strive after consciousness in our religious convictions, can be based only on this supposition, namely, that reason cannot be applied to the solution of religious questions. However, such a supposition is as strange and obviously false as the supposition that calculation cannot settle any mathematical questions.

God has given man but one tool for the cognition of himself and his relation to the world,--there is no other,--and this tool is reason, and suddenly he is told that he can use his reason for the elucidation of his domestic, economic, political, scientific, artistic questions, but not for the elucidation of what it is given him for. It turns out that for the elucidation of the most important truths, of those on which his whole life depends, a man must by no means employ reason, but must recognize these truths as beyond reason, whereas beyond reason a man cannot cognize anything. They say, "Find it out, through revelation, faith." But a man cannot even believe outside of reason. If a man believes in this, and not in that, he does so only because his reason tells him that he ought to believe in this, and not to believe in that. To say that a man should not be guided by reason is the same as saying to a man, who in a dark underground room is carrying a lamp, that, to get out from this underground room and find his way, he ought to put out his lamp and be guided by something different from the light.

But, perhaps, I shall be told, as you say in your letter, that not all men are endowed with a great mind and with a special ability for expressing their thoughts, and that, therefore, an awkward expression of their thoughts concerning religion may lead to error. To this I will answer in the words of the Gospel, "What is hidden from the wise is revealed to babes." This saying is not an exaggeration and not a paradox, as people generally judge of those utterances of the Gospel which do not please them, but the assertion of a most simple and unquestionable truth, which is, that to every being in the world a law is given, which this being must follow, and that for the cognition of this law every being is endowed with corresponding organs. And so every man is endowed with reason, and in this reason there is revealed to him the law which he must follow. This law is hidden only from those who do not want to follow it and who, in order not to follow it, renounce reason and, instead of using their reason for the cognition of the truth, use for this purpose the indications, taken upon faith, of people like themselves, who also reject reason.

But the law which a man must follow is so simple that it is accessible to any child, the more so since a man has no longer any need of discovering the law of his life. Men who lived before him discovered and expressed it, and all a man has to do is to verify them with his reason, to accept or not to accept the propositions which he finds expressed in the tradition, that is, not as people, who wish not to fulfil the law, advise us to do, by verifying reason through tradition, but by verifying tradition through reason. Tradition may be from men, and false, but reason is certainly from God, and cannot be false. And so, for the cognition and the expression of truth, there is no need of any especial prominent capacity, but only of the faith that reason is not only the highest divine quality of man, but also the only tool for the cognition of truth.

A special mind and gifts are not needed for the cognition and exposition of the truth, but for the invention and exposition of the lie. Having once departed from the indications of reason, men heap up and take upon faith, generally in the shape of laws, revelations, dogmas, such complicated, unnatural, and contradictory propositions that, in order to expound them and harmonize them with the lie, there is actually a need of astuteness of mind and of a special gift. We need only think of a man of our world, educated in the religious tenets of any Christian profession,--Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant,--who wants to elucidate to himself the religious tenets inculcated upon him since childhood, and to harmonize them with life,--what a complicated mental labour he must go through in order to harmonize all the contradictions which are found in the profession inoculated in him by his education: God, the Creator and the good, created evil, punishes people, and demands redemption, and so forth, and we profess the law of love and of forgiveness, and we punish, wage war, take away the property from poor people, and so forth, and so forth.

It is for the unravelling of these contradictions, or rather, for the concealment of them from ourselves, that a great mind and special gifts are needed; but for the discovery of the law of our life, or, as you express it, in order to bring our faith into full consciousness, no special mental gifts are needed,--all that is necessary is not to admit anything that is contrary to reason, not to reject reason, religiously to guard reason, and to believe in nothing else. If the meaning of a man's life presents itself to him indistinctly, that does not prove that reason is of no use for the elucidation of this meaning, but only this, that too much of what is irrational has been taken upon faith, and that it is necessary to reject everything which is not confirmed by reason.

And so my answer to your fundamental question, as to whether it is necessary to strive after consciousness in our inner life, is this, that this is the most necessary and important work of our life. It is necessary and important because the only rational meaning of our life consists in the fulfilment of the will of God who sent us into this life. But the will of God is not recognized by any special miracle, by the writing of the law on tablets with God's finger, or by the composition of an infallible book with the aid of the Holy Ghost, or by the infallibility of some holy person or of an assembly of men,--but only by the activity of the reason of all men who in deeds and words transmit to one another the truths which have become more and more elucidated to their consciousness. This cognition has never been and never will be complete, but is constantly increased with the movement of humanity: the longer we live, the more clearly do we recognize God's will and, consequently, what we ought to do for its fulfilment. And so I think that the elucidation by any man (no matter how small he himself and others may consider him to be--it is the little ones who are great) of the whole religious truth, as it is accessible to him, and its expression in words (since the expression in words is the one unquestionable symptom of a complete clearness of ideas) is one of the most important and most sacred duties of man.

I shall be very much pleased if my answer shall satisfy you even in part.

PATRIOTISM OR PEACE

Letter to Manson

1896

PATRIOTISM OR PEACE

Letter to Manson

DEAR SIR:--You write to me asking me to express myself in respect to the United States of North America "in the interests of Christian consistency and true peace," and express the hope that "the nations will soon awaken to the one means of securing national peace."

I harbour the same hope. I harbour the same hope, because the blindness in our time of the nations that extol patriotism, bring up their young generations in the superstition of patriotism, and, at the same time, do not wish for the inevitable consequences of patriotism,--war,--has, it seems to me, reached such a last stage that the simplest reflection, which begs for utterance in the mouth of every unprejudiced man, is sufficient, in order that men may see the crying contradiction in which they are.

Frequently, when you ask children which they will choose of two things which are incompatible, but which they want alike, they answer, "Both."

"Which do you want,--to go out driving or to stay at home?"--"Both,--go out driving and stay at home."

Just so the Christian nations answer the question which life puts to them, as to which they will choose, patriotism or peace, they answer "Both patriotism and peace," though it is as impossible to unite patriotism with peace, as at the same time to go out driving and stay at home.

The other day there arose a difference between the United States and England concerning the borders of Venezuela. Salisbury for some reason did not agree to something; Cleveland wrote a message to the Senate; from either side were raised patriotic warlike cries; a panic ensued upon 'Change; people lost millions of pounds and of dollars; Edison announced that he would invent engines with which it would be possible to kill more men in an hour than Attila had killed in all his wars, and both nations began energetically to arm themselves for war. But because, simultaneously with these preparations for war, both in England and in America, all kinds of literary men, princes, and statesmen began to admonish their respective governments to abstain from war, saying that the subject under discussion was not sufficiently important to begin a war for, especially between two related Anglo-Saxon nations, speaking the same language, who ought not to war among themselves, but ought calmly to govern others; or because all kinds of bishops, archdeacons, canons prayed and preached concerning the matter in all the churches; or because neither side considered itself sufficiently prepared,--it happened that there was no war just then. And people calmed down.

But a person has to have too little perspicacity not to see that the causes which now are leading to a conflict between England and America have remained the same, and that, if even the present conflict shall be settled without a war, there will inevitably to-morrow or the day after appear other conflicts, between England and Russia, between England and Turkey, in all possible permutations, as they arise every day, and one of these will lead to war.

If two armed men live side by side, having been impressed from childhood with the idea that power, wealth, and glory are the highest virtues, and that, therefore, to acquire power, wealth, and glory by means of arms, to the detriment of other neighbouring possessors, is a very praiseworthy matter, and if at the same time there is no moral, religious, or political restraint for these men, is it not evident that such people will always fight, that the normal relation between them will be war? and that, if such people, having clutched one another, have separated for awhile, they have done so only, as the French proverb says, "_pour mieux sauter_," that is, they have separated to take a better run, to throw themselves with greater fury upon one another?

Strange is the egotism of private individuals, but the egotists of private life are not armed, do not consider it right either to prepare or use arms against their adversaries; the egotism of private individuals is under the control of the political power and of public opinion. A private person who with gun in his hand takes away his neighbour's cow, or a desyatína of his crop, will immediately be seized by a policeman and put into prison. Besides, such a man will be condemned by public opinion,--he will be called a thief and robber. It is quite different with the states: they are all armed,--there is no power over them, except the comical attempts at catching a bird by pouring some salt on its tail,--attempts at establishing international congresses, which, apparently, will never be accepted by the powerful states (who are armed for the very purpose that they may not pay any attention to any one), and, above all, public opinion, which rebukes every act of violence in a private individual, extols, raises to the virtue of patriotism every appropriation of what belong to others, for the increase of the power of the country.

Open the newspapers for any period you may wish, and at any moment you will see the black spot,--the cause of every possible war: now it is Korea, now the Pamir, now the lands in Africa, now Abyssinia, now Turkey, now Venezuela, now the Transvaal. The work of the robbers does not stop for a moment, and here and there a small war, like an exchange of shots in the cordon, is going on all the time, and the real war can and will begin at any moment.

If an American wishes the preferential grandeur and well-being of America above all other nations, and the same is desired for his state by an Englishman, and a Russian, and a Turk, and a Dutchman, and an Abyssinian, and a citizen of Venezuela and of the Transvaal, and an Armenian, and a Pole, and a Bohemian, and all of them are convinced that these desires need not only not be concealed or repressed, but should be a matter of pride and be developed in themselves and in others; and if the greatness and well-being of one country or nation cannot be obtained except to the detriment of another nation, frequently of many countries and nations,--how can war be avoided?

And so, not to have any war, it is not necessary to preach and pray to God about peace, to persuade the English-speaking nations that they ought to be friendly toward one another, in order to be able to rule over other nations; to form double and triple alliances against one another; to marry princes to princesses of other nations,--but to destroy what produces war. But what produces war is the desire for an exclusive good for one's own nation,--what is called patriotism. And so to abolish war, it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism, it is necessary first to become convinced that it is an evil, and that it is hard to do. Tell people that war is bad, and they will laugh at you: who does not know that? Tell them that patriotism is bad, and the majority of people will agree with you, but with a small proviso. "Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but there is also another patriotism, the one we adhere to." But wherein this good patriotism consists no one can explain. If good patriotism consists in not being acquisitive, as many say, it is none the less retentive; that is, men want to retain what was formerly acquired, since there is no country which was not based on conquest, and it is impossible to retain what is conquered by any other means than those by which it was acquired, that is, by violence and murder. But even if patriotism is not retentive, it is restorative,--the patriotism of the vanquished and oppressed nations, the Armenians, Poles, Bohemians, Irish, and so forth. This patriotism is almost the very worst, because it is the most enraged and demands the greatest degree of violence.

Patriotism cannot be good. Why do not people say that egotism can be good, though this may be asserted more easily, because egotism is a natural sentiment, with which a man is born, while patriotism is an unnatural sentiment, which is artificially inoculated in him?

It will be said: "Patriotism has united men in states and keeps up the unity of the states." But the men are already united in states,--the work is all done: why should men now maintain an exclusive loyalty for their state, when this loyalty produces calamities for all states and nations? The same patriotism which produced the unification of men into states is now destroying those states. If there were but one patriotism,--the patriotism of none but the English,--it might be regarded as unificatory or beneficent, but when, as now, there are American, English, German, French, Russian patriotisms, all of them opposed to one another, patriotism no longer unites, but disunites. To say that, if patriotism was beneficent, by uniting men into states, as was the case during its highest development in Greece and Rome, patriotism even now, after eighteen hundred years of Christian life, is just as beneficent, is the same as saying that, since the ploughing was useful and beneficent for the field before the sowing, it will be as useful now, after the crop has grown up.

It would be very well to retain patriotism in memory of the use which it once had, as people preserve and retain the ancient monuments of temples, mausoleums, and so forth. But the temples and mausoleums stand, without causing any harm to men, while patriotism produces without cessation innumerable calamities.

What now causes the Armenians and the Turks to suffer and cut each other's throats and act like wild beasts? Why do England and Russia, each of them concerned about her share of the inheritance from Turkey, lie in wait and do not put a stop to the Armenian atrocities? Why do the Abyssinians and Italians fight one another? Why did a terrible war come very near breaking out on account of Venezuela, and now on account of the Transvaal? And the Chino-Japanese War, and the Turkish, and the German, and the French wars? And the rage of the subdued nations, the Armenians, the Poles, the Irish? And the preparation for war by all the nations? All that is the fruits of patriotism. Seas of blood have been shed for the sake of this sentiment, and more blood will be shed for its sake, if men do not free themselves from this outlived bit of antiquity.

I have several times had occasion to write about patriotism, about its absolute incompatibility, not only with the teaching of Christ in its ideal sense, but even with the lowest demands of the morality of Christian society, and every time my arguments have been met with silence or with the supercilious hint that the ideas expressed by me were Utopian expressions of mysticism, anarchism, and cosmopolitanism. My ideas have frequently been repeated in a compressed form, and, instead of retorting to them, it was added that it was nothing but cosmopolitanism, as though this word "cosmopolitanism" unanswerably overthrew all my arguments. Serious, old, clever, good men, who, above all else, stand like the city on a hill, and who involuntarily guide the masses by their example, make it appear that the legality and beneficence of patriotism are so obvious and incontestable that it is not worth while to answer the frivolous and senseless attacks upon this sentiment, and the majority of men, who have since childhood been deceived and infected by patriotism, take this supercilious silence to be a most convincing proof, and continue to stick fast in their ignorance.

And so those people who from their position can free the masses from their calamities, and do not do so, commit a great sin.

The most terrible thing in the world is hypocrisy. There was good reason why Christ once got angry,--that was against the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

But what was the hypocrisy of the Pharisees in comparison with the hypocrisy of our time? In comparison with our men, the Pharisees were the most truthful of men, and their art of hypocrisy was as child's play in comparison with the hypocrisy of our time; nor can it be otherwise. Our whole life, with the profession of Christianity, the teaching of humility and love, in connection with the life of an armed den of robbers, can be nothing but one solid, terrible hypocrisy. It is very convenient to profess a teaching at one end of which is Christian sanctity and infallibility, and at the other--the pagan sword and gallows, so that, when it is possible to impose or deceive by means of sanctity, sanctity is put into effect, and when the deception does not work, the sword and the gallows are put into effect. Such a teaching is very convenient, but the time comes when this spider-web of lie is dispersed, and it is no longer possible to continue to keep both, and it is necessary to ally oneself with either one or the other. It is this which is now getting to be the case in relation to the teaching about patriotism.

Whether people want it or not, the question stands clearly before humanity: how can that patriotism, from which result innumerable physical and moral calamities of men, be necessary and a virtue? It is indispensable to give an answer to this question.

It is necessary either to show that patriotism is such a great good that it redeems all those terrible calamities which it produces in humanity; or to recognize that patriotism is an evil, which must not only not be inoculated in men and impressed upon them, but from which also we must try to free ourselves at all cost.

_C'est à prendre ou à laisser_, as the French say. If patriotism is good, then Christianity, which gives peace, is an idle dream, and the sooner this teaching is eradicated, the better. But if Christianity really gives peace, and we really want peace, patriotism is a survival from barbarous times, which must not only not be evoked and educated, as we now do, but which must be eradicated by all means, by means of preaching, persuasion, contempt, and ridicule. If Christianity is the truth, and we wish to live in peace, we must not only have no sympathy for the power of our country, but must even rejoice in its weakening, and contribute to it. A Russian must rejoice when Poland, the Baltic provinces, Finland, Armenia, are separated from Russia and made free; and an Englishman must similarly rejoice in relation to Ireland, Australia, India, and the other colonies, and coöperate in it, because, the greater the country, the more evil and cruel is its patriotism, and the greater is the amount of the suffering on which its power is based. And so, if we actually want to be what we profess, we must not, as we do now, wish for the increase of our country, but wish for its diminution and weakening, and contribute to it with all our means. And thus must we educate the younger generations: we must bring up the younger generations in such a way that, as it is now disgraceful for a young man to manifest his coarse egotism, for example, by eating everything up, without leaving anything for others, to push a weaker person down from the road, in order to pass by himself, to take away by force what another needs, it should be just as disgraceful to wish for the increase of his country's power; and, as it now is considered stupid and ridiculous for a person to praise himself, it should be considered stupid to extol one's nation, as is now done in various lying patriotic histories, pictures, monuments, text-books, articles, sermons, and stupid national hymns. But it must be understood that so long as we are going to extol patriotism and educate the younger generations in it, we shall have armaments, which ruin the physical and spiritual life of the nations, and wars, terrible, horrible wars, like those for which we are preparing ourselves, and into the circle of which we are introducing, corrupting them with our patriotism, the new, terrible fighters of the distant East.

Emperor William, one of the most comical persons of our time, orator, poet, musician, dramatic writer, and artist, and, above all, patriot, has lately painted a picture representing all the nations of Europe with swords, standing at the seashore and, at the indication of Archangel Michael, looking at the sitting figures of Buddha and Confucius in the distance. According to William's intention, this should mean that the nations of Europe ought to unite in order to defend themselves against the peril which is proceeding from there. He is quite right from his coarse, pagan, patriotic point of view, which is eighteen hundred years behind the times. The European nations, forgetting Christ, have in the name of their patriotism more and more irritated these peaceful nations, and have taught them patriotism and war, and have now irritated them so much that, indeed, if Japan and China will as fully forget the teachings of Buddha and of Confucius as we have forgotten the teaching of Christ, they will soon learn the art of killing people (they learn these things quickly, as Japan has proved), and, being fearless, agile, strong, and populous, they will inevitably very soon make of the countries of Europe, if Europe does not invent something stronger than guns and Edison's inventions, what the countries of Europe are making of Africa. "The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master" (Luke vi. 40).

In reply to a prince's question how to increase his army, in order to conquer a southern tribe which did not submit to him, Confucius replied: "Destroy all thy army, and use the money, which thou art wasting now on the army, on the enlightenment of thy people and on the improvement of agriculture, and the southern tribe will drive away its prince and will submit to thy rule without war."

Thus taught Confucius, whom we are advised to fear. But we, having forgotten Christ's teaching, having renounced it, wish to vanquish the nations by force, and thus are only preparing for ourselves new and stronger enemies than our neighbours. A friend of mine, who saw William's picture, said: "The picture is beautiful, only it does not at all represent what the legend says. It means that Archangel Michael shows to all the governments of Europe, which are represented as robbers bedecked with arms, what it is that will cause their ruin and annihilation, namely, the meekness of Buddha and the wisdom of Confucius." He might have added, "And the humility of Lao-tse."

Indeed, we, thanks to our hypocrisy, have forgotten Christ to such an extent, have so squeezed out of our life everything Christian, that the teachings of Buddha and Confucius stand incomparably higher than that beastly patriotism, by which our so-called Christian nations are guided. And so the salvation of Europe and of the Christian world at large does not consist in this, that, bedecking themselves with swords, as William has represented them, they should, like robbers, cast themselves upon their brothers beyond the sea, in order to kill them, but, on the contrary, they should renounce the survival of barbarous times,--patriotism,--and, having renounced it, should take off their arms and show the Eastern nations, not an example of savage patriotism and beastliness, but an example of brotherly love, which Christ has taught us.

_Moscow, January 2, 1896._

LETTER TO ERNEST HOWARD CROSBY

On Non-Resistance

1896

LETTER TO ERNEST HOWARD CROSBY

On Non-Resistance

MY DEAR CROSBY:--I am very glad to hear of your activity and that it is beginning to attract attention. Fifty years ago Garrison's proclamation of non-resistance only cooled people toward him, and the whole fifty years' activity of Ballou in this direction was met with stubborn silence. I read with great pleasure in _Peace_ the beautiful ideas of the American authors in regard to non-resistance. I make an exception only in the case of Mr. Bemis's old, unfounded opinion, which calumniates Christ in assuming that Christ's expulsion of the cattle from the temple means that he struck the men with a whip, and commanded his disciples to do likewise.

The ideas expressed by these writers, especially by H. Newton and G. Herron, are beautiful, but it is to be regretted that they do not answer the question which Christ put before men, but answer the question which the so-called orthodox teachers of the churches, the chief and most dangerous enemies of Christianity, have put in its place.

Mr. Higginson says that the law of non-resistance is not admissible as a general rule. H. Newton says that the practical results of the application of Christ's teaching will depend on the degree of faith which men will have in this teaching. Mr. C. Martyn assumes that the stage at which we are is not yet suited for the application of the teaching about non-resistance. G. Herron says that in order to fulfil the law of non-resistance, it is necessary to learn to apply it to life. Mrs. Livermore says the same, thinking that the fulfilment of the law of non-resistance is possible only in the future.

All these opinions treat only the question as to what would happen to people if all were put to the necessity of fulfilling the law of non-resistance; but, in the first place, it is quite impossible to compel all men to accept the law of non-resistance, and, in the second, if this were possible, it would be a most glaring negation of the very principle which is being established. To compel all men not to practise violence against others! Who is going to compel men?

In the third place, and above all else, the question, as put by Christ, does not consist in this, whether non-resistance may become a universal law for all humanity, but what each man must do in order to fulfil his destiny, to save his soul, and do God's work, which reduces itself to the same.

The Christian teaching does not prescribe any laws for all men; it does not say, "Follow such and such rules under fear of punishment, and you will all be happy," but explains to each separate man his position in the world and shows him what for him personally results from this position. The Christian teaching says to each individual man that his life, if he recognizes his life to be his, and its aim, the worldly good of his personality or of the personalities of other men, can have no rational meaning, because this good, posited as the end of life, can never be attained, because, in the first place, all beings strive after the goods of the worldly life, and these goods are always attained by one set of beings to the detriment of others, so that every separate man cannot receive the desired good, but, in all probability, must even endure many unnecessary sufferings in his struggle for these unattained goods; in the second place, because if a man even attains the worldly goods, these, the more of them he attains, satisfy him less and less, and he wishes for more and more new ones; in the third place, mainly because the longer a man lives, the more inevitably do old age, diseases, and finally death, which destroys the possibility of any worldly good, come to him.

Thus, if a man considers his life to be his, and its end to be the worldly good, for himself or for other men, this life can have for him no rational meaning. Life receives a rational meaning only when a man understands that the recognition of his life as his own, and the good of personality, of his own or of that of others, as its end, is an error, and that the human life does not belong to him, who has received this life from some one, but to Him who produced this life, and so its end must not consist in the attainment of his own good or of the good of others, but only in the fulfilment of the will of Him who produced it. Only with such a comprehension of life does it receive a rational meaning, and its end, which consists in the fulfilment of God's will, become attainable, and, above all, only with such a comprehension does man's activity become clearly defined, and he no longer is subject to despair and suffering, which were inevitable with his former comprehension.

"The world and I in it," such a man says to himself, "exist by the will of God. I cannot know the whole world and my relation to it, but I can know what is wanted of me by God, who sent men into this world, endless in time and space, and therefore inaccessible to my understanding, because this is revealed to me in the tradition, that is, in the aggregate reason of the best people in the world, who lived before me, and in my reason, and in my heart, that is, in the striving of my whole being.

"In the tradition, the aggregate of the wisdom of all the best men, who lived before me, I am told that I must act toward others as I wish that others should act toward me; my reason tells me that the greatest good of men is possible only when all men will act likewise.

"My heart is at peace and joyful only when I abandon myself to the feeling of love for men, which demands the same. And then I can not only know what I must do, but also the cause for which my activity is necessary and defined.

"I cannot grasp the whole divine work, for which the world exists and lives, but the divine work which is being accomplished in this world and in which I am taking part with my life is accessible to me. This work is the destruction of the discord and of the struggle among men and other beings, and the establishment among men of the greatest union, concord, and love; this work is the realization of what the Jewish prophets promised, saying that the time will come when all men shall be taught the truth, when the spears shall be forged into pruning-hooks, and the scythes and swords into ploughshares, and when the lion shall lie with the lamb."

Thus the man of the Christian comprehension of life not only knows how he must act in life, but also what he must do.

He must do what contributes to the establishment of the kingdom of God in the world. To do this, a man must fulfil the inner demands of God's will, that is, he must act amicably toward others, as he would like others to do to him. Thus the inner demands of a man's soul coincide with that external end of life which is placed before him.

And here though we have an indication which is so clear to a man of the Christian comprehension, and incontestable from two sides, as to what the meaning and end of human life consists in, and how a man must act, and what he must do, and what not, there appear certain people, who call themselves Christians, who decide that in such and such cases a man must depart from God's law and the common cause of life, which are given to him, and must act contrary to the law and the common cause of life, because, according to their ratiocination, the consequences of the acts committed according to God's law may be profitless and disadvantageous for men.

Man, according to the Christian teaching, is God's workman. The workman does not know his master's whole business, but the nearest aim to be attained by his work is revealed to him, and he is given definite indications as to what he should do; especially definite are the indications as to what he must not do, in order that he may not work against the aim for the attainment of which he was sent to work. In everything else he is given complete liberty. And so for a man who has grasped the Christian conception of life the meaning of his life is clear and rational, and he cannot have a moment of wavering as to how he should act in life and what he ought to do, in order to fulfil the destiny of his life.

According to the law given him in the tradition, in his reason, and in his heart, a man must always act toward another as he wishes to have done to him: he must contribute to the establishment of love and union among men; but according to the decision of these far-sighted people, a man must, while the fulfilment of the law, according to their opinion, is still premature, do violence, deprive of liberty, kill people, and with this contribute, not to union of love, but to the irritation and enragement of people. It is as though a mason, who is put to do certain definite work, who knows that he is taking part with others in the building of a house, and who has received a clear and indubitable command from the master himself that he is to lay a wall, should receive the command from other masons like him, who, like him, do not know the general plan of the structure and what is useful for the common work, to stop laying the wall, and to undo the work of the others.

Wonderful delusion! The being that breathes to-day and disappears to-morrow, that has one definite, incontestable law given to him, as to how he is to pass his short term of life, imagines that he knows what is necessary and useful and appropriate for all men, for the whole world, for that world which moves without cessation, and goes on developing, and in the name of this usefulness, which is differently understood by each of them, he prescribes to himself and to others for a time to depart from the unquestionable law, which is given to him and to all men, and not to act toward all men as he wants others to act toward him, not to bring love into the world, but to practise violence, to deprive of freedom, to punish, to kill, to introduce malice into the world, when it is found that this is necessary. And he enjoins us to do so knowing that the most terrible cruelties, tortures, murders of men, from the Inquisitions and punishments and terrors of all the revolutions to the present bestialities of the anarchists and the massacres of them, have all proceeded from this, that men suppose that they know what people and the world need; knowing that at any given moment there are always two opposite parties, each of which asserts that it is necessary to use violence against the opposite party,--the men of state against the anarchists, the anarchists against the men of state; the English against the Americans, the Americans against the English; the English against the Germans; and so forth, in all possible combinations and permutations.

Not only does a man of the Christian concept of life see clearly by reflection that there is no ground whatever for his departure from the law of his life, as clearly indicated to him by God, in order to follow the accidental, frail, frequently contradictory demands of men; but if he has been living the Christian life for some time, and has developed in himself the Christian moral sensitiveness, he can positively not act as people demand that he shall, not only as the result of reflection, but also of feeling.

As it is for many men of our world impossible to subject a child to torture and to kill it, though such a torture may save a hundred other people, so a whole series of acts becomes impossible for a man who has developed the Christian sensitiveness of his heart in himself. A Christian, for example, who is compelled to take part in court proceedings, where a man may be sentenced to capital punishment, to take part in matters of forcible seizure of other people's property, in discussions about the declaration of war, or in preparations for the same, to say nothing of war itself, finds himself in the same position in which a good man would be, if he were compelled to torture or kill a child. It is not that he decides by reflection what he ought not to do, but that he cannot do what is demanded of him, because for a man there exists the moral impossibility, just as there is a physical impossibility, of committing certain acts. Just as it is impossible for a man to lift up a mountain, as it is impossible for a good man to kill a child, so it is impossible for a man who lives a Christian life to take part in violence. Of what significance for such a man can be the reflections that for some imaginary good he must do what has become morally impossible for him?

How, then, is a man to act when he sees the obvious harm of following the law of love and the law of non-resistance, which results from it? How is a man to act--this example is always adduced--when a robber in his sight kills or injures a child, and when the child cannot be saved otherwise than by killing the robber?

It is generally assumed that, when they adduce such an example, there can be no other answer to the question than that the robber ought to be killed, in order that the child be saved. But this answer is given so emphatically and so quickly only because we are not only in the habit of acting in this manner in the case of the defence of a child, but also in the case of the expansion of the borders of a neighbouring state to the detriment of our own, or in the case of the transportation of lace across the border, or even in the case of the defence of the fruits of our garden against depredations by passers-by.

It is assumed that it is necessary to kill the robber in order to save the child, but we need only stop and think on what ground a man should act thus, be he a Christian or a non-Christian, to convince ourselves that such an act can have no rational foundations, and is considered necessary only because two thousand years ago such a mode of action was considered just and people were in the habit of acting thus. Why should a non-Christian, who does not recognize God and the meaning of life in the fulfilment of His will, kill the robber, in defending the child? To say nothing of this, that in killing the robber he is certainly killing, but does not know for certain until the very last moment whether the robber will kill the child or not, to say nothing of this irregularity: who has decided that the life of the child is more necessary and better than the life of the robber?

If a non-Christian does not recognize God, and does not consider the meaning of life to consist in the fulfilment of God's will, it is only calculation, that is, the consideration as to what is more profitable for him and for all men, the continuation of the robber's life or that of the child, which guides the choice of his acts. But to decide this, he must know what will become of the child which he saves, and what would become of the robber if he did not kill him. But that he cannot know. And so, if he is a non-Christian, he has no rational foundation for saving the child through the death of the robber.

But if a man is a Christian, and so recognizes God and sees the meaning of life in the fulfilment of His will, no matter what terrible robber may attack any innocent and beautiful child, he has still less cause to depart from the law given him by God and to do to the robber what the robber wants to do to the child; he may implore the robber, may place his body between the robber and his victim, but there is one thing he cannot do,--he cannot consciously depart from the law of God, the fulfilment of which forms the meaning of his life. It is very likely that, as the result of his bad bringing up and of his animality, a man, being a pagan or a Christian, will kill the robber, not only in the defence of the child, but also in his own defence or in the defence of his purse, but that will by no means signify that it is right to do so, that it is right to accustom ourselves and others to think that that ought to be done.

This will only mean that, in spite of the external education and Christianity, the habits of the stone age are still strong in man, that he is capable of committing acts which have long ago been disavowed by his consciousness. A robber in my sight is about to kill a child and I can save it by killing the robber; consequently it is necessary under certain conditions to resist evil with violence.

A man is in danger of his life and can be saved only through my lie; consequently it is necessary in certain cases to lie. A man is starving, and I cannot save him otherwise than by stealing; consequently it is necessary in certain cases to steal.

I lately read a story by Coppée, in which an orderly kills his officer, who has his life insured, and thus saves his honour and the life of his family. Consequently in certain cases it is right to kill.

Such imaginary cases and the conclusions drawn from them prove only this, that there are men who know that it is not right to steal, to lie, to kill, but who are so loath to stop doing this that they use all the efforts of their mind in order to justify their acts. There does not exist a moral rule for which it would be impossible to invent a situation when it would be hard to decide which is more moral, the departure from the rule or its fulfilment. The same is true of the question of non-resistance to evil: men know that it is bad, but they are so anxious to live by violence, that they use all the efforts of their mind, not for the elucidation of all the evil which is produced by man's recognition of the right to do violence to others, but for the defence of this right. But such invented cases in no way prove that the rules about not lying, stealing, killing are incorrect.

"_Fais ce que doit, advienne que pourra_,--do what is right, and let come what may,"--is an expression of profound wisdom. Each of us knows unquestionably what he ought to do, but none of us knows or can know what will happen. Thus we are brought to the same, not only by this, that we must do what is right, but also by this, that we know what is right, and do not know at all what will come and result from our acts.

The Christian teaching is a teaching as to what a man must do for the fulfilment of the will of Him who sent him into the world. But the reflections as to what consequences we assume to result from such or such acts of men not only have nothing in common with Christianity, but are that very delusion which destroys Christianity.

No one has yet seen the imaginary robber with the imaginary child, and all the horrors, which fill history and contemporary events, have been produced only because men imagine that they can know the consequences of the possible acts.

How is this? Men used to live a beastly life, violating and killing all those whom it was advantageous for them to violate and kill, and even eating one another, thinking that that was right. Then there came a time, when, thousands of years ago, even in the time of Moses, there appeared the consciousness in men that it was bad to violate and kill one another. But there were some men for whom violence was advantageous, and they did not recognize the fact, and assured themselves and others that it was not always bad to violate and kill men, but that there were cases when this was necessary, useful, and even good. And acts of violence and murder, though not as frequent and cruel, were continued, but with this difference, that those who committed them justified them on the ground of usefulness to men. It was this false justification of violence that Christ arraigned. He showed that, since every act of violence could be justified, as actually happens, when two enemies do violence to one another and both consider their violence justifiable, and there is no chance of verifying the justice of the determination of either, it is necessary not to believe in any justifications of violence, and under no condition, as at first was thought right by humanity, is it necessary to make use of them.

It would seem that men who profess Christianity would have carefully to unveil this deception, because in the unveiling of this deception does one of the chief manifestations of Christianity consist. But the very opposite has happened: men to whom violence was advantageous, and who did not want to give up these advantages, took upon themselves the exclusive propaganda of Christianity, and, preaching it, asserted that, since there are cases in which the non-application of violence produces more evil than its application (the imaginary robber who kills the child), we must not fully accept Christ's teaching about non-resistance to evil, and that we may depart from this teaching in the defence of our lives and of those of other men, in the defence of our country, the protection of society from madmen and malefactors, and in many other cases. But the decision of the question as to when Christ's teaching ought to be set aside was left to those very men who made use of violence. Thus Christ's teaching about non-resistance to evil turned out to be absolutely set aside, and, what is worse than all that, those very men whom Christ arraigned began to consider themselves the exclusive preachers and expounders of His teaching. But the light shineth in the dark, and the false preachers of Christianity are again arraigned by His teaching.

We can think of the structure of the world as we please, we may do what is advantageous and agreeable for us to do, and use violence against people under the pretext of doing good to men, but it is absolutely impossible to assert that, in doing so, we are professing Christ's teaching, because Christ arraigned that very deception. The truth will sooner or later be made manifest, and will arraign the deceivers, even as it does now.

Let only the question of the human life be put correctly, as it was put by Christ, and not as it was corrupted by the churches, and all the deceptions which by the churches have been heaped on Christ's teaching will fall of their own accord.

The question is not whether it will be good or bad for human society to follow the law of love and the resulting law of non-resistance, but whether you--a being that lives to-day and is dying by degrees to-morrow and every moment--will now, this very minute, fully do the will of Him who sent you and clearly expressed it in tradition and in your reason and heart, or whether you want to act contrary to this will. As soon as the question is put in this form, there will be but one answer: I want at once, this very minute, without any delay, without waiting for any one, and without considering the seeming consequences, with all my strength to fulfil what alone I am indubitably commanded to do by Him who sent me into the world, and in no case, under no condition, will I, can I, do what is contrary to it, because in this lies the only possibility of my rational, unwretched life.

_January 12, 1896._

INTRODUCTIONS TO BOOKS

1890-94

INTRODUCTIONS TO BOOKS

A. STOCKHAM'S TOKOLOGY

The present book does not belong to the vast number of all kinds of books, from the philosophical and the scientific to the artistic and practical, which, with other words, in other permutations and combinations, say and repeat the old familiar, sickeningly familiar, commonplaces. This book is one of those rare books which do not treat of what everybody talks about and nobody needs, but of what nobody talks about and what is important and necessary for all. It is important for the parents to know how they should act, in order without unnecessary suffering to bring forth uncorrupted and healthy children, and still more important it is for the future children to be born under the best of conditions, as, indeed, it says in one of the mottoes of the book, "To be well-born is the right of every child."

The book is not one of those which are read only that no one may say that he has not read this book, but one of those the reading of which leaves traces, compelling men to change their lives, to mend what is irregular in them, or at least to think of doing so. This book is called _Tokology_, the science of the bearing of children. There are all kinds of strange sciences, but there is no such science, and yet, after the science of how to live and die, this is the most important science. This book has had enormous success in America, and has greatly influenced American mothers and fathers. In Russia it ought to have an even greater influence. The questions about abstaining from tobacco and all kinds of exciting beverages, beginning with alcohol and ending with tea, the questions about eating without the slaughter of living beings, vegetarianism, the questions about sexual continence in domestic life, and many others, which partly have been solved and partly are being worked out, and possess a vast literature in Europe and in America, have not yet been touched upon by us, and so Mrs. Stockham's book is particularly important for us: it at once transfers the reader into a new world of a living human movement.

In this book every thinking woman--for this book is chiefly intended for women--will find first of all an indication that there is absolutely no need of continuing to live as insipidly as her forefathers lived, but that it is possible to find better paths of life, using for this purpose science, the experience of men, and her own free thought, and, as the first model of such a use she will find in this book many precious counsels and hints, which will make life easier for herself, her husband, and her children.

_February 2, 1890._

AMIEL'S DIARY

About a year and a half ago I chanced for the first time to read Amiel's book, _Fragments d'un Journal Intime_. I was struck by the significance and profundity of its contents, the beauty of the exposition, and, above all, the sincerity of this book. As I read it, I marked down the passages which more particularly startled me. My daughter undertook to translate these passages, and thus were formed the extracts from the _Fragments d'un Journal Intime_, that is, the extracts from the extracts of Amiel's diary in several volumes not yet printed, which he conducted from day to day for the period of thirty years.

Henri Amiel was born in Geneva in 1821 and was early left an orphan. Having graduated from the higher courses in Geneva, Amiel went abroad and there passed several years at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin. Upon returning in 1849 to his home, he at the age of twenty-eight years received in the Geneva Academy a professorship, at first of æsthetics, and later of philosophy, and this he held until his death.

Amiel's whole life was passed in Geneva, where he died in 1881, having in no way risen above the large number of the most ordinary of professors, who, mechanically compiling their lectures from the latest books in their particular specialties, just as mechanically transmit them to their hearers, and from a still greater number of poets without contents, who furnish these quite useless, but still marketable wares to periodicals that are published in tens of thousands of copies.

Amiel did not have the slightest success either in the learned or in the literary field. As he was approaching old age, he wrote of himself as follows:

"What have I been able to extract from those gifts which were bestowed upon me, from the peculiar conditions of my life of half a century? Are all my collected scribblings, my correspondence, these thousands of intimate pages, my lectures, my articles, my verses, my different notes anything but dry leaves? To whom and for what have I ever been of any use? And will my name live a day longer than I myself, and will it have any significance for any one? Insignificant, empty life! _Vie nulle._"

About Amiel and his diary two well-known French writers, his friend, the well-known critic, E. Scherer, and the philosopher, Caro, have written after his death. Interesting is that sympathetic, but partially patronizing air with which both these authors treat Amiel, when they regret that he was deprived of those qualities which are necessary for the performance of real work. And yet, the real work of these two writers--the critical labours of E. Scherer and the philosophic labours of Caro--will hardly much outlive their authors, while the accidental, not real work of Amiel, his diary, will always remain a live book, necessary for men and influencing them for the good.

A writer is dear and necessary for us only in the measure in which he reveals to us the inner working of his soul, of course, if this work is new, and not previously accomplished. No matter what he may write, a drama, a learned work, a story, a philosophic treatise, a lyric poem, a criticism, a satire, it is only this inner work of his soul which is dear to us, and not the architectural structure in which he, for the most part, and I think, always, distorting them, clothes his thoughts and feelings.

Everything which Amiel poured into a ready mould, his lectures, treatises, poems, was completely dead; but his diary, where, without thinking of the form, he spoke only to himself, full of life, wisdom, instruction, consolation, will for ever remain one of the best books accidentally left to us by such men as Marcus Aurelius, Pascal, Epictetus.

Pascal says: "There are but three kinds of people: those who, having found God, serve Him; those who, not having found Him, are busy seeking Him, and those who, not having found Him, none the less do not seek Him.

"The first are sensible and happy, the last are senseless and unhappy, the second are unhappy, but sensible."

I think that the difference established by Pascal between the first and the second, between those who, as he says in another passage, having found God, serve Him with their whole hearts, and those who, not having found Him, seek Him with their whole hearts, is not only not so great as he thought, but does not even exist. I think that those who with their whole hearts and suffering ("_en gemissant_," as Pascal says) seek God, already serve Him. They serve Him with this, that with these sufferings of their seeking they lay out and open for others the road to God, as Pascal himself did in his thoughts, and as Amiel did all his life in his diary.

Amiel's whole life, as it is presented to us in this diary, is full of this seeking after God, which is suffering with the whole heart. The contemplation of this seeking is the more instructive in that it never ceases to be a seeking, never stops, never passes into the consciousness of the acquisition of truth and into instruction. Amiel says neither to himself nor to others: "I now know the truth,--hear me!" On the contrary, it seems to him, as is proper for him who sincerely seeks the truth, that the more he finds out, the more he has still left to know, and he, without stopping, does everything he can for the purpose of finding out more and more of the truth, and so constantly feels his ignorance. He constantly dwells upon what Christianity and the condition of a Christian ought to be, without for a moment dwelling on the thought that Christianity is precisely what he professes, and that he himself personifies the condition of a Christian. And yet his whole diary is full of expressions of the profoundest Christian understanding and feeling. These expressions act most powerfully on the reader on account of their very unconsciousness and sincerity. He speaks with himself, without thinking that he is heard, without trying to appear sure of what he is not sure, without concealing his suffering and his seeking.

It is as though we were present, without the master's knowledge, at the most secret, profound, impassioned inner work of the soul, which is generally concealed from the view of an outsider.

For this reason it is possible to find many statelier and more eloquent expressions of Amiel's religious feeling, but it is hard to find such as are more intimate and more heart-stirring. Shortly before his death, when he knew that his disease might any day end in strangulation, he wrote:

"When you no longer reflect that you have tens of years, one year, a month free before yourself, when you already count tens of hours, and the future night bears in itself the menace of the unexplored, it is evident that you decline art, science, politics, and are satisfied with conversing with yourself, and that is possible until the very end. This inward conversation is the only thing which is left to him who is sentenced to death and whose execution is delayed. He (this condemned man) concentrates upon himself. He no longer emits rays, but only converses with his soul. He no longer acts, but only contemplates.... Like a hare, he returns to his lair to die; and this lair is his conscience, his thought. So long as he can hold a pen and has a moment of solitude, he concentrates himself before this echo of himself and holds converse with God.

"This, by the way, is not a moral investigation, a repentance, a call. It is only the 'amen' of submission.

"My child, give me your heart.

"Renunciation and agreement are less difficult for me than for others, because I want nothing. I should only want not to suffer. Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane asked for the same. Let us do the same that He did. 'Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt,'--and we will wait."

Such he is on the day before his death. He is not less sincere and serious throughout his whole diary, in spite of the elegance, and now and then choiceness of his diction, which became a habit with him. In the course of all the thirty years of his diary he feels that we all so thoroughly forget, that we are all condemned to death and that our execution is only delayed. And it is for this very reason that this book is so sincere, serious, and useful.

_1893._

S. T. SEMÉNOV'S PEASANT STORIES

I have long ago formed a rule to judge every artistic production from three sides: (1) from the side of its contents,--in how far that which is revealed by the artist from a new side is important and necessary for men, because every production is a production of art only when it reveals a new side of life; (2) to what extent the form of the production is good, beautiful, and in correspondence with the contents; and (3) in how far the relation of the artist to his subject is sincere, that is, in how far he believes in what he represents. This last quality always seems to me to be the most important one in an artistic production. It gives to an artistic production its force, makes an artistic production infectious, that is, evokes in the hearer and reader those sensations which the artist experiences.

Seménov possesses this quality in the highest degree.

There is a certain story by Flaubert, translated by Turgénev, _Julian the Merciful_. The last episode of the story, which is intended to be most touching, consists in this, that Julian lies down in the same bed with a leper, whom he warms up with his body. This leper is Christ, who carries Julian off to heaven with Him. All that is told with great mastery, but I always remain very cold during the reading of this story. I feel that the author himself would not have done, and would not even have wished to do so, and I never feel any agitation in reading about this wonderful exploit.

But Seménov describes the simplest story, and it always touches me. A village lad comes to Moscow to find himself a place, and with the influence of a countryman of his, a coachman, who is living with a wealthy merchant, he here gets the position of assistant janitor. This place was formerly occupied by an old man. It was by the advice of his coachman that the merchant sent away the old man and in his place put the young lad. The lad arrives in the evening to begin his work, and in the yard hears the old man's complaints in the servants' room, for having been discharged for no cause whatsoever, only to make room for the young fellow. The lad suddenly feels pity for the old man and is ashamed to have pushed him out. He reflects for a moment, wavers, and finally decides to give up the place, which he needs and which has pleased him so much.

All this is told in such a way that every time when I read it I feel that the author not only would have wished to act similarly in such a case, but would certainly have done so, and his feeling infects me, and I am happy, and it seems to me that I have done something good or would be glad to do something good.

Sincerity is Seménov's chief characteristic. But, besides it, the contents are always significant,--significant, because they deal with the most important class of Russia, the peasantry, which Seménov knows as only a peasant, who himself lives the hard life of a peasant, can know. The contents of his stories are also significant, because in all of them the chief interest is not in the external events, not in the peculiarities of the situations, but in the approximation to and the removal from the ideal of Christian truth, which stands firm and clear in the soul of the author and serves him as a safe measure for the valuation of the worth and importance of human acts.

The form of the stories fully corresponds to the contents: it is serious and simple, and the details are always correct,--there are no false notes. What is particularly good is the figurative language of the persons in the stories, which is frequently quite new, and always artless and strikingly powerful.

_March 23, 1894._

THE WORKS OF GUY DE MAUPASSANT

It was, I think, in the year 1881 that Turgénev, during a visit at my house, took a French novel, under the name of _Maison Tellier_, out of his satchel and gave it to me.

"Read it, if you have a chance," he said, apparently with indifference, just as the year before he had handed me a number of the _Russian Wealth_, in which there was an article by Garshín, who was making his début. Evidently, as in the case of Garshín, so even now, he was afraid he might influence me in one way or another, and wished to know my uninfluenced opinion.

"He is a young French author," he said; "look at it,--it is not bad; he knows you and esteems you very much," he added, as though to encourage me. "As a man he reminds me of Druzhínin. He is just as excellent a son and friend, _un homme d'un commerce sur_, as was Druzhínin, and, besides, he has relations with the labouring people, whom he guides and aids. Even in his relations to women he reminds me of Druzhínin."

And Turgénev told me something remarkable and incredible in regard to Maupassant's relations in this respect.

This time, the year 1881, was for me the most ardent time of the inner reconstruction of my whole world-conception, and in this reconstruction the activity which is called artistic, and to which I formerly used to devote all my strength, not only lost for me the significance formerly ascribed to it, but even became distinctly distasteful to me on account of the improper place which it had occupied in my life and which in general it occupies in the concepts of the men of the wealthy classes.

For this reason I was at that time not in the least interested in such productions as the one which Turgénev recommended to me. But, to oblige him, I read the book which he gave me.

Judging from the first story, _Maison Tellier_, I could not help but see, in spite of the indecent and insignificant subject of the story, that the author possessed what is called talent.

The author was endowed with that particular gift, called talent, which consists in the author's ability to direct, according to his tastes, his intensified, strained attention to this or that subject, in consequence of which the author who is endowed with this ability sees in those subjects, upon which he directs his attention, something new, something which others did not see. Maupassant evidently possessed that gift of seeing in subjects something which others did not see. But, to judge from the small volume which I had read, he was devoid of the chief condition necessary, besides talent, for a truly artistic production. Of the three conditions: (1) a correct, that is, a moral relation of the author to the subject, (2) the clearness of exposition, or the beauty of form, which is the same, and (3) sincerity, that is, an undisguised feeling of love or hatred for what the artist describes,--Maupassant possessed only the last two, and was entirely devoid of the first. He had no correct, that is, no moral relation to the subjects described. From what I had read, I was convinced that Maupassant possessed talent, that is, the gift of attention, which in the objects and phenomena of life revealed to him those qualities which are not visible to other men; he also possessed a beautiful form, that is, he expressed clearly, simply, and beautifully what he wished to say, and also possessed that condition of the worth of an artistic production, without which it does not produce any effect,--sincerity,--that is, he did not simulate love or hatred, but actually loved and hated what he described. But, unfortunately, being devoid of the first, almost the most important condition of the worth of an artistic production, of the correct, moral relation to what he represented, that is, of the knowledge of the difference between good and evil, he loved and represented what it was not right to love and represent, and did not love and did not represent what he ought to have loved and represented. Thus the author in this little volume describes with much detail and love how women tempt men and men tempt women, and even some incomprehensible obscenities, which are represented in _La Femme de Paul_, and he describes the labouring country people, not only with indifference, but even with contempt, as so many animals.

Particularly striking was that lack of distinction between bad and good in the story _Une Partie de Campagne_, in which, in the form of a most clever and amusing jest, he gives a detailed account of how two gentlemen with bared arms, rowing in a boat, simultaneously tempted, the one an old mother, and the other a young maiden, her daughter.

The author's sympathy is during the whole time obviously to such an extent on the side of the two rascals, that he ignores, or, rather, does not see what the tempted mother, the girl, the father, and the young man, evidently the fiancé of the daughter, must have suffered, and so we not only get a shocking description of a disgusting crime in the form of an amusing jest, but the event itself is described falsely, because only the most insignificant side of the subject, the pleasure afforded to the rascals, is described.

In the same volume there is a story, _Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme_, which Turgénev recommended to me more particularly, and which more particularly displeased me on account of the author's incorrect relation to the subject. The author apparently sees in all the working people whom he describes nothing but animals, who do not rise above sexual and maternal love, and so the description leaves us with an incomplete, artificial impression.

The insufficient comprehension of the lives and interests of the working classes, and the representation of the men from those classes in the form of half-animals, which are moved only by sensuality, malice, and greed, forms one of the chief and most important defects of the majority of the modern French authors, among them Maupassant, not only in this story, but also in all the other stories, in which he touches on the people and always describes them as coarse, dull animals, whom one can only ridicule. Of course, the French authors must know the conditions of their people better than I know them; but, although I am a Russian and have not lived with the French people, I none the less assert that, in describing their masses, the French authors are wrong, and that the French masses cannot be such as they are described. If there exists a France as we know it, with her truly great men and with those great contributions which these great men have made to science, art, civil polity, and the moral perfection of humanity, those labouring masses, which have held upon their shoulders this France and her great men, do not consist of animals, but of men with great spiritual qualities; and so I do not believe what I am told in novels like _La Terre_, and in Maupassant's stories, just as I should not believe if I were told of the existence of a beautiful house standing on no foundation. It is very possible that the high qualities of the masses are not such as are described in _La petite Fadette_ and in _La Mare au Diable_, but these qualities exist, that I know for certain, and the writer who describes the masses, as Maupassant does, by telling sympathetically of the "_hanches_" and "_gorges_" of Breton domestics, and with contempt and ridicule the life of the labouring people, commits a great error in an artistic sense, because he describes the subject from only one, the most uninteresting, physical side, and completely overlooks the other, the most important, spiritual side, which forms the essence of the subject.

In general, the reading of the volume which Turgénev gave me left me completely indifferent to the young writer.

I was at that time so disgusted with the stories, _Une Partie de Campagne_, _La Femme de Paul_, and _L'Histoire d'une Fille de Ferme_, that I did not at that time notice the beautiful story, _Le Papa de Simon_, and the superb story, so far as the description of a night is concerned, _Sur l'Eau_.

"There are in our time, when there are so many who are willing to write, a number of people with talent, who do not know to what to apply it, or who boldly apply it to what ought not and should not be described," I thought. I told Turgénev so. And I entirely forgot about Maupassant.

The first thing from Maupassant's writings which after that fell into my hands was _Une Vie_, which somebody advised me to read. This book at once made me change my opinion concerning Maupassant, and after that I read with interest everything which was written over his name. _Une Vie_ is an excellent novel, not only incomparably the best novel by Maupassant, but almost the best French novel since Hugo's _Les Misérables_. Besides the remarkable power of his talent, that is, of that peculiar, strained attention, directed upon an object, in consequence of which the author sees entirely new features in the life which he is describing, this novel combines, almost to an equal degree, all three conditions of a true artistic production: (1) the correct, that is, the moral, relation of the author to the subject, (2) the beauty of form, and (3) sincerity, that is, love for what the author describes. Here the meaning of life no longer presents itself to the author in the experiences of all kinds of debauched persons,--here the contents, as the title says, are formed by the description of a ruined, innocent, sweet woman, who is prepared for anything beautiful, a woman who is ruined by that very gross, animal sensuality which in the former stories presented itself to the author as the central phenomenon of life, which dominates everything, and the author's whole sympathy is on the side of the good.

The form, which is beautiful even in the first stories, is here carried to a high degree of perfection, such as, in my opinion, has not been reached by any other French prose writer. And, besides, what is most important, the author here really loves, and loves strongly, the good family which he describes, and actually despises that coarse male who destroys the happiness and peace of this dear family and especially of the heroine of the novel.

It is for that reason that all the events and persons of this novel are so vivid and impress themselves on our memory: the weak, good, slatternly mother; the noble, weak, dear father, and the daughter, who is still dearer in her simplicity, absence of exaggeration, and readiness for everything good; their mutual relations, their first journey, their servants, their neighbours, the calculating, coarsely sensuous, stingy, petty, impudent fiancé, who, as always, deceives the innocent girl with the customary base idealization of the grossest of sentiments; the marriage; Corsica, with the charming descriptions of nature; then the life in the country; the coarse deception of the husband; the seizure of the power over the estate; his conflicts with his father-in-law; the yielding of the good people; the victory of impudence; the relation to the neighbours,--all that is life itself, with all its complexity and variety. But not only is all this described vividly and well,--there is over all a sincere, pathetic tone, which involuntarily affects the reader. One feels that the author loves this woman, and that he does not love her merely for her external forms, but for her soul, for what there is good in it, and that he sympathizes with her and suffers for her, and this sensation is involuntarily transferred to the reader. And the questions as to why, for what purpose, this fair creature was ruined, and why it should be so, naturally arise in the reader's soul, and make him stop and reflect on the meaning and significance of human life.

In spite of the false notes, which here and there occur in the novel, as, for example, the detailed account of the girl's skin, or the impossible and unnecessary details about how the deserted wife, by the advice of the abbot, again becomes a mother, details which destroy all the charm of the heroine's purity; in spite of the melodramatic and unnatural history of the revenge of the insulted husband,--in spite of these blemishes, the novel not only appears to me to be beautiful, but through it I no longer saw in the author the talented babbler and jester, who does not know and does not want to know what is good and what bad, such as he had appeared to me to be, judging him from the first book, but a serious man, who looks deeply into man's life and is beginning to make things out in it.

The next novel of Maupassant which I read was _Bel-Ami_.

_Bel-Ami_ is a very filthy book. The author apparently gives himself the reins in the description of what attracts him, and at times seems to be losing the fundamental, negative point of view upon his hero and passes over to his side; but in general, _Bel-Ami_, like _Une Vie_, has for its basis a serious thought and sentiment.

In _Une Vie_ the fundamental thought is the perplexity in the presence of the cruel senselessness of the agonizing life of a beautiful woman, who is ruined by the gross sensuality of a man; here it is not only the perplexity, but also the indignation of the author at the sight of the welfare and success of a gross sensuous beast, who by his very sensuality makes a career for himself and attains a high position in the world, an indignation also at the sight of the corruption of that milieu in which the hero attains his success. There the author seems to ask: "Why, for what purpose, is the fair creature ruined? Why did it happen?" Here he seems to be answering the questions: "Everything pure and good has perished and continues to perish in our society, because this society is corrupt, senseless, and terrible."

The last scene of the novel, the marriage in a fashionable church of the triumphant rascal, who is adorned with the Order of the Legion of Honour, with the pure young maiden, the daughter of the old, formerly irreproachable mother of the family, whom he seduced, the marriage, which is blessed by the bishop and is recognized as something good and proper by all the persons present, expresses this idea with unusual force. In this novel, in spite of its being clogged with obscene details, in which the author unfortunately seems to delight, we can see the same serious relations of the author to life.

Read the conversation of the old poet with Duroy, when they come out after dinner from the Walters, I think. The old poet lays bare life before his young interlocutor and shows it to him such as it is, with its eternal, unavoidable companion and end,--death.

"It already holds me, _la gueuse_," he says of death. "It has already loosened my teeth, pulled out my hair, mauled my limbs, and is about to swallow me. I am already in its power,--it only plays with me, as a cat plays with a mouse, knowing that I cannot get away from it. Glory, wealth,--what is it all good for, since it is not possible to buy a woman's love with them, and it is only a woman's love that makes life worth living. And death will take that away. It will take this first, and then health, strength, and life itself. And it is the same with everybody. And that is all."

Such is the meaning of the remarks of the aging poet. But Duroy, the fortunate lover of all those women whom he likes, is so full of sensuous energy and strength that he hears, and yet does not hear, and understands, and yet does not understand, the words of the old poet. He hears and understands, but the spring of his sensuous life bubbles up with such force that the incontestable truth, which promises the same end to him, does not appal him.

It is this inner contradiction which, besides its satirical significance, forms the chief meaning of _Bel-Ami_. The same thought sparkles in the beautiful scenes of the death of the consumptive journalist. The author puts the question to himself as to what life is and how the contradiction between the love of life and the knowledge of unavoidable death is to be solved,--and he does not answer the questions. He seems to be seeking and waiting, and does not decide one way or another. Consequently the moral relation to life continues to be correct in this novel also.

But in the next novels after that this moral relation to life begins to become entangled, the valuation of the phenomena of life begins to waver, to grow dim, and in the last novels is completely distorted.

In _Mont-Oriol_ Maupassant seems to combine the motives of the two preceding novels, and repeats himself as regards contents. In spite of the beautiful descriptions, full of refined humour, of a fashionable watering-place and of the activity of the doctors in this place, we have here the same male, Paul, who is just as base and heartless as the husband in _Une Vie_, and the same deceived, ruined, yielding, weak, lonely, always lonely, dear woman, and the same indifferent triumph of insignificance and baseness as in _Bel-Ami_.

The thought is the same, but the author's relation to what he describes is now considerably lower, especially lower than in the first novel. The inner valuation of the author as to what is good and bad begins to become entangled. In spite of all the mental desire of the author to be objective without any bias, the rascal Paul apparently enjoys the author's complete sympathy. For this reason the history of Paul's love, his attempts to seduce, and his success in this produce a false impression. The reader does not know what the author wants,--whether he wants to show the whole emptiness and baseness of Paul, who with indifference turns away from the woman and offends her, only because her form is spoiled from being pregnant with a child by him, or whether he wants, on the contrary, to show how agreeable and nice it is to live the way this Paul lives.

In the next novels after that, _Pierre et Jean_, _Fort comme la Mort_, and _Notre Cœur_, the moral relation of the author to his persons is still more entangled, and is entirely lost in the last. On all these novels already lies the stamp of indifference, haste, fictitiousness, and, above all, again that absence of a correct moral relation to life which was noticeable in his first writings. This begins at the same time that Maupassant's reputation as a fashionable author becomes established, and he is subject to that terrible temptation to which every well-known author, particularly such an attractive one as Maupassant, falls a prey. On the one side, the success of the first novels, newspaper laudations, and flattery of society, especially of the women; on the second, the evergrowing rewards, which, however, do not keep pace with the constantly growing demands; on the third,--the insistence of publishers, who vie with one another, flatter, implore, and no longer judge of the quality of the productions offered by the author, but in ecstasy accept everything which appears over the name that has established its reputation with the reading public. All these temptations are so great that they evidently intoxicate the author: he succumbs to them, and, though he continues to work out his novels as regards their forms, and does it even better than before, and even loves what he describes, he no longer loves what he describes because it is good and moral, that is, because it is loved by everybody, and hates what he describes not because it is bad and despised by everybody, but only because one thing accidentally pleases and another displeases him.

Upon all the novels of Maupassant, beginning with _Bel-Ami_, lies this stamp of haste and, above all, of fictitiousness. From that time on Maupassant no longer does what he did in his first two novels,--he does not take for the foundation of his novels certain moral demands and on their basis describe the activity of his persons, but writes his novels as all artisan novelists write theirs, that is, he invents the most interesting and the most pathetic or most contemporary persons and situations, and from these composes his novel, adorning it with all those observations which he has happened to make and which fit into the canvas of the novel, without the slightest concern how the events described are related to the demands of morality. Such are _Pierre et Jean_, _Fort comme la Mort_, and _Notre Cœur_.

No matter how much we are accustomed to read in French novels about how families live by threes, and how there is always a lover, whom all but the husband know, it still remains quite incomprehensible to us how it is that all husbands are always fools, _cocus_, and _ridicules_, and all lovers, who in the end marry and become husbands, are neither _ridicules_ nor _cocus_, but heroes. And still less can we understand in what way all women are loose in morals and all mothers holy.

It is on these unnatural and improbable and, above all, profoundly immoral situations that _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la Mort_ are constructed. And so the sufferings of the persons who are in these situations do not touch us much. Pierre's and Jean's mother, who was able to pass all her life in deceiving her husband, evokes little sympathy for herself when she is compelled to confess her sin to her son, and still less when she justifies herself, asserting that she could not help making use of the opportunity of happiness which presented itself to her. Still less can we sympathize with the gentleman who, in _Fort comme la Mort_, during his whole life deceived his friend, corrupted his wife, and now laments because, having grown old, he is not able to corrupt also the daughter of his paramour. But the last novel, _Notre Cœur_, does not even have any inner problem, except the description of all kinds of shades of sexual love. What is described is a satiated, idle debauchee, who does not know what he wants, and who now falls in with just as debauched, mentally debauched, a woman, without even any justification of sensuality, and now parts from her and falls in with a servant girl, and now again falls in with the first and, it seems, lives with both. Though in _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la Mort_ there are touching scenes, this last novel provokes nothing but disgust in us.

The question in Maupassant's first novel, _Une Vie_, stands like this. Here is a good, clever, dear human being, ready for anything good, and this being for some reason is sacrificed, at first to a coarse, petty, stupid animal of a husband, and then to just such a son, and perishes aimlessly, without having given anything to the world. What is this for? The author puts the question like that, and does not seem to give any answer. But his whole novel, all his sentiments of sympathy for her and disgust with what ruined her serve as an answer to his question. If there is one man who has understood her sufferings and has given expression to this understanding, these sufferings are redeemed, as Job says to his friends, when they say that no one will find out about his suffering. Let a suffering be made known and understood, and it is redeemed. Here the author saw and comprehended this suffering and showed it to men. And this suffering is redeemed, because, as soon as it is understood by men, it will sooner or later be destroyed.

In the next novel, _Bel-Ami_, the question is no longer as to why there is any suffering for the worthy, but why there is wealth and glory for the unworthy. And what are this wealth and glory, and how are they acquired? And just as before, this question includes an answer, which consists in the negation of everything which is so highly valued by the crowd. The contents of this second novel are still serious, but the moral relation of the author to the subject described is considerably weakened, and while in the first novel only here and there occur blemishes of sensuality, which spoil the novel, in _Bel-Ami_ these blemishes expand, and many chapters are written in mere obscenity, in which the author seems to revel.

In the next novel, _Mont-Oriol_, the questions as to why and for what purpose are the sufferings of the dear woman and the success and joys of the savage male are no longer put, but it seems to be assumed that it ought to be so, and the moral demands are almost not felt; instead there appear, without any need and evoked by no artistic demands, obscene, sensuous descriptions. As a striking example of this violation of art, in consequence of the incorrect relation of the author to the subject, may with particular vividness serve the detailed description of the appearance of the heroine in the bathtub, which is given in this novel. This description is of no use whatsoever, and is in no way connected with the external or the internal meaning of the novel: bubbles cling to the pink body.

"Well?" asks the reader.

"That's all," replies the author. "I describe, because I like such descriptions."

In the next two novels, _Pierre et Jean_ and _Fort comme la Mort_, no moral demand whatever is to be found. Both novels are constructed on debauchery, deception, and lying, which bring the _dramatis personæ_ to tragic situations.

In the last novel, _Notre Cœur_, the condition of the _dramatis personæ_ is most monstrous, savage, and immoral, and these persons no longer struggle against anything, but only seek enjoyments, of ambition, of the senses, of the sexual passion, and the author seems to sympathize completely with their strivings. The only conclusion one can draw from this last novel is this, that the greatest happiness in life is sexual intercourse, and that, therefore, we must in the most agreeable manner make use of this happiness.

Still more startling is this immoral relation to life as it is expressed in the quasi-novel, _Yvette_. The contents of this terribly immoral production are as follows: a charming girl, with an innocent soul, but corrupted in the forms which she has acquired in the corrupt surroundings of her mother, deludes the debauchee. He falls in love with her, but, imagining that this girl consciously talks that insinuating nonsense which she has learned in her mother's company, and which she repeats like a parrot, without understanding it, he imagines that the girl is corrupt, and coarsely proposes a _liaison_ with her. This proposition frightens and offends her (she loves him), opens her eyes to her position and to that of her mother, and makes her suffer deeply. The touching situation--the conflict of the beauty of the innocent soul with the immorality of the world--is beautifully described, and it would have been well to stop here, but the author, without the least external or internal need, continues his narration and causes this gentleman to make his way to the girl at night and seduce her. In the first part of the novel the author had evidently been on the side of the girl, and in the second he suddenly passed over to the side of the debauchee. One impression destroys the other, and the whole novel falls to pieces and breaks up, like bread which has not been kneaded.

In all his novels after _Bel-Ami_ (I am not speaking now of his shorter stories, which form his chief desert and fame,--of them I shall speak later), Maupassant obviously surrendered himself to the theory, which not only existed in his circle in Paris, but which now exists everywhere among artists, that for an artistic production we not only need have no clear conception of what is good and what bad, but that, on the contrary, the artist must absolutely ignore all moral questions,--that in this does a certain merit of the artist consist. According to this theory an artist can and must represent what is true, what exists, or what is beautiful, what, consequently, pleases him, or even what can be useful as material for "science," but it is not the business of the artist to trouble himself about what is moral or immoral, good or bad.

I remember, a famous painter showed me once his painting, which represented a religious procession. Everything was exquisitely painted, but I could not see any relation of the artist to his subject.

"Well, do you consider these rites good, and do you think that they ought to be performed, or do you not?" I asked the artist.

The artist said to me, with a certain condescension to my naïveté, that he did not know and did not consider it necessary to know: his business was to represent life.

"But do you at least love this?"

"I cannot tell you."

"Well, do you despise these rites?"

"Neither the one nor the other," replied, with a smile of compassion for my stupidity, the modern highly cultured artist, who represented life without understanding its meaning and without either loving or hating its phenomena. Even so unfortunately thought Maupassant.

In his introduction to _Pierre et Jean_ he says that people tell the writer: "_Consolez-moi, attristez-moi, attendrissez-moi, faites-moi râcer, faites-moi rire, faites-moi frémir, faites-moi pleurer, faites-moi penser. Seuls quelques esprits d'élites demandent á l'artiste: faites-moi quelque chose de beau dans la forme qui vous conviendra le mieux d'après votre tempérament._"

It was to satisfy the demand of these chosen spirits that Maupassant wrote his novels, imagining naïvely that that which was considered beautiful in his circle was the beautiful which art ought to serve.

In the same circle in which Maupassant moved, it is woman, a young, beautiful, for the most part a nude woman, and the sexual intercourse with her that have preëminently been considered to be that beauty which art must serve. Such an opinion was held not only by Maupassant's fellows in "art," by painters, sculptors, novelists, and poets, but also by philosophers, the teachers of the younger generations. Thus the famous Renan says frankly in his work, _Marc Aurèle_, while condemning Christianity for its lack of appreciation of feminine beauty:

"_Le défaut du christianisme apparait bien ici, il est trop uniquement moral: la beauté chez-lui est tout-à-fait sacrifiée. Or, aux yeux d'une philosophie complète, la beauté, loin d'être un avantage superficiel, un danger, un inconvénient, est un don de Dieu, comme la vertu. Elle vaut la rertu; la femme belle exprime aussi bien une face du but divin, une des fins de Dieu, que l'homme de génie ou la femme vertueuse. Elle le sait et de là sa fierté. Elle sent instinctivement le trésor infini qu'elle porte en son corps; elle sait bien, que sans esprit, sans talent, sans grace vertu, elle compte entre les premières manifestations de Dieu: et pourquoi lui interdire de mettre en valeur le don, qui lui a été fait, de sortir le diamant qui lui est échu?_

"_La femme, en se passant, accomplit un devoir; elle pratique un art, art exquis, en un sens le plus charmant des arts. Ne nous laissons pas égarer par le sourire que certains mots provoquent chez les gens frivoles. On décerne la palme du génie à l'artiste grec qui a su résoudre le plus délicat des problèmes, orner le corps humain, c'est à orner la perfection même, et l'on ne veut voir qu'une affaire de chiffons dans l'essai de collaborer à la plus belle œuvre de Dieu, à la beauté de la femme! La toilette de la femme, avec tous ses raffinements, est du grand art à sa manière._

"_Les siècles et les pays, qui savent y réussir,--sont les grands siècles, les grands pays, et le christianisme montra par l'exclusion dont il frappa le genre de recherches que l'idéal social qu'il concevait ne deviendrait le cadre d'une société complète que bien plus tard, quand la révolte des gens du monde aurait brisé le joug étroit imposé primitivement à la secte par un piétisme exalté_" (_Marc Aurèle_, p. 555).

(Thus, according to the opinion of this guide of the younger generations, it is only now that the Parisian tailors and wigmakers have mended the mistake made by Christianity, and have reestablished beauty in its real, high significance.)

To leave no doubt in what sense beauty is to be taken, this same famous writer, historian, and scholar wrote a drama, _L'Abbesse de Jouarre_, in which he showed that sexual intercourse with a woman is that very ministration to beauty, that is, a high and good work. In this drama, which is remarkable for its absence of talent and especially for the coarseness of Darcy's conversations with the Abbess, where we can see from the very first words of what love this gentleman is speaking with the apparently innocent and highly moral girl, who is not in the least offended by this,--it appears that the most highly moral people, in the sight of death, to which they are condemned, a few hours before it can do nothing more beautiful than surrender themselves to their animal passion.

Thus, in the circle in which Maupassant grew up and was educated, the representation of feminine beauty and love has quite seriously, and as something long ago decided and determined by the cleverest and most learned of men, been considered to be the true problem of the highest art,--_le grand art_.

It is to this theory, frightful in its insipidity, that Maupassant was subjected, when he became a fashionable writer. And, as was to have been expected, in the novels this false ideal led Maupassant to a series of mistakes and to weaker and ever weaker productions.

In this showed itself the radical difference which exists between the demands of the novel and those of the story. The novel has for its problem, even for its external problem, the description of the whole human life or of many human lives, and so the writer of a novel must have a clear and firm idea of what is good and what bad in life, and Maupassant did not possess that; on the contrary, according to the theory to which he held, it was thought that that was not necessary. If he had been a novelist like some untalented writers of sensuous novels, he would have calmly described as good what is bad, and his novels would be complete and interesting for people sharing the same views as the author. But Maupassant had talent, that is, he saw things in their real form, and so he involuntarily revealed the truth: he involuntarily saw the bad in what he wanted to regard as good. For this reason his sympathy is constantly wavering in all his novels, with the exception of the first: now he represents the bad as being good, now he recognizes the bad to be bad and the good to be good, and now again he keeps all the time jumping from one to the other. But this destroys the very essence of every artistic impression, the _charpente_, on which he stands. People who are not very sensitive to art frequently imagine that an artistic production forms one whole, because the same persons act in it all the time, because everything is constructed on one plot, or because the life of one man is described. That is not true. That only seems so to the superficial observer: the cement which binds every artistic production into one whole and so produces the illusion of a reflection of life is not the unity of persons and situations, but the unity of the original, moral relation of the author to his subject. In reality, when we read or contemplate an artistic production by a new author, the fundamental question which arises in our soul is always this: "Well, what kind of a man are you? How do you differ from all other men whom I know, and what new thing can you tell me about the way we ought to look upon our life?" No matter what the artist may represent,--saints, robbers, kings, lackeys,--we seek and see only the artist's soul. If he is an old, familiar artist, the question is no longer, "Who are you?" but, "Well, what new thing can you tell me? From what new side will you now illumine my life for me?" And so an author who has no definite, clear, new view of the world, and still more so the one who does not consider this to be necessary, cannot give an artistic production. He can write beautifully, and a great deal, but there will be no artistic production. Even so it was with Maupassant in his novels. In his first two novels, especially in the first, _Une Vie_, there was that clear, definite, new relation to life, and so there was an artistic production; but as soon as he, submitting to the fashionable theory, decided that there is no need whatever for this relation of the author to life, and began to write only in order to _faire quelque chose de beau_, his novels ceased to be artistic productions. In _Une Vie_ and _Bel-Ami_ the author knows who is to be loved and who is to be hated, and the reader agrees with him and believes him, believes in those persons and events which are described to him. But in _Notre Cœur_ and in _Yvette_ the author does not know who is to be loved and who is to be hated; nor does the reader know it. And as the reader does not know it, he does not believe in the events described and is not interested in them. And so, with the exception of the first two, or, speaking strictly, of the one first novel, all of Maupassant's novels, as novels, are weak; and if Maupassant had left us only his novels, he would be a striking example of how a brilliant gift may perish in consequence of that false milieu in which it was evolved, and of those false theories of art which are invented by men who do not love it and so do not understand it. But, fortunately, Maupassant has written short stories, in which he did not succumb to the false theory which he adopted, and wrote, not _quelque chose de beau_, but what touched and provoked his moral feeling. It is in these stories, not in all, but in the best of them, that we see how the moral feeling grew in the author.

In this, indeed, does the remarkable quality of every true talent consist, so long as it does not do violence to itself under the influence of a false theory, that it teaches its possessor, leads him on over the path of moral development, makes him love what is worthy of love, and hate what is worthy of hatred. An artist is an artist for the very reason that he sees the objects, not as he wants to see them, but as they are. The bearer of talent,--man,--may make mistakes, but the talent, as soon as the reins are given to it, as was done by Maupassant in his stories, will reveal and lay bare the subject and will make the writer love it, if it is worthy of love, and hate it, if it is worthy of hatred. What happens to every true artist, when, under the influence of his surroundings, he begins to describe something different from what he ought to describe, is what happened to Balaam, who, when he wanted to bless, cursed that which ought to have been cursed, and, when he wanted to curse, began to bless that which ought to have been blessed; he will involuntarily do, not what he wants, but what he ought to do. The same happened with Maupassant.

There has hardly been another such an author, who thought so sincerely that all the good, the whole meaning of life was in woman, in love, and who with such force of passion described woman and the love of her from all sides, and there has hardly been another author, who with such clearness and precision has pointed out all the terrible sides of the same phenomenon, which to him seemed to be the highest, and one that gives the greatest good to men. The more he comprehended this phenomenon, the more did it become unveiled; the shrouds fell off, and all there was left was its terrible consequences and its still more terrible reality.

Read his "Idiot Son," "A Night with the Daughter" (_L'Ermite_), "The Sailor and His Sister" (_Le Port_), "Field of Olives," _La Petite Roque_, the English _Miss Harriet_, _Monsieur Parent_, _L'Armoire_ (the girl that fell asleep in the safe), "The Marriage" in _Sur l'Eau_, and the last expression of everything, _Un Cas de Divorce_. What Marcus Aurelius said, trying to find means with which to destroy in imagination the attractiveness of this sin, Maupassant does in glaring, artistic pictures, which upset one completely. He wants to laud love, but the more he knew of it, the more he cursed it. He cursed it for the calamities and sufferings which it brings with it, and for the disappointments, and, above all, for the simulation of true love, for the deception which is in it, and from which man suffers the more, the more he abandons himself to this deception.

The mighty moral growth of the author, during his literary activity, is written in indelible characters in these exquisite short stories and in his best book, _Sur l'Eau_.

And not merely in this discrowning, this involuntary and, therefore, so much more powerful discrowning of sexual love, do we see the author's moral growth; we see it also in all those higher and ever higher demands which he makes on life.

Not only in sexual love does he see the inner contradiction between the demands of the animal and of the rational man,--he sees it in the whole structure of the world.

He sees that the world, the material world, such as it is, is not only not the best of worlds, but, on the contrary, might have been quite different,--this idea is strikingly expressed in _Horla_,--and does not satisfy the demands of reason and of love; he sees that there is a certain other world, or at least there are the demands for such a world, in man's soul.

He is tormented, not only by the irrationality of the material world and the absence of beauty in it, but also by its lack of love, by its disunion. I know of no more heartrending cry of despair of an erring man who recognizes his loneliness, than the expression of this idea in the exquisite story, _Solitude_.

The phenomenon which more than any other tortured Maupassant, and to which he frequently returned, is the agonizing state of loneliness, the spiritual loneliness of a man, that barrier which stands between a man and others, that barrier which, as he says, is felt the more painfully, the closer the bodily contact.

What is it that tortures him? And what would he have? What destroys this barrier, what puts a stop to this loneliness? Love, not love of woman, of which he is tired, but pure, spiritual, divine love. And it is this that Maupassant seeks; toward this saviour of life, which was long ago clearly revealed to all, that he painfully tugs at the fetters with which he feels himself bound.

He is not yet able to name what he is seeking, he does not want to name it with his lips alone, for fear of defiling his sanctuary. But his unnamed striving, which is expressed by his terror in the presence of solitude, is so sincere that it infects us and draws us more powerfully than many, very many sermons of love, which are enunciated with the lips alone.

The tragedy of Maupassant's life consists in this, that, living in surroundings that are terrible because of their monstrousness and immorality, he by the force of his talent, that unusual light which was in him, broke away from the world-conception of his circle, was near to liberation, already breathed the air of freedom, but, having spent his last strength in this struggle, perished without becoming free, because he did not have the strength to make this one last effort.

The tragedy of this ruin consists in the same in which it even now continues to consist for the majority of the so-called men of our time.

Men have in general never lived without an explanation of the meaning of the life they live. Everywhere and at all times there have appeared advanced, highly gifted men, prophets, as they are called, who have explained to men this meaning and significance of life, and at all times the men of the rank and file, who have no strength to make this meaning clear to themselves, have followed that explanation of life which their prophets revealed to them.

This meaning was eighteen hundred years ago simply, lucidly, indubitably, and joyously explained by Christianity, as is proved by the life of all those who have accepted this meaning and follow that guide of life which follows from this meaning.

But there appeared men who interpreted this meaning in such a way that it became nonsense. And people are in a dilemma,--whether to recognize Christianity, as it is interpreted by Catholicism, Lourdes, the Pope, the dogma of the seedless conception, and so forth, or to live on, being guided by the instructions of Renan and his like, that is, to live without any guidance and comprehension of life, surrendering themselves to their lusts, so long as they are strong, and to their habits, when the passions have subsided.

And the people, the people of the rank and file, choose one or the other, sometimes both, at first libertinism, and then Catholicism. And people continue to live thus for generations, shielding themselves with different theories, which are not invented in order to find out the truth, but in order to conceal it. And the people of the rank and file, especially the dull ones among them, feel at ease.

But there are also other people,--there are but a few of them and they are far between,--and such was Maupassant, who with their own eyes see things as they are, see their meaning, see the contradictions of life, which are hidden from others, and vividly present to themselves that to which these contradictions must inevitably lead them, and seek for their solutions in advance. They seek for them everywhere except where they are to be found, in Christianity, because Christianity seems to them to have outlived its usefulness, to be obsolete and foolish and repellent by its monstrosity. Trying in vain to arrive by themselves at these solutions, they come to the conclusion that there are no solutions, that the property of life consists in carrying within oneself these unsolved contradictions. Having arrived at such a solution, these people, if they are weak, unenergetic natures, make their peace with such a senseless life, are even proud of their condition, considering their lack of knowledge to be a desert, a sign of culture; but if they are energetic, truthful, and talented natures, such as was Maupassant, they cannot bear it and in one way or another go out of this insipid life.

It is as though thirsty people in the desert should be looking everywhere for water, except near those men who, standing near a spring, pollute it and offer ill-smelling mud instead of water, which still keeps on flowing farther down, below the mud. Maupassant was in that position; he could not believe,--it even never occurred to him that the truth which he was seeking had been discovered long ago and was near him; nor could he believe that it was possible for a man to live in a contradiction such as he felt himself to be living in.

Life, according to those theories in which he was brought up, which surrounded him, and which were verified by all the passions of his youthful and spiritually and physically strong being, consists in enjoyment, chief of which is woman and the love of her, and in the doubly reflected enjoyment,--in the representation of this love and the excitation of this love in others. All that would be very well, but, as we look closely at these enjoyments, we see amidst them appear phenomena which are quite alien and hostile to this love and this beauty: woman for some reason grows homely, looks horrid in her pregnancy, bears a child in nastiness, then more children, unwished-for children, then deceptions, cruelties, then moral sufferings, then simply old age, and finally death.

And then, is this beauty really beauty? And then, what is it all for? It would be nice, if it were possible to arrest life. But it goes on. What does it mean,--life goes on? Life goes on, means,--the hair falls out and grows gray, the teeth decay, there appear wrinkles, and there is an odour in the mouth. Even before everything ends, everything becomes terrible and disgusting: you perceive the pasty paint and powder, the sweat, the stench, the homeliness. Where is that which I served? Where is beauty? And it is all. If it is not,--there is nothing. There is no life.

Not only is there no life in what seemed to have life, but you, too, begin to get away from it, to grow feeble, to look homely, to decay, while others before your very eyes seize from you those pleasures in which was the whole good of life. More than that: there begins to glint the possibility of another life, something else, some other union of men with the whole world, such as excludes all those deceptions, something else, something that cannot be impaired by anything, that is true and always beautiful. But that cannot be,--it is only the provoking sight of an oasis, when we know that it is not there and that everything is sand.

Maupassant lived down to that tragic moment of life, when there began the struggle between the lie of the life which surrounded him, and the truth which he was beginning to see. He already had symptoms of spiritual birth.

It is these labours of birth that are expressed in his best productions, especially in his short stories.

If it had been his fate not to die in the labour of birth, but to be born, he would have given great, instructive productions, but even what he gave us during the process of his birth is much. Let us be grateful to this strong, truthful man for what he gave us.

_Vorónezh, April 2, 1894._

THE END.

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Transcriber's note:

Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).

Small capital text has been replaced with all capitals.

Variations in spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been retained except in obvious cases of typographical error.

Missing page numbers are page numbers that were not shown in the original text.

The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up paragraphs, thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page number in the List of Illustrations.

Page 290: The transcriber has removed "were" from "But since there were was more than one woman in each house".